An Example for George Bush and Dick Cheney to Follow

As I have opined awhile ago, Messrs. Bush and Cheney should have the courage of their convictions to take a lesson from the suicide of Mr. Roh. I'll make it known that the worst is yet to come for this economy as businesses of all kinds shed jobs. As a result, extraordinarily qualified people with GREAT credit ratings are getting laid off. While some will be fortunate enough to land jobs, many will not, and we are going to see a spike, as is noted, in foreclosures and bankruptcies of people who hitherto kept their finances in perfect harmony with the mantra "live within your means" and are going to watch what they have done by following all the rules go to the shitter. I don't mean to sound defeatist, but we have yet to see the worst from what Messrs Bush and Cheney and company did to this economy, not to mention our moral standing in the world through the "pay Halliburton on the public teat" war in Iraq and the atrocities that they sought and received legality for from attorneys who would legalize the guillotine if that was what King George and Queen Dick (or do I have that backward --somebody has to be the bitch, right?) Maybe we will read a headline like this for our own responsible parties for the calamity that, if I am reading the tea leaves correctly, is yet to come.

Randy Shiner

SKoreans mourn death, pay respects to ex-president

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AP – Women cry in front of a picture of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun during a funeral service …

By YOUNG-JOON AHN, Associated Press Writer – 22 mins ago

BONGHA, South Korea – Bowing deeply and laying white chrysanthemums before his portrait, tens of thousands of mourners journeyed Sunday to the southern village where former President Roh Moo-hyun killed himself by jumping off a rocky cliff overlooking his home.

But several top officials, including the prime minister, were turned away from the mourning rites for the liberal ex-leader, who had a fractious relationship with conservative opponents his supporters accuse of driving Roh to his death. They pelted a bus carrying conservative politicians with eggs and doused lawmakers with water.

The 62-year-old Roh, who relied on pluck and hard work to rise from his impoverished youth in rural Gimhae to become president in 2003, died Saturday after jumping from a promontory known as Owl's Rock that overlooks his home. He left behind a note describing his suffering over corruption allegations and asking to be cremated.

The government and Roh's family agreed to hold a public "people's funeral" after a seven-day mourning period, most likely on Friday, former Roh aide Han Hyung-min said.

Roh's suicide, just 15 months after he left office, came as he and his family faced intense questioning about $6 million given to the Rohs during his presidency by a Seoul businessman implicated in a number of bribery scandals.

The allegations weighed heavily on a man who prided himself on his "clean" record in a country struggling to shake a tradition of corruption. Prosecutors had been grilling Roh, his wife and their two children since last month.

"What's left for me for the rest of my life is just to be a burden to others," Roh wrote in a note on his computer minutes before leaving for the final hike to Owl's Rock with a security guard. "Don't be too sad. Aren't life and death both part of nature? Don't feel sorry. Don't blame anybody. It's destiny."

Roh's suicide stunned the nation of 49 million, which was divided during his presidency between those critical of his outspoken, antiestablishment ways and others who rallied around his efforts to promote democracy, fight corruption and facilitate rapprochement with North Korea.

Braving a downpour, nearly 80,000 trekked Sunday to Bongha, the village 280 miles (450 kilometers) south ofSeoul where Roh had lived since leaving office, to pay their respects at mourning tents erected at the community center, police said. Hundreds of Buddhist monks in gray robes and wide-brimmed hats held a solemn prayer service.

But not all visitors were welcomed. Roh supporters accuse South Korea's conservative right, led by President Lee Myung-bak and the Grand National Party, of pushing the corruption probe believed to have driven Roh to despair.

Prime Minister Han Seung-soo was turned away. Roh backers hurled eggs at a bus carrying Lee Hoi-chang, the conservative who lost the presidential election to Roh in 2002.

Supporters also reviled National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyong-o, dousing him with water. His aides tried to protect him from the angry onslaught with their umbrellas. Former Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye, daughter of former President Park Chung-hee, also tried to pay her respects but wasn't able to reach the mourning site.

The mood Sunday in Seoul was somber. A line at Chogye Temple snaked around the lawn and into the street as Seoulites, many dressed in black and bearing flowers, waited to pay their respects. Many sobbed as they knelt before his smiling portrait.

At a mourning site outside Seoul's 16th-century Deoksu Palace, more than 16,000 waited in long lines to place white flowers, cigarettes — Roh had recently started smoking — and melons before portraits of the ex-leader.

"I'm really sad. I can feel how much pressure he had been suffering," said Moon Hye-kyung, a 47-year-old businesswoman, wiping away tears with a handkerchief. "I think he could have endured the pressure if it was leveled against only him, not his family members and aides."

She, like many others, blamed conservatives for Roh's suicide.

"The current government pushed this man into death. No doubt about that," said Moon.

But Hong Young-sik, 71, said the government wasn't to blame.

"Why are you guys gathering here? Did he do anything to be praised?" Hong, a former government official, shouted at the crowd. "He only killed himself because he was shamed out of the fact that his and his family's wrongdoing was revealed."

Scuffles broke out between riot police and Roh supporters collecting signatures for a petition calling for Lee's impeachment.

Along Seoul streets, mourners affixed yellow ribbons wishing Roh peace.

"We love you. We've been happy with you," some of the messages said. "Please go to heaven and live freely."

