Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Walmart's been all over the news this week, in response to the Supreme Court decision that its female employees cannot bring a class action lawsuit against sex discrimination. But as disturbing as Walmart's record is on discriminating against women working in their stores, there's another area for major concern that has received little media attention. I'm talking about factories that produces clothes for Walmart stores, where The 'Super Congress' Is a Scam Designed to Force Cuts To Popular Programs And Keep Taxes On The Rich Low | Economy | AlterNet
August 11, 2011 |
In the months ahead, we're going to be treated to an endless parade of process stories about the Gang of 12 “super congress” that emerged from the debt ceiling deal. Each time a staffer leaks some bit of trivia about the internal machinations of this opaque committee, the Beltway media will write a flurry of stories about it, lawmakers will signal whether they might support this provision or that one and the pundits will sift through the tea leaves trying to predict whether this time the kind of “grand bargain” the Washington Posteditorial board lusts after will finally come to pass.
THE POWER OF THOUGHT By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.
Have you ever been associated with people who always "bring you down?" Their thoughts, emotional expression, energy level, negativity and cynical attitude impacts you and you feel down, depressed and less energetic yourself. These persons are called "toxic." Toxic people have a distinctive view of life. They believe the world has cheated them out of something. They think they are entitled and that the world "owes" them something. For toxic people, nothing "good" ever happens to them and they always think negative thoughts about events... even if those events are positive. Likewise, have you ever been around people who seem to elevate your mood and inspire you? The way they talk, the ideas they share, how they express their feelings, their enthusiastic energy level and positive attitude, lifts your spirits and you feel better. You feel uplifted and more energized. After you interact with them, you have more energy and feel better about yourself and your life. These people focus their thoughts on the positive aspects of events and maintain a positive outlook on their lives. Whenever you wrap your own moods and feelings around others, you have empowered them to influence, even control your own emotional life. If you always match your thoughts with those people around you, you give away your personal power. Therefore, you may wish to pick and choose those people with whom you associate. Even better, take responsibility for your own emotions and feelings. Become the gate keeper of your own heart. Let negative people in only when you feel emotionally strong enough to personally balance their negative impact. Let positive people in all the time. Better still, fill your thinking time with affirmations, conceptualizations, ideas, visualizations and memories which are personally enjoyable, positive, goal-directed, beneficial to those around you. Then you can emotionally afford to let everyone into your heart. They might even be uplifted by you. When two or more people share their joy and delight, the interaction can become sensational. Just like when two master tennis players play their best games with one another, the overall match is enjoyed by everyone. The quality of it is more than the combination of individual play. The pleasure experienced by everyone is greater than the sum of the delight experienced by the two individual each players. Such a phenomenon is called "synergy." We know our bodies rarely respond to external events. Rather, they respond to the perceptions we create in our minds, the meaning we give to those perceptions, and the nature of our evaluations imposed on those perceptions. Mental activity has creative and definitive power beyond what you can readily imagine. The nature, quality and value of your life is created and determined by the nature, quality and value of your habitual thinking patterns. If you are unhappy with your situation or circumstance, begin changing it by first, changing your thinking habits. There are several ways to start changing your thinking. Here are a few suggestions. Create an overall vision of the future you would like to have. Write down a comprehensive description of that vision. Write it in the present tense as if it were already manifested in your life. Memorize the description. Refer to it regularly. Make a written list of at least 200 goals you would like to reach in your lifetime. They can be small victories, or huge dreams. Then need to be supportive of your creating your desired vision. Update the list regularly. Write "victory" beside each one accomplished. Practice filling your mind with affirmations and images of you functioning within your desired lifestyle. Write down your affirmations and imaginings, your hopes and dreams. Record them and listen to them regularly. Collect pictures of your desired outcomes. Put self-esteem affirmations on your mirror. Regularly, paint, draw or sculpt your visualizations. Help others realize their dreams. You will always create what you desire if you help enough people get what they want. Focus on the positive quality of your thinking and you create a reality of abundance and happiness. Then, you will beneficially influence others, rather than being a victim of circumstance or others' moods and behavior. When you practice the above thinking habits, you realize the psychological and emotional power of your own thought patterns. When you have regular positive thinking patterns, your experience of life becomes so much more enjoyable. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dr. Thomas is a licensed psychologist, author, speaker, and life coach. He serves on the faculty of the International University of Professional Studies. He recently co-authored (with Patrick Williams) the book: "Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills and Techniques for Enhancing Your Practice...and Your Life!" (W.W. Norton 2005) It is available at your local bookstore or on Amazon.com. |
Monday, August 15, 2011
"Why Rick Perry Won't Win" by Kevin Drum
Why Rick Perry Won't Win
| Sat Aug. 13, 2011 12:21 PM PDT
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R). A few days ago I rashly said, "For the record, I don't think Rick Perry can win the Republican nomination, and I know that he can't beat Obama in a general election." Unsurprisingly, a lot of people wanted to know just what made me so sure of that. So with Perry now officially in the race, I guess it's time to explain myself.
