While the President-elect eventually won over most of the American Jewish community by throwing a few folks under the speeding bus and speaking in centrist tones, there have always been concerns by some Israel supporters about his close associations to fervent Palestinians like Rashid Khalidi and anti-Israel advisors like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Andrew Malley.

Caroline Glick does an excellent job of listing those concerns in the Jerusalem Post. You can read that here

If Glick is right and the United States is ready to change its stance towards Israel, this policy will need to be sold to an Israeli government that always puts the safety of its nation first (in other words, we’ll blow up Iranian nukes whether the U.S. likes it or not) and the American People. If he tries to sell that, the only person who could sell it is Hillary Clinton.

While we have had numerous posts on the political implications of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, we haven’t had much discussion about what her presence would mean to Obama administration policy around the world.

While the world is excited about Barack Obama’s election, he has no credibility on the world stage and has not yet earned the trust of our allies. Through her own work and the goodwill former President Clinton has abroad, Senator Clinton has that trust and credibility. Whatever President Obama wants to sell, he may just need Hillary to sell it.

The concern is, would he use her to try and sell this:

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn’t already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

Over the past few years, Obama’s top nuclear nonproliferation adviser, Joe Cirincione, has repeatedly advocated placing Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table and offering it up in exchange for an Iranian pledge to end its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates – whom Obama is considering retaining – insinuated in his 2006 confirmation hearings that Iran is only building nuclear weapons to defend itself against Israel. Gates, it should be recalled, has been instrumental in convincing Bush not only not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, but not to support an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.

What is profoundly distressing about statements by men like Cirincione and Gates is what they tell us about the strategic reasoning informing the incoming Obama administration.

Again, I have no idea if this is what an Obama administration will do. Would Senator Clinton as Secretary of State even go along with this kind of policy? What I do know is this, if the new President really wants to change our foreign policy approach radically, John Kerry or Bill Richardson won’t be able to do the job. They can’t walk into a room with other world leaders and say trust me. Hillary Clinton can. That may be why she really is being considered for the job.

Jobs were lost in virtually every sector: manufacturing, construction, and especially the service sector, which had been the sector that provided job strength over the last few years.

In summary, there is nothing to like about this report and it is likely to get worse. Estimates on unemployment rate range from 7% to 9% by the middle of 2009.

Read more here on how the “Economy Sheds Jobs.”

Goldman Sachs, which had the most accurate call on the employment report, is now calling for a -3.5% GDP for 4th qtr 2008 and a -2% for 1st qtr 2009.

Also: The market expects a .50 cut in the Fed Funds rate in December to an overall rate of .5%.

This call leads us to wonder whether we are going to move into a Japanese-style economy from the 1990s in which lending rates were literally 0 but savings were still very significant and borrowing anemic. Banks did not fully recognize losses. Inflation was not an issue given that borrowing needs were non-existent. This scenario is not the case here in the United States since our deficit borrowing will be enormous!!

Equity markets are expected to open flat to slightly higher this morning. Actually those markets opened up app 1% and got as high as 2.5% but have come back down to +1% after the GM earnings. (11:30 am).

Bonds are lower with rates up by app 8-10 basis points.

Commodities are mixed with early call on gold up 2-3% but copper is lower … again … oil also looks like it will open slightly lower but moved higher in sync with the overall market.

The auto situation continues to receive a lot of focus. The “cash burn” rate for Ford and GM is between 2-3bln a month.

The Big 3 are asking for 50bln in capital to address health care costs and liquidity … expect them to get it from Uncle Sam with Uncle Sam taking warrants in the companies … all that said, indications are that the auto companies will have layoffs and cost cuts wherever possible. Ford posted earnings of -$1.31 per share vs expectations of -.93. GM posted earnings (how is it that they are called earnings when in fact they are losses?!) of -$7.35 per share vs expectations of -$3.94. This GM situation is truly dire.

Read more here how “Ford Plans More Cuts.”

All the focus on bank lending really needs to focus on the ability of the banks and brokers to “sell” those loans (mortgages, auto loans, credit card loans, et al) to investors through the “securitization” process.

Investors are very cautious and have little appetite at current rates to buy these loans. Given that lack of demand, banks are not willing to lend. Ultimately rates for these products need to move higher to attract investors.

