DISQUS

Even my 85+ year old grandparents use a computer. Their opinion of McCain: too "old."


But this is kind of a pointless post if you think about it. I mean, if McCain doesn't use a computer, then he's never going to see this post. And I doubt most of his supporters have ever read a blog. So aren't we preaching to the choir?

@Craig


"On a related note, one would think the Supreme Court would want to uphold the Constitution, no?"



Good luck getting this in front of the Supreme Court, let alone a federal judge. Since the whole damn program is secret, how the hell can you establish standing in litigation? How can you prove that you were injured, if you can't prove that spying happened to you? If you can't prove that you were injured, you have no standing. If you can't prove standing, you have no case that a federal court will hear. With telco immunity, everyone is going to get tossed out on their asses, and you're never going to be able to prove a damn thing.



I'm no expert on things of this nature, but I do know that courts won't strike down a law unless someone can prove an injury typically.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/0... is absolutely crushing to me. I really can't believe he would do this. I took my Obama sign out of my window. What a fraud.



If he doesn't show up and vote no on this bill, I won't give him another dime, I won't stump for him at the dinner table, nothing, nada, zilch, zippo, bupkis.

This is great news for the netroots wing of the party. Clinton was going to boot Dean from the job if she got the nomination, and replace him a DLC hack. The nomination battle was long viewed as a proxy fight over the direction of the DNC by those paying attention, but that fight got short shrift in the media.

@SquarePeg


It's just a joke.



A little satire for your Sundays. http://www.theonion.com/content/index</br>

Thank you for those quotes. I am now significantly dumber than I was 2 minutes ago. By posting those quotes, you are helping in the fight against "elitism." (whatever that means)


On another note. Who is more clueless: Dan Quayle or the Dubya?

@shakes


"Damn people. Just because a white person didn't vote for Obama doesn't mean that they are racist."



You're right. And implying otherwise is racist in and of itself...that is, in the absence of evidence otherwise. May I refer you to the ABC exit polls.



20% of white West Virginians voting in the Democratic primary said race was a factor. 20% of DEMOCRATS, the party that is supposedly doing better with race relations (insert snark)!!! That alone should be deeply troubling, but when 2/3 of those people then say they would never vote for Barack Obama, it's hard to say that racism isn't playing a role.



The West Virginia results are deeply troubling, but not from a perspective of Obama's electability. It's troubling because it exposes unsettling truths about ourselves.

Anyone catch this gem in the ABC poll?


"The second slot is one possibility: Clinton continues as the preferred choice as Obama’s running mate, with 39 percent of Democrats saying they’d like him to pick her if he's the nominee. That peaks at 59 percent of African-Americans, 47 percent of Clinton supporters and 42 percent of women (vs. 34 percent of men)."



Whhhhaaa?

I told those fucks down at the league office a thousand times that I don't roll on Shabbos!

Great endorsement, but keep Richardson off the ticket. Some of us still remember how bumbling he was as Secretary of Energy when he demonized Wen Ho Lee by leaking news of the investigation to the media.


Plus, he failed to accomplish anything (as far as I know) in terms of ending our addiction to foreign oil.



Pick somebody from a state where Obama is going to have a harder time winning, e.g. the Carolinas, Virginia, the Dakotas, etc.

*Begin Transmission*
MEMO

From: Howard Wolfson

To: The Press

Subject: Mississippi doesn't count

----



We would just like to remind America that Mississippi doesn't count. As Mississippi didn't ratify the 13th Amendment until 1995, um...they're big stupid doo-doo heads. Couple their doo-doo-headness with the fact its name does note end in "-ennsylvania," and you can clearly see why we shouldn't respect their voices.



*End Transmission*

Damn not being able to post images in the comment section.

You should warn people not to listen to that youtube clip within 30 minutes of eating. I nearly retched my turkey bacon all over my laptop. I never would have gotten that smell out of the keys...

When second-wave feminism attacks:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/10/144252/803/258/473658



"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."



I don't see Ms. Ferraro volunteering to change places with Mr. Obama.

On a positive note, I'm breaking down why Obama will be the nominee this Fall.


http://underamicroscope.wordpress.com

Friends, Americans, Countrymen,


I come not to praise the Democratic Party, but to bury it.



Love,



HRC

Congratulations are in order to Mrs. Clinton. She has won 8 delegates, according to that bastion of Clintonian liberalism, the Wall Street Journal.


