This is it

Well, folks, it's do or die time. If you haven't already, please get out there and vote.

No matter how long the lines, no matter what you think your candidate's chances are. This isn't one to sit out.

And please keep this in mind.

Greetings from Phillie-delphia

Well, wow. Just wow. I skipped the parade, though. Philadelphia sports fans tend to get ... overheated. I got caught in the middle of the 1983 Sixers celebration. Never again.

As if there wasn't already enough excitement, Chase Utley just went and dropped an "f" bomb on live radio (link). The crowd didn't seem to mind. But I expect fallout.

What else? Well, there's this: Obama warns of overconfidence; Pa. polls still show Obama lead. Yes, but it's shrinking. I spent the afternoon working at my local McCain HQ. Who knows? We just might pull it out.

And speaking of elections, this is encouraging: Rightist bloc leads Left in 'Post' poll

The Rightist bloc led by the Likud will defeat the Left, led by Kadima and Labor, by eight Knesset seats in the national election on February 10, according to a Jerusalem Post/Smith Research poll.

The survey, taken on Wednesday of 501 respondents representing a statistical sample of the electorate, found that Likud, Shas, Israel Beiteinu, the National Union-National Religious Party and United Torah Judaism would combine for 64 seats, while Labor, Kadima, Meretz and the Arab parties would together win only 56.

If those numbers prove to be correct, Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu could form a right-wing government that would likely end negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and perhaps with Syria. However, Netanyahu told the Knesset this week that he wanted to see Kadima and Labor in his government.

Hey, it's Friday and it's the last day of the month. And the DJIA actually had a (very) positive week. Happy Halloween!

And Shabbat Shalom.

Irony

The Who are playing the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia tonight.

And Tommy is about to be coronated King of America. It doesn't get much more ironic than this. The generation that thought it invented the greatest challenge to blind obedience to authority and mind control has utterly succumbed to both and is about to elect a figuratively blind deaf and dumb candidate to lead this nation into the abyss.

If we weren't living it, it would be theater. But we are. So it's tragedy on a grand scale.

Update: Of course, it ain't over until the fat lady sings ...

I tend to post negative but I'm not ready to roll over yet.

(No, I'm not bi-polar ... there aren't enough poles to define my mood swings in this election)

Sponge mode

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself reading obsessively. It really is getting out of hand. Maybe once the election is over ..., no, maybe once the financial meltdown reverses ..., no, maybe once Israel schedules new elections and they're over ..., no, well, it seems I'm in sponge mode, for the time being. Not very productive, I'm afraid.

The least I can do is share some of the most enlightening and elucidating essays and articles I've come across over the past several days. Some of them are more recent, others less, but these all focus on the upcoming presidential election, to varying degrees, and if you're still on the fence about it or wishing you had some lucid arguments to make to others who are, they may help.

Allies Want McCain by Richard L. Benkin

Poll after poll shows that respondents in every European (and Muslim) country want us to make Barack Obama president in November. On the other hand, those people who are on the front lines of our war against Islamist extremism feel just as passionately that an Obama victory will undermine their efforts.

TO THE UNDECIDED VOTER by Neal Boortz

The Republicans don't deserve power in Washington just as you don't deserve a boil in the center of your forehead. There are worse things, however. Complete Democrat control or, in the case of your forehead, a nice big melanoma. Pretty much the same things, actually.

It's not that the Republicans did everything wrong. They got the tax cut thing right, and they responded correctly, for the most part, to the radical Islamic attack on our country. They just did so much wrong at the same time. They got drunk with power, and the hangover affects all of us.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? by Orson Scott Card

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

Wright 101 by Stanley Kurtz

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so.

McCain for President by Charles Krauthammer

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? [ ... ]

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Indeed. Well, as they say, I hope these help.

Shabbat Shalom.

On a positive note

That's how we're ending this week. They're few and far between these days, it seems, but this is good. Very good.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Japan handily defeated Iran for a non-permanent seat on the U.N. security council and Austria and Turkey edged out Iceland in secret ballot voting Friday.

Iran — under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear program — received only 32 votes from the U.N. members compared to 158 for Japan for the Asian seat.

Austria and Turkey beat Iceland in the battle for two non-permanent European seats on the 15-member council in voting at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

The Security Council is the powerhouse of the U.N. with the ability to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeepers.

The other two seats went to Mexico, which will represent Latin America, and Uganda, which will represent Africa; both ran unopposed.

You would think Iran's defeat would be a foregone conclusion but, really, you can't take anything for granted when it comes to the U.N. Today, sanity prevailed. Somewhere.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat greetings

There are some really lovely Jewish greeting cards available at this site. Unfortunately for me, it appears that you need to be in Australia to take advantage of them. If you are, please do.

I hope they don't mind my using this image here.

Wishing all a peaceful and refreshing Shabbat.

Sabbath of Sabbaths

Tomorrow, the markets will be open on Wall Street and Main Street and most people will go about their business. Those of us observing Yom Kippur, unless we live in closed Orthodox neighborhoods, will slip in and out among them on our way to and from shul or just taking quiet walks or sitting at home.

