Thoughts From the Desert

Investment Outlook for 2012--The More Things Change...

2012-01-12T07:58:00.000-08:00

I believe that 2012 will be the fourth straight rewarding year for investors who can sleep at night and deal with the very real headline risks that will whip the markets around on a daily basis. I further believe it is an excellent time to be invested in outstanding American companies that are earning record profits, some of which selling at levels we have not seen since I first got into the business more than three decades ago.

More about where we are headed and why in a minute. First, let’s look back on the year just ended and see what we have learned.

On one level, 2011 was an extremely volatile period for the investment markets. It seemed that every day the focus would shift from one economic “crisis” to the next with the headlines of the moment combining with the steroids of high-frequency computer trading to whip the market up, down and around on an hourly basis.

We went from periods of angst about the budget deficits to concerns about the U.S. unemployment rate to fears of the effect of tax increases to the catastrophic implications of a downgrade to the U.S. credit rating to worries about a double-dip recession to the Congressionally-created threats of a U.S. default to the grim speculation over the impact of a Chinese slowdown to the current doomsday scenarios regarding the future of European Union and the economic and financial disruptions that are still being touted as a likely outcome of a full-blown crisis in that part of the world.

Each of these looming disasters was labeled a crisis by the disaster-addicted media—at least until they completely dropped the story the next day—and the ebb and flow of hourly headlines had the ability to create “risk-on” euphoria or “risk-off” despair—sometimes with several of each taking place during the same trading day. And, for the most part, the accompanying frenzies disappeared as quickly as they had appeared and the media spotlight and obsession moved on to the next disaster du jour.

And yet if someone went to sleep on January 1, 2011 and woke up on New Year’s Eve, he would think that things had been pretty calm since all the stock market averages ended the year about where they started. So who were the real experts—those who told us we needed to make daily adjustments to our holdings or face calamity or the guy who slept through it all and didn’t change a thing?

This obvious attempt at sarcasm should not suggest that there aren’t serious issues that hang like a cloud over the future of our economy and that there aren’t real problems out there. Far from it.

Our media’s addiction to crises has distracted investors from the real underlying story. After a real cataclysmic, system-threatening financial meltdown in 2008 followed by three years of rehab, high unemployment and slow economic activity, there seems to be evidence that things are getting better across a whole variety of data points and the slow steady economic recovery of the last two years is finally gaining some real traction. More jobs are being created every month, fewer people are submitting new claims for unemployment, and consumer confidence is rising.

At a time when stock prices across a broad swath of companies ranging from Apple to McDonald’s to IBM to Union Pacific to Nike to Philip Morris trading at or near all-time highs in revenues, earnings, and stock prices and most market averages up almost 100 percent over the last three years, many investors still fear the market and have been steering their purchases to so-called safe havens such as gold and U.S. treasuries.

My plan for 2012 is similar to my approach in 2011. Investors should be positioned in quality companies which are showing outstanding growth in revenues and profits, solid management, a history of raising dividends and distributions in industry sectors that seem likely to benefit from an improving economy and rising confidence. In summary, I believe 2012 should be very much like 2011 in a number of respects—only better.

Those sectors that were favored in 2011 (energy, agriculture, oil and gas pipelines, and life-changing technology) should continue to do well. If the economy and sentiment continue to improve, sectors such as industrials, banks, and home builders could end their multi-year bear markets and finally make a turn to the upside. Even though the headlines remained bad during the fourth quarter, some of the largest gains were registered by housing related investments. Many of the bank stocks have spiked sharply in recent weeks as well. It is an area we will continue to watch.

The headlines will be far different in 2012 as the presidential campaign kicks into full swing. The Republicans will certainly continue to convince Americans that we have been suffering mightily from the policies of President Obama while Democrats will try to focus on all of the many hopeful signs I have mentioned above. As usual, the pundits will do their best to stir the pot and create controversy and confusion.

Meanwhile, I will continue to keep my eye on the data which, at least recently, have shown signs of significant and hopefully sustainable improvement.

Buy good stocks and live a long time. That has been my mantra for more than 30 years. For the first 20 years, it worked like a charm. Not much has worked for anyone during the last 10 years. Now the whole idea of long-term investing has been thoroughly rejected by luminaries such as Jim Cramer and a broad range of high-speed hedge fund traders (many of whom lost quite a bit of their clients’ money last year).

Hopefully, this will be the year that we are all fully rewarded for our belief and confidence in some of our country’s premier companies. Obviously, there are event risks, but I believe there are greater risks to losing both money and/or buying power to those who load up on cash, bonds and gold in the name of safety than to those who buy quality companies at reasonable prices.

The Rick Perry Mezuzah --Update

2011-10-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm behind the curve on this story but I have to admit that it continues to grow on me.

In late June, Governor Perry signed into law a bill that prevents Texas homeowner's associations or condo boards from outlawing the placement of mezuzot no longer than 25 inches on the doorposts of their houses and, presumably upon their gates. The bill was introduced by a state representative after two his constitutents moved out of their apartment after being told they had to remove a mezuzah from their door frame. The couple said they pushed for the new law to protect the rights of other Jews in the future.

Perry, whose credentials as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people are now carved in Jerusalem stone as far as I'm concerned (see previous article), signed it into law immediately.

Within weeks, Tablet Magazine reported The Mezuzah Store had commissioned a strictly limited edition Rick Perry 26 inch Texas-Sized Mezuzah. The work of art is non-compliant under Texas law but was clearly designed to be a priceless collector's item which pushes the legal limits yet another inch further.

The last time I looked, this one-of-a-kind masterpiece was still available for only $999.99 although the inclusion of scroll upgrades ranging from Kosher to Superior to Alter Rebbe could jack the price up to $1,100.

Among the responses received to this article was one from a gentleman who thought a mezuzah was "one of those obnoxious horns that people blow at soccer matches" and thought 25 inches sounded about right to him. Another was from a more knowledgeable respondant who expressed the oft-repeated opinion that "anything over 8 inches is just showing off."