___

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

24 September 2008
Bush's Speech: Honor US Mr. President
Dear Mr. Bush:

I did not need to sit through a 14 minute speech for me to understand the lecture in macroeconomics that you gave just now to understand that this country, if you described it accurately, is fucked. And you and your so-called "administration" fucked it up. Now you are appointing Commissars who want unlimited power with NO review by ANYONE? This is what you support? Perhaps it was a sick joke by Commissar Paulson to come up with a three page "plan" whose contents contained little in the way of specifics, with the exception of section eight of the document, which of course is that very large paragraph in which Mr. Paulson presumably with your knowledge and consent, included in this document. Sir, I am hoping that that was a joke by your inner ruling circle, because you wanted to pass it off to Congress and let the next guy worry about it. Like YOU give a shit? You're all set. I'm sitting here uncertain about everything, including my health, and you get to retire back to Texas and Connecticut for a life of ease. Or maybe not. Perhaps the stench of your Presidence will haunt you forever. It would me, and I will never forget having to write the words I am writing here.

My knowledge of the Japanese culture stems in large measure as a consequence of a friend that I had in high school, Ronald Nakai, who was Nisei - second generation Japanese and with whom I stayed in touch until about 14 years ago for no particular reason. Whenever I would go to his house, I was treated with dignity, respect and honor, even though I was only a 12 0r 16 year old punk kid. Theirs, like mine, is a system of reverence for the past. Ron and I were famous fishing buddies, having the good fortune to be living in Chicago in the 1970s atttending Sullivan High School and when not in school or weekends, when the weather was nice, of course, fishing. But I especially remember a time when we went to his house, and they shared an ancient Japanese ritual that celebrated the rice harvest, as I recall. We each had a big mallet, which we used to strike a big, big ball of rice-dough, that we would smash into a pancake that would appear on the log-like thing that we were hitting. They took it very seriously and I was more than happy to participate. I remember the feeling of "hey, this is cool" when I was doing it, even though I only now realize the grander significance of the act. They were giving thanks to God for rice. Reverentially. Because they and I realize that the path to true holiness is through honor of the past and honor for the future as well. Wiithout honor, one cannot be truly holy.

The other part of Japanese culture that I only now see the grander significance of is the concept of hari-kiri, which is the most famous form of seppuku. Here is the Wikipedia definition of Seppuku:

Seppuku (切腹? "stomach-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku has been used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have committed serious offenses, and for reasons that shamed them. Seppuku is performed by plunging a sword into the abdomen and moving the sword left to right in a slicing motion. The practice of committing seppuku at the death of one's master, known as oibara (追腹 or 追い腹, the kun'yomi or Japanese reading) or tsuifuku (追腹, the on'yomi or Chinese reading), follows a similar ritual.

I would contend that if you are half the soldier you crowed about in 2000 and again in 2004, you would want, I would hope, to be able to call yourself a samurai and proceed forthwith to commit seppuku. Between all the calamities that you have caused this country in the name of politics and money, you should be so ashamed of yourself that I at least hope you are man enough to have considered that this would be a perfectly legitemate way out of this life.

Then again, sir, I am sure that you have rationalized the whole thing as somehow being perhaps beyond even your office's power to affect. I am sorry, but your presidency has been marked by a string of failures so long that it can only mean one thing: the management of it is and has been utterly and completely disfunctional at its core. And in the job of this country's highest office, you simply failed to heed too many warnings, time and time again. About so many things. And you blindly insisted that things were OK, even though those of us in the hinterlands of the West Coast could already feel, via "for sale" signs in too many front lawns reading "bank foreclosure, that things were going to get this bad. There were those of us who knew things were bad, but I ascribed those more to personal failings of my own, some within my control, but many not. But this has been coming on for some time and still you persisted in denying the severity of the program that you laid out before the country tonight as necessary.

More like, I had to laugh in your face, sir. Because you were giving me a rationale for a socialist solution to capitalism's inherent woes. Sir, I hope you can laugh with me, (since seppuku is really out of the question in reality, I know) because if this isn't the most absurd situation you have ever seen, I don't know what is. But I can tell you this with some sincerity: Nelson Rockefeller is spinning in his grave and so are all the rest of the dead (and those alive) Wall Street barons rolling over in their graves and homes, because you have gone against everything they stood for in order to maintain the status quo. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this article in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_socialism_in_Great_Britain#Socialism_and_nationalism

The History of Socialism in Great Britain is essential reading for anyone wanting to know what to expect next, I predict, to the present economy. It cannot help but take this route, because, as some politican or other said this week, borrowing from "we've gone down the rabbit hole", borrowing of course from Alice in Wonderland And if there is one law that everyone, furtive socialists and fervent capitalists alike have to obey, regardless, is that of gravity. And once we are down the rabbit hole, we can only go, accordingly, down.

Well done. Messrs. Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and Washington salute you, of course, I am sure. What a horrible day in history, not necessarily because socialism is all that bad, I hope, but it puts a question mark after the American Dream. The American dream is to "make it to the top" or at least not legally let anyone stand in your way but, essentially, you. This shatters that conception, because the government that you were President of that supported the American Dream as it previously existed, had a failure of leadership. I'm sorry the dreams of the American Forefathers had to end so ignominiously. They would have died in vain.

Whooooosssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh.................



