September 12, 2008

This cop was not a known member of Temple 420. The best part of this video report, which had me laughing out loud, is the snorting newscaster off camera.

Commercialism at its finest. Where have I seen and heard this before?

Thank you, Sarah Palin for this edition of Freaky Friday. John McCain has claimed a slight lead over presidential opponent Barack Obama. From the AP:

John McCain has taken a modest lead over Barack Obama entering the final seven weeks of their presidential contest, buoyed by decisive advantages among suburban and working-class whites and a huge edge in how people rate each candidate’s experience, a poll showed Friday.

Underscoring how tight the race remains, several swing groups who traditionally help decide presidential races remain about evenly divided between the two tickets. These include independents, married women and Catholics.

I owe Sarah Pulliam—that’s Pulliam, not Palin—at Christianity Today’s election blog for this quick reference to main exchange on religion between Sarah Palin and Charles Gibson last night:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said—first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie. And I do believe, though, that this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing. It’s an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.

Charlie, those are freedoms that too many of us just take for granted. I hate war and I want to see war ended. We end war when we see victory, and we do see victory in sight in Iraq.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That, in my world view, is a grand—the grand plan.

GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

PALIN: I don’t know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.

There has been a lot of kvetching regarding Gibson’s treatment of Palin, but to avoid making this post interminably long, I’ll save that discussion for another entry.

Chabad Telethon is just about the biggest extravaganza—maybe outside Burning Man—on the Jewish calendar. Rabbi Chaim Cunin has remarkable pull, as did his father, and participants have included Martin Sheen, Adam Sandler, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bob Dylan. Last year they raised $7.2 million.

If you live in Los Angeles, you’ve no doubt seen the banners hanging everywhere or that truck parked on a bridge over the 10 Freeway. The telethon returns this Sunday and Ethan just called to let me know that Vic the Brick had mentioned on sports talk radio’s “Loose Canons” that he’d be there.

This led me to the Chabad Telethon web site to see what other celebs have confirmed. Nobody confirms, and the only I could find was Jordan Farmar, fresh from Israel, Jon Voigt, a regular, and this photo of Vic.

We still know very little about what Sarah Palin thinks of American Jews, and this post isn’t going to reveal any whoppers.

Her political views and religiosity led to immediate suspicion, which she responded to with an uninspiring visit to AIPAC. But this was followed by news of the Jews for Jesus speaker at her church last month, and then for her RNC speech she cribbed from right-wing nut job Westbrook Pegler.

Palin has been incredibly off limits, so, unlike Barack Obama, who was on the phone with more than a minyan in January, Palin hasn’t done the Jewish press interview yet. Not with me, not with JTA, not even with The New York Times. We have her ABC News interview, and now Jewish voters have this checklist of what Palin really has said about the Bridge to Nowhere, teaching Creationism in schools and banning books.

The National Jewish Democratic Council, which compiled the list, comprised of quotes resurrected in recent news articles, lets Palin off the hook though when it comes to Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul and Jews for Jesus. “To be objective, NJDC has no reason to believe that Palin shares the values of Jews for Jesus or the opinions of Buchanan or Paul when it comes to the subject of the Jewish community or Israel.” So, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Palin Q&A with JTA.

* Updated: Adding another confusing layer to Palin and the Jews, Mollie at GetReligion just sent me this story from the Jewish Press. “Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin sports an Israeli flag in her lapel and displays an Israel flag in her office window despite the tiny Jewish population of her state,” the conservative paper reported, and you can see the flag here.

Not sure what it means. Now, back to the NJDC. Their complete fact sheet is after the jump:

Since Wednesday, I’ve been trying to reconcile why the operator of the new football stadium being built for the New York Giants and Jets would entertain selling naming rights to an international surety that had insured the Nazi concentration camps.

Forget the fact that I have no idea what it means for Auschwitz to be protected against lawsuits—I doubt they were worried about being sued by an emaciated Jew who fell on handrail-less stairs and shattered a hip—it’s just inconceivable that sports teams with New York in their names would play in the house the Nazis built. Granted, being an anti-Semite does not preclude one’s name from appearing on a major regional facility—Lindbergh Field in San Diego or Ford Field in Detroit, for example—but this is Jersey.

As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of protest from Jewish organizations and Holocaust survivors, and today the New Meadowlands Stadium said Allianz, once the front-runner to spend $30 million a year for the rights, was now out of the running:

“We are continuing discussions with other potential partners for the new stadium and look forward to the summer 2010 opening of this new icon for our region,” the statement said.

Allianz spokesman Peter Lefkin confirmed that talks were off.

Its officials contended that the firm had atoned for its former support of the Third Reich by supporting reparations programs and working to become a responsible company. Allianz said it should no longer be held accountable in 2008 for the company’s record during World War II.

Steven Korenblat, an attorney who represented Citigroup in its naming rights deal for the New York Mets’ new stadium, noted that German companies such as Daimler-Benz and Deutsche Bank that had connections to the Third Reich have higher profiles in the U.S. than Allianz.

“I don’t think this is a made-up controversy,” Korenblat said, referring to Allianz negotiations. “For those who have strong feelings about it, it’s genuine. My view is that we should continue to remember the past and continue to speak the truth, but at the same time we should allow Germany and its corporate citizens to move forward.”