Even this bogus online test thinks so.

You are a Social Moderate (50% permissive) and an… Economic Moderate (43% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Sen. Obama from the debate Tuesday night.

I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

The United States did not attack Iraq because of 9/11. Or not exclusively. This little tidbit is a reminder that Sen. Obama’s worldview is much different from that of George W. Bush or John McCain.

The reason why the Bush administration - with overwhelming Congressional support - decided to attack Iraq was because Iraq under Saddam had failed to come clean about its WMD program in accord with UN resolutions. Since the United States was uncertain, the government felt - especially in the wake of 9/11 - that it couldn’t take and find out that there Saddam had a WMD program when a SCUD landed in the United States or in the land of an ally loaded with such a warhead. Saddam also was giving aid to numerous terror groups. And despite what the MSM would have you believe, he did have ties to Al Qaeda, even if he had no role in 9/11.

But here’s the part that bothers me even more. One of the mantras of the Obama campaign is that he will use all the (presumably diplomatic) tools at his disposal to prevent Iran from going nuclear. The assumption is that these diplomatic tools will be effective. But Sen. Obama never seems to consider what would be if diplomacy fails.

Sen. Obama’s implication is that President Bush failed to use all the diplomatic tools available to him to bring Iraq into compliance. President Bush did try, but he was undermined (as Pres Clinton was before him somewhat) by countries like France, Germany and Russia that had commercial dealings with Saddam and were thus willing to subvert the UN resolutions that were supposed to bring him in line.

Rather than take a chance, President Bush chose to take action. Sen. Obama claims that a nuclear Iran is “intolerable.” But if it becomes inevitable because diplomacy fails will Sen. Obama continue using those tools? Or will he act?

Related from Anne Bayefsky:

Wake up. There is a genocidal maniac on the verge of reaching the point of no return in his ability to make a nuclear weapon. A fanatic with the stated ambition to murder five million Jews living in Israel — to start. A villain who has already funded and armed a terrorist war against the Jewish state that in 2006 forced one-third of Israel’s population to live underground for almost a month. In other words, an individual who is ready, willing, and able to give the nuclear trigger to a terrorist group — to terrorists who cannot be bargained with because they prefer their death to your freedom. As for the suggestion that the Mullahs are more powerful and nicer guys, the millions brutalized and subjugated in Iran tell a different story.

h/t LGF

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Sarah Palin’s coming to Richmond on Monday. She’ll be in Virginia Beach earlier that day. Apparently, we Richmonders are the poor stepchildren, because McCain will be there, but not here. Bummer.

My friend Sarah and I are going to see her. We will be bringing our cameras and camcorders. Richmond has a pretty high percentage of triple-L college students, so we expect much fun to be had outside (and inside) the Arthur Ashe Center.

They want us to wear red. I was thinking of wearing red and blue just to confuse people. Maybe on of my Fourth of July shirts will do.

Any other Richmonders heading out there?

I found something that both Camille Paglia and I agree on: Sarah Palin, and the way she’s been wronged by the mainstream feminists (those would be the radfems). Via Hot Air.

The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother — without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive.

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature.

As I keep ending my podcasts: Amen, Sister Suffragette. And that’s a Gilmore-ism, which was a show that featured not one, not two, not three, but four strong female major characters, and endless strong female minor characters, without emasculating the men on the show.

Here’s one reason why I think Obama is going to make the worst president ever: He has no empathy. He is a politician, yet how many times did he say “you” instead of “us” when speaking about the problems Americans are facing? Go back and listen to how many times he talked about how “you” are working two jobs, and “you” are struggling to pay your bills.

He is the worst kind of elitist: An unconscious one. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

It comes off as very cold and distant.

Obama, you’re no Bill Clinton.

I watched the debate tonight. John McCain is finished. He isn’t saying what the Americans want to hear, he’s not challenging Obama on the right issues, he’s not answering the questions in the way that the sound bites will be repeated around the water cooler tomorrow and, frankly, he comes off like your friendly grandpa sitting around the dinner table nattering on and on.

Obama is going to sweep into the nation, and I think he will be the worst president since Hoover, as I believe he will be even worse than Jimmy Carter.

The best thing about the debate was Tom Brokaw. I loved that he didn’t let Obama roll over him with his “Can I respond to that?” the way that Biden did to Ifill.

I’ll be going to the Sarah Palin rally on Monday, because I want to see her. But I hold out almost no hope that McCain will pull this out.

via memeorandum

A recent pro-Obama video has some of the Israeli officials who appeared in it upset, for they feel that it misrepresented their views.

Former head of the Mossad Ephraim Halevy and former IDF deputy chief of staff Maj.-Gen. Uzi Dayan accused the group of taking their words out of context, saying that when filmed they had been told that the issue at hand was the challenges facing the next man in the White House, and not that the film was aimed at endorsing Obama for president.

“It’s not only misleading, it was an interview about what the next president was going to have to deal with,” Dayan told The Jerusalem Post, “and to know that they used this interview and took [only] five seconds [of it], and put me in a list of people praising Barack Obama…

Shmuel Rosner points out that the video’s less a problem because it misrepresents Sen. Obama, than that it mis-represents Israel.

Again, the problem with this clip is not that it gives a misleading impression of Obama. It’s the impression it gives about Israel that’s wrong. Yes, one can find some Obama supporters among the ex-officials of the Israeli Defense forces, but they will be in the minority. One of them, Amnon Shahak, is shown in both clips. Shlomo Brom, Yossi Alpher and Shaul Arieli - names most Israelis (and surely Americans) will not recognize - are all knowledgeable, respectable people, but can be usually counted on to be in opposition to most things the Israeli defense establishment believes.

