JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

John and Sarah Shmoe?

By Eric Fingerhut · October 27, 2008

“‘O’ & Joe or The Shmoes” – that’s the slogan on a new campaign button from the National Jewish Democratic Council.

For an $18 donation, you’ll get a button with caricatures of the four candidates and the slogan – with John McCain and Sarah Palin pegged as “The Shmoes.”

NJDC executive director Ira Forman said he was just injecting some fun into the campaign, but the Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks isn’t amused by the group’s use of the Yiddish term, which means a stupid or obnoxious person.

“It’s disrespectful, in bad taste and not appropriate,” said Brooks.

The RJC has been using some rough language of its own in the last few weeks – although none of it has been in Yiddish. The group has called Barack Obama “reckless,” “dangerous,” “weak,” and “naive,” in newspaper advertisements.

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Political tidbits: Obama effigy found in Ohio, McCain townhall reaction

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

• A man hangs an Obama effigy in his front yard – with a Star of David on the top of his head – and freely admits he doesn’t want a black man as president. The Huffington Post has the video from a local TV station in Ohio.
• John McCain isn’t going to bring up Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but won’t ask the Republican Jewish Coalition to stop putting him in their ads, according to Newsweek.
  
• McCain turned down an opportunity from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin yesterday to talk about Wright at a Jewish “tele-town hall meeting.”
• M.J. Rosenberg rips Riskin for spending years living in Israel and yet presuming to advise U.S. presidential candidates on strategy, at TPM Cafe.
• Jim Besser of The Jewish Week felt the McCain meeting seemed too staged.
• Menachem Rosensaft on McCain’s “pals” like Phil Gramm and Randy Scheunemann, in the Huffington Post.
• Here’s the National Jewish Democratic Council’s newest print ad, making the case that Obama-Biden will protect Israel and achieve energy independence.
  
• And here’s the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new television ad, using Hillary Clinton to criticize Obama for saying he’d meet with the leaders of rogue states.
  
• Every church and synagogue in the United States is going to receive the anti-radical Islam film Obsession, according to Marketwatch. It’s coming enclosed with a new right-wing, anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion publication called The Judeo-Christian View, which is backed by a couple Orthodox rabbis and charges that Obama’s support of partial-birth abortion is akin biblically to child sacrifice.
• Daniel Pipes plays the Muslim card, claiming that Obama wouldn’t get a security clearance if he becomes president.
  
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tells CBS’s “Face The Nation” that Sarah Palin has “really disturbed” the Jewish community in Florida, according to UPI.
  
• Richard Heideman and Steve Grossman face off as surrogates for McCain and Obama in Boston, reports the Boston Globe.
  
• Adam Brickley, one of Sarah Palin’s earliest fans in the lower 48, has gone from being an evangelical Christian to a “messianic Jew,” notes the New Yorker in a Palin profile.
  
• Our daily look at the Florida Jewish vote today comes from the Chicago Tribune.
• The Jewish Press endorses John McCain.
  
• “Family Guy” briefly compared McCain and Palin to Nazis last night, according to Hollywood Today.
  
• Sarah Silverman talks to Katie Couric.

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Political tidbits: Obama campaign won’t debate RJC, low turnout for the Schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

• The Obama campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials, because they’re tired of the RJC’s negative ads, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal.
• CNN has the story of a “great schlepper” who ended up not only convincing his South Florida grandparents to support Barack Obama, but also spoke to more than 100 of their neighbors.
• Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph says only 200 people actually schelpped, and many found their grandparents were already supporting Obama.
  
• And some of Obama’s senior staffers are schlepping to Florida for the next few weeks – a signal the campaign thinks it can win the state, according to a Miami television station.
  
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Jesse Jackson says his comments on “Zionists” controlling American foreign policy were distorted – and that the Obama campaign has distanced itself from those remarks.
• Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna talks about the election and the Jewish vote with JUF News.
• The L.A. Jewish Journal interviews Obama’s California strategist, Mitchell Schwartz.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg blogs that the angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies remind him of those demonstrating against Yitzhak Rabin in the months before he was assassinated.
• Michael Oren, in Forbes, said it was “astonishing” to discover that the presidential candidates “differ significantly on virtually every issue” related to Israel, except for their “common commitment to Israel and the search for peace.”
• Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has decided the many polls of Jewish voters are wrong. How? He surveyed his high-school friends from Pittsburgh, gets a 9-1 margin for Obama and declares that non-Orthodox Jews are going to vote in much bigger numbers for the Democrat than everyone thinks.
• Campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton tells a Philadelphia JCC crowd that the economic crisis is heartbreaking, reports the AP.
• Bloomberg on the campaigns seeking American voters in Israel.
  
• Max Blumenthal and David Niewert at Salon claim Sarah Palin has ties to some radical right-wingers.
• M.J. Rosenberg wonders what Sarah Palin meant when she campaigned to be “Wasilla’s first Christian mayor” – since the incumbent was a Lutheran but his last name was Stein.
• Charley Levine, in the Jerusalem Post, would like to see a McCain-Biden ticket.
• Campaiging for John McCain, Joe Lieberman tells Ohio voters that he might even vote for Obama one day – but not this year, according to the AP. And he tells the Forward that he’s “at peace” with his decision to become an independent and back the GOP presidential candidate.
  
• More on the battle for Florida Jewish voters, from the Chicago Tribune.
• Ben Shapiro, on Townhall.com, challenges Alan Dershowitz to a debate over Dershowitz’s claim that both candidates are equal supporters of Israel.

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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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Get me rewrite: New Israel question needed

By Ami Eden · October 8, 2008

Israel popped up at the end of Tuesday night’s town hall-style debate, when one audience member asked:

“If, despite your best diplomatic efforts, Iran attacks Israel, would you be willing to commit U.S. troops in support and defense of Israel? Or would you wait on approval from the U.N. Security Council?”

With all due respect to the questioner, there are much better/more relevant ways to measure each candidate’s support for Israel and the willingness to put U.S. troops at risk in defense of the Jewish state (not to mention their general views on securing U.N. authorization before American military action). Now, before I go on, it’s only fair to point out that during a previous Democratic primary debate, one of the highly paid professionals – ABC’s George Stephanopoulos – asked a similar and equally off-the-mark question to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The pressing question is not what a candidate would do after an Iranian attack on Israel, but what a candidate would do – or permit/help Israel do – to prevent an Iranian attack. For example, both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin have been asked in recent weeks the very relevant question of what an Obama or McCain administration would do if Israel decided to launch a preemptive strike against Iran. Of course, as I noted earlier, they both offered the same implausible answer: The United States needs to defer to Israel on such matters about its own security.

Why implausible? Because the United States controls Iraq’s air space and, depending on whom you believe, the fallout will include Iranian strikes against Western and oil-producing targets – so I think it’s safe to say that the next president will have some input on the decision-making process, probably long before any attack were ordered.

As for last night’s answers, read the transcript (second-to-last question) or watch the video:

If you happen to bump into either of the candidates, or will be posing the questions at the final debate, here’s what you can ask with regards to Iran:

* Senator McCain, why, if you favor stiffer international sanctions on Iran, have you not urged your fellow GOP senators to stop blocking such measures from being approved in the U.S. Senate?

* Senator Obama, your surrogates have been suggesting that when you talk about direct high-level talks with Iran, you don’t necessarily mean with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s Holocaust-denying president who continues to predict Israel’s downfall. Would you meet with him or not?

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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: 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.

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Israel on SNL

By Uriel Heilman · October 6, 2008

Here’s what Tina Fey had to say about Israel in Saturday Night Live’s spoof of the Biden-Palin debate:

“There’s a special place for Israel in heaven.”

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Political tidbits: Palin knocked for Israel answer, Biden criticized for Lebanon claim

By Eric Fingerhut · October 3, 2008

• Sarah Palin’s answer on Israel last night sounded like she was “randomly spewing every talking point she’d ever uploaded on Israel,” writes Noam Scheiber in The New Republic.
  
• Michael Totten, in Commentary, wonders what Joe Biden was talking about when he claimed that the U.S. “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.”
• Rick Siegel, in the Huffington Post, said he only heard one “snort” all night from Biden – when Palin said she was “so encouraged to know we both love Israel.”
• Holocaust survivor Rachel Patron, writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, says Jewish voters need more from the candidates than just promises of preventing a “second Holocaust.”
• Shmuel Rosner, in Commentary, also doesn’t like the analogy, calling it “more frightening than reassuring.”
• Joe Lieberman predicts McCain will hit 40 percent of the Jewish vote, according to the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
• The National Journal puts the National Jewish Democratic Council and Republican Jewish Coalition in its ”Ad Spotlight.”
• NJDC executive director Ira Forman, in the Huffington Post, criticizes the RJC’s “guilt by association” ads and quotes Joseph Welch’s famous line to Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

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Political tidbits: Hastings apologizes, more Jewish pro-Obama videos

By Eric Fingerhut · October 2, 2008

• Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) now says he regrets his comments last week about Sarah Palin, but maintains a McCain-Palin administration would be “anathema” to most African Americans and Jews.
• Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau, in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, likes Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” video, but doubts it will have much impact on which way Florida votes.
  
• Jewish friends and supporters of Barack Obama, including Penny Pritzker and Abner Mikva, talk in this campaign video about why they support him .
  
• Benjamin Hartman in Ha’aretz says a debate in Israel last week between proxies for the American presidential candidates was a lot more exciting than the real candidates going at it the next evening. A question about Palin caused the greatest stir at that debate, according to CNS News.
  
• Jim Besser in The Jewish Week notes that the AJC survey found Obama surprisingly less popular among younger Jews than older Jews – although that number may be skewed by the strong support McCain enjoys in the Orthodox community.
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) says her opponent criticized her for coming home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah; Republican Tim Bee’s campaign said it was an innocent mixup and that they meant no harm.
• Obama adviser Dennis Ross tells the New Jersey Jewish News that his candidate would “change the dynamic” in the Middle East.
• Ed Koch recounts his trip to South Florida over the weekend to campaign for Obama.
  
• Doug Bloomfield, in the Washington Jewish Week, says John McCain’s no-earmark policy would be bad for Israel and the Jews.
  
• David Benkof in the Jerusalem Post argues that Jews shouldn’t use the Supreme Court as an excuse not to vote for McCain.
• Gawker tallies up how Jewish members of Congress voted on the bailout.
• Has Congress always taken the High Holidays off? No, it’s a fairly recent custom, reports the Associated Press.
  
• Sarah Palin has used Queen Esther as a role model, but is she really more like David battling Goliath? Mark Joseph on FoxNews.com thinks so.
• The Boston Globe wonders whether Joe Biden’s propensity to speak from “the kishkas” will get him in trouble tonight.
  
• Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” worked on Rosh Hashanah, and he thinks Congress should have worked, too.
  
• Andy Borowitz has some fun with Bill Clinton’s announcement that he wouldn’t be campaigning until after the Jewish High Holy Days.

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