Before I get to that, though, I have a mealymouthed caveat or three. First, if the economy is bad enough, anyone can win. And right now, the odds of the economy being bad enough are a little too close for comfort. Second, in recent years you could lose a lot of money continually underestimating the lemming-like power of the Republican Party to dive off ever-higher cliffs. Third, it's absolutely true that you can make a pretty good case that none of the current GOP candidates can possibly win the nomination. And yet, someone will.
And there's more. Perry is unquestionably a very good, very shrewd politician. He has access to lots of money. And he can deliver a pretty good speech. My beloved wife just finished listening to his announcement speech and told me, "He's my favorite Republican right now." When I grimaced, she just gave me a scary look. Scary because it's the look that means she sees something that's invisible to a committed partisan like me.
But enough of that. I've covered my ass enough. Here are the top ten reasons why, despite all this, I think Perry is a weaker candidate than he's being made out to be:
- Everyone looks good before they get into the race. Remember how great Tim Pawlenty was supposed to be? But just wait a few months for Perry to get beat up by his opponents, for the oppo research to kick in, for all the big profiles to start appearing, and for a gaffe or two to get some play. He'll start to look distinctly more human then.
- He's too Texan. Sorry. Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not. But even in the Republican Party, not everyone is from the South and not everyone is bowled over by a Texas drawl. Perry is, by a fair amount,more Texan than George W. Bush, and an awful lot of people arestill suffering from Bush fatigue.
- He's too mean. He'll have a hard time pretending he's any kind of compassionate conservative, and outside of Texas you still need a bit of that. Aside from being politically ruthless and famous for holding grudges, Perry's the kind of guy who almost certainly executed an innocent man, never pretended to care about it, and brazenly disbanded a commission investigating it. This famously produced the following quote in a 2010 focus group: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.” In Texas, maybe that works. In the rest of the country, not so much.
- He's too dumb. Go ahead, call me an elitist. I'm keenly aware that Americans don't vote for presidents based on their SAT scores, but everything I've read about Perry suggests that he's a genuinely dim kind of guy. Not just incurious or too sure about his gut feelings, like George Bush, but simply not bright enough to handle the demands of the Oval Office. Americans might not care if their presidents are geniuses, but there's a limit to how doltish they can be too.
- He's too smarmy. He might be fine one-on-one, but on a national stage Perry looks like a tent revival preacher or a used car salesman. Again: this might play OK in Texas and a few other places, but it will wear thin quickly in most of the country.
- He's too overtly religious. Even Bush soft pedaled his religious side for the masses during his first campaign and did most of his outreach to the evangelical community quietly. Outside the Bible Belt, Perry's fire-and-brimstone act is going to be hard to take.
- Policywise, he's too radical, even for Republicans. "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" goes over well with a certain segment of the tea party, but not with most of the country. Nor does most of the country want to get rid of Medicare and turn it over to the states. Nor do they think global warming is a hoax, and they don't really think all that kindly of people who muse publicly about seceding from the union. Bush was able to soften his hard Texas edge with a genuine passion for education. I'm not sure Perry can do that.
- Despite conventional wisdom, about half of the GOP rank-and-file aren't tea party sympathizers (see Question 3G here). Of the half who are, Perry is going to have to compete with Michele Bachmann and possibly with Sarah Palin. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has the non-crazy half of the party almost to himself. Huntsman isn't going to provide him with any serious competition there, and Pawlenty is rapidly becoming a non-factor too. I think this is an extremely underappreciated dynamic right now. Yes, Republican primary voters tend to be more conservative than the party as a whole, but there are still going to be a lot of non-tea partiers who vote, and they don't have a lot of good choices other than Romney. What's more, a fair number of tea partiers like Romney too (see Question 19 here). This is a pretty good base to work from.
