First day of soccer

Finally after a long winter, the weather was gorgeous yesterday, and kids' soccer program had their first day of practice. Watch these young fellows played each other in 5 to 5 settings, chasing the ball like crazy, and their never getting tired body. We parents on the sides were just shouting non-stop, trying to give them some attack or defense advice. It just all of a sudden reminded me that there is a purpose why I worked so hard in my humble position. I believed it when Congressman Paul Ryan said he doesn't want to leave the burden to his kids generation when introducing the new budgets plan. We absolutely owe it to them to get the deficits under control and to see to it that we have put together a mechanism to constrain the ever-reaching-out government once and for all.

Watched "Network" by Sidney Lumet over the weekend. Absolutely brilliant. Sorry to learn that he passed away Saturday.

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel. 
Howard Beale: Why me? 
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday. 
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God. 
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.