A basic truism

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 26, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Follow Your Heart

Follow Your Heart: Become the Person You Were Meant to Be

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman

When asked what they want to do with their life, most people cannot offer a straight answer. The reason is that what they truly enjoy doing and what they feel they should do to make money are two entirely different things. We feel that it's more important to get into a career that offers good pay and benefits rather than following where are hearts are trying to guide us. As a result, most people spend their lives chasing money and never fulfilling their heart's greatest desires. We pay the bills and accumulate possessions only to find ourselves on our death bed swimming in regret.

http://www.aesthetic-conscience.org/2014/07/follow-your-heart-become-person-you.html

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 26, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The truest ache

Manifestation of Dreams is the Transformation of Self 

Often times in life we are hit with overwhelming inspiration to pursue a dream, and during that moment of inspiration it seems as though the stars are aligned and nothing can hold us back. Riding on a passion-driven high, we know in our heart that we have found our purpose and set out to manifest our dream into reality. It seems as though synchronicity is in full effect, as little coincidences and serendipity confirm every epiphany that aligns with our vision. Days go by… weeks and then months. We pour our heart and soul into our vision but the optimism and passion begins to fade away. Why did it seem so right in the beginning if it was not meant to be? Were we just being naive, or is there something missing?

http://www.aesthetic-conscience.org/2014/07/manifestation-of-dreams-is.html

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 26, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Disparity of weighing the evidence | Conciliation or Sound Byte?

“I beg my colleagues to sit down and let’s work this out. Veterans are dying. This is not a policy, academic issue here. This is the very lives of the men and women who are serving.”

Sen. John McCain, on the battle in Congress over how much to spend on reshaping the troubled Veterans Affairs Department. Though the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved separate bills in June to speed up veterans’ access to care, they still disagree on the price tag, and it’s unclear whether the legislation will pass in the few days left before Congress adjourns for its August recess. (via latimes)

 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-friedman/mccains-non-support-for-t_b_131046.html

COMMENTARY:  McCain ‘sounds’ so sane, so rational in the statement at the top of this post.  Alas, his actions ‘say’ something altogether different and that is where we MUST focus our attention … on the man’s actions — ALWAYS.  Words, sound bytes do NOT make the man — ANY man [or woman]. 

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 25, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Steve King, Asshole of the Day

assholeofday:

Steve King, Asshole of the Day for July 24, 2014
by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)

After 6 years almost no one is willing to go "full birther" any more. No one except Donald Trump maybe. You can’t come right out and say Obama wasn’t born in America without people tuning you out, and everyone knows that. Even the people who deep down hate him and feel he is foreign know it.
Rep. Steve King, the xenophobic congressman famous for suggesting that most immigrants are drug mules with cantaloupe-sized calves, starts a speech saying he won’t assert where Obama was born. He’s not a birther, you see. But then he plays to his crowd’s racism by suggesting Obama is foreign:

“His vision of America isn’t like our version of America. That we know,” King said of Obama. “Now I don’t assert where he was born, I will just tell you that we are all certain that he was not raised with an American experience. So these things that beat in our hearts when we hear the National Anthem and when we say the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t beat the same for him.”

Now there’s a dog-whistle— “not raised with an American experience”.

It’s true that Obama didn’t live his entire life in America, but he only lived overseas for 3 years as a child. Other than that he lived here, among Americans. His mother was an American. The grandparents he lived with were American.

Of course Rep. King doesn’t even explain what American experience it is that Obama doesn’t have, because he doesn’t have to— he knows that his crowd will know what he means.

We’re all familiar with the “I’m not racist, but…” statements, and how they are all pretty much racist. Once you start putting people in groups and making them all the same in your head, you’re in racist territory.

It’s like these people think that racism is only lynchings and Jim Crow laws, and not the wider array of discrimination that happens in life. And what is Rep. King doing if not saying “I’m not a birther, but…”? So when he starts claiming Obama doesn’t have an American experience, it’s obvious what he means. And for that, he is Asshole of the Day.

It is Steve King’s first time as Asshole of the Day.

Full story: Buzzfeed

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 24, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The Five Mental Hindrances!

bhikkhu samahita originally shared [on Google Plus] to Taoism - The Way

What Causes Ignorance?