I hope to hear from my rabbinic scholar friends on the halacha regarding whether size matters and to what extent.

Rick Perry's Two-Foot Mezuzah Sealed the Deal For This Jew

2011-10-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

Ever since I met Rick Perry in Aspen a couple months ago (before he was an official candidate) I have been convinced that he had a combination of attributes that would likely win him the Republican presidential nomination. (Actually, now I'm not so sure but I digress).

That was before I knew about all his close Jewish friends and his great, unshakable support for Israel. But he truly became my BCF (Best Chaver Forever) when I learned from this article in today's Jewish Daily Forward that Perry changed Texas law to allow gonga mezuzahs of more than two feet in length (batteries optional) to be installed on condominium door frames. We all know that size matters--particularly when it comes to mezuzot--and it's nice to see that Perry believes in taking care of his friends and co-religionists who share his refutation of the theory of evolution.

That and more can be found in the article which is a treasure trove of good news for Jewish voters and which also features a picture that is suitable for framing.

Perry's obvious love for Israel and the Jewish people as well as his astute diplomatic skills have also been on display during the last month. Prior to the U.N. speeches by Netanyahu, Abbas, and Obama, Perry held a news conference with Likud Knesset leader Danny Danon who is bringing a bill to a vote next week calling for Israel to annex the entire West Bank and end all this foolish talk about a Palestinian state once and for all.

Perry honed in on President Obama's "arrogant" attitudes toward Israel and repeatedly criticized Obama's tactics of "appeasement" toward the Palestinians--a subtle yet skillful attempt to conjure up illusions of Neville Chamberlain appeasing that bad guy in Germany a few decades ago.

Of course this news conference was taking place as Obama was infuriating the Palestinians with his strong speech supporting Israeli rights, Netanyahu was praising Obama and stating that our president deserved a "medal of honor" for his strong and instantaneous efforts to save those trapped in the Israeli embassy in Cairo, and Obama was yet again using up huge amounts of political capital to bail the Israelis out in the U.N. But when have trivial facts like that made a difference?

We already know that Perry is a real man with real baytzim who can handle a 25-inch mezuzah. He's as tough as they come. He has already made it clear to the Chairman of Federal Reserve that the chairman has "almost" committed treason ("almost treason" is probably still a capital offense) and will be shown the door as soon as Perry takes over. In addition, he has warned Chairman Bernanke not to show his face in Texas unless he wants the kind of "ugly (violent) reception" normally reserved for gay men, terrorists, traitors, and almost traitors in that patriotic state.

If the Tea Party and its tactics are the wave of the American political present and future and Netanyahu, Lieberman, and Danon are the same in Israel, then the ties and similarities between our governments, level of discourse, and commitment to Jewish and democratic values have, in fact, never been more clearly aligned. And none of the other candidates can hold a candle (Havdolah, Yahrtzeit, Shabbat, Chanukah, or otherwise) to Perry when it comes to being a perfect American partner for the Right wing coalition that now governs Israel and the Jewish religious leaders there.

For some of my fellow Jews, that might a cause for celebration.

For the rest of us, not so much.

Buy Good Stocks and Live a Long Time--Lessons Learned From Irene, the Debt Crisis, and TV

2011-09-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

For reasons discussed in a series of emails (available upon request), Kristen and I left Aspen last Friday to fly directly into the teeth of Hurricane Irene where we were repeatedly assured by the news media we would face certain death. It was a case of choosing between staying alive, or missing her father's 70th birthday party, and Kristen made it pretty clear that life would not be worth living for me going forward if we missed the party (which was canceled as soon as we landed).

But I digress. This piece is about the stock market and lessons learned.

First let's talk about what we have learned about the news media in general and TV news in particular.
On a broad range of issues, it is clear that given their huge investment in 24-7 coverage, news media's top priority is no longer keeping us better informed. It is now about keeping all of us as frightened and/or angry as possible all the time. It is a lesson that they learned from politicians over the years. Going negative works if your goal is to attract attention.

Let's start with our widely reported debt crisis. Actually, the U.S. doesn't have a debt crisis. A debt crisis is when you owe a lot of money and can't get anyone to lend you any more. The U.S. owes a ton of money, but a whole variety of investors are lined up to loan us more at lower and lower rates. That is despite the threat of the Tea Party Congressmen to make the U.S. default on its debts and promises, the equally irresponsible decision of Obama to cave in to those tactics, and the subsequent downgrade of our credit rating. The net effect of all that was to cause buyers of our debt to loan us even more money at even lower rates.

What we do have is a structural problem, well known to millions of Americans from their personal lives, of spending way more money than we are taking in. That needs to be addressed by finding ways to take in more money and spend less. But the U.S. is not bankrupt by any definition nor are we out of money.
Yet the media treated it as an "end of days" scenario that would kill the stock market and life as we know it as well as causing our borrowing costs to immediately go through the roof.

Without missing a beat, the media obsession transitioned to the European debt crisis and the pending implosion of all their banks.

Then focus shifted to the Middle East and the Arab Spring. We were told that the overthrow of murderous dictators (and our longtime allies) like Mubarak and Assad and Qaddafi would destroy stability and oil supplies in that part of the world and it would kill the stock market and life as we know it. Apparently, the theory is that freedom and democracy are just too messy when they come too suddenly and we were better off when the thieving and vicious despots ran that part of the world.

Just when the Libya story was reaching a climax, reporting from the entire region stopped for a solid week as Hurricane Irene became the only story worth reporting. We were told that the entire eastern seaboard was going to be washed away and life as we know it would never be the same.

I know because I'm still here in Connecticut since all the flights were preemptively canceled for days to accommodate the end of the world which never happened—again.

Do you notice a trend here?

It seems as though whatever happens and wherever it happens in the world today, the story line is always the same. This is really scary and the end of life as we know it. You should be very afraid and sell all your stocks.