- Perry's campaign is going to be heavily based on the "Texas miracle." But this looks a lot less miraculous once you put it under a microscope — and pretty soon it won't just be churlish lefties pointing this out. You can be sure that the rest of the Republican field will be hauling out their own microscopes before long.
- Republicans want to beat Obama. They really, really want to beat Obama. Romney is still their best chance, and down deep I think they know it.
All that said, I might be wrong. But I'd still advise everyone to take Perry with a few more grains of salt than they have been. It's easy for us urban liberals to just cynically assume that the tea party-ized GOP will nominate whoever's the dumbest, toughest, meanest, godliest sonofabitch in the field, but I'm not so sure. Perry may come out of the gate strong, but he might not wear well once the national spotlight is on him.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Latino Lawmakers Sue Texas Governor Rick Perry For Attempting To Undercut Latino Vote
Latino Lawmakers Sue Texas Governor Rick Perry For Attempting To Undercut Latino Vote: "pEarlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau released figures that support predications that Latinos will soon outnumber whites in Texas. Latinos already make up 38 percent of the state’s population and two-thirds of the state’s 4.3 million population increase over the last ten years. The Texas State Data Center projects that Latinos will become the [...]/p"
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Ron Paul...A Dangerous Man for Our Country
Illuminati/Rothschild puppet. Racist, anti-abortion, misogynist....Paul (and/or his son)will take us straight back to the Bush distaste for middle and lower classes. He wants NO Medicare, Medicaid, or any assistance of any sort for those who experience grave difficulty. Do your research on this man ... and his son! For those Ascension-bound....Ron Paul is the antithesis of everything for which that belief system stands.
He is a reptilian-souled individual cloaked in the guise of a "so-called respectable citizen"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
Also, in Wikipedia, is this passage:
An article in The Daily Link (http://www.thedailylink.org/2007/11/ron-paul-racist-misogynist.html) provides some of Paul's quotes:
http://www.thedailylink.org/2007/11/ron-paul-racist-misogynist.html
Here it is, a collection of some of Paul's "greatest" quotes, taken from seven of his monthly political newsletters written between 1990 and 1994. Because of the incredibly politically incorrect content, Morris asked Paul to release all past copies of the Ron Paul Survival Report to the media, going back to the newsletter's origin in 1986. Paul promised to do so, but never did. Individual copies, however, can be requested from his surfside home, at 409/233-5854. As to why he wouldn't release his entire body of work to the media, Paul says voters may not understand his "tongue-in-cheek, academic" writings.
* "Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."
* Although "we are told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
* "Black males age 13 that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."
* "The Earth Summit is the creepiest meeting of politicos since the first gathering of Bolsheviks. Officially known as the UN Conference for Environment and Development, it will be held in Brazil in June; bad guys from all over the globe will attend."
* "[Hillary Clinton] is one of the most dangerous women in public life. Not only is she a fanatical abortion advocate, she wants parents to register with the government as a condition for having children to be able to sue and `divorce' themselves from their parents. Maybe her daughter ought to sue her parents for attempting to raise her as a leftist. That sure qualifies as abuse to me."
* "...University of Texas affirmative action law professor Barbara Jordan is a fraud. Everything from her imitation British accent, to her supposed expertise in law, to her distinguished career in public service, is made up. If there were ever a modern case of the empress without clothes, this is it. She is the archetypical half-educated victimologist, yet her race and sex protect her from criticism."
* Disgruntled taxpayer "Dean Hicks fired bombs through mortars at night at buildings of the Internal Revenue Service in California. Hicks did damage federal property, but no individuals were injured... Hicks was sentenced to 20 years in prison, given a $45,000 fine, and ordered to pay $335,000 in restitution to the IRS. If he had been a serial murderer, he would not have gotten this sort of sentence."
* "Why do we need the federal government? There's no Cold War and no Communist threat. Many other nations are breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. The centralization of power in Washington occurred in a different time. Why not think about getting rid of the federal government, returning to the system of our Founders, and breaking up the United States into smaller government units?"
* "There is good news after the L.A. riots. Statewide, gun sales are up 45% over the same period last year. People have been purchasing a record number. If the cops are not going to take care of the problem, the people will."
