“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
“IOTD” is image of the day, a concept I came up with. I teach visual meditative therapy – or in easy terms – a mini mental holiday. For some people it is very difficult for them to get their image right. I post an image a day for people to use in their mini mental vacay. Some are serious, some are silly, and some are just beautiful!”
There’s also a law known as the “Americans with Disabilities Act”.
There’s the “Golden Rule”.
Mainly there’s common sense.
This man truly believes that he’s above everyone and everyone.
He doesn’t care about badmouthing or disrespecting anyone. Remember the Mexicans, John McCain, Megyn Kelly, “illegal immigrants, Jorge Ramos, Black Lives Matter …. and so many others.
Donald Trump Slammed For Mocking Disabled New York Times Reporter Serge Kovaleski
Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday night Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump seems to mock New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition called arthrogryposis which affects the movement of his arms.
Trump imitates Kovaleski while defending comments he has made over the past few weeks, asserting that members of the Muslim communities in New Jersey celebrated following the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in 2001.
The New York Times has slammed Trump’s actions as ‘outrageous’.
(This is not direct discrimination, it’s lower than that).
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. In 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988.
It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, amended and signed by President George W. Bush with changes effective January 1, 2009.
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that is intended to protect against discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[4] which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal.
~Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter~
~Published on Nov 26, 2015~
Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability
Donald Trump Criticized After He Appears to Mock Reporter Serge Kovaleski – New York Times Slams Trump’s ‘Outrageous’ Mocking of Reporter With Congenital Condition
This Thanksgiving, No Place for Refugees at the American Table
Posted on Nov 18, 2015 By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, there has been a crushing backlash against refugees from the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. As Americans prepare for one of the most popular national holidays, Thanksgiving, which commemorates the support and nourishment provided by the indigenous people to English refugees seeking a better life free from religious persecution, a wave of xenophobia is sweeping the country.
In the U.S. Congress, no less than six separate bills have been put forward to block any federal funding to resettle refugees from Syria or Iraq and to empower states to deny entry into their “territory.”
Imagine if all of a sudden we had 50 “statelets” creating their own border checkpoints, stopping all travelers, looking for anyone suspicious, i.e., any and all Syrians.
So far, 31 state governors have essentially demanded this.
Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback issued an executive order forbidding any agency of state government from cooperating in any way with Syrian refugee support efforts. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have called for a pause in the Syrian refugee program, with the support of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
(all so called Chrstians)
It has been almost 400 years since that first, fateful Thanksgiving feast in Massachusetts.
Xenophobic policies like those threatening to shut out refugees from these wars, if allowed to stand, should serve as a shameful centerpiece at every Thanksgiving table this year.
At least 81 transgender people were murdered worldwide this year — and those are just the victims whose deaths were reported.
BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM
NOVEMBER 20 2015
Today marks the 16th annual Transgender Day of Rememberance, after the first event was organized by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in Allston, Mass., to memorialize Rita Hester — a trans woman of color killed in 1998.
Every year since, growing numbers of trans people and advocates worldwide take a moment to pause and remember the countless lives lost around the globe to transphobic violence.
The somber occasion serves as a memorial event in which trans people and allies can mourn their dead, celebrate the lives they lived and as a popular hashtag in the wake of unabated anti-trans violence proclaims, #SayHerName.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Facebook Timeline
Google Images
Human Rights Campaign
The Advocate Magazine
~~GALLERY~~
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As the names listed in the graphics demonstrate, certain nations — the United States and Brazil — have particularly acute problems with fatal transphobic violence. The number of trans women killed this year in the U.S., for instance, is nearly double that of the total killed last year.
But it’s also worth noting that in many countries around the world, no formal system exists to report the deaths of trans people, and repressive societies combined with oppressive policing worldwide often give trans people good cause to be wary of law-enforcement officials.
So while we mourn those whose names are listed below, take a moment to memorialize those whose names we will never know — because they, too, had lives, and loves, and passions that were extinguished because of hate.
Antoine Leiris wrote although the terrorists had taken ‘an exceptional life’ they would ‘not have my hatred’ Rose Troup Buchanan
Thursday 19 November 2015
Paris terror attack
Husband pays touching tribute to ‘love of his life’ in defiant message to attackers
The husband of a woman killed in the Paris attacks has written a touching message to the “love of my life” and promised to raise their 17-month-old son “happy and free ”.
