Tikkun Olam

As the upcoming elections draw nigh, only one week away,  I am resigned to the fact that I have no one to vote for (unless I write in a candidate-say, my D. H.  I myself respectfully decline to run at this time...). There is no way I will vote for the incumbent. Except for partially funding the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system that has prevented hundreds of casualties from hundreds of missiles launched from Gaza--funding it with conditions, however--our president has shown a disdain for Israel and her leaders such as has not been seen before by an American president.  His lack of protection for the Embassy personnel in Benghazi  when desperately requested before the September 11th attack which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, as well as his lame, ineffectual and embarrassing essentially non-response after the attack--saying that it was caused by a spontaneous protest against a "vile, disgusting video" condemning Mohammad, apologizing--again--...

President-elect Barak H. Obama has appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff. From The Jerusalem Post : President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday offered the job of White House chief of staff to Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who reportedly accepted the offer. Emanuel is the Chicago-born son of a former Israeli . Obama, right, smiles as he listens to US Rep. Rahm Emanuel, during an unscheduled stop at the Chicago Sister Cities International Rally in Chicago in June 2008. The 48-year-old Emanuel is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community of Chicago and grew up speaking Hebrew with his father, a pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun , the Jewish resistance group in Palestine, before the War of Independence in 1948. From Haaretz : A day after winning an historic election to become the first black American p...

If Hillary Clinton had been nominated as the Democratic party candidate, it would have made sense: you choose the tried and true, the experienced; if that had been done, I, as a voter, would have had more of a choice. But for some strange reason, Barack Hussein Obama was chosen. Why do I use Hussein (as some commenters have asked me in the past)? Because that is his full name, it indicates the religion to which he was born, that religion being generally intolerant towards any religion or culture other than itself--and he seems to want to hide it. Nothing, but nothing should be hidden about a potential candidate for the highest office of the land. Actually, the reason he was chosen was not 'strange,' as I mentioned above. It is understandable, when one considers a shallow, uninformed, disinterested public raised on television. I guess the average American doesn't care to research his candidate or analyze his findings. Mr. and Mrs. Average American are more interested ...

I first saw the link on Little Green Fo otballs and then on Jameel’s blog, which led me to the AP article , intimating “racism” on Governor Palin’s mention of Senator Obama’s affiliation with unrepentant-terrorist Bill Ayers, of Weathermen fame. The Associated Press article, (or is it really an editorial masquerading as a “news” story?), suggests that Obama’s connection with Ayers couldn’t have been deep but rather that they knew each other on an ‘acquaintance’ level only. This reminded me of something I had just finished reading last night in Commentary Magazine (to which I subscribe) by Joshua Muravchik , resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former socialist, now self-described neoconservative ) . Mr. Muravchik seems to disagree with the author of the AP story as to the extent of the Obama/Ayers relationship. Mr. Daniel, author of the AP story also implies that Palin's statement is 'racist' (emphasis mine): By claiming that Democrat ...

(warning: I like long, run-on sentences.) I had already decided that my Thursday night, Oct. 2nd 2008 entertainment would be to sit down on my 26 year old sofa in the family room and watch the debate while chapping dinner (Rosh Hashana left-over chicken) on paper plates on the coffee table. And what a great night it was. In my opinion, Governor Palin did better than before (she must have practiced and rehearsed forever ), but her inexperience and fear of venturing out from behind her prepared talking points showed, while Senator Biden's many years of political experience showed too, as well as his ease of speaking extemporaneously, culling facts--albeit some wrong ones, notably about Hezbollah being kicked out of Lebanon (they weren't) and Palestinian elections in the West Bank (it was Gaza), as Daled Amos correctly points out--from memory, in sharp contrast to Palin's constantly looking down at her notes while he was speaking, and towing the party line while she was...

I wasn't going to post anymore before Rosh Hashana, but I received this in an email (from my research staff) and, after picking myself up off the floor, couldn't resist sharing it with you. You'll notice a certain vice-presidential candidate is missing (-hadn't been chosen yet); you know, the one who can see Russia from her house . Shabbat shalom, and Happy New Year . *Copyright alert: No infringement of any text or graphic copyright is ever intended on this blog. If you own the copyright to any original image or document used for the creation of the graphics or information on this site, please contact the blog administrator with all pertinent info so that proper credit can be given. If you wish to have it removed from the site, just say the word; it shall be, ASAP.

Have you thought about how ridiculous this whole candidate-election-hoopla-thing is, when you think about how it fits in the 'Great Scheme of Things?' Let's see, one candidate has a murky past: parents might not have even been married when he was conceived (He has stated to the effect that he is 'not clear' on that issue), his father disappears; yon son goes to a third world country and attends an Islamic religious school for a while, raised by a single (read=divorced or unwed) mother, she sends him off to live with his grandparents, name somehow changes to 'Barak' from 'Barry' somewhere along the line; somehow he becomes a state senator but nobody's heard of him for four years; suddenly he comes out of nowhere and is famous . Then they find a long-lost half-sister (in a burka). And he grew up, out of all the states available in the entire country, in HAWAII. Other-side candidate runs three miles every other day for fun; owns a rifle (waddya ...

