The problem with this cycle is that early in the year, you pick an upset special that almost no else has noticed or is paying attention to, and then by the time Labor Day rolls around, nobody's surprised to see the challenger ahead. Over in Illinois' 17th Congressional District : Total Overall
I’m going to have to stop off at Barnes and Noble to read the whole thing, since Time posts only an excerpt , but I trust Phyllis Chesler’s analysis : The Jewish insistence on life may be the key to our survival as a people despite ceaseless persecution. It might be the lesson, the model, for all humanity in an era of genocides, civil wars, torture chambers, tyrannies, and totalitarian regimes. Why is TIME turning things on their head and refusing to recognize the courage and the heroism of Jewish Israelis who choose to live in the moment when the moment is all they have? Against all odds, the Jews simply refuse to give up. Added : I see Time ‘s essay is garnering some attention around the ‘sphere . See Victor Davis Hanson, ” For the Jews in Israel, Money Trumps All? “: I know it’s commonplace to read in the latest issue of Time or Newsweek that Obama is a god, that Islamophobic Americans are collectively prejudiced against Muslims, that the response after 9/11 was overblown and unnecessary (over 30 subsequent terrorist plots have been foiled, and, for some reason, renditions, tribunals, Guantanamo, Predators, intercepts, etc., have all been embraced by the Obama administration), but the recent Time piece on Israel by a Karl Vick is probably the most anti-Semitic essay I have ever read in a mainstream publication. Hanson’s on to something. See also Bret Stephens, ” Time magazine adds its voice to the chorus of those attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state .” Here’s more, from Daniel Gordis, ” Acceptable in Polite Society .”

See the original post:
From Phyllis Chesler: TIME Magazine’s Latest Blood Libel About Israel
-By Warner Todd Huston For those that thought faded journo Jimmy Breslin had passed on to his great reward, fear not for ol’ Jimmy is back and this time he wants you all to know that you Tea Partiers are wild-eyed racists filled with madness. Heck you are all as crazy as Bobby Kennedy’s killer Sirhan-Sirhan,
Original post:
Jimmy Breslin: Tea Partiers Are Like Kennedy’s Killer Sirhan Sirhan, Are Racists Filled With ‘Madness’
This is about the time when Democrats thought—or perhaps hoped—the political clouds that have hung over them all year would begin to lift. Instead, those clouds may actually be getting darker.
Read more:
Get Ready for an Anti-Incumbent Wave
From Emma Silvers, at Slate : On the 2 train uptown during the morning commute the other day, I was in my usual state of sleepwalk — face crammed into a fellow passenger’s armpit — when a young woman standing 3 feet away from me removed an Amazon Kindle from her oversize designer purse and began to read. A surprising wave of disgust overcame me as I stared at the smooth metallic back of the thing, at her manicured fingernails positioned against it, at her face as she read … whatever it was that she was reading. That was part of it, I realized, trying to analyze my own ridiculous, knee-jerk judgment of this stranger. I couldn’t see what she was reading, and it bothered me. I couldn’t peer in that tiny window onto someone’s interior world, or delight in the juxtaposition that a book choice sometimes presents — when you notice a stuffy, 90-something grandma buried in a trashy romance novel, or a would-be gangsta engrossed in “Love in the Time of Cholera.” But at 26, a supposed child of the Internet generation (who, I recently discovered, must henceforth be referred to as “The Millennials,” and discussed in the media mainly in reference to our refusal to get real jobs or move out of our parents’ basements), I’ve begun to feel out of step with this particular aspect of youth culture. I’m starting to understand what my grandmother must feel when she heads to the library once a week to dutifully check the e-mail account my uncle created for her. As I stared at the woman, fully engaged, happily using this very practical and very expensive device that, for all I know, she saved her pennies for a year to buy, I felt something entirely out of proportion with the situation: I felt personally slighted. I never thought my lack of interest in e-readers made me particularly unique — until recently, when Consumer Reports and national headlines started implying I was actually in a freakish minority. Earlier this summer, you could practically hear the collective weeping of small publishers nationwide when Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling hardcovers by a 180-to-100 margin. Then came the drumbeat for the thinner, cheaper Kindle model forthcoming in September, and the competitors’ accompanying rush to stay in the game. A crop of stories attempted to sort out the so-called e-reader wars: Kindle vs. iPad vs. Nook – which is right for you? More service-oriented articles provided tips for all the people who aren’t me: “Copying Text From Your Kindle to Computer,” or “The Best Way to Highlight Passages on Your Nook” (hint: not with an actual highlighter). These articles all had slightly different aims, but their bottom line was the same: Of course you need to buy an e-reader. What are you, a Mennonite? One recent story in the New York Times went so far as to claim that iPads and Kindles and Nooks are making the very act of reading better by — of course — making it social. As one user explained, “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.” Hear that? There’s a stigma about reading alone . (How does everyone else read before bed — in pre-organized groups?) Regardless, it turns out that, for the last two decades, I’ve been Doing It Wrong. And funny enough, up until e-books came along, reading was one of the few things I felt confident I was doing exactly right. More at the link . I haven’t made the leap yet, although I doubt I’m as opposed to e-reading as our essayist here.
The cover of the August 18, 2010 issue of TIME magazine asks “Is America Islamophobic”. Unless you’re deaf, blind, stupid and suicidal, your answer must be “Not nearly enough!” Islamophobia – the fear of Islam and those who embrace it – is not some sort of neurotic condition, as the liberal media would have you
Continued here:
Some people will do anything for a prophet