The idea that Freddie and Fannie will be the buyer of last resort for these mortgages is a movie that we have seen before and it has a very bad ending.

Read more here on how “JP Morgan’s Illiquid Assets Rise.”

Speaking of Fannie: Expect a RECORD loss when they post 3rd qtr earnings.
Another situation that bears watching is AIG … they are trying to sell divisions to repay Uncle Sam but are meeting with little demand currently or buyers are very cautious as they can’t get financing for the purchase.

With all of the government intervention currently and more intervention expected, it is not a stretch to say that as taxpayers we are all investors in the biggest multi-strategy hedge fund in the world. Problem is, I think that our “investment” may in many circumstances be like that roach motel. We can get it, but just how the heck do we get out …??

Last but not least … Warren Buffett purchased preferred stakes in Goldman Sachs at 125 with a 10% dividend and warrants to purchase more at 115 … Goldman closed yesterday at app 81 … yes down 35% from Buffett’s purchase … Buffett did the same trade with General Electric when GE was at 22.25 … GE closed yesterday at 18.3 … yes down app 20% … Warren is smart but he has the luxury of time and excess cash … those investments were made in late September.

I caution you from focusing too much on the day-to-day swings in the markets and continue to assess the trends in the economy. Bounces are temporary. Markets correct by price and time.

Granted we have had app a 40% correction in price, but we will likely now suffer from either more price corrections or a market that at best “treads water” thus a time correction.

We hope you had a Happy Friday!!

……..

Ed.’s Note: Our apologies for not posting this story on Friday. It was entirely the editor’s fault. LD wrote this by mid-day Friday. We will try to do better.

If this pattern doesn’t make you stand in line the very minute your polls open on November 4, I don’t know what will.

Recently I posted a piece on how the organized the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and the CCDS Marxist-Leninist party are working hard for Obama too–from Chicago, of course. The Real Barack Obama has also recently reported that Chicago’s Marxist Party is also working hard for Barack Obama.

Well, The Real Barack Obama blog now informs us that we can add the Communist Party to the list.

In shades of the late 60s and the early 70s, I see a Barack Obama pattern here that has little to do with Democracy. Let’s just say these people don’t wave the American flag a lot or enjoy Democracy as we know it.

Toss in an Obama Cold Call Center In Gaza City, an endorsement and campaign contributions from Hamas, Ethnic Cleansing Cousin Odinga, a crazed Jihad-loving Zbigniew Brzezinski as his top foreign advisor, endorsementa from Iran and North Korea’s currently comatosed “Dear Leader,” and I would say we have a real problem here in the candidacy of the still-unvetted Barack Obama, wouldn’t you? I’d say we’re talking about a guy who is planning Change You Simply Cannot Believe. I mean, it’s a good thing Stalin and Guevara aren’t still alive or they would be endorsing Obama too.

The Real Barack Obama has the full story here on the recent Communist Barack Obama endorsement. Here are some quotes:

Libero Della Piana is New York State chairman of the Communist Party USA, former national organiser of the party and a member of the CPUSA’s 140 strong National Council.

Like virtually all of the CPUSA’s several thousand members and supporters, Della Piana is working to elect Barack Obama to the US Presidency.

…snip…

Comrade Della Piana sees the upcoming US election as an opportunity to change the direction of the US.

From the CPUSA’s People’s Weekly World blog, September 5, 2008

Della Piana This Labor Day working people and their families in New York State are in an exciting and challenging moment. For the first time in years, the labor movement together with its broad movement allies, has the potential to change the course of the country in a more positive direction.

The 2008 Presidential election is historic. Not only has the Democratic Party nominated an African American as its candidate for the first time, but there have also been record turnouts in the primaries and a vibrant grassroots movement has developed.

No wonder Putin likes Obama so much.

Copyright © 2008 Uppity Woman. All Rights Reserved.

A foreign policy adviser of presidential candidate Barack Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, accused members of the American Jewish establishment of “McCarthyism” in its attitude towards critics of Israel. He called the pro-Israel lobby “too powerful” and accused American supporters of Israel as being too ready to use the slur of “anti-Semitism” against critics of Israel. …

What if Hillary Clinton’s close ‘friend’ an advisor, or if Hillary had said this:

“Brzezinski is someone I have learned an immense amount from”, and “one of our most outstanding scholars and thinkers”.

