Chris Muir tells me that every time I link to him, you folks click in large numbers. I may not be Instapundit, but dammit, I have a great crowd here.

And it’s fundraiser time again. Chris supports himself by these donations, and keeps Day by Day coming. It’s a worthy cause. Toss a few bucks his way. He definitely deserves it.

And oh yeah, Chris? Some of us want Zed hotness. I mean, what use is Sam hotness to straight women?

The Obama campaign has long taken a tack suggesting that those who don’t support the senator may well be racist. I’ve noted how this has manifested itself in the Jewish community. Sometimes it’s the campaign’s media surrogates who take this tack, sometimes it’s just the usual political organizations.

A week and a half ago the Baltimore Jewish Times looked at the views of Baltimore’s Orthodox community towards Senator Obama and there were two names missing from the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. What wasn’t missing was the typical “only the ignorant or racist wouldn’t support Sen. Obama comment, delivered by my “representative” State Delegate Sandy Rosenberg.

Mr. Rosenberg stirs his lemonade and chooses his words. He’s heard the bad buzz, too. It sounds like a “typical Republican smear campaign,” he says, carefully crafted to pick up on Jewish fears.

“If they could make John Kerry look like a draft dodger instead of the war hero he was,” Mr. Rosenberg says of the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign, “imagine what they can do to Obama,” the first black presidential candidate whose middle name is Hussein, to boot.

Well no, the criticisms of Sen. Kerry did not make him look like a draft dodger. They asked whether he betrayed his comrades in arms after he returned stateside. But that’s perhaps too subtle a point.

And what about substantive criticism of Sen. Obama, here’s how the article deals with two:

A woman calls the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES to report that a local radio talk show host said there is a mention on Mr. Obama’s official Web site of “Jews and oven,” an obvious allusion to the Holocaust. [We didn't find any.]

A member of the Orthodox community assures this reporter that one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers publicly said the hindrance to peace in the Mideast lies in New York and Miami, both cities with large Jewish populations.

As far as the first incident, this did indeed happen. Bill Levinson of Israpundit recorded a screenshot of the offending blog. The reason the reporter couldn’t find it is because the Barack Obama website took it down, but it was up.

Sen. Obama’s website allowed users to set up their own blogs on the campaign’s website. And in quite a few instances, those setting up blogs expressed vile antisemitic sentiments.When it became of these blogs, the campaign correctly deleted them quickly. But it still raises the question of why so many people who feel this way, feel that Sen. Obama is the preferred choice for president.

And the adviser who blamed the lack of peace in the Middle East on Jewish voters has a name.

Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, seemed to identify Jewish voters when asked to name the biggest obstacles to Middle East peace. “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote…here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it,” McPeak said.

But it’s not just McPeak who was problematic among Sen. Obama’s advisers. He was advised by Robert Malley the only member of the American team at Camp David in 2000 who didn’t blame the failure of the talks on Yasser Arafat. And Zbigniew Brzezinski endorsed the opinion of Walt and Mearsheimer.

And let’s not forget that Sen. Obama said himself that he opposed the Likud. If elections are held in Israel, it might very well be that a President Obama will have to deal with PM Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud. And we know that Obama will go into such a relationship with a negative perception.

(I’d also point out that J-Street, a supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group is funded by one Alan Solomont, who is also one of Sen. Obama’s financial supporters. J-Street believes that peace will only come when America pressures Israel to make concessions. I’d have to think that Mr. Solomont sees Sen. Obama as the candidate most likely to support this agenda.)

So instead of answering these concerns, those supporting Obama cite the “Barack is a Muslim” e-mails. (These most likely came from his opponents at the time: other Democrats.) I am informed. And my information tells me that Sen. Obama will not be as supportive of Israel as I would like. Israel is an important issue for me, though it isn’t the only one. I can’t think of any major issue where I prefer Sen. Obama’s approach to Sen McCain.

And let’s get to those two glaring omissions. Rev. Wright, who preached anti-White bigotry and antisemitism from the pulpit is an issue that ought not to go away. Rev. Wright didn’t take over a church that Sen. Obama attended. Sen. Obama sought out Rev. Wright as a way of bolstering his radical credentials. That’s not a smear. It’s a praise, written in a glowing profile of the senator appearing last year in Rolling Stone magazine.

And why is Sen. Lieberman’s ties to Sen. McCain not mentioned in the article. I don’t agree with Sen. Lieberman on domestic issues, but in foreign policy I mostly agree with him. Furthermore in a campaign supposedly about the new politics, Sen. Lieberman is Exhibit A of Sen. McCain’s cross-aisle appeal. It stands in stark contrast the partisanship displayed by Sen. Obama during his short senate tenure.

The most honest assessment from a Democratic official in the article came from former State Senator Paula Hollinger:

To Paula Hollinger, the current rhetoric in the Jewish community has a familiar ring. Mrs. Hollinger, the former veteran state senator from the 11th District, says the Orthodox register Democrat in order to vote in the primary elections. “But 99 percent of the time they vote Republican for president,” she says.

In the 11th District, for example, which includes heavily Jewish precincts in Pikesville and Owings Mills, the vote in presidential elections generally splits 50/50 Republicans to Democrats.

If Obama’s supporters want to convince more politically conservative Jews that he’s the right man, they need to explain and not just vilify.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The approach to threats against Israel is one of those things that is taken casually. Here’s Secretary Rice on the regular but (relatively) infrequent Qassams that still get fired into Israel despite the ceasefire with Hamas:

QUESTION: How does the ceasefire in Gaza help matters? Has it endured better than you imagined?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it has its ups and downs, obviously. But look, I - we said early on that if there - that calm in Gaza would be a useful thing because it - the Egyptians, who - with whom we worked, have managed to keep what is a very fragile situation at least stable, and that’s certainly a help to any process of trying to move forward on the peace process.

Ultimately, though, Gaza has to be resolved and it has to be resolved on the basis of the - Abu Mazen’s program for it, which is that legitimate Palestinian Authority institutions have to be reinstated. I think we want to continue to look at what can be done at the crossings for regularization of those ultimately along the lines of the November 2005 agreement. So this is not, I think, a metastable situation, but it’s a situation that for now has seemed to allow at least people to - you know, the levels of violence to stay low, and that’s welcome.

(h/t My Right Word)

Nothing about the threat from Hamas’s building of fortifications and re-arming. Somehow Abu Mazen (she’s using his nom de guerre, how reassuring) is going to impose his authority on Gaza.

And how’s that Abu Mazen thing going? Didn’t Israel just build his confidence? Why yes they did. The New York Times reports:

Israel released almost 200 Palestinian prisoners Monday in a good-will gesture aimed at reinvigorating the faltering peace process. Hours later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the country to make her own push for a deal between the two sides.

And what does this “good will gesture” entail?

Among those freed Monday were two men whom Israel says have “blood on their hands,” meaning they had been convicted in attacks that harmed Israelis. Said al-Atabeh, 57, who had been in custody since 1977, was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner.

“This is a great joy for our mothers and our people, but it remains a small step because we left behind us thousands of prisoners,” Mr. Atabeh said after his release, according to Reuters.

Mr. Atabeh had been convicted in bombings that killed one Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.

A second long-serving prisoner was Mohammed Abu Ali, who had been jailed since 1980 for the murder of an Israeli settler in the West Bank.

However, most of those set free had been arrested for lesser crimes within the past two years.

“It’s not easy for Israel to release prisoners,” said a government spokesman, Mark Regev, according to The Associated Press. “But we understand the importance of the prisoner issue for Palestinian society.”

(h/t Boker Tov Boulder)

Note that “blood on their hands” is in quotes. Why not just write “who were convicted of murder in the commission of acts of terror?” (without the quotes, of course) Why is almost as much time spent describing the prisoners by the length of time served as by the crimes they committed?

By emphasizing the time served changes their status from terrorists to prisoners. Put another way Snapped Shot asks and answers a question about the coverage of the prisoner release:

How does our “impartial” press choose to represent them?

You guessed it: As heroes.

And as far as the release of prisoners being important for Palestinian society, Israelly Cool explains why it’s important.

These murderers are but two of the “prisoners” we freed today, as a “goodwill” gesture to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. And he reciprocated with a goodwill gesture of his own - a threat that unless all the “prisoners” are freed, there will be no peace.

Speaking of gestures, this one made by the released prisoners does not mean “peace.” It means “V for victory”, and is basically a promise that the terrorism will continue.

JoshuaPundit writes (regarding Condoleeza Rice but the general point holds) about what’s not important:

No mention of course on whether it might matter a lot to the Israelis to keep these killers behind bars.I doubt that matter penetrates her consciousness.

Nor does it matter to Mahmoud Abbas, who referred to the released terrorists as ‘heroes’ and made a point of saying that no peace agreement with Israel was possible until all of the terrorists are released.Nor did eithr he or Condaleeza Rice have the common decency to mention a single word about Gilad Shalit, who’s still being held incommunicado in the Gaza Strip.

And as noted before past experience shows that these prisoner releases will lead to more terror, not peace.

Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.

The Washington Post describes the issue of prisoner releases like this:

Israel has periodically released Palestinian prisoners, whose fate is among the most politically and emotionally compelling issues for the Palestinian public, to shore up Abbas’s government. Abbas favors negotiations with Israel to create an independent Palestinian state, while the rival Hamas movement has advocated destruction of the Jewish state. The releases, although modest, are designed to show that Abbas’s approach yields rewards.

“Modest?” “yields rewards?” No mention that there’s a very good chance that a portion of the terrorist released will likely return to terrorism. So who receives the “rewards” other than terrorists who have seen their terms reduced, is not clear. No mention that the fellow who “favors negotiations” considers resistance (i.e. terrorism) to be peace. There’s something really Orwellian here.

And as a Blog for All writes:

It’s supposed to help bolster Fatah in their internecine struggle with Hamas, but all it does is provide more fodder for the terrorists to hold out hope that they can beat Israel for control over all territory West of the Jordan River.

Despite the romantic terms used to describe the prisoner release, they present a real risk to Israel. When will the world demand that the Palestinians take similar risks for peace?

Crossposted on Yourish.