Obama Goes to Shul

A special thanks to Blogger'n'Chief's Senior Bexley Correspondant, Annelyn Baron...

May 23, 2008

BOCA RATON, FLORIDA * Senator Barack Obama came to Temple B'nai Torah this afternoon. As will often happen with candidates out on the campaign trail, his arrival was delayed by several hours. And although he apologized for being tardy and making us wait, he never did mention the reason for his delay. As I found out later that night, he had hopped up to Capitol Hill in ord er to vote in favor of a measure which greatly expands the G.I. Bill. He could have taken the high, self-serving road and told those assembled why he was late. He could also have taken the low, 'finger-pointing' road and flailed Senator McCain for being one of 22 Republicans voting against our men and women in uniform.Instead, he did neither.

This was not his reason for going to shul.Rather, he was here, in the midst of approximately 750 mostly-Jewish men, women and teens, to talk about himself, Israel, and anti-Semitism, and to address head-on the virtual St. Vitus' dance of fear that has been such a noxious staple of cyberspace this past year.

I managed to snag a VIP pass and, guiltily walking past the long line of folks standing out in the rain, was seated about 6 feet away from the senator. Sitting with me were -- somewhat surprisingly -- at least thee lions of the Republican Party and a couple of die-hard Clinton acolytes. They, like so man y in t h e assembled minyan, were not there because they already supported Senator Obama. Rather, they had come to find out for themselves just who the 'skinny guy with the stran ge-sounding name' is, and whether or not he will be as bad for Israel as so many have claimed.Senator Obama certainly had his work cut out for himself.To make the senator's task even more challenging, just the day before he attended shul, the New York Times ran a story entitled 'Many Florida Jews Express Doubts On Obama.' In the article, staff writer Jodi Kantor quoted a handful of South Florida Jews who were dismissive -- if not downright hostile -- to Senator Obama's candidacy. One elderly woman said she would never vote for Obama 'because of his attitude on Israel.' A second averred that Obama 'is part of Chicago's large Palestinian community.' A third worried that if he were elected, Obama 'might fill his administration with followers of Loui s Farrakhan.' And yet a fourth opined, 'His father wa s a Muslim and you can't take that out of him.'No one ever said running for president was easy; especially when you're a guy named Barack Obama, and you're speaking in a synagogue before more Jews than the rabbi has seen since last Rosh Hashana.

With a mesmerizing mix of eloquence and erudition, articulation and affability, the Senator won over the vast majority of the assembled minyan. During the more than two hours he spent speaking and dialoguing, Senator Obama made it abundantly clear that he was, is, and always shall be, a staunch defender of the Jewish State. [One should know a fact: after going over the voting records of both Senator Clinton and Obama vis-a-vis issues pertaining to Israel, AIPAC -- the main Israel support lobby in the U.S. gave both a 100% rating. That's 100% of the time that both senators voted in a manner that was favorable to the Jewish State.]Senator Obama told of how, as a youngster attending summer camp, he had a Jewish counselor w ho told him about Zionism:'I really connected with it, because in Zionism, there is this sense of rootedness, of having a place and a home. And for a kid with my unusual background . . . and not knowing precisely where I fit, this struck a tremendous chord.'When asked about his relationship with a Palestinian professor from the University of Chicago, the Senator said:'Yes, I have met the man, but why do people automatically conclude that therefore I must be in agreement with what he espouses? People do have the ability to listen to those with whom they disagree. How can one ever make any progress if the only folks they talk to are those with whom they are in agreement?

'Obama went on to say:'I don't want to get in to the 'some of my best friends are Jewish' trap, because it's terribly demeaning. But I will tell you this: when I first ran [unsuccessfully] for Congress against Bobby Rush, the main argument against me was that I was too close to the Jewish community! I have always believed that Jewish and African Americans have an historic bond, an historic memory. I mourn the passing of the time when Jewish Americans and African Americans worked together in harmony to bring about change. If it weren't for the Jewish community and their central role in the Civil Rights struggle, I wouldn't be here today, running for President of the United States.'Addressing all the emails that are going around [indeed, I just received one entitled 'The Fifty Lies of Barack Obama'], he made a telling point with a fine degree of humor: 'You know, no one believes those emails that start out: 'I'm a Nigerian who has $5 million in the bank but can't get at it . . . however if you'll only send me a thousand dollars . . .' Or all those medicines that promise to help expand your . . . well, let's not go there . . . [laughter] . . . But seriously, why then do people believe scurrilous rumors? Promising millions for nothing or pot ency for pennies has about as much reality as proclaiming that I am a Jihadist.

'Many in the crowd were of the opinion that 'George W. Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had.' I hear this from my students more often than is comfortable. Senator Obama addressed this in words of stark simplicity: 'In the past seven years, Iran has become infinitely more powerful than ever before. It has given tremen dous financial support to the major enemies of Israel. This has all happened under the Bush-Cheney-McCain watch. How can anyone conclude that the one who empowers your worst enemy is your best friend? It doesn't make any sense.

'One person in the crowd asked why, in saying he would convene a summit meeting of all Arab countries, he excluded Israel, Obama smiled and answered:'Well first, Israel isn't an Arab country; its a Jewish State. Secondly, they are our strongest ally . . . our best friend in the region. The countries we would be talking to are the on es we want to convince that someday, somehow, they're going to have to learn how to live in peace with Israel. If you only talk to your friends, there is absolutely no chance that you're ever going to be able to change your enemies. That is part of the definition of courage'By way of example, Senator Obama mentioned how, when speaking before students at a school of Ramallah, he told them, 'One day you are going to have to learn to live in peace with Israel.'Did Senator Obama's 'performance' make supporters out of everyone in attendance? Probably not, for he is, as we say in Hebrew, raq basar va'dahm ['merely flesh and blood']. Nonetheless, I believe he quelled the fear and uncertainty in many hearts.

