Strollerderby : president-elect obama

Kids to Obama: Read Books, Eat More Ice Cream

JeanneSager — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:36:00 GMT

Ah, if only life were this simple. A collection of letters written by children to President-Elect Barack Obama were highlighted in the New York Times last week.

Their number one pick? A series of junk food suggestions from a little girl who thinks the president elect needs to put on some weight.

The letter is, of course, pure kid - "You look too skinny. You should eat more food. this is what you should eat:" followed by a list of foods I'd love to eat but only let my daughter have on special occasions. You can get all upset that this child doesn't value "healthy" foods, or you can look at it purely from the eyes of a child. She thinks the president looks hungry. She likes him enough to suggest he eat better. And, hey, who wouldn't want a buddy to fatten up on ice cream, buttered popcorn and cotton candy?

Others in the list were written by older children, and with that comes a bit more worldliness. Most moving to me is the letter from a twelve-year-old who says her parents are split down political lines, with one highly conservative and the other ultra-liberal. "Thank you for bringing my parents somewhat closer together. :) You are my idol Mr. Barack," she says.

I admit it; it doesn't take much to get me all weepy about the future of our country. But that letter in particular brought on the little pricks in the corner of my eyes. Because after reading about the parents who refuse to let their kids attend school on Tuesday lest they see the wrong (in their eyes) president inaugurated, it's nice to know there are parents out there who don't agree with the president-elect and are still raising kids to be thoughtful, accepting, and productive members of society.

To read the whole list - from suggestions that he get more kids reading to requests to help their families get jobs, check out the Times piece. Bring the tissues.

Image: New York Times

Via Jezebel

Entire School Board Recalled By Angry Students

Protect Children: Prohibit Divorce

U.S. Military Making Virtual Mom and Dad

Linda Ellerbee Says Kids Should Skip School To Watch Inauguration

Obama Adds Kids Concert to Inaugural Lineup

JeanneSager — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:32:00 GMT

They've been telling us not to bring the kids along to the inauguration, but since Americans are known for being such great listeners . . . they've added a kids show to the lineup.

Considering Sasha and Malia Obama's iPod playlists are probably a little (OK, a lot) different from Barack and Michelle's, is anyone really surprised by this one?

As of yet, there are no acts announced for what the president-elect dubbed a free "concert for America's children" to be held the night before his big show, on Jan. 19 at the Verizon Center. But Presidential Inaugural Committee spokesman Josh Earnest told the Washington Post it would include "whatever the kids are listening to today."

The event will require tickets - free of course - like most of the events of the day. So is this Washington's nod to the fact that parents want to show up for the event? Or is this just happening because we have a president with young children?

Hey Obama, Give This Kid an Interview!

Schools Closing for Inauguration Day

Bringing the Kids to the Inauguration - Think Again

Hey Obama, Give This Kid an Interview!

JeanneSager — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Damon Weaver's stuck his mic in the faces of the likes of Vice President-Elect Joe Biden, future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and possible New York Senate-seat-holder Caroline Kennedy. So what makes him any different from your standard political pundit? He's just ten years old.

And now the Florida fifth grader is gunning for the biggest interview of his TV news career: he wants to land President-Elect Barack Obama.

Weaver is an anchorman for KEC-TV news, the show produced by fifth and sixth graders at Canal Point Elementary School in Pahokee, Florida. His four-minute bid for the Obama interview has gotten more than forty thousand hits on YouTube, and he's got a second video with Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade and forward Shawn Marion putting in a few good words for the little man.

Marion says he'll play the president-elect one-on-one if he'll interview Weaver - although he can't promise he'll let him win. And Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Anquan Boldin? He's a graduate of Weaver's elementary school, and he's chipped in some cash to help get the pre-teen to the inauguration. The school threw a carnival to help make it happen too; and the boy will spend an entire week in D.C. in January. That's when he hopes Obama will grant a few moments of his time for an aspiring reporter.

"I can interview you any time, any day of that week - just have your people call my people," Weaver says with a wide grin at the end of his YouTube message."If you want to be my homeboy just like Joe Biden, all you have to do is just let me interview you."