In other words, Mrs. Clinton was unable to overcome the 12 delegates that Mr. Obama netted out of Idaho. That's right. Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont combined netted Mrs. Clinton less delegates than Mr. Obama netted in Idaho alone. Nevertheless, this is surely a spectacular victory that will assure her the nomination...



...beware the coming Clinton putsch.

1) It's the pinnacle of fearmongering to even make being a Muslim an issue in this campaign. There are plenty of white, born-again Christian terrorists (Eric Rudolph, anyone?), but no one accuses Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or George W Bush of being a Manchurian candidate because of their Christianity. Obama nailed it on its head when he said last night that it's offensive to Muslims. Being a Muslim, does not make one a terrorist, or a foreigner, or any less of an American. To even imply otherwise is absurd in the absence of demonstrable links to violent radical groups, be they Islamic in name or otherwise. These questions of dual loyalty were the same lobbed against Jews in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as newly created nations and nation-states struggled to explain the place of "the other" in their midst, even if "the other" had resided in the nation's "homeland" just as long as the nation had.


2) The Israel issue. Some Jews care about more than just Israel. You know, we're not all a big monolithic voting group that huddles together before the election, and decides things based solely on the issue of Israel.

If by white people, the author means white people living in the Bay Area, it's spot on. Don't go to Utah/Idaho/anywhere not near water (which I believe is #51) and expect white people to like sushi, the Sunday New York Times, and Pacifica radio (although I do love all three...but then again I live by the water).

Update.


It looks like the Hagee endorsement is about to have some MAJOR blowback from Catholics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022804231.html



It's on CNN right now. McCain is being forced to triangulate this. The Cunningham experience is going to inform how McCain handles this problem.

michelle,


I agree. It's a subtle form of racism/anti-Semitism. Playing minorities against one another to consolidate your own power. Sadly it has worked to a large degree.



dnA,



I appreciate your response, and I agree with you that it is abhorrent when people say that God let the Holocaust happen to punish the Jews for their perceived religious crimes. However, I again ask you to reconcile your argument that this constitutes modern, racial anti-Semitism with the fact that rabbis themselves have historically made the same argument that Pastor Hagee has as regards to the Holocaust and other traumatic events in Jewish history:



"The Temple was supposed to last forever; this depended, however, on the Jews' adherence to the Torah and its mitzvot (Divine commandments). At first, the Jews kept the Torah and steadfastly retained their faith, enjoying peace, prosperity and a direct connection to G-d through the Temple. However, after 300 years the Jews began to stray from the Torah and leave the path of their fathers. G-d sent prophets repeatedly to admonish them, but the Jews refused to change their ways, choosing instead to deride these prophets as false messengers come to discourage them with predictions of destruction...Thus G-d punished His people for deserting Him and His laws. All this had been predicted in the Torah, and it truly came to pass with all the horror of which Moses had warned. " Does that constitute anti-Semitism? The destruction of the First Temple resulted in the slavery of portions of the Jews (or Judeans? When did Judaism truly become Judaism?). The above quote is from Chabad. Although it sounds like it could come from Pastor Hagee. Methinks this is a question of who has the right to say what in today's America, i.e. a question of privilege.



Hints of Holocaust self-blame are found even amongst some of the most progressive 20th Century rabbis, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, albeit from a very different perspective from Chabad, who lamented as follows in 1948: "When we were blinded by the light of European civilization, we could not appreciate the value of the small fire of our eternal light. In the spiritual confusion of the last hundred years, many of us overlooked the incomparable beauty of our old, poor home. We compared our fathers and grandfathers, our teachers and rabbis, with Russian or German intellectuals. We preached in the name of the twentieth century, compared Berdichev to Paris, Ger with Heidelberg. Dazzled by big city street lamps we lost our inner vision. The luminous visions that for so many generations shone in the little candles were extinguished for many of us. Now, trampled and bloodied in the blinding lamps of civilization and evil - we sense the importance of our small candles which our mothers so piously blessed." Is Dr. Heschel, the Rabbi who marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King, really suggesting that Jewish desire to assimilate is the reason for the Holocaust. Had only we held onto Jewish identity we would not have been fooled into believing that Europeans were not capable of such a harm? Jewish self-blame even here. Is it anti-Semitism?



