On this day

Message from H.H. the Dalai Lama

A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience--in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know you are safe, cause others to know they are safe. If you wish to comprehend seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand them. If you wish to heal your own sadness and rage, seek to heal the sadness and rage of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assistance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.

This is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts of those whose lives you touch, both now and for years to come. We shall set the course for tomorrow today.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Goddamn perfect weather

We've got that goddamn perfect weather again. I kept shaking my head thinking how the fuck could a pilot fly into the tower when there wasn't a cloud in the sky- until the other plane...

Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T35WXFOmwI

Time is of the essence! We must stop Obama's socialist agenda!

Time is of the essence! We must stop Obama's socialist agenda!

If you agree then show your support by taking this pledge. Then be sure to pass it on to everybody in your address book.

Pledge to Stop the Obama Socialist Agenda

I, _______________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:


I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.


I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.


I will foreswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.


I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

* Social Security

* Medicare/Medicaid

* State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)

* Police, Fire, and Emergency Services

* US Postal Service

* Roads and Highways

* Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)

* The US Railway System

* Public Subways and Metro Systems

* Public Bus and Lightrail Systems

* Rest Areas on Highways

* Sidewalks

* All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations)

* Public Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)

* Public and State Universities and Colleges

* Public Primary and Secondary Schools

* Sesame Street

* Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children

* Public Museums

* Libraries

* Public Parks and Beaches

* State and National Parks

* Public Zoos

* Unemployment Insurance

* Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services

* Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal Government (pretty much all of them)

* Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government Grant or Research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)

* Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and Velcro (Nazi-NASA Inventions)

* Use of the Internets, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking

* Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce and Crops That Were Grown With, Fed With, Raised With or That Contain Inputs From Crops Grown With Government Subsidies

* Clothing Made from Crops (e.g. cotton) That Were Grown With or That Contain Inputs From Government Subsidies


If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forego my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care.


I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C. and pledge to never take my family on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:

* Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History

* The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments

* The government-operated Statue of Liberty

* The Grand Canyon

* The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials

* The government-run socialist-propaganda site - Arlington National Cemetery

* All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC


I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forego their government salary and government-provided healthcare.


I will oppose and condemn the government-funded and therefore socialist military of the United States of America.


I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.


I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.


Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.


Upon reaching age 65, I will forego Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.


SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF __________ IN THE YEAR ___.

_____________ _________________________

Signed Printed Name/Town and State


(Found somewhere a year ago)

Okay, at the risk of condemnation, losing friends and being carved in stone on the Internet, I'm going to be completely honest here...

Born in Manhattan, watching the towers rising and living within earshot of their collapse, 9/11 hit close to home. Quite frankly, I thought the world was coming to an end. I thought I was never going to feel safe again. And I have to admit, when I spot a Middle Easterner even nine years later, I still change subway cars. I avoid them in Penn Station and Grand Central and I feel like it will always be a war zone when I walk past the guys in Army camouflage and the cops with bomb-sniffing dogs. It upsets me when, so as not to be caught racial profiling, airlines double check every tenth passenger even if the tenth is an 80 year old white woman, when no 80 year old white woman ever crashed an airliner into a building.

So, you see, my old world did come to an end and I don't really feel safe anymore and it leads me to do things or assume things that, even though understandable, I'm not very proud of. What it means at a very personal level is that the terrorism worked.

As the grandchild of Russian immigrants who settled on West 57th St. on one side and the descendant of a Dutch counsel to Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam on the other, I come from a long line of people to whom America - and New York - was very special. And I feel the same way.

I love my country. I define my country's uniqueness by the Constitution of the United States. It still blows my mind that the founders had such foresight for this place and such promise in its people that they provided for the ability to amend its words as years brought change they could never begin to imagine. And what country but ours in the history of man gives its citizens the right to pursue happiness? It can't give us happiness. No one can. But it tells us it is our right to go looking for it.

Forget the specifics in the later Amendments for the moment. Doesn't that alone tell us we need to find a common balance so that we ALL can be in the hunt for what makes us happy? I mean, if these people want to build a house of worship for their beliefs and they comply with all the building codes and ordinances and it is a private property that is up for sale in the proper manner, they are doing nothing illegal to buy it and be there. In fact, we can't BY LAW really stop them.

And maybe it is unsettling for them to be so close to Ground Zero and I wonder, too, why they couldn't pick another spot just to be good neighbors and respect New York's sensitivity to the hallowed ground where the World Trade Center stood. Maybe it crosses my mind that they have another agenda like it crosses my mind that the person I spot on the subway might be carrying a bomb.

But feeling this way reduces MY ability to pursue MY OWN happiness. And disallowing this cleric the same rights reduces the chance to show all the people of the world, and especially the young, whether they wish us harm or wish to be one of us, that America is indeed very special, that its Constitution is something worth preserving, that we Americans have a spirit like no other - and that hate in any form doesn't belong here.