The other trend, again because of the desire to keep us glued to our TVs and computers nonstop, is to make investors believe that it is no longer a good idea to buy good companies and hold them for a long time. We are told that we have to be proactive and trading in and out of the markets constantly in order to protect ourselves. And, of course, watch the markets like a hawk every minute of the day to know what and when to buy and sell and buy and sell.

I couldn't disagree more in general and particularly right now.

It is true that our country and much of the world has behaved irresponsibly over the last decade. Spending needs to be cut and tax revenues need to be raised. It is true that high levels of unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. are a huge problem. It is true that the slash and burn ideology-driven political tone in Washington is making it difficult to enact constructive policies. It is true that there are financial crises in Europe and elsewhere that are very frightening. There are and have been real challenges that are worthy of concern.

Like my clients, I want to invest long-term money in assets that offer the best chance for preservation of buying power, future income, and capital appreciation.

But unlike most of the pundits and a lot of investors, I believe that buying gold at $1,900 an ounce and loaning money to the government for 10 years at 2 percent interest or putting it in the bank at zero percent interest is not the way to be safe and prudent.

Unlike CNBC (whose most popular shows are now called "Mad Money" and "Fast Money" (which should speak volumes about their priorities), I continue encourage investors NOT to be very proactive in their trading and check the value of their accounts six times a day (or six times an hour for some).

What is getting lost in the popular discussion is the fact that in the face of all that has happened during the last few years, hundreds of companies are now making record profits, sitting on record amounts of cash, have little debt, and are paying ever-rising dividends that are far higher than the returns available from "safe" alternatives.

Several of my clients contacted me over the last month and asked what I was doing to protect their accounts. I told them I was keeping them invested in what I believe to be profitable, high yielding and/or potentially fast growing companies that are projecting good earnings going forward and are benefiting from macro-world trends that are not changing. I honestly believe that those are not only the best places to be going forward, but are also the safest places to be if your goal is to maintain or grow your net worth and buying power during a period of unprecedented deficits and political dysfunction.

Yes, August was a terrible month for the stock market. Most averages dropped 15 percent or more during just a few weeks. It happens. On average, in normal times, the market suffers a 20 percent or greater correction once every two years. When that occurs, it is not a "crash." It is simply the market being the market.

And when that happens, it is generally an opportunity to pick up great companies at good valuations —not the last chance to get out before the end of the world and life as we know it.

Barack Obama--Our Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace, and Pro-America President

2011-05-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

As an American Jew who cares deeply about my religion and the State of Israel, the last few days have been the best of times and the worst of times.

The good news is that President Barack Obama has once again gone out of his way to show his grasp of the complex issues in the Middle East and his strong commitment to the safety and security of Israel as America's greatest ally in the region.

In both his speech at the State Department a few days ago and his address to AIPAC two days later, he stated (as he did in front of a Muslim audience in Cairo two years ago) his unshakeable commitment to Israel's safety and security.

He also made it clear in no uncertain terms that his support for a Palestinian state was contingent upon their abandonment of terrorist tactics and their willingness to recognize Israel's right to exist. He made it clear that he will strongly oppose Palestinian efforts to be recognized as a state by the U.N. and all efforts to delegitimize Israel.

Here is what our President actually said:

"For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.

As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums. But precisely because of our friendship, it’s important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.

His speech at the State Department seemed to be great news for Israel and horrible news for those who would like to see the views and tactics of Hamas become the dominant culture if the proposed reconciliation betwen that terrorist group and Fatah actually comes to fruition.

The only suggestion he had for Israel was to pick up where former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert left off and to use the 1967 borders as a starting point for boundary discussion with mutually agreed upon land swaps that reflect the changes that have taken place since Israel took control of the West Bank 44 years ago.

This was not a new or shocking suggestion. Olmert made the identical statement just two years ago.

"On the 16th of September, 2008, I presented him (Abbas) with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles.

One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor modifications on both sides. Israel will claim part of the West Bank where there have been demographic changes over the last 40 years.

I repeat (for emphasis) that the above quote is from then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert detailing what he offered the Palestinians two years ago. Whether one thinks his approach was ill-advised or not, there is no doubt that Obama was simply repeating a stated position of the Israeli government--not coming up with some radical new game changing idea.

Obama's speech at AIPAC put an exclamation point on all those sentiments and should have been reassuring to all of us who care deeply about Israel and long for peace in that region.

That assessment was clearly shared by many others who care deeply about Israel and the Jewish people.

The American Jewish Committee came out with a strong statement praising Obama's comments. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League called Obama's speech strongly pro-Israel and said it showed that Obama has a good understanding of the issue in the Middle East. Atlantic Magazine columnist Jeff Goldberg, a strong supporter of Israel and former soldier in the Israeli army, concurred. Tzipi Livni, the member of Knesset who heads Israel's largest political party, praised Obama's comments in the strongest terms. J Street added its approval as well.

But, as we all know, Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Obama by throwing what several analysts referred to as a "hissy fit" and just one day before he was to privately meet with our president he felt the need to publicly state that he "expected" Obama to take back what he had said. Then, the very next day, he openly lectured Obama in a way that suggested that our president was naive and needed a history lesson.

I will have more to say about Netanyahu (this article is the first in a trilogy) after his speeches to AIPAC and Congress but I will simply add now that one has to question the wisdom, common sense, and motivations of a national leader who would go out of his way to publicly admonish and distort the statements of the leader of his country's best and only friend and benefactor in the world.

But Netanyahu's remarks and attitude opened the floodgates for a numbers of Republicans and many Jews who care deeply about Israel to go "birther" and "Tea Party" on our president.

Mitt Romney was first--claiming that Obama had "thrown Israel under the bus" without stating how or why. He was followed by the rest of the opportunistic Republicans who sensed (falsely I hope) that this distortion of our president's comments could be exploited as a wedge and used to lure our president's massive Jewish support away.

