As a political-commentator, it is never advisable to make predictions that can be seen as “out on a limb”, but many of us do it anyway. The fact is that even a supposedly safe prediction can backfire and undermine one's credibility in just a single special-election, far more a whole national election-cycle. It's probably always better to couch your predictions a bit: a lesson I learned again recently.

You see, a few months ago I appeared on a BCAT cable-television program in Brooklyn, with Tom Robbins (staff writer/ The New York Village Voice) and Tom Tracey (The Brooklyn Paper). We were discussing the then upcoming primary elections. I am sure one can “Google” and find the show on the Internet. In that discussion I told the viewing audience that Carl Paladino was going nowhere fast. I essentially felt back then -and still do now- that he is totally unfit to be the governor of New York State. I thought Rick Lazio was going to clean his clock in the Republican primary: boy, was I wrong!  read more »

Back on February 2 (before "Super Tuesday), I analyzed the problems of the Republican party (available here). About a week later, televsion's self-appointed pundits started saying exactly the same thing I posted.

I'm not egotistical enough to think that someone read my post and decided to poach it (well, actually I am, but it's a long shot at best). But the fact that I was blogging it shortly before those pundits were saying it on TV is very interesting.

Perhaps the networks, broadcast and cable, are hiring the wrong people?

Awhile back I wrote about an anti-Semtitic incident in Indiana where a Republican politician told a group of Jews that they didn't count because they only made up 2% of the Indiana population. I called this the Republican "2% solution." This is how the incident appeared to the Jewish group:

[In Feb. 2006], the Indianapolis JCRC’s Jewish Lobby Day was held. Around 40 Jews from around the State of Indiana came to Indianapolis to lobby our state senators and representatives on a number of issues.  read more »

I didn't know this but last week was self-proclaimed "Islamo-facism awareness week," a right wing intolerance fest dreamed up by extremists Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. I only know that these fools were strutting around advocating intolerance because of an email I got from the organization Jews on First.

There is something so disgusting about the right wing fear of just about everything that isn't white, male, Protestant Christian. Ann Coulter is the perfect example of this. When we hear her condemning so-called Islamo-fascism, let's remember that she is the idiot who said right after 9/11 that:

"We should invade their [Muslim's] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

And what did she choose to advocate during her "Islamo-facism awareness week?" Anti-Semitism. Yes, she attacks Jews as part of her paranoia against Islam. Last week she told Donny Deutsch:

"we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians."

Ann Coulter also claimed that Christians want Jews "to be perfected" by converting to Christianity.  read more »

Missed this when it first came out at the beginning of August. But the National Jewish Democratic Council has brought it to my attention. Mitt Romney has criticized Democrats for being unable to "recognize evil." And yet Mitt Romney ALSO is calling for America to look to Hezbollah as a role model.

...in an article titled “Mitt Romney cited Hezbollah's social network as a model for U.S. diplomacy,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on recent comments by GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney that Hezbollah’s “kind of diplomacy is something that would help America become stronger around the world …” Today, the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) strongly criticized Mitt Romney for his praise of Hezbollah and released the following statement from Executive Director Ira N. Forman:  read more »