* "There is no such thing as a hate crime, only crimes against person and property."]
He is a reptilian-souled individual cloaked in the guise of a "so-called respectable citizen"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
Also, in Wikipedia, is this passage:
Controversial claims made by an unidentified author in Ron Paul's newsletters, written in the first person narrative, included statements such as "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." Along with "even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming."[137] Two other statements that garnered controversy were "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions". In an article titled "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."[138]
Paul had given his own account of the newsletters during March 2001, stating the documents were authored by ghostwriters, and that while he did not author the challenged passages, he bore "some moral responsibility" for their publication.[139]
At the end of 2007, both the New York Sun and the New York Times Magazine reprinted passages from early 1990s publications of Paul's newsletters, attacking them for content deemed racist.[13] These were the same newsletters that had been used against Paul during his 1996 congressional campaign.
On January 8, 2008, the day of the New Hampshire primary, The New Republic published a story by James Kirchick quoting from selected newsletters published under Paul's name.[53][140]
Responding to the charges in a CNN interview, Paul denied any involvement in authoring the passages. Additionally, Paul's campaign claimed through a press release that the quotations had come from an unnamed ghostwriter and without Paul's consent. Paul again denounced and disavowed the "small-minded thoughts", citing his 1999 House speech praising RosaParks for her courage; he said the charges simply "rehashed" the decade-old Morris attack.[141]
An article in The Daily Link (http://www.thedailylink.org/2007/11/ron-paul-racist-misogynist.html) provides some of Paul's quotes:
http://www.thedailylink.org/2007/11/ron-paul-racist-misogynist.html
Here it is, a collection of some of Paul's "greatest" quotes, taken from seven of his monthly political newsletters written between 1990 and 1994. Because of the incredibly politically incorrect content, Morris asked Paul to release all past copies of the Ron Paul Survival Report to the media, going back to the newsletter's origin in 1986. Paul promised to do so, but never did. Individual copies, however, can be requested from his surfside home, at 409/233-5854. As to why he wouldn't release his entire body of work to the media, Paul says voters may not understand his "tongue-in-cheek, academic" writings.
* "Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."
* Although "we are told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
* "Black males age 13 that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."
* "The Earth Summit is the creepiest meeting of politicos since the first gathering of Bolsheviks. Officially known as the UN Conference for Environment and Development, it will be held in Brazil in June; bad guys from all over the globe will attend."
* "[Hillary Clinton] is one of the most dangerous women in public life. Not only is she a fanatical abortion advocate, she wants parents to register with the government as a condition for having children to be able to sue and `divorce' themselves from their parents. Maybe her daughter ought to sue her parents for attempting to raise her as a leftist. That sure qualifies as abuse to me."
* "...University of Texas affirmative action law professor Barbara Jordan is a fraud. Everything from her imitation British accent, to her supposed expertise in law, to her distinguished career in public service, is made up. If there were ever a modern case of the empress without clothes, this is it. She is the archetypical half-educated victimologist, yet her race and sex protect her from criticism."
* Disgruntled taxpayer "Dean Hicks fired bombs through mortars at night at buildings of the Internal Revenue Service in California. Hicks did damage federal property, but no individuals were injured... Hicks was sentenced to 20 years in prison, given a $45,000 fine, and ordered to pay $335,000 in restitution to the IRS. If he had been a serial murderer, he would not have gotten this sort of sentence."
* "Why do we need the federal government? There's no Cold War and no Communist threat. Many other nations are breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. The centralization of power in Washington occurred in a different time. Why not think about getting rid of the federal government, returning to the system of our Founders, and breaking up the United States into smaller government units?"
* "There is good news after the L.A. riots. Statewide, gun sales are up 45% over the same period last year. People have been purchasing a record number. If the cops are not going to take care of the problem, the people will."
* "There is no such thing as a hate crime, only crimes against person and property."]
Inside 9/11 - Hijacking the air defense
Little by little...the TRUTH is coming to light. This is no longer a "conspiracy theory"
8/12: Americans Dismal About Economy’s Future…Obama Not Faulted for Financial Picture
Americans have become significantly more pessimistic about the U.S. economy. According to this national McClatchy-Marist Poll, nearly seven in ten adults nationwide — 68% — believe the worst of the country’s economic conditions are yet to come. 27% say the worst is behind us, and 6% are unsure........
continue.....
continue.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"