Randy Shiner
Posted by Randy Shiner at 6:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2008 race, Birth of Socialism, Breaking Media News, Bush's speech on economy September 24, Japanese culture, Ronald Nakai, seppuku, seppuku for George Bush, US Economy

Farewell, Douchebags

We say good-bye to people we'd rather not hear from again after the close of the elections:

The Day After

The Day After

Even though the stock market took another dump today, down 490 points, it didn't seem to faze me as much as other dumps that it has taken over the course of the last couple of months. Because, and forgive me if this is more liberal delusion, I feel like there is, might be, could be, a decent future for this country if President Obama can provide the kind of leadership that I know that he and his team are capable of.

As I've written in this space before, he is going to have a long time to be able to prove his mettle. This country is at present so screwed up financially and foreign policy-wise that Solomon himself would have trouble arriving at a solution that 300,000,000 people can live with and prosper under. Which is of course not to say it's impossible. Clearly it's not impossible. If it can be wrecked, it can be reconstructed, better than before. But not, as Einstein says, with the same level of awareness that created the problems themselves. There has to be, and is, a higher level of awareness that is going to come out of the Obama White House. It is what I am hoping from an Obama administration.

Yesterday evening, I commented to my son Mitchell that this election really wasn't about people like me, but was really about people like him - the teenagers and 20-somethings that are going to have to dig deep into their souls and come up with thoughtful, workable solutions for the problems that this country will face on an ongoing basis. And judging from the participation in the election of young people, they are chomping at the bit to make a difference, something that, frankly, my generation, which came of age in the 80s and 90s, did not have the chance to do, as we were all about making money and impressing the neighbors with our new cars and mansions, not with living within our means and spending what we could afford, as opposed to what we thought we'd make at some point in the future. Surely there is something to the notion that if the government is acting irresponsibly by spending more than it was taking in -- deficit spending - then it must, perforce be an acceptable way to live. Of course, that is completely a false notion but I think that there must be something to it anyway, because now, in the middle of the shitstorm that "voodoo economics" has wrought, we know what the answers are going to have to be: pay as you go, acting in a fiscally responsible way, saving money, not spending every dime you make and above all making sure that we all act responsibly otherwise. We are all colllectively paying right now for our collective irresponsibility, but let there be no doubt that we had some help in the development of our attitudes about "the way things are". It's not all able to be foisted off on external factors; we are all blessed and cursed with free will. But leadership, or a lack of it, on a national level, in my view, led us all down the road to ruin that we find ourselves too far down along right about now. And is the reason why, thank God, we got our collective acts together at the voting booth yesterday (with the notable exception of the hateful Proposition 8 here in California that passed, banning gay marriage) with the election of Barack Obama.

Positive change seems like a real possibility now that the news is not dominated by Sarah Palin, whose name I hope never to have to write again, or John McCain, who, I have to think at 72 years old, is thanking his lucky stars that he lost. Fixing this country is a young man's game. A young man with ideas and energy to make sure that we all do the right thing by each other and by our country.

Randy Shiner

Harvard Law Prof, Reagan SG, Gives Obama His Vote

Harvard Law Prof, Reagan SG, Gives Obama His Vote
LB Readers, please let us know if you hear tale of any famously liberal law profs throwing their weight behind the McCain/Palin ticket. For now, all we've come across is the flip-side: notable conservatives supporting Obama/Biden.

The latest: Harvard's Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general under President Reagan and as recently as January was working on behalf of McCain, has publicly endorsed the Democratic ticket. Click here for the New Republic story written by Fried colleague Cass Sunstein.

According to TNR, in a letter to the McCain/Palin campaign, Fried asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

In a note to TNR, Fried, who authored the book "Order and Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution," later explained himself, along the way rendering a not-so-hearty endorsement of Obama.:

I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation -- although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.

The Fried vote follows a similar endorsement by Pepperdine law prof Douglas Kmiec, made back in March. Back in March, Kmiec told the Law Blog:

President Reagan used to tell all of us in his administration, and the public generally, that his proudest achievement was making the country feel better about itself. I believe Obama is committed to giving us reason to feel better about ourselves. Ive seen it in the classroom. Ive been teaching for 40 years, and have not seen a more electric and engaged atmosphere with regard to the democratic process.



See and Post Comments: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/10/24/harvard-law-prof-reagan-sg-gives-obama-his-vote?mod=djemWLB&reflink=djemWLB&reflink=djemWLB

The Intersection of Politics and Retail Commerce

Yes, if only I could actually afford to piss away $29 for a t-shirt to remember this time in life? I could argue both ways.

Randy Shiner

Obama campaign refusing to debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials

View from a booth: Kol HaKavod. The "Republican Jewish Coalition" or whatever these stooges are calling themselves are running the most despicable fear-mongering advertisements all over the Jewish world, calling into question not Mr. Obama's policies toward Israel (a legitemate discussion) but his motivations as an American. These are not serious people with a serious agenda, but rather the unwitting puppets of those who would rather see Israel continue along the same ruinous path as under the Bush regime. We see what the result of those policies are.

Randy Shiner

2008 ELECTIONS
Obama campaign refusing to debate
Republican Jewish Coalition officials

JTA Staff

Republican Jewish Coalition ads seen as misleading is one reason cited for the Obama campaign to shun the organization.

By Eric Fingergut

Published: 10/19/2008

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Barack Obama's campaign has decided that the best way to respond to the Republican Jewish Coalition's controversial advertisements is to shun the organization.

Representatives and surrogates for the Democratic nominee are refusing to participate in debates and forums with representatives

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of the RJC, but will continue to take part in such activities with representatives of the McCain campaign.