Antoine Leiris, whose wife Helene Muyal-Leiris was among the 89 killed in the Bataclan concert hall attack on Friday evening, posted an emotional message on Facebook.
Mr Leiris, who first met his 35-year-old wife 12 years ago, told the attackers he would “not grant you the gift of my hatred.”
In a post – shared more than 60,000 times by Tuesday morning – Mr. Leiris said in French he would raise their son Melvil “happy and free” and that responding to “hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are.”
Antoine Leiris lost his wife Helene in the Bataclan theatre in Paris.
His Facebook tribute to his wife and challenge to her killers has since been shared thousands of times. Mr Leiris read out the letter to BBC News in Paris.
Freedom fries is a political euphemism for French fries in the United States. The term came to prominence in 2003 when the then Republican Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Bob Ney, renamed the menu item in three Congressional cafeterias in response to France’s opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq.
Although originally supported with several restaurants changing their menus as well, the term fell out of use due to declining support for the Iraq War.
Following Ney’s resignation as Chairman, it was quietly reverted.
Little girl, trying to sleep in your bed
don’t listen to the sound of the bombs nearby
just close your eyes and try not to cry
and let your brother sing you a lullaby.
And don’t listen to the noise of the guns
as the bullets flash by your door, don’t cry
just think of the peace found in sleep
while your brother sings you a lullaby.
Little girl, as you sleep in your bed
when you dream, try not to dream of the day
when soldiers came with their guns
and took your father away.
And when you wake up to a new day
looking for the sun, through the dust and smoke
try to find some hope in that terrible place
as you and your brother strive to cope.
Little girl, war is the world of grown ups
and there is nothing you can do
even if you tell them of your fear and sorrow
no one will listen to you.
But when the war is over and done
and you no longer hear an exploding shell
maybe your young life will be a better place
more like Heaven and less like Hell.
Puerto Ricans (Spanish: Puertorriqueños; Taíno: boricua) are the inhabitants or citizens of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Puerto Ricans do not treat their nationality as an ethnicity but as a citizenship with various ethnicities and national origins comprising the “Puerto Rican people“.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred to as mainstream Puerto Rican culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early Spanish settlers, along with other Europeans arriving later such as the Corsicans, Irish, Germans and French, along with a strong West African culture which has been influential.
Puerto Ricans commonly refer to themselves as boricuas. “The majority of Puerto Ricans regard themselves as being of mixed Spanish-European descent. Recent DNA sample studies have concluded that the three largest components of the Puerto Rican genetic profile are in fact indigenous Taíno, European, and African”.
‘That what I want, basically, what I really want, is what you want. And I don’t know what you want. Surprise me’.
But that’s the kinship between “I” and “thou”. So when I ask, I go right down to the question, which we started with: “What do I want?”
The answer is “I don’t know”.
When Bodhidharma was asked, “Who are you?” which is another form of the same question, he said “I don’t know”. Planting flowers to which the butterflies come, Bodhidharma says “I know not”. I don’t know what I want.
And when you don’t know what you want, you reach the state of desirelessness. When you “really” don’t know … you see, there’s a beginning stage of not knowing, and there’s an ending stage of not knowing.
In the beginning stage, you don’t know what you want because you haven’t thought about it, or you’ve only thought superficially.
Then when somebody forces you to think about it and go through it, you say, “Yeah, I think I’d like this, I think I’d like that, I think I’d like the other”. That’s the middle stage.
Then you get beyond that, and say “Is that what I really want?” In the end you say, “No, I don’t think that’s it … I might be satisfied with it for a while, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, but it’s not really what I want”.
Why don’t you really know what you want? Two reasons, that you don’t really know what you want.
Number one: You have it.
Number two: You don’t know yourself.
Because you never can. The godhead is never the object of its own knowledge, just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, life doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself. “I don’t know”.
And this “I don’t know”, uttered in the infinite interior of the spirit, this “I don’t know”, is the same thing as “I love”, “I let go”, “I don’t try to force or control”. It’s the same thing as humility.
And so the Upanishads say, “If you think that you understand Brahman, you do not understand. You have yet to be instructed further. If you know that you do not understand, then you truly understand, for the Brahman is unknown to those who know it, and known to those who know it not’.
