Thought For The Day - 11.08.08

“Wherever you go, no matter

 what the weather, always

 bring your own sunshine.” 

…Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

 Here is a great (true) story about someone who always brought his own sunshine, as he slowly watched things change….

 

The White House Butler

WASHINGTON — For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America's racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

In 1866 the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, sensing an opening to advocate for black voting rights, made a White House visit to lobby President Andrew Johnson. Johnson refused to engage in a struggle for black voting rights. Douglass was back at the White House in 1877. But no one wished to discuss his political sentiments: President Rutherford Hayes had engaged the great man — it was a time of high minstrelsy across the nation — to serve as a master of ceremonies for an evening of entertainment.

In the fall of 1901, another famous black American came to the door. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, to meet with him at the White House. Roosevelt was careful not to announce the invitation, fearing a backlash, especially from Southerners.

Started as 'pantry man'

Before he landed his job at the White House, Gene Allen worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and then at a country club in Washington.

He and his wife, Helene, 86, are sitting in the living room of their Washington home Her voice is musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She calls him "Honey."

The couple met in Washington at a party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.

In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he says. "I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields."

Fields, a maitre d', immediately liked Allen and offered him a job as a "pantry man." He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year.

There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," Allen says.

"I was there, Honey," Helene reminds him. "In the back maybe. But I shook their hands, too." She's referring to White House holiday parties, Easter Egg hunts. They have one son, Charles, now an investigator with the State Department.

"President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," Allen says. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday, too!' "

And so they'd sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.

"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he goes on. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy."

"Hmm-mmm," she says, rocking.

A State Dinner

He was in the White House kitchen the day JFK was slain. He got a personal invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."

The whole family of President Carter made him chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It comes out sounding like the highest compliment.

First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. But she told him he would not be working that night.

"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' "

Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son says, 'Momma, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'

"The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to," she says." I was doing as much talking as they were.

"Had champagne that night," she says, looking over at her husband. He just grins: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.

Colin Powell would become the highest-ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named President Reagan's national security adviser in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that same position under President George W. Bush.

The butler remembers seeing both Powell and Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that blacks were moving closer to the center of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He'd tell Helene how proud it made him feel.

Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him, tight.

Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were actually elected president.

"Just imagine," she said.

"It'd be really something," he said.

On Monday, Helene had a doctor's appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone.

"I woke up, and my wife didn't," he said later.

The lady he married 65 years ago will be buried today.

The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office

 “The One Thing We Can All Count On Is Change!”

(Some things are outside our ability to change… Some, our ability to affect lies in our passion and interest…  But how we react, accept or stand up to change is definitely within all our control.)

Thought For The Day - 10.22.08

“I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.” …Eleanor Roosevelt  

The Decent Drapery of Life

The nation's political contests are (finally) entering the home stretch.

That means the candidates who are out of office - Democrats in some races, Republicans in others - are raising the age-old question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

When politicians pose this question, we know they are asking us to do a quick economic calculation. Is your salary higher? Is your home worth more? Is your 401(k) rising in value?

Given the bruised condition of the U.S. economy, housing market and stock market, millions of Americans could be forgiven for responding with an emphatic "no" - and perhaps a few overripe tomatoes.

Politics aside, though, there is a problem with turning this "better-off" question into a monetary equation. It neglects what Edmund Burke called "the decent drapery of life."

You may not be earning more than you were four years ago. Your home or your stock portfolio may be worth less. But is that really how we determine whether we are better off?

Maybe you fell in love over the last four years. Maybe you took up fly-fishing. Maybe you moved to an exciting new city. (I did.) Maybe you spent the last four years honoring your profession, learning more about it, helping more people than ever before.

Economic statistics are fine as far as they go. But they don't go far in measuring a life well lived.

Life can't just be about the grim determination to get and have more. As President Calvin Coolidge said, "No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."

Peggy Noonan agrees. "In a way, the world is a great liar," she writes. "It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, 'The thing about Joe was that he was rich.' We say, if we can, 'The thing about Joe was he took care of people.'"

It doesn't hurt to remember this. Because the one undeniable fact about the last four years is that you now have four less of them left.

So maybe the important thing is not to make more, have more, or spend more. Maybe the important thing is to slow down and appreciate small things, ordinary things: The first frost. The town clock. The curl on your grandson's forehead.

At 79, my Dad has suddenly become an avid birder. What a surprise. When I was growing up, his free time was all about golfing, coaching Little League games or watching major league sports. He didn't own a pair of binoculars. And he certainly couldn't tell you the difference between a tufted titmouse and a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

When we're young, of course, we're going to live forever. There isn't time to notice things. We have places to go. Things to do.

"We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well," wrote Paul Bowles near the end of his life. "Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five time more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty."

Rushing from one appointment to the next, we use up our time, putting off the non-urgent, the unessential.

But in the second half - and no one knows when we reach that point exactly - life takes on a special poignancy precisely because our time is limited. It becomes richer and more meaningful because of it.