The decision comes as Jewish Democrats have become increasingly upset by advertisements attacking Obama that the RJC has run in Jewish newspapers across the country. The ads have called Obama's views on Israel "dangerous" and "reckless," and his advisers "pro-Palestinian," "anti-Israel" and "hostile to Jews."

An Obama Jewish outreach official did not return a call requesting comment, but a source familiar with the Obama camp's thinking emphasized that the campaign is ready and willing to debate whomever the McCain campaign designates.

Obama representatives will not appear alongside anyone from the RJC, said the source, because it believes the organization is spreading false information about Obama through its series of advertisements and the poll of Jews in swing states it sponsored last month.

The survey, which the RJC said tested "negative messages" about Obama, included questions stating that Obama had served on a board that donated to a "pro-Palestinian organization" and that he had been endorsed by a Hamas leader. (Democrats noted that the "pro-Palestinian organization" primarily was devoted to social service work in Chicago and that Hamas later rescinded its endorsement.)

The RJC's executive director, Matt Brooks, said he was "disappointed and saddened" by the Obama campaign's decision.

"It does a disservice to the community" and "stifles debate," said Brooks, who has defended the group's ads as accurate and said the RJC is "raising important issues."

The campaign's decision already has affected one debate scheduled for Sunday evening at a Jewish community center in Van Nuys, Calif. Obama adviser Mel Levine said he pulled out of the event -- sponsored by Council of Israeli Community, Los Angeles -- after he was told last week of the Obama campaign's new policy.

Levine, a former U.S. congressman, already had debated his scheduled opponent, RJC California director Larry Greenfield, three times, and said he was prepared to proceed with Sunday's event prior to the campaign's directive. But as a critic of the RJC's tactics -- Levine said last month that the group was "weakening Israel" by undermining the traditional notion of bipartisan support for the Jewish state -- he backed the decision.

"I happen to agree with it," he said, because appearing on the same stage with RJC gives the group an unwarranted "stature."

"They've consistently misstated and misrepresented" the facts, Levine said, adding that at one of the debates his counterpart never even mentioned John McCain in his opening statement.

Levine emphasized that he was happy to appear with "any legitimate surrogate" from the McCain campaign. He noted that he was speaking to JTA on his way to the airport for a trip to Las Vegas to debate U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Levine did assist the Council for Israeli Community, Los Angeles in finding a replacement, UCLA law
professor David Kaye, for Sunday's debate. Council first vice president Haim Linder said he was upset initially by the cancellation -- he compared it to having the rabbi and photographer cancel a couple days before a wedding -- but noted that Levine "went to work" and "got us a wonderful person" to replace him.

It is unclear how many other such events could be affected by the campaign's decision.

The Jewish Republican group said that an Obama campaign representative had refused to appear with an RJC leader at an Oct. 26 forum at Temple Sinai in suburban Philadelphia. But an organizer of the forum told JTA that it had Pennsylvania leaders from both campaigns lined up for the event.

And a representative of the Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles said an Oct. 23 debate between Greenfield and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), a leader of Obama's Los Angeles Jewish Community Leadership Committee, was still scheduled.

Asked what was wrong with the Obama campaign insisting on debating its McCain counterparts while RJC representatives could square off against perhaps National Jewish Democratic Council officials, Brooks said that such choices should be left up to organizers.

"The host organization should be free to invite who they wish," he said. "It's not up to us to decide who participates."

The executive director of National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, has participated in a number of debates with RJC representatives this year and said he will continue to do so. Still, he said he could "sympathize" with the Obama campaign's decision, calling the RJC's tactics throughout the campaign "really low."

Brooks said he would be glad to publicly defend his group's advertisements, and issued a challenge.

"I will debate anybody the Obama campaign chooses," he said, and "we will go through every single ad" and discuss the RJC's poll as long as "we debate their polls," too.

"I want to have that conversation with the Jewish community," he said.

For the Undecided Jewish Voter

for the undecided Jewish voter

By Dee from Suquamish, WA - Oct 14th, 2008 at 3:10 pm EDT

Comments | Mail to a Friend | Report Objectionable Content

I’m not a representative of any group or organization. No one’s asked me to do this. I’m just one Jew who wanted to speak to other Jews.

Felt compelled to do so, actually.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a conversation with you, the person readind this. It’s as personal, to me, as if you were in my living room and I had just handed you a cup of tea. It's as intimate as elbows on the kitchen table.

But, as we sit down together, you should know that I have some uncomfortable things to say about Jews and black people. About how I’ve felt about black people, and how that could play out in the voting booth. If you’re a boomer or older, it might ring a bell.

If it does, listen.

My grandfather came from Dol Hinov, a shtetl near Vilnius. With his two brothers, he opened clothing stores on Boston’s North Shore. He helped build a Conservative synagogue to which we belonged. Otherwise, my family adopted an approximation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant values.

I was 5 in 1954 when I was shown, along with the other Sunday school preschoolers, film footage of bulldozers pushing bodies into mass graves. You know the ones. And I was told, don’t trust them. And by “them,” those grim-faced temple elders meant Christian America. Anyone who wasn’t us.

The rest of the world, in short.
I got the message.

And it was reinforced, because the North Shore in the 1950s was a place where divisions ran deep. There were no blacks. Jews and Catholics were the “out” groups. Antisemitism was a fact of life. You had your Irish and Italians, you had your Jews and you had your WASPS, who belonged to clubs we couldn’t join and lived in neighborhoods that were “restricted.”

