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Political tidbits: Gibbs takes on Hannity, another Jewish pro-Obama video

By Eric Fingerhut · October 8, 2008

• Obama adviser Robert Gibbs took on Fox News host Sean Hannity last night over his use of anti-Semite Andy Martin to make wild claims about Barack Obama.
• The Sun-Sentinel has more on Martin, while the New York Times interviews Martin, who denies being an anti-Semite and says it’s a “peripheral” issue.
  
• And Glen Greenwald in Salon has even more details on Martin and criticizes the ADL for not speaking out about Martin.
• A powerhouse political panel tomorrow at Temple Rodef Shalom in Northern Virginia: Chuck Todd, Matt Brooks and Matt Dorf at the afternoon break in services, reports the Washington Post.
• The Sun-Sentinel has details on Joe Lieberman and Ed Koch stumping for Jewish votes in South Florida.
• Marty Peretz, in the Jerusalem Post, on why there are “so few Jewish Republicans.”
• Another pro-Obama video – this time from a Orthodox Jewish mom who lived in Jerusalem for five years.
  
• The Washington Post finds an article in a newsletter from the U.S. Council for World Freedom that belittles critics of Ronald Reagan’s 1985 Bitburg trip. John McCain says he resigned from the group in 1984, but was still on the letterhead in 1986 – and attended the group’s dinner in 1985.
• Anat Hakim explains why she schlepped north to convince her family to vote for McCain, in the Los Angeles Times.
• Political pundit Larry Sabato thinks Sarah Silverman’s profanity in her Great Schlep video may backfire on Obama – but adds that he still finds Jack Benny funny.
• Two Israeli pro-Obama videos are deemed a “de-schlep-tion” by Abraham Katsman and Kory Bardash in the Jerusalem Post.

0 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Ed Koch, Israel, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Presidential Race, RJC, Tidbits

Last weekend Pa., this weekend Ohio

By Eric Fingerhut · October 7, 2008

After a big day of Jewish outreach featuring everyone from Ed Koch to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to actress Blythe Danner in Pennsylvania last Sunday, the Barack Obama campaign has a major Jewish outreach event scheduled for this Sunday in Cleveland. The 5 p.m. event at Landerhaven is scheduled to include Dennis Ross, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Levin again, among others. For a schedule of what went down in the Keystone State last Sunday, click here:

11:00am - Congressman Anthony Weiner and Former Congressman and New York City Mayor Ed Koch at Shaare Shamayim in NE Philadelphia (9768 Verree Road Philadelphia, PA)

2:00 pm - Ed Koch at Martin’s Run in Delaware County(11 Martins Run, Media, PA)

2:15 pm - Congressman Anthony Weiner at the Kaiserman JCC (45 Haverford Road, Wynnewood, PA)

4:15 pm - Ed Koch at Brith Sholom (3939 Conshohoken Ave, Philadelphia PA)

4:15 pm - Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Sander Levin at the home of Barbara and Mickey Black (The Barclay Apt 3B, 237 S 18th St, Philadelphia, PA)

5:00 pm - Congressman Anthony Weiner at the home of Steve & Louie Asher (301 N. Latches Lane, Merion Station PA)

5:00 pm - Actress Blythe Danner at the Home of Amy Brenner (254 Biddulph Road Radnor, PA)

7:00 pm - Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Sander Levin at Congregration Shir Ami in Bucks County (101 Richboro Road Newton, PA)

7:00 pm - Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz and Deputy Speaker of the PA House of Representatives Josh Shapiro at The Berman Family Residence (1508 Grasshopper Lane, Gwynedd Valley, PA)

0 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Ed Koch, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Presidential Race

Political tidbits: Franken up by nine, Mason flip-flopped on McCain

By Eric Fingerhut · October 6, 2008

• Al Franken (D) leads Sen. Norm Coleman (R) by nine points in a new poll of voters in Minnesota, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The paper also has a report on the first debate of the campaign, held Sunday night.
• On “Meet the Press"… Democratic strategist Paul Begala warns that the GOP’s guilt-by-association reasoning could be turned on its head to make John McCain look like someone who has associated with anti-Semites.
  
