Click images for desktop size: "Peso" There's a whole lot of flap and furor now because Bush's budget has been presented.
My take on the budget is that its typically self interested, promoting agendas and totally unrealistic.
There is a nerd-ish fascination with one section - Increasing the funding to NASA while decreasing the budget to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since Bush has gone on record as conceding that Global Warming is a reality and not a figment of some commie's brain, the logical conclusion is that he's written off the planet earth and is expecting us all to fly away on silvery space ships.
Sadly I'm not a person who trusts anyone who professes to believe in "The Rapture". When someone believes that they are chosen and that God will come down and take care of them and them alone (when the time comes), this is not someone to allow to plan anyone's future.
The budget is the budget. It will flounder around until it doesn't much matter anymore, at least to people who have to work for a paycheck.
What is important to me is something that this budget folderol is looking to drive from the public mind. Hell, I'm kidding myself. It never had a chance to concern anyone except the few it touches directly.
Children suicides are way up.
Children, meaning people under 13 years old.
Twelve year old kids are so filled with anger and despair that they're offing themselves.
It staggers me.
It saddens me that it isn't staggering anyone else.
When child murders - murders committed by children - shot up there was a big hew and cry: Charge them as adults; bring back the death penalty for kids; repeal the child labor laws and all the other sick quick fixes that actually got implemented.
I didn't hear of anyone who mattered saying that this was a big failing on our part, that we have made a huge error and made a world that wasn't fit for children. Or that we had taught children that life was so worthless that the expedient way to cope with a problem was murder.
Now, in our insufferable adultness we have made more and more children feel that their own lives are worthless.
Nowadays we clearly listen to our children so well that when a small kid crisis comes up they've got no place to go. The best solution their little kid's mind come up with is to swipe daddy's or mommy's gun from the bedside table and blow their little brains across their bedroom walls.
How did we let this happen? How have we let children feel so alone, so unloved?
What grave sins have we committed that the only punishment suitable is to allow children to take their own lives?
Everybody nows I'm not smart. When child murder touched me the only solution I could see was to go out with the kids who felt that badly about themselves and give them the chance to play a little ball; listen to them while we chucked the ball around.
I'm simple like that. Still stubborn enough to spend over a decade going out and finding those kids, letting them know that they were just as good as anybody else.
Some egg head called it "social inclusion of youth via sports".
I'm not that smart, I called it, "playing a little ball." I'd be afraid to do the social inclusion thing. It sounds hard.
Playing a little ball worked well enough I thought. I was wrong. It was ripples in the ocean. Yeah, a lot of those kids went on and picked up the task and carried it as their own into their own adulthood.
There weren't enough of them.
I think that the only real purpose of this life is to clear the way for the future. The only future we have is kids.
That means the greatest tragedy in the entire history of the world is a child's death. The most tragic kind of death I know of is self inflicted.
I don't know what to do about it. I know that every child out there is a radiant ball of potential. I know every kid has value and worth far greater than my own. I don't know how to convince them of it.

Click images for desktop size: "The Outsiders" by Unknown I know its not enough to just say it. It has to be shown and illustrated and proven to them every day. Its a pleasant enough task, honest.
I did it. I have a good sense of self worth but I know that if I could do it then anyone - ANYONE - else can do it and probably do it better.
What I don't know how to do is to convince you to get up and care.
My little puppy does it and has a world of puppy fun doing it. You can say she's just a dog. I agree except for the "just" part.
If she is just a dog then why is it she can extend herself to love children? Why is she can work to make a child happy when you cannot.
God save us from do gooders who look to raise their won egos by benefitting the needy when the do gooders don't understand what the need is.
God save the children.

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