Inner-city kids weren’t bussed to the North Shore. I knew one black person, and that was Elsina, the long-time housekeeper for my mother’s parents in Hollywood, Florida. Elsina and my grandmother had a sort of Driving Miss Daisy relationship.

I was 11 when Jews marched with blacks for civil rights. My family approved, at a distance. In 1967, as a freshman at Goucher College, I tutored in Baltimore’s inner city. Tutoring meant I was the helper, they were the helped, which was easy. During the race riots of 1968, I stood on the roof of a building at Johns Hopkins and saw Baltimore burning. I stood at a remove, but had not yet taken the measure of that gulf.

In the mid-1960s my mother and aunt inherited a building in Harlem and promptly sold it, so as not to be slum landlords. I understood that as Jews traded East Coast inner cities for the suburbs, blacks moved in. They often lived in Jewish-owned buildings and shopped at Jewish-owned stores and the relationship between landlord and tenant, shop-owner and customer wasn’t necessarily a happy one. I knew the right things to say. I could tell you why the civil rights movement had to turn away Jews and other friends to foster Black Power. I avoided the N word. That went double for schvartzeh.

I got a masters degree at Washington University in St. Louis, where the racial divide was the Missouri River: Blacks lived in East St. Louis, a place to avoid. After graduate school, I taught at a college in Minneapolis and later moved to New York.

I lived in Manhattan for a decade, and I lived there with the omnipresent, low-level fear of a woman alone. Walking home late at night, I kept to the middle of the street, away from dark doorways. I crossed to avoid groups of blacks.

I was afraid until I got sick of fear. My personal tipping point came late one night in a subway stop. I was considering the long flight of stairs up which I would have to lug my rock-heavy suitcase, when I was approached by a black man in his late teens or early 20s.

He said, “Can I carry your bag for you?” I looked at him and realized that I would rather lose the bag than be afraid. So he carried the luggage up and across the overpass and down the other side. He put the suitcase down and we stood there for a long minute, looking at each other. Then we both burst into tears.

I took the hand he held out.
“You’re a good man,” I said “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Don’t let me tell you otherwise.

I'd like to be able to say that that encounter removed all racism from me. Instead, it began a transformation that is ongoing.

I moved to the West Coast and married. When it came time to adopt a baby, I was ashamed to realize I didn’t want a black baby. I turned that into “not fair to the child.” A few years later, when I ran my own adoption agency, I heard other nice white people say the same thing.

I’d tiptoe up to it: Would they take a Chinese baby?
No problem.

Could they accept a Hispanic baby?
Sure.

How about a black infant?
Nothing doing.

And always it was framed as “unfair to the child.”
Each time I was forced to look at my own racism.

I may have come of age in the 1960s but I was formed in the 1950s–in a racially divided place, amid a deeply traumatized people. I was middle-aged before I fully realized that my parents–and, I believe, many Jews of their generation–were in a protracted state of shock over the Holocaust. On the surface they assimilated, but they were afraid. If a few thousand years of persecution hadn't done the trick the Shoah made them, us, all-too-adept at drawing the line between our group and others. I watched as my tiny Pacific Northwest congregation tore itself in two over how to treat non-Jewish spouses. Some were willing to embrace without condition. Others wanted “them” to keep their hands off the Torah, not make aliyah and so forth.

My first impulse when faced with the Other may always be to recoil, but I have reason to hope that reflex will continue to weaken. I wish I did not have to make a conscious effort to reach out, but history raised that barrier and my personal history reinforced it.

In a generation or two such obstacles may be a fading memory.
Today, the wall around my heart is mine to breach.

***

I offer you more tea and you say no, you have to go, you have to meet a friend, you have to pick up a grandchild. Before you leave, one more thing.

Be honest. If fear and prejudice are holding you back from supporting Obama, then be honest enough to acknowledge what’s going on. And if you do look into your heart and you still can’t get around the fact that this is a black man, then ask yourself this: Is it better to have a highly intelligent black man in charge or a medium-smart white guy ? How about a highly intelligent black man or a half-educated, deeply provincial, mean-spirited woman?

I mean, really. Consider the mess we’re in. I believe, deeply believe, that four more years of Republican rule mean that our last, best chance to stem climate change will pass us by; that we will individually stagger under the burden of our own health care; that the Iraq war will saddle our grandkids and their kids with (even more) debt. That the Middle East will be further destabilized, that we will be held in even less esteem by the world-at-large. That at home the split between rich and poor will grow wider, with all the social instability that brings.

And none of this will be good for the Jews. Or Israel, for that matter.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and a point of view. I'm just hoping that if you are frightened by, or uncomfortable with the thought of Obama for president, you'll consider taking a really good, hard look at the deepest reasons why. Because if we have any shred of prejudice, we can be manipulated into fear.

If you have already expunged all traces of racism so that you come to this vote without that handicap, then you have my apologies. You have your act together and you don’t need me to tell you. But maybe you have a cousin, a sister, a friend…

In any case, however it is for you, you have my fondest regards, mishpacha.

Who's Good For The Jews?

Commentary
Who's Good For The Jews?
Michael B. Oren 10.14.08, 12:01 AM ET

As an Israeli who lives part-time in the U.S., I am always surprised when Americans ask me who the Israelis want to win the U.S. elections. My response is that, though Israel is intensely close to the U.S., many Israelis cannot even identify the Democratic and Republican candidates.

