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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 May 2, 2008 / 27 Nissan 5768

Has anybody got a flag pin?

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Patriotism is not always the last refuge of the scoundrel. Sometimes it's just the last refuge of a frightened politician.


Barack Obama, hotly pursued by his preacher and the crazy preacher's aggressive racism, has revised his stump speech. His once formidable polling lead over Hillary Clinton has dwindled to the single digits. The man who wouldn't wear a tiny American flag on his lapel is looking for a flag pin the size of a bass fiddle.


"You want to know who I am?" he asked a crowd in North Carolina this week. "You want to know what's in me? It's a love of country that made my life possible. It's a belief in the American dream."


All no doubt true. But the senator's own dream, which only a fortnight ago looked so dreamy, has begun to feel more like a nightmare. He was leading in North Carolina by 25 points — unrealistic then, to be sure — and yesterday that lead had shrunk to 14 points (Rasmussen), 12 (Public Policy Polling) or even to 5 (Survey USA), depending on which pollster you believe.


Worse, a poll taken for New York Times-CBS News shows a spectacular decline in the number of voters who think Sen. Obama is the inevitable Democratic nominee. (Hillary was once inevitable, too, so inevitability is not always reliable.) A month ago, nearly 70 percent of the Democrats expected Sen. Obama to be their nominee; now barely half (51 percent) do. Worst of all, such a turnaround comes only five days before crucial primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. The big 'mo is not always everything, but it's always a lot.


Even if he loses both primaries, not likely, it's difficult to see how Hillary can take him. He'll have the delegates and probably even the popular votes, and if the superdelegates override the primaries the mischief in the party won't be repaired for generations, even if there aren't riots in Harlem, on the South Side of Chicago, in Watts and in lots of other little Harlems in between. But the Republicans have stumbled into nominating the only man who could win in November, and all the Republicans have to do to preserve an authentic shot at keeping the White House is to save the unpredictable John McCain from John McCain; there's always the chance that he'll morph into Mr. Nice Guy in a fit of civility and an effusion of good manners in the middle of the high road.


The Obama problem continues to be the blabbermouth preacher who isn't likely to go away. He even has a book coming in October. The more the senator tries to extricate himself from the orbit and embrace of Jeremiah Wright, the more the odor clings (so to speak) to him. He sat down at a picnic table in a park in Indianapolis this week with a few dozen supporters to talk about the economy. These were men and women who would have been glassy-eyed only a few days earlier, awed by sitting on the same grass with the man who was about to save America from America. The first question was about the price of gasoline. Then the barrage began. Everybody wanted to talk about the explosion of the Wright stuff.


"The situation with Reverend Wright was difficult," he said. "I won't lie to you. We want to make sure this isn't a perpetual distraction." But perpetuity threatens nevertheless. He tried to explain why it took him 20 years to discover that his pastor, the man who presided at his marriage and who baptized his two daughters, was a pastor whose views were "appalling" and "unacceptable."


Hillary understands that when your opponent is laming himself the best strategy is to get out of his way. Earlier in the week, she described the Wright stuff as "outrageous," "off base," and "far out," describing until she exhausted her thesaurus. By the end of the week, she resisted a television interviewer's attempt to get her to find more adjectives to hurl.


Nearly everyone, save a few of the liberal pastors who preach to empty pews, is having a high old time denouncing and decrying Jeremiah Wright and generally viewing with alarm. But he's only one of the chickens from the past beginning to flutter down to roost in the Obama campaign. How many more are on final approach?

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

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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