Bush Takes America $482 Billion In the Red July 29, 2008

The New York Times reported today that “President Bush would leave a record $482 billion deficit to his successor”, and this staggering figure doesn’t even reflect the full situation:

The White House predicted Monday that President Bush would leave a record $482 billion deficit to his successor, a sobering turnabout in the nation’s fiscal condition from 2001, when Mr. Bush took office after three consecutive years of budget surpluses.

The worst may be yet to come. The deficit announced by Jim Nussle, the White House budget director, does not reflect the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline.

The new deficit numbers also do not account for any drains on the national treasury that might result from further declines in the housing market.

Half a trillion dollars. Mission accomplished.

Praying at the Pump, Why Not?

A religious organization in St. Louis, Missouri, “Pray at the Pump”, has undertaken a unique effort to relieve the crunch of rising gas prices.

They are asking for Divine intervention.

“Pray at the Pump” has begun a campaign of prayer at a St. Louis-area Mobil station to thank G-d for lower fuel prices, and to ask G-d for lower gas prices “since politicians couldn’t get lower gas prices”:

A St. Louis faith-based group has scheduled two prayer services at an area Mobil station to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop.

Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chairman of Pray at the Pump, says the gatherings will be held to ask God to intervene since politicians couldn’t get lower gas prices.

Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and sing “We Shall Overcome” with a new verse, “We’ll have lower gas prices.”

I think these are wonderful actions. This was understandably placed in the “weird, offbeat” news section, and of course, upon the story’s publication, jokes began to abound.

But while this may be an unusual venue in which to pray, I don’t find these actions weird at all, and in fact, it would be logical for all religious people to do similar things.

The simple act of prayer assumes that prayer has an effect on one’s environment and/or soul: one would not waste his time doing a patently ineffective action in the hopes of receiving some sort of result if he knows he’s acting in vain. Virtually all religious people who believe in interaction with a Higher Power see that Higher Power as a source of help, of refuge, of salvation against all odds. Most religious people would agree with the statement: “when no one else was there for me, G-d was.”

For those of us who believe in an all-powerful, infinite G-d with omnipresent, permanent and total jurisdiction over the universe, prayer also means interacting with that One Entity who can do anything. It would follow logically that if one believes G-d can create life, planets, and time — G-d can also change gas prices. Is it any more logical to pray at a hospital than at a gas station? G-d can kill a micro-organism or heal a broken bone “as quickly as” He could do any number of market-impacting actions to lower gas prices.

I have stood on bus stops and prayed for buses to run on time, I have prayed for phones to ring, I have prayed for subways to run on schedule. If someone desires to fulfill the ideal of “in all your ways, know Him”, then it would follow logically that, since there is nothing in the Universe “out of G-d’s control”, then one would ask Him to “control” all sorts of things.

It is precisely when we start thinking that humans have control that G-d doesn’t have (ch”v) that we run into problems. Is there something that OPEC can do that G-d can’t undo? Is there anything that Americans could vote for that G-d couldn’t veto? I’ll take Mr. Alexander’s contention, even, a step further — it is not that “politicians couldn’t get lower gas prices”, so therefore, “as plan B”, one should turn to G-d, on the contrary, G-d should always be “plan A”, and the politicians only focused upon to gauge what effects the prayers had. Turning to a human is only the effort we put in to manifest a Divine decree, the reality, of course, being that all the “work”, all the “doing”, all the manipulation of circumstance and Creation is being done exclusively by the Creator.

And while very few humans who have ever existed can be said to have lived at this level of faith their entire lives, when people do make shows of faith, they shouldn’t be made fun of or belittled, rather, it should make us examine our own levels of faith and trust in G-d, to see if we also would ask the Creator for $.25 off.

Anti-Obama Propaganda: Trying Harder

In the words of Linkin Park, the neo-cons tried so hard, and got so far, but G-d willing, in November, it won’t really matter.