As an item on the Israeli news, the U.S. elections usually rank fourth or fifth, well behind the latest political scandals, multi-car accidents and soccer scores. And yet, the outcome of November's balloting could have profound ramifications for Israelis. The contestants' positions on the peace process, their policies toward Iraq and Iran and their strategies for pursuing the war on terror--all will impact the Jewish State. Depending on who wins, the Middle East--and Israel's place in it--may look substantially different.

That is the conclusion of a study I published in the current edition of The Journal of International Security Affairs, the first comprehensive analysis of the candidates' platforms affecting Israel. My findings were astonishing. Apart from their common commitment to Israel and to the search for peace between it and the Arabs, Barack Obama and John McCain differ significantly on virtually every issue.

McCain, for example, favors transferring the U.S. embassy, situated in Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem--an action certain to antagonize the Arabs--while Obama has not supported the move. Obama, on the other hand, has expressed reservations about Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank, while McCain has overlooked the matter.

McCain has called on the Palestinian Authority to live up to its obligations to clamp down on terror, but Obama has stopped short of making such a demand. Obama has supported Israel's ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza and its peace talks with Syria; McCain opposes both.

McCain insists that the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be solved without first confronting Islamic radicalism. Obama believes that the Arab-Israeli dispute, though not the root of all Middle Eastern conflicts, is nevertheless a "constant sore" that "infect(s) all of our foreign policy."

The differences between the candidates on a continued American military presence in Iraq and proposed talks with Iran are well-documented. McCain favors the first and opposes the second, and Obama's positions are exactly reversed. Regarding the war on terror, Obama advocates a return to the Clinton-era treatment of terrorists as criminals who should be tried by the justice system. McCain, by contrast, upholds the Bush Doctrine of preemption and the defeat of terror by extra-Constitutional means.

Which of these policies are best for Israel depends on one's definition of best. Some might prefer an America that is even-handed in peace talks, dedicated to achieving a comprehensive Arab-Israeli agreement and open to dialogue with its enemies. Others favor an America that is more sympathetic to Israel in negotiations, committed to fighting Islamic radicalism and ready to act preemptively--unilaterally if necessary--against terror. An America led by McCain or Obama will pursue substantially different courses in the Middle East, impelling Israel down widely divergent paths.

Israelis may not have a say in choosing that direction, though many of their supporters might. In spite of the Republicans' claim to commanding an unprecedented 35% of the Jewish vote, the sizable majority of American Jews will still vote Democratic. Still, a difference of only several percentage points could tip the scales in such key states as Florida and New York with their large Jewish populations.

Paradoxically, the race in those states may be decided by the former Floridians and New Yorkers who now live in Israel but who retain their U.S. citizenship. Mostly religious and politically conservative, these Israeli-Americans are expected to side overwhelmingly with McCain.

Perhaps the question of whom the Israelis want for president should not be so surprising, then, especially when posed to a dual-citizen. Israel may yet exert a small but pivotal influence on the presidential elections. American Jews and Israeli-Americans may, together but indirectly, determine Israel's future.

Michael B. Oren, a visiting professor at the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is the author of Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

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By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: October 12, 2008

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

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Andy Martin is known for filing many lawsuits.

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also be known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Bush's Speech: Honor US Mr. President

Dear Mr. Bush:

I did not need to sit through a 14 minute speech for me to understand the lecture in macroeconomics that you gave just now to understand that this country, if you described it accurately, is fucked. And you and your so-called "administration" fucked it up. Now you are appointing Commissars who want unlimited power with NO review by ANYONE? This is what you support? Perhaps it was a sick joke by Commissar Paulson to come up with a three page "plan" whose contents contained little in the way of specifics, with the exception of section eight of the document, which of course is that very large paragraph in which Mr. Paulson presumably with your knowledge and consent, included in this document. Sir, I am hoping that that was a joke by your inner ruling circle, because you wanted to pass it off to Congress and let the next guy worry about it. Like YOU give a shit? You're all set. I'm sitting here uncertain about everything, including my health, and you get to retire back to Texas and Connecticut for a life of ease. Or maybe not. Perhaps the stench of your Presidence will haunt you forever. It would me, and I will never forget having to write the words I am writing here.

My knowledge of the Japanese culture stems in large measure as a consequence of a friend that I had in high school, Ronald Nakai, who was Nisei - second generation Japanese and with whom I stayed in touch until about 14 years ago for no particular reason. Whenever I would go to his house, I was treated with dignity, respect and honor, even though I was only a 12 0r 16 year old punk kid. Theirs, like mine, is a system of reverence for the past. Ron and I were famous fishing buddies, having the good fortune to be living in Chicago in the 1970s atttending Sullivan High School and when not in school or weekends, when the weather was nice, of course, fishing. But I especially remember a time when we went to his house, and they shared an ancient Japanese ritual that celebrated the rice harvest, as I recall. We each had a big mallet, which we used to strike a big, big ball of rice-dough, that we would smash into a pancake that would appear on the log-like thing that we were hitting. They took it very seriously and I was more than happy to participate. I remember the feeling of "hey, this is cool" when I was doing it, even though I only now realize the grander significance of the act. They were giving thanks to God for rice. Reverentially. Because they and I realize that the path to true holiness is through honor of the past and honor for the future as well. Wiithout honor, one cannot be truly holy.