• Jackie Mason flip-flopped on McCain? The Miami New Times posts a video of the comedian calling John McCain a “disgusting lowlife” and a “fraud” during the Republican primaries, quite a contrast with his pro-McCain, anti-Sarah Silverman video released Friday.
• Andrew Silow-Carroll, in the New Jersey Jewish News, decodes the presidential candidates’ High Holiday messages – and finds that they encapsulate their strategies for winning the Jewish vote.
• By the end of this campaign, every South Florida Jewish voter will have been interviewed at least once about the campaign. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel contributes with this article.
• And Salon does its part, but with a fresher spin – it finds a lot of Florida Jews who really don’t like Sarah Palin.
• Palin said during the vice-presidential debate that she backed a Sudan divestment bill in Alaska, but the bill’s Democratic sponsor says she was against it before she was for it, according to ABCNews.com.
• And Joe Biden’s statement that the U.S. and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon” wasn’t accurate either.
• The Levin brothers, Carl and Sander, stump for Obama at a Bucks County, Pa. synagogue, reports the Bucks County Courier Times.
• Menachem Rosensaft urges Jews to listen to Ed Koch and vote for Obama.
  Willy Stern, in the Weekly Standard, quotes a Palestinian pollster who says Palestinians aren’t that optimistic about an Obama presidency.
• Fox host Sean Hannity uses a source with a history of anti-Semitism to attack Obama, according to Todd Gitlin at TPMCafe.
• The Jewish Council for Education and Research has released a video of seven former IDF generals and Mossad chiefs endorsing Barack Obama, but two of them say they had no idea their interviews were going to end up in a pro-Obama video, according to Haaretz.

1 Comment | Share This | Al Franken, Barack Obama, Ed Koch, Florida, Israel, Joe Biden, John McCain, Michigan, Norm Coleman, polls, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin, Senate races, Tidbits

Political tidbits: Is Bubbie’s vote really that important?

By Eric Fingerhut · September 29, 2008

• Writing in The New Republic, Nate Silver explains “Why your Bubbie will not decide the election” – no matter how many grandchildren make The Great Schlep.
• Barack Obama tells a group of mostly Jewish donors in Detroit why he likes the Jewish New Year.
• Abba Spero, in the Jewish Press, compares John McCain and the rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto.
  
• Former New York Mayor Ed Koch hits the campaign trail in South Florida, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
• Cox News Service checks out the “army” the Obama campaign is building in Florida to sway Jewish voters.
  
• What will the “Palin Effect” be? Bradley Burston explores that question in Ha’aretz.
• Jeffrey Goldberg, blogging at The Atlantic, says Sarah Palin demonstrated ”terrifying ignorance” when asked about Hamas’s electoral victory in Gaza.
  
• The Wall Street Journal on campaign yarmulkes – and whether they’re appropriate for synagogue.
  
• Over at Ynet, Israeli Likudnik Yoram Ettinger compares the worldviews of the two presidential candidates – turns out he isn’t a fan of Obama.
  
• In the Huffington Post, Sherman Yellen argues it is “deeply offensive to any Jewish voter who cares about Israel” for the presidential candidates to “exploit” fears of an Iranian attack on Israel.
  
• Marilyn Henry, in the Jerusalem Post, examines the role of clergy and houses of worship in politics.
• Thirty-three pastors endorsed candidates from their pulpits yesterday, hoping to get sued.
• As Congress races to vote on the big bailout before Rosh Hashanah starts, here’s a look at House Democrats’ point man on the bill, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who quips that “it’s a well-known rule” that “God will only hear your prayers if you’re in your congressional district.”
• And some background on Eric Cantor’s role in the bailout drama, as one of the House Republicans who helped scuttle the original plan.

0 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Ed Koch, Eric Cantor, Florida, Iran, John McCain, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin, Tidbits

Koch: Obama is my guy—Palin is scary

By Ami Eden · September 9, 2008

Back in June, as the New York Observer reported, Ed Koch was holding out on whether to endorse Barack Obama. Well, now the former Big Apple mayor – a Democrat who has endorsed Republicans, including President Bush in 2004 – is on board (see full endorsement below). What changed? Apparently, according to Politico, Koch is not a big fan of Sarah Palin:

“The designation of Palin to be vice president,” he said. “She’s scary.”

He said he was alarmed by the report that she’d triggered a conflict with the local librarian in Wasilla, Alaska by inquiring about the possibility of banning books.

“Any time someone goes to the library and says, ‘I want to ban books,’ and the librarian says ‘no,’ and she threatens to fire them – that’s scary,” he said.

(Palin at the time said she was just inquiring about the library’s policy on banning books, with no aim of actually banning any. “It was a rhetorical quesiton – nothing more,” the McCain-Palin campaign said in a memo yesterday. And no books were banned, the town says.)

Here’s the full endorsement:

Ed Koch

Presidential Endorsement

September 9, 2008

The time has come to declare whom I will be voting for.

When I made my decision four years ago and supported the reelection of George W. Bush, I said at the time the overwhelming issue for me was international Islamic terrorism, including al-Qaeda. The goal of Islamic terrorists was and still is to reestablish the Caliphate encompassing most of the Muslims living in a host of nations from Spain to Indonesia and placing them under a single religious leader with full authority over the civil affairs of the countries, in the style of Iran. That goal includes the deaths or forced conversions of Christians and Jews as infidels or the payment by them of tribute, and the elimination of the State of Israel.

In 2004, I concluded that the one person running for president who understood that danger best and was prepared to fight it and defend America and its allies was George W. Bush. Even though he is now at a low ebb in popularity, I have no regrets for having campaigned and voted for him. I said at the time I didn’t agree with him on a single domestic issue and so far as I can currently see that is still true with the exception of drilling for oil off our coasts and building nuclear energy plants.

I believe that Bush and Tony Blair, Bush’s main international ally with regard to the war in Iraq and against Islamic terrorism, will be redeemed by history. President Harry Truman was reviled when he left office, but is now honored for his courage and vision.

Now, once again, I have to make a decision to either endorse the Democratic ticket of Obama and Biden or support the Republican ticket of McCain and Palin. I am 83 years old. If I am lucky, I may yet vote not only in this election, but in the presidential election of 2012 and perhaps, if luckier, even in that of 2016. I believe I must vote my conscience, and that means for the presidential candidate who in my estimation will best protect the U.S. over the next four years.

I personally know two of those running: Joe Biden and John McCain. I like and admire them both. John McCain is a genuine war hero and patriot. Joe Biden is a friend well versed in foreign and domestic affairs, who had made judgment calls on domestic and foreign policy and legislation that I agree with. I do not personally really know the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, having spoken to him only once and briefly, or the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

One foreign policy issue that particularly concerned me in 2004 was the security of Israel. I thought in 2004 that issue was better left to President George W. Bush, and I believe I was right. President Bush understood the need to support the security of Israel and did so. I did not feel that way about Senator John Kerry.

That is not an issue in this election. Both parties and their candidates have made clear, before and during this election campaign their understanding of the need to support Israel and oppose acts of terrorism waged against it by Hamas and other Muslim supporters of terrorism.

So the issue for me is who will best protect and defend America.

I have concluded that the country is safer in the hands of Barack Obama, leader of the Democratic Party and protector of the philosophy of that party. Protecting and defending the U.S. means more than defending us from foreign attacks. It includes defending the public with respect to their civil rights, civil liberties and other needs, e.g., national health insurance, the right of abortion, the continuation of Social Security, gay rights, other rights of privacy, fair progressive taxation and a host of other needs and rights.

If the vice president were ever called on to lead the country, there is no question in my mind that the experience and demonstrated judgment of Joe Biden is superior to that of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a plucky, exciting candidate, but when her record is examined, she fails miserably with respect to her views on the domestic issues that are so important to the people of the U.S., and to me. Frankly, it would scare me if she were to succeed John McCain in the presidency.

I reiterate the question each of us must answer in making our choice, who will best protect and defend America, domestically and with respect to the literal defense of the country? I hope I’ve made the right decision but only time will tell.

Whoever wins should and, I hope, will, following the election, receive the support of all Americans, no matter how they voted, especially in these perilous times. God Bless America and the next president and vice president of the U.S.

4 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Ed Koch, george w. bush, John McCain, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin