I am a conservative, both on foriegn policy and fiscal issues, but a libertarian on social and personal issues.  In my dreams I am the “swing voter” this election — and I only mean that in a political sense. But, as the election nears, I think I’ll vote for Barack Obama, and here are my top 10 reasons:

1.  He’s a smooth talker — and I love smooth talkers; they are the consummate seducers, and I like to listen to them talk the ink off of Webster’s definitions (i.e. to define welfare payouts as tax cuts);

2.  He claims (and who wouldn’t believe this) he will spend another trillion-plus in give-aways and balance the budget;

3.  His long and layered association with ACORN has taught him the skills and benefits of intimidation, which I believe will help him deal with our most reluctant European allies;

4. His desire to lie with “educational guru” Bill Ayers. whom we all want to forgive for his bombing of Americans, will bring “political correctness” to our kindergartners, even though it will accelerate our falling behind other societies, which foolishlessly concentrate on languages, math, science, history and art;

5. His 360 degree turn on accepting public financing shows he can abandon agreements, like North Korea’s vertically-challenged dictator, and change his pledges — on a dime;

6. His 20-year relationship with  the anti-American anti-white Reverend Wright, which he enthusiastically shared with his two daughters, shows American-haters he feels their pain;

7.  His acceptance of significant financial contributions from Fannie May in his first year shows how quickly he can make his desires known (in exchange for endorsing a lack of oversight of the mortgage giant), and how much he cherishes his well-heeled friends, which has been duly noted, no doubt, by the sheiks of Saudi Arabia and rulers of China;

8. He understands Islam as well as any American Hussein on the planet, and will insist that the rest of us learn and appreciate their culture and nuances, without burdening them with learning about our multi-cultural system;

9.  His tax-raising job-killing and protectionist ideas shows that he can work “across the aisle” — this time by holding hands with the ghost of Herbert Hoover; and

10. He’s damn good looking!

I can’t wait to bathe in the light of his “change” — whatever that is!

By Alan Bromley

I have a dream! I have a dream of 1.25 billion Muslims lifting themselves up, and neither blaming nor hating the 13 million Jewish men, women and children for their ills.

I have a dream! I dream of 1.25 billion Roman Catholics taking responsibility for bringing Jesus to trial and for executing him.

I have a dream!  I dream  of blacks marshalling their spiritual, intellectual and economic might to lift themselves up–and stop demonizing their Jewish neighbors.

I have a dream!  I dream of western intellectual elites applying universal standards, and recognizing that Israel is the sacred and continuous homeland of the Jews, who have lived there for more than 4,000 years before a Muslim existed.

I have a dream! I dream that the western and Muslim nations recognize that attacking a nation (Israel)– and losing — does not, morally or legally, entitle them to have their land returned so that they can attack again!

I have a dream!  I dream that people who left their homes (in Palestine) at the behest of their (Arab) neighbors to make it easier to kill all the Jews, realize they have no “right of return.”

I have a dream! I dream that the United Methodist Church, as well as the Presbyterian Church USA, realize and appreciate that Israel is always ready to trade land for peace–to make their region flower with prosperity, if they could only find neighbors not intent on destroying them.

I have a dream!  I dream that former President Jimmy Carter, such a good Christian that he finds ways to forgive his enemies before he realizes who his friends are, learns history — and recognizes that the Arab nations have refused to help assimilate their brethren in Palestine (but have chosen to find ways to arm them to kill Jews).

I have a dream that the born-again Christians, strong allies of Israel that they are, stop trying to convert us Jews to Christianity.

I have a dream! I dream that the world neither blamed the Jews for being communists and/or capitalists nor for being film and song-writers.

I have a dream! I dream of one set of rules for all–not one set of rules for Christians, Muslims and secularists — and another, separate set of rules for Jews.

I have a dream! I dream of equality of opportunity; I dream of the peaceful but hasty death of blatant bias; I dream that my people, all people, may flourish and be judged by how we live, rather than by those who re-write history so they can villify, stifle and kill us!

Alan Bromley

I was born a Jew sixty years or so ago In New York City, and grew up in northern New Jersey.  While often speaking out against anti-Semitism, I never felt so vulnerable as I did on my trip to Europe last week.

My wife and I went to visit our younger daughter, who is studying abroad for a semester, and we made a side trip to Venice.  Friends told us to make sure to visit the “old Jewish quarter” in Venice — and we did.

But it wasn’t a “quarter” — it was a ghetto…a small area in which the Jews of Venice were forced to live; where they weren’t allowed out at night.  Where 1,600 men, women and children were herded, sent to concentration camps and slaughtered.  Even cattle had more humane endings.  Of the 1,600 taken eight returned.

I couldn’t even find the place by asking where the old temple was, until someone said, “oh, you mean the ghetto.”  I had never visited a concentration camp or a ghetto, and was overcome by what I saw:  A few Chabad (orthodox Jews) had set up an office, to keep a presence perhaps; a wall of bronze sculptures (as way of an apology by the Venetians) depicted Jews being rounded up and slaughtered, and dozens of students were on tour, learning about the atrocities perpetrated on this minscule minority–my minority!

It was as if they were viewing panda bears before they became extinct.  All of a sudden I realized I was the bear in the zoo, the oddity who is on some “nearly extinct” list, but without any mandate, anywhere in the world to preserve me and my people, my daughters, my cousins and my grandchildren to be.

Then we went to Murano for some of the famed glass-art, and when the artisans boasted of their six and seven generations of blowing glass, I asked where they were when the Jews were being rounded up — and they suddenly lost their ability to speak English.

We returned just in time for two major events: Passover and the Pope’s visit to the U.S.

At our Passover seder, my cousins talked of how the Albanian Muslims saved 6,000 Jews during the Holocaust, and how Islam is not inherently intolerant.  I interjected rather forcibly, stating that while differences existed within Muslim communities, the Koran offers guidance on who to kill and how to kill them (Jews being among them).  I was  quickly branded a “defeatist” by one cousin, who does stellar work trying to bring Jewish and Muslim children together.

I didn’t have much time to continue the discussion, as an elder cousin diverted the conversation and told a joke, knowing I would push the issue.  So much for asking more than four questions on Passover, I thought.

While the do-gooder cousin tried to lecture that Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries were different, before I was cut off, I managed to say they had two things in common: Islam and a hatred for Jews, a desire to extinquish us.

I didn’t get to say that, by my conservative estimate, if 10% of the Muslims wanted to annihilate the Jews, that means for every Jewish man, woman and child, there are 10 Muslims ready to kill us.  Double that to 20 or quadruple it to 40, and we may have a better estimate.

Ultimately, it made me thankful that we a have Jewish state, where no authority tells Jews where they must live, what fields they cannot enter, how late they may roam, and force us to wear yellow stars or bear tattoos with numbers.

Which brings me to the Pope…His Eminence.  For one, I must state that I actually relish his views on religion, morality, reason, secularism and moral relevancy.  I only wish that Judiasm had a singular voice that could be heard, that would resonate, but that is not in the cards for my people, who have a history, glorious as it is, that questions and debates virtually all issues.  We even questioned– and challenged – God about destroying Sodom and Gommorah because God couldn’t find 100 pure men.  We remain diverse, we cherish the questions as much as the answers, and, hence, have no singular beacon.

So, I find the Christian viewpoint welcome via the Pope (other Christian denominations, like the Jews, remain too divergent to have such a force), as a counterpoint to the secularism that has infected Eastern Europe and our own intellectual snobs.  It is the counter-weight to both moral relativism and Islam, as well as the greed element of capitalism.

And, as a Jew I must admit that welcoming the Catholic voice does not come easily.  For it was the Catholics, the apostles, Constantine and others who created anti-Semitism by blaming the Jews for killing another Jew named Jesus.  Rather than take responsibility for putting Jesus on trial and executing him, they decided — after realizing his popularity — they better blame someone else… in this case the supposed “jury” of Jews.  Never, never has a jury, except in this case, been stained with its verdict; neither Joan of Arc, nor the Rosenbergs.  It’s always been the governing power.

But foregiveness is both a Judiac and Christian tradition, and the Catholic Church has chosen to foregive us, and I choose to foregive the church.  I, however, have not in my readings learned of the power of foregiveness in the Koran.

So while I welcome Catholics as allies, and appreciate the fundamentalist Christian support of Israel (even though they ultimately want to convert us), I feel I am an endangered species.

A couple of years ago I was having a discussion with an engaging black businessman.  He blurted out that he somehow wished he were born white.  I couldn’t understand that comment, until I visited the ghetto of Venice.

So it is with a bit of  sadness, witnessing my remaining 13 million  brothers and sisters struggle to endure – and with great pride — that I say I was born a Jew and will die a Jew!

Alan Bromley

In a last-ditch effort to attract voters in Pennsylvania,  Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton yesterday promised to return all the White House furniture and artifacts that she and Bill stole as they left after his last term as U.S. President.

