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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: More guilt by association, a plea to stop talking about Israel

By Eric Fingerhut · October 10, 2008

• More guilt by association from the GOP, as he chairman of the Palm Beach Republican Party is e-mailing around a video of an eight-month old speech in which Louis Farrakhan calls Barack Obama “the messiah.” Obama already responded to this endorsement in a debate during the primaries: After some badgering from Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton saying that simply denouncing Farrakhan wasn’t enough, Obama said he would “reject” the Nation of Islam leader’s support.
• Some guilt by association for McCain and Palin, from Menachem Rosensaft in the Huffington Post.
  
• From Jesse Kornbluth in the Huffington Post ... Yom Kippur letter to Joe Lieberman’s rabbis, urging them to “talk to Sen. Lieberman about the hatred the McCain-Palin campaign is encouraging” – and complete with somewhat over-the-top allusions to Kristallnacht.
• Bradley Burston, in Ha’aretz, accuses Sarah Palin for stirring up prejudice and hatred when she talks about Obama.
• In the National Review ... Mona Charen argues that Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlep” video is just one more example of Jews substituting liberalism for their religion – and blames the New York Times for going along with it.
• Shmuel Rosner, in Slate, urges the candidates to stop talking about Israel so much.
• Politico reports that John McCain didn’t disclose his affiliation with the U.S. Council for World Freedom as a freshman congressman; his campaign says he didn’t have to report the connection.
• In the L.A. Jewish Journal ... former AIPAC head Morris Amitay lays out why he supportd McCain.
• And former top Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross does the same for Obama.
  
• The Jewish Week talks to some undecided Jewish women about Sarah Palin.
  
• The Christian Science Monitor weighs in on Obama’s “struggles to attract Jewish voters.”
• A report on Obama’s Jewish outreach efforts in Pennsylvania, from the Jewish Exponent.
• Michael Gerson in the Washington Post on the importance of the Iran threat in making one’s choice for president.
• The National Jewish Democratic Council claims the Republican Jewish Coalition is lying in its new ad when it says Obama would be willing to meet personally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Actually, the NJDC is wrong, because Obama did say that, at the YouTube debate last year (the questioner even puts a photo of Ahmadinejad on the screen when he asks the question) and he said it again two months later after the Iranian president spoke at Columbia University.

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Hillary launches Jewish outreach in Pa.

By Ami Eden · April 2, 2008

JTA’s Lisa Hostein has the story on the Clinton campaign’s push for Jewish votes in Pennsylvania.

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Obama adviser heading to Syria

By Ben Harris · February 14, 2008

The controversy about Obama’s foreign policy advisers continues. The New York Sun reports that Zbigniew Brzezinski, an adviser to Barack Obama, is en route to Damascus at the helm of a delegation from the RAND Corporation.

Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, is considered cool to Israel, and he was cited in a recent American Thinker article as a major reason for concern about Obama’s position on the Middle East.

There’s some confusion over just who is advising Obama on the Middle East. The Sun called Brzezinski one of Obama’s “main advisers,” but also quotes a campaign spokesperson as saying Brzezinski is not a “day-to-day” adviser.

That jibes with what the campaign told us. Only four people advise Obama on Israel/Mideast questions: Tony Lake (more on his background here), Dan Shapiro, Jewish liaison Eric Lynn, and Denis McDonough, the campaign’s overall foreign policy coordinator.

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Hillary takes Maryland Jewish vote

By Ben Harris · February 13, 2008

Hillary Clinton took 60 percent of the Jewish vote in the Maryland primary. Here’s the JTA brief about the breakdown:

Hillary Clinton won 60 percent of the Jewish vote in Maryland’s Democratic primary, but Barack Obama won overall.

Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) was the choice of virtually every other religious group polled, and he easily won the state in Tuesday’s vote. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won on the Republican side of the so-called Chesapeake primary., which included contests in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

In Maryland, with the exception of Catholics, where Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) enjoyed a slight advantage, 48 percent to 45 percent, Obama won among Protestants and voters describing themselves as “Other Christian” – the largest single religious voting bloc in the state. Nonreligious voters also favored Obama.

Overall, Obama won 59 percent to Clinton’s 37 percent. With easy victories Tuesday in Virginia and the District of Columbia, Obama for the first time has taken a lead in the delegates count.

In advance of the primary, both campaigns aggressively courted Maryland Jews. An e-mail supporting Obama and signed by several state officials, including the attorney general, was dispatched to the Jewish community.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), a popular figure in the Jewish community, met with area rabbis last week to urge them to support Clinton.

Exit polling data was reported by MSNBC. No data was available for Virginia or the District of Columbia.

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Caucuses for Florida?

By Ben Harris · February 6, 2008

The AP is reporting that the Democrats are floating the idea of caucuses in Florida and Michigan as a way to resolve the standoff over whether their delegates will count in the nominating contest. State party reps say the proposal is nothing new, and they’re sticking with the results of their votes. Clinton won Florida (50-33) and Michigan (55-40).

“We’ve said all along that we’re going forward with our delegate selection program using the vote on Jan. 29,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski. “We’ve got more delegate applications than ever.”

That sounds reasonable, until you consider that neither candidate campaigned in Michigan or Florida, and in Michigan, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot.

With the Democratic race as tight as can be, this could turn into the story of this election, with all its echoes of the 2000 Florida debacle. Stay tuned.

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Seals trounces Footlik

By Ami Eden · February 6, 2008

JTA’s Jacob Berkman has been covering the Democratic congressional primary fight in Illinois between Dan Seals and Jay Footlik, who served as Bill Clinton’s and John Kerry’s Jewish liaison.

The final tally isn’t pretty: Seals 81% (72,704), Footlik 19% (16,563).

The Berkinator will have more later today.

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Supressing the Jewish vote?

By Ben Harris · February 5, 2008

Probably not. But still, this story out of Los Angeles is a little troubling.

Bernie Cade, the electoral inspector at the Westside Jewish Community Center, said the equipment hadn’t arrived, hours after polls opened.

Cade said he had not received voting machines or the ink that goes in them for any of the seven booths in the polling station. Dozens of people were sent to other polling places nearby, but Cade said a voting troubleshooter was on hand and the polling place was accepting hand-marked ballots.

Still, Cade said the process was slow, and that he was worried about more delays.

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Rabbis: Don’t support the “toeiva” agenda

By Ben Harris · February 5, 2008

According to this report on the website Yeshiva World News, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada issued a statement prohibiting followers from voting for candidates whose positions are “antithetical to our Torah based morality.”

Candidates who support abortion on demand, the “toeiva” agenda, liberal attitudes towards pornography of any sort – are antithetical to our way of life and it is forbidden to support or vote for them.

“Toeiva" is the Biblical word for abomination and is understood to refer to homosexuality.

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering what the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada is, this is the group whose representative, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, performed a prayer for rain in Atlanta last year. “He’s the Orthodox community’s Reverend Al Sharpton,” said a source familiar with the Orthodox world. “No, actually, he aspires to become the Orthodox community’s Reverend Al Sharpton.”

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The hipster vote

By Ben Harris · February 5, 2008

If your taste in clothing runs to skinny jeans and colorful fitted t-shirts, you might want to consider voting for Obama or McCain. Hipster outfitter American Apparel is endorsing the pair with a set of sleek photos on its website. Even if you’re a Clinton supporter, you might want to check it out to see a shot of Bill and Hillary back when they weren’t inahling.

Of course, if you object to men masturbating in front of female interviewers, you might want to consider voting for someone else.

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