Zionist Organization of America head Morton Klein went the furthest, issuing a vitriolic statement in which he called Obama all sorts of nasty names and called on AIPAC to rescind their invitation for the president to address their conference. ZOA members also led an anti-Obama rally outside the Israeli embassy in New York.

I just heard Rush Limbaugh's cogent assessment of Obama's speeches as he told millions of listeners that "Obama has clearly chosen the Palestinians over the Israelis. He has told Israel to go commit suicide." Many other Right wing and pro-Israel bloggers have piled on in an effort to outdo themselves creating adjectives and invectives describing Obama's efforts to destroy Israel.

Equally disappointing was the way the mainstream media promoted the distortion of Obama's comments instead of providing truth and clarity. Headlines and sound bites repeatedly gave the false impression that our president had ordered Israel to return to the 1967 borders. None mentioned the other 98 percent of his speech, including the many criteria and guidelines he set for the Palestinians. It was all about reacting to the distortion that had been angrily invented by the Israeli prime minister.

Never mind that Obama has done nothing of the sort. Never mind that Obama in his words and actions has done just the opposite. Never mind that this is the same Barack Obama whom Israeli ambassador Michael Oren--a man who has actually been in the room during each of the meetings between our president and Netanyahu--has repeatedly and effusively praised as a strong and steadfast friend of the Jewish state.

I find all this confusing and depressing. Not so much the fact that other Americans and Jewish figures disagree with my assessment of Obama's performance but the fact that the smearing and vitriol and lies and distortions that have characterized one-issue fact-free hate campaigns against our president by the birthers (Obama was born in Kenya) and the Tea Party (Obama wants to destroy America) and the NRA (Obama wants to take away your guns) and the Right to Lifers (Obama wants to kill the unborn) are now being employed by Jews and others who claim to care so deeply about the future of Israel (Obama wants to destroy the Jewish homeland).

I believe that many of these people do mean well but it is sad beyond my ability to express that so-called Jewish leaders have resorted to slash-and-burn tactics in their inexplicable zeal to demonize our president. The tactics of distortion and fabrication have apparently replaced the respectful and nuanced, fact-based conversation that has always been the hallmark of Jewish debate.

It is both sad and disappointing that they are targeting a man whom I believe has acted and spoken more honestly and courageously in his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East and generate the best outcome for Israel and the U.S. than any president in my lifetime.

It is even more tragic what this tone and attitude is doing to our efforts to build community and have a civil, productive conversation as committed American Jews. Jeff Goldberg has shared some of the hatemail he has received from fellow Jews after he stated that he believes Obama is pro-Israel and made a wonderful speech. But that too is a topic for another day.

J Street--A Breath of Fresh Air

2011-02-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

I am in my third day of the J Street annual conference here in Washington. What I have seen in person on the ground here is an energized and committed group of people--almost all Jews--who care deeply about Israel and the Jewish people and who are very concerned that the policies of the current Israeli government and religious leadership are doing a great deal of harm. I have always been taught and believe that acting and speaking out on those kinds of concerns are the highest form of patriotism and Jewish responsibility.

The sessions have featured amazing speakers, including former AIPAC execs Tom Dine and Doug Bloomfield, Dennis Ross, Rabbi David Saperstein, Imam Faisal Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative, Peter Beinart, Steven Cohen, Daniel Levy, many members of Congress, and five members of the Knesset representing different parties who are here to both express their views and to show their support for J Street and what it represents.

Although J Street is barely two years old, the conference has attracted more than 2,000 attendees including 500 students. More than 11,000 people have attended J Street events during the last year and the are now 38 local chapters in 26 states and J Street U chapters on 182 campuses.

The conference has featured a number of plenaries and dozens of breakout sessions. I haven't heard a single comment from anyone who doesn't care deeply about Israel's future as a Jewish state. As with all healthy organizations, I have heard a lot of introspection and self-criticism.

In Rabbi Saperstein's keynote address, he broadly praised J Street for filling a huge void that existed in the pro-Israel pro-peace conversation but went on to criticize J Street for it's politically questionable decision to urge the U..S. to refrain from vetoing the resolution condemning Israel's settlement policy. It is refreshing to be part a pro-Israel group at a conference where people are encouraged to express their personal opinions, criticisms, and concerns out loud.

I am saddened that so many of my Jewish friends have resorted to the Fox News-like tactics of using lies, partial truths, and distortions in an effort to demonize J Street and smear its donors and professionals. Virtually every viral email I have received was written and/or forwarded by people who are not here at the conference nor have they ever had any first-hand contact with anyone from J Street

What we have now in the Jewish and pro-Israel movement is a healthy alternative. For Jews who believe our top priority--not the only priority but our top priority--is to protect and defend the State of Israel, then AIPAC (I support AIPAC financially and have served on it's local board) provides a great way to leverage that feeling.

For those who believe our top priority is to live out their Jewish values and who are focused on the commandments to work for peace, to improve the world, and to love the stranger then J Street provides a vehicle to leverage that approach. As a serious Jew who cares deeply about both Israel and Jewish values, I am thrilled that both organizations are part of our political and Jewish landscape.

I attended a J Street leadership meeting here a few months ago where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren congratulated J Street for having "made it" and expressed his desire to work closely with J Street in the future.

I have not heard AIPAC negatively mentioned once here at the conference and yet I read articles and receive frequent emails from my AIPAC friends trying to delegitimize and destroy J Street. It is as though they believe if they say enough bad things, J Street will just go away. They remind me of the Wizard of Oz frantically scurrying around telling Dorothy and her friends to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

As the Wizard found out, that is not an approach that works well or for long.

The American Jewish Narrative 2.0--Israel Version

2011-02-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

We have all been shocked and amazed in recent weeks as we have watched the instant unraveling of many Arab empires of the Middle East. On one level, we knew that the oppression and harsh authoritarian tactics that the leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere have used for decades to enrich themselves and exploit their people would come home to roost.

