It’s the Jewish festival of Sukkot at the moment, which means that Jews all over the world are celebrating the harvest and dining al fresco. For non-practicing Jews in New York, Sukkot means being accosted by bands of earnest teenagers trying to get you to shake the lulav and the etrog and to say a couple of prayers. I went for a walk in the park with my buddy Shabot yesterday and there must have been at least a half dozen groups. As you can see, they did a very thorough job of making sure everyone in the park had a go. And it worked too.

I watched last night’s debate in a cafe in Brooklyn surrounded by Obama supporters, so it was a little difficult to figure out who won. I thought Barack Obama landed the biggest punches of the evening but John McCain delivered most of the jabs. Overall, Obama seemed calm, measured—and, yes, presidential—if a little tired. McCain seemed cranky, frustrated and angry. If I was a Republican I might have had that sinking feeling by the end of the evening.

UPDATE: Since Joe the plumber played such a big role in last night’s debate, you might be interested in taking a look at his exchange with Obama earlier in the day. (Via Daily Intel.)

Non sequitur of the month goes to this caption in the New York Times that accompanies a story comparing the decline of the British Empire with the perceived weakening of US hegemony. The caption reads:

Decline: Even as the future King Edward VIII shot a tiger in India in 1921, Britain’s empire was overstretched.

So now you know. The next time you see a President (Palin?) standing over a fresh kill, the beginning of the end will have begun.

A Power That May Not Stay So Super

It’s almost impossible not to feel that tensions are running high as this election draws closer. On Sunday, I saw a woman coming out of the subway in Brooklyn wearing an Obama T-shirt and I wondered whether it would be possible to walk around the city in a McCain T-shirt and feel safe. Probably not.

So far I haven’t seen any videos on the Web of ill-tempered Obama supporters (which does not mean they do not exist). But such videos of McCain supporters seem to multiply each day. Here’s some loathsome banter from a crowd at a recent John McCain rally in Bethlehem, PA, where the Republican candidate’s fans express their views to a small group of “baby killing,” “Commie,” “faggot,” “European socialist” supporters of the “Muslim” “terrorist” “Barama.”

It’s kind of hard to imagine anything like this taking place in Britain.

(Via Gawker)

Frank Rich took the Republican candidates to task in the New York Times this weekend for stoking fear and hatred of Obama. It’s a complaint that has been made frequently over the past few days, though as ever, Rich puts it more eloquently and forcefully than most:

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

It’s well worth reading in full.

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama