JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

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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Norm does Norway

By Ron Kampeas · September 3, 2008

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) got the homeboy advantage and spoke twice this week at the Republican Party convention in St. Paul, the town he once led as mayor.

On Tuesday he explored how his Jewish faith helps him understand St. Paul (the Tarsus convert, not the city) ... or something.

And on Wednesday, the senator with the thickest Brooklyn accent west of the Hudson got all Scandinavian on the delegates.

Here in Minnesota, we always talk about the Norwegian husband who cared so much about his wife that he almost told her. In this election in Washington, we face leaders of the Democrat Party who care so much about working families that they almost do something – but they don’t. In this presidential election, we have the chance to elect a man who does not just talk about problems and how much he cares, but will actually do something to solve them.

The Federal News Service transcript records “scattered laughter” at the line about Norwegian husbands, which might be generous.

Umm, Norm, why are you ignoring the ancestral treasure trove?

To further confuse matters, Coleman and Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle spoke on a night packed with efforts to prove the GOP’s minority outreach, with plenty of Latino and African American speakers. So, of course, Lingle, who is also Jewish, greeted delegates with an ... aloha.

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