Donald Trump Op-Ed by 13-Year-Old 8th Grade Student Matthew Wieseltier

13-year-old 8th grade student and Huff Post blogger Matthew Wieseltier does not want to grow up in Donald Trump's America
he is a bright insightful and eloquent young man.


http://rise.huffingtonpost.com/watch/donald-trump-op-ed-13-year-old-8th-grade-student-matthew-wieseltier

I was cooking and had to leave the kitchen

Sarah's godawful voice, and her more than godawful folksy stupidity made me want to throw up before I could even eat.
I had to get away to gather my wits and calm my stomach lining. The Germans have an expression "standing like an oil slicked buddha" (herumstehen wie ein Ölgötze) and that is what the Donald reminds me of standing beside her and the smirky slick weirdness of his expression as she does her antics shows me clearly that he knows she is full of it and simply wants to make herself important again.

What have we come to? I would not have believed this scenario even a year ago.
The Republican party is on a path to not only self destruct, but to look at it's remnants and debris from the bottom up.
YUCK

My favorite dog video ever - well - so far, anyway

Dog teaches baby how to jump
This is the top of adorable, it is beyond precious, it makes my entire week so far - just a minute long

In honor of Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump: A visual to gird up for

For folks who won a contest for the first time: Step by Step rundown of the sequences

These are basic guidelines, nothing is etched in stone, I may be forgetting something, but they may nevertheless take the edge of wondering how to proceed, or as I did, panicking.
The host or hostess is in charge, all decisions begin and end there, and so not much is to be feared

Announce the theme in the Photo Forum - as well as the schedule for submissions and voting - give at least 1 week between announcing the theme and the start of submissions, for people to go out and shoot.

Start submission thread in photo forum, along with a separate comment thread, link them to each other and caution folks to not make comments or ask questions in the submission thread. If they do anyway, just cope with it , remember, nothing is etched in stone.
Into the header of the submission thread copy and paste the basic rules about photo submissions.
there is a pinned thread at the top to the photo forum, by CC, “Preliminary or the Gathering of Contest Rules”
where you can get the info about all of that

During the submission time host or hostess needs to remain vigilant to questions or problems that arise, and at times remind folks of the timing to submit. One tries to make noise so those who want to enter a photo don’t miss the fact it is happening. Many a host or hostess also post a notice in the Lounge to solicit photographs.

When the time comes to make the polling threads, decide on how many threads are needed based on the number of submissions received. 10 is the maximum per thread. I like to have one third or thereabouts of the submissions in the finals. So for example when it is 21 entries, I like to have 7 finalists, and they will come from 3 polls of 7 each.

I am not going to explain here how to make the polling threads, there may be instructions about that somewhere already, and I am not the best at this anyway. Just gather the links of the submissions as they come in and study old threads. You can always ask along the way.
Make the threads and explain the theme to the voting public, you want them to know what they are looking for, not just have them vote for pretty pictures. Again state the timing involved for how long the voting will be, also tell the photographers how you will chose the finalists, and how many there will be. Post them. Link them to each other so folks can go from one to the next and vote.

Then you are almost home free, the most difficult is behind you.
The next step its to gather the finalists, run a poll if there is a tie, or flip a coin, or make the choice any old way you want. Remember: you are the boss of this.

Run the finalists along with the same explanations of the basic polls about theme and timing.

Announce the winners and pass the baton.

Hope this helps.

For want of a title I did not enter this one in "ONE"

but I really like it, it was in the streets of Montreal

A little levity - don't mean anything by it really - but you decide: "Who wears this hair better"?..

I just felt like lightening up a bit after the magnificent and real issues debate we just saw, and I praise Martin O'Malley for keeping his composure and giving Jim Webb a lesson on how to deal with being slighted.

In honor of Grant Wood - current image of a heterosexual marriage ….

Perseverance, hard work, and talent based on HOPE = Veteran housing rehab in NC

I read about this in my local paper, and just had to take a short drive to see it myself.

Whole Man Ministries of N.C. — a grassroots, nonprofit charitable organization — is rehabbing duplex buildings that it bought in eastern Winston-Salem. The buildings will be converted to single-family dwellings, offering three bedrooms and two baths. The city is assisting by providing 15-year term loans totaling $201,028 with a zero percent interest rate for two units.

98 159 more signatures needed to fulfil Bill Maher's 60th birthday wish

After his winter hiatus tonight, 5 days before his 60th birthday, Bill Maher resumed his show "Real time" tonight.

It was a show that made me laugh a whole lot, with great guests and lively and valuable discussion and opinions, the only giveaway here is that he had on the 43rd President of the US, the winner of an Oscar, an Emmy and a Nobel Prize as his interview guest:
Senator Al Gore.

It was wonderful to be in Al Gore's "presence" again, after a long time missing him and mourning his supposed loss.

Now here is the thing about the request. Bill said in all the years since his show "Politically incorrect" started in I think he said 1993 he has never asked his audience to help him with anything. Not when he had personal problems, when his mother died, when he had bad break-ups, or when he kept wondering why Stedman Graham won't marry him.
But for this birthday, when he says the only good thing about turning 60 is that you are on the young end of being old, he is asking us to go to

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ask-president-obama-appear-hbos-real-time-bill-maher

and get the 100 000 signatures needed in one month's time to get President Obama to answer his long standing invitation to come to his show. In his inimitable way he collaged together 2 special segments of clips / one from all the times he has praised Obama (and never did he mention the million he gave as a campaign donation) / and one of all the other shows Obama has graced with his presence which really is just about everybody except, as Bill says: Fox and Friends and himself. In essence, Maher said, he deserves to be in that lineup, and wants all of us to help him get the attention of the White House which is guaranteed by the 100 000 signatures on the website's "We the people / petitions".

I realize I may get a bit of flaming by those who don't like Bill you have the other option to just ignore me.
But I signed it, and hope those of you who have been fans of his decide to help him in this one request he has of us, his audience, in return for the work he has put in to be there for us.