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Political tidbits: Burns likes Obama’s stance on Iran, Fleischer calls Obama new Carter (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 28, 2008

• Former Bush administration official Nicholas Burns says Barack Obama is right: The United States should talk to adversaries like Iran, in Newsweek.
  
• Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer calls Barack Obama “the Jimmy Carter of the 21st century” and brings up Jeremiah Wright when talking to Jewish voters in Las Vegas, reports the Wall Street Journal.
• In Israel, boxing promoter and Israel supporter Don King endorses Obama because he’ll speak softly but carry a big stick, according to the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg rips the “Jewish extremists” behind the distribution of the film “Obsession” in swing states.
• Stop using Hitler “as a political tool,” writes Brad Hirschfield on Beliefnet, in a response to that Pennsylvania e-mail.
  
• George Costanza – actually, Jason Alexander – campaigns for Obama in South Florida, writes the Huffington Post.
• Jewish Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) is on the campaign trail too, for McCain, reports the Honolulu Advertiser.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports that Israelis are “uneasy” at the prospect of an Obama election.
• Young non-Orthodox Jews don’t give Israel high priority when voting for president, according to a new study reported in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) conviction yesterday means Ethan Berkowitz’s chances in his race against longtime incumbent Republican Don Young, just got better. Here’s the New York Times noting Republicans bailing out on Young, who is implicated in the same scandal as Stevens.
• The New Republic wonders about the National Republican Sentorial Committee’s “Sex-and-Al Franken Obsession.” And even Norm Coleman says he was “astonished” by the comic-book style mailer and that any more copies should be collected and destroyed.



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Political tidbits: Schlep talk, Coleman pulls negative ads

By Eric Fingerhut · October 13, 2008

• Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) says Yom Kippur convinced him to withdraw all his negative ads in his race against Al Franken.
  
• The New York Times looks at Andy Martin, the “man behind the whispers about Obama” who has a trail of anti-Jewish comments in his past.
  
• Newsweek says Sarah Palin is costing John McCain Jewish votes.
• “The People of the Button”: New York Rabbi Peter Schweitzer on the history of presidential campaign buttons in Hebrew, in the New York Times.
• Alan Dershowitz states that all the major party presidential and VP candidates are enthusiastic backers of Israel, so supporters of the Jewish state should base their voting decision instead on “more general considerarations” of who would be best for America and the world. The Green Party, though, is another story, he writes in the New York Daily News.
  
• British newspapers love “The Great Schlep”: The Times of London talks to Jews visiting their families in Florida. So does The Guardian.
  
• Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post argues that the Jewish Council for Education and Research videos (those featuring Sarah Silverman and retired Israeli generals) are actually hurting Obama in the Jewish community – because they’re not taking Jewish concerns seriously.
• Jonathan Rosenblum tells bubbe and zaide to ignore the grandchildren, in the Jerusalem Post.
• The latest on this weekend’s courting the Ohio Jewish vote, from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
• What right-wing extremist groups has Todd Palin been “palling around” with? Menachem Rosensaft wants to know, in the Huffington Post.
  
• Liberals always threaten to move to Canada if a Republican wins the presidency? Where should conservatives threaten to go if Obama wins? Chris Wilson in Slate suggests Israel as one possibility.
• The Forward’s Brett Lieberman wonders if the Jewish community in Virginia could end up playing a crucial role in the election.
• Arab American Institute leader James Zogby criticizes McCain – and the Republican Jewish Coalition – for using “Arab” as a pejorative term.
• Rep. Robert Wexler is still a “heavy favorite” for re-election, but he has some “aggressive” opponents this year, writes the Palm Beach Post.
• Sarah Silverman talks to Keith Olbermann about “The Great Schlep,” but the best part of the interview is probably when Silverman tells Sarah Palin how she should have answered Katie Couric’s question about the newspapers and magazines she reads.

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Is Sarah Palin Jewish? UPDATED

By Ron Kampeas · October 8, 2008

The short answer is, probably not.

You might have seen the genealogies circulating on the net - here’s one - claiming she’s a descendant of one Schmuel Sheigam, a Lithuanian Jew.

I’ve run the info past folks at the National Archives. A search of immigration records shows no Sheigam - or Sheeran, as the Ellis Island transformation would have it, according to these accounts - arriving in 1915. (And yes, all possible spellings were run.) Sheigam doesn’t turn up, period.

There is a grain of truth in this, as there often is with urban myths: Records (ship manifests, censuses, property records etc.) show that Sheeran is indeed a common Irish American name, and one that some immigrants, evidently Jewish, adopted upon their arrival.

I asked the McCain-Palin campaign about this, they never got back to me (not that I blame them, I’d also prioritize screwy queries about ancestors low on my to-do list); but it’s worth noting that they had earlier confirmed that she had been baptized a Roman Catholic. (She is no longer a Catholic.) That would comport with Irish ancestry, the more common association for “Sheeran.”

What’s odd about this phenomenon is that I’m getting asked this by Jews, when the myth is being perpetuated by anti-Semites. ("Why do some people dislike Jews” as a hedder is what we call an obvious giveaway; more subtle is the use of the word “Jewess.")

One version of this I saw suggested that John McCain wanted his old pal and fellow U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) as his running mate, and relinquished at the last minute. Again, a grain of truth here - my own reporting confirms this. Where it gets loony is in the why: Joe, apparently, was not simply too moderate for McCain’s advisers - he was too clearly part of the Zionist conspiracy. McCain, according to this fiction, was told to go with the stealth Jew. That explanation is echoed in the above website (see under “This would explain a lot.")