It becomes more important than ever to spend time with the people we love, to create those opportunities - and to savor them.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Only you can determine what the question even means. But the answer shouldn't require a calculator.

"Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," Ronald Reagan once remarked.

They understand this in Scotland. When I lived in St. Andrews several years ago, the locals would often clink my glass, give me a wink, and announce in that distinct Scottish brogue:

"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."

Carpe Diem, Alex Green, Spiritual Wealth

“Perhaps something to consider as we vote and in considering for whom we are voting… Who is the better man (or woman)?  Who has lived the bigger and more rounded life; a decent life?  Who has given the most?  Who has the experience to understand and empathize with more of us… for it is far from just the money or economics that makes America who she is and us ‘who we are’!

Thought For The Day - 10.04.08

“The Greatest Fear Is Fear Itself!” …President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man that Joe Biden and Katie Couric thought was president when the American Stock Market crashed in 1929.

(Nothing Gets Our Attention Like Fear says Gavin de Becker, Security Expert & Author of ‘The Gift of Fear’  & ‘Fear Less’.  He also says that what Americans should fear the most is the ‘cure’, the rights we have given up so freely since 9/11, the invasive precautions we now accept in the name of security and the daily local news broadcast that keeps us in a state of fear!!)

Biden Secret Service Codename: 'Assassination Insurance'

While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president -- or maybe take a stab at guessing the decade when televisions were first available to the public. 

Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened."

For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs.

Other than that, the statement holds up pretty well. At least Biden managed to avoid mentioning any "clean" Negroes he had met.

Couric was nearly moved to tears by the brilliance of Biden's brain-damaged remark. She was especially intrigued by Biden's claim that FDR had said the new iPhone was the bomb!

Here is Couric's full response to Biden's bizarre outburst about FDR (a) being president and (b) going on TV in 1929: "Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden's strong suits."  ...Yet she is the one looking down on Sarah Palin; scrunching up her face in looks of bewilderment.

But when our beauteous Sarah said that John McCain was a better leader on the economy than Barack Obama, Couric relentlessly badgered her for evidence. "Why do you say that?" Couric demanded. "Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? ... Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?"

The beauteous Sarah had cited McCain's prescient warnings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Couric, the crackerjack journalist who didn't know FDR wasn't president in 1929, demanded more examples from Palin.

We are currently in the middle of a massive financial crisis brought on by Fannie Mae. McCain was right on Fannie Mae; Obama was wrong. That's not enough?

Not for the affable Eva Braun of evening TV! "I'm just going to ask you one more time," Couric snipped, "not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?" 

This would be like responding to someone who predicted the 9/11 attacks by saying: OK, you got one thing right. Not to belabor the point, but what else?

Obama was not merely wrong on Fannie Mae: He is owned by Fannie Mae. 

Somehow Obama managed to become the second biggest all-time recipient of Fannie Mae political money after only three years in the Senate. The biggest beneficiary, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, had a 30-year head start on receiving loot from Fannie Mae -- the government-backed institution behind our current crisis.

How does the Democratic ticket stack up on other major issues facing the nation, say, gas prices?

Shockingly, Sen. Joe Biden was one of only five senators to vote against the first Alaskan pipeline bill in 1973. This is like having been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. If Sarah Palin does nothing else, she has got to tie that idiotic pipeline vote around Biden's neck.

The Senate passed the 1973 Alaskan pipeline bill by an overwhelming 80-5 vote. Only five senators voted against the pipeline on final passage. Sen. Biden is the only one who is still in the Senate -- the other four having been confined to mental institutions long ago.

The stakes were clear: This was in the midst of the first Arab oil embargo. Liberal Democrats, such as senators Robert Byrd, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church and Hubert Humphrey, all voted for the pipeline.

But Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies by about the same amount.

The only argument against the pipeline was that it would harm the caribou, an argument that was both trivial and wrong. The caribou population near the pipeline increased from 5,000 in the 1970s to 32,000 by 2002.

It would have been bad enough to vote against the pipeline bill even if it had hurt the caribou. A sane person would still say: Our enemies have us in a vice grip. Sorry, caribou, you've got to take one for the team. But when the pipeline goes through and the caribou population sextuples in the next 20 years, you really look like a moron.

We couldn't possibly expect Couric to ask Biden about a vote that is the equivalent of voting against the invention of the wheel. But couldn't she have come up with just one follow-up question for Biden on FDR's magnificent handling of the 1929 stock market crash?

Or here's a question the public is dying to know: "If Obama wanted a historically delusional vice president, why not Lyndon LaRouche?" At least LaRouche didn't vote against the Alaskan pipeline.

