Six year old boy writes to President Obama to ask if his family can adopt the Syrian boy from a photo that went viral.

Courtesy of TPM:

A 6-year-old boy from New York is inspiring a lot happy tears this week after he wrote a heartwarming letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to bring a Syrian boy to his house so that boy could become a part of his family. 

The letter writer, Alex, was referring specifically about Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy whose image went viral last month after he was pulled out from rubble in the city of Aleppo following an air strike.

Here is the boy's letter:

Dear President Obama, 

Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan. 

Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won't bring toys and doesn't have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math. And he [can] smell Catherine's lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn't let anyone touch it. 

Thank you very much! I can't wait for you to come! Alex 6 years old

Yeah I am going to have to go remove something from my eye. Damn thing won't stop watering.

Sometimes the news is so terrible that even reporters have trouble holding it together.

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

CNN’s Kate Bolduan is a reporter who asks tough questions and is often expressive and emphatic when she does it. Today, however, she was expressive in a very different way. While sharing a video of a five-year-old Syrian named Omran Daqneesh sitting in the back of an ambulance with blood and soot all over him, Bolduan was tasked with explaining that he and his family were pulled from the rubble that was once their house. She said that there had been an air strike — which is common, as the country has been embroiled in a violent civil war for years — but had to stop and compose herself a few times.

I started seeing this little boy's image all over cable TV and the internet today and I have to admit that my reaction was very similar to Ms. Bolduan's.

Here is more about the little boy courtesy of the New York Times: 

In the images, he sits alone, a small boy coated with gray dust and encrusted blood. His little feet barely extend beyond his seat. He stares, bewildered, shocked and, above all, weary, as if channeling the mood of Syria. 

The boy, identified by medical workers as Omran Daqneesh, 5, was pulled from a damaged building after a Syrian government or Russian airstrike in the northern city of Aleppo. He was one of 12 children under the age of 15 treated on Wednesday, not a particularly unusual figure, at one of the hospitals in the city’s rebel-held eastern section, according to doctors there. 

But some images strike a particular nerve, for reasons both obvious and unknowable, jarring even a public numbed to disaster. Omran’s is one.

Unbelievably sad, and this little boy is just one of many innocent victims in a war not of their making.

Now if you will excuse me it seems I have something in my eye. 

Preschooler finds gun in glove box, keeps America safe by shooting himself in the side.

Courtesy of TPM:  

A preschool-age child in Troy, Michigan shot himself after finding a gun in the console of his mother’s Ford Mustang, the Detroit Free Press reported on Friday. 

According to the paper, while his mother loaded groceries into her car in a Kroger parking lot, the child found the 9 mm Smith and Wesson and shot himself in the side. The wound was not fatal and the child is out of surgery, Troy Police Captain Robert Redmond told the Free Press. 

Redmond said that it was unclear whether the gun was left in the car by the boy’s mother or her husband, but that “she’s still responsible for the child’s safety.”

It seems that this is just about the best outcome one can expect when the headline contains the word "preschooler" and "gun."

Yes he shot himself, but no he is not dead.

Your good news story of the day.

Mike Huckabee supports Paraguay's decision to force a 10 year old girl to give birth to her rapist's baby.

In an interview with Dana Bash on CNN on Sunday, Huckabee was asked about a recent news item about a 10 year old girl who had been raped by her stepfather, and the decision of the government to deny her an abortion.

Here is more courtesy of CNN: 

"Let's not compound a tragedy by taking yet another life."

 "A 10-year-old girl being raped is horrible. But does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? And that's really the issue," Huckabee said. 

He said his opposition to abortion is based in part on its lasting effects, including that of the woman making the decision. 

"There are two victims. One is the child; the other is that birth mother who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later when she begins to think through what happened -- with the baby, with her. And again, there are no easy answers here," Huckabee said. 

"I just come down on the side that life is precious; every life has worth and value. I don't think we discount the intrinsic worth of any human being, and I don't know where else to go with it than just to be consistent and say, if life matters, and that's a person, then every life matters," he said.

This is really the danger of adopting this whole "personhood" idea.

First off it is not based on biological facts, and secondly it allows people, usually men, to deny the rights of females by suggesting that the rights of the fetus supersedes those of the woman.  Or in this, case little girl.

And yes do keep in mind that this is NOT an adult woman who made the decision to have unprotected sex, this is somebody's baby who was assaulted by an adult she trusted, and was then forced to be the biological incubator that allowed his violent act to take human form.

Huckabee talks about facing guilt years after having an abortion, but first of all that is a fallacy, and secondly it pales by comparison to the emotional stress this child has endured by having her innocence ripped away from her and and then being thrust into the role of a full grown woman when she barely understands what is happening to her, and to her body.

Compound that with having to raise the child when you are a child yourself, or perhaps instead having the child immediately taken away for adoption so that you can feel that sense of loss after suffering through the pain of childbirth.


Clearly Huckabee is zealot who places religious doctrine over the rights of this fellow human beings.

Well the ones without boy parts at least.

Nine year old boy shot and killed by his grandfather during canned hunting excursion on family ranch.

Courtesy of Fox 4:  

The Wise County Sheriff's Office says a 9-year-old Wise County boy was accidentally shot and killed by his grandfather Saturday while hunting on the ranch the family runs. 

Investigators say it happened around 10 a.m. during a controlled pheasant release at the 9 Bar Ranch just outside Decatur. 

Nine-year-old Callen Little, his parents and his grandfather were in a hunting stand. 

At some point, Callen left the stand. 

The grandfather accidentally shot the boy in the chest as the birds were released. 

"He'd left the stand for some reason and then the birds were released and when they shot, they shot into the direction where the boy was, and he was struck in the chest,” said Wise County Sheriff David Walker.

I am trying to figure out how you can lose track of your nine year old grandson with people in the area getting ready to fire off their weapons and I just can't do it. His safety would be a constant matter of concern for me. 

Yet another senseless death as the result of the careless handling of firearms.