Boker tov, Boulder!

The King is in the field... Good Shabbes

  From BtB archives, a path that for some reason always pulls on my heartstrings... somewhere in the Golan.

To any and all remaining loyal readers of BtB, a Good Shabbes.  This blogger is sick, so please put in a good word for me with Hashem in your prayers this Shabbes.

'm sorry for the lull but with Gd's help, it will be only temporary. For some miscellaneous fleeting thoughts, see my twitter (in my low-energy state, it feels easier than blogging).

What else can I tell you? It's Elul.

As the last month of the Jewish year, Elul is traditionaly a time of introspection and stocktaking -- a time to review one's deeds and spiritual progress over the past year and prepare for the upcoming "Days of Awe" of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. As the month of Divine Mercy and Forgiveness (see... Elul 1) it is a most opportune time for teshuvah ("return" to G-d), prayer, charity, and increased Ahavat Yisrael (love for a fellow Jew) in the quest for self-improvement and coming closer to G-d. Chassidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi likens the month of Elul to a time when "the king is in the field" and -in contrast to when he is in the royal palace- "everyone who so desires is permitted to meet him, and he receives them all with a cheerful countenance and shows a smiling face to them all."     Specific Elul customs include the daily sounding of the shofar (ram's horn) as a call to repentance. The Baal Shem Tov instituted the custom of reciting three additional chapters of Psalms each day, from the 1st of Elul until Yom Kippur (on Yom Kippur the remaining 36 chapters are recited, thereby completing the entire book of Psalms). Click here to view today's Psalms: Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24  (P.S.) Elul is also the time to have one's tefillin and mezuzot checked by an accredited scribe to ensure that they are in good condition and fit for use.   See also this tidbit from Jewish history ~ George Washington, in a letter to the Jews of Newport Rhode Island, 219 years ago today: "...May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid..."

Amen, amen.

Gag me -- or better yet, gag the "journos"

The Associated Press is the backbone of the world's information system serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television and online customers with coverage in all media and news in all formats. It is the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics, audio and video.

AP's mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.

AP operates as a not-for-profit cooperative with more than 4,000 employees working in more than 240 worldwide bureaus. AP is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members....

AP supplies a steady stream of news around the clock to its domestic members, international subscribers and commercial customers. It has the industry's most sophisticated digital photo network, a 24-hour continuously updated online news service, a state-of-the-art television news service and one of the largest radio networks in the United States. It also has a commercial digital photo archive, a photo library housing more than 10 million images.

AP has received 49 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in the categories for which it can compete. It has 30 photo Pulitzers, the most of any news organization.

The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats.

Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest [with 243 bureaus in 97 countries] and most trusted source of independent news and information.

On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.

 

Okay, you got that? Now meet Phil Elliott who covers nothing less than "the White House, Obama administration and Washington" for The Associated Press.

Read his twitter page ... and weep.

 

Sun starts to set over #obamavineyard. Party of strangers acroaa st. looks lovely. No first family view this evening. Told not to expect 1.

Another night, another pool hold. This time, middle of a street with the ocean visible just over a crest. #obamavineyardabout 15 hours ago

Among the reserved work space in the press file in #obamavineyard, we have Inside Edition.

is in the file center on Martha's Vineyard, awaiting next move. Working on Bernanke story and drinking Diet Coke.

Reuters WH photographer Jason Reed's time lapse White House photo project. Pretty amazing. http://bit.ly/3S7jr4:44 PM Aug 24th

journos taken to first hole moments after Obama's first drive, but in time to capture him walking down lush green fairway (via @mikeallen)1:48 PM Aug 24th

@KevinMaddenDC haha. We are in a tent waiting for POTUS to play some golf with Whitaker, Marvin and UBS exec.1:47 PM Aug 24th

The mopeds/ Vespas look cute on #obamavineyard I think I will stick with a bike, though.3:33 PM Aug 23rd

@dnp83 yes, sir. We have delivered the President to his vacation home on #obamavineyard. Flew up on AF1 this afternoon.3:32 PM Aug 23rd

@NiaMalikaH Bo was adorable. Makes me want a puppy of my own. #obamavineyard.3:31 PM Aug 23rd

 

[That must be Nia Malika Henderson, the reporter for Politico.com who seems most familiar with all the players in and around the Obama administration who come from -or still reside in- the "ivory ebony tower" - Yael]

 

The Obamas are in for the night. Lid has been called. #obamavineyard 3:28 PM Aug 23rd

Helo blades fired up. We are flying in Nighthawk 4 to #obamavineyard.1:50 PM Aug 23rd

Air Force One is rolling. #obamavineyard.12:47 PM Aug 23rd

Marine One touched down. Obama walking to AF1. Vineyard in 90 minutes. #obamavineyard.12:41 PM Aug 23rd

Marine One spotted on horizon. #obamavineyard.12:37 PM Aug 23rd

Marine One is five minutes from Andrews. #obamavineyard about to commence.12:36 PM Aug 23rd

@beadinglady there is nothing yet announced re Sen. Kennedy and the Obamas, but we've all heard the speculation. As of now, that's all it is11:04 AM Aug 23rd

Making sure I have charger cables for #obamavineyard. So stoked my folks are coming down from Boston.12:59 AM Aug 23rd

@MattOrtega that is a risk I am willing to take. I see way too much BDSM every day as part of #hcr.12:58 AM Aug 23rd

Talking about how @mattortega likes to talk about joining boxing gym but never going with peeps. #mattortegaboxongfail (via @kombiz)11:30 PM Aug 22nd 

vacay's over...did my best to unplug. now trading hawaii beach for "working" beach - am martha's vineyard bound ... (via @yunjid) // c u thr11:30 PM Aug 22nd

To the moon!

 

"Healthcare is the tip of the iceberg"

Columnist Bill Whittle, picked up at DANEgerus Weblog:

"You know, the one thing that I learned from this last election is that if you have a young, hip, likable, historic candidate, and you promote him through CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and all the rest, not to mention stand-up and late night comedy, the entire music industry, university, high school and even elementary school teachers, just about every major movie and television star ... and run against the oldest candidate in the history of the Republic, despised by the base of his own party, a man unwilling to take the fight to the only fields in which he can win, and representing the incumbent party responsible for two unpopular wars, a two-term President with historic disapproval ratings, in the middle of the 'worst economy since the Depression...' Well, you put all of those forces in harness and you, sir, will attain 53% of the vote!"

Plus Must-Read: Obama's Summer of Discontent

Health care is the tip of the iceberg.

Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed.

The spell is broken. Obama is tall and thin and from Illinois, but he is no Lincoln. [UPDATED]

 

Read Fouad Ajami in the WSJ:

 

It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-confidence.

[....]

The Obama devotees were the victims of their own belief in political magic. The devotees could not make up their minds. In a newly minted U.S. senator from Illinois, they saw the embodiment of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama was tall and thin and from Illinois, and the historic campaign was launched out of Springfield. The oath of office was taken on the Lincoln Bible. Like FDR, he had a huge economic challenge, and he better get it done, repair and streamline the economy in his "first hundred days." Like JFK, he was young and stylish, with a young family.

All this hero-worship before Mr. Obama met his first test of leadership. In reality, he was who he was, a Chicago politician who had done well by his opposition to the Iraq war. He had run a skillful campaign, and had met a Clinton machine that had run out of tricks and a McCain campaign that never understood the nature of the contest of 2008.

He was no FDR, and besides the history of the depression—the real history—bears little resemblance to the received narrative of the nation instantly rescued, in the course of 100 days or 200 days, by an interventionist state. The economic distress had been so deep and relentless that FDR began his second term, in 1937, with the economy still in the grip of recession.

Nor was JFK about style. He had known military service and combat, and familial loss; he had run in 1960 as a hawk committed to the nation's victory in the Cold War. He and his rival, Richard Nixon, shared a fundamental outlook on American power and its burdens.

Now that realism about Mr. Obama has begun to sink in, these iconic figures of history had best be left alone. They can't rescue the Obama presidency. Their magic can't be his. Mr. Obama isn't Lincoln with a BlackBerry. Those great personages are made by history, in the course of history, and not by the spinners or the smitten talking heads.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Tuesday, January 20, 2009:

Washington's journo set headed to the home of David Bradley (Atlantic Media Company owner) last night for a book party honoring PBS' Gwen Ifill and her book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."

"People don't believe that timing is everything, but timing is everything," said Ifill, referring to the merging of her book ambitions and the election of America's first African-American president.

I told you you should call the Debates Commission -- back in October.  I guess you didn't bother.  So apparently the lady is right that "timing is everything" ... because now

 

I T ' S   W A Y   T O O   L A T E.

 

Listen up, O-merica

I knew him when... he was just a little blog

I would say I have great nachas from Omri's appearance in the Jerusalem Post, but that would sound like I am a lot older than him or something. So instead, I'll just limit my comments to

Kudos! and Mazal Tov!

You understand, of course, that I am not responsible for the choice of advertising banners, and that this should not reflect too awkwardly on our rising star :) Yael

Human Rights Watch earns its pay

By OMRI CEREN

Original: http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275819.html

Reprint: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251133671085&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Read it all 'em both!

We Shall... Overwhelm

All wee-wee'd up and nowhere to go?

 

 

 

REDSTATE reports on the Dims' efforts to crash town hall meetings and literally "overwhelm" them.

One of the leading opponents on Congress of the Democrats’ healthcare plans is Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Over the next two weeks, he will have a series of townhalls in his district to talk about healthcare.

RedState has obtained an emailshowing the Democrats and Barack Obama’s own Organizing for America are working to actively disrupt Paul Ryan’s townhalls.

In the email,Democrat activists Kelly Gallahersends out a series of instructions for activists, telling them to keep them secret.

