Crumpled Notebook

This has bugged me for a while, and since I’ve been inspired to write more lately, I’m going to say it publicly.

Doesn’t Congress and Senator George Mitchell have anything better to do than worry about baseball? As one friend says, “it’s ridiculous that they’re even involved.”

I don’t think I’m the only person who feels this way either.

I guess maybe I could be wrong. I guess maybe I was always taught that our government, our congress, legislators, and President’s job was to look out for the welfare of the country. You know, things like, a thriving economy, peace with other countries, taking care of those who need help, making sure every child has a proper education, and making sure Americans get proper health care, just to name some more obvious ones.

But it seems, at least lately, Senator Mitchell has made baseball his only agenda. Yes, baseball players using and abusing steroids is not good for baseball, but come on, in the grand scheme of things, where does that rank on the priorities of our country? Is there any presidential candidate running on the platform that MLB needs to crackdown on steroid use in baseball? Is that on the list of questions of issues that are important to the people who live in the country? The answer is NO.

So I ask, why are you, Senator Mitchell, wasting my tax dollars on something that I, and most Americans, already know? Shouldn’t MLB be allowed to govern itself? Since using steroids illegally is a crime, shouldn’t law enforcement just be cracking down? I’m just saying, it would be like my city council coming in and investigating our high school sports teams here are drinking too much gatorade, or practicing in the off-season, or even using steroids. That doesn’t happen. If a coach, school official, or police officer suspects that, they’ll do something about it. Not our city council or mayor or anything like that. And if they did, I would still say it was ridiculous.

Sure, maybe MLB should have done a better job of monitoring it. Maybe the coaches and trainers and team mates should have taken some responsibility. Why aren’t you investigating Bud Selig for not doing his job if you care that much? If you have to go in an investigate the coaches and players under him, should that say that he hasn’t been doing his job and should just be fired? My opinion is that he never cared until the government started caring. Why would he? You have records being broken…something that gave baseball it’s first breath of life in I don’t know how many years. And all of that happening under baseball commissioner Bud Selig. Now he’s playing “hard” and cracking down. He should be. He should have been all along because there of course is steroid use in baseball. There still is. And there was even before Congress decided to make it its mission to strip any record-breaking baseball player of their credibility, whether it’s true or not.

Maybe the Babe never used steroids. Maybe he did. Maybe there was something else he used. The fact is, people have been cheating in baseball, and probably every other sport, since the inception of the game. It doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t make it a matter of national security either. If Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens took steroids, and you busted them for it, is that going to help my future children have a good education? Is that going to ensure that when they retire, they have social security there (or when I retire for that matter)? Is that going to help ensure my mom gets the medication she needs just so she can get out of bed and get up and move around? Is that going to help find a cure for cancer or Parkinson’s disease? This that going to make sure that we don’t go into another recession during the Bush administration? This that going to bring peace in the middle east and our troops home safely? Reduce crime rate? Get drugs off the streets? Boost our economy?

No. It’s not. You, Senator Mitchell, and anyone else in Congress who helped with this witch hunt, should be ashamed of yourself for wasting not only tax payers dollars, but more importantly, your time. That time that we elected you to be looking our for “our” best interest and the best interest of our country, not the best interest of America’s Pastime.

I know, I rarely do full posts on politics, just the occasional jab. You can even see from my categories that there is no “politics” category. It’s just not my thing to rant about on here usually. Not that this is a rant by any means.

I was reading a TIME article today called “The Last Temptation of Al Gore.” While I was reading it, and looking at the picture gallery of him over the years, I realized how much good this man has actually done for our country and how much courage he has to keep doing it despite his “loss” in the 2000 election. I really like it when people stop caring about what they should be and just be themselves and I feel like that is what Gore has done since the election. I wish this Al Gore was the same Al Gore that ran for president in 2000. I love the fact that since then, he has really fought for what he believes in, and stuff we should all believe in like our environment, he didn’t care to speak out against the war, because what does he have to lose. He has showed much more passion than we ever saw when he was Vice-President or running for President. He has somehow managed to grasp the advantage the President Clinton had over him–personality. A straight-up environment-loving, computer geek with personality. Yeah, so what if he said he “invented the internet” (actually what Gore said was “I took the initiative in creating the Internet”). A wording blunder, yes–complete fabrication, no. At least his blunder didn’t say that “human being and fish can coexist peacefully” (although, I’m sure he would be all for that too).