None of this means the Alaska governor doesn’t have a Jewish ancestor somewhere on the tree - it’s not exactly uncommon in immigrant nations; especially in America, which has a wonderful history of welcoming all stripes of newcomer, unlike the sad sacks who run the conspiracy websites.

UPDATE: A number of readers (starting with both commenters below) have pointed out that there’s a comprehensive Sarah Palin genealogy here and that it contains nary a Chosen One. Case closed.

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Alaska. Iran. 

By Ron Kampeas · October 7, 2008

Get the connection?

Umm, winter sports? Check. (Iran has some killer ski slopes, I hear.)

Indigenous religious beliefs tied to the apocalypse? Okay.

Crazed political leaders anticipating the demise of the United States? And forming a mutual admiration society? Whoa.

In fairness, the Salon story on the Alaska Independence Party’s oddball founder Joe Vogler and his chumminess with the Iranians covers a period predating Todd Palin’s membership in the party. (Palin, of course, is husband to the current Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin.) The party reportedly cleaned up its act after Vogler’s mysterious death and has since nominated candidates who comport with its new goals of making independence one of many options for Alaska.

In double, cross-your-fingers, tfoo-tfoo-tfoo fairness, though, Salon’s point is not that the Palins are insurrectionists: it’s that it’s easy to tie just about anyone in American politics to an unsavory character - and that the Palin-Vogler stretch is about as taut as the Obama-Ayers “palship.”

Hattip: TPM

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Political tidbits: Silverman talks about the “schlep,” new ads and more

By Eric Fingerhut · October 7, 2008

• Sarah Silverman talks to the New York Times about her video for “The Great Schlep.”
  
• The National Jewish Democratic Council’s new advertisement deals with energy independence, while the Republican Jewish Coalition’s latest is about Obama’s statement that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “without preconditions.”
• Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reveals that Barack Obama’s campaign returned $33,000 to two brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought t-shirts in bulk from the campaign’s online store. They listed their addresss as “Ga.,” which the campaign thought was Georgia.
• Time’s Joe Klein asks “where’s the outrage” from conservative Jews over Sarah Palin’s church and Sean Hannity citing a “Jew-hater” as a source.
• The Cleveland Plain-Dealer explores whether Republicans can make inroads in the Jewish vote in Ohio.
• Joe Lieberman tells Chabad of Boca Raton, and the Palm Beach Post, that it’s OK to attack Obama’s associations, but that doesn’t mean McCain is trying to avoid issues.
• Lieberman introduces Palin at a big fundraiser in Palm Beach.
• Matt Littman, at the Huffington Post, wonders how many Jews Sarah Palin has met.
  
• Those pro-Obama videos from Israelis give a false impression of his support in the Jewish state, according to Shmuel Rosner in Commentary.

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Political tidbits: Ad wars, Sarah Silverman and more

By Eric Fingerhut · September 26, 2008

• JTA’s Ami Eden critiques a Republican Jewish Coalition ad linking Barack Obama and Pat Buchanan, and reports on another one quoting Democrats who have praised John McCain.
• The New York Times reports that Obama is now running dubious ads about McCain, including one that hits below the belt in an effort to scare Latino voters.
  
• And the RJC cries foul over a Florida Democratic congressman saying, “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”
• The National Jewish Democratic Council goes positive with a Rosh Hashanh-themed Obama ad.
• Sarah Silverman wants you to get your Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama.
• Remember ”Rabbis for Obama”? Well, the man who brought you the McCippah and the Obamaica introduces: ”Rabies for Obama.”
  
• Brett Lieberman at The Forward looks into the big funding disparity between the Republican Jewish Coalition and the National Jewish Democratic Council – which explains why NJDC chair Marc Stanley kept joking about finding a billionaire this week at the NJDC’s Washington Conference.
• How big a factor is race in the Jewish vote? The Jerusalem Post’s Hilary Leila Krieger looks into it.
  
• Anchorage’s Chabad rabbi talks to the Jewish Advocate about Sarah Palin.
• Two leaders of Republicans Abroad Israel, in the Jerusalem Post, continue the GOP criticism of Democrats for “sabotaging” this week’s anti-Iran rally.
• A Wisconisn political scientist says Sarah Palin may drive Jews away from John McCain, in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
• Daniel Halper, at Commentary’s blog, points out that John McCain seems to be garnering a great deal of support from independents in the AJC survey released yesterday.
• Juan Cole, in Salon, argues that Barack Obama and Sarah Palin overreacted to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s United Nations speech.
• Menachem Rosensaft, in the The Jewish Week, writes that the Republican Party stance on abortion “is in direct conflict with Jewish law.”
• In a piece headline “Sarah, Heavenly Sarah,” Laurence Kulak, in the 5 Towns Jewish Times, asks a question we’re hearing for the very first time: “Why does Sarah Palin seem to be so Jewish?”
• Yiddish singer Eleanor Reissa and actress Elaine Stritch will headline a party next month to raise money for the pro-Obama Jewish Alliance for Change.

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From Ak. to Fla., heritage across the USA

By Ron Kampeas · September 4, 2008

Over at Politico, the prodigious Ben Smith wonders if the “Christian Heritage Week” Alaska Gov. (and John McCain’s Veep pick) Sarah Palin signed into law will make Jews nervous.

Dunno, but it’d be a hard case for the Democrats to make, considering how one of their top Jewish surrogates, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), has made passage of the federal act that created Jewish Heritage month (based on a Florida model) a signature of her first term in office.

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