USOC savoring lead in Olympic medals race

United States' Abby Wambach celebrates winning the gold medal in their women's soccer final against Japan at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

United States' Abby Wambach celebrates winning the gold medal in their women's soccer final against Japan at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

LONDON (AP) ? Swimming, track and field, basketball, women's soccer, Serena Williams and Aly Raisman. They all found their way onto U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst's highlight list from the London Games.

"I like to hear 'The Star-Spangled Banner' ? a lot," Probst said.

Good thing, because the U.S. national anthem has blared more than any other in London over these last two weeks, and it's doubtful that will change much before the Olympic flame is extinguished on Sunday night. With the games winding down, the U.S. had opened a significant lead over China in the overall medals race, and also were holding off the Chinese in the chase to win the most gold medals.

If the Americans finish atop the medal standings ? and it was a near mathematical certainty that it would be the case ? it would mark the fifth straight Summer Games where U.S. athletes took home more prizes than anyone else from an Olympics.

"The Olympic motto is faster, higher, stronger. And I think that every American came here to do that," U.S. judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison said Saturday. "Not necessarily fastest, highest, strongest, but I came here to perform at my very, very best and make America proud as a result."

She wasn't alone.

American swimmers won 31 medals. Track and field was on pace for about 30, a goal that seemed farfetched to some in the U.S. Olympic movement not long ago. Gabby Douglas won the women's all-around competition in gymnastics, Raisman left that venue with three medals and Williams won Olympic gold at Wimbledon over Maria Sharapova in what Probst said was "the most dominating performance I have ever seen by a female tennis player, ever."

Williams rolled over Sharapova that day, 6-0, 6-1.

Most of the other Americans weren't quite that dominant ? but weren't exactly slackers, either.

"Yeah, we like to come in first. There's nothing wrong with that," Probst said. "This is a competition and I think it's absolutely great that we're leading in the medal count, both on golds and in total. The last time we won both gold and the total was in Athens, so it's been a while. I think it feels good to see our athletes be so successful on the field of play."

USOC CEO Scott Blackmun said about 200 American athletes will leave London with a medal, a figure buoyed by success in plenty of team sports. If his estimate of 200 holds, that would mean roughly 38 percent of the U.S. athletes competing at the games would make at least one trip to the award podium.

"One of our primary objectives is to get as many American athletes on the podium as we can," Blackmun said.

Blackmun said before the Olympics that the U.S. was obviously hopeful of winning the medal chase again, but never revealed if the committee had a specific target number.

On Saturday, Blackmun did say that the way the games have panned out was "pretty darn close" to the U.S. expectations.

Through Saturday afternoon, U.S. Olympians in London had claimed 95 medals, 13 more than the Chinese. Americans were also leading the gold-medal chase over China, 41-37.

"For me, it's not a competition in medal count against somebody else," said U.S. decathlete Ashton Eaton, a gold medalist in London and the world-record holder in his event. "I think if you just are cheering your country on and you're just trying to beat whoever is in front of you in your competition, the medals take care of themselves, really."

Probst gave high praise on Saturday to the way London organizers put the Olympics together, and a number of U.S. athletes also raved about the logistics ? from buses running on time to the quality of the Olympic village.

Probst, however, took one good-natured shot at London organizing committee head Sebastian Coe, who said earlier this year that he expected China to take away more medals than anyone else.

"The only thing that Seb got slightly wrong was he predicted that we would come in behind China in the medal count," Probst said. "And I told him back in April that we were going to work really, really hard to prove him wrong."

So this medals win might be a bit sweeter for the Americans than the most recent ones that came at Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing.

"The American public has high expectations for our Olympic team and our Olympic athletes," Probst said. "There was a lot of speculation about where we would finish as a team. And a lot of people predicted that we might finish second and some even suggested third. So we're extremely proud of what our team has accomplished and what our athletes have accomplished."

___

Follow Tim Reynolds on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ByTimReynolds

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-08-11-OLY-USOC-Medals-Race/id-6b69d02352044ee2ad37726dc6c3e437

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Bullied 14-Year-Old Girl Gets Plastic Surgery to Fix Ears, Nose, Chin

Courtesy the Iles Family

ABC News? Bianna Golodryga and Natasha Singh report:

At first glance, 14-year-old Nadia Iles exudes an air of confidence that many other girls her age lack. That confidence is hard won.

Teased about her big ears since she was 7 years old, Nadia found school a nightmare. Her classmates tormented her, and she couldn?t bear to look at herself in the mirror.

?I felt horrible. I felt like I was like dirt,? she said, in an interview with ?Good Morning America.? ?They said that I have the biggest ears that they?ve ever seen. They called me ?Dumbo,? ?elephant ears.??

The teasing and bullying escalated, and Nadia, of Cummings, Ga., started to believe the negativity.

?I kind of got into this shell and I actually skipped school a lot,? she said. ?I made excuses. I would say my stomach hurt, say that I was sick even though I wasn?t.?

Nadia would cry a lot on the way home from the bus stop and at night before she went to sleep. It got so bad that Nadia even contemplated suicide.

?I actually did think about suicide but I wasn?t pushed, I didn?t really want to.? I didn?t think that was the solution,? she said.

Nadia?s troubles came as a shock to her mother. Because Lynda Iles had recently been laid off, and had a 9-year-old son, Joshua, who was battling cerebral palsy, Nadia didn?t want to bother her mother with her problems.

?I?m heartbroken about it,? Lynda Iles said, speaking of her daughter?s torment, including her thoughts of suicide. ?I didn?t realize that it was that bad. She would mostly say that she has migraines.?

Eventually, Nadia told her mother everything and begged for surgery to pin her ears back. Lynda Iles couldn?t afford it, so she turned to the Little Baby Face Foundation, a Manhattan-based organization that provides free surgery for children with facial deformities who have a financial need.

Click HERE to read about other bullied teens? plastic surgery.

Dr. Thomas Romo, the president of the organization, found Nadia?s story compelling.

Romo operated on Nadia in June. He pinned her ears back, and also operated on her nose and chin.? Romo performed $40,000 worth of work for free.

Asked if they were concerned that operating on Nadia conveyed the message that other bullied children needed to have plastic surgery, Romo replied: ?She wasn?t picked to have her surgery because she was bullied. She was picked for her surgery because of her deformities.?

Lynda Iles added: ?It was just something that we chose to do. It?s no different than somebody having teeth that require braces.?

Nadia no longer has a problem looking at herself in the mirror.

?I see a new me, a beautiful girl,? she said.

For years, Nadia wore her hair down to cover her ears. When she starts her first day of high school today, she will likely wear her hair up.

Asked about how she felt about the bullies who tormented her, she said: ?I forgive, but I don?t forget.?

Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=edcdbd7e86cb581cf5b5448b05121279

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Mastering Order ? Part I | Clarendon Consulting

There have been a handful of astounding revelations in my life, most of which have dawned slowly on my befuddled brain. Two of those are: the power of positive affirmation and the power of language.

This week, in the first part of a 2-part offering taken from her ?Notes from my Book Launch Talk,? Liliane Grace shares her journey with these two revelations, and even further.

As the daughter of a Jewish woman in WWII Poland, Liliane?s life view comes from a very unique perspective. And we are in the unique position of being able to learn from her journey.

Wishing you open hearts and minds,
Sheryl Cooper
Editor

?

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson

?

Mastering Order ? Part I

?

It?s not often you get to pick the brain of an acclaimed international writer, and further, to be able to add your own 2 cents? worth. But Liliane Grace allowed a foray into her magical mind. I hope you will be able to follow my ramblings among her magical words:

Sheryl: Liliane, writing a book such as The Mastery Club must have been such a unique experience. I can imagine the impact of revelations that had to have occurred during its creation. Is there any way you can describe the process?

Liliane: The process I?ve been through since writing The Mastery Club has been quite transformational. I went from a place where my family was in breakdown and I had effectively given up on my dreams as a writer to having a renewed and much stronger family and realizing some of my dearest dreams.

Sheryl: And then, of course, you followed with The Hidden Order. How did that compare?

Liliane: The journey I have been on since I first began jotting ideas for The Hidden Order has been extraordinary ? confronting ? intense ? unsettling, and it has honestly transformed my life ? again! But before I share that, I?d like to go back in time so you can understand why and how I embarked on this journey in the first place.? ?

I have always loved writing stories ? to me, writing is one of the most god-like actions a person can do: with the stroke of a pen ? in the olden days; tapping of keys today ? one can ?create a human being? and even a whole world. I utterly love that creative process.
When I was eleven I was invited to join a Creative Writing Club, and an innocent exercise to write a list of words we liked and a list of words we didn?t like, planted a seed in my mind that words have energy; they affect our feelings and state of mind.

Sheryl: Your childhood was very unusual, wasn?t it? Growing up as a child of a survivor of Jewish persecution in World War II Poland must have given you a unique perspective on life, and an appreciation for things often taken for granted.

Liliane: Yes, as a teenager, I began reading the books on my mother?s bookshelf, books with titles like The Power of Your Subconscious Mind and Life & Teachings of the Masters of the Far East ? and I was captivated by what I read in those books.

My mother had had a very traumatic childhood as a Jew in WWII in Poland, and as an adult she began to accumulate this very interesting library because she had questions about life ? Why are we here? How can people be so cruel to each other? How can one develop an inner authority rather than being subject to the whims of others?

Speak It and It Shall Happen ? Well, not quite.

Her books included true stories about people who were experiencing health or relationship or financial challenges who declared a certain kind of statement either aloud or silently or in writing, and thus transformed their lives. I was hooked. I became fascinated that we can use language to create imaginary worlds for the purpose of entertainment, and we can also use language to deliberately create our world, the world we are living in.

I began to declare some of those statements or affirmations myself, and then I would look around eagerly for a result ? for my world to change, but, mostly, nothing happened. So I came to the conclusion that these ideas worked for those people in the books, but not for me. I was longing for mastery but I was increasingly living like a victim, in reaction to everything?..

Until I hit a low point in my life when I felt like a complete failure as a mother, a writer, a wife. Out of desperation I began to work with these ideas more deliberately and more persistently. I told myself I was going to stick with the process of affirmations until I saw a result; I made it a lifestyle commitment to saturate myself with the ideas I wanted to demonstrate ? I declared affirmations while walking the dog, had books in the loo and tapes playing in the car?

Sheryl: Sooooo, what happened? What was the result?

LiIiane: I wrote The Mastery Club around that time ? we teach what we need to learn, right? I was coaching myself. I wanted to be masterful.

Sheryl: Why did Mastery appeal to you?

Liliane: Because I wanted to win immunity from difficulty. The war stories I?d grown up with had alarmed me. I was troubled by what I observed around me. I wanted world peace and for everyone to be happy and safe. I wanted to get rid of my unpleasant traits and only be good. Who can relate?

Sheryl: It was about this time that you began reading John Demartini, wasn?t it?

Liliane: In the process of writing The Mastery Club, I discovered the work of Dr. John Demartini, and my whole premise for life began to wobble. My book began to shift direction slightly in response to what I was reading and experiencing of his material.

Mastery is a Process

But I?m getting ahead of myself. When I began to apply the principles I had read about in my mother?s books with real commitment, I began to experience magic in my life. Slowly, situations that had appeared to be stuck were transformed, first on the home front, and then in my writing. Derek and I self-published The Mastery Club and the response I received was so enthusiastic that I was certain it would be an international bestseller in no time at all. I would be rich and famous and life would hum along!

The response to the book definitely began to support my changing sense of identity from failure to success, and some magic really did eventuate in my life, for example, being given a free trip to Paraguay and a free cruise as a speaker? But I also found myself facing even bigger challenges and I often felt overwhelmed.

Sheryl: What was so daunting? Writing a book is daunting enough; what other stressors did you experience?

Liliane: You see, today?s self-publishing author must wear a great many hats. Not only are we the creative writer, but also the marketer ? both online and offline, the publicist, the sales team, the administrator, the speaker, the product development department, etc. My life, over the last few years, has been a process of running from one boiling pot to the next, stirring this, turning that, doing my best to cover all of these areas as professionally as I could but making it up as I went along because I was learning as I was going. And, needless to say, there were delays and rejections and poor decisions.

So a bit of overwhelm? The international success remained ?in potential?. In the wake of publishing a book called ?The Mastery Club?, I was forced to face my fears that I would be perceived as a ?failed master?; that I wasn?t capable of demonstrating what I was teaching, of walking my talk. I began to back-peddle; I wanted to very clearly delineate the difference: I?m a WRITER, not a Master. I write about this stuff because I?m a good communicator ? but don?t expect me to demonstrate it.

Sheryl: What kept you going?

Liliane: The old childhood urge to be a master wouldn?t let go. It?s as Caroline Myss says, ?Once we are calibrated to a certain idea, we can?t go back.? We resonate at a new level of consciousness and we see everything through that lens. I couldn?t go back and I had to unpack this idea of mastery much more thoroughly, and this process took me even more deeply into Dr. Demartini?s work.

Sheryl: We?ll have a look into what I found next week.? Be sure and come back.

?

Source: http://clarendonconsulting.com/blog/mastering-order-part-i/

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DREAM Act a nightmare for legal immigrant | Fox News

By MB Snow at August 8, 2012 | 10:04 am | Print

By Maegan Vazquez ?

Lauren Gray graduated from Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., last May. She received a Bachelor?s degree of Fine Arts in Dance.

If Lauren Gray?s parents had been illegal immigrants, she wouldn?t be facing deportation.

Lauren Gray, a dancer who turns 21 on Wednesday, has lived in the U.S. since she was just 4, when her parents came here from England. But they came on work visas and, once she turns 21, Gray can?t piggyback on those permits. So, barring a last-minute miracle, Gray is about to leave for ?home,? to a country that?s foreign to her. While she is not being forcibly deported, she plans to ?self-deport? rather than remain here illegally.

?The U.S. is the country I was raised in,? Gray, who lives in Trenton, Mo., about 90 miles northeast of Kansas City, told FoxNews.com. ?I am unwanted in the country I call home.?

Ironically, under the DREAM Act-style guidelines now being followed by the Obama administration, an illegal immigrant in Gray?s position would be welcome to stay while following a path to citizenship. Earlier this year, the president instructed the Justice Department not to deport law-abiding illegal immigrants if they arrived as minors, graduated high school and have lived in the U.S. for at least five years before 2001, though the administration has denied the guidelines amount to amnesty. While the DREAM Act was designed to apply only to illegal immigrants, the Obama guidelines do cover legal immigrants ? provided their immigration status expired prior to June 15.

via DREAM Act a nightmare for legal immigrant | Fox News.

General Immigration News Politics Dream Act, Immigration, Maegan Vasquez, News, NewsNow, Politics

Source: http://www.politicalnewsnow.com/2012/08/08/dream-act-a-nightmare-for-legal-immigrant-fox-news/

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