All Entries in the "Politics" Category
Obama and progressive parenting
Andie Coller posted an interesting piece on Politico this morning where she points out that progressive parenting principles are reflected both in Obama’s rhetoric and leadership style.
It would be easy to bash Obama’s enlightened-father philosophy as an insulting new extension of the nanny state, but the truth is that the exercise of power in any form shares a lot in common with the parent-child relationship.
The Recession Made Me an Optimist - Seth Greenland
I don’t feel like I have the luxury of pessimism any more. The country is in dire shape, the problems seem insurmountable, the leaders of the past eight years dangerous buffoons who will pay no price for their epic malfeasance. The auto industry is tanking, newspapers are going bankrupt, and Wall Street is fleecing us again with the bailout. Truly, things are awful.
And yet.
When the Going Gets Tough, Satire Gets Going - Seth Greenland
American culture has long had a carnival aspect. How else to explain the ascendancy of Paris Hilton and her fellow celebritards, or the career of Flavor Flav? But until recently, these people and their antics had been a diversion, something to be glanced at in a dog-eared magazine at the dentist’s office, or to be glimpsed on a teenager’s laptop. Not anymore. With the advent of the Palin Family . . . reality took a turn that must make all practitioners of satire quake in our boots. If this is what truth offers, our audience would do well to ask, then who needs comedy?
Preschoolers At The Polls — Heather Cabot
Mindful Mom is delighted to welcome Heather Cabot, founder of the Well Mom, as one of our Mindful Moms!
Election Day got off to a rousing start over breakfast when my nearly three-year-old son stubbornly announced that he would NOT be going with me to “boat” because he did not want his feet to get wet. [...]
Prop 8 and Obama, a mandate to listen - Susan Kaiser Greenland
On a morning where an Obama presidency is cause for celebration and hope, the likely passage of Prop 8 in California is a reality check that Americans remain almost literally split down the middle with respect to our perspectives on the most basic of social issues. For those of us who supported Obama and his mandate, it will take more than just reaching across the aisle to manifest the hope for change and unity that he and his campaign have inspired. It’s going to take a whole lot of listening - active listening with a willingness to have our own perspectives shift - to come together and move forward as a more united and more evolved nation. President-elect Obama has proven to be an exemplar of this approach and, if his plans for a transition team are any indication, the hard work of open and informed conversation has already begun in his administration. Now it’s time for the rest of us to follow his lead and take these conversations to our schools, churches, temples, workplaces, and kitchen tables, truly integrating into our workaday lives the change that we believe in.
The candidates’ positions on education
This morning’s edition of Education week outlines John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s positions with respect to education. The candidates views on critical policy issues differ significantly.
Click HERE for a Voter’s Guide that digests McCain and Obama’s positions on No Child Left Behind, Teacher Quality, School Choice, Early Childcare and Education, and Higher Education.
Click HERE for a running TWITTER feed on Obama and McCain’s positions on education.
The Greatest Commandment — Rev. Amy Starr Redwine
I am a mother, a pastor, a wife (of a pastor), and an American. I am also a supporter of Barack Obama. I have eagerly followed his career since his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I fervently hope and pray that in just a couple more weeks he will be the president-elect and that in just a few months he will begin to implement an entirely new vision for America.
Looking beyond election day — Susan Kaiser Greenland
Negative feelings reside in the world of emotions, the language of which is predominantly non-verbal. Images, sounds, sense impressions, and smells are the most effective way to convince emotions, like fear, that there’s cause for alarm. Nothing speaks more powerfully to the fears of older undecided Jewish voters than images of Hitler. And to people born in communities with longstanding culturally based and unrecognized racial prejudice, the association between the first major party African-American candidate for President and a monkey is one of the most embedded, racially charged images in U.S. history.
Opie, Richie, the Fonz and Andy Griffith endorse Obama
Rumor has it Sherriff Taylor from Mayberry (who now lives in Miami) endorsed Obama today too!
Staying calm in the financial crisis
A survey on AlterNet of what some of the best thinkers believe we’re facing in the coming months and years — and the best ways to prevent complete disaster.
Despite the general consensus among the experts I surveyed that we are almost certainly headed into very rough waters, there was cause for optimism as well, in that most agreed that aggressive and coordinated actions by government could contain the damage. More importantly, the bright spot in this crisis may be (stress on the word may) the blow it deals to the center-right, anti-regulatory paradigm that has guided economic policymakers both at home and in many of the world’s capitals over the past three decades.
