"Calling All Women: Wake Up and Be Heard!!!"

Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. 

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. 

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill wouldcut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).

Sources: 
1. "'Forcible Rape' Language Remains In Bill To Restrict Abortion Funding," The Huffington Post, February 9, 2011 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206084 
"Extreme Abortion Coverage Ban Introduced," Center for American Progress, January 20, 2011 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205961 
2. "Georgia State Lawmaker Seeks To Redefine Rape Victims As 'Accusers,'" The Huffington Post, February 4, 2011 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206007 
3. "South Dakota bill would legalize killing abortion doctors," Salon, February 15, 2011 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/15/south_dakota_abortion_killing_bill 
4. "House GOP Proposes Cuts to Scores of Sacred Cows," National Journal, February 9, 2011 http://nationaljournal.com/house-gop-proposes-cuts-to-scores-of-sacred-cows-20110209 
5. "New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion," Talking Points Memo, February 4, 2011 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205974 
6. "Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should be Married and Home with Kids," Think Progress, February 16, 2011 http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/16/gop-women-kids/ 
7. "Bye Bye, Big Bird. Hello, E. Coli," The New Republic, Feburary 12, 2011 http://www.tnr.com/blog/83387/house-republican-spending-cuts-pell-education-usda-pbs
8. "House GOP spending cuts will devastate women, families and economy," The Hill, February 16, 2011
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/144585-house-gop-spending-cuts-will-devastate-women-families-and-economy- 
9. "House passes measure stripping Planned Parenthood funding," MSNBC, February 18,2011
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/18/6080756-house-passes-measure-stripping-planned-parenthood-funding

"GOP Spending Plan: X-ing Out Title X Family Planning Funds," Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2011 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/02/09/gop-spending-plan-x-ing-out-title-x-family-planning-funds/ 
10. Ibid. 
"Birth Control for Horses, Not for Women," Blog for Choice, February 17, 2011 http://www.blogforchoice.com/archives/2011/02/birth-control-f.html 

~From MoveOn.org

"Help Us to Remember"

Help us to remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last nightis a single mother who worked nine hours that day, that she is rushing home to cook dinner and help with homework, to do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man
who takes forever at the checkout stand, is a worried 19-year-old college student,
who is balancing his apprehension over final examswith his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us that the scary looking bum, begging for money
in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!)
is a slave to addictionsthat we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow
through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress
are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive.
Let us show patience, empathy and love.

Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us,
but to all humanity.

Remind us each day that of all the gifts you give us,
the greatest gift is love.

(Author Unknown) 

"The Sinister Weirdness of Huckabee"

By Chris Matthews, Hardball host

Let me finish tonight - and this week - with a challenge to the Republican party. Don't do what Huckabee did this week. 

Skip the talk about the "Mau Mau" revolt in Kenya back in the 1950s, about the influence his African father or grandfather might have on the President and make this campaign about how this President has performed, the policies he's advanced and how they've performed. 

Our country has a lot to talk about between now and November 2012; don't waste time talking about a country, Kenya, Barack Obama never lived in, a distant father he hardly even met, and a grandfather he never met.
 
Why?  
 
For one reason, and I didn't think of it, talking about something as faraway, as exotic, as the "Mau Mau revolt of the 1950s," seems a strange way to address the 2012 American presidential campaign, more important, the gigantic economic and other challenges facing the country right now. It's like that general in "Dr. Strangelove" talking about "precious bodily fluids."       
 
Or as George F. Will puts in a column for this weekend, "Sensible Americans must be detecting VIBRATIONS OF WIERDNESS" in what Huckabee was saying.   Vibrations of weirdness.

Of course, looking at it a from a different angle from the conservative George Will, you can spot something dirtier in this tying of the president to a revolt against white rule in East Africa back sixty years.

The image of black men killing white people in a political struggle goes right to the ideological, cultural and ethnic nervous system of those people who might just be ready to hear just the kind of weirdly exotic nonsense ole Huckabee got caught pedeling on the AM dial early this week - something ordered up from the Dark Continent for the late night fear-mongering of a pol from Arkansas who knows how to hit the sweet spot of American racial nervousness. You know, the ole Nat Turner business, of slaves breaking lose and killing their owners.   
 
This is precisely, dead-on what Huckabee did this week talking up the Mau Mau and Obama's dad and grandpop: sell the kind of black against white violence that sells in the dark, nervous night of the soul.

Are You Older Than Dirt?

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?' 

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.  'All the food was slow.' 

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?' 'It was a place called 'at home,' I explained. !  'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' 
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it : Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. 

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 19.  It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God.  It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people... 
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was on a party line.  Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.
  
