So, And What Happened?

In the New Yorker:-

Last June, Joel Benenson, who was Barack Obama’s top pollster during his Presidential run, reported on the state of the campaign. His conclusions, summed up in a sixty-slide PowerPoint presentation, were revealed to a small group...The primaries were over, Hillary Clinton had conceded, and Obama had begun planning for a race against Senator John McCain.

There was good news and bad in Benenson’s presentation. Obama led John McCain, forty-nine per cent to forty-four per cent, among the voters most likely to go to the polls in November, but there was also a large group of what Benenson called “up-for-grabs” voters, or U.F.G.s, who favored McCain, forty-eight per cent to thirty-six per cent. The U.F.G.s were the key to the outcome; if the election had been held then, Obama would have probably lost.

And?

...the presentation explained, “Obama’s image is considerably better defined than McCain’s, even on attributes at the core of McCain’s reputation,” such as “stands up to lobbyists and special interests,” “puts partisan politics aside to get things done,” and “tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.”

...Benenson’s polling was revelatory. “Voters actually did not know as much as I think the press corps thought they did about John McCain,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Obama, told me. “What they’d heard about McCain most recently, and certainly during the primary process, was that he was like every other Republican — fighting to sound more like George Bush.” Benenson said, “What we knew at the start of the campaign was that the notion of John McCain as a change agent and independent voice didn’t exist anywhere outside the Beltway.”

There's more.

Was McCain Prounouncing a Jewish Benediction?

For those, perhaps, unfamiliar, when an observant Jew makes a benediction (a bracha), for example, before eating food, he will cover his head. Usually, even those not-so-observant will do so and either have a kippah or yarmulke handy to place on one's head.

Those without can sometimes be seen placing their own hand over their head. And I can still recall my late mother helping me out, literally, with her own hand when I was much, much younger.

With that in mind, take a look at the pictures below:





Was Cindy helping out there?

My Alma Mater Goes McCain

From the Yeshiva University "The Commentator":

attempts to distinguish between John McCain's military and political behavior miss the point. John McCain is not simply (simply!) a military hero. Throughout his political career, and most particularly on the biggest issues, he has demonstrated courage to do what he thinks is right for the country when it will hurt his political career. Despite his long years in Washington, D.C. and his heroic history, he has never allowed the Beltway culture to dominate his thoughts or personality. He doesn't wink at petty corruption or speak in the tongues of the Senate. He doesn't vote for a bill before he votes against it; and he doesn't vote for something because others expect him to follow nicely and politely in line. He acts based on his conscience and what he thinks is right.

...He has been an independent thinker since he arrived in Congress. On foreign policy, he opposed the Republican President Reagan on sending Marines to Beirut and supported the Democratic President Clinton in Congress on dispatching troops to Kosovo.

And in the recent Iraq War, as his presidential aspirations seemed to dissolve in the smoke of suicide bombings and turmoil of 2005 and '06, McCain did not waver in his advocacy of a strong prosecution of the war.

...What further separates John McCain from other politicians is that his independence has allowed him to maintain a bond with the common man and his own common sense...

...Many high-minded individuals go to Washington with John McCain's sense of principle; few have a record of demonstrating it for decades.

...We are now fighting two wars, a struggling economy and a broken Washington culture. The next president will have enormous power to reshape the economic landscape and place his stamp on the world. John McCain is not perfect; he has a ready temper, for one. This man is no Messiah.

...this we know about John McCain: he will always be battling for the average American. He will always place country first.

He Just Got a Whiff

Pam Must Be Happy

McCain also raised the specter of illegal foreign donors to Obama's
campaign and special "earmark" spending requests for campaign fundraisers. "Why has Sen. Obama refused to disclose the names of people funding his campaign,"
McCain said as the crowd booed. "His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal
foreign funds from Palestinian donors."

McCain's reference was based on a Newsweek article that said Obama's campaign had returned the money to two brothers living in the Gaza Strip. According to the article, the two Palestinians "had bought T-shirts in bulk from the campaign's online store. They had listed their address as 'Ga.,' which the campaign took to mean Georgia rather than Gaza."

She is.

She is.

Crossword Puzzles Are Political, Too?

David Levinson Wilk thinks so.

According to the puzzle database maintained by Cruciverb.com, ever since that game-changing day in 2005, OBAMA has appeared regularly as an answer in New York Times crossword puzzles. With its wonderfully convenient alternating series of commonly used vowels and consonants, OBAMA has been the answer to the clues “Senator who wrote ‘Dreams From My Father,’” “Future senator who delivered the 2004 Democratic convention keynote address” and “Presidential candidate born in Hawaii.”

But what about MCCAIN? Shockingly, not once has MCCAIN been an answer in a crossword in the New York Times, The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. No MCCAIN, no JOHNMCCAIN, no SENATORMCCAIN, not even his most recent sobriquet, the presidential-sounding JOHNSMCCAINIII.

And the reason?

Simple. Letters and vowels and consonants:

...Diane McNulty, a New York Times spokeswoman, said, “The answer is obvious for anyone who does crosswords. It is because ‘Obama’ is a five-letter name that alternates vowels and consonants. It’s got three vowels out of five letters, starting and ending in vowels. So it is much more crossword-friendly than ‘McCain,’ which is a harder word to put in a crossword. If McCain’s name was Obama, then his name would have been used many more times in crosswords.”

I like that: If McCain’s name was Obama, then his name would have been used many more times in crosswords. And if my grandmother had wheels, would she be a bus?

Is there a solution to this puzzling situation??

Is there any indication that crosswords can “right” themselves in the generations ahead? I’m not so sure. In perhaps the shrewdest political move of his career, the Democratic presidential nominee and his wife gave their oldest child another crossword-friendly five-letter name containing commonly used vowels and consonants: Malia.

Great McCain Ad on Iran

Are There Brains Under Them Yarmulkes?

Obama, McCain Supporters Have Kippot on the Brain

Maybe.

But do the skullcap wearers have...brains?

How Bad is McCain?

Read this report.

Here's a snippet:-

Essentially, McCain would continue the disastrous policy currently being
pursued by the Bush administration, which (as John Hinderaker recently observed at
PowerLine) has now relieved the Palestinians of the "roadmap" prerequisite that
they end terrorist attacks against Israel before further negotiations can
proceed

Trust the Liberals To Move On Israel

The liberal group MoveOn.org is launching an ad against Republican John McCain and his joke about bombing Iran, arguing that the nation "can't afford another reckless president."

The group plans to spend about $100,000 to air a commercial on network and some cable television stations in Iowa and New Hampshire, states that hold early contests in the presidential nomination process, spokesman Alex Howe said Friday.

McCain, campaigning Wednesday in South Carolina, answered a question about military action against Iran with the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann."

"That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran," he said. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..."

His audience laughed, but MoveOn.org called the comment dangerous.