Then there is the Zionist (and later Israeli) ambivalence/outright disdain for Holocaust survivors. Israeli policy, up until the trial of Adolf Eichmann, was basically to blame the Holocaust victims for not seeing the "true way" and emigrating to British Palestine, thereby saving their own lives (the "Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter" argument). I recommend Tom Segev's excellent The Seventh Million on this topic. The book recounts this gem from David Ben-Gurion: "We were on the brink of extermination." Ben-Gurion was referring to the yishuv (the Jewish community in British Palestine) even though he had been asked about the Holocaust. Moments later he responded to a third question about the Holocaust with "What is there to understand? They died, that's it." Is Ben-Gurion's quote "better" than Pastor Hagee. Ben-Gurion does not attempt to blame Jewish indifference to Jewish law as the reason for the Holocaust (curiously, the creation of a Jewish state in the Holy Land is thought to be prohibited in Jewish law because it requires the coming of the Messiah first). Rather Ben-Gurion just doesn't even care. Should Pastor Hagee have made such a remark, we would have been all over him for that too.



Then again there are anti-Semitic Zionists, and anti-Zionist Jews. So maybe an anti-Semitic rabbi like Ovadia Yosef isn't so hard to fathom? Put another way, if Ovadia Yosef were an American Rabbi who endorsed John McCain, would you still title this article anti-Semites for McCain?



And as to why no one is holding Hagee's feet to the fire...the Republican party is made up more and more of these staunch evangelicals. The GOP has made a deal with the devil. If he renounces Hagee, McCain loses the election in my opinion. The evangelicals stay home. If Obama does not renounce Farrakhan though, he risks losing not just the Jewish vote, but larger swaths of the upper-class educated vote who don't particularly like Clinton, but don't like Farrakhan's hate much either. What is the proportion of the Democratic party who are followers of Farrakhan compared to the proportion of the GOP who follow Hagee and other like-minded evangelical pastors who use Jews for their own religious purposes (namely, the construction of the Third Temple). McCain simply can't afford to renounce Hagee. No Republican can.



Regarding your anecdote with the teacher, I've always wondered what Farrakhan thought about Black American Jews, the Beta Israel and the Ugandan Jews of Mbale. If your teacher is any indication, it seems not much.



But then again, maybe we should ask Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain why they are all taking support from Lutherans? Yes, I said Lutherans. Martin Luther penned "On the Jews and their Lies." Luther makes Farrakhan look like Gandhi. I mean, damn, the book makes the Jew-baiting in Mein Kampf blush. Take a look, if you got a strong stomach: http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase... Or have any of them taken donations from the Ford Motor Company? http://books.google.com/books?id=cNsfsqyxDl8C&d...>

[Preface: I'm a white Jewish lurker on your blog who comments anonymously (and mention that I am white and Jewish) from time to time. I debated posting this anonymously as well, but I decided that it was time to come out and put my name on my post. That's how infuriated I am by your post].


To be abundantly clear: yes, I think race plays a huge part in the fact that Hagee is accepted while Farrakhan is vilified. But that does not mean that Farrakhan should not be vilified. You are dead wrong when you say that Farrakhan has never said anything worse than what Hagee said.



Two wrongs doesn't make a right. Hagee is a bigot. Farrakhan is a bigot. Like it or not, Farrakhan is. He also preaches a highly unorthodox version of Islam that gives credence to the Islamophobes (Allah did not speak to anyone in the 20th century; Islam does not advocate racial segregation). Farrakhan, and the rest of the Nation perverts Islam, just like Pastor Hagee perverts Christianity with his opinions on natural disasters. Please don't discount Farrakhan's racism and hatred simply because there is a homophobic hater on the Republican side (rephrase that...many homophobic haters on the Republican side).



As a Jew, I am deeply offended by what Farrakhan has repeatedly said about me (yes, talking about all Jews, means you are talking about each and every Jew). I'm not one to find anti-Semitism under every rock, and I don't particularly like the ADL, but they have collected a nice batch of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism: http://www.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_ow... moreover, what Pastor Hagee has said on Jewish suffering is not out of line with traditional Jewish teaching. The destruction of the two temples (first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and again in 70 CE by the Romans) and the resulting exiles were because Jews had lost their way and had disobeyed God.



