Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka

I'm torn.

Do I support McCain or Romney? I'd much rather Romney be President than McCain. But McCain, I think, has a better shot at beating Obama/ Hillary.

Funny thing is, I'm a registered Democrat, so I can't vote in the GOP primary anyways.

Noyam posts a really good rant, part of which is about segulahs. I've posted on this before a bit, but it's an issue I talk about a lot more in person.

My main beef with the segulah explosion we're witnessing, is that it cheapens Judaism. I've used the term Vending Machine Judaism before, and I think it's the perfect description of the new religion we're creating. Basically, God is a giant vending machine. We stand in front of it, see what we want, press a button, and we expect to get it. Need a shidduch? Say Shir haShirm. Parnasah? Say Parshas Ha'mon. Can't find your keyes? Give money to R' Meir Baal Ha'Ness.

This is turning religion into nothing more than a means to an end. It's a selfish version of Judaism, as in "How can I use God to get exactly what I want"?

Richard Cohen takes on Obama and his minister, who is apparently a fan of Louis Farrakhan.

I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though, "present" will not do.

Obama has been treated with kid gloves by the medial. It's going to end sooner or later, and for Obama's sake, I hope sooner. As James Taranto always says, it's not good for a candidate to be treated so well by the media. It lulls you into a false sense of security and complacency

Charles Krauthhammer takes on Obama. Brilliant.

One does not have to be sympathetic to the Clintons to understand their bewilderment at Obama's pre-New Hampshire canonization. The man comes from nowhere with a track record as thin as Chauncey Gardiner's. Yet, as Bill Clinton correctly, if clumsily, complained, Obama gets a free pass from the press.

It's not just that NBC admitted that "it's hard to stay objective covering this guy." Or that Newsweek had a cover article so adoring that one wonders what is left for coverage of the Second Coming. Or that Obama's media acolytes wax poetic that his soaring rhetoric and personal biography will abolish the ideological divide of the 1960s -- as if the division between left and right, between welfare statism and free markets, between internationalism and unilateralism, between social libertarianism and moral traditionalism are residues of Sgt. Pepper and the March on Washington. The baby boomers in their endless solipsism now think they invented left and right -- the post-Enlightenment contest of ideologies that dates back to the seating arrangements of the Estates-General in 1789.

The freest of all passes to Obama is the general neglect of the obvious central contradiction of his candidacy: The bipartisan uniter who would bring us together by transcending ideology is at every turn on every policy an unwavering, down-the-line, unreconstructed, uninteresting, liberal Democrat.

James Taranto today says that pundits are using the "Bradley Effect" to try to explain why Obama polled so well in New Hampshire, but did much worse in the actually primary.

John McGinnis takes this idea one step further, and says that the Bradley Effect-esque theory could also explain why Obama did so well in Iowa- there's no secret ballot in a caucus, everyone knows who you are voting for.

Excellent column by Bret Stephens on why why foreigners consider us naive.

When foreigners assail Americans for being naive, it is often on account of contrasts like these. A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word "hunger." A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation. A nation in which our "division" is defined by the vitriol of Ann Coulter or James Carville is not a truly divided one--at least while Mr. Carville is married to Republican operative Mary Matalin and Ms. Coulter is romantically linked with New York City Democrat Andrew Stein.

Does anybody for a moment thing that the media would be gushing over Obama if he was a conservative Republican?

The Wall Street Journal on a possible Bloomberg White House run:

Most third-party candidates have run on some issue or cause that the main parties had ignored. Lincoln and the Republicans supplanted the Whigs in 1860 over slavery, Teddy Roosevelt promised a return to progressive Republicanism in 1912, Strom Thurmond represented Southern segregationists in 1948, and even Ross Perot had the budget deficit in 1992. We aren't aware of any such cause or idea that Mr. Bloomberg represents. Perhaps he could run on "competence," but that's a less than thrilling call to arms....

We also doubt the conceit that all Washington needs is a President who is a better and more ideologically flexible manager. The reason health-care and entitlement reform are so difficult is because the two main parties have such different visions of how to do it. The next President won't be able to wave those differences away, but will instead have to decide whose solutions to favor.

Tomorrow it begins. To be really honest, I don't care who wins the GOP nomination, as long as it isn't Huckabee. I'm quite ok with Rudy, Romney, McCain or Thompson. I'm not in love with any of them. I went from supporting Romney, then Thompson, then Rudy. Right now I'm flirting with supporting McCain. I've long since realized that there's rarely, if ever, a perfect candidate whose views line up neatly with mine.