On the climate of hate in this election - Anna McDonnell
Now for the bad news. I think this graph perfectly represents what we, as a country, are doing in the last weeks of the Presidential election. The level of vitriol is so high, the distrust and suspicion of each side for the other so intense, the accusations so wild, the fear and the fury so palpable, that I keep thinking that somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, with his laptop on his knees, Osama Bin Laden is laughing his ass off.
PEOPLE, we have all got to take it down a notch.
We live as if we have the answers - Florence Shay
Mindful Mom is proud to have Florence Shay (Jeeps’ mom) guest blogging for us today. Florence has a wonderful blog about daily life selling rare books to discerning book lovers. Florence knows about what she doesn’t know and she learned it the hard way.
I didn’t know I didn’t know it until long past when it would have been useful to know it. How easy, how comfortable it would be to immediately recognize that you don’t know it. You can pause, consider, and try to Find Out. No, we live as if we have the answers. Only now in my senior years can I look back and say, “Yikes! It seemed so right, and it was so wrong.” I’m positive I know it all now. Learned from living through it.
The danger of being a heartbeat away & not knowing what you don’t know - Seth Greenland
What makes Sarah Palin so dangerous is that, despite her right wing, Christianist positions, she reminds me of Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason’s eminently likeable character from The Honeymooners. Like Ralph, Palin’s level of knowledge exists in inverse proportion to her level of confidence. This is a classic comic archetype with roots that go back thousands of years (There ya go again, lookin’ at the past!). They both say the most idiotic things, and you just want to pinch their cheeks. Sarah Palin believes a girl who is impregnated by her father should be forced to have the baby. And she’s so darn cute when she’s sayin’ it! It’s totalitarianism with a wink and a shimmy.
Don’t Know Mind and Introspection - Susan Kaiser Greenland
Don’t know mind was a favorite phrase of Korean Zen master Seung Sahn and I bet it’s the perspective that the last question of this week’s presidential debate was intended to point the candidates toward. It refers to a state of mind that is open and receptive; one of non-reactive, non-conceptual awareness. It’s not empty, but a lens through which we experience life directly and clearheadedly.
The difference between being uninformed and being misinformed
A post in AlterNet on being attached to your views and changing other people’s minds…
A long time ago, Mark Twain told us: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Entwined in Twain’s train of thought, is an implicit — and important — distinction: the difference between being uninformed and being misinformed.
Health Care - Do we have the political will to get it done?
Obama asks to be held accountable for health care in his first term of office.
What I Don’t Know and How I Will Learn It — Lori Mozilo
What I’m left with is: I know that what I don’t know, is a lot (to paraphrase a line from “Moonstruck”). I’d like to be OK with that. I guess that means, what I don’t know is how to be fine with how much I don’t know.
All that we don’t know - - Seth Greenland and Susan Kaiser Greenland
8:57pmSusan
Can you believe the last question of the debate was “What Don’t You Know and How Will You Learn It?” If that’s not a question for mindfulmom I don’t know what is.
8:58pmSeth
I thought it was a great question. I like that Obama mentioned that his wife can be counted on to tell him what he doesn’t know. He certainly locked up the married person vote with that response.
I’m Right! Right?—Diana Winston
And in Buddhist teaching, one major cause of suffering is our attachment to our opinions. We hold on, polarize, entrench, and separate ourselves from others. You might say attachment to views is the source of a lot of large scale planetary suffering, perhaps a root of the mess we’re in. So am I fostering more divisiveness by holding fast to my view? But if I don’t, will anything get accomplished?
I love a man in uniform - Seth Greenland
Seth weighs in on HuffPo about how troubled he is by the police officer with the shaved head who introduced Sarah Palin at her rally in Florida yesterday.
A heartbeat away — Susan Kaiser Greenland
I hadn’t held her to a higher standard because she was a woman, nor did she accuse me of doing so: her claim was that for the sake of the greater good I should have held her to a lower one. I should have covered for her. No doubt this executive did have to fight dirty to break through the glass ceiling and as a younger member of the sisterhood I had benefited. In her view it had been my opportunity to give back.
