Green Festival, Los Angeles (Nov. 17-18)

GreenFestivals.org; Wisdom Quarterly

The LA stop of the Green Festival is this weekend at the LA Convention Center. Connect with local communities to find ideas and innovations to help take the next green steps. Hundreds of speakers, exhibitors, DIY workshops... It stops in downtown Nov. 17-18. See the Online Event Guide. Admission is affordable on any budget. The fest is beinh held at the LA Convention Center: 1201 Figueroa St., intersection of the Santa Monica (10) and Harbor (110) freeways. Event hours are 10:00 am-7:00 pm Saturday and 11:00 am-6:00 pm Sunday. Exhibitors have have passed the Green America screening process for leadership in social and environmental responsibility and have earned the Green America Seal of Approval for their commitment.

See Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman, radio/TV hostess for the independent global news hour Democracy Now!, will speak and sign her latest book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope on Saturday, Nov. 17 at 1:00 pm. Goodman goes beyond the mainstream media’s obsessive focus on poll numbers and candidate gaffes to examine how people are organizing, the impacts of restrictive voter ID laws, and the massive influx of campaign cash following the Citizens United decision. More

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Better Presidential Debates (comedy)

Wisdom Quarterly; (NPR, Oct. 6, 2012); DrShrapn3l (therumble2012.com)   

  

What if nobody won? (Getty/ChipSomodevilla)

While failed-comedian Bill O'Reilly (FOX News) and faux-newser Jon Stewart (Comedy Central) duked it out, there was another much more serious alternative presidential debate presented by NPR (National Public Radio). It was between third-party candidates Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian).
 

The NPR third-party candidate debate

Green Jill Stein (jillstein.org)

What's it like to be a third-party candidate running for president? Ralph Nader can tell us: "You're excluded from the debates," he says. "You spend an exhausting amount of time, until Labor Day, trying to get over the ballot access barriers. Your petitioners are harassed in the streets; you're subjected to baseless lawsuits by one party or another."
  
Nader has run for president three times -- four if you count the time he ran unofficially. In 2000, he managed to win almost 3 percent of the national vote.

• LISTEN: Third-Party Debate (11:31)

Libertarian Gary Johnson

To this day, getting a third-party candidate into a presidential debate is practically impossible.
  
[The one-party system we have, halved in two, has made sure of that.] The Commission on Presidential Debates says that to be included, you have to poll 15 percent with voters. That's why George Farah, founder of Open Debates, a group that wants the system reformed, thinks the commission is the main problem.

"This commission exists for the principle purpose of protecting and strengthening the two parties," Farah says. "Every four years they allow the major party candidates to negotiate agreements that dictate many of the terms of the debates -- including the exclusion of popular third-party voices."
  
So given the two major party candidates had 90 minutes and at least 50 million viewers for their debate last Wednesday, [NPR] decided to invite two of the third-party candidates to a debate of our own.

Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party's nominee. Jill Stein is the Green Party's nominee. They joined moderator -- and host of weekends on All Things Considered -- Guy Raz for a debate focusing on domestic issues: the economy, health care, and the role of government. More

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The Green Tara Mantra (video)

Buddhist Light

   

Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha

  

Green Tara (Leighton Cooke)

OM represents Tara's sanctified body, speech, and mind.

TARE means liberating from suffering, the disappointment and pain of samsara, the Five Aggregates of Clinging (skandhas, heaps, groups, constituent factors) under the control of delusion and karma.

TUTTARE means liberating from the eight fears, the external and internal dangers, delusion, and karma.

TURE means liberating from the ignorance of the true nature for the ego, self, soul. It shows the way to the real cessation of suffering.

SVAHA means "May the meaning of this mantra take root in my mind."

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