In Israel, of course, it's a different story. And especially in Jerusalem, where everyday life comes to a complete standstill. It's something to behold, something I've felt privileged to have been able to carry with me and retrieve every year back here in the USA.

The headline at JerusalemPost.com now reads:

Jpost.com will resume updates after Yom Kippur

And at Ynet, the latest Update banner, similarly:

Ynetnews will return after Yom Kippur

InContext, likewise, will resume after Yom Kippur. To all of you observing the fast, may it be an easy one.

G'mar hatimah tova (may you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year).

I heart Jackie Mason

What a mentsch!

I've never heard of Sarah Silverman before and I wish I hadn't now. She's an extremely unfunny and rude little girl with a very nasty mouth. Someone should wash it out with soap.

Meanwhile, I lost track of how many whoppers and bloopers Joe Biden pulled off in the debate last night. Little Green Footballs has a list (with backup). Some of them, I think, I hope, were just Joe's mouth operating without direction. Others were, well, clearly deliberate lies.

Ok. I know. Too much lashon hara, especially for this time of year. Who decided to put elections right after the High Holy Days anyway?

Hey, I finally got my lawn sign today! Two of them, in fact. I'm probably going to need more because, unsurprisingly, someone is going around the neighborhood ripping up the McCain Palin signs. Yes, so far, anyway, only the McCain Palin signs. Go figure.

I have more to say but I'm out of time, as usual. But, oh yes, thanks to the U.S. Congress for stepping up this week. Let's hope they weren't too late. Some of the speeches on the House floor today were truly memorable (Nancy Pelosi's wasn't one of them this time ... thank God). I realize there's no consensus whatsoever on this, but I do feel that we took a step back from the brink of the abyss today. We'll see.

Shabbat Shuva Shalom.

L'Shana Tova Tikatevu

What a year this has been.

Here's wishing all a much better 5769, full of peace, prosperity, good health and many blessings.

Shana Tova!

A hard-charging populist

So neither candidate has distinguished himself so far in his response to the economic crisis. McCain has on more than one occasion jumped the gun and made a few bad calls. He's been obliged to do way too much walking back. Obama, as usual, tries to say and do nothing. It's safe and, sadly, effective. He's rocketing up in the polls.

But now he's trying to take credit for offering solutions to the problem ahead of time. And it's bogus. How far he'll be allowed to go with these claims, I have no idea. The media, after a brief attempt at achieving more balance, now seems to be deeper in the tank for Obama than ever.

In a speech in Florida on Wednesday, Obama took this swipe at McCain:

Now, in the last few days, my opponent has decided to start talking tough about CEO pay. He's suddenly a hard-charging populist. And that's all well and good. But I sure wish he was talking the same way over a year ago, when I introduced a bill that would've helped stop some of the multimillion-dollar bonus packages that CEOs grab on their way out the door. Because he opposed that idea.

Really? If McCain is sounding like a populist, it's hardly the first time and not at all sudden. But let's look at that bill. Obama's referring to S.1181 - the Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act, which he did, in fact, introduce in 2007. It never got out of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee (on which John McCain does not sit). The Congressional Research Service summarized the provisions of that act as follows:

Amends the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to require a proxy, consent, or authorization for a shareholder meeting occurring on or after January 1, 2009, to permit a separate shareholder vote to approve executive compensation.

States that such shareholder vote shall not be binding on the board of directors, nor construed: (1) as overruling a board decision; (2) to create or imply additional fiduciary duty by such board; and (3) to restrict or limit shareholder ability to make proposals for inclusion in proxy materials related to executive compensation.

Requires proxy solicitation material for a shareholder meeting occurring on or after January 1, 2009, concerning disposition of substantially all of an issuer's assets, to disclose compensation agreements or understandings with the principal executive officers of either the issuer or acquiring issuer regarding any type of (golden parachute) compensation which: (1) relates to such disposition; and (2) has not been subject to a shareholder vote.

Provides that proxy solicitation material containing such executive compensation disclosures shall require a separate shareholder vote to approve such agreements or understandings.

States that such shareholder vote shall not be binding on the board of directors, nor construed: (1) as overruling a board decision; (2) to create or imply additional fiduciary duty by such board; and (3) to constrain shareholder ability to make proposals for inclusion in proxy materials related to executive compensation.

So his bill would have required a non-binding shareholder vote on golden parachute compensation agreements where a company was going belly up (but not in other cases and only after 1/1/09). (A number of companies have already adopted such measures voluntarily, BTW.) Gee, yeah, that would have gone a long way toward stopping those multi-million dollar bonus packages. Not.

BTW, there's no evidence whatsoever that McCain "opposed the idea." He didn't sponsor the bill, true. Neither did 91 other senators. Politifact (which glosses over the huge gap between what the legislation would actually do and what Obama now claims it would have done) called the Obama campaign to pin that one down. They obviously weren't satisfied with the answer.

