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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 11, 2008 / 8 Sivan 5768

This Messiah is anything but humble

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Many spiritually advanced people I know identify (Sen. Barack) Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who had the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet," wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford June 6.


For you normal people unfamiliar with the term, a "Lightworker" is sort of the New Age equivalent of an angel. Mr. Morford sure takes this "ObaMessiah" stuff seriously.


He isn't alone. When Sen. Obama last week became the first black to win a major party nomination for president, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. was understandably excited. Maybe a little too excited:


"What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation's political history," Rep. Jackson told the Politico blog. "The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance."


John McCormack of the Weekly Standard attended the Obama rally at the Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Va., the day after he locked up the nomination.


"Ask one why he or she is here, and the answer isn't Obama's pledge to end the war or fix the economy," Mr. McCormack wrote. "These fans have come because of Obama himself."


One was Fred Van Doren, 51, from Woodbridge, Va., who told Mr. McCormack he'd never voted before, but was inspired by Mr. Obama's "spiritual values and integrity."


Before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Van Doren had joined an online forum "intending" that Sen. Obama be the nominee, he told Mr. McCormack. "Intending," according to those who practice it, is the most powerful force in the universe, discovered by Rhonda Byrne in 2004 and described in her best selling book, "The Secret."


"Intending" is a spiritual, not a religious practice, Mr. Van Doren assured Mr. McCormack. "We didn't pray or do any weird Kool-Aid drinking stuff like that."


Sen. Obama cannot be held responsible for what loony fans think about him. But he has a higher opinion of himself than objective circumstances warrant.


Sen. Obama celebrated clinching the Democratic nomination with a speech from the convention center in St. Paul. Future generations, he told his adoring audience, will look back upon that night and say: "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..."


Canute the Great (995-1035), the Viking king of England, Denmark and Norway, is reputed to have waded into the ocean and ordered the waves to recede. Canute, who was actually a pretty modest guy for a king, didn't really expect the water to obey.


He staged the scene to teach a lesson about the limits of a king's powers to sycophantic courtiers. But Sen. Obama apparently wasn't kidding.


It'd be hard enough for a President Obama to bring peace to the Middle East and carbon free energy independence to the United States without regulating sea levels too. Journalists should have laughed "until their ribs squeaked," said columnist George Will.


But journalists today are more like Mark Morford than the skeptics depicted in "Front Page," Ben Hecht's famous play. "I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after listening to an Obama speech.


Garry Wills, writing in the New York Review of Books, described Sen. Obama's speech on race relations in Philadelphia Mar. 18 as the finest since Abraham Lincoln's speech on slavery at the Cooper Union in 1860. (Mr. Wills has maintained a discreet silence since Sen. Obama in effect repudiated what he said in that speech following the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club April 28.)


In a story in January, John Hill of the Sacramento Bee described how Obama volunteers in California were told to tell people "how they came to Obama," using language more appropriate to religious conversion than to politics.


"You don't need to debate policy or discuss the day's headlines," said a campaign Web site advising volunteers. "You have a very personal reason for investing your time and energy in this campaign — that's the most compelling story you can tell."


In the Obama campaign, talking about themselves trumps facts and logic. "We are the change we've been waiting for." Was there ever a campaign slogan at once so vapid, and so filled with self love?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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