She writes that “the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Organizing for America, and Community for Change are wroking together to promote attendance at these sessions” ....

The stated goal is "to overwhelm each session with reform supporters."

 

 

 

America will just have to "get over it" (Illustrated)

Nia-Malika Henderson reports at Politico:

 

.... During the campaign, Obama visited Martha’s Vineyard for fundraising, and in summer 2004, there was a kind of coming-out party for the soon-to-be junior senator from Illinois. Organized by senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who owns a home on the island,

the event drew a crowd of about 300 A-listers to the summer rental of Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, a friend of Obama’s who once hosted the Clintons at the home in Oak Bluffs.

Obama is expected to see Gates this week as well, friends say — just weeks after Gates attended the “beer summit” at the White House, following Gates’s arrest on disorderly conduct charges at his home by a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer. Obama came out strongly in defense of Gates, saying police “acted stupidly” in arresting the professor.

It was the first racial imbroglio of his term, and set off a firestorm that Obama tried to deflect quiet by bringing Gates and the officer to the White House.

Palling around with Gates could re-open a conversation that Obama doesn’t want to have...

 

“It would be hard to avoid seeing Skip [Gates] because he is out and about so much. ... but I think it would be a mistake to go over to Skip’s for a beer,” said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a political science professor at Princeton University,

 

who was on the Vineyard last week for an annual conference on race. “He doesn’t want to encourage the sense that he has an intimate relationship to Skip or that he has any lingering responsibility. He [Obama] has done his part in all of this.”

[Harvard law professor Charles] Ogletree, who owns a home in Oak Bluffs, said there aren’t any plans for a reception for Obama similar to the one in 2004.

   "Charles Ogletree, Jr ... is closely linked to the Black Panthers and to radical black ideology... a key member of the reparations movement and once pursued the possibility of bringing a class action lawsuit to win reparations for descendants of African slaves."

“People are ready, willing and able to host him in any way, but they want him to get privacy and rest,” said Ogletree, a mentor to Michelle Obama who was Gates’s lawyer after he was arrested.

Harris Lacewell said Americans shouldn’t be surprised the president wants to go to a nice place for vacation, especially a place like Martha’s Vineyard, where he has many friends. “If he wants to hang out where other presidents hang out, then he can,” she said. “America is going to have to get over the fact that the guy is an elite. He lives in the White House — he can vacation in the Vineyard.”

If you don't live in -or often visit- the radical leftist bubble archaically known as the "ivory tower," then you probably haven't heard of this Melissa Harris Lacewell who has the audacity to say that America will just have to "get over" itself.

Until that comment, I didn't mind all that much that the Obamas were in the Vineyard -- I was just surprised that they would go to such a Very White place -- but now I'm getting offended. The very Americans to whom Harris Lacewell now condescends include the big-hearted if simple minded, beyond-tolerant folks who voted for Obama in order to show Harris Lacewell and the rest of the world just how non-racist we really are... plus all of us taxpayers, of no apparent consequence, who are financing his vacation "in the Vineyard."  (No, the Obamas are not using public funds, but where does his paycheck come from, if not our pockets?)

So who is this woman?  If you read her opinions, it will come as no surprise that she honors Malcolm X ... with gratitude "for his courage and for the lessons he imparted to us, to light the way for our struggle." 

See also this bit that she wrote for The Nation just after the '08 presidential election:

Barack Obama's presidency will not deal a death blow to racism. Racial inequality still affects the quality of the air we breathe, the quality of our health, the likelihood of being erroneously shot by police, the likelihood of being poor, of having little education and of being unemployed. Race is sticky and racism is real. Being black will still mean living poorer and dying younger.

 

I agree - not that racism affects the air, but that Obama's presidency has not dealt it aa "death blow." It is, in fact, more alive and well than it has been for decades.  Certainly, racism is more a part of my life in the Age of Obama, than it ever has been in my fifty or so years, but I attribute that to the fact that people like Harris Lacewell refuse to "get over it."  And why should she?  She's built a life, a career and a good livelihood around its existence and promulgation.

Without Racism, Harris Lacewell would be a nobody.

 

 

To my mind, that's a     we should all Hope for.

 

 

"You can't make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak."

I've been watching C-Span a lot and have seen so many impressive Representatives at town meetings across the country. I should have written their names down; there was one especially wonderful Blue Dog Democrat in Mississippi. I am so heartened by them as well as by the American people, who have done their homework and are asking very intelligent questions, as well as eloquently - even if simply - declaring their deeply heartfelt concern for the country. And I'm heartened too by the polls (- 14). The American People are waking up to what threatens us, at least part of it, since health care is more personal than it is political. Anyway, here's one more Representative of whom I had never heard before... Congressman Mike Rogers,representing Michigan's 8th District. I titled this post with with his quote from Abraham Lincoln in this, his opening statement on healthcare reform in the House on July 17th. Enjoy,