And the principle is that any time you, as it were, voluntarily let up control, in other words, cease to cling to yourself, you have an access to power. Because you’re wasting energy all the time in self-defense, trying to manage things, trying to force things to conform to your will.
The moment you stop doing that, that wasted energy is available. And therefore you are, in that sense, having that energy available, you are one with the divine principle. You have the energy! When you’re trying, however, to act as if you are god, that is to say, you don’t trust anybody and you’re the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line, you lose the divine energy, because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself.
So then the principle is: the more you give it away, the more it comes back. Now you say, ‘I don’t have the courage to give it away. I’m afraid’.
And you can only overcome that by realizing, you better give it away, because there’s no way of holding on to it. The meaning of the fact that everything is dissolving constantly, that we’re all falling apart, we’re all in the process of constant death, and that – ‘The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon/Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and/Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face/Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone all that Omar Khayyam jazz.
You know, ‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the great globe itself, I, all which it inherit — shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.’ …
All falling apart. Everything is. That’s the great assistance to you. That fact that everything is in decay is your helper. That is allowing you that you don’t have to let go, because there’s nothing to hold on to.
It’s achieved for you, in other words, by the process of nature. So once you see that you just don’t have a prayer, and it’s all washed up, and that you will vanish and “leave not a rack behind”, and you really get with that, suddenly you find that you have the power, this enormous access of energy.
But it’s not power that came to you because you grabbed it; it came in entirely the opposite way. The power that comes to you in that opposite way is power with which you can be trusted.’
I can not believe that this is going to happen. I had resigned myself to the fact that it wouldn’t be a reality in my lifetime. Still with this ever-changing information flowing, it’s hard to believe. The feeling that there is still a possibility that this won’t happen is still there.
Many do not agree with marriage equality … and have place innumerable obstacles trying to stop it.
Let’s see where this leads.
I do know that I’m getting ready. I’m heading to the County Clerks Office the morning of January 6, 2015.
What happens after that …. you will soon know!!
All of Florida’s 67 counties can comply with a federal judge’s ruling and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples starting next week.
U.S. Judge Robert Hinkle issued a ruling Thursday that clarifies (January 1, 2015) his ruling on the issue
Hinkle originally overturned Florida’s same-sex marriage ban, but there were questions as to whether it affected only Washington County, or all counties.
A stay on the ruling was set to end at midnight Jan. 5, and Hinkle said he would not extend the stay. That means on Jan. 6 counties can begin issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples.
U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled New Years Day that all Florida clerks are bound by the U.S. Constitution not to enforce Florida’s gay marriage ban and that any couple seeking a license on Tuesday, January 6, should receive one.
“The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the Clerk to issue licenses to other applicants,” Hinkle wrote in an order released Thursday afternoon. “But as set out in the order that announced issuance of the preliminary injunction, the Constitution requires the Clerk to issue such licenses.”
~Judge Hinkle said this in his ruling~
“History records no shortage of instances when state officials defied federal court orders on issues of federal constitutional law. Happily, there are many more
instances when responsible officials followed the law, like it or not. Reasonable people can debate whether the ruling in this case was correct and who it binds.
“There should be no debate, however, on the question whether a clerk of court may follow the ruling, even for marriage-license applicants who are not parties to this
case. And a clerk who chooses not to follow the ruling should take note: the governing statutes and rules of procedure allow individuals to intervene as
plaintiffs in pending actions, allow certification of plaintiff and defendant classes, allow issuance of successive preliminary injunctions, and allow successful
plaintiffs to recover costs and attorney’s fees.”
Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida said : “This is a New Years Day present from federal Judge Robert Hinkle — he has given Florida the road map to an orderly transition to being a state that treats all its people equally.”
~~GALLERY~~
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“We are thankful that Judge Hinkle agreed with us that the Constitution does not tolerate discrimination and that, beginning Tuesday Jan. 6, all clerks in Florida have an obligation to issue marriage licenses to couples requesting them.”
Simon said Hinkle’s “injunction has statewide impact because he found the law unconstitutional and therefore as we have been saying, no public official should be acting in accordance with an unconstitutional provision.”
It Is What It Is 