But no one foresaw the sweeping changes and revolts that are changing the landscapes of those countries overnight and, to be honest, no one knows how this story will play out.

For some self-proclaimed and organizationally-designated American Jewish leaders (Thomas Friedman once told me he had never met an American Jewish follower) this is simply the most recent and dramatic episode in a serious of changes that have rocked their world and marginalized The Jewish Narrative 1.0 that has served us so well for decades.

This latest tarnished truth is that all Arab Muslims in the Middle East are motivated by one emotion--their hatred of Jews and all-consuming desire for the destruction of the State of Israel. Those of us who have suggested that just maybe most Palestinians and others also have a desire to feed their families and secure a more promising future have been accused of being hopelessly naive and endangering the future of the Jewish people.

Despite the best efforts of self-described "pro-Israel" Jews and their media to find the anti-Semitic needle in the haystack, we have neither seen nor heard much mention of hatred of Israel or Jews on the part of the protesters.

It is certainly possible that the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas-like groups will fill the voids that will are being created as dictators fall, but that is by no means certain at this point. Meanwhile, my Jewish friends keep sending me articles warning that these so-called revolts are really a way of turning on Israel and hastening its demise. The Jewish Narrative 1.0 predicts with certainty that it will be bad for Israel and the Jews.

Take for example that Israel is our Jewish homeland. Let's be honest. Do we really believe that? Can we call it our homeland in any real sense if it is a place where very of us were born and where, now that we have been free to move there for decades, few of us want to live?

As obvious as the answer might seem, it actually came as a huge shock and disappointment to most of my My Israeli friends have know this for 30 years now. They had assumed that once things in Israel settled down a little that all Jews would want to live there because anti-Semitism in the diaspora was so pervasive and rampant and that the quality of Jewish life in Israel was so unique and wonderful that we would all flock there.

They were shocked and unprepared for the fact that anti-Semitism in the U.S. would disappear pretty much completely and be replaced by an environment where Jews were considered very desirable marriage partners by gentiles and Judaism would become the most admired religion in America according to polls.

For those of us who live elsewhere, Israel has actually become a place of refuge for Jews who are not us (and others pretending to be Jews) who live in horrible places where everybody wants to get out and move to the U.S. Since the U.S. won't accept most of them, more than a million Jews have fled to Israel--not making aliyah but going to the only place that would take them. That is an important and wonderful outlet and Jews who live in horrible places are very lucky to have it as a choice. But it doesn't make Israel a Jewish homeland anymore than a battered women's shelter can be considered a homeland for women.

In addition, AIPAC and other groups that claim to be pro-Israel are no longer completely Jewish. In fact, non-Jews comprise the fastest growing segment of AIPAC in recent years and passionate and compelling Christian speakers are regularly featured at the organizations events. In addition, groups like Christians United for Israel (CUFI) have exploded in popularity, boasting more than half a million members in just five years of existence.

CUFI is headed by Reverend John Hagee, a charismatic evangelical minister who was given a keynote speaking position at the AIPAC National Policy Conference and received multiple standing ovations. When he is not out supporting Israel, Hagee has championed a number of positions on gender and abortion rights issues that are anathema to most Jews. His statement that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment to New Orleans for having a gay pride parade was among those that caused John McCain to reject his endorsement during the last presidential campaign.

At the same time, groups like J Street are growing in popularlity inside the Jewish community. A growing number of Jews who care deeply about Israel have grown uncomfortable with the notion that one is not allowed to be in the booster club if he ever criticizes the coach or players on the team. Many Jewish leaders believe and have stated that once you criticize the Israeli government in public, you are automatically thrown out of the booster club.

I'm not saying whether this is a good or a bad phenomenon. But what we no for sure is that times have changed a great deal and are continuing to morph every day. Israel is increasingly viewed as an American ally and vibrant democracy by the growing numbers of non-Jews who are supportive and the pro-Israel movement is no longer the exclusively Jewish club that it once was. Like most aspect of Jewish life in our country, it is becoming more American.

Another bug in the 1.0 program is that the Judaism that most of us practice is far more attractive and meaningful to us than what passes for religious Jewish life in Israel.

The sad (actually tragic) fact is that many of us are repelled and ashamed by the statements and actions of Jewish rabbinic leaders in Israel and the fact that the worst of them seem to have so much control over Israeli government policy.

Occasionally, as with the "Who is a Jew" issue years ago or the outrage over a proposed change in conversion laws last year, the rigid and often insensitive actions by Israeli rabbinic leaders and members of the Knesset strike such an emotional nerve and are so offensive that American Jews rise up in protest. When that happens, the Israeli government leaders and the rabbis say and do enough to humor us and defuse the issue--but no more than that.

Who among us didn't cringe at the recent statements by the chief rabbinate and heads of Shas when they determined that the horrific Carmel fires where dozens were killed and tens of thousands of people suffered horrible losses were the result of inadequate Shabbat observance in the region? Or that it should be illegal for a Jew to sell land to an Arab.

And that according to investigations and reliable accounts, it was a group of influential rabbis that encouraged young Israeli soldiers to commit vicious war crimes against innocent Gazans during Operation Cast Lead several years ago--crimes for which soldiers were convicted and went to jail.

When the Shas (the ultra-Orthodox political party that is part of Israel's governing coalition) Interior minister deliberately and successfully embarrassed Vice-President Biden and insulted the United States by announcing the growth of new Jewish neighborhoods in Palestinian parts of Jerusalem during Biden's visit last year, Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized for the timing. But at the end of the day, he supported the actions and is now committed to expanding settlements and neighborhoods in Palestinian-occupied areas. And, despite his obvious attempt to embarrass and insult Israel's most important ally, the Shas minister kept his job in Netanyahu's cabinet.

