Those of us that care deeply about each other and our country have had a rough ride.

In the early Bush years, I was like a robot, going through the motions - while my heart was breaking. I was stiffened. Stopped in my tracks from my own disbelief. For many months, if not years.

From the beginning, the endless headlines of Bush's reign stretched out before me like a dry, barren road.

If you live in Ellis County, Kansas, you are invited to attend an important citizen meeting on May 2nd, 2007!

Once, I dreamed of sunshine. There was a big, bright ball of yellow swelling in the sky, and there was I, illuminated in the light, like a saint crowned in halo, ready to perform the most testing of miracles. That's the way I viewed my life when I was a budding youth: nothing was too big or too difficult to be accomplished. I knew that, one day, I would use my skills and talents to help change the world, make it a better place for all.

When we talk about the youth movement in America and ways to get us to engage and participate in the process we often find a huge amount of ambiguity - little hard data/evidence (except the Harvard Institute of Politics or the CIRCLE research) and even fewer willing to conduct experiments into microtargeting the 18-30 demographic.

At times our conversations and debates concerning public policy leave us "stuck" in abstractions and theoretical concerns.

After all, most of us here have the luxury of conversation about what are, for millions of other people, matters of life and death, literally.

April 24 is Equal Pay Day. Equal pay is certainly about the respect and dignity of women. It's also about the equal opportunity this country claims to cherish. But even beyond that, it's about poor working families and the larger costs of pay inequity which affect the poorest among us most of all. Consider these facts from a joint study undertaken by the AFL-CIO and the Institute for Women's Policy Research:

The more I read Shane Claiborne, the more he inspires, troubles, challenges and motivates me to rethink just about everything!

His remarkable The Irresistible Revolution speaks to the importance of how we "see" other people.

Really important stuff, especially in the city...

Walter Ulbricht proclaimed in 1961, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" Translated to English, the statement means, "Nobody has any intention to erect a wall." Walter Ulwork was the head of state, party leader and most powerful German in East Germany in 1961. Only two months after Ulwork emphatically denied that there were any such plans to build the Berlin Wall, on August 13, 1961, Ulwork began building the Berlin Wall.

On April 18, 2007, Major General William Caldwell IV, US Army, said, "We have no intent to build gated communities in Baghdad."

That same day, the U.S. military began sealing off Baghdad neighborhoods with concrete walls in a controversial new strategy, but residents fear the barriers could deepen divisions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Hey, it's Sunday. Yesterday I was browsing through a little crooksandliars.com on a commercial break during a playoff game (and if you must know, God's team won...). In the comments section under an article someone posted a link to a BBC documentary about a church in these great United States of America where the primary tenet was that our nation is on God's s@#$-list because we are too nice to gay people. This is a "christian" church, or so they insist. And I'm not posting a link to the video or citing the name of the group...just as I would have never aired the ravings of the shooter down in Virginia or an angry message from a father stuck in a child custody dispute...

Oh, for the days of "the Big Boss" from Kansas City, MO. Ted Pendergast with help from his brother Michael had become one of the great political machines of the twentieth century. From stuffing ballots to road construction, they took care of their own. The Pendergast machine can be credited for Harry Truman's ascendancy to the White House. Truman with gratitude once stated that he loved Michael, "As I did my own daddy."

Some of us in Ellis County are in the throes of a wind fight, and we sorely need a daddy, but all we are getting is ...

They're at it again in Austin, Texas.

Defending God and "His values" can be tough work in such a secular place as Texas and in such a "godless environment" as the halls of our state house, right?

Serious business protecting the "In God We Trust" and "under God" heritage of the Lone Star state.

Not long ago I spoke to a church located in a well-to-do part of Dallas. Great folks who are eager to do good things, serve people and make a difference in our city. The minister had invited me to speak to the group about faith, biblical theology and "the poor," which I was happy to do.

This week was a big one for da yoots. (can you tell My Cousin Vinny is on?) Skyline Public Works released a statement and launch of their new youth funding program the Go Grants The Program commits to giving $250,000 contributions to an organization in each state over the next ten years that specifically targets youth participation and engagement in sustaining organizations that continue work for elections and after.

It prompted me to take a deeper look into funding for youth programs, who gives, what they give, how they give, and what the partisan break down of funding to these groups is.

What I found with a simple OpenSecrets is a significant divide between Young Democrats and Young Republicans in funding. If you look under the 527 section you see that the YD's received about $1.6million for the 2006 election cycle and made about $1.5million in expenditures.

What do you suppose the Young Republicans did?

"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals." ~ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, The Goebbels Diaries, London, 1948

"If we are to reach real peace in this world... we shall have to begin with the children." Mohandas K. Gandhi

Despite loud rhetoric to the contrary, the Bush administration has left millions of children behind with respect to education by failing to fully fund the programs in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Bush never gave our schools, students or teachers the resources they need. In fact, Bush never gave the minimum of funds that were required to simply implement the bare bones version of his NCLB.

The result - unfunded mandates that frustrate our schools, harm them, and don't help them. And our children? They are the victims of empty promises.

Call it whatever you want - shell game, bait and switch, unfunded mandate. It doesn't matter what you call it. It boils down to this - our government is not betting on the successful future of our public schools.

In 2004 we saw a dramatic increase in the 18-30 voting block voting. Maybe it was Iraq, maybe it was about specific issues, maybe it was Howard Dean who engaged them and kept them involved through the election - who knows - but 12% more young people voted in 2004 than did in 2000.

There have been many people, several in fact, even me, who have said that there needs to be a change. A very specific youth based movement that communicates on a youth based level is needed if we mean to make any real progress at continuing the kind of growth in my generation that we saw in 2004.

That's why I'd like to applaud the efforts of these folks.

Please review our site's links and blog roll - and add comments below if you have some additional sites to recommend.

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Whenever American donors are asked, we report back the belief that most of our donations go to assist those less fortunate than ourselves - right?

However, the facts of our giving tell a very different story.

It should surprise none that as a devout person of faith and a strong democrat that I support Senator John Edwards' campaign for President. I talk about him everywhere I go, in the grocery store, at work, at home, everywhere. And what I find interesting is that someone actually said to me they they liked him but "He really has to get over that poverty thing."