The other part of Japanese culture that I only now see the grander significance of is the concept of hari-kiri, which is the most famous form of seppuku. Here is the Wikipedia definition of Seppuku:

Seppuku (切腹, Seppuku^? "stomach-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku has been used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have committed serious offenses, and for reasons that shamed them. Seppuku is performed by plunging a sword into the abdomen and moving the sword left to right in a slicing motion. The practice of committing seppuku at the death of one's master, known as oibara (追腹 or 追い腹, the kun'yomi or Japanese reading) or tsuifuku (追腹, the on'yomi or Chinese reading), follows a similar ritual.

I would contend that if you are half the soldier you crowed about in 2000 and again in 2004, you would want, I would hope, to be able to call yourself a samurai and proceed forthwith to commit seppuku. Between all the calamities that you have caused this country in the name of politics and money, you should be so ashamed of yourself that I at least hope you are man enough to have considered that this would be a perfectly legitemate way out of this life.

Then again, sir, I am sure that you have rationalized the whole thing as somehow being perhaps beyond even your office's power to affect. I am sorry, but your presidency has been marked by a string of failures so long that it can only mean one thing: the management of it is and has been utterly and completely disfunctional at its core. And in the job of this country's highest office, you simply failed to heed too many warnings, time and time again. About so many things. And you blindly insisted that things were OK, even though those of us in the hinterlands of the West Coast could already feel, via "for sale" signs in too many front lawns reading "bank foreclosure, that things were going to get this bad. There were those of us who knew things were bad, but I ascribed those more to personal failings of my own, some within my control, but many not. But this has been coming on for some time and still you persisted in denying the severity of the program that you laid out before the country tonight as necessary.

More like, I had to laugh in your face, sir. Because you were giving me a rationale for a socialist solution to capitalism's inherent woes. Sir, I hope you can laugh with me, (since seppuku is really out of the question in reality, I know) because if this isn't the most absurd situation you have ever seen, I don't know what is. But I can tell you this with some sincerity: Nelson Rockefeller is spinning in his grave and so are all the rest of the dead (and those alive) Wall Street barons rolling over in their graves and homes, because you have gone against everything they stood for in order to maintain the status quo. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with this article in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_socialism_in_Great_Britain#Socialism_and_nationalism

The History of Socialism in Great Britain is essential reading for anyone wanting to know what to expect next, I predict, to the present economy. It cannot help but take this route, because, as some politican or other said this week, borrowing from "we've gone down the rabbit hole", borrowing of course from Alice in Wonderland And if there is one law that everyone, furtive socialists and fervent capitalists alike have to obey, regardless, is that of gravity. And once we are down the rabbit hole, we can only go, accordingly, down.

Well done. Messrs. Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and Washington salute you, of course, I am sure. What a horrible day in history, not necessarily because socialism is all that bad, I hope, but it puts a question mark after the American Dream. The American dream is to "make it to the top" or at least not legally let anyone stand in your way but, essentially, you. This shatters that conception, because the government that you were President of that supported the American Dream as it previously existed, had a failure of leadership. I'm sorry the dreams of the American Forefathers had to end so ignominiously. They would have died in vain.

Whooooosssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh.................



Randy Shiner

The Palin Debacle by MAJO and US Iran Policy, Past and Future

The following ideas, somewhat edited, are from an email I exchanged with a correspondent in Israel yesterday. He is very, very concerned, and rightly so, about the Iranians. As a result, he views Barack Obama's position on Iran as weak willed and lily-livered. I very much disagree.
_______________________



Balls are not in short supply here. Brains are. This country is in ruins, and maybe it's easier for both of us to see each others' trees for their respective forests, but the situation in 1939 was way more simple than it is today: there was no nuclear bomb until 1945. Then when the Russians got it, that was the end. Or maybe it was the end when Oppenheimer came up with the idea to weaponize crashing atoms in the first place. Regardless of anything, we do not need a doddering old man whose competence and judgment are in question, as are those of Sarah Palin who is as well qualified to run a country as she is the Cafeteria at Hewlett Packard. Carly Fiorina, a "surrogate" for the McCain campaign admitted that neither Mrs. Palin nor Mr. McCain "were qualified to run a major corporation". And this is from their own side! She has been disappeared from their campaign because she told the truth. If they couldn't run a major corporation, why on earth would we want someone like that running the entire free world? If you poke around on my blog for awhile, believe me, you will come up with enough reasons that Palin is a meshuggener whose foriegn policy outlook is "God's will". That is a quote.

The Jews (MAJO) were SO dumb to invite Palin in the first place. It was just a political move to salve the very small, but very wealthy "Republican Jewish Coalition" whose very existence is to me a joke. No-one of any substance, including now Joe Biden, would be seen with Sarah Barracuda (an insult to all self-respecting barracudas, BTW). I wouldn't have appeared, either, with her.

At the end of the day, the fault with the whole thing lies with the organizers who never should have invited the first politician, democrat or Republican, to the rally. That was the first and last bad political move by the MAJO in this affair. If they were going to have a rally, they should have had a rally and left the politics out of the thing. We can all unite, regardless of political points of view against a goofball like Ahmedinnerjacket. I would bet that if he was "disappeared" (permanently), not a few people inside Iran would be very happy. The problem isn't Iranians. It's their government that is leading them places that they themselves have to know are not in their long-term best interests. Taliban can't play in Persia forever. Or can it? Perhaps if things were made a bit inconvenient for the Iranian people, they would take their lives back, lives that have been spent fighting the ghosts of the American CIA who put the Shah in power in 1953 via a coup. Iranians need to join the 21st century and stop fighting 50 year old wars. If they don't, there should be consequences for such people.

