Kristol Makes It Crystal-Clear

In his NYTimes op-ed:

...But Israel — assuming it succeeds — is doing the United States a favor by taking on Hamas now.

The huge challenge for the Obama administration is going to be Iran. If Israel had yielded to Hamas and refrained from using force to stop terror attacks, it would have been a victory for Iran. If Israel were now to withdraw under pressure without accomplishing the objectives of severely weakening Hamas and preventing the reconstitution of a terror-exporting state in Gaza, it would be a triumph for Iran. In either case, the Iranian regime would be emboldened, and less susceptible to the pressure from the Obama administration to stop its nuclear program.

But a defeat of Hamas in Gaza — following on the heels of our success in Iraq — would be a real setback for Iran. It would make it easier to assemble regional and international coalitions to pressure Iran. It might positively affect the Iranian elections in June. It might make the Iranian regime more amenable to dealing.

With respect to Iran, Obama may well face — as the Israeli government did with Hamas — a moment when the use of force seems to be the only responsible option. But Israel’s willingness to fight makes it more possible that the United States may not have to.

Not to mention the benefit to Israel, directly and immediate.

Now, if we could only get Obama to help us do what really needs to be done with Iran's nuclear capabilities.

The "Obama Rakes Rahm" Clip

At a 2005 event hosted by Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy

Delayed Illustration

I posted about the "Yes We Can" phenomenom here.

And finally found a proper accompanying illustration:

It's Not "Yes, We Can". It's "Are We Able?"

The campaign slogan might have been a bit, er, off the mark.

Could it be that instead of "Yes, We Can", it should have been: "Are We Able"?

Read on:

Obama Team Weighs What to Take On in First Months

With the economy in disarray and the nation’s treasury draining, President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers are trying to figure out which of his expansive campaign promises to push in the opening months of his tenure and which to put on a slower track.

Mr. Obama repeated on Saturday that his first priority would be an economic recovery program to get the nation’s business system back on track and people back to work. But advisers said the question was whether they could tackle health care, climate change and energy independence at once or needed to stagger these initiatives over time.

The debate between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach has flavored the discussion among Mr. Obama’s transition advisers for months, even before his election. The tension between these strategies has been a recurring theme in the memorandums prepared for him on various issues, advisers said.

“Every president is tempted to take on too much,” said one Obama adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “On the other hand, there’s the Roosevelt example and the L.B.J. example, which suggest an extraordinary president can do an awful lot. So that’s the question: Is it too risky for the president to be ambitious?”

Much of the issue may be out of Mr. Obama’s hands. The $700 billion financial bailout threatens to push the deficit into the stratosphere. “The poor man has his hands tied by the economic and financial mess we have right now,” said John Tuck, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan. “I don’t know what his options are. They’re very, very limited.”

Or even:

"Am I Able?"

UPDATE

Hannah Friedman singing “Oh Obama Don’t Break My Heart.”



(Kippah tip: Jewlicious)

Oh. It's Generation "O", Now?

Damien Cave of....the New York Times is pushing it:

Generation O Gets Its Hopes Up

GENERATION O is that college kid at the White House gate early Wednesday morning, lifting his shirt to reveal “Obama” painted in red on his chest.

Or that stylized Obama T-shirt that makes irony look old, the “Obama Girl” on YouTube, or the thousands of notes on Barack Obama’s Facebook page: “U are the best!!!” “yeah, buddy.”

And, of course, Generation O is the president-elect himself.

Oh.

Oh no.

"But It Isn't 3 AM Yet"

When the call does come, all the citizens of the world hope that the challenge will be met and that justice and right will be done.

(On that 3AM phone call)

So, US Jews Letting Us Down?

Ethan Porter in Rashid Who? published at The New Republic claims US Jews have retuirned to the Denocratic Party candidate:

By late last spring, concerns about Jews deserting the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, had reached a fever pitch. Writing in his popular blog for Politico, Ben Smith declared that Obama had a "Jewish problem."...When State Senator Stephen Geller, who represents a heavily Jewish section of South Florida, went to tout Obama to his constituents, he felt as if "they were going to get out of their walkers and crush me," he told me.

Geller's fear seemed, as least in part, to be based in fact: Polls at the time showed Obama struggling in comparison to earlier Democratic candidates. A Gallup poll from May showed that Barack Obama would receive merely 60 percent of the vote in a then still hypothetical match-up against John McCain...

Now, however, with the election only days away, it's clear that Jews have come home. According to Gallup's latest numbers, 74 percent support the Illinois senator...Obama has been especially savvy about keeping the chosen people on his side--a strategy that could prove very helpful next Tuesday.

And not very savvy are some other people.

Barack Obama's Shiloh Connection

Did you know that there is a Shiloh connection to the current Democratic frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination?

Here:

...the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel — the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God [in the Tabernacle Courtyard here at Shiloh and there was only one rival, Peninah - YM]. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

Well, that's an interesting way to get from Shiloh to Sharpesville.

And, at another opportunity, what else did BO's pastor say?

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost,"

This, in reference to Sept. 11.

Source

Well, if I was an Afro-American preacher, I'd say that the statement about "state terrorism" is inflammatory, mendacious and downright meanspirited and sho' 'nuf is a damnable lie. It is a blank check for evil men to kill innocents.

Wright is all wrong.

How bad, then, is Obama?

O Ho Obama

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

Source