What Pastor Hagee said about Jewish suffering pales in comparison to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, i.e. the Chief Rabbi of Israel for Spanish/Dutch-descended/Middle Eastern Jews who follow the Spanish liturgy; it's complicated -- it's also important to note that the overwhelming majority of Jewish victims of the Holocuast were Ashkenazi (i.e. of the German liturgy), not Sephardi) who said in 2000: "[T]he 6 million Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone." I strongly disagree with this opinion, denounce it and condemn it (I'm not sure which is stronger. Senator Clinton?). I don't like what Yosef said. Rabbi Yosef's extreme views do underscore something that has continuously underpinned Jewish thought: rationalizing why very, very bad, unthinkable things happen to good people. How can you possibly explain why 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis (not to mention the 4 million non-Jews killed in the camps, and the tens of millions killed in fighting during the War)? How can you explain the Spanish Inquisition? How can you explain the Expulsion? How can you explain the destruction of the two temples? How do you explain the pogroms? How do you explain Auschwitz? How can you explain that if your whole understanding of the world is of an omnipotent God who protects the righteous and the innocent? In Yosef's framework, it is because we (the Jews) messed up. (You now may begin to see why Jews are stereotyped as being self-loathing and neurotic; and why many of us actually are self-loathing or neurotic to some degree). In this context, Pastor Hagee's opinions on Jews, are (sadly) very much in line with traditional Jewish teaching. Your outcry about Hagee raises the issue of privilege: who may speak about a particular issue? Is this quote only an outrage because a nutjob Christian espoused them?



Now, back to Farrakhan. Contrast Hagee/Yosef's opinions on Jewish suffering, which vacillate somewhere between Jewish self-loathing and race/religion-baiting, with Farrakhan's statements:

"Farrakhan: "Is the Federal Reserve owned by the government?"

Audience: "No."

Farrakhan: "Who owns the federal reserve?"

Audience: "Jews."

Farrakhan: "The same year they set up the IRS, they set up the FBI. And the same year they set up the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith… It could be a coincidence… [I want] to see black intellectuals free… I want to see them not controlled by members of the Jewish community.""



OR



"You say I hate Jews. I don't hate the Jewish people, I never have. But there [are] some things I don't like. 'What is it you don't like, Farrakhan?' I don't like the way you leech on us. See a leech is somebody that sucks your blood, takes from you and don't give you a damn thing. See, I don't like that kind of arrangement. You become our manager, you become our agent. Every one of us that got talent, we can't make it because you opened the door, and when you opened the door you get and we end up dead with nothing, owing the IRS."



OR



"Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET?... Everything that we built, they have. The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, movie industry and television. And they make us look like we’re the murders; we look like we’re the gangsters, but we’re punk stuff.”



I'm sorry, but that's the epitome of modern anti-Semitism, the mindset that gives rise to the mass murder of Jews. This is the idea that Jews control the world, that we are the purveyors of global capitalism and (ironically, were it not justifications for hate groups) simultaneously of global Bolshevism. Modern anti-Semitism differs from religious hatred. Hitler didn't hate Jews because they didn't worship Jesus or because they had their Sabbath on a Saturday. Hitler hated us because he thought we controlled the world. Farrakhan hates us because he thinks we control the world, and specifically that we target the black world.



Honestly, I'd really come to appreciate the debate and analysis on this blog, but your post is either extremely ignorant or extremely repulsive. I hope that you take the time to educate yourself about Farrakhan. Read Mein Kampf, then read Farrakhan, then read about the origins of modern anti-Semitism (not the hatred of Jews on religious grounds)...and then come back and tell me that Pastor Hagee is honestly the bigger anti-Semite, in the way that the word is meant to be used (it was coined in the 19th century to show that hating Jews for non-religious reasons was okay, and that hating Jews for religious reasons was primitive. It made hatred a science).



To be clear, I don't like Pastor Hagee, he is a bigot and he is a homophobe. I condemn, I denounce. He uses Jews and Israel to further his own eschatological fantasies which border on religious hatred (see Gershom Gorenberg's End of Days). But that one quote that you pull, is not worse than what Farrakhan has said (and it definitely ain't worse than what Ovadia Yosef has said). I pity you if you honestly believe that, "Nothing Farrakhan has said or done is more vile than this."



Let's please not try to say that one wrong is worse than another. They are both wrong, and they are both despicable. Let us condemn all wrongs, and not implicitly condone Farrakhan, because it's not (in your opinion) as bad as what a white man said. It's all wrong.



Sorry for writing an essay. Have a nice day.