My other Democratic critic is Dee. We are Internet friends. Unfortunately, Dee is unlike Jim in that she is a nag. Ever since the “Octomom” stupidity came up, she has been urging me to write about it. At first, my emotions were too strong. Now? I surrender.

The words “stupid,” “horrible,” “reprehensible” and “irresponsible” are all too mild to express my feelings. The woman is a pig and the news people are no better. What is the big commercial hullabaloo? Lots of sows have from twelve to fifteen offspring, she had only eight. The doctor should be disbarred and the children, all of them, should be taken away and placed in homes where there are responsible adults. Instead, there is great publicity, hoards of volunteer helpers (Miss Suleman fired these after a few days, saying they were reporting her to child welfare) and lots of free goodies including a beautiful new home – which will probably look like it is an uninhabitable slum house in a year or two – or a week or two.

In addition to the new eight, Miss Suleman has six other children at home, ranging in age from two to seven. She says she is not receiving any welfare, just food stamps and disability checks, the checks totaling $2,379 per month. She also lived in her parent’s home for free. She claims she paid the $100,000 for fertility treatments by working double shifts at the hospital in addition to the disability money. (I think I would like a job in that hospital.) No mention was made in the articles I reviewed concerning who paid for the team of doctors and nurses who delivered the eight latest. I think I know why California is having financial problems.  The slightest bit of Welfare oversight would have revealed she was receiving disability at the same time as working double shifts. That makes no sense. 

Miss Suleman is planning on returning to university in the fall to work on her Master’s Degree. No mention in any of the articles was how she planned to care for those 14 children, the eldest being 8, while attending school. No mention is made as to how she plans to pay for this, and the care of the children while she is in school.

Possible fraud is not the real problem, however. What is another million or so taxpayer dollars in this case when so many are helping themselves to the seemingly bottomless, unpoliced, welfare well.   The true tragedy of this Octomom mess is the future of the children. Young children require a lot of care and attention, I claim expertise as a father of eight. They carelessly ignore danger to themselves and are casually cruel to brothers and sisters. They don’t mean to harm themselves or others, danger is simply meaningless to them. My daughter Lorene received a serious shoulder dislocation when she made a diving stop of her son Joseph as he raced down my driveway headed for the highway. On the casual cruelty side, I recall a situation when I was digging out a septic tank trench. I had a large pile of clay on one side and Andrew, about two, was sitting on top of one side of it. His brother Stephen, sitting about four feet away, was casually throwing lumps of mud at him. When I said, “Stephen stop throwing mud at Andrew,” he asked, “Can I throw rocks?” He meant it. He didn’t intend to harm or know the danger of a clump of hard clay, or a rock, hitting his little brother in the eye. I laughed at the time and still think of it as one of many funny such instances, but my children – all children – must be watched. How is Miss Suleman going to watch 14 children under the age of nine when those eight babies begin walking? There is a real possibility of harm in their interactions.

At another level, what sort of adults are these children going to become as they are raised by a mother who appears to have exploited all others; her mother and father who provided free housing and food as she bore the first six, volunteers who tried to help and the people of California through the welfare system. Is she raising fourteen more welfare dependent adults?

All of Miss Suleman’s finances appear interesting and none of them are very transparent. She deserves a post in the Obama Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of a department examining welfare fraud. She would fit right in.