In 1933, this country needed saving. The country picked a crippled patrician white guy to lead. He led with smarts and not a little bit of good PR. Not, mind you, that he gave a damn about the Jews of Europe. Heck, there were plenty of Jewish voices here in the US who didn't want Ostjuden here, either. He is famously quoted as saying "remind the Jews that they are but visitors here. This is a Christian country." (paraphrasing) If anything, we are fortunate that there IS a half-black guy running, because trust me, this is still a country where white Christian males run the show, and Israel and the Jews are just so much bother when things get inconvenient, as they are now. Just ask Ike in 1956. Remember the negotiations undertaken by Kissinger in 1973. Whose side is on whose? Add traditional right-wing nutjobs as exist in the Christian Right (personified in lovely fashion by Mrs. Palin), and the leftist idiots who rant on and on about Israeli "apartheid" yet say nothing about the way women are treated in nearly every Arab country, not to mention minorities and children, as you well note. It is a situation the solution for which I have no answers, but the mountains of Peru are looking very nice this time of year.


As far as Iran is concerned the US isn't going to credibly threaten anyone with anything at this point. This country is in the midst of if not a Great Depression, then a Pretty Big Depression. Focus has to be on fixing the economy first. Without a strong economy, our influence in the world is dreck. We have no moral authority - we torture prisoners, keep them locked up forever without any due process and invaded Iraq because of George Bush's desire to do better than his daddy did. This country is, in a word, f'ed up. We have no credible foreign policy - what foreign policy we did have under Bush was ideologically driven and not reality based. Lies, lies and more lies created not a foreign policy but a Ministry of Propaganda. Goebbels would be proud, believe me.

I am not saying that Iran isn't a threat. It is. Clearly. I think Ahmedinejad is a menace. But does HE really hold the reigns of power? It is not a Hitlerite system in Iran. I do not know internal Iranian politics very well, but I have to assume from what I do know that the Mullahs are the real power there, and they do not want war. At least I HOPE they don't want war. I am sure that we can find out this information, but negotiations have to be undertaken with the threat of a big klonk on the head lurking not too far off the surface for the negotiations to accomplish everyone's goals. I predict that Iran will be allowed to keep whatever nuclear reactors that they have, but will ultimately be forced to accept meaningful IAEA oversight. Obama's approach is simply to co-opt them. And failing that, there will be consequences, inlcuding, obviously, a military one. The objection everyone has to him meeting Ahmadinejad without preconditions is unjustified. Someone has to start a conversation with him. Let it be a guy named Barack. Ahmedinejad is acting like a spoiled brat by moaning and whining, hoping that the Jews of the world will get so upset that they will completely overreact and do something stupid, like help elect John McCain president. That would be a continuation of present policies toward Iran that directly have resulted in the situation we face today. The same is true with every single other foreign policy decision made by the Bush Administration. And if anything, McCain on foreign policy is Bush on anabolic steroids.

McCain's attitude with respect to Iran is exactly what Ahmedinejad is pining for: a showdown with the US. I would frankly rather have a foreign policy in which WE are in some measure of control. That control begins by talking with our enemies. At present, the foreign policy deregulation by the Bush administration (I hesitate to call it an administration, given the level of real administration that has taken place, but "regime" seems so, well, third world.) has resulted in a meltdown of a credible position with respect to Iran. The present posture leads directly to war, without a stopover for a discussion. I think talking is a good thing. It beats people dying.

Let's assume that George W. Bush has one more disaster in him before he leaves office on January 20, 2009. From a military standpoint, how does the US or Israel attack a nuclear program that has over 2000 individual sites? Do you just call out B-52s and carpet bomb Tehran and hope you hit a target? Limited strikes such as that done to Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 and more recently to Syria are just not possible, as far as I know. Perhaps you have some information that would help the discussion in that regard. Not negotiating when military options are limited is self-defeating, is it not? It would be a blessing in disguise if the oil got cut off. That would motivate Congress to stimulate - really stimulate - the growth and maturation of alternative energies like CNG, wind, solar, and the rest. We are all hostages to the Arabs at this point - it is a national security issue for the US that needs immediate attention not unlike that which the President and Congress are giving the investment banks and AIG.

I sense some justifiable panic in your voice. If I were an Israeli, I would be insisting on American action, too. Just know that if John McCain gets elected, this world will no longer be safe or sane in any measure, not that it is right now. He is WWIII personified, and as far as I am concerned, any Jew that votes for him will deserve what s/he gets as a result. The discussions over Israel, the Middle East and the rest have got to change. Obama is the only candidate with the intelligence and foresight to do it. There is no other choice. It's just a shondeh that there are so many Jewish bigots in the world (33% according to latest polling) who would just as soon vote for McCain than a "schvartzer". Even though he is also half-white. Even though he personifies not only an American dream, but also a very Jewish one as well.

Would the mother of any Jewish guy NOT think that their son, the President of the Harvard Law Review, and Senator shouldn't be President of the US, if that was what he wanted? Don't you think that Eliot Spitzer is thinking that even a Jew had a chance to be President if a black guy did? (only the black guy kept his schvanz in one place - his wife; WASPS can breathe easy) That doesn't seem to matter to a moronic Jewish-American electorate that is fused to idiots like Sarah Palin and John McCain like our future was some kind of very bad TV game show. God help us all. And I mean ALL.


Randy Shiner