Attention New Parents: Save Your Baby's LONG FORM

       Today I asked my daughter, who lives in Arizona,  if she had the long form of my grandchildren's birth certificates and she said no, it must have got lost in the move because she couldn't find it and had to get  replacement birth certificates for  her twins Jeffrey and Jane when they started kindergarten.
    "Great," I said, "There go my dreams of one of my grandchildren becoming president of the United States."
     "Huh?"
     "YOUR state is trying to pass a law that will only allow someone to run for president if they have the long form birth certificate," I explained.
     "Huh?" she said again.
     "Never mind, I'll e-mail it to you."
     So I sent her this:

Within ten days after submittal of the names of the candidates, the national political party committee shall submit an affidavit of the presidential candidate in which the presidential candidate states the candidate's citizenship and age and shall append to the affidavit documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen, prove the candidate's age and prove that the candidate meets the residency requirements for president of the United States as prescribed in Article ii, Section 1, Constitution of the United States. The affidavit prescribed in subsection a shall include references to and attachment of all of the following, which shall be sworn to under penalty of perjury:
1. A certified copy of the presidential candidate's long form birth certificate that includes at least the date and place of birth, the names of the hospital and the attending physician, if applicable, and signatures of any witnesses in attendance. If the candidate does not possess a long form birth certificate as required by this paragraph, the candidate may attach two or more of the following documents that shall take the place of the long form birth certificate if the candidate swears to their authenticity and validity and the documents contain enough information for the secretary of state to determine if the candidate meets the requirements prescribed in Article ii, Section 1, Constitution of the United States:
(a) early baptismal or circumcision certificate.
(b) hospital birth record.
(c) postpartum medical record for the mother or child signed by the doctor or midwife or the person who delivered or examined the child after birth.
(d) early census record.

         She called back.
        "So whose behind it? Those people who don't believe Barak Obama is a natural born citizen?"
       "Them and Donald Trump. "I said.  "If they do this crap, they better warn parents to save their children's long form birth certificates in the event that their child becomes a presidential candidate."
      "Right.  Well, we're not even worried about student council yet," she said.
      "Maybe not, but I bet Ann Dunham would have saved it somehow if she'd known her son was going to grow up to be president.  Then there wouldn't be all these wacky conspiracy theorists prompting such dumb laws that affect my grandchildren!!"
     "Well, try not to worry too much.  By the time Jane and Jeffrey have reached the qualified age to be president the courts will have long since thrown it out," she said.
    "They better.  It's just not right to impede on the rights of my grandchildren to be president!"

       So here's to you Ann Dunham. I know that if you had lived to see your son become president the "birther's" would not be obsessing about this because you could have filled in all the smallest of details of the most memorable event in any mother's life.

                                                     Ann Dunham with Barak as a boy
   

      Since you're not here to defend him, some of us will try to do right by you and dispel the nonsense.  Once again:

1961	Barack Hussein Obama II is born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4 at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Woman and Children.II

An Appeal to Save Life on Earth: forget SETI

    So, our planet is undergoing it's sixth major mass extinction, and there is a large array in
the desert searching for other life in the universe.  Why is it that we care about life in other parts of the universe but we could give a rat's butt about life on our own planet?  I'm so confused.  Coral reefs which contain such abundant, extraordinarily beautiful, awesome creatures are bleached and dying throughout the world.  In fifty years polar bears will be found at zoos and in the combined  DNA of grizzlies but nowhere else.   But, there is a large array in the desert searching for intelligent life outside our planet.  Well, perhaps on the other hand that's not a bad idea to search for intelligent life elsewhere, because we are certainly not finding it here, except in rare instances.  One such rare intelligence is a man by the name of E.O. Wilson. 

He says:

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in our knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance.

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

Edward O. Wilson, The world's leading authority on Biodiversity, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Harvard and author of "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth."

    As I write this, I can envision some believers out there thinking and saying that this is just all part of the foretold end of the world.  Nonsense.  We are called upon to be stewards of the earth.  Where is our estimation of sincerity for our home, our Earth? It is our gift and we have squandered its riches. 
     Instead of focusing on life outside the universe, lets concentrating on saving the one we have.