There no doubt will always be those who choose to believe the worst about Senator Obama -- or anyone in the public eye for that matter. There will also always be those who seek to hide incipient racism beneath the veneer of inept rhetoric. And believe me, I am fu lly expecting people to write and tell me that I have had the wool pulled over my eyes -- that Senator Obama is a Muslim, anti-Semitic . . . the whole nine yards.

Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage

NYtimes

By FRANK RICH

SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.
As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)

Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.
How long before we learn she never shot a moose?

Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.
He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.

That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.

As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”

The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.
This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.

We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.

In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.

“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.

What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.

That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.

By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Hillary Clinton weighs in

"The two party conventions showcased vastly different directions for our country. Senator Obama and Senator Biden offered the new ideas and positive change America needs and deserves after eight years of failed Republican leadership. Senator McCain and Governor Palin did not.

"After listening to all of the speeches this week, I heard nothing that suggests the Republicans are ready to fix the economy for middle class families, provide quality affordable health care for all Americans, guarantee equal pay for equal work for women, restore our nation's leadership in a complex world or tackle the myriad of challenges our country faces.

"So, to slightly amend my comments from Denver: NO WAY, NO HOW, NO McCAIN-PALIN."

More on the Media

Thanks to my Chief Media Corespondent Shelby Nathans, the following article has been added to compliment the earlier one from Joe Klein. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=2B5BE65F-18FE-70B2-A8335B142E20CE63

Why the media should apologize By: Roger Simon September 4, 2008 10:50 AM EST

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry. We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice? Bad questions. Bad media. Bad. It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols. Sarah Palin hit the nail on the head Wednesday night (and several in the audience wish she had hit some reporters on the head instead) when she said: “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways: First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture. Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it). Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.” Why go there? What trees does that plant? Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul. Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.” Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to. Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq. Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried. Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.) The official theme of the convention’s third day was “prosperity,” but the unofficial theme was “the media are really, really awful.” Even Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president this year by saying “I am a conservative, but I am not mad at anybody,” discovered Wednesday night that he is mad at somebody. “I’d like to thank the elite media for doing something,” Huckabee said, “that, quite frankly, I didn’t think could be done: unify the Republican party and all of America in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin.” And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party? No, that is simply the cynical, media view. Though as Lily Tomlin says, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up.” I couldn’t resist that. For which I am sorry.

© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

Some facts:

From http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/4/125718/1967

Sarah Palin's Assault On The Truth

by Todd Beeton, Thu Sep 04, 2008 at 01:47:07 PM EST

It's astounding when the media does its job and even more astounding when it's The AP that does it but credit where credit is due, they have a fact check of the speeches last night and Sarah Palin in particular turns out to be just an out and out liar.

Just a few of her doozies:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform -- not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

The article was posted last night but got a second lease on life today as the number one featured story on the Yahoo home page. Yahoo is generous, saying "Sarah Palin and her fellow RNC speakers weren't completely truthful at times" but the message is clear: she's a freakin liar.

Now, while neither The AP nor Yahoo comes right out and uses the "L" word, it's great to see the Obama campaign once again not shying away from it. In an e-mail to supporters, David Plouffe writes:

I wasn't planning on sending you something tonight. But if you saw what I saw from the Republican convention, you know that it demands a response.

I saw John McCain's attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign. [...]

It's now clear that John McCain's campaign has decided that desperate lies and personal attacks -- on Barack Obama and on you -- are the only way they can earn a third term for the Bush policies that McCain has supported more than 90 percent of the time.

Notice that he refrains from using the term in relation to Palin specifically but the implication is clear.

Update [2008-9-4 13:49:46 by Todd Beeton]:And as if on cue:

The fired Alaskan official, whose dismissal has become the subject of a state senate committee's investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin, has told ABC News that she has not been entirely truthful on the matter.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Walt Monegan, the former Alaskan Public Safety Commissioner, said he was dismissed because he refused to fire the Governor's former brother-in-law, a state trooper. [...]

Monegan says he believes that the Governor has not told the truth about what happened.

My challenge to John McCain and Sarah Palin

Listen, this is a political campaign. Fine. There's going to be mockery and there's going to be attacks but I have a challenge for the GOP. We learned in the last 8 years that you guys know how to win elections. Karl Rove has proven to be a very effective - although tragic - campaign consultant. What we also learned, however, is that you guys don't seem to know how to govern. I don't need to spew off a laundry list, as the last 8 years are as tangible proof as could exist. So, while you bring out the old brutal, divisive campaign tactics that have worked so well for you in the past, please - for America's sake - try to tell us how you'd govern and why we should vote for you between your factless, shallow insults. Nowhere in Palin's speech today was there any semblance of an a coherent agenda - let alone an effective one. I've said for awhile that the Republicans have no good ideas and I'm waiting to be proven wrong. I also loved how she had the guts (balls?) to criticize Obama on Iraq when she, herself, said she had no idea what was going on there. Further, the Republicans have said all along that Obama is all rhetoric and no substance. There is no comparison between Obama's substance and the crap we saw tonight. Eventually, for the sake of the people, the Republicans must hold governing in as high regard as they do brutalizing their political oppenents.

Things Sarah Palin mocked: optimism, change, community organizers