This is an issue that should have moved to the forefront 15 years ago when Israeli and U.S. Jewish religious leaders put a death sentence on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and actually encouraged and motivated his still-unrepentant murder to shoot him in cold blood to save Israel and the Jewish people.

While American Jews were shocked by Rabin's murder, there was and still is virtually no conversation in the U.S. about about the role of major Jewish religious leaders in bringing it about. Even today, a majority of Orthodox Israeli Jews consider the murderer Yigal Amir a hero and hold rallies demanding his release and pardon. While in prison for murdering the prime minister, he has given media interviews and has been allowed to marry and father children.

The Israel that many of us fell in love with and made us feel so proud was a place where we believed that when non-observant secular kibbutzniks reached their teens, they suddenly morphed into crack soldiers and paratroopers who could prevail against insurmountable odds as they repeatedly defeated and outsmarted the armies of their evil Arab neighbors who outnumbered them and were determined to destroy all Jews and Israel.

There was some truth in that narrative. But there was a lot of pathology as well.

Fifteen years ago I participated in the Prime Minister's Mission where six-figure givers to the Federation went first to the Soviet Union and then flew to Tel Aviv on a plane loaded with olim (immigrants) who were making aliyah (immigrating to Israel). The immigrants on our flight all spoke English and told us in dozens of one-on-one conversations that thanks to our help (money and political clout), their families had been rescued from a horrible situation and would have a new start in Israel.

Once in Israel, we visited military installations and religious sites and met with the highest government leaders. The climax of the trip was a dinner with Prime Minister Rabin at the Israel Museum where each of us stepped to a microphone so we could personally tell him of the six and seven figure commitments that each of us was making to Israel and how proud we were to do it.

Rabin then told us that we were true heroes and saviors of the Jewish people. He and I conversed a little in Hebrew and I felt like a superstar. Everyone went home feeling amazing. We Jews who were on the verge of extinction and the most powerless group in the world just a generation before now had our own country and were in a position to support it with vast fortunes. It was a great story and it was all true.

But, as with most real stories in our dynamic world, some things began to change. Israel's economy began to grow and our money became less essential--still important, but not as much as it had been. Israel became a nuclear power as well and is now in its 44th year of occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River--an area that was almost exclusively occupied by Palestinians and still would be if not for the many Jewish settlements that have been built by the government from scratch in recent decades solely to change the demographic facts on the ground.

In fairness, Israeli Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert did make very attractive offers to create a Palestinian state and cede control of most of the West Bank. But the recently released Palestinian Papers have shown that their current leaders have been far more willing to make concessions for peace than The Jewish Narrative 1.0 would indicate.

But now, two generations later, the Israelis not only still control those Palestinian areas--it continues its decades-long policy of building Jewish settlements there which sends a troubling message to the world. Why would Israel build Jewish settlements in the West Bank unless they plan to stay forever and never give the area back to the Palestinians?

It cannot be denied Israel is still unfairly held to a double standard and is wrongly singled out for criticism in the United Nations. It is still surrounded by Arab neighbors--most of whom would prefer that the country did not exist. It has been the victim of terrorist attacks for decades. But the facts on the ground, the demographics, and a broad range of factors have changed anywhere from a little to a lot there over the last 20 years.

At the same time, as Peter Beinart pointed out in his brilliant and troubling article last year, fewer liberal and less ritually observant Jews consider themselves Zionists at all. The term Zionist itself is a vestige of a time just a couple of generations ago when Jews claimed they longed to return to Israel but were prevented from doing so. Now that any of us can get on a plane from anywhere in the world and be in Israel in a few hours and become citizens a few hours later (if the rabbis there say we are really Jews and let us), one has to wonder why that term Zionist is still used to describe people who choose to live elsewhere.

Many long time lovers and residents of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Thomas Friedman, and Rabbi Daniel Gordis have become sharply critical of both the morality and wisdom of the decisions and statements of Israel's government and religious leaders--voicing the kind of public criticism that is still considered heresy by many American Jewish leaders and their organizations.

After Israel's disastrous attack on the Turkish blockade-busting flotilla bound for Gaza, Goldberg--who once moved to Israel and served in the army as a prison guard in the West Bank--wrote the following:

"What I know already makes me worried for the future of Israel, a worry I feel in a deeper way than I think I have ever felt before. The Jewish people have survived this long in part because of the vision of their leaders, men and women who were able to intuit what was possible and what was impossible. Where is this vision today?"

Gordis, an American-born rabbi who moved to Israel with his family and is a favorite speaker of many pro-Israel groups, recently wrote what appears to be a lament in his blog saying the following:

"Anyone who imagines that (just because there is no fighting on any of our borders at the moment) the status quo is tenable is sorely mistaken. The writing on the proverbial international wall requires no deciphering. Without some serious attempt at making progress – even if Palestinian recalcitrance ultimately renders it wholly unsuccessful – Israel effectively contributes to its own marginalization."

After reading this, one might conclude that I might just be a self-hating Jew who just wants to take potshots at Israel and our community institutions. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a lifelong proud and grateful Jew who feels a special relationship with the land and people of Israel.

I believe there is cause for concern but also reason for great hope. I have been asked to chair the Tucson Federation campaign next year--a job I held in Milwaukee 15 years ago. I was on the national board of Israel Bonds and a campaign chairman for more than a decade. I remain on the boards of two Jewish day schools which I once chaired. I currently chair the board of CLAL--a great organization which focuses on bringing Jewish wisdom to the public square in an accessible and pluralistic way. I am planning my 21st trip to Israel with our community next fall. I continue to support both AIPAC and J Street, and look forward eagerly to my weekly Torah study class.

I have been told by a friend who is a very generous and influential Jewish leader that the issues I raise should not be discussed in public. He tells me that friends don't criticize friends in public. He has nothing to but disdain for J Street because it is publicly critical of certain Israeli policies. By the way, that is a feeling that is apparently shared by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren who has declined to address the upcoming J Street Conference in Washington--just months after Oren spoke to a gathering of J Street leaders and congratulated them on their amazing growth and expressed a desire to work more closely in the future.

I have great respect for my generous friend (and for Oren as well) but couldn't disagree with him more. All meaningful relationships are based on honesty and the ability to be dynamic in an ever changing world. It is that ability that has enable Judaism and the Jewish people to survive and grow against all odds for centuries and it is precisely that paradigm that will lead to the new and improved American Jewish Narrative 2.0--a version that retains all the strengths of the existing model and implements changes essential to be relevant and strong in the future.

As with all upgrades, we need to retain the unique and meaningful aspects of 1.0 but we need to be creative, open, and pluralistic as we try to make it better and more resilient. As always, pluralism and Jewish wisdom will be the keys to moving forward. Finding the partial truth in the opinions of those with whom we disagree instead of doing our best to demonize them as so many are doing today.

Some Thoughts from Tucson--Let's Create an Economic Crisis For Hate, Inc.

2011-01-16T10:14:00.001-08:00

Our President, Barack Obama, came to my home town the other night and told Tucson and America exactly what we needed to hear. He rocked McKale Center and the rest of the country with personal stories that made us cry a lot and words of hope and encouragement that made us cheer.

A number of my friends from out East said they were a little thrown off by the festive atmosphere at McKale given the trauma and tragedy that had rocked our community. But they don't get it. First, Arizona Wildcats basketball fans (and EVERYONE in Tucson is a fan) are used to cheering their heads off whenever they come to McKale.

Also, Tucson had been through real tragedy but we also had real heroes that made us very proud. The college student Daniel Hernandez who saved Gabby's life with his courage and expertise made us proud. So did the three older folks who tackled the murderer and kept him from reloading and killing more people.

And those doctors!
Is there anyone in the country who is not impressed with the University Medical Center's Trauma unit and the miracle workers who staff it? Not only can they save lives--they can explain frightening and scary medical stuff so the rest of us actually think we understand it.

It was an amazing evening of sadness and hope--of tears and cheers--of shame and pride. And our president topped it off by making the most wonderful speech that most of us have ever heard. It was full of compassion and sympathy but it was also laden with hope, challenge, and a vision of how we can best move forward as a city, a state, and a country. Obama pointed out that the vitriolic hate speech that has replaced real dialogue in our country was not a direct cause of the shootings, but there is no doubt that without a return to civility and real conversations we have no chance to surmount the daunting challenges we face as a country.

It is already clear that the attacks from the Right will not go away. But it's not just because the purveyors of hate speech are bad people. It is because the Right Wing hate industry is a multi-billion dollar business and lots of people are making big money--BIG money. The behavior will change when the economics change. Period.

Clear Channel Communications made more than $1 billion in profits last year. They are the patriots from Texas who bring us Rush Limbaugh (who has a $400 million dollar contract to spread fear and outrage through 2016), Sean Hannity ($40 million income a year), Mark Levin (who has threatened to sue anyone who suggests that his vicious rhetoric prompted the Tucson shootings), Michael Savage and other angry radio luminaries.

Fox News made $700 million in profits last year--more than all other TV news operations combined. It brings us Glenn Beck ($32 million in income in 2009), Bill O'Reilly,($20 million), and is committed to bring down our President in the name of saving our country Fox is also providing full employment and millions of dollars worth of free publicity to Sarah Palin and the other potential Republican candidates for 2012 as part of their commitment to spin-free, fair and balanced news.

Those dollar figures debunk the ridiculous claims from my Right wing friends that "both sides do it." It is true that there are those on the left who engage in harsh and sometimes unfair criticism of the Right. But there is no Left Wing hate industry To suggest some sort of equivalency is to suggest that a jaywalker and a murderer are equally reprehensible because they have both committed crimes or to compare a lemonade stand to McDonald's because they both make money selling food. Give me a break.

Keith Olbermann,, Rachel Maddow, and all the other Left-leaning broadcast professionals put together don't make in a year what Limbaugh makes in a few months. And that's not to mention that the are outnumbered
20-to-1 by the Right wing media stars. Meanwhile, the "voice of the common man" Glenn Beck makes twice as much in an hour than an average Americans makes in a year.

The issue is not whether the promotion of hatred and outrage is legal (it is), whether it was the direct cause of the shootings here in Tucson (it wasn't), or whether most Liberals want guns banned (maybe super-sized ammo clips and automatic weapons that are only useful for killing lots of people, but not all guns). It is about doing what is good for our country going forward.

When you receive an email full of lies and distortions that encourages you to hate or be afraid of good people and forward it to others, don't delete it. Instead, give the sender links and facts that prove he is spreading lies. Tell him you are disappointed in him for spreading slanderous and vicious lies about those in public life and encourage him to copy you on his apology. Make our friends who spread hatred and lies pay at least an emotional price for their damaging behavior.

When a TV or radio station puts people on the air whose only motive is to promote anger and fear, write the general manager of the station and ask them not to give hate-mongers a podium. Also email the sponsors to make sure they know that You will no longer buy their products until they stop enriching and enabling those who are destroying civility in our country.

The social change organization Jewish Funds for Justice {JFSJ) has submitted a petition signed by 10,000 calling for Fox News to drop Glenn Beck. The letter cites Beck's anti-Semitic series on George Soros in which he referred to Soros as a "puppet master" and a "Jewish boy who helped send his fellow Jews to the death camps." New Yorker magazine accused Beck of broadcasting tropes that "corresponded uncannily to those of classic anti-Semitism."

The letter also pointed out that Beck had made more than 400 references to Hitler and Nazi Germany over the last 18 months--almost always to point out their similarities with Obama and his administration.

In addition, the president of JFSF said that "We are not accusing Glenn Beck or (Fox News head) Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch of pulling the trigger in Tucson. Only one man did that. But we are accusing them of playing to the worst in all of us."