Then, imagine if that person made this statement:

It’s not unique to the Jewish community — but there is a McCarthy-ite tendency among some people in the Jewish community. They operate not by arguing but by slandering, vilifying, demonising.

They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel.”

Paranoid? Jewish people are paranoid? Well, I guess so, one day they are heading off to work – the next day they are being shipped off to concentration camps (IF THEY WERE LUCKY) or worse- gas chambers.

So, forgive me Mr. Brzezinski if I do not buy into your ‘outstanding thinking’ that Jewish people ‘promptly wheel out anti-Semitism’.

Anyway- back to my point- If a Hillary supporter/advisor had made this statement…well, you know.

The full story at American Thinker is here. The Irish Independent news article on which it is based is here.

One more thing: Remember South Carolina?

The only way the Obama campaign could neutralize/devour Hillary’s support in the AA community was to paint her and her husband as racist. Is Senator Obama’s campaign now trying to neutralize or divide the Jewish community? He and David Axelrod have done quite a number on the Democratic Party. Divide the progressive blogosphere, divide the feminist, divide, divide, divide and conquer- but what exactly is Senator Obama and his campaign going to conquer?

The part time occupation of the part time Jews in the major media outlets for the last week or so has been to tackle Obama’s Jewish problem head on, in the same way that major corporations tackle the public revelation their product is fatally toxic to babies– by shaking their heads, smiling weakly and assuring us that it’s all in our heads.

If we’re to believe the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the good people at Media Central, the whole Jewish problem with Obama is the result of some provocative emails sent out by Karl Rove in his spare time that unfairly paint Obama as a Muslim to some gullible senior citizens.

“There, there,” the media assures these elders, “Obama isn’t a Muslim. He’s the Messiah come to lead us to the promised land of big government, Cuban quality health care and environmental taxes on every ounce of bread we eat.” And on the way there he may stop by the Middle East to lead Hamas to Jerusalem.

“Hasn’t Obama said that he’s Pro-Israel,” the columnists bewails, “how many times does he need to say it.” They don’t stay to hear the reply that he doesn’t need to say it, he needs to be it. For a skeptical profession they seem oddly offended that anyone is taking a politician’s statements in an election year with a grain of salt. “Listen to the man,” they say, “pay no attention to the Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Soros, Tony Lake, Samantha Power and Robert O. Malley behind the curtain.”

Hasn’t Obama already fired Samantha Power who wanted an invasion of Israel and Robert O’ Malley who was already privately meeting with Hamas, they protest. That just leaves George Soros without whom Obama would be just another junior Senator angling for an entry level spot on a committee, Brzezinski who helped bring Iran and Al Queda into existence and the rest of Obama’s radicals, both from his Chicago Wright days and his Harvard period, who are all too full of thoughts on what should be done with America and Israel.

The media which until recently was doing its best to pretend that the only people who could possibly oppose Obama were Satanists or worse yet Christians, has decided to believe that the only Democrats who oppose Obama are the senile elderly, hysterical feminists or rednecks. And the media is sure that once Obama is officially anointed at the convention, they along with the Jews will learn to fall into line behind the Kossacks, just like their ancestors did in Eastern Europe. If not, there’s always a cavalry charge.

While the leaders of major Jewish organizations are being called on the carpet by the Democratic leadership and told that they will lose influence and face a major backlash and the destruction of the “Black-Jewish alliance” if they don’t get behind Obama right now and leap into action to reassure their communities that Obama is A-OK; the Jewish public’s concerns are being poo-poohed by the press which is certain those ignorant folks in Brooklyn and Miami Beach will follow marching orders at the polls as soon as their own leadership does. For now some of the Jewish organizations are holding out for assurances that will no doubt fall away once Obama stops by for a meet and greet over bagels and lox and assures them how much he enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof.

As the ultimate outsider who belongs nowhere Obama has shown a great talent for repackaging himself into a dozen ethnic and racial identities. Obama can be white or black. He can be Christian or Muslim. He can be a wealthy Harvard educated professional or a street level community activist. Like an MC Escher picture, he’s a collection of impossibly intersecting levels that seem oddly out of perspective for reasons that aren’t apparent until you try to follow his contradictions. With all that in mind, there’s no reason that Obama can’t also repackage himself as a Jew.