I guess what impresses me most with him is his quiet dignity. He didn’t sit by during the 2000 election and let things happen, but in the end, he had respect for our system. After that, I think most people would have went on a rampage saying how the process was wrong and it needed to be changed. He didn’t do that. He just did what he’s been doing forever, focusing on his passions, and doing so in such a way that he doesn’t care if people judge him. Why should he? He lost a the popular vote to a complete moron. He challenged it and he still lost. He lost his own state. I think most self-respecting men would have went into hiding for the rest of their life. Gore? He decided to write a couple of books and make a movie which resulted in an Academy Award and a Pulitzer. I don’t think that constitutes as running home with your tail between your legs.

And still, he’s not running for President. At least not right now. He should. I mean, he has the best of some of the Democratic front-runners all rolled into one. He’s “a candidate with the grassroots appeal of Barack Obama—someone with a message that transcends politics, someone who spoke out loud and clear and early against the war in Iraq. But you would also want a candidate with the operational toughness of Hillary Clinton—someone with experience and credibility on the world stage.” I’ll go one step father to that. He would be a candidate who doesn’t care about judgment anymore. A man kind of like John Edwards who took his shot and lost it and came back with this side of him we’ve never seen before. A side of him with personality and charm. He’s a southern. He’s not black (and you know there are still people out there who won’t vote for Obama because of that). He’s not a woman (same thing with Hillary losing votes because of being a woman). And frankly, I think he’s done more for our country during the last 5-6 years than our own President has. He hasn’t been creating legislature, he’s being creating awareness and I think I would argue that that is the most important first step to any kind of change. I’m not convinced he has to run for President to continue to make an impact. In fact, maybe he can accomplish more by not running and maybe that is his reasoning. However, if there is any man, or woman, in this country who should be our President, someone intelligent as well as personable, someone who has the ability to create real change and pull us out of this hole we keep digging deeper and deeper, then that man is Al Gore.

Here’s info on his books and movie: Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, An Inconvenient Truth, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

An interesting picture I found on creative commons taken between Mission and Bryant on 24th St in San Francisco.

I was very disheartened to hear that Unsite.org had to be taken offline. While I understand that anyone doing something that represents The Salvation Army should be monitored (and I support that idea as well), I hope the National Headquarters looks hard at the positive aspects and value of this site.

I give my whole-hearted support for the mission and purpose of Unsite.org–as a Salvation Army employee, a Salvationist, a volunteer, a supporter and a child of God. I was very disheartened to learn of it being taken down as I found it to be a very useful tool for my work at The Salvation Army, for both social services and ministry related aspects. Most of the clip art and graphics available to us from the Corps or from The Salvation Army is either non-existent or difficult to access, or people just don’t know about them! On top of that, they tend to be outdated, poor quality, or non-unique for the most part. I know the Red Shield Toolkit provides some high quality material, but unless you work for The Salvation Army, you don’t have access to these and they are difficult to get to. If you happen to just be a church member or church volunteer ( i.e. Sunday School teacher) the Red Shield Toolkit wouldn’t be accessible to you and it doesn’t provide much, if any, ministry related graphics or resources.

Unsite is a good collection of FREE, fresh, new and high quality resouces that is available to Salvationist worldwide. They stay true to the mission of the Salvation Army–a mission to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to all. It was always nice and encouraging to see what other Salvationist in the world were working on and how they were ministering to their communities. Not only did it provide material to use, but it also helped to generate ideas for new materials and resources that could be shared with others. I never feared that anything I wanted to submit or use would be sold or used for malicious purposes. It was always nice to have the website handy to find a Call to Worship, a game to play with the youth, or helpful graphics such as poster for a Food Drive. Resources that most people don’t have either the software or know-to to create on their own.

These resources have helped me personally with organizing a campus food drive with student volunteers by providing information and posters. They have given me simple logos or graphics for brochures, fliers, powerpoint presentations and videos used to promote the work of The Salvation Army and recruit volunteers for all of our programs. The site has given me scriptural resources and relevant games to use during the Sunday School class that I teach.

I have been using Unsite.org since it first came online and have found it to be an INVALUABLE resource for MY work and ministry at The Salvation Army and it has helped me connect with other Salvationist through using the site. I would encourage the decision-makers to reconsider the value of this site and to find some way to keep these simple and easy resources available to Salvationist world-wide!

My latest Jamglue mix and
response to the elections. election projection by mfelkins

It’s a good day for Democrats, or at least anyone kind of tired of politics we’ve been subjected to the past 4–6 years.

Not that I’m anti-Republican. I’m not. I even voted for Arnold. Yep, I’ll tell you that and have no problems with saying it.

I’m just saying that something obviously hasn’t been working, so a change is a breath of fresh air.