We elected a president without knowing who he really was.  He was a blank slate, a handsome face, a man who offered hope and change…racial healing and an end to partisanship, or so he said.

But we chose to ignore all the personal tell-tale signs…if this was a poker game, and it always is, the “tells” have been neon-like:  He sat with his wife and daughters at the table of a hate-mongering preacher for 20 years, never expressing disgust or leaving in protest, as his minister told his parishoners how evil America was, how evil Jews were…how his people (blacks) were victims (not how the United States tried to address it’s early history of slavery by being one of the first nations, after Great Britain, to make slavery illegal…PLS NOTE: I HAVE WRITTEN and PRODUCED A SONG, WHICH CAN BE ACCESSED ON YOUTUBE, ENTITLED “THANK GOD I WAS BORN IN THE USA” in response to anti-Americanism….also, cute to note here that slavery only legally exists in Muslim lands now).  He had coffee-clatches with bombers, domestic terrorists.  His parents were so radical they left him on his grandparents’ doorstep so they could resume their leftist mantras.

Oh, how we indulged him…preferring to see him as a blank slate, rather than what he was…a product of his upbringing…a self-pronounced victim of America’s biases, a self-hating American (yes Michelle spoke her truth by announcing she had never been proud being an American until his nominantion…but we, and the media, let that pass without examination or even discussion…wasn’t that the result of their bedside pre-or- post-coital repartee??).  What’s love got to do with it?

Any good poker player could have seen the “tells” and called his bluff, but alas, we had John McCain (and an always compliant media), a noble man who will always be remembered as a survivor not a leader, a man who told us and his staff not to malign – or align — President-to-be Obama with those closest to him.

You and I are judged by our friends, our family…but Obama was off limits..because he’s black…perhaps…everyone folded–and he won the pot.

So now we’re left with…what?!  A president whose first call as our leader was not to any of our allies, but to the leader of the Palestinians…he likely used his middle name, which while verboten during the campaigns,  he himself used as soon as he addressed Muslims in Egypt–Hussein.

“Hey, Abbas, how ya doin’,” this is Hussein, yeah President of the USA…”wazz up?”

“It’s a new day now…I understand your pain.”

So, who do we have here as our “leader”?

A man who returned to Great Britain  (our most steadfast ally) a bust of Winston Churchill, one of the greatest leaders of the free world because Obama’s grandfather was allegedly humiliated or even brutalized during England’s ownership of Kenya, a man who has no empathy for a century of slavery to the misguided communist ideals of eastern Europeans, a man who couldn’t care less that my people were brutalized by the Russians, the Catholics, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Germans, a man without any experience in hiring, firing, or building anything other than a base of whiners who prefer to view themselves as victims.  A man who inherently hates capitalism, which while it has its faults, greed among them, has produced the greatest middle class in all history. 

We’ll, get past this “leader”, not without damage, but the American people, as evidenced by the Tea Party activism, shows we’ll end up stronger for having survived him

But, we should have known…any good poker player would have seen the “tell”… all we had to do was examine him as a basketball player:  By all accounts, he is a trash-talker who can only go left.

Alan Bromley

note: due  to serious health issues, I had been unable to keep up my posts…I hope that, at least for the near-term, I will be here again. 

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