Global Politician unfortunately is putting his best shovel forward in the right-wing feces-projecting match when it comes to our (G-d willing) future president, Barack Obama:

n the poll of Jewish voters (conducted April 1-30), it showed Obama getting 61% of the Jewish vote against John McCain (32%). Yet in the same poll Hillary Clinton beat Obama among Jewish voters 62% - 38%. So obviously Jews are lifelong democrats who will vote for Obama, whom they rejected in the primaries, rather than vote for McCain. Thus, for them, party loyalty is preferable to Israel loyalty.

Recently I posted two articles by Yarom Ettinger, former Israeli Ambassador to the US, The Prospects of a Palestinian State and National Interests of the United States and It’s American interests, stupid, both of which clearly demonstrate that keeping Israel strong is to keep America strong…..While most Jews favour Obama in a run off with McCain because he is a Democrat, they ignore how pro-Palestinian and anti-American he is.

Anti-American. This about a man who has done nothing but prove his patriotism from day one, defending his affinity for the country of his citizenship in the face of every flag-pin naysayer.

It’s almost embarrassing at this point — to watch pundits who should be esteemed drop ideological trou in full view of the entire Internet. Mr. Belman in the GlobalPolitician article accuses Obama of everything from an Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade endorsement to everything short of all-out racism.

Perhaps it’s because the neo-cons have nothing to say that they’re rehashing already-disproven points, perhaps their vitriol is actually born from a genuinely pro-American concern. Regardless, I feel we have only begun to see the beginning of drivvel, and Democrats have to, unfortunately, brace themselves for an unprecedented onslaught of misinformation. Perhaps this would not be happening if Obama were John Edwards. Or Hillary. But now that the right has shown their “We’re-glue-everything-we-say-will-stick” MO, I fear Dems will only be in for the months-long broken record we have been subjected to thus far.

Could anything serve as better proof to Obama’s conention that America needs change?

News and Advertising, Live at Eleven July 22, 2008

Welcome to newsvertising. Broadcast journalism’s (albeit porous) exalted position as being above the dog-eat-dog world of product marketing has, lamentably, begun to come to an end. For the first time ever, the newsdesk is now fair game for product placement, as the Guardian reports today. McDonalds will now be able to place its Iced Coffees on newsdesks in a product placement deal, which, the article says, extends the “tentacle-like” reach of “clandestine advertising”:

The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in American TV shows in the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with the introduction of McDonald’s products into regional news programmes.

Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast food giant the right to place cups of its iced coffee onto the desks of news anchors as they present morning current affairs shows.

Typical is Fox 5 News, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox television network in Las Vegas.

Two cups of coffee, their cubes of ice glinting in the studio lights, now daily stand before the channel’s morning presenters. The presenters conspicuously do not drink from the cups, which is just as well – the cups contain a bogus fluid and fake ice to prevent the cubes melting.

Let’s just examine this for a second: McDonalds is paying for their product to be placed in newscasts. Product placement, for anyone who saw the classic early-90s flick “Wayne’s World”, has long been in movies and broadcast television — going so far as “[The] OC, which had one character talk about having “a9.Com’d” a friend on the day the internet search company A9 launched a new Yellow Pages service of that name.”

When was the last time you used a website with a number in its name as a verb? Googling, yes. YouTubing? Perhaps. A9-ing? To even use a term like that in public would be a perfect excuse for any social gathering’s bouncer to say, “Ok, your friends can come in. You, wait outside.”

And if you didn’t know, you better A9 somebody.

“Clandestine advertising” has the power to make characters use outlandish turns of slang, and could be the reason for multiple pizza boxes to be served in a TV show scene depicting dinner for 4. However, when it makes its way onto the newsdesk, the insidious effects are far from humorous. While Adam Bradshaw, news director for Las Vegas’ Fox 5 News, says that he would not put the product on his “5 or 10pm” newsdesk, and that, were a negative story about McDonalds to come up, he would pull the product from the newsdesk. And kudos to Mr. Bradshaw for that. However, as the Guardian notes:

TV stations across America are suffering from a downtown in advertising, partly due to the challenge of the internet and partly to the more recent economic troubles of the country.

In a harsh financial climate, many are turning to new cash streams such as Fox 5 News’s latest innovation.

