bodhi tree swaying

I read Zits every morning. Today’s was particularly funny, I thought.

• Liked this quote: "You cannot live an authentic life without mastering the art of disappointing people."  Cheryl Richardson
• And this one: "Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence." Eckhart Tolle
• But this is another fake Buddha quote doing the rounds on Twitter, quotations sites, etc: ” ‘If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change’ – Buddha.” The entire tone of that statement is so far from anything I’ve read in any form of Buddhist scripture that I’m astonished anyone familiar with Buddhism would think for a moment this is genuine. And yet I see Buddhists passing this quote on as if it were.
• It’s good to know I live in the land of

…

Judith Warner:

Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking Election Day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.

And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.

Tears to Remember – Judith Warner Blog – NYTimes.com

Scientific American reports:

In Colorado voters shot down Amendment 48, the “Personhood Initiative,” by a three-to-one margin. The measure would have defined human life as starting “from the moment of fertilization”—which in essence would have made abortion a crime and put the brakes on embryonic stem cell research there.

I’m not pro-abortion by any stretch of the imagination, and neither is my wife. We (or more strictly she) would never have an abortion, and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to have an abortion. I do support abortion (albeit with some reluctance) when the life or health of the mother is seriously in danger. I can understand when someone chooses to have an abortion because of some serious developmental abnormality of the fetus. I’m pro-contraception. I’m pro sex-education (countries with better sex ed have lower teen pregnancy rates).

But I consider the idea of …

I love Gail Collin’s sense of humor. She manages to be hilarious while being insightful, which makes her a very attractive woman in my eyes. Here she is on Elizabeth Dole’s scurrilous campaign ad:

North Carolina tossed Elizabeth Dole out of office despite her ad campaign aimed at convincing the state that her opponent, Kay Hagan, was an atheist. This was accomplished, you may remember, through the creative strategy of showing Hagan’s picture along with another woman’s voice saying: “There is no God!” If Dole had won, by the next election we would have been bombarded with ads that appeared to show candidates saying “I support adultery!” or “Let’s kill the puppies!” Now that won’t happen. Thank you, North Carolina.

More hilarity can be found here.

And in case you missed it, here’s the ad. Watch it now before Dole uses the DMCA to have it pulled from YouTube.

…

A brief mention of Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham’s, passing was posted on Lucianne.com a right-wing “news forum”. The comments became so toxic that the site owner had to remove them.

Conservatives rejoiced. Conservatives implied that her death had been “conveniently timed” to help Obama win the election. That she’d been killed to boost him in the polls. A MsMontana commented, “R.I.P. old woman…you deserve it.”

I have to say I fear for America. Where is all this poison going to go now that Obama’s been elected? Is it just going to dissipate as people find that Obama is a likable, honorable, and talented president? Or are these people so out of touch that they’ll continue to adopt a poisoned view of everything about him?

Because they lost the election, and because of the nature of hatred, some of the poison will be …

Monty provides another window today on the phenomenon known as “confirmation bias” in politics. Monty and Moondog both receive the same information and yet draw the opposite conclusions from it.

I just got this email from my fellow Scot, David Byrne. Yes, he of Talking Heads fame.

He speaks, in effect, for me:

Pardon the bulk mailing. I Can’t Vote. I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election. FYI – I can get drafted (luckily, Daniel Berrigan burned my draft board’s records) and I pay taxes, yet I cannot vote for President. On Election Day, I see my neighbors heading to the nearby elementary school to cast their ballots. The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

But most of you can vote. What can I say? The Republicans have made us less safe than before 9/11, bankrupted this economy, started an illegal war they can’t

…

There was a lot of coverage a few weeks back about research showing that people with a tendency to experience anxiety are more likely to favor right-wing political views. To put it bluntly, Republicans scare easily.

That’s amply demonstrated in a post that the excellent Mahablog links to, in which Jonah Goldberg purports to write from 2012, reporting on Obama’s failed presidency. It’s a bizarre, even hysterical, piece of writing in which, apparently, Obama’s administration will be damaged by Biden making bizarre statements:

…he told the Russian foreign minister he’d “rather punch a nun in the throat” than cooperate on an Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration knew they had a problem on their hands.

The strange comments and behavior kept coming: at an international summit on child poverty, he accused the Dalai Lama of issuing a “brain fart,” he phoned Supreme Court

…

I just want to praise Daniel Zubairi and other brave Republicans who stood up to a pair of racists at a McCain rally. It’s good to see people taking a stand against this kind of ignorance and hatred.

(Afterthought: It’s ironic that the McCain campaign wouldn’t let Zubairi be interviewed on TV after this incident. Zubairi is an asset to his party, but I guess the McCain team would rather not address racism head on and may be embarrassed at the idea of having a Muslim speaking on their behalf).

In Something About Sarah, Kathleen Parker has some interesting things to say about men’s (and McCain’s) propensity to become distracted by pretty ladies:

…there can be no denying that McCain’s selection of [Palin] over others far more qualified — and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter — suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by . . . what?

Science provides clues.

At least her column seemed interesting to me, but maybe that’s just because she’s kinda hot.

Read the whole article

Terence at Republic of T posted this earlier today with the comment “Pitiful: that’s the only word I can think of to describe this.” Vile was the word that came to my mind.

The “outraged” individual is Republican strategist Brad Blakeman, commenting on why it’s more outrageous for Obama to take a campaign plane to go visit his possibly dying grandmother than for the McCain campaing to spend $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin (that’s in, what, two months? Which is about $2,500 a day?).

As Terence points out, the idea of a presidential candidate, in this day and age, taking a commercial flight is just ludicrous. Not to mention the callous insensitivity of criticizing a man visiting his seriously ill grandmother. Every word that comes from these people’s mouths just digs them into a deeper hole with …

I was suspicious yesterday about the story that a McCain campaigner had allegedly been attacked and the letter “B” carved on her face because her mugger was infuriated at seeing a McCain/Palin sticker on her car. Of course there are nuts out there and anything could happen, but in the picture of the woman’s face it was peculiar that the supposed vicious attacker had been careful not to cause any actual bleeding. It would be peculiar if, carving a letter into a struggling person’s face with a knife, the injuries amounted to no more than a superficial scratch with no bleeding whatsoever.

Here’s the picture.

And here’s what appears to be the truth:

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ? Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper

…