The JFSF petition makes great points. But but acts like this by themselves won't achieve great results. As we have learned decisions about guns and what kind of media and government we get are based on money, ratings and sponsors. But there's encouraging news there too.

Recently, Beck was pulled off the air in New York City when radio station WOR dropped his show. Philadelphia radio station WPHT has recently dropped both Beck and Hannity. The shows weren't dropped because of letters or threats. It happened because no one was listening to them. It this case, the stations weren't trying to do the "right thing." It was all about money, ratings, and sponsors.

In the Tucson audience was our Senator John McCain who just wrote in the Washington Post that Obama made a great speech and went on to call our President "a patriot." This is the same guy who two years ago questioned Obama's patriotism by stating that Obama was willing to lose a war in order to win an election.

Fox News boss Roger Ailes instructed his anchors to "shut up and tone it down" after the shootings and told them to "make your points intellectually"--a pretty clear admission that for news reporters to be intellectual and rely on facts would require a huge change at Fox. Then Glenn Beck came out and praised Obama for his speech and said the man who he last year called a racist and a socialist who wanted to destroy America has now grown into a good president. Do you think these decisions were made due to an epiphany that their behavior was hurting America or was it based on their fear that they had pushed the hate envelope too far and it might start costing them some money?

We should encourage our media and politicians to do the right thing. But the villains here aren't running a charity. They are running a multi-billion dollar business. The key to success is creating an environment where hate doesn't pay and a financial crisis that brings Hate, Inc. to its knees.

That's an economic crisis we can all pray comes speedily in our time. Then we'll really have a reason to cheer.

Some Thoughts from Tucson--Truth and Consquences

2011-01-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

Kristen and I were driving to our Tucson home from Phoenix Saturday morning when we heard the news on the radio. Our friend and Congressman Gabby Giffords and more than a dozen other people had been shot (CNN and NPR actually reported that she was dead) outside the Safeway store at Oracle and Ina. We were on our way home and would have driven right by that intersection a few minutes later. We would have certainly stopped to say hello to Gabby.

Instead we had to take a detour around the police roadblock and finish the trip to our house listening to this horrific event repeatedly described as "shocking" by every one on the radio. But I live in Arizona and I live in the United States. As devastated as I was by the news, I was no more shocked than one would be to learn that a person who drank a quart of scotch a day for years had developed liver disease or that a 4-pack-a-day smoker had contracted lung cancer. This was a devastating and sad but totally logical outcome of the toxic trends that have been at work in our country and my home state for years now.

Later in the day, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik hit it right on the head.

"Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that," the sheriff said during a press conference. "That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences."

Dupnik declared that "it's time that this country take a little introspective look at the crap that comes out on radio and TV. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital, We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Dupnik did not say that any of the purveyors of hatred ever said specifically that someone should take a gun and shoot Gabby Giffords in the head. He also did not say that there is any way to guarantee that some nut won't take a gun and go out and shoot a bunch of people. He also made it clear that the hate-mongers on the airwaves were not doing anything illegal.

He just said that these actions "are not without consequences."

There is no denying that the use of demonization and promotion of hatred have become well choreographed, well funded, and very effective political strategies in our country in recent years and nowhere has that been more evident than in Arizona.

As a Democrat in a district that had gone Republican for two decades, Gabby Giffords has been in the crosshairs of the haters--literally and figuratively--for the last two years.

She was one of 20 Democrats targeted by Sarah Palin in her now-infamous website posting during the health care debate last year. In a post entitled "Don't Retreat, Instead--Reload!" Palin urged her followers to aggressively go after targeted Democrats and showed a map of the U.S. with simulated crosshairs of a gun scope showing the districts where the offending Congressmen lived. Since the murders, Palin has taken the posting down but Giffords expressed her alarm during a TV interview at the time in which she said "people have to realize that there are consequences of their actions. On the day of the final vote on health care reform, Giffords' Tucson office was attacked and the front door was smashed.

Shortly before that, a close friend of mine began working for Giffords in that office. She was excited about the job and looked forward to interacting with and helping Tucson residents who came to the Congressman seeking assistance.

Instead, she had to walk through throngs of demonstrators (some of them paid) who harassed Giffords and her staff on a daily basis. She told me that the phone lines were constantly jammed by "the regulars" who called regularly to rant about Giffords' liberal views in a constant stream of abusive and obscene invectives. One day, my friend was physically accosted by an angry and abusive man inside the office and Giffords' Outreach Director Gabe Zimmerman had to intervene to protect her. Gabe, a sweet and wonderful 30 year old man who was recently engaged, was one of those murdered in yesterday's attack.

A short time later, my friend quit her job. She told me she was unable to sleep at night and couldn't take the constant abuse any more.

During a "Congress at Your Corner" meeting at a different Safeway store more than a year ago, one of the attendees dropped a gun on the ground. After that incident, a caller later warned that if Giffords kept messing with his First Amendment rights then she would have to start dealing with "Second Amendment remedies"--a sentiment echoed by Tea Party Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada a few months ago.

Gabby is a tough lady. But when I last talked with her before the election in November, she shook her head and told me she was both shaken and astonished by both the nastiness of the campaign against her and the huge amounts of money that were being funneled in from out of state to support her opponent, Tea Party phenom Jesse Kelly. Kelly is a 29-year old Montana native who flunked out of college during his freshman year and never was involved in politics until he ran against Gabby last year. Before running for Congress he worked in his dad's construction business.

His first campaign fundraising event last summer was headlined "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help Remove Gabrielle Giffords From Office. Shoot a Fully Automatic M-16 with Jesse Kelly."
Kelly's campaign was largely bankrolled by the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into Tucson to put attack ads against Giffords on the airwaves and the roadsides. A month before the election, thousands of blue and white signs appeared overnight up over most of the streets and highways in District 8. None of them even mentioned Kelly's name--they were pure attacks on