September 5, 2008 | 3:07 pm

More on mentioning God in political speeches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Last night I mentioned how I heard John McCain name-drop the Lord’s name several times during his speech. Today, The New York Times ran a graphic that looked at the words the candidates used in their speeches.

“As it turns out, GOP speakers invoked the name of God (“God”) nearly twice as often Democratic ones, 43 to 22,” Mark Silk writes at Spiritual Politics. “But when it came to the tickets themselves, the invocations were tied: Biden and McCain, 8 each; Obama and Palin, 2. In other words, those candidates most identified with religion mentioned God least.”

Hmmm. I wonder why? I think we can guess pretty accurately.

September 5, 2008 | 2:53 pm

A short, prayerful post

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I saw this tweet from AudioJT yesterday and I thought it was pretty beautiful:

“Old Anglican prayer - Lord, what we know not…teach us. What we have not…give us. What we are not…make us, for your sake… Amen”

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September 5, 2008 | 1:55 pm

Jon Stewart traps Republicans in their own politicking

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My primary criticism of Bill Maher’s “Religulous” was that it argued apples (religious people) were absolutely bananas (insane) by almost exclusively focusing on kumquats (the strangest fruits you’ll ever eat). To Jon Stewart’s credit, he skewers his victims not by often choosing the biggest target but by trapping the leaders of our world in their own words.

The above video was brought to you by my wife, the

liberal lunatic in our divided house

sound thinker who keeps this reluctant Republican balanced.

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September 5, 2008 | 9:56 am

Palin and Pontius Pilate, Jesus and community organizing

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been trying to avoid blog posts about Sarah Palin, who has dominated the content here for almost a week now, but The Web Guy sent me this gem from Jonathan Martin’s blog at Politico that was too good to pass up. It’s a reader email that takes aim at Palin’s community-organizing comment:

“Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.”

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September 5, 2008 | 2:12 am

Name dropping God at the RNC

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m not much for political speeches, and wasn’t so mesmerized by John McCain tonight. Green-screen malfunction aside, I enjoyed hearing McCain drop the biggest name that’s been mentioned throughout the presidential election season: God.

McCain has had an at-best-tenuousrelationship with evangelicals, a relationship that a certain someone has really buoyed. Here’s the prayer McCain’s pastor, Dan Yeary, offered at the Republican National Convention tonight:

Almighty God, we are grateful for the gift called America. We are thankful for the freedom to celebrate what we are doing and have done this week. We have repeatedly invoked your blessing on our country. And as we do, we are reminded of the words you gave to Solomon: if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, you will hear from heaven and heal our land.

So we pray, humble us Lord, humble us as a people to serve you, help us to seek your face alone. Give us the courage to turn from our self-centered, wicked ways. Hear us, oh Lord, as we ask you to heal our land. We ask you to still the storms … tonight that we ask that you protect our young men and young women who are protecting us from terrorism.

Lord, we ask a very special blessing on our brother John McCain. (cheering)
Father, we think that he has been prepared for such a time as this. We ask that you give him wisdom and courage, wisdom that comes from you, and courage that comes from his relationship with you. We ask your blessing and divine protection on Cindy and the children. May they see such honor and integrity in their parents that they rise up and call them blessed.

Oh Lord, in humility, we ask that you remind us that we cannot put our country first unless you are foremost. For as Jesus taught his disciplines, thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

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September 4, 2008 | 7:22 pm

Footage of Farmar coaching hoops in Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Video footage of Jordan Farmar’s trip to Israel, courtesy of the one and only Elie Seckbach.

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September 4, 2008 | 1:58 pm

John McCain and ‘a deeply committed Christian’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Dobson

Focus on the Family leader James Dobson said last night that he’s come around on John McCain. Why is that so surprising?

Well, beside that fact that McCain is incredibly uncomfortable in a room full of evangelical Christians, Dobson said in February that he wouldn’t vote for McCain “as a matter of conscience.” In July he changed his tune to tepid optimism. And then last night, before McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, whose Christian convictions have endeared her to a lot of my friends—Rhett Smith tweeted last night, “Sarah Palin, you had me at hello.”—Dobson’s organization sent this around:

Dr. Dobson: ‘If I Went into the Polling Booth Today, I Would Pull the Lever for John McCain’  ....“A genuine reformer. A deeply committed Christian.”

That’s how Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action, described Gov. Sarah Palin, who joined Sen. John McCain’s presidential ticket Friday.

On a special Focus Action radio broadcast, Dr. Dobson said Palin has helped change his mind on McCain.

“If I went into the polling booth today, I would pull the lever for John McCain,” he said.

Editor’s note: I’m totally burnt out by blogging ad nauseum about Sarah Palin. I don’t care if Barack Obama drops Joe Biden in favor of getting Palin on his ticket, I’m not mentioning her in another post until at least Sunday.

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September 4, 2008 | 1:37 pm

‘The invisible pregnancies of presidential daughters’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I mentioned to a friend the other day that I knew girls in high school who got pregnant and kept the child and that I also knew of people, from wealthier families, who got pregnant and had their problem “taken care of.” What has made Bristol Palin’s pregnancy so surprising to me—beside the way social conservatives have rallied around her decision to marry and become a mother—is that the Palins went public with their daughter’s mistake. Though the Palins belong to that class of Americans whom you expect to keep quiet their indiscretions, they also belong to that subset of evangelical Christians who, from the looks of things, practice what is preached.

