All Entries in the "Campaign 2008" Category
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Finite and Infinite Games
Sue Smalley applies James Carse’s uber-intellectual and way cool game theory to this election on Huffington Post.
“A finite player is one who plays the game to win or lose and sees it as having a beginning and an end; an infinite player is one who tries to keep the game going with the objective of engaging as many players in it as possible.”
Guess who’s the infinite player?
What’s Obama thinking? Seth Greenland
Imagine you’re in a car accident. You’re pulled from the twisted wreckage with a massive head injury. The hospital has two surgeons, a black man and a white woman. The man went to the best medical school in the country, is cool, calm and rocks his scalpel like an artist. But the other one, the woman, she looks like the lady you ran next to in the 10k last weekend. Oh, and she’s a veterinarian who usually operates on reindeer. Who’s it going to be?
Sarah Palin Book Club
Seth weighs in on the emergence of Sarah Palin as a character in the LA Times Book Blog.
Johnny Mac’s preparing for his speech tonight - what’s he thinking? Seth Greenland
Wonder if they’ll let me hold that baby while I give my speech tonight.
More of what Johnny Mac is thinking - Seth Greenland
Sarah, Sarah, I love it when you shoot a bear-ah… third installment of what Johnny Mac is thinking . . . . .
More political satire by Seth Greenland
Seth dishes up some more political satire on Huffington Post today with Part II of What John McCain is Thinking?
PS - Mindful daughter’s best girlfriend just came home from the DNC where she represented CA as a junior statesment and a blogger. She’s more insightful than most TV pundits and have the all-time best name for a political blog this election I Want Michelles’ Clothes. Look out BlogHer she’s coming up!
What John McCain Is Thinking? — Seth Greenland
Seth mindfully dishes out some political satire on Huffington Post today.
Smart men, foolish choices: Testosterone Rules? - Amy Spies
I have become increasingly aware of how little I understand men — how they operate, what drives them. ‘You have no idea how much men are led by their…’ my very significant other said to me at the dinner table (not for the first time). But this time, it was about John Edwards’ choices: while [...]
We’re shocked, SHOCKED — Susan Kaiser Greenland & Seth Greenland
Edwards knew what the stakes were and yet he took an incredible risk. It’s as if he has become Evel Knievel and had to jump over the 100 monster trucks just for the thrill of it.