I admit it — Lori Mozilo
I did not need convincing that Sarah Palin is under qualified to serve as Vice President. I had already decided that her unreadiness disqualifies her for the job, particularly now, when whomever does become President will need a very strong partner to help shoulder the huge burdens that have been left to the next administration. What has changed is why I believe Governor Palin is unfit to serve.
Should our kids hate McCain? - Soren Gordhamer
The other day while having dinner with my six-year-old son, he announced, “I hate John Mccain.” Just about everyone he knows is voting for Obama, and he knows it, but to say that he hates someone that he has never met and does not know much about, struck me. I certainly have never said such a thing, nor likely his mother, who he lives with the other half of his life when he is not with me. I wondered, “How is it that kids are hating at such a young age? What is a mindful parent to do?”
Sarah and the baby—a shout out for feminism —Diana Winston
Suddenly, we have a woman—although utterly unqualified and clearly a media package with rock star charisma and medieval viewpoints—running for the second highest office in America with a baby on her shoulder.
It’s moving. It’s historic. It’s not about Sarah Palin.
I’m one proud Michigander - Susan Kaiser Greenland
Susan weighs in on the McCain/Palin pullout in Michigan on Huffington Post today: I can’t actually see Alaska or Russia from the kitchen window of my grandparents’ home in Calumet, Michigan, but I doubt if the perspective from that window is much different than the one from the Palin’s kitchen window.
Why Kelley Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis — Diana Winston
It is easy as conscious people to place the blame on ourselves. If we do that, we feel guilt, shame and disempowerment. The government wants us to feel bad. Then we don’t act. Deep understanding involves not only seeing our own part, but also recognizing the intricate web of conditions in which our part lies.
It is called structural violence if we blame ourselves when actually the system is at fault.
I Caused the Financial Crisis - Kelley McCabe
It’s OK if you hate me… I still want you to know I am responsible for the financial crisis.
Me and a few others like me… but let me explain.
By way of background, I should tell you I have an MBA in Finance from NYU and I worked on Wall St. for 20 years. I’d like to blame all of this on Dick Fuld, but the truth is the financial crisis did not start “out there”. It did not start with the executives on Wall St. The financial crisis started with me. And with you. And with some false assumptions that many (if not most) people bought into.
What’s John McCain Thinking? Seth Greenland
Seth on HuffPost: What’s Johnny Mac thinking:
God forgive me, Sally Palin makes Bush look good. Prime Minister of Pakistan sure did like her, though. Thinks she’s a hooker. Poor guy was wondering what all the cameras were doing there. Wonder what he talked to her about? Sally, everyone in Pakistan wants to know…is Clay Aiken really gay? Least that’s something she’s qualified to talk about. Am I going to Hell for choosing her? Johnny Mac’s a risk taker. Damn the torpedoes, I’ll buy some asbestos underwear!
Barbarism to Decadence - Seth Greenland & Susan Kaiser Greenland
Hey Seth
Do you think the US went from a period of barbarism to a period of decadence without a period of civilization in between?
Seth
I think Sarah Palin said that, but I don’t agree. It’s elitist.
Reason and emotion in politics - Sue Smalley
Sue Smalley talks about the role of emotion in this election in her column this week on HuffPo:
I’ve noticed since the conventions that we have slipped completely into emotional politics. There is anger, anxiety, pride, cynicism, shock, fear, and panic attached to our blogs, our words, the candidate’s ads, the candidate’s rhetoric, and seemingly everyone in America right now. At least with apathy, the mood was steady but with the population engaged in the election as never before, emotion seems to have moved to the fore and reason to the back of the line.
Sarah Palin, Henry Kissinger & Chuck E. Cheese - Seth Greenland & Susan Kaiser Greenland
8:56amSeth
When’s this election going to be over?
8:56amSusan
Not soon enough, I’m losing my hair.
8:57amSeth
Your Obama hat must be on too tight.
Out of sight not out of mind
For Mindful Moms with kids away at college, here’s an easy way to help them get an Absentee Ballot, for what could be the most important election in their lifetimes.
Amy Ephron from One for the Table has built an online tool to help college kids get an Absentee Ballot. The deadline in some states for receiving the application is October 15th, so get on it!
Now’s the time to fight. - Lori Mozilo
The phrase I think I heard most from the media during the Republican Convention was “red meat.” RED MEAT. And that’s what it looked like. A giant gathering of crazed dogs waiting for the next batch of raw steaks to be thrown their way. We’ve got to start throwing a little red meat of our own.