How The Nobel Peace Prize Has Lost Its Way...

Why are we dragging our feet on increasing troop levels in Afghanistan? Maybe the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize wants to put some distance between his prize win and increasing the size of a war.

There are a lot of items circulating on the internet right now about how the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way, and I would like to share one of them with you now. You can look this up and will find the story to be based on facts, at least, according to the World Wide Web, although a lot of the emails circulating right now are a little dodgy on the true details of the story...

Irena Sendler passed away on May 12, 2008, sadly, not as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Also known as Irena Sendlerowa, she was a Polish social worker who secretly was a member of the Polish Underground, Zegota.

Immediately following the Nazi push into Poland on September 1, 1939, Irena joined with a group of people that created over 3,000 false documents to help smuggle Jews out of Poland.

In 1942, the Zegota appointed Irena as the head of its children's section. As a social worker, Irena had been granted permission to enter the Warsaw ghetto to monitor typhus, charged with ensuring that the disease did not go beyond the ghetto walls.

This afforded Irena the perfect opportunity to head the group's efforts to help Jewish children. Working with as many as 24 other members of Zegota, Irena developed an elaborate scheme by which 2,500 Jewish children were smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto.

Under the guise of ensuring that a typhoid outbreak did not occur, Irena and her fellow conspirators did everything from carrying out children in false bottoms of supply boxes, to hiding them in ambulances and trams, disguised as packages. 

Once freed by the efforts of Irena and the Zegota, these children were placed with Polish families, orphanages and churches with Irena maintaining records of their original identity and their new identity so that once the occupation was over, they could be reunited with surviving relatives.

Irena hid the records in jars that she buried. In 1943, however, the Nazis had caught on to Irena's involvement in Zegota. She was captured, tortured, and sentence to death. Zegota was able to spare her life by bribing Nazi prison guards, and Irena went into hiding for the remainder of the war.

As soon as the occupation ended, Irena returned to Warsaw, dug up her jars, and began working to reunite the children she had saved with surviving family members. Later, Irena would go on to work with the Polish government in exile during the Soviet occupation. Sadly, this landed her in a Soviet prison where she miscarried her second child. Due to her imprisonment, even upon her release, Irena and her children lost many of the rights afforded to the Polish Soviet citizenry, such as the ability to attend state-run universities.

As early as 1965, Irena began receiving awards from the world community, even though she could not venture out of Soviet Poland to accept these awards until 1983 when she was honored by the Isreali Supreme Court.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II recognized Irena's efforts with a personal letter, and Irena was awarded Poland's highest civilian honor, the Order of the White Eagle. 

In 2007, at the age of 97, Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but her life-threatening efforts to free Jewish children from the Nazis, reunite them with their families after the war, and her fight against the Soviets in Poland, just all paled in comparison to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's efforts to alert the world about Global Warming. Yes, you read that right. If Al Gore is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than Irena Sandler, then the prize itself no longer carries the meaning that it once did. Couple that with the award going to The Magician this year, and I am done with it all together.

Bobcat On Our Walk

Yesterday, I shared the following with the OC Register, which is currently mapping coyote and bobcat sightings throughout Orange County. You can make your own report at pets@ocregister.com.

"I live in Aliso Viejo and every evening my wife and I walk along Pacific Park between the 73 and Wood Canyon. On the evening of October 6, 2009, at about 6:00 PM, we saw a full-sized adult bobcat come out of the brush and run across the street about fifty feet ahead of us, in essence, making its way up the hill from out of our neighborhood. We continued on our path on the sidewalk, and sure enough, at the point at which the cat had crossed the street, he was sitting on his hind legs about fifteen feet up the hill on one of the man-made ledges, looking down at us. I was really amazed at how casual the cat was with us being that close. I kept a close eye on him and he met my gaze for about three seconds before looking away. Through our entire encounter, he was as aloof as a neighborhood house cat."

I Officially Withdraw My Endorsement Of Meg Whitman For California Governor

It is not often that I have done so, but I am officially withdrawing my endorsement of a candidate this morning.

While Meg Whitman's voting record has been a gray area for some time, the email that I received from her campaign this morning, a "Note From Meg", has confirmed for me that regardless of whether or not there is another viable Republican candidate, Meg Whitman will not be getting my vote.

I have continually taken a strong stance that any politician who seeks the honor of speaking for the people should have a strong voting record. While I may not always have agreed with how they voted, they must have at least shown up to vote. Too many Americans have died in the preservation of democracy for us to just not find the time to vote!

Please read the Note From Meg below, watch the video, and read the letter you will find in the links contained in the Note. I have done so, and I have to say to Meg, "There is no excuse for not voting, especially regarding the excuses that you are offering. It is time to step down and let those who have spent their lives involved in the process, and those who care enough to actually vote, make their bid for California Governor. I do not want someone who has not allowed their voice to be heard at election time speaking for me and my fellow voters."

Note From Meg:

As you may be aware, on September 24th The Sacramento Bee ran a story claiming, in effect, that I never registered to vote or voted until 2002. Since that story appeared, our campaign team has been reviewing my voter registration data, which we had on file. We set out to patiently and accurately reconcile what we knew with what The Bee wrote.

I have been very up front about my voting record. I'm not proud of it. From the age of 18 until today, I have missed too many elections. On Friday, I posted this video to make sure everyone understood my views on this matter.

While my voting record is nothing to be proud of, I have voted on numerous occasions, especially when I lived in San Francisco during the 1980s. For whatever reason, The Sacramento Bee appears to have played fast and loose with the actual facts.

Click to read a letter we sent to The Sacramento Bee this morning. The letter speaks for itself.

As always, I can't thank you enough for your support. Rebuilding California won't be easy. The special interests are very entrenched. Too many people in Sacramento like the status quo. I need your help to restore California.

Meg