i see from the papers that jewish support for obama is even higher now. (what did i tell you?) the ultrazealots, racists, and incurable republicans are still dug in, but that goes for every race/religion/ethnicity/sexual preference, not just jews. it's time we recognize that rightwing zionism is a branch of neoconservatism, not the other way around as the judeophobes of the world would have us believe. even though we do control the media, have no fear, we come in peace.

but what's striking is that, as observed, this represents a change in the attitudes of US Jewry, who had until now been traditionally more militant towards the Arabs, both Palestinian and other countries, than Israelis. It was an eyeopener for me to visit the country decades ago, and discover that my slightly pacifist attitudes, by US standards, made me close to a rightwing provocateur to the average Israeli. They were willing to try to agree to almost anything if it would guarantee an end to the tiresome burden of being a garrison state; the catch being that succh guarantees were hard to find. But like many Americans, I was never informed that we were allowe to take that position. (At the same time, the casual de facto racism of the Israeli public was startling to a baby boomer; i imagine it was much the same as european would have felt touring the US south in the late 50s or early 60s, only with Arabs playing the part of the blacks. Seemed to me to make it less reasonable to expect that a little Arabic Israeli citizen would grow up to love his country when he saw a swarthy hook nosed caricature intended to represent his parents planting a bomb, as a bus ad advising continual vigilance).

Anyway, I don't know if this newly enlightened attitude reflects a greater access to Americans of this comparison with the attitudes of Israeli residents, or the effect of the Palestinians' public relations campaign, or just a post-Bush disgust with all things neoconservative, but it's at least something positive in a largely deteriorating world situation. And I can't help but feel that Obama's part of it in some way, if only as a symbolic refuge from ugly jingoism.

you're oppressing me by not letting me practice my religion; which consists of oppressing other religions.

"The mainstream media is not free press. If it were free press they would cover the other candidates. It is propaganda plain an simple. It is not journalism and is is not free speech."

well, i certainly oppose those laws requiring the media to take a left wing point of view, and would be in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing people with a rightwing point of view to publish and market their point of view to anybody who wishes to pay for it. it would probably make a fortune and put all those left wing media out of business, appealing to all those oppressed US citizens yearning to read more Ann Coulter.

See also, "Mysteries of the Right Wing, part 784: how to believe that the unfettered free market is the best route to truth, and also that there ought to be laws to prevent Hollywood from putting out that crap just to make money".

why just today i pulled out my gun to chase some kid off my lawn, and damn if he didn't pull out his gun and wave it at me. He's oppressing my right to bear arms, dammit!

but there is no "detroit" making decisions in their long term interest; what there is is executives making decisions based on what's going to be profitable in the next quarter, and "long term" meaning the next year; and that means trucks and SUVs, which have about three times the profit margin as cars and for which the costs of convincing the public they need them are already paid. they are compelled to this path by the need to keep the already struggling company afloat for another year, plus the need to keep their bonuses up for the next year, which includes the need to appease the stockholders who demand short turn returns or they will take their capitalization somewhere else; and those stockholders are, more and more, big pensions and mutual funds which need to keep their members happy or they will take their money out, and those members are... hey that's us!

people have been on the case of Toyota for a while now, on the grounds that they get a free pass for spitting out a few (but a lot more now!) hybrids to great acclaim, while peddling a fleet including plenty of giant trucks to pay the bills.

"If I am a consumer, and the government forces me to buy a car that gets better mileage, lower my annual fuel costs, I'm liable to drive more, not less. How do we know this? About 20 years of CAFE data, that's how."

perhaps you could explain that to us who don't see how mileage driven per year

http://bp3.blogger.com/_CQyU4ayBifw/SDxDgA7R3pI/AAAAAAAAA9g/m-Vm8V27_uo/s1600-h/shooting+in+foot.JPG

is all that dependent on gas mileage according to 20 years of CAFE data

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/CARS/rules/CAFE/docs/Summary-Fuel-Economy-Pref-2004.pdf (page 5, for instance)

i also don't see any sign that miles driven per year is affected by the cost of gasoline until it ran off the cliff last year, nor any sign that gas mileage has been responsive to cost of fuel, rather than actual CAFE standards, up till they were relaxed in the 1980s.

this isn't another of those faith in the free market things where a good theory trumps reality, is it?

phantasm.

if they would only have had bush campaign for obama, it would be president palin soon.

damn right. election night 2000 was the death of the sixties.