Thought For the Week (Special Mid-Week Edition): On Dancing Lightly With Life....

Please enjoy this compilation courtesy of Jonathan Lockwood Huie as a token of our thanks:

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor.

It's to enjoy each step along the way.

- Wayne Dyer

Life may not be the party we hoped for,

but while we are here we might as well dance.

- Anonymous

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement

and the thrill of creative effort.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Dance like no one is watching,

love like you'll never be hurt.

Sing like no one is listening.

Live life like it's heaven on earth.

- Anonymous (various attributions and alternate phrasings)

An #Outsider Musical Interlude Special Edition: Coldplay From Global Citizen Festivual 2017

Embracing the possibilities!!

Notations On Our World (Special @POTUS watch Edition): A Snapshot of the "Resistance" On the Eve of the New Week

 
It has been quite a week as President Trump attended the Bastille Day Celebrations that President Macron hosted and returned to the United States to spend the weekend at his Golf Course in New Jersey.  The opposition to him is continuing as our team picked up the latest  courtesy of the team at the Guardian of London chronicling the so-called Resistance as the challenges in Washington Abound.    This is also as the CEO of JP Morgan Chase blasted the profound challenges in Washington noting, "...'It's almost an embarrassment being American ..."--This is from a man that turned down President Trump's offer to serve as Treasury Secretary: 

The Resistance Now: a healthy dose of reality

Republicans still can’t find enough votes for their healthcare bill as activists keep up pressure, while others target Trump Tower with the Impeach Trump! protest The Resistance Now on Facebook

Demonstrators from Arizona chant ‘kill the bill or lose your job’ while sitting on the floor outside the office of Senator Jeff Flake. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Adam Gabbatt  @adamgabbatt

We go again Senate Republicans have been sweating away over the latest version of their healthcare bill over the past week. Now they’ve come out and slapped it down on the table. Unluckily for the GOP… a) Activists are both energized and accustomed to thwarting ill-thought out healthcare legislation. b) It appears that some Republicans are unlikely to vote for it. On Monday, police arrested 80 people who were protesting the second Senate bill in Washington. There have been signs that protests, phone calls and letter-writing are having an impact.

Healthcare activists protest behind an angry police officer on Capitol Hill. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Susan Collins of Maine opposed the first bill and has already said she she will vote no on the second. Rob Portman of Ohio – a particular focus for activists – also appears to be wavering. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia isn’t keen either. A Huffington Post/YouGov survey released on Thursday found that healthcare is the issue most Americans are most concerned about right now: 47% of respondents said healthcare was one of the two issues they were worried about, with the economy at 37%. Just 12% of respondents put Russia in their top two. Battle for an open internet Tech giants joined forces with online activists and free speech groups on Wednesday for a day of protest against Trump administration plans to roll back net neutrality rules. Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and other tech giants all highlighted their opposition to the plans. Activist group Fight for the Future said the day of protest resulted in more than 3.45m emails being sent to Congress, while the Federal Communications Commission received more than 1.6m comments – a record for a single day. In May, the FCC voted 2-1 to start the formal process of dismantling rules that prevent ISPs from creating fast or slow lanes to favor one user over another and potentially allow them to choose winners and losers online.

PRESS RELEASE: Still in progress historic day of action for #NetNeutrality is breaking records, reaching millions: https://t.co/JNUwsFsy6H pic.twitter.com/I0jrWG9OH0 — Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) July 12, 2017

Impeach Trump?

Unimpeachable? Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

More than 3,000 people are expected to gather in New York City on Saturdayfor an Impeach Trump! national day of protest. Protesters will gather outside Trump Tower for the event, which is organized by Refuse Fascism. The rather optimistic title – the event was initially called the Trump Impeachment Party – came to be because it was created “with the mindset that Trump would be impeached within a matter of weeks since his election”, said organiser Mohammad Hamad, adding that he and others will try to turn the march into something broader in the coming months. “We’ll continue to fight the Trump-Pence regime because they’ve already made their agenda clear and it will have a generational impact on Americans (and the world) if they get away with it,” Hamad said. Progressivism can work everywhere Matt Yglesias has a fascinating piece at Vox on how a progressive message can appeal in affluent suburbs – such as in Atlanta’s sixth congressional district, where Jon Ossoff lost on a more centrist platform in June. It’s because the GOP’s proposed tax cuts will only benefit the fabled 1%, Yglesias says. “The reality is that even the richest GOP-held congressional district in the country, Virginia’s 10th, has a median household income of ‘only’ $110,000 – far too low for most voters to benefit from the GOP’s proposed top rate cut, or even from … repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s taxes, which fall on households earning more than $250,000 a year.”

Rich people. Photograph: David Davies/PA

Merde There were fewer anti-Trump protesters than expected in Paris, and those who did try to protest were kept “far from any of the locations Trump visited”, we reported. A few hardcore demonstrators persisted.

https://translate.google.com/ Photograph: Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty Images