Pizzas were not delivered to our home... but milk, bread, ice and coal were.

  All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week.  He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive. 
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 

Older Than Dirt Quiz : Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about Ratings at the bottom. 
1.Candy cigarettes
2.Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes 
3.Home milk delivery in glass bottles 
4. Party lines on the telephone
5.Newsreels before the movie 
6.TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels [if you were fortunate])
7.Peashooters 
8. Howdy Doody 
9. 45 RPM records 
10.Hi-fi's
11. Metal ice trays with lever 
12. Blue flashbulb
13.Cork popguns 
14. Studebakers..... I worked there for one 11 hour day in 1962.
15. Wash tub wringers 

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older 
If you remembered 7-10  = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered

11-15 =You're older than dirt! 

"The Spiritual Life" by Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

The Spiritual Life

by Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

The French philosopher, Teilhard DeChardin, once wrote: "We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience. Rather we are spiritual beings having a physical experience."

If you define "spirituality" as any experience that is not available to our five senses, then the majority of our life experiences are spiritual. Concepts like peace, joy, love, truth, beauty, connection, surrender, bliss and fulfillment are all spiritual in nature. Indeed, life itself is a spiritual experience.

Spirituality may have nothing to do with "religion" or "religiosity." It is not the same as "morality" or the "right way" to live. It rarely has anything to do with "doctrines" or "ethics." Spirituality can be described, however. Some aspects of spirituality may include: an expanded self-awareness, particularly of your true nature; the experience of joy, inner peace and love; and the realization of your essential unity with all of the universe/creation.

The evolutionary growth of your spirit follows some known principles. It usually begins with an "awakening" to the awareness that there is more to being alive than we can ever know. This awakening can be sudden or gradual. It can be a sudden flash of insight ("a light bulb moment") or a slow "dawning" of what being alive really means.

This awakening of consciousness leads to an intense desire to know more. This desire is often referred to as "spiritual hunger." We long for more. More experiences. More awareness. More knowledge. More of spiritual unity.

Then we usually let go of all previously held ideas, habits and behaviors. We lose our old "self." We let go of Mind and Ego. This loss evolves into a sense of emptiness and is often called "the dark night of the soul." From that darkness emerges a new awareness, a new identity, a new sense of self that feels more "real" than the one we lost. People often refer to this as a spiritual "rebirth."

Following the experience of being reborn, we then integrate our new self into a new lifestyle or "new way of being in the world."  We reach "spiritual maturity" when the search for knowledge is replaced with living from the center of our being; when we no longer seek the truth, rather we live in it; when we always love rather than fear; when we realize our essential unity with the Universe, or Universal Intelligence, or Life Force, or God (whatever you prefer).

You can identify spiritually mature persons by some of the following qualities:

• They function on the principles of love, rather than the habits of fearful defense.
• They respond from within themselves, rather than react to the people and events that are outside their skin. 
• They live as they consciously choose, usually very simply.
• They are graceful in their responses to others.
• They experience "bliss" on a regular basis, not just when meditating or praying. 
• They maintain internal equanimity and calm.
• They are often delightfully humorous.
• They are non-hostile.
• They relate to others in healthy and beneficial ways.
• They reflect their true nature in all they do. 
• They are insightful, quick to learn, open to new experiences and eager to make themselves, others and the world more loving and peaceful.

The benefits of developing your spiritual life can include: getting along with others much better; contributing positively to all your relationships; bringing your healthiest and best to your service; acknowledging the true nature of others as the same as yours; experiencing more belonging, vitality, joy, inner peace, and love within your experience of being alive. Are not such benefits worth the risk of growing spiritually? Perhaps your own spiritual growth is the primary purpose for your being alive in the first place.

Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D. has 30+ years experience as a Life Coach and Licensed Psychologist.  He is available for coaching in any area presented in "Practical Psychology."  As your Coach, his only agenda is to assist you in creating the lifestyle you genuinely desire. The initial coaching session is free.  Contact him: (970) 568-0173 or E-mail: DrLloyd@CreatingLeaders.com or LJTDAT@aol.com 

"Wisdom of the Ages" by Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

WISDOM OF THE AGES 

By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D. 

Someone once said, "If we do not learn from our mistakes in the past, we are bound to repeat them" (or something like that).  What might we learn from the wisdom of sages of long ago?  If we learn from the very wise people in human history, perhaps today we can repeat what benefited humanity back then. 

One of China's best loved books of wisdom is the "Tao Te Ching."  It was written in the fifth Century B.C. by a man named, Lao Tzu.  It has come down to us as a "classic of world literature" and Lao Tzu's sayings may be very familiar to us.  For example: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  Back then, Tzu wrote it as a guide for wise political leaders.  I hope the example below will serve the same purpose today.  

In 1985, John Heider wrote an excellent book titled, The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" Adapted for a New Age.  He writes, "...even more important is the fact that [the] Tao Te Ching persuasively unites leadership skills and the leader's way of life: 

our work is our path." 

Since the tragic events in Tucson a few weeks ago, our leaders have been addressing the nature and quality of their discourse and language.  I hope the quote below from Heider's book will also serve as "a guide for wise political leaders." 

    

"The wise leader knows how to act effectively.  To act effectively, be aware and unbiased.  If you are aware, you will know what is happening, you will not act rashly.  If you are unbiased, you can react in a balanced and centered manner. 

"Have respect for every person and every issue directed at you.  Do not dismiss any encounter as insignificant.  But neither should you become anxious or afraid of being overwhelmed or embarrassed. 

    

"If you are attacked or criticized, react in a way that will shed light on the event.  This is a matter of being, centered and of knowing that an encounter is a dance and not a threat to your ego or existence.  Tell the truth. 

    

"If you are conscious of what is happening in a group, you will recognize emerging situations long before they have gotten out of hand.  Every situation, no matter how vast or complex it may become, begins both small and simple. 

    

"Neither avoid nor seek encounters, but be open and when an encounter arises, respond to it while it is still manageable.  There is no virtue in delaying until heroic action is needed to set things right.  In this way, potentially difficult situations become simple. 

    

"If you have not bragged about your abilities or tried to make people be the way you think they ought to be, very few group members will want to encounter you anyway." 

We need to learn from the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching written over 2,500 years ago.  Perhaps only then will we repeat it today. 

Humanity Has Reached the Point Where it Can and is Listening to the Voice of God

John Smallman, February 26, 2011

Your spiritual evolution is accelerating, as it must, and the divine energies surrounding and enveloping you are intensifying as you continue asking for help from your guides, angels, and from God Himself. What you are doing is of great importance, it is totally in alignment with the divine Will, and consequently you cannot fail to achieve your aim, which is to evolve or, more correctly, to return whence you came, to eternal union with God.

The illusion has dragged you into a state of great suffering that was only possible because you were given free will, which allowed you to reject your eternal loving relationship with God in which you were created, and build an environment where you pretended that you were separated from Him. That, of course, is impossible because all that exists does so within God. Nevertheless, using the gifts that He had bestowed upon you, you went ahead and imagined an environment without His loving Presence, and chose to experiment with a very large number of rather strange ideas that can only truly be described as quite insane.

The results of these experiments are all around you, wherever you look, and they are not a pretty sight. Initially your intentions were not unkind, just thoughtless. You could have used your reason and intelligence to calculate where your experiments would lead you, but it seemed that there was so much fun in not knowing that you rushed ahead and became addicted to the sense of excitement that your lack of foreknowledge provoked.

By the time the pain and suffering had become endemic it seemed that there was no way back, and that you had permanently and gravely offended your Father by your ill-conceived and basically thoughtless behavior. It seemed to you that you had destroyed His divine creation of beauty and perfection and were, therefore, beyond forgiveness. You had forgotten that the environment in which it appeared that you had your existence was but an imaginary one that you had built to play in and hide from Him. Your imaginations had convinced you that what you were experiencing was absolutely real, and you began to blame one another for your suffering, and that led only to further suffering. To cease experiencing suffering you have to cease imposing it on others.

You have the power and the divine grace to recognize that what you are experiencing as reality, and have been experiencing that way for eons, is, in truth, an illusion that you continue to support and maintain as long as you continue to attack and blame one another. Judgment must cease because it destroys every effort you make to establish peace. For eons every societal system that has been overthrown has only been replaced by a similar one containing all the same faults and problems the revolutionaries claimed that they would put right, as your world history clearly shows. There have always been wise ones among you offering sane guidance, but in the excitement and increased insanity of revolution you refused to listen.

Finally humanity has reached the point where it can and is listening to the Voice of God, which has always been available and expressed through the wise and gentle ones amongst you. Now you can start to recognize that this painful realm of confusion, fear, and anxiety is but a hideous nightmare from which you can awaken by laying down judgment, blame, and punishment, and replacing those destructive attitudes with gentleness, understanding, forgiveness, and cooperation. You are seeing this happening all over the world, as people support each other peacefully to disempower regimes that have controlled them instead of honoring them as God’s beloved children.

You are all divinely loved. You have never left the Presence of God. You will awaken from the seemingly endless nightmare of ferocious disagreement, judgment, and war. Then your joy will be complete because in Reality, God’s divine Presence, there is nothing else.