To that end, Obama is already reimagining himself as a Zionist thanks to a Jewish sixth grade camp counselor and speaking of his love for the writings of Leon Uris and Philip Roth. While it’s safe to assume that Obama won’t be giving any readings of Leon Uris’ The Haj, a book that captured with unnerving accuracy the psychological fault lines of Arab culture, he is displaying a talent more worthy of the literary works of other writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Theodore Dreiser. The talent of recreating himself into what people most want to see, the gift of the true con artist.

Obama hasn’t begun name dropping Uris and Roth out of a sudden love for old Jewish writers. Instead he’s discovered a sudden love of the same things that elderly and middle aged Jewish voters who have jilted him are interested in. Like the cynical suitor who studies a girl’s habits to discover her tastes and mirrors them to seduce her, Obama has made it his practice to jump in and out of identities and personas. Today Obama is reading Leon Uris. Tomorrow there’s a rally in San Francisco and he’s reading Amy Tan. The day after that he will be connecting to Feminists by namedropping some Erica Jong. Which selection in the infinitely expandable Obama Book Club best reflects who he is? The answer is none of them. The only thing that reflects on Obama is that he is determined to be President and willing to say anything to make it happen.

Jewish voters are nothing more to him than another breed of cattle to be coaxed through the gates of the polling centers to vote for him. The Democratic party relies on a varied and diverse herd led by Judas Goat community leaders to win office and they’re good at managing the herd. Stop by for a pizza in Little Italy, a bagel on the Lower East Side, some won ton in Chinatown and a burger in Harlem. Shake everyone’s hand, smile, relate and then slip some assurances and earmarks under the table to the community leaders. The herd sighs. The herd is happy as they led back to the barn until the next milking or slaughter.

In making the choice to break with Obama. Jewish voters are being given the chance to allow a larger moral reckoning to win out over this cheap type of ethnic pandering that the Obama campaign is engaging in. It is not guilt that should motivate Jewish voters to reject Obama. There will be plenty time for guilt after 8 years of Obama have done their damage just as there was after 1946. Guilt is the luxury of those who made an unforgivable mistake. This is the year when we can prevent the mistake from being made. Guilt is the refuge of those who know that what they are doing is wrong but refuse to change. This is the year when we can change.

Obama is not our savior. Obama is no one’s savior but his own. As his cult of personality spreads, millions of Americans are throwing reason and rationality out the window to embrace the promise of a one man solution to all their problems. But Obama’s background has left him with two poisoned outsider’s gifts, a legacy of hatred for America and the ability to camouflage his real feelings to blend in anywhere.

When a nation brings a cult of personality leader to power, it is typically at a low point in its national self-confidence and finds an outsider to rule over them in the hope he will save them from themselves. Just as Hitler was an Austrian ruling over Germany, Stalin was an Ossetian ruling over Russia, Obama is an African Arab with a Muslim background positioning himself for the White House. With a slim record and a campaign built primarily around his outgoing personality, Obama is America’s biggest mistake waiting to be made. Let’s not play any part in making it.

We don’t need to be saved from ourselves. We need to be saved from leaders who think that we rather than they are the problem. We need to be saved from leaders who imagine that disarming America and destroying Israel will make our enemies love us. We need to be saved from leaders who have more empathy for the enemy than they do for the citizens they rule over.

We don’t need to be saved by a lifelong con artist with a manufactured biography who repackages himself to appeal to everyone while concealing his real sympathies behind a facade of multilevel marketing outreach. We need to be saved from him and only we can save ourselves from him.

::::::::::::

From my blog: Sultan Knish.

The past week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the milestone of the 4,000th American soldier killed in that disastrous adventure.

Commemorating and underscoring the urgent need for a new policy direction, Senator Clinton delivered a serious and detailed address clearly setting out her vision for and commitment to ending the conflict. Her approach includes a direct critique of the most glaring failures of the Bush administration: its unwillingness to use political pressure and intense international diplomacy to effect a resolution of the outstanding differences that have driven the region into a proxy war within Iraq with the United States manning and supporting combatants on all sides.