Well-spoken (especially for a ten-year-old), Weaver is polite, sweet and hopeful. He's got just the right mix of "I can do it" and "oh please, let me do it" that makes you want to root for him. And he's done his homework - his video has clips not just of the NBA and NFL stars but of the agricultural importance of his hometown and the classrooms where he spends his days. He might be "just a kid," but he's obviously got something to say about the country's future - and his own.

So what do you think? Should Obama give this kid an interview and help make a real reporter out of him?

Juno Goes to Washington? Congress' First Unwed Mom

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

Nintendo Scrabble Game Drops the F-Bomb

Mix Rap With Kid Shows and Whaddya Get?

Babble Talk: The Easter Bunny Can House Santa

Inauguration Day's a School Day: How Will Your Family Celebrate?

JeanneSager — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:28:00 GMT

What will you be doing on January 20, 2009? With almost a quarter million tickets being handed out for President-Elect Barack Obama's swearing in as the forty-fourth commander in chief and a crowd of four million expected, chances are Sasha and Malia won't be the only kids on the national mall. As for the rest of us? The 20th is a school day this year; not to mention a work day.

In fact the noon-time ceremony will be hard for all by stay-at-home parents with non-school-aged (or homeschooled) kids to watch. I'm crossing my fingers for a snow day, so I won't have to make a mad drive across town from nursery school pick-up to settle in in front of the TV. I expect my three-year-old will only have the patience for a few minutes of President Barack Obama before she's ready for me to flip to Noggin or play the ladybug game, but parents with older kids have an incredible opportunity to share history with their kids on a frosty Tuesday that's fast approaching.

Every inauguration's a teaching moment, but this is a day more akin to Kennedy's swearing in than Bush 2's second time at the podium (which I skipped, by the way - although I did watch the first). It will be the one and only time we will watch the first black president of the United States sworn in. When our kids are old farts like us, will they be able to talk about the day they watched it?

Is it worth it to you to make the drive to D.C.? Will you keep them home from school just to watch it at home? Or will the day be business as usual?

Image: Official Inauguration Site of the U.S. Senate

A Taste of Sasha and Malia's White House Rules: But Can They Paint it Pink?

Woman in Labor Holds Off Delivery Until After Voting for Obama

Move Over Jackie, Make Way for the Second Mrs. O (Obama, That Is)

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines

How do we love Michelle Obama? Let us count the ways!

Malia & Sasha Obama Do D.C. Schools and The White House

An Obama Your Kids Can't Resist: Make the President-Elect in Cupcakes

JeanneSager — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:59:00 GMT

If your kids are anything like mine, they fall prey to bribery pretty easily. Bribery in the form of frosted goodness anyway. So if your little one isn't already spouting "President Barack Obama" when you show off pictures of the new commander in chief, how about a convincing them with cupcakes?

Upstate New York cake artist Zilly Rosen put forty hours and plenty of fondant into the recreation of Obama in more than one thousand two hundred cupcakes. Using a photoshopped picture of the president-elect, Rosen mapped out a grid for placing cupcakes iced in nine different shades of fondant. She told Cupcakes Take the Cake the original plan was a bake sale, but she Obama-cakes qualified for campaigning within one hundred feet of a polling place, so Rosen swung by the headquarters of the Obama campaign in Buffalo, NY and dropped her five-foot by six-foot sweet homage to a president-elect off for the hard working volunteers to enjoy.

Think you'll only get a taste via pictures? Think again: a grid is easy enough to make, thanks to this Photoshop tutorial, and this link to the Shepard Fairey Obama Vote poster that Rosen used.

Images: Zillycakes (via Neatorama)

Woman in Labor Holds Off Delivery Until After Voting for Obama

Move Over Jackie, Make Way for the Second Mrs. O (Obama, That Is)

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines

Crafty: Make a Green Owl With "Oh My GAWD" Janice from Friends

Morning News: The Second Thing Michelle Said After Obama's Historic Win

Madeline Holler — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Lots of good stuff from Barack Obama during his 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft last night. But let's start with the first-lady elect's reaction when the couple realized he had won the election.

She turned to him and said: "You are the 44th president of the United States of America. Wow. What a country we live in." Then, according to her husband who may or may not have been exaggerating: "Yeah. And then [Michelle] said, 'Are you going take the girls to school in the morning?'"