Gens. Brom, Alpher and Arieli (as well as Naomi Chasan, who is also mentioned as being on the video) are all supporters of J-Street a “pro-peace, pro-Israel” organization that is closely tied to Sen. Obama.

Still this doesn’t mean that the misrepresentation was done by the Obama campaign, but by a group that supports Sen. Obama.

Rosner’s point is reiterated by Israel Matzav:

This is especially significant because, as I noted in the earlier post, Dayan is the only one interviewed with ties to a party on the right of the political spectrum, and it was Dayan who allowed the video’s makers to claim that the generals interviewed were from “across the political spectrum.”

Two other retired generals who were interviewed - Amram Mitzna and Giora Inbar (who is also now apparently a US citizen since he said he would vote for Obama), stood by the comments, although they too admit that they had no idea why they were being filmed. The rest of the JPost article I linked above is a rehash of yesterday’s JPost article about the video.

More at Daled Amos.

The truth is that the last polling numbers I saw actually showed that Israelis prefer Sen. Obama to Sen. McCain by a small margin. I forget where I saw them. I believe that those polls even had him leading among Likud voters. I don’t recall who the polling organization was, though I find those numbers surprising. (Of course, that does not mean that they’re wrong.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Monday is the last day to register to vote in Virginia. If you haven’t registered by close of business October 6th, you won’t be voting for our next president.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by:

Someone who will go ballistic if the registrar screws up my change of address the way the DMV screwed things up six years ago.

What, you couldn’t tune in even for a minute to make it a nice, even 70 mil?

Final: 69,989,000 viewers — Palin-Biden the most-watched vp debate ever

Slackers.

Some people got their knickers bunched because of this part of the transcript (allegedly said by Joe Biden):

When we kicked - along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

CNN apologizes for the accidental inclusion from the Biden’s 2012 speech during inauguration of a new hospital wing in Wichita KS. The correct text should read:

When we kicked - along with Philippines, we kicked Chinese bases off the Moon, I said and Barack said, “Move Micronesian forces in there. Fill the Moon’s vacuum, because if you don’t know - if you don’t, Chinese will control it.” Er… the vacuum, I mean.

CNN was unavailable for further comments on the mistake.

Hat tip: Dick Stanley.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Go ahead. You know you want to talk about it.

I thought she did just fine, and it makes me feel a bit better about her after those horrible interviews. Now what I’d like to see is more of that Sarah Palin and less of the one who gives nothing but bullshit answers to the media. Sorry, Sarah, but you don’t get a bye for using the “Bad ol’ MSM!” routine in the debate tonight.

Like Kathleen Parker, I was seriously wondering if Palin wasn’t a really bad choice after all. Unlike Parker, I didn’t write a column about it.

This post is triggered by that post by Neil of A Cloud in Trousers. In which Neil joins the crowd of bleeding hearts demanding the release of five Cubans arrested by FBI in 1998 and put on trial for quite a few offenses (notice the source of the following quote, please):

There are a number of minor charges, including acting as agents of a foreign government without being registered with the US authorities (which the Five admit to), but the two main charges which three of them have been condemned to life sentences for are related to spying and murder.

I can agree with much of what Neil says: yes, Cuba is far from being a socialist heaven. Yes, the infamous US embargo on Cuba is stupid and only helps to perpetuate the Cuban regime. Yes, there is a strong possibility that the trial was partly rigged and the sentences dished out by the court were influenced by the venue.

However - the five never denied that they were Cuban intelligence agents, unlawfully operating on the territory of another country:

But the Five pointed out vigorously in their defense that they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.

(You will have to scroll down a lot in the linked site or search for “Who are the Cuban Five?” on that page to get to that quote). Without resorting to legal terminology (which I cannot do anyway), these people were spying, no matter what legal term is fitting to their occupation while in Miami. No matter what the previous source (a Marxist one, to be sure) tries to prove. The verbal trickery of the “agents of foreign government” and “monitoring the actions of terrorist groups” kind is really pathetic. Imagine a USA spy caught in Cuba “monitoring the activities” of something.

They may have gotten harsher sentences than were due to them. That is, if you rely solely on Granma - sourced propaganda and decide to believe that every other charge but spying is false. That is if you forget what exactly it is DGI, the Cuban foreign intelligence service, does for living. That is if you look at Desmond Tutu’s and Harold Pinter’s backsides as a sole source of that redeeming ray of hope.

In short - if you are ready to buy one-sided crap in unlimited doses.

Now ask yourself how many of the celebrities that join hands protesting the bitter fate of the Miami five have ever joined their manicured hands in protesting the fate of the jailed Cuban journalists, dissidents, the whole people? Does the name of Rev Tutu or that of Reb Pinter appear on one of these protests?

Yeah, but it’s hardly relevant to the case we discuss here. Or is it?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

This is why actors should stick to writing scripts.

I keep trying to figure out why Obama — who I so admire, seems to underwhelm in these debates. All I can come up with is that while everyone else aims up for these events — they aim to score, to excite, to appeal — Obama, who is so brilliant, has such understanding of the issues at play, such insight in how to re-shape where we are and how to proceed where we need to go… it seems like all his energy is spent pushing down: containing his thoughts. Suppressing the 20 sub-thoughts that follow each main thought. Speaking in measured tones lest he be perceived elitist or too academic. Keeping in check his healthy sense of the absurd — like when he kept trying to get a word in with McCain plowing away - - actually saying , “John…? Uh John…? Like a guy who’s lost the connection then just smiles and hangs up without re-dialing.