Neither was that the end of his disingenuous attacks and distortion of McCain's record in that speech alone. Unfortunately, the full text appears to have vanished from the web (for the moment at least), but there's enough of it here to catch the drift.

I expect more of the same in the debate tonight.

Shabbat Shalom.

Leaving the left

It's been a long time since I linked Caroline Glick, and for some pretty good reasons, but I'm breaking the ban today, for some equally good reasons. In this column, she sums up, in excruciatingly accurate detail, the incredible imbicility of the dis-invitation of Sarah Palin to yesterday's anti-Iran rally in New York, the mindset of Jewish Democrats and the Democratic Party in general. And in so doing, she also sums up something else: the reasons why, after a lifetime of hanging out in those circles, I have ultimately left the left.

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.

[ ... ]

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those [Iranian] women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

Please read every word. That's only the beginning and the end. There's so much more in between.

And if you haven't yet read the text of Palin's intended speech, please do that too.

Brief thoughts

Are we glad this week is over or what? I really don't even want to talk about it. So, briefly.

Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel, says Israel's banks are "doing well." I imagine they are, but does this look like a happy camper to you?



The DJIA ended the week just a few dozen points below where it started. Of course that was only due to heroic measures. Will they work? Who knows?

As for Sarah Palin's disinvitation to Monday's anti-Ahmadinejad rally in New York, please read Soccer Dad. The priorities of the liberal Jewish organizations in this country are just totally screwed up. We should throw them all under the bus. Except that, well, they've got too many people brainwashed and befuddled and, somehow, we need to keep trying to reach out to those people and help them. (Ok, yes, I do know how condescending that sounds. I'm in a mood.)

Meanwhile, I think McCain probably made a mistake jumping on the Franklin Raines thing. It's just flimsy at this point and it gives his detractors a solid peg to hang their accusations of bad campaign tactics on. Just saying. There's so much more important stuff out there.

Like this (followed up with this), for instance. This campaign in getting more bizarre every day.

Hey. It's that time.

Shabbat Shalom.

Lipstick

Speaking of things changing in a New York minute, how about this? The Intrade Predictions for the Presidential race now favor John McCain over Barack Obama by three points. The Real Clear Politics Electoral map today shows Obama leading by one (1) electoral vote with 105 still up for grabs. Suddenly, even that massive Democratic victory in the upcoming Congressional elections is looking dubious. Whodathunk?

Of course, this can all change tomorrow. How much of it is due to the Sarah Palin phenomenon and how much to Obama fatigue, it's hard to say. The former may well burn itself out (but maybe not) and the latter could reverse course. The media, of course, will play a part, but it's unclear what that will be, as well. The partisanship and blatant lack of objectivity by the major networks appear to be wearing thin. Will they pull back or will they just completely lose the people's trust? And if they lose it, where will people go?

There's that saying about counting your chickens. Those of us supporting the Republican ticket shouldn't get to cocky.

Still, two essays I read this week pretty well bookmarked this issues that I believe define this race. The first, by Fouad Ajami at the WSJ, addresses the differences between the candidates on foreign policy and American's role in the world. The second, by Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara at The Weekly Standard, addresses the economy. Both excellent must-reads.

But all that serious stuff aside, in the end this election just may turn out to come down to one word. Lipstick. Imagine that.

Shabbat Shalom.

Seven years gone

9-11-2001

Do we still remember?

I sure hope so. I know I do.




Charles Johnson has invited his readers to share their memories of that day over at Little Green Footballs. If you're registered there, you can chime in. If not, there are over 500 personal stories to read, each one unique, many of them quite inspiring.

What's up?

TS Hanna is headed this way. Tomorrow promises to be wet and windy. The wet, we really desperately need. Hopefully, it will come in gradually. Torrential downpours on this parched ground could be a real disaster.

Not nearly the disaster, of course, that Gustav could have been. There's a blessing we say after the aversion of disaster, praising God who (paraphrased) bestows favors on the undeserving, and has shown every kindness. Roger that.

Disasters loom in many places and in many forms, though. I see good old President Shimon Peres made the headlines again today, announcing his opposition to the use of military force against Iran. He's convinced the world will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. He wants to sit down to tea with them and chat about it. And, while he's at it, he wants to chat with Bashar Assad about giving back the Golan. Because this negotiating thing has worked so well for him (and for Israel) in the past.

McCain's speech. It wasn't bad. It could have been worse. It went too long for the substance it contained. Oh, look. I didn't like it. Sue me. McCain gives lousy speeches. He can, OTOH, be very good extemporaneously. In those respects, he's the polar opposite of Obama. He did a great job at Saddleback. I think he'll do well in the debates, and the less scripted, the better.

Sarah's speech ... awesome. There are, as I've said elsewhere, a lot of things I don't agree with her views on, but I'll have to process that over the next few weeks. For some reason, the thought of her as VP doesn't scare me one bit.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Meryl, a huge mazal tov on her move and her homeownership and may she enjoy her new condo in most excellent health.

Shabbat Shalom.