For years American generals have been telling the administration, the Congress, and the public that Iraq is not a situation that lends itself to a military solution and will only be resolved politically. While the focus of American opprobrium has been on the Iraqi government for its failure to find those solutions, Senator Clinton, in her speech, is the first presidential candidate to spell out in a precise plan the elements required for an international effort, including co-opting and controlling the enablers of the ongoing violence in Iraq, to promote political reconciliation and reform.

My wife, former CIA agent, Valerie, and I accompanied Senator Clinton to Philadelphia the day after her speech.

Valerie pointed out in her comments how, in the run up to the invasion, the administration lied to the Congress and the American people about the nature and the seriousness of the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration’s willful twisting of intelligence was crucial to manipulation of the press, the public and the Congress. Not until months later, after the invasion, did the facts of the administration’s distortion of intelligence slowly begin to trickle out, partly as a result of my own efforts in a New York Times opinion piece in July 2003.

Understandably, Senator Obama’s speech on race relations overshadowed Senator Clinton’s policy pronouncements. While laudable in intent, Senator Obama would never have made the speech had his relationship with fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright not become a public relations nightmare for him. Among other things, Wright preaches that the United States government unleashed the HIV virus in Africa to kill blacks. (Having worked in Africa for much of my adult life, including with one of the early AIDS researchers, Dr. Jonathan Mann, I can safely say that there is absolutely no evidence to sustain Wright’s reckless charge.) Obama had no choice but to address his 20-year close relationship with a man he still considers, as he made clear in his speech, a mentor.

In the immediate aftermath, the Obama campaign dispatched several foreign policy surrogates to blitz the airwaves, supposedly to offer alternatives to Clinton’s recommendations. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Hillary was subjected to yet another round of personal abuse, denigration and ridicule rather than a serious debate of the issues. The real subtext of the Obama campaign was to attack Hillary in order to distract from Obama’s association with his anti-American preacher. National security went un-addressed. Rather than filling in his largely absent record, Obama had his surrogates engage in what can be termed the mendacity of hype.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, an otherwise serious person, made the extraordinarily silly comment belittling two-term Senator Clinton by comparing her experience to that of Mamie Eisenhower and his own travel agent after offering an analysis of the situation in Iraq and the path to a resolution that essentially mirrored the basic points Senator Clinton made in her speech. Brzezinski was not asked and did not explain why Obama early embraced him as an adviser and openly praised him, but recently has coldly distanced himself because of Brzezinski’s controversial views on Israel.

Nor did Brzezinski address the bloody issue of mercenary forces like Blackwater, which Obama states should be allowed to remain part of our military force in Iraq — a position challenged by Senator Clinton, who has called for phasing them out. In place of practical policies, Brzezinski offered his vague “sense” that Obama is a person who understands change before it takes place and is therefore capable of making “transcendental” decisions, whatever that might mean. For a man with a reputation as tough-minded, Brzezinski retreated into cloudy abstraction in his defense of Obama, who, according to the Senator, he, Brzezinksi, knows hardly at all.

Senator John Kerry, another Obama surrogate, offered the startling observation that Obama is better equipped than anyone else to bridge the divide between the U.S. and the Muslim world and end Islamic extremism and terorrism — “because he’s a black man.” There is absolutely no empirical evidence to sustain that claim, the notion that a single individual, even one with a resume filled with appropriate experience, would be able to halt terrorism because of the color of his skin. It is patently absurd. But Kerry presented nothing to back up his astounding racial reasoning. And the Obama campaign was remarkably silent on Kerry’s racialization of the foreign policy discussion.

Next, Governor Bill Richardson, who campaigned on his resume as a foreign policy practitioner, “agonized,” he explained, before putting his faith in a “once in a lifetime leader” and endorsed Obama, repudiating his own rationale of experience as a prerequisite for being President. Rather than state why he believes Obama has superior national security credentials and positions, he opted to complain instead about James Carville comparing him to Judas Iscariot. Since Richardson made foreign policy the centerpiece of his campaign — a direct consequence of President Bill Clinton’s appointments — and of the salience of foreign policy as an issue in the election, he owed an explanation of how Obama’s foreign policy would make us stronger and more secure that Clinton’s. But, preferring to defend himself against the charge of having betrayed the Clintons he neglected to discuss such policy.