Really. The fact that he can put this on Huffington Post and not feel the least bit embarrassed just boggles my mind.

Jim Treacher pointed it out to me.

In fact, Jim Treacher has been posting quite a lot of funny things about the election. You should read them.

Well, I think McCain did all right, but he could have done better.

But one thing that utterly set my teeth on edge was Obama’s continually calling Senator McCain, “John.” You know, show some respect and give the man his title. He gave you yours.

Overall, though, I loved the format. I want to see a knockdown, drag-out like that. More and better next time.

Update: See, I wasn’t alone in being annoyed.

More than one person noticed that Obama repeatedly referred to McCain as “John.” It seems that Obama has picked up this bad habit from his running mate.

During the primaries the RNC did research and found that Hillary gained sympathy from listeners when her opponent called her by her first name instead of “Senator Clinton.” They heard it a sign of disrespect. Biden regularly refers to McCain as “John” often following the words, “my friend.” (With friends like these…)

It’s a small, but noticeable, tick and it sounds patronizing when Biden does it. “Folks” (to use another favorite politician’s tick) noticed that Obama now does it, too.

In his J-Street primer for American audiences (an op-ed in the Washington Post), J-Street’s founder, Jeremy Ben Ami wrote:

Grateful as I am for decades of U.S. friendship with Israel, I have to wonder, as the state my father helped found turns 60, just who is defining what it means to be pro-Israel in the United States these days.

In other words he’s asking, who gives others the right to claim that I’m not pro-Israel?

So now, guess what? Mr. Ben Ami has defined who can be pro-Israel.

But as Noah Pollak observed last week, that’s exactly what J-Street was doing with Sarah Palin. They declared - with absolute certainty - since Gov. Palin did not represent the views of most Jews, she couldn’t speak out against Iran!

So apparently, according to J-Street, you can define who is pro-Israel, if you have the correct political beliefs.

We see a similar hypocrisy with the NDJC - yes, for them Democratic comes before Jewish. During the past few years they took shots at Lincoln Chafee. I’m not saying they were undeserved. He was and is anti-Israel. But let’s look at one:

The New Republic’s blog notes the unprecedented nature of Republican rallying around anti-Israel Chafee:

So when the Republicans supported Chafee in a vain effort to hold onto the Senate, the NDJC saw fit to use this action as an indictment of Republicans. Fair enough.

So when the Obama campaign welcomed the endorsements of Republicans for Obama, led by one ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee what did we hear from the NDJC?

*crickets*

And when J-Street joined the NDJC from allowing Gov Palin to speak, did the NDJC distance itself from an organization one of whose advisory council members is the same, ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee? Did we hear a peep of protest? Again …

*crickets*

So for J-Street being pro-Israel is a privilege reserved for those who believe the same things they do. And for NDJC being anti-Israel is a disqualification - if you’re a Republican.

(I’m not going to try to square NDJC’s identification of Lincoln Chafee as anti-Israel with the apparent J-Street belief that he is pro-Israel. My head would explode.)

Speaking out against Ahmadinejad is as bi-partisan an issue as there could be. These two organizations pretending to be pro-Israel instead chose to make the even partisan and disqualified Gov. Palin from speaking at the event. But their hypocrisy regarding Israel is more proof that partisan politics for them came before confronting tyranny.

Regardless, at least one protest will go. An Iranian exile protest which will be protesting:

Ahmadinejad’s trip coincides with an appalling rise in public executions in Iran - victimizing juveniles in particular. In late July, in one day alone, 29 people were executed. His government continues to arrest and kill dissidents in prisons and crush anti-government protests. It is also conspiring to massacre nearly 3,500 Iranian dissident refugees at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Ahmadinejad, isolated and despised by the majority of Iranians at home, is pushing Iran and the region toward war and crisis by fomenting terrorism in Iraq and developing nuclear weapons.

Not everyone is ill-disposed toward Ahmadinejad:

But for Quakers and Mennonites who’ll be at the table, breaking bread with this controversial dignitary means drawing deeply on the same spiritual roots that sustained their embattled ancestors long ago.

“Jesus ate with lepers and with tax collectors, and in the United States right now, Iran would be in that category,” said Arli Klassen, the executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, an outreach arm for Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in the United States and Canada.

“The criticisms levied at Jesus were that he ate with … people of ill repute, and we’re getting similar criticisms.”

I wonder if these folks would ask Ahmadinejad about the increase of executions or what treatment a citizen of his country could expect if he converted to one of their religions. If last year’s dinner is any indication, that will not be the case.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s smile at times turned to a grimace as the panelists prodded him, politely, about his record on the Holocaust, human rights abuses, Israel and nuclear weapons development. Also politely, he conceded nothing, and often deflected the inquiries by turning the spotlight on the policies of the United States and Israel.

“Who are the ones that are filling their arsenals with nuclear weapons?” he said. “In the United States they have tested the fifth generation of atomic bunker bombs, missiles that go as far as 12,000 kilometers. Who is the real danger here?”

The Times of course was impressed with the “friendly, even warm, exchange,” regardless of whether it accomplished anything positive.

That’s why these phony pacifist religions get criticized. They’re going to the dinner to commiserate with a tyrant, giving him the cover of ecumenicism, when, in fact, he is intolerant.

And we can also see how successful talking with Ahmadinejad has been. Not at all.

And that’s similar to the problem with J-Street and NDJC. They’re now congratulating themselves for getting Palin’s speech canceled. But they have not one word of criticism for the Iranian tyrant. They have no words of criticism for the so-called pacifists who’ll shake Ahmadinejad’s blood soaked hands.

I have a hard time believing that having Gov. Palin speak at a protest of a tyrant is worse than those who receive him warmly. But J-Street and the NDJC can’t work up any outrage over a true outrage. Not only are J-Street and NDJC hypocritical, they have no sense of priorities.

Meryl has more on the Ahmadinejad protests.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“On the eve of Israel’s 60th Independence Day, the country’s population stands at 7,282,000″, says this site. Without arguing about this number - 7,281,999 of the citizens do not have a slightest idea what their minister of defense is doing lately. This quote summarizes how it looks from outside his feverish brain:

Senior Labor Party figures said Barak understands that he has to prevent Livni from consolidating her popularity from the prime minister’s chair, but does not want to be criticized for provoking elections. Barak is said to believe that Netanyahu will not join a Livni government, and this could be his pretext to call for elections. Livni’s associates said it was strange that Barak met with the opposition leader before finding time to meet with Livni, despite her attempts since Thursday to schedule such a meeting.

Oh well, hopefully he will understand eventually that after the elections he is pushing for he will not have a pot to piss in, politically speaking…

The other intriguing question is whether Barak knows what Ehud does… or vice versa?

More guesswork here. But no psychiatrists on the case so far.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Actually, it’s less than two hours until Ehud Olmert ends one of the most disgraceful leaderships of the modern State of Israel. I have no real hopes that Tzipi Livni will be much different, but she’s going to have to work harder to keep that government coalition going, and with any luck, Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak discussed ending the coalition and forcing new elections when they met the other day. It still won’t happen overnight. The earliest we will see new elections is three months from now:

The Knesset member tasked with the mission will be given 28 days, with a possible extension of 14 days. If this person fails, the president is authorized to order a different MK to form a coalition within an additional 28 days. Should the second MK fail to do so, the general elections will be moved up and will be held within 90 days.

That would be a good thing. Tzipi Livni will have been elected by fewer than 35,000 voters. Can you imagine a U.S. president being selected by less than half of one percent of the nation’s eligible voters? This is a government that should absolutely call new elections. She won with 16,936 votes. There are over five million eligible voters in Israel. Talk about selected, not elected. If the Israeli public stands for this—well, I’m going to stop here before I start hurting the feelings of my Israeli friends.

One name: Alan Solomont.

I posted a comment about him at LGF.

There’s suspicion among some observers that the National Jewish Democratic Council was a significant player in the decision to cancel invitations to all politicians to speak at the Stop Iran rally.

Solomonia wrote:

…let’s be clear, I’m sure the real culprit for politicizing this was the National Jewish Democratic Council, not the still-fringe in all but funding, J-Street

Similarly Wizbang wrote:

Enter the National Jewish Democratic Council, which supports the Obama Campaign. They were enlisted and put to the front to apply direct pressure to the Conference of Presidents, also a Jewish organization. And it is not a stretch to imagine (though wholly my conjecture) that the Conference of Presidents has donors among the NJDC, and therefore more than simply conceivable that there were threats of significant funding halts and other future obstacles from among powerful NJDC members.

I disagree. I think that J-Street was the prime mover. That’s because of Alan Solomont.

Solomont was one of the main forces behind J-Street. Here’s Solomont on why he helped found J-Street:

“The definition of what it means to be pro-Israel has come to diverge from pursuing a peace settlement,” said Alan Solomont, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser involved in the initiative. In recent years, he said, “We have heard the voices of neocons, and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard.”

Solomont also saw in the current Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, a kindred spirit.

Solomont, however, approaches his work not as just helping a candidate but as furthering a cause.

“This is a mission-driven, value-laden enterprise, and I am philosophical about it,” he said during an interview in the memorabilia-filled conference room of his office in this Boston suburb.

Throughout the conversation, Solomont emphasized that raising money is a means to an end: getting politicians who share his goals of a more economically and socially just country. He said his work is deeply driven by the Jewish teachings he learned growing up in an observant household in the nearby town of Brookline.

There’s more:

“The war on poverty created structures for citizen involvement, and my work centered on getting people empowered through collective action,” he said.

After working as a community organizer Solomont, who has undergraduate degrees in nursing and political science, made his wealth in the nursing home and senior home health care businesses. He now devotes almost all his time to political and philanthropic work.

Solomont says working as an organizer helped him form an instant bond with Obama, who undertook similar efforts in Chicago in the 1980s.

Alan Solomont supports Barack Obama because he sees someone who holds the same values. J-Street’s participation in the effort to torpedo Palin’s appearance at the anti-Iran rally is what suggests that this was a coordinated effort run by the Democratic party to dis-invite her, regardless of cost.

In a profile of Solomont from four years ago, here’s how he’s described:

“The word ‘fund-raiser, fund-raiser, fund-raiser’ keeps repeating,” remarks Steve Grossman, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime friend of the Solomonts. “But what I think people don’t understand as well about Alan and Susan is that they have a great strategic sense, so they can synthesize and bring multiple skills to the table.”

See that phrase “strategic sense.” The campaign against having Palin speak had a feel of being purposeful. Let’s go back to Wizbang again to understand the motivation:

Make no mistake that this was an Obama op and that it was Obama operatives directing the screenplay. Upon news of Palin’s invitation, it was assured that the event would garner a higher level of attention than it already commanded. And the images and footage of Palin speaking in protest (popular protest, it should be added) of Iran and the messianic Ahmadinejad upon the backdrop of the common perception of Obama’s weakness in foreign policy and national security simply could not stand. Furthermore, it would have provided endless campaign fodder with Palin shown standing against the world’s foremost state sponsor of international terrorism amid the audio-visual bites of Obama stating he would hold talks with Iran without preconditions. The effects would potentially be more than just stinging.

So I think it was J-Street that was the senior partner to the Obama campaign in torpedoing the anti-Ahmadinejad rally.

Tigerhawk sums it up nicely:

“Whether Barack Obama can be said to be ‘good for the Jews’ is too portentous a question even for this blog. It is now safe to say, however, that his campaign is not.”

(h/t Instapundit)

UPDATE: Lynn-B (In Context) writes in the comments:

You make a convincing case that Solomont had the motivation and the ideology to pull these strings but not that he had the clout. I don’t see it. J-Street is still a legend in its own mind. It doesn’t have the power to influence the Conference. The NJDC, however, clearly does. And it was quite transparent in its attempts.

Perhaps I’m guilty of allowing my distaste for J-Street exaggerate their true level of influence - and thus I’m helping them trumpet their reputation unnecessarily. But what I’m trying to argue is that J-Street is an adjunct of the Obama campaign not an allied movement and that J-Street is a lot more tied in to the Democratic party.

Look at J-Street’s advisory council. One name that sticks out is Debra Delee, who is not only CEO of APN but is also, like Alan Solomont, a Democratic superdelegate. My guess is that she’s not alone. So while the NJDC may promote the Democratic party, my guess (and it’s only a guess,) is that J-Street is - in large part - the Democratic party.

I’m willing to concede that I might be giving too much credit to J-Street. But I don’t think so. But I’ll have to admit I don’t have strong proof of that.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Why is it, exactly, that so many Jews are Democrats? That’s right. Because Democrats are the champions of liberal, social causes. They’re against tyranny and all for liberty, freedom, and especially, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

But heaven help you if you go against what the Democrats want. Like, say, having Sarah Palin appear in the same venue as Hillary Clinton, even if it’s to protest Jew-hater Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Because then, forget about your freedoms of association, speech, and assembly.

Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came as the result of intense pressure from Democrats.

[...] Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

[...] The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, “it could jeopardize their tax exempt status” if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand.

So all politicians were disinvited, most prominently, Palin.

Got that? Not only would Clinton not appear, but if the groups did not disinvite Palin, Democrats threatened their tax-exempt status. Why? Because they’d sic the IRS on them by calling it a political event. Who was threatened? Well, basically, every major Jewish group in America.

The thing that I hate the most about this? It won’t stop my liberal Jewish friends from voting Democrat in any way. It won’t even make them think twice about the tactics used by the Democrats. And it’s far, far worse than Soccer Dad wrote about the other day. CBS didn’t have the story about Jewish organizations having their tax-exempt status revoked for having Palin speak at the rally.

That’s not a political party pressuring groups to do something. That’s outright break-your-kneecap, Mafia-style blackmail threats.

In fact, those are precisely the kinds of tactics that the Jewish groups will be protesting on Monday. We just never expected them from the Democrats.

Update: Soccerdad has more on the Obama advisor that’s knee-deep in the disinvitation campaign.

I don’t know how many times I read at the NJDC website that support for Israel is bipartisan. But that’s been the mantra there. If anyone had temerity to criticize Democrats for their lack of commitment on Israel, that’s the cliche that NJDC would trot out in defense. Never mind that a lot more Democrats than Republicans are skeptical of Israel’s rights or are overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, that’s the claim NJDC would make.

Now the mask is off:

Yesterday, NJDC said that Monday’s protest against Ahmadinejad was too important to be tainted by partisanship. Today, NJDC commends the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs for making the right decision by withdrawing their invitation to Governor Sarah Palin. This decision shows that bi-partisan solidarity against President Ahmadinejad has won out over partisanship - even in this highly charged election year.

NJDC had no problem with partisanship when Sen. Clinton was the scheduled speaker, so the issue isn’t partisanship. And contrary to NJDC’s claim this shows non-partisan support for the anti-Ahmadinejad rally, not bi-partisan support.

Similarly the anti-Israel group that calls itself pro-Israel, J-Street, protested Gov. Palin’s scheduled speech to the rally:

Sarah Palin is scheduled to headline Monday’s rally in New York of Americans Jews concerned about the threat Iran poses to the United States and Israel.

Sarah Palin at a rally to unify American Jews on Iran? Really?

Palin stands diametrically opposed to the majority of American Jews on nearly all issues - including on Iran. With just a few days left before the rally, we have no time to lose.

Now parse that statement. In what way is Palin’s stand on Iran contrary the views of American Jews? Because she stated that Israel had a right to defend itself?

More generally, the implication is that no one has the right to be pro-Israel (in J-Street’s anti-Israel way) unless they believe all the right things. Noah Pollak had it right.

This is appalling. When did abortion and the environment become issues of unique concern to Jews? They of course are not, any more than taxes and social security have any special relevance to Christians. J Street is attempting to bludgeon Palin with disapproval from the Jewish community when in fact it is the liberal community that detests her.

What does J Street want its few acolytes to do? Harass the organizers of the Iran rally until they disinvite Palin — you know, in the spirit of inclusiveness and democracy.

Hot Air:

She was willing to go but the Democrats didn’t want to share a spotlight with her. So rather than let her attend and use her presence to drum up attention for the cause they’re ostensibly there to advance, the left muscled the organizers into canceling all politicians’ invites.

Going back to the NJDC, shouldn’t the priority be the opposite? Shouldn’t the priority have been that the issue of standing up to Iran is so important that even Democrats would be willing to appear with a Republican to show American resolve. Messianic times might be marked by a lamb lying down with a lion, but apparently it will not include Democratic tolerance for Republicans.

At a time when Democrats fear that Jews might not vote for Barach Obama in the same proportions that they usually do, the Obama campaign takes a gimme and absolutely fumbles it.

Red State:

But that’s all right. This is the candidate that the Democrats wanted, this is the candidate that the Democrats deserve, and this is the candidate that the Democrats got; and I offer the pious hope that they fully experience every aspect of their choice, down to the very molecular level.

I hope the Republicans play this up. I listened to Ben Cardin the other night claiming how strong Obama would be against Iran. Now I see that Obama won’t even ensure that one of his proxies would speak at a rally to register his symbolic opposition to Iran. Do I really think he’ll do anything substantive as President?

The McCain campaign sees an opportunity and takes full advantage:

This issue is too important to fall victim to partisan politics. Instead of pressuring Senator Clinton to withdraw and pressuring the event’s organizers to disinvite Governor Palin, we hope Senator Obama will consider lending his own voice to this cause. And if Senator subsequently wishes to clarify any remarks that might be misconstrued, he will have the opportunity to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions after he speaks at the UN the folllowing day. After all, the last time Senator Obama took the stage to address a nonpartisan, pro-Israel audience, his call for Jerusalem to remain the “undivided” capital of a Jewish state was easily clarified the next day.

Still it’s puzzling as to exactly what’s going on. Shmuel Rosner offers some explanations.

The first question now is whether it was Sen. Clinton’s idea to withdraw or whether she did so on orders from the Obama campaign. I can understand that she was miffed that she wasn’t told about Palin’s invitation by the organizers, but Rosner didn’t think that was a reason for her to withdraw.

So did Hillary - looking to 2012 - see this as a way to make Obama look bad in the eyes of Jewish voters and the Obama campaign stupidly followed along with her faux outrage? Or was the Obama campaign so intent on preventing Gov. Palin from establishing pro-Israel credentials they wanted to force her out whatever the cost?

Regardless the campaign got its Jewish allies NJDC and J-Street - who are vastly more liberal than the Jewish community as a whole - to claim that the event ought to be “non-partisan” - figuring that those groups would inoculate the campaign against charges of playing politics by the wider Jewish community.

Jennifer Rubin has more tawdry details.

More discussion at memeorandum.

Was this a really good time to show that the Democratic commitment to stopping Iran was less than 100%? Uh, no.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

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.

If we go back four years and two months we learn:

Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants, operating from hideouts suspected to be along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, are directing a Qaeda effort to launch an attack in the United States sometime this year, senior Bush administration officials said on Thursday.

”What we know about this most recent information is that it is being directed from the senior most levels of the Al Qaeda organization,” said a senior official at a briefing for reporters. He added, ”We know that this leadership continues to operate along the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Counterterrorism officials have said for weeks that they are increasingly worried by a continuing stream of intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda wanted to carry out a significant terror attack on United States soil this year. But until the comments of the senior administration officials on Thursday, it was not clear that Mr. bin Laden and top deputies like Ayman Zawahiri were responsible for the concern.

Another senior administration official said on Thursday that the intelligence reports — apparently drawn partly from interviews with captured Qaeda members and partly from other intelligence — referred to efforts ”to inflict catastrophic effects” before the election.

The article reports that the nature of the threat was “unspecific” leading me to believe that it never got much past the wishing stage. For some reason or another. Still, it’s incredible that there was no such chatter this year. Was there?

And we if we go back to right before the election we recall that Osama bin Laden made a rather specific threat.

The Islamist website Al-Qal’a explained what this sentence meant: “This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, ‘Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,’ it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn’t treat all American people as if they’re the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections.” [3]

Apparently, unable to strike before the elections, Bin Laden attempted to bully the American electorate into voting for John Kerry. It likely didn’t have any effect. But still remember he made a threat and never carried it out.

Jonathan Spyer has more as to what has happened to Al Qaeda since 9/11.

Al-Qaida has combined sometimes nightmarishly effective tactical ability with a somewhat other-worldly, incoherent political and strategic program. Political Islam is transforming the politics of the Middle East, and represents a key strategic challenge to the west. But the particular version of it represented by the perpetrators of 9/11 is today more of a murderous side-show than the nerve center of the future Caliphate which it likes to imagine itself.

Al Qaeda, Spyer reports, has been effective in getting its message out to like minded organizations, but operationally it has suffered numerous setback over the past seven years.

Abe Greenwald summarizes some of these losses:

Every criticism of President Bush’s national security record begins rightly with the charge that Osama bin Laden has not been captured or confirmed dead. Any honest defense of Bush must reckon with this fact. The story goes that in 2003 U.S. forces abandoned the hunt for bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan and shifted their focus onto Iraq, giving the al Qaeda leader a free pass so that we could take up arms against a regime unconnected to the attacks of September 11. Let’s put aside the fact that this is a false choice. And let’s put aside questions about the claim’s legitimacy regarding timelines, intelligence agencies, roaming fighters, Iraq’s terrorist ties, and the dynamics of force deployment, and simply accept the accusation at its most damning. To wit: Bush lost bin Laden by going into Iraq. Okay: If I were offered the choice of taking out one al Qaeda mastermind who had recently been reduced to the status of cave-dwelling spoken-word artist or more than a thousand senior al Qaeda operatives and tens of thousands of armed Islamist soldiers, I would choose the latter a thousand out of a thousand times.

And the proof is in the pudding. Consider the decimated state of al Qaeda and related organizations since they’ve come up against overwhelming American force in Iraq. As CIA director Michael Hayden recently put it, we’ve seen “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally.” Would the hunt for one man in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan have yielded better results?