The media also keeps telling us that Obama is ahead in the polls by as much as 9 percentage points, because of his ‘handling’ of the present economic crisis… Handling???  He is nowhere around!!  And as we all know, statistics and polls can be interpreted and spun by anyone who wants to and needs to… The fact is that only one poll, that interviewed Democrats to Republicans 2 to 1, shows Obama ahead of McCain by more than 3 percentage points… while others show them from 3 percentage points apart to being in a dead heat, even with all the media spin for Obama and with McCain being off the campaign trail and doing his job in Washington.

By Ann Coulter for NewsMax

“McCain wants to ‘put his country first’. The best way is simple: Get aggressive and win the election!” …Larry Elder, who says McCain needs to take off the gloves!

Thought For The Day - 10.03.08

"Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage."
…Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian renaissance writer and thinker

 

Where would we be today if everyone retreated as soon as they came upon an obstacle? We would be suffering the ramifications of losing World War I and II. Without light, of course, since Edison stumbled many times before succeeding. Would we have cars, airplanes, computers? Running water, food, clothing? The late Dr. Randy Pausch said it best, "Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." Prove how badly you want to succeed.

Next time a great opportunity comes along, go for it!  If you have friends and family who are willing to try something unconventional… support them, buy from them, try what they have, be an ear to bounce ideas off of or a shoulder for them to cry on before they start over.

Thought For The Day - 10.01.08

"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."  …Mahatma Gandhi, a political and spiritual leader of India

 Would you spend your entire life’s savings to save the life of a family member? Absolutely, without a second of hesitation. That realization should make it abundantly clear that far too many of us live our lives backwards — pursuing wealth, success, and pleasure. And hoping we live long enough to enjoy them. Live life right by putting your health first. Then the rest will fall into place.

 MUFA’s

The trick to a flat stomach and losing weight is having MUFAs at every meal and snack. What is a MUFA? It stands for monounsaturated fatty acid, which is found in nuts (walnuts and almonds are great choices), seeds, avocadoes, olives and flax and olive oils, and dark chocolate. So walnuts in my cereal? Flaxseed oil in my smoothie? Tapenade in my turkey wrap? Guacamole with my dinner? Totally doable!

"Jumpstart" your diet for about 4-days by having Mufas at every meal and snack, which is designed to not only lower the calories a bit more (an acceptable 1,200), but also to reduce belly bloat and gas so you have the visual proof that your gut is deflating.

Add 2 liters of Sassy Water -- a mixture of water with a lemon, a cucumber, grated ginger and spearmint leaves each day, for the first 4-days,strained of course, and you are on your way!

 Source:  Prevention  Magazine!

 Ad some GoChi and you are on your way to weight loss and good health, which truly is the greatest wealth!!

 Source:  Prevention  Magazine!

Thought For The Day - 09.30.08

“It Is Easy To Make the Party In Power the Scapegoat, And Even Easier To Make Yourself Look Good When You Are Willing to Shade the Truth… or Just Vote Present!”  …Thomas Sowell 

Bailout Politics 

By Thomas Sowell

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home 

to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae 

and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage 

loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to 

otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole 

careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words "affordable housing" and the ugly word 

"redlining" led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community 

Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led 

happened on George W. Bush's watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong "creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and 

enjoy the associated increase in return."

Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported 

enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to 

prevent chaos in financial markets.

Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve System, made the same point in testifying before Congress in 

February 2004. He said: "The Federal Reserve is concerned" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using this implicit reliance on a government bailout in a crisis to 

take more risks, in order to "multiply the profitability of subsidized debt."

Chairman Greenspan added his voice to those urging 

Congress to create a "regulator with authority on a par with that of banking regulators" to reduce the riskiness of Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac, a riskiness ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, 

but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great 

Depression of the 1930s.

Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free 

markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten 

away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the 

expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting 

politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers.

And for a little reality check:

•  These financial practices that have led us to our present financial problems started long before the Bush Administration.  One of the most radical groups in America, ACORN, that helped push the government toward forcing lenders to loan to people who couldn’t qualify under the old rules, is an organization with which Obama has direct ties.
  
• Both McCain and Bush have warned about and asked for financial reforms during the past 8-years. 
•  If you think change from what brought America to our present financial crisis means Obama and the democrats, you don’t have your facts straight. 
• The example of Nancy Pelosi going to the House of Representatives today and causing the Republican House members, who had softened over the weekend, to definitely unit against the bailout, is the perfect example of the Democrats not being willing to work together and trying to place the blame of their bad policies on this administration and the Republicans.

Related Stories: 

The Rest of the Meltdown Story

 2008 Presidential Candidate Comparison

 McCain Shines – Bill Clinton Glad To See Him

 ACORN, Obama, and the Present Mortgage Mess

  

“The first 300,000 million of the 7 billion dollar plan should be divvied up and given to the American people… 1 million to every American Citizen and legal resident of the United States… and the rest can be used to bailout Wall Street and the Financial Industry.”  …Russell Crowe

(I loved it, Russell, because I said the same thing and wrote an article saying just that last week.  Too bad nobody listens to us!  Marion…)