With this in mind, I found an article by Slate’s mad biology reporter and resident fertility expert, William Saletan, both intuitive and affirming. After doing some devil’s arithmetic, Saletan concludes that at least a few of the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ daughters since 1964 must have gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Why didn’t we hear about these women? His suspicion would be my own:

An unintended pregnancy rate of 6 to 7 percent, in a population of 37 women, means two to three pregnancies per year. Even if you discount the rate further, on the grounds that these are the wealthiest and best-educated families, the notion that none of these young women got knocked up before their parents’ nominations or elections is—pardon the term—almost inconceivable. If you’re a politician, and your daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock, you can be systematically excluded from the sample of nominees by self-selection, voters, or running-mate vetters. But not if the pregnancy never becomes known.

If any of these daughters conceived, but no pregnancy or birth was reported, what happened? One possibility is miscarriage. But the Guttmacher analysis suggests a different answer: Most unintended pregnancies in the higher income and education brackets end in abortion.

Remember that before you judge or poke fun at Sarah Palin. She’s not the candidate whose daughter messed up. She’s the candidate who didn’t get rid of the mess.

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September 4, 2008 | 11:25 am

When Lieberman loved Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Joe Lieberman has been riding John McCain’s coattails since the tide shifted in the Republican primaries; Tuesday the Jewish senator, who came improbably close of the vice presidency in 2000, praised McCain at the Republican National Convention. But two years ago Lieberman was exhorting McCain’s Democratic rival, Barack Obama, pledging his support and playing up his involvement in the young senator’s development.

“As far as I’m concerned [Barack Obama] is a ‘Baruch,’ which means a blessing. He is a blessing to the United States Senate, to America, and to our shared hopes for better, safer tomorrows for all our families,” Lieberman said, captured in the above video. “The gifts that God has given to Barack Obama are as enormous as his future is unlimited. As his mentor, as his colleague, as his friend, I look forward to helping him reach to the stars and realize not just the dreams he has for himself, but the dreams we all have for him and our blessed country.”

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September 4, 2008 | 8:52 am

Palin, proselytizing and Jews for Jesus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo: NYT

Most Christians consider me a Jew for Jesus. But whenever they say this, I feel it necessary to correct them. I am, in fact, an ethnic Jew who believes in Jesus, but Jews for Jesus belong to a certain group of evangelical missionaries who proselytize Jews by presenting Christianity in a Jewish wrapper. And that is not me.

Though Bel Air Presbyterian’s college group used the Jews for Jesus building in Westwood for Bible studies during my first two years at UCLA, the only interaction I’ve had with employees of the organization is when they reached out to me at the Israel festival last year and invited me to a BBQ after they found out a Christian mole had infiltrated The Jewish Journal.

The group has been criticized by Jewish organizations—the Anti-Defamation League said in a 2004 report that they target “Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

“Christians have been trying to make us disappear as Jews for 2,000 years. Now they’re trying a different method, which is for them to tell us that you can believe in Jesus and still be Jewish,” ADL chief Abe Foxman told Jeffrey Goldberg in a 1997 NYT Magazine article. “It’s baloney, of course.”

So what to make of the sermon last month from the head of Jews for Jesus at Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin’s church?

the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.

“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.
Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [Brickner’s son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, cited the “cultural distance” between Palin and almost all American Jews.

“She’s totally out of step with the American Jewish community,” he said. “She is against reproductive freedom – even against abortion in the case of rape and incest. She has said that climate change is not man-made. She has said that she would favor teaching creationism in the schools. These are all way, way, way outside the mainstream.”

John McCain’s campaign said yesterday that Palin wasn’t aware Brickner would be speaking at her church that Sunday and that she didn’t share his views. I have no reason to doubt her sincerity. But we have already heard that Palin has a Jewish problem—and the drumbeat seems to be getting louder. How does this complicate McCain’s popularity with hawkish and right-leaning Jews?

After the jump, Palin, who, yes, as was sort of suspected, sounded good last night, speaks at her church about a gas pipeline, the war in Iraq and other stuff.

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September 4, 2008 | 2:42 am

Sarah Palin, Michael Chabon and the frozen chosen

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It must be difficult being Jeffrey Goldberg.

He has essentially the best job in American journalism—and that is after leaving the New Yorker last year. He’s the author of a fantastic memoir on Muslims and Jews and the fight over the Land of Israel. He gets accused of torturing Palestinians by American cheerleaders for Hezbollah. And when he started a blog this spring, it immediately got the kind of traffic most of us daily sloggers only dream of, buoyed by Q&As with the high-profile person of his choice. He began with Barack Obama, then moved on to John McCain; yesterday he had a good conversation with Dexter Filkins about the dramatic turnaround in Iraq.

Today, he spoke again with the great Michael Chabon about—what else?—the governor of Alaska, the frozen Promised Land in “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” (You’ve probably heard the governor’s name recently: it’s Sarah Palin.)

A snippet:

JG: Is Sarah Palin Jewish? Her husband was in the Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Or maybe the Steelworkers, I forget.

MC: It’s unlikely and, I feel, sort of weird the way this Alaskan lady’s fortunes have become caught up, and so quickly, with those of the Jews. An exhaustive search of press mentions on Lexis-Nexis reveals that, until very recently, “Alaska” and “Jews” had been included in the same sentence only 18 times, ever. I know I probably deserve some of the credit for this uptick, but I decline to accept it.

(skip)

JG: Do you think McCain was a) smart, or b) stupid, to pick Palin as his running mate?

MC: I think the answer is probably both more pathetic and more chutzpadich than either a) or b) would imply.

After the jump is an taped interview I did with Chabon last fall.

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September 3, 2008 | 9:20 pm

Michelle Obama related to black rabbi

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I think at this point we can agree that Barack Obama’s outreach to Jewish voters has digressed into the absurd. Michelle Obama is now claiming relation to one of the most prominent black rabbis in the United States.

What’s that? Oh, the Obama campaign actually had no comment about this revelation from The Forward. Odd. I would imagine this would help shore up some support. Well, it’s an interesting story anyway.

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