Get a load of this guy’s name:

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing

Talk about having the perfect name. That’s like being an Indy 500 winner named Driver.

You know, I don’t think Obama has any clue how utterly elitist he comes off. From his speech to a crowd of Hollywood celebrities and money people last night, in a $28,500 dinner at a mansion we’ve all seen in the movies. Here’s what Obama told the guests who ponied up $57,000 a couple:

Obama asked the crowd to “keep steady”” in the remaining 48 days until Election day and to remember that his campaign “is about those who will never see the inside of a building like this and don’t resent the success that’s represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.”

And then he went to pay his respects to the Hollywood proletariats, who could only afford the $2,500 cost of the ballroom speech (although many stars, of course, went to both).

Please. If this guy ever felt the same pressures as the working man and woman in America, I have yet to hear about it. Obama never had to juggle the bills, deciding which could be put off and which had to be paid on penalty of getting them thrown to a collection agency. Obama never had to worry where the money for the rent was going to come from, or how to afford to feed his family after paying all the other bills. It shows every single time he tries to relate to “the common man” in his speeches. He constantly comes off as an elitist, out-of-touch snob complaining about the price of arugula. Hey, Obama? The working man and women, they mostly eat lettuce. Iceberg. Sometimes romaine. Arugula? That’s for cooking shows.

Keep on making speeches like this, and you’ll eventually stop wondering why your support is disappearing. This is America. Nobody likes a snob. Wait, that’s not true. Snobs like each other. But us working stiffs? We see right through you.

Today is the day that PM Ehud Olmert has dreaded for weeks. Today is the day when he might very well end his political career. The NYT reports:

The selection of a new head of the party, Kadima, was prompted by police investigations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on allegations that he took money illegally while he was mayor of Jerusalem and industry minister. Mr. Olmert has promised to step down, but is expected to stay on as a caretaker prime minister until a new coalition is formed.

Mr. Olmert is still keen to reach some kind of historic peace agreement with the Palestinians before he finally ends his term.

David Hazony expands on those last two sentences:

Two things make me wonder whether he is really leaving us after all. First, Olmert has continued making bold statements about the peace process, yesterday veering sharply to the Left, warning Israelis that a peace agreement with the Palestinians will require some kind of land exchange, in which Israel gets to keep large settlement blocs in exchange for territory on the pre-1967 side of the border, announcing that Israel would participate in some kind of international plan for the refugees, which really means agreeing to absorb some fairly small number in order to give the Palestinians the ability to say they had “returned” refugees to their 1948 homeland. He also apologized for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

The second is that he yesterday told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who wished to give him an honorable farewell, that no good-byes are needed, since “I’ll still be here.”

Hazony suggests that Olmert is planning to stay on as long as he can, if not as Prime Minister then perhaps as a “special envoy” like Tony Blair (only on the Israel stage, not with the same international flavor that Blair’s role has.)

Maybe that’s why Shmuel Rosner doesn’t see much excitement in Israel. Check out his multiple choice quiz.

One more note about the Times article:

Class and ethnicity have entered into the contest, with Jews of Middle Eastern origin, the Sephardim, seeming to favor Mr. Mofaz while those of European origin, the Ashkenazim, who tend to be better off and better educated, preferring Ms. Livni.

The condescension towards Sephardim is pretty blatant isn’t it? Could you imagine a newspaper report in this country:

Blacks support candidate A but whites who tend to be better off and better educated prefer candidate B.

Think about it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Notice what’s missing from this headline from the NYT?

Hamas Strikes at Gaza Clan Known for Criminal Activity

Well, let’s look at the first paragraph of the story:

Eleven members of a large Palestinian clan, including a 1-year-old, were killed along with a Hamas police officer late Monday and early Tuesday, when Hamas forces clashed with gunmen at the family’s compound here, witnesses said.

The number of dead. If Israel had targeted a Qassam launching site and it had been close to a home and the resulting explosion killed eleven people including a baby, what would the headline have read?

Israeli raid in Gaza kills baby, ten others

Now notice what’s missing from my hypothetical headline. I didn’t include the reason for the Israeli raid, but the headline defending a Hamas assault on a residential neighborhood mentions “criminal activity.”

Elder of Ziyon, points out that the Doghmush clan was hardly innocent.

To be fair, the Doghmushes are hardly innocent. According to the usually anti-Hamas Firas Press, the Doghmushes fired rockets and mortars from their compound towards Mahmoud al-Zahhar’s house in Gaza City during the fighting as well. So both sides have wanton disregard for civilian lives.

Still that doesn’t change the implication of the headline. No headline about an Israeli raid that killed eleven people in Gaza would contain the phrase “to halt terror attacks,” or “to halt militant attacks.”

Israeli raids that kill Palestinians are reported by identifying the number killed as if the death toll by itself stands as an indictment of the Israeli action. But it’s not just that the headline that justifies the Hamas attack. Here’s the second paragraph:

The assault on the powerful Dagmush clan, notorious for both militant and criminal activity, signaled an apex in the campaign by Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, to impose internal order, and it was welcomed by many people here. The Dagmush family was considered the last large clan challenging Hamas authority in Gaza, after Hamas cracked down in early August on the Hillis clan, which is loyal to Hamas’s rival, Fatah.

Again phrases like “impose internal order” and “welcomed by many people here” would not be found in an article about an Israeli raid. The clan is described as “notorious” and “criminal.” In an article about an Israeli raid, we’d get the term “militant” but never “terrorist” even if the actions precipitating the raid fit the dictionary definition of a terror attack.

Also the terror activity that Israel was defending against would have been qualified with “Israeli military sources say,” instead of described in definite fashion as the “militant and criminal activity” was presented here.

The headline and second paragraph were both written in exculpatory fashion. If Israel had been defending civilians in Sderot the tone would have been accusatory.

More from Israelly Cool and Meryl.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

For the sake of brevity I have omitted the word “mad” in the headline, you might want to work out by yourself where it fits.

We are used to joke about that famous “three million presidents”* thing, about three Jooz having five opinions and more and more in the same vein. But every joke is half the truth, and the problem of our infighting is far from being a joke. United we stand, but united we are on very rare occasions, and rarely we take a breather from tearing the nation apart. I am never tired repeating this. But Ami Isseroff does it so much better in the latest piece The biggest danger to Israel.

The worst period in the early history of ancient Israel was the time of the Judges, of which the Book of Judges states more than once, In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The gift of men like Herzl and David Ben-Gurion is that they were able to overcome the futile, petty and egotistical quarrels of Diaspora Jewish life and rabbinical Judaism, and to produce a united people, ready to undertake sovereignty.

What happens when these elements are missing?

WYSIWYG, ladies and gentlemen - What You See Is What You Get, and it’s past time to stop and do something about it.

But read the whole article, please.

(*) The story goes more or less like this: in a meeting between Nixon and Ben-Gurion, the former complained about the burden of managing a country of 200 million citizens. Ben Gurion countered: “Imagine the problem of managing a country of three million presidents”.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Say, how many headlines you think this would create if it had been the IDF that killed a baby?

Baby among 11 dead after Hamas raids criminal gang’s Gaza base
Forces from Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza, attacked a compound belonging to a powerful criminal gang yesterday in a heavy street battle that left 11 dead, including a baby boy.

The fighting began on Monday when a Hamas policeman was killed with a shot to the head while Hamas forces were trying to arrest a wanted member of the Doghmush clan inside the headquarters of the Gaza municipality. After the shooting, Hamas mounted a major raid on the clan in al-Sabra in eastern Gaza.

The attack lasted until dawn yesterday, with heavy fighting in the streets of the city. Another Hamas policeman was killed along with 10 members of the clan, all young men apart from two children, a boy aged one and a 16-year-old, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. A further 42 people were injured.

Hamas said its forces had been involved in an operation against “fugitives”.

But it’s not Israel, it’s Hamas, so the AP doesn’t bother putting out hourly updates. The AFP doesn’t even mention the dead baby. Reuters barely mentions it. But there are no breathless updates, no constantly circulating death and casualty updates, no quotes from mourning relatives, no pictures of the bloody child held out to dozens of screaming Palestinians.

Funny, that.

I guess dead Palestinian babies don’t count when Palestinians are causing the deaths by virtue of not caring that they’re sending RPGs into a house. Funny how Desmond Tutu doesn’t come out and call those war crimes.

Well, actually, no, not really. We all know about Israeli Double Standard Time. This is just more evidence of the media bias.