Awwww.

He said his mother-in-law squeezed his hand while they watched the election night returns -- a gesture that was slightly out of character for her. And also, he said sleeping in his own bed in Chicago and spending time with the kids has been a treat, after so much time away from Chicago during the campaign.

On more serious matters in the interview [go to HuffPo for gobs of clips], Barack Obama also said he would, by executive order, close Guantanamo and ban torture.

Perhaps even harder than it has been for Barack Obama to give up smoking will be giving up his Blackberry, to which he has admitted he is addicted. However, disclosure and public records laws, as well as for security reasons, he may be forced to give it up. Even more unimagineable is that he will also have to give up email. No email? No Blackberry? What else is there?

Former rival John McCain and Obama will meet today in Chicago to talk about ways they can work together. That should be fun.

Finally, a Daily Palin tidbit: maybe the fact that Palin's two eldest kids and her soon-to-be son-in-law are high school dropouts had little or nothing to do with her. A new report shows that Alaska's dropout rate is double the U.S. average. Nearly 40 percent of this year's ninth-graders in the state won't have high school diplomas in 10 years. And the state ranks 50th -- dead last! -- in the number of this year's ninth-graders who will have a bachelor's degree in 10 years. So, come on. Lay off the Governor!

Video: CBS News [via HuffPo]

25 Things You Don't Know About Barack Obama

Madeline Holler — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:31:00 GMT

Who is this president-elect, Barack Obama? "Oh, now you ask," bleat the GOP strategists who couldn't get that whole "we don't reeeeeally know him" strategy to work.

It's never too late to ask. Here are 50 things you might not know about him yet. Sure, they're pretty trivial, but fun to know anyway. Like, did you know he could bench press 200 lbs.? Not bad for a skinny dude, not bad.

Also, he collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

Some other favorites:

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream

• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee. (I'll bet they're regretting that decision now!)

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21

• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire

• His speciality as a cook is chilli

Go here for 25 more facts about the president-elect you might like to know.

Morning News: Students Kicked Out for Saying Obama's Name

Madeline Holler — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Having your candidate lose an election can make you want to do crazy things. Believe us! We've been there!

But banning the utterance of the president-elect's name strikes us a terribly old-fashioned/old-facist. Not to mention, against the law.

Yet the ACLU continues to receive complaints from parents and students of Pearl Schools in Mississippi.

The Pearl Middle School superintendent confirmed that two students were kicked off the bus for saying Obama's name. A basketball coach warned players that they'd be suspended if they did any such thing. The bus driver and the coach were reprimanded for their actions. We hope the students can think to come together and chant "Obama, Obama!" for the next few days. Because, yes, they can.

Barack Obama will continue the tradition of most presidents in exercising regularly. His sport, as we know, is basketball. Plus the guy can and does bench 200 lbs.(Go here for more Obama trivia). Only a few American leaders have been totally lethargic fatties: William Howard Taft, Grover Cleveland and Franklin Pierce. (Incidentally, these three weren't such fab dads either. Connection? Maybe.) And read here what Men's Fitness magazine says about who is fitter: George W. Bush or Obama.

Which of those two men is more fit to serve as president? Silly question. The big news is, Obama's considering reversing a ton of Bush's executive orders, like the ones to drill oil all over the damn place and also the limits on stem cell research.

(The two are meeting today, along with their spouses, to start the handoff. Awkward!)

Speaking of reversals, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks Proposition 8, the constitutional gay marriage ban that voters passed by the narrowest of margins (and with millions of dollars from the Mormon church for false campaigns), won't last long. He thinks the state Supreme Court will overturn it. And also that the ban won't affect the status thousands and thousands of same-sex marriages now on the books.

PS: The wildly inappropriate governor is apparently getting some again, now that Barack Obama won the election. He tells CNN his wife, Democrat and Kennedy Maria Shriver, has let him back in the bedroom.

Another governor wasn't so lucky after Obama's win. Here are seven things an Alaska political analyst says Sarah Palin needs to deal with to get back in the good graces of state lawmakers and voters. Remember, she used to be really popular there.

A researcher in Baltimore has noticed pregnant women are a long-neglected group in studies on the effects of certain drugs and would like that to change.