“If you elect me, I pledge,” Hillary said to an audience in Philadelphia, “to return all the furniture we took from the White House when Bill finished his second term.”

To an apoplectic crowd of life-long suporters, she said “electing me will save our country $62 million in returned artifacts and furniture.  It will help us bring down our national debt and balance our budget.”

She then added that she would “institute an historical tax of 60% on those Americans who keep their ‘Americana’ momentos,” but hinted at an amnesty for those, like her, who returned everything their ancestors owned if they gave them back to the government.  “I believe in amnesty, not for immigrants mind you, but I believe in foregiveness,” she declared to a cheering audience.

“We have to start thinking, not of ‘me,’ but of ‘us’,” she said, perhaps one moving-van late.

Interupted by one irrascible Reublican, who asked whether she had listed the value of the stolen furniture on her tax returns, Hillary shouted, “you’ll never get to rent a room in my White House!”

She then declared that, “As your president, I promise that for $50 my supporters can take turns ringing the ‘Liberty Bell’ – and I will never take it home!”

Alan Bromley

I love to witness the addicted, whether they be in 12-step “Friends of Bill” programs or on the political trail.  It is never their (my) fault…either they(we) have someone to blame or just can’t help them(our)selves.

One day someone, maybe Dick Morris,  may figure out that the addicted are the swing voters.  Millions of Americans are addicted, some like Hillary (and Bill) to lying, some, like Spitzer to sex (with hookers, not his wife), others to  gambling, alcohol and drugs.  And nobody has sought this group, which cuts across all ethnic and economic lines.  Forget black/white, Jewish/Catholic/Born Agains…this is the group to which our candidates, if they would only confess, belong.  For they are all addicted — addicted to lying!

And, so we have bred our political class:  From the Kennedy family to the Bush and Clinton families, we have elevated  those who know best how to lie abut their past, the present and our view of the future.  Perhaps it is what we deserve, but hopefully we can do better.

Our present “Liar-in-Chief” is the junior senator from New York, one Hillary Clinton.  She blithely lies about her achievements, about her own NAME! It would take too much space to list all her lies, but suffice it to say, it is with bemusement that she cannot stop, or admit to her addiction.  She, as the saying goes, needs to admit to her short-comings and make amends.   It is unlikely that we can expect her to seek guidance from a “higher power” — as all she seeks is a higher office.  Her “ends”, which she thinks “justifies her means”, by the way, are way too flatulent.

It is the one truth that she and Bill share, and seems to be the lynchpin of their relationship: They have both always been addicted to assuming power.  Their lies, they believe are dismissable–and they were from the main stream media until another, more likeable liberal, in the name of Barack Hussein Obama, emerged. They’ve cloaked their addiction in populist terms, about how they can bring about a better world, even as theirs is, on a marital basis at least, is a transparent sham; a partnership of lust, not for each other, but of power.  How delightful.  Is that the best we can do?!

And Barack, suave, svelte and soothing, is on a similar hedonistic ”high.”  Only he, raised by a white grandmother, whom he blithely tossed onto the coals of his ambition, he tells voters, can make us whole.  He too is addicted, to the belief that because he fit so effortlessly into our “white world”, that he alone can assuage us of our white guilt and bring us together.  Nevermind that he sat and listened to a hateful preacher for 20 years and never recoiled; he is Superman, cloaked in a mixed-race cape, addicted to his bathroom mirror - and immune to the kryptonite being shot from Hillary’s cannons!

John McCain remains a question: Is he addicted to pain?  He suffered more than almost anyone, and certainly evokes sympathy, if not admiration for doing so; for surviving and starting a new life.  But does he retain a lust, or addiction to the power of our military prowess to invoke the pan-American dream of  planting democracies where, perhaps,  they cannot grow, at least in our children’s lifetimes.

That remains the salient question for American voters: Do we have candidates who lie for the lust of power, lie because they are addicted or because their utopian dreams are what they think we want to hear?

They lie about their votes, their histories; they lie to their spouses and the voters.  One only hopes they lie less to their children.  My own experience is that our children hardly ever listen to us as much as they watch us, and then make judgments.  As it should be!

Or is there a voice, one voice that rings true.  That, in the end, I believe,  is the what the American people will evaluate–and who we will elect to the office of the President of the United States!  Someone who will serve us, rather than themselves.

It’s either that, or they confess to themselves, to a “higher power” — or aggressively seek the votes of those of us who suffer from one addiction or another.  Millions of us suffer from a variety of addictions, me included, and if anyone one of them came “clean” they just might capture the hidden swing-votes of “the addicted.”

Alan Bromley