Leaving the high of participating in the Nefesh b’Nefesh JBlogger Convention, albeit cyberspace-illy, still behooves us to continue to try to make an impact on world events, beginning perhaps with local events (who was it who said, “think globally, act locally”?) In perusing some of the many blogs whose authors I was familiar with or had just met in the conference chat room, I came across this piece about Senator Obama (about whom I’ve written before, here , here and here ) by Daled Amos . As I’ve said previously, there is more than meets the eye behind the charismatic facade (for some--not for all) of Mr. Barak Hussein Obama, beyond the flip-flop he committed at the AIPAC conference this past June. This video hints just a little more about the hidden Obama; or do most Americans only care about the rhetoric? Hey, why be so serious after all? Isn't it a little like, say, the State Fair? Or Disneyland? Or Hollywood? Let's just play the game and have a grand old time (just...

Found this interesting little piece on Fox News on the 'net: it seems that, according to the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif , who starred in blockbuster Hollywood productions such as Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago--Arabs and democracy are not great bedfellows. The story, based on information on the MEMRI website, states that Mr. Sharif told President Bush that democracy will never take hold in the Arab countries, because they are made up of sects, and prefer to go to their sheik to handle disputes: "I said to Bush, even before he entered Iraq: Forget about all that. We, the Arabs... We are not like [regular countries]," said Sharif. "You will drown there." By gosh, if we only had known this before our president got us into the war in Iraq - I mean, who knew - about Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds ("-oh my!")? And who knew that people with no concept of and not prepared culturally for democracy - when Mr. Prez praised the "democratic" electio...

I have written before, in my posts of February 5,th 13th and April 13th about my uneasiness with this unknown quantity-cum-current-Democratic-nominee for president of the United States, and now have reason to write again. After a lovely speech before AIPAC in which he said all the right things (or should I say, said the right sentiments and feelings, but nothing much on 'tachlis' - the 'how-to' was missing), we now learn that Mr. Obama hastily changed his tune. Is it because he was confronted with Arab opposition to his stance on keeping Jerusalem undivided? Initially, in his AIPAC speech, he said: Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. That didn't sit too well with PA Chairman Mr. Mahmoud Abbas nor with Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhari. Is that why one of Mr. Obama's campaign...

I just learned--yes, I stopped in the middle of Pesach cleaning and sneaked over to the computer when no one was looking, heheh--just don't tell anyone (...but too late for the Pesach Hevel Havalim, I'm afraid) from reading a JTA article that Senator Barack Obama from Illinois, in his campaign efforts to 'inform' the Israeli public (?) (read=garner the Jewish vote), has launched a blog in Hebrew , the first post being a translation of his Chicago speech of March 2nd, 2007, followed by the original in English . ), hosted by the website Tapuz . Now, that's an unusual thing to do, isn't it? As far as I know, none of the other candidates for President have blogs in the Hebrew language. Barrack Hussein Obama is apparently making a big PR attempt to promote the idea that he is very pro-Israel (again, read=very pro courting the Jewish vote). In having this blog, he seems to want to express to the Israeli public (read=and their American counterparts) his strong support...

Well, it looks as if the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is sweeping up the Democratic delegates. As of last count, he seems to be ahead of the Senator from New York, Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton; at the very least he is surely giving her a run for her money. There is no question that Obama is a good orator; but should that be the basis upon which we elect our next president? In the meantime, I've discovered more disturbing things about him and his possible affiliations. Here is an article I found on WorldNetDaily about a Che Guevara flag in Obama's volunteers' office. Is Che a role model? That's worrisome. Not enough? So here is another one to worry about, from a site called Project Islamic Hope . * Do you recognize that face , right smack in the middle of the heading? Obama's photo up there can only mean that he is one of the supporters of their causes (now, what might they be)? Well, here's just one of their causes , apparently; ...

There was something that was nagging at the back of my brain while I was writing my previous post. It was saying, why are you writing about a Shabbaton when you should be writing about something seriously important, like Super Tuesday and the danger of Barack Obama winning the Democratic primaries? Ok, so I’m doing it now; this Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, worries me. We all have heard (or have we?) of his Muslim upbringing in his early childhood, his biological father and stepfather being Muslim, his attending a Muslim Wahhabi school there and of course, the middle name he never uses: Hussein: an Arab*, not African--name. And according to Islam, if one’s father is Muslim, ‘once a Muslim, always a Muslim.’ But isn't he a Christian? So he says. He is officially a member of the Trinity United Community Church, whose Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Jr. is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan --who is no supporter of Israel or the Jews—and Pastor Wright has equated Zionism with racism. Her...