Ignorance is caused by the 5 Mental Hindrances! 

http://what-buddha-said.net/drops/II/Cause_of_Ignorance.htm

 

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 24, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

IF ONLY there was a permanent category for this idiot

Rick Perry, Asshole of the Day for July 23, 2014  by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)

There’s a crisis on America’s southern border, and it’s not poor adult immigrants coming for work and opportunity, it’s children fleeing violence in Central America. Rather than stay and risk death, they travel hundreds of miles with very little resources with the hope of safety in America.

But of course in America, the very people who most loudly proclaim their Christianity don’t want to help. They shout loudly to deport these children who have swelled the detention centers and strained the resources to support them. There’s lots of loose talk that Obama is “in on it”, or that Obama is not following the law, but he is following the law— a law signed by George W. Bush designed to keep immigrant children safe, whether they came here legally or not. And as to the “in on it” allegation, unless you believe that Obama got Central American drug gangs to escalate the violence and killings, there’s just no plausible other conspiracy here.

We’ve featured several assholes who have spoken out on the crisis in various ways:

Sarah Palin accuses Obama of exploiting foreign children to orchestrate a crisis
William Gheen wants Americans to mail dirty underwear to politicians and refugees
Rep. Louie Gohmert wants to shoot 10-year-old refugees at the border
Rep. Phil Gingrey fear mongering about unvaccinated immigrant children when he doesn’t think American children need to be vaccinated
Rep. Adam Kwasman yelled at a school bus of citizens because he thought they were undocumented immigrant children
But there’s the run-of-the-mill fear mongering, conspiracy theory, and xenophobia; and then there’s Rick Perry.
Gov. Perry, you may recall, was a serious contender for the GOP nomination in 2011 until he suggested that deporting children was wrong, and his numbers were sliding even before his Oops moment. But that was then.

As the crisis has escalated Perry has tried to play to his base while still governing like a human, but if the two are in conflict, guess which he does?

He said Obama was in on it somehow, and then stuck to it when pressed whether he really believed that days later.

He refused to shake Obama’s hand, the customary gesture when the President comes to a governor’s state.

As he let the right wing hype machine make a big deal out of Obama saying he didn’t want to do a photo-op on the border, Rick Perry did a photo-op with Sean Hannity on the border, playing at soldiers.

And then this: This week Perry said he would send the Texas National Guard down to the border. Sounds like he’s doing something. But is he? Here’s what the Texas National Guard General says about the deployment:

Most of the 1,000 National Guard troops headed to the Texas-Mexico border will take up observational positions and detain people only if they interfere with their mission, a top general over the deployment said Tuesday.

Texas Adjutant General John Nichols said the troops will help deter illicit traffic while U.S. Border Patrol agents deal with a record spike of unaccompanied minors entering the country. The Texas National Guard troops are headed to border on the orders of Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who has been a chief critic of the White House response to the crisis and is considering another run for president in 2016.

Nichols said troops will be armed for their safety, but when asked if their weapons would be loaded would say only that ammunition would be in magazines.

So will they be stopping people at the border? No.

What can they do? Nothing.

They are observers. They can stand there with possibly empty guns looking tough. Looking like Perry is doing something.

It’s all just for show. For Fox News footage. For his 2016 campaign commercials, and especially for his SuperPAC that he won’t coordinate with.

But it’s not to help secure the border, like he’s pretending to the GOP base of xenophobes. Not one single bit.

Oh, and one last thing— Perry expects us to reimburse him for this piece of pointless theater. Yep. Mr. States’ Rights wants federal money to pay for the deployment he ordered.

So, for making a big show of sending the National Guard, even though they can’t and won’t do anything, Rick Perry is Asshole of the Day.

It is Gov. Perry’s sixth time as Asshole of the Day. Previous wins were for saying his wife never meant to defend women’s right to control their own bodies claiming his abortion bill is about protecting women’s health, even though it has no provision to save the life of the mother saying all women should be forced to have babies as teenagers because Wendy Davis did suggesting that expanding Medicaid will invent people to be sick refusing to shake Obama’s hand and saying Obama was “in on” the border crisis somehow

Full story: Talking Points Memo

Stephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
July 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/