Many TV stations are turning to new cash streams. Will all of them have the integrity to not put McCoffee on the 5pm news? Will all the journalists accept fake product and pull it off the newsdesk when appropriate, or will some of them let some brand evangelism (”You know, Bob, I love this coffee”) “slip” as part of “casual” banter between anchorpeople?

The fact that we, as Americans, even have to ask these questions says something about the state of our news media. Perhaps “the challenge of the internet” should extend to the newsdesk itself. Perhaps online news has more journalistic integrity due to the sole fact that a banner ad, no matter how well you place it, is still not part of the text one is reading. A commercial for McDonalds when followed by a news report from behind a desk with McDonalds ice cubes twinkling inside of their “new iced coffee”, followed by another commercial for McDonalds, does not give the separation of “this is news, this is advertising”.

When TV stations allow their newsdesks to become prime advertising space, all viewers must take pause — because the more “clandestine” advertising gets, the less the viewer is supposed to perceive it, and the already beleaguered journalistic trade must now try to maintain objective standards in the face of not just politics and ratings, but now also full-on marketing. Remaining fair and balanced is hard when corporate sponsors are keeping you on the airwaves.

But, perhaps, at the end of the day, this is only decor, only a paid accessory — a piece of the desk set aside to cater to a corporate interest.

One can only hope that the news stories themselves aren’t soon to follow.

Bulldozer Attack in Jerusalem: “He tried to run over anything that moves” July 2, 2008

The Jerusalem Post today breaks the heart-wrenching news: three people were killed and 66 more wounded (1 moderately, the rest “lightly”) when a bulldozer-driving terrorist, 30-year-old Husam Taysir Dwayat from “Southeast Jerusalem” plowed through downtown Jerusalem. His rampage would crush six cars and overturn others, and would demolish a bus in its wake, and would end upon his being killed by a quick-thinking IDF soldier:

Three people were killed and 66 were wounded - one moderately and the rest lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was also overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged. The attack, at the junction of Jaffa Road and Sarei Yisrael St., set off a panic in the area and left a large swath of damage in the heart of the capital. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

A car was dragged several meters by the bulldozer before being crushed under the vehicle. A baby was pulled out by a passerby before the vehicle was crushed, with the child’s mother still inside.

The rampage would come to an end at the hands of Moshe Plesser and Eli Mizrahi — Plesser only being 18 years of age at the time — who would shoot a combined five rounds at Dwayat, killing him:

As he began running towards the bulldozer, Plesser said that he shouted out to onlookers for a gun. Together with another civilian, Plesser climbed aboard the bulldozer and began wrestling with the driver. “At one point he [the driver] yelled out “Allah Akhbar” [God is great] and stepped on the gas pedal,” Plesser recalled. “I drew the weapon of the civilian who was with me and shot the driver three times in the head. I think I did what is expected from every soldier and citizen.”

Seconds later, a police officer, Eli Mizrahi, climbed aboard the bulldozer and shot the terrorist again, killing him.

…The policeman, Mizrahi, later told reporters at the scene that he had acted “precisely as we were taught to do.”

Mizrahi said he had been on duty with his partner nearby when word of the attack came through and he sped to the scene on his motorbike. He saw a trail of smashed and crushed cars and wounded pedestrians, he said, cocked his gun and dashed toward the bulldozer in which the perpetrator was driving.

An armed Israeli civilian fired first, Mizrahi said, referring to Plesser, but the tractor was still moving, “crushing a car and heading towards more civilians.”

So Mizrahi climbed up to the driver’s cab. “I fired twice. And he was neutralized.”

Ironically, Plesser is the brother-in-law of of Capt. David Shapira, the IDF officer who killed the terrorist who went on a shooting rampage at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in March.

Three organizations claimed responsibility for the bulldozer attack - Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the militant armed wing of the Fatah movement, the Galilee Freedom Battalion, suspected of being “affiliated with Hezbollah”, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Besides the usual outrage at the horrible loss of life, and my heart going out to my fellow Jews who died in the Holy City — here’s why I feel personally played out, betrayed almost, by this particular terror attack: (more…)