While Al Qaeda remains a force to be reckoned with, it cannot act as it did seven years ago. This means that whatever mistakes President Bush has made along the way, he has succeeded in the big picture. Will whoever succeeds him take the calm we have experienced over the past seven years for granted and relax his vigilance or will he remain committed to keeping the forces of the Islamists on the defensive. Osama hasn’t barked in seven years on American soil. What will it take to extend that record?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Click here.

Laugh.

Don’t be drinking or eating.

Jon, I want that on a t-shirt.

Let me try once again to explain to the doubters out there why I don’t care that Palin’s views on abortion are different than mine. Or that she’s a “Christianist,” as Asshole Andrew Sullivan keeps calling her. Or that she and I may not see eye to eye on many issues. The fact is, it’s 2008, and it’s about damned time a woman was a member of at least one of the two national presidential tickets.

The pundits are telling us that angry would-be Hillary voters won’t vote for Palin. The pundits are wrong. They will vote for Palin, and they are moving to the right for this election—the polls keep coming up McCain, after having been Obama, Obama, Obama. It’s not just a post-convention bounce. It is the excitement that having a female candidate is engendering (pardon the pun).

Those of you who don’t get it simply aren’t going to get it. It’s the same reaction I get when I try to explain the difference between Judaism the religion, and Judaism the culture. If you don’t get it, I am wasting my time trying to explain the differences. But let me try once more.

Year after year after year, women watch as the leaders of this nation, the leaders of corporations, and the leaders of the world all look pretty much the same: They’re men. There are precious few women in world leadership positions. And it’s not because we haven’t been out there for the past forty years. The feminist revolution has been around for long enough for women to be in leadership positions. And yet—we are not. And part of that reason is that the old boys’ network does exist. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. Name the last powerful woman in the Senate or House of Representatives whose name isn’t Clinton. Tell me what happened to Geraldine Ferraro after her run for VP. Tell me how many women are serving in the Senate now.

Sixteen.

How many women Senators have there been?

Thirty-five.

How many women Presidential candidates? Vice-Presidential candidates?

Governors?

Twenty-nine.

How many women have been the heads of the DNC or RNC? Secretaries of State? Ambassadors to important countries? Chiefs of Staff?

There has been a dearth of female leadership in this nation, but there has not been a dearth of women on leadership tracks to choose from—in spite of the constant refrain that is so. It’s almost like the same old stupid “Gee, where are all the women political bloggers?” discussion that gets rolled out every time some idiot wants to troll for links. We’re here. But that glass ceiling exists. It’s not our imagination. I work for a company that only has a female executive because they bought a company with a woman president. In 2008, I work for a company that had no women executives at all. Not. One. So do not tell me that women are simply imagining the barriers that still exist for women in the corporate and government structures. It’s pretty easily proven by the numbers.

Sixteen women senators. Women make up half the population of the United States, but only sixteen percent of the Senate. Granted, representation isn’t a one-for-one deal, but it’s effing 2008, not 1978. We’ve been in politics for long enough to have better representation than that.

So now perhaps you begin to see why Sarah Palin is so exciting to ALL women, not just women whose politics already agree with her. Even the women who hate her are secretly glad to see a woman on the ticket for the highest office in the land.

Women are going to vote for McCain for various reasons. But a fair amount of women are going to vote for him because he put a woman on the ticket. If you think that’s tokenism, if you think that’s patronizing, if you think it’s hollow symbolism, you haven’t been paying much attention to what most women feel.

We want to see Sarah Palin succeed, because it will move us forward in ways equally as important as Barck Obama’s candidacy has moved African Americans forward.

It ain’t tokenism. It’s about effing time.

Daled Amos concludes why he doesn’t trust Sen. Biden on Israel:

Against this background of saying one thing but doing another–while I appreciate what Biden says about Israel, I am concerned that once he is in a different position, one where he will have input on policy and no longer need to score points with his constituency by associating himself with particular Senate bills, Biden will show a different agenda. Under those circumstances, I just don’t trust Biden to keep his promises to Israel.

And indeed a recent statement of his:

It is quite a swipe at the organized Jewish community that the Jerusalem Post is reporting Senator Biden has launched against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “I take a backseat to no one — including Aipac — when it comes to supporting Israel,” the Post quotes the Delaware Democrat just chosen as Senator Obama’s running mate as saying. “They don’t speak for the entire Jewish community. There are other organizations that are just as strong and consequential,” he said.
“Aipac does not speak for the State of Israel.”

… raised questions at the NY Sun:

Well, it is true that Aipac does not speak for the state of Israel; it is not a foreign agent. But Aipac is the formal voice of the pro-Israel lobby in America, and through its governance structure, represents the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that is the umbrella group for the Jewish community in this country. Aipac has not publicly criticized Mr. Biden, though it did take different stances than he did on some Iran-related legislation. Aipac has described Mr. Biden as pro-Israel, a description whose accuracy we do not dispute.

If Mr. Biden, though, really thinks there are other American Jewish organizations that are as strong or as consequential as Aipac when it comes to the America-Israel relationship it sure will be illuminating to see him name them. If he has in mind dovish groups such as the Israel Policy Forum or the J Street Project, Mr. Biden is only going to hurt the Obama ticket with that portion of the Jewish vote that is actually up for grabs in this election.

Jennifer Rubin characterizes Biden’s statement as

It is further evidence of poor temperament, something that no amount of study can solve. Putting aside the merits of his dispute with AIPAC, the tone and the fact that he is in a public spat with a key representative group from a key constituency says something about his fitness for high office. His mouth and penchant for verbosity are only part of the Biden problem. He is incapable of behaving with restraint, modesty and discretion — the very qualities you expect in a leader in high office.

But I think Rubin and the Sun are missing something here. I don’t believe that Biden’s statement is out of line with Sen. Obama’s views at all or reflective of a problem with his tempermant. Keep in mind that Sen. Obama said:

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” the Illinois senator and contender for the Democratic presidential nominee told a group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Sunday. “If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress.”

Substitute AIPAC for Likud and the statements sound very similar. And indeed there’s a school of thought on the Middle East that AIPAC is representative of the Likud. (It’s actually, usually representative of whatever party is in power in Israel.)

Or consider that J-Street an organization that would seem to be in line with Biden’s statement, J-Street is funded by Alan Solomont, one of Sen. Obama’s main fundraisers.

Or consider that the group of Republicans for Obama have a record of being anti-Israel.

This morning, former Iowa Republican Congressman Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, and prominent lawyer and former White House intelligence advisor Rita E. Hauser will host a conference call to endorse Senator Barack Obama and announce the formation of Republicans for Obama.

The theme continues: these Republicans — with the exception of Jim Leach — also are very cool towards the American-Israel relationship.

I don’t think that Sen. Biden’s remarks about AIPAC can be construed as anything other than a sign that a President Obama, would take a more adversarial approach to Israel than the previous two administrations.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Brian Carney writes in the WSJ:

Meanwhile, 51% of those surveyed thought the press was “trying to hurt” Mrs. Palin with its coverage.

Perhaps most troubling for the press corps, though, was this finding: “55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations.”

No doubt that’ the reason the editors of the Washington Post keep on harping on campaign donations. They hope the the public won’t scrutinize them too closely.

(via memeorandum)

Read Ocean Guy’s devastating attack on the media “cocoon”

Journalists are stuck on stupid and almost completely unable to realize that alternative news sources are accessible to a much larger percentage of the general public. And another fact that journalists and editors are seemingly oblivious to, is that the percentage of the general public that is routinely well INFORMED, is informed because they are using a wide variety of news sources. No longer are we only reading the NYT and Washington Post and paying attention to the network news.

For at least a decade, the most informed segment of our population, the neighborhood and office opinion leaders, have been using that entire spectrum of news sources to inform ourselves. We still read the “old media” but… as news junkies and internauts, we have a vast array of additional news sources right at our fingertips. The distributed intelligence and collective experience of the blogosphere alone is awesome, but blogs are only a small portion of the total information available. Meanwhile, Journalists have responded to this change in news distribution by covering their ears and eyes and loudly singing, “LaLa Lalala, LaLa Lalala…” in a futile attempt to ignore their pesky critical audience.

And as if you need proof the Counterterrorism blog reports:

I see one after another of the mainstream media outlets which have made important contributions to the factual underpinnings of the counter-terrorism effort dropping off that beat. Editors in the print media are shifting terrorism experts on their staffs towards investigations of political candidates. At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories (I haven’t had time to chase down everybody in “the business”).

The CT blog notes that it is especially unfortunate that these specialists are being moved away from the counterterrorism beat at the same time that the Bush administration is acting ever more aggressively against terror organizations as its term approaches the end.

This leads Instapundit to note wryly:

SHIFTING RESOURCES TO FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Oh, please.

Any idiot can get a blog on DKos. And this ridiculous accusation is proof that many idiots do.

Oh, wait. That was Andrew Sullivan’s link.

Here’s the Daily Kos moron’s blog.

These unerring detectives have Photographic! Evidence! that will shock you!!

And they’ve been slammed to the mat by—facts.

Unless Bristol was pregnant for fourteen months, the baby is Sarah Palin’s. And it’s been confirmed by Kos Kiddie “Red Pen”:

Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

That is all.

Morons. Sexist, misogynist sons of bitches. STUPID sexist, misogynist sons of bitches.

Way to prove how progessive you are, lefties. Way to keep women wanting to vote for your candidate. Just keep on slamming Sarah at every opportunity, sinking lower and lower as you go, and you will drive me firmly into the arms of the right. You’ve already lost me for two Presidential elections. That’s right, you lost a feminist who was a lifelong Democratic voter. At this rate, you will never get me back.

Update: Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Doesn’t change a word I wrote in this post.

This is the sentiment, exactly, on what many women feel about Obama not choosing Hillary for VP:

“If 18 million votes is not enough, what does it take in the Democratic Party to get a woman on the ticket?”

Time was, when the two top candidates were in a statistical tie, no one was “anointed.” They fought it out on the floor of the convention, and then the loser became the VP candidate.

Then again, this is also the fault of the arcane rules the Dems chose so that they could take the choice away from the voters and put it back into career politicians’ hands (read: Superdelegates). One person, one vote? Not for them.

What people don’t understand when they fling around the easy label of “identity politics” is that like it or not, identity politics exist. When we see the sexist and misogynist comments on blogs and online news sites, we tend to get angry. It’s something that comes up every single time. I have never seen a discussion on any kind of women’s issue that doesn’t devolve into sexism and/or misogyny. Or, worst of all, the pretense that white males are being discriminated against as much as, if not more than, women and minorities. Shyeah. How many white male Senators are there again? How many female and minority candidates for VP and president have there been again?

But I’m getting off the point. The point is, the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP underlines the perception that women were slighted, yet again, by the Democrats. And that isn’t really what the Democrats want.

As I said, I was going to vote for McCain anyway. The addition of Palin has made me want to pay attention for the rest of the campaign. And the reaction from the Democrats and progressives?

Despicable.