Then, there was retired Air Force General, Merrill “Tony” McPeak, whose media appearance last week consisted of making the outrageous charge that Bill Clinton was using “McCarthy-like tactics” simply because he mentioned, in the event of a Hillary-McCain match-up, that Hillary and McCain are good patriots and that the campaign should be devoted to a substantive debate of the issues. Even the right wing National Review’s Kathleen Parker, who was at the event, felt compelled to correct the record. “Bill Clinton was saying that Hillary and McCain are both good patriots who love their country, not that all those unmentioned are something else.”

Bill Clinton, of course, was not using “McCarthy-like tactics,” but the Obama campaign was eager to smear him. Which was guilty of “McCarthy-like tactics”? Attack the character of your adversaries; demean them; turn them into caricatures; while lying about someone, claim they are liars.

Finally, the Obama campaign pushed a compliant press corps, all too eager to do its bidding rather than maintain its standards of objectivity and skepticism, into hyping a mini-pseudo-scandal: whether Hillary “misspoke” about being under sniper fire when she paid a visit to Tuzla in Bosnia in 1996. In fact, the then-First Lady was told the plane was diving to land to avoid possible sniper fire. Whether there was or not is irrelevant. Anybody who has been involved in these situations, as I have, knows this. The threat was apparently real enough for U.S. military on the ground, the pilot and her security detail to engage in evasive procedures. That should have been the end of the matter. But the cable TV talking heads nattered the Obama campaign talking points endlessly.

Obama’s week of rolling out national security surrogates and talking points was not a pretty sight and turned out to have almost nothing to do with bolstering his thin credentials. His distracting efforts were a clear attempt to deflect attention from them, in fact. In response to Hillary’s detailed, substantive speech on Iraq, Obama replied with ad hominem insults. Instead of presenting his own plan, his campaign indulged in character assassination.

David Axelrod, the top Obama political strategist, for one, knows better. After all, he and his wife were direct beneficiaries of Hillary Clinton’s personal kindness and public policy experience when, in the midst of the impeachment trial of her husband, she travelled to Chicago to support Susan Axelrod’s efforts to raise money for her foundation, Citizens United for Research on Epilepsy (CURE), established by her after one of the Axelrod children was afflicted with the malady. As reported in the New York Times in April, 2007 (with thanks to eriposte of the Leftcoaster blog for his research):

“It was January 1999, President Clinton’s impeachment trial was just beginning in the Senate and Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak at the foundation’s fund-raiser in Chicago. Despite all the fuss back in Washington, Clinton kept the appointment. She spent hours that day in the epilepsy ward at Rush Presbyterian hospital, visiting children hooked up to machines by electrodes so that doctors might diagram their seizure activity and decide which portion of the brain to remove. At the hospital, a local reporter pressed her about the trial in Washington, asked her about that woman. At the organization’s reception at the Drake Hotel that evening, Clinton stood backstage looking over her remarks, figuring out where to insert anecdotes about the kids. “She couldn’t stop talking about what she had seen,” Susan Axelrod recalled. Later, at Hillary Clinton’s behest, the National Institutes of Health convened a conference on finding a cure for epilepsy. Susan Axelrod told me it was “one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy.” And this is how politics works: David Axelrod is now dedicated to derailing this woman’s career.”

Senator Obama and his campaign should get back to defending his policy positions and record rather than diminish a good person and an accomplished public servant. They know better.

But Sam had to release the guillotine herself, then get her head back down on the block: “‘She submitted the resignation,’ said a source in the Obama campaign. “‘She made this decision on her own to submit her resignation and we accepted it. Obviously, there was a lot of pressure from outside sources.’”

Then the gallant Zbigniew Brzezinski stuck his own neck out: “[He] seems to think that departed Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power got a raw deal.”

But wait. It turns out that Mr. Zbigniew is a headless horseman: “Obama [has] distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Jimmy Carter administration who traveled to Iowa with Obama when he made an Iraq speech.”  

“I do not share [Zbigniew Brzezinski's] views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally,” Obama said. “He’s not one of my key advisers. I’ve had lunch with him once. I’ve exchanged e-mails with him maybe three times. He came to Iowa to introduce … for a speech on Iraq.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition has been critical of Obama’s plan, if elected president, to call “a summit in the Muslim world.” Executive Director Matt Brooks said he was “deeply troubled” by the proposal.

– Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times

I’ve heard that the fish rots from the head.

UPDATE / Enjoy: