Left Leg prob #2

As you might have seen from my recent post, I had a serious problem with my toe after dropping a piece of wood on it while moving last month. For the record, the nail fail off last night, one full month after the incident! During my orientation 2 weeks ago I tripped and fell and scraped up my leg pretty badly, giving me my second problem on my left leg in 3 weeks. I wish I had a more dramatic story for how it happened, but it was honestly while playing a game of tag on a grass field. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's the truth.

the iRack

As my wife said, "oui, c'est drole, mais c'est trop vrai!" Or, "sure it's funny, but it's too true!"

My big screen debut

If you're new to my blog then I invite you to go through the June 2005 archives to read my posts about being an extra in my church's movie about Joseph Smith. It was a great experience to get paid to be in a movie of such an interesting and historically important person. I first saw myself up on the big screen during the summer of 2006 when I was in Salt Lake City, but since the movie isn't out on DVD yet I've had no way to prove to others that I really was in it. Well, when Sarah and I were in DC a couple weeks ago we stopped at the Temple visitor's center and watched the movie together. I knew when my scene was coming up (more than 30 minutes into the movie) so I pulled out our camera and bootlegged my scene! Now I have proof! If you were able to zoom in on the four people unloading the barge on the other side of the river as the scene opens, then you'll notice that I'm the second from the left. It's movie magic that I am on both sides of the canal at the same time! Without further ado, here's the video clip:

21 years in a row

While Sarah and I were in NYC recently, my dad took us to a great Yankees game. I was relieved the Yanks played well and that Sarah had a good time, because her first Yankees game was really boring! This was a special game as ARod was one home run short of 500. Each pitch he faced brought electricity to the crowd (literally, as you can see there were tons of camera flashing during each pitch). Unfortunately he didn't get #500 that day, but when he did a few games later, he became the youngest player in baseball history to reach that milestone. I think there's only something like 26 other people who have ever reached 500.



Having grown up 25 minutes from Yankee stadium I've been to many games, including one season when I went to as many as 26! While this will most likely be my only game this year, it's special because it keeps our streak alive of having gone to a Yankees game together for 21 straight summers. As far as we can remember, we've been to a game every season since 1987 when I was 6 years old. My favorite part of any Yankee game is singing New York, New York along with Sinatra at the end.

Big Toe

Here's a picture of my big toe as it was starting to heal. Unfortunately this is a photo of how much better the toe looked compared to when I first dropped a piece of wood on it. I can't complain since it was the only casualty from my long distance move.

Immigrant Museum

While we were in NYC I couldn't help but be amused by the image of Sarah standing next to the sign for the immigration museum at Ellis Island. We know a thing or two about the anxiety of immigrating to the US!

UFO?

While having dinner with the Charland family last Sunday (he's our Bishop at Church), we heard a loud noise over their back porch patio. We looked up, and there was a hot air balloon, right above their neighborhood, maybe 30 feet (around 10 meters) in the sky! I could have thrown a baseball to them they were so close. So we put on our shoes, and with the rest of the neighborhood, we ran a couple blocks and watched as this huge balloon hovered in the air and landed in the middle of the street! What a wierd experience to watch a hot air balloon land on a suburban street completely unannounced. Apparently there was no wind and they were going to run out of gas if they continued, and there was no better place around, so they just landed. They called a truck and we watched as they brought the balloon down, folded it up and put it in away. The whole thing only took 4 minutes! We told the Charlands that they really didn't have to go through all the trouble to arrange something like that for our sending off! Read about the rest of our good-bye dinners at our family blog.

Nigeria vs Zambia

Last week Sarah and I went to the Nigeria-Zambia game in the FIFA under 20 World Cup of soccer. The rain storm was crazy, the game was close and the African fans were a blast. In the end Nigeria won 2-1, which led to a massive party in the stands. One large group had drums and trumpets and paraded through the outside of the stadium with the rest of their group dancing and singing; it was great! The first video are the official highlights of the game from FIFA's website, the second is a video which I pulled off of youtube posted by someone from an earlier Nigeria game, but it gives a good sense of the party atmosphere we enjoyed. FYI, Nigeria has since been knocked out of the tournment (as have the US and Canada) and two teams we've seen (Argentina and Czech Republic) are in the semi-finals and could face each other in the finals. The other two teams still alive are Austria (who beat the US) and Chile.

Romney Fundraising

This is an enjoyable video posted on the Romney's family website about their recent fundraising day in Boston. It's interesting to me for 3 reasons, the first being that it demonstrates the huge importance of money in modern politics and how most of the campaigning and idea sharing that seems to be going on revolves around raising money. Secondly, it shows Romney's growing strength. Amazingly, he has raised more money than any other Republican in both quarters of 2007 so far, and has spent his money well to bring himself from 4th or 5th in Iowa and New Hampshire to leading in those states. On his Washington Post blog, Chris Cilliza even ranked Romney as in the lead for the overall Republican nomination! This due to McCain's implosion and Rudy's not so conservative record. It'll be really interesting to see how this thing plays out over the next 7 months (the primaries are mostly in February).

The third interesting aspect of this is the incredible importance of youtube as a source for spreading messages, both for canidates and for anyone else who wants. The biggest example of this are the two following videos which have played a major role in perpetuating the perception that Romney is a flip-flopper and political opportunist. Which is the real Romney? The one who vows to protect abortion rights, gay rights and gun control while running for Governor or Senator of a liberal state, or the one who vows to end abortion, prevent same sex marriage and joins the NRA while running for the Republican nomination? My guess is that he's probably closer to the latter, and that the former was more of a political bend for him.





To further make my point of the importance of youtube, Romney responded to this last video by quickly producing and posting one of his own:

Editorials

Here are three brief editorials while I wait for my computer at work to start functioning:
I was outraged to read in yesterday's Washington Post of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona testimony before Congress that multiple times during his four year tenure (2002-2006) he was silenced and muffled by Bush's politcal appointees from giving his scientificly based professional opinion on controversial public health issues like stem cell research. As I've written before, this is an issue that is grossly misunderstood by the public and greatly misrepresented by Pres. Bush and large portions of the right wing (I am proud that all the LDS Senators support stem cell research). As surgeon general Carmona felt he had a responsibility and opportunity to educate the public on the issue, but chunks of his speeches were cut by Bush's people and his appearances were controlled by the White House. He was even instructed to mention Pres. Bush's name at least 3 times per page during his speeches! Unfortunately politcal handling of the SG isn't brand new as former Surgeons General under Reagan and Clinton both testified to feeling they didn't have free professional reign, though they both said that nothing they experienced compares to what Bush is doing.

While I am on the subject of Bush infuriating me, can you believe his response to the Scooter Libby sentencing? The story goes that a year or two ago an illegal leak of someone's name occured and a NY Times reporter was put in jail for not revealing her sources (essentially protecting Bush's people as it turns out). Bush said that once he found out who the source was he would punish and fire that person and seemed supportive of criminal proceedings. Well, it turned out that at least one of those people (Karl Rove and CIA director Richard Armitage also had) was Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, a HUGELY important person and very close to Bush. Bush backpedaled and didn't fire him or support criminal charges, though Libby was eventually charged with obstruction of justice (I'm fuzzy on the exact details but I think that's right). A jury convicted him and a judge sentenced him to 30 months in jail. An unbelievable story in its own right if it had ended there as Libby became the highest ranking official to be convicted of criminal charges since the early 80's, but it gets worse. Just before Libby was about start serving time (he already had a prison ID number), Bush "commuted" his sentence saying it was excessive for the crime and that the evidence at trial didn't warrant this. Unbelievable! It's true that he didn't outright "pardon" him, meaning forgive the crime and overturn the conviction, but he's unintentionally opened a legal can of worms by commuting him. This essentially means that he accepts the conviction but forgives Libby of his jail time, and as a result, every person who has been or will be convicted on similar charges will argue that they deserve the same punishment Libby got. This is outrageous. This from the President who speaks so strongly for "mandatory minimum" sentences because "activist judges" take the law into their own hands and weakly punish criminals. I find such blatant hypocrisy so frustrating. You'll also notice Harriet Miers in the above photo; remember her? On the same day as what might arguably be his biggest achievement as President (confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts), Bush nominated his personal White House Lawyer to the Supreme Court. That obviously bombed, and now apparently her testimony about the justice department firings has been subpeoned, and Bush has ordered her and another advisor Sara Taylor, not to testify. Unbelievable. That's a whole other long story I won't get into.

Finally, have your heard about the outrageous news from the Dept of Homeland Security about permanent residency applications? There are a set number of green cards they give out every year (except to spouses of US citizens, there is an unlimited number of those, THANK GOODNESS!) and earlier this year a bulletin went out saying that more applications would be accepted for people from India and a couple other places. People who had been waiting 9-10 years could finally apply! People canceled trips, rushed to be married, have relatives wait on line to get documents, hired lawyers in order to get everything together by the July 2nd deadline. On July 2nd, the very day that everyone had their applications in, Homeland Security announced that they had made a mistake and the quota was already filled and there were no more green cards available. Being in the middle of a huge immigration process myself (though with the guarantee that a green card is available for Sarah) I understand the unbelievable stress, anxiety and frustration the process brings, not to mention the large amounts of money that gets spent (we've easily spent more than $1200 so far and have a ways to go) and I am beyond outraged and ashamed at the department's actions. According to a Washington Post article, hundreds of people from India responded to this terrible disappointment with a protest worthy of Ghandi, sending boxes of flowers to the department headquarters. Apparently they've received hundreds and hundreds of boxes of flowers from angry protesters. What an admirable way to channel anger and frustration. I wonder if I could be capable such a response. I hope I don't have to find out!

2008 Health Care Debate

Kudos to the NY Times for this great summary