We need to talk about this America.
About a President hoping for an attack to justify an attack on on the judiciary.
This is how doctors get murdered.
This is how clinics get shot up.
This is how mosques get burned.
This is not the behavior of a President.
Or an American.
This isn’t the behavior of a good “Businessman.”
We need to talk about this, America.
Because we have a “President” who is rooting against us.
If you thought Bush/Cheney took advantage of 9/11, watch if there’s an attack on our soil.
He won’t ask for unity.
He’ll enforce fealty.
This ‘President’ is hoping for the worst, preparing for it, to take advantage of it like a real estate predator waiting for a housing crisis.
We need to talk about this.
This isn’t a vision for America.
This is a desire and a plan for America to fail.
Starting at the top.
It was the nuttiest week of the Dancing with the Stars season as all of the stars traded partners for one night of total insanity. Or at least that’s how it usually is.
Last night, October 12, 2015, was actually great, and a lot less of a mess up than the switch-up often is. There were some truly incredible dances tonight, including the season’s first perfect score from a slightly unexpected pair!
While both Bindi Irwin and Carlos PenaVega totally rocked their routines with respective temporary partners Val Chmerkovskiy and Lindsay Arnold, it was Alexa PenaVega and Derek Hough who blew the roof off the place with their epic tango and scored a standing ovation from Carrie Ann Inaba (even if she thought it was a paso doble) and perfect tens from all four judges, including guest judge Maksim Chmerkovskiy.
Alexa Ellesse PenaVega (née Vega; born August 27, 1988) is an American actress and singer. She is known for her role as Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series and Shilo Wallace in the film Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008). In 2009, she starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family series Ruby & The Rockits.
Alexa Vega was born in Miami, Florida but spent the first four years of her life on a ranch in Ocala, Florida. Her father is Colombian and her mother, Gina Rue, is an American former model.
In August 2013, while on a cruise with friends, Vega became engaged to actor and singer Carlos Pena, Jr. The couple married on January 4, 2014, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and changed their surname to PenaVega.
Week 5: Switch-Up
Judges: Carrie Ann Inaba, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Julianne Hough, Bruno Tonioli.
Couples performed one unlearned dance with a different partner selected by the general public; due to the nature of the week, no elimination took place.
I have followed this Kim Davis story with both fascination and disgust.
It’s a gift that keep on giving.
I thought we lived in a nation bound by laws.
Anyone not following the laws is a criminal.
This woman has broken the law, she’s been in contempt of court and was jailed because of this.
After the Labor Day weekend she was freed by the judge on the condition to not interfere with the clerks in her office who have been handing out marriage licenses to eligible couples.
Fascinating and disgusting to see how presidential candidates flock to her side and exhort and hail her in her quest.
She hasn’t return to her job yet but has reportedly said, through her lawyer, that she remains in her original stance.
Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump came up with a potential nickname on Thursday, August 20, 2015, for the wall he wants to build along the US-Mexican border.
Speaking with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, the Republican presidential candidate compared the wall to the Great Wall of China.
“As you know, I know how to build. I know how to get it done. We’ll have a great wall. We’ll call it the ‘Great Wall of Trump,'” Trump said, later adding that he was only being “facetious.”
(ALWAYS REMEMBER, THERE’S TRUTH IN JEST)
Trump, whose anti-illegal immigration stance has fueled his surging campaign, argued that his wall would be much easier to build than the ancient barrier constructed by Chinese dynasties.
“You look at the Great Wall of China, that was built 2,500 years ago — it’s 13,000 miles.
And we’re really talking about something a little more than 1,000 miles.
So it is something that can be absolutely done — not done at tremendous cost,” Trump said.
Some may will think that I’m totally biased. In some sense I may have to agree. However, how can anyone judge another in matters of the heart? Love is love … one falls in love with the essence of the “better half”. The vessel in which that essence is kept should be irrelevant.
Souls fall in love with souls they recognize from before.
Love is love. It comes in many shapes and forms.
Who is anyone to judge?
How can this be anything but heartwarming?
I have used this video before. I used it before my marriage became legal in the state I live in. Now, as I watched is again …. the video takes on a new meaning “until I could” became my reality.
Tomorrow is my second month anniversary of legal wedded bliss.
Watch This Amazing Ode to Marriage Equality, by Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco
(9/21/14)
“Until We Could” is a poem by Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco — and a beautiful film from Freedom To Marry.
It is a decade since the U.S. first state, Massachusetts, enshrined marriage equality in law, and since the founding of campaign group Freedom To Marry (FTM). It has been a fruitful, frustrating decade, a bizarre range of weather systems of advances and losses—but mainly now, finally, advances.
To mark the 10 years, FTM commissioned Richard Blanco, the poet for Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, to write a poem commemorating the decade. So powerful was the result, titled “Until We Could,” the organization then commissioned a video to bring Blanco’s words to evocative life.
~~Until We Could~~
Richard Blanco
~~Published on Sep 21, 2014~~
Until We Could, a gorgeous new video poem written by Richard Blanco, celebrates love and the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. The film is narrated by Golden Globe winning actress Robin Wright and actor Ben Foster.
Made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, imported to the USA
Richard Blanco’s mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born on February 15th, 1968. Forty-five days later, the family emigrated once more to New York City. Only a few weeks old, Blanco already belonged to three countries, a foreshadowing of the concerns of place and belonging that would shape his life and work. Eventually, the family settled in Miami where he was raised and educated. Growing up among close-knit Cuban exiles instilled in him a strong sense of community, dignity, and identity that he’d carry into his adult life as a writer.
read your dreams like butterflies flitting underneath
your eyelids ready to flutter into the room. Yes,
I praised you like a majestic creature my god forgot
to create till that morning of you suddenly tamed
in my arms, first for me to see, name you mine
Yes to the raise of your body breathing.
Yes, to all of you. Yes, I knew … but we still couldn’t.
I taught you how to dance Salsa by looking
into my Caribbean eyes, you learned to speak
in my tongue, while teaching me how to catch
a snowflake in my palms and love the grey
clouds of your grey hometown. Our years began
collecting in glossy photos time-lining our lives
across shelves and walls glancing back at us …
Us embracing in some sunset, more captivated
by each other than the sky blushed plum and rose.
Us claiming some mountain that didn’t matter
as much as our climbing it, together. Us leaning
against columns of ruins as ancient as our love
was new, or leaning into our dreams at a table
flickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes.
I knew me as much as us, and yet … we couldn’t.
When the fiery kick lines and fires were set for us
by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall,
we first spoke defiance. When we paraded glitter,
leather, and rainbows made human, our word
became pride down every city street, saying:
Just let us be. But that wasn’t enough. Parades
became rallies – bold words on signs and mouths
until a man claimed freedom as another word
for marriage and he said: Let us in. We said love
is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would
listen at every door that would open until noes
and maybes turned into yeses, town by town.
city by city, state by state, understanding us
until the woman who dared enough say enough until
the gravel struck into law what we always knew
love it the right to say: I do and I do and I do.
and I do want is to see every tulip we’ve planted
come up spring after spring, a hundred more years
of dinners cooked over a shared glass of wine, and
a thousand more movies in bed. I do until our eyes
become voices speaking without speaking, until
like a cloud meshed into a cloud, there’s no more
you, me – our names are useless. I do want you to be
the last face I see – your breath my last breath
I do, I do and will and will for those who still can’t
vow it yet, but know love’s exact reason as much
as they know how a sail keeps the wind without
breaking, or how roots dig a way into the earth,
or how the stars open their eyes to the night, or
how a vine becomes one with the wall it loves, or
how, when I hold you, you are rain in my hands.
It Is What It Is 