Volunteers are still desperately searching for survivors of a collapsed school in Haiti. Most of the missing are between 10 and 20 years old.

25 Things You Don't Know About Obama

Mississippi Students, Postal Worker, Punished For Wearing Obama Shirts

UPDATE AGAIN: Palin Prepper Defends The Gov

Obama Meets the Press. We Don't Cringe.

Photo: blog.mlive.com

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines

JeanneSager — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:52:00 GMT

Coming from a split political family myself, some of the images captured in blogger ZeFrank's From 52 to 48 With Love project tugged at the part of me that always wishes families would just GET ALONG! I've always wondered if election season wasn't shoved up against Thanksgiving so we'd all be forced to deal with one another and make nice after a long period of sniping.

The project was devised by ZeFrank as a means for Obama supporters to reach out to McCain supporters. He called for pictures with simple messages to be e-mailed his way that could break down the barriers. "Perhaps it is naive. the differences are real, i know. but we have to repair the damage done from this election cycle somehow...," he said.

The result is in stark contrast to the back-biting and hatred of campaign season. Pictures came in from both sides, like the couple making out, one whose cheek reads "I voted red," the other whose cheek says "I voted blue." and from outside the country ("I couldn't vote but I believe in showing the love" with a Brazilian sign).

But it was the family pictures that hit me: the man holding a sign that says "I voted for Obama. My dad voted for McCain. I love my Dad. Things are really bad. We can only do this together." or the woman holding a letter (ostensibly to her husband?) "Dear 48, Please don't break up with me. I know we can make this work. I'm ready to compromise because I love you and I love us. I'm not doing this just for the kids alone. I'm doing it because I want you to be happy. Love, 52."

There are plenty more at ZeFrank's site, and he's waiting for yours. Want to make someone in your family happy? Someone one either side? Make your own - then send it to them, along with this site.

Images/Source: ZeFrank (via Urlesque)

How to Keep Your Kid From Pissing off The McCain Supporters

Woman in Labor Holds Off Delivery Until After Voting for Obama

Obama Meets the Press. We Don't Cringe.

Bringing Some Color to Capitol Hill

Strollerderby : president-elect obama

Kids to Obama: Read Books, Eat More Ice Cream

Parents Criticize Schools for Celebrating Inauguration

Entire School Board Recalled By Angry Students

Protect Children: Prohibit Divorce

U.S. Military Making Virtual Mom and Dad

Linda Ellerbee Says Kids Should Skip School To Watch Inauguration

Obama Adds Kids Concert to Inaugural Lineup

Review: Yo Gabba Gabba! Cuts an Album

Hey Obama, Give This Kid an Interview!

Schools Closing for Inauguration Day

Bringing the Kids to the Inauguration - Think Again

Hey Obama, Give This Kid an Interview!

Schools Closing for Inauguration Day

Juno Goes to Washington? Congress' First Unwed Mom

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

Nintendo Scrabble Game Drops the F-Bomb

Mix Rap With Kid Shows and Whaddya Get?

Babble Talk: The Easter Bunny Can House Santa

Inauguration Day's a School Day: How Will Your Family Celebrate?

An Obama Your Kids Can't Resist: Make the President-Elect in Cupcakes

A Taste of Sasha and Malia's White House Rules: But Can They Paint it Pink?

Woman in Labor Holds Off Delivery Until After Voting for Obama

Move Over Jackie, Make Way for the Second Mrs. O (Obama, That Is)

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines

Malia & Sasha Obama Do D.C. Schools and The White House

An Obama Your Kids Can't Resist: Make the President-Elect in Cupcakes

A Taste of Sasha and Malia's White House Rules: But Can They Paint it Pink?

Woman in Labor Holds Off Delivery Until After Voting for Obama

Move Over Jackie, Make Way for the Second Mrs. O (Obama, That Is)

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines

Crafty: Make a Green Owl With "Oh My GAWD" Janice from Friends

Morning News: The Second Thing Michelle Said After Obama's Historic Win

25 Things You Don't Know About Barack Obama

Morning News: Students Kicked Out for Saying Obama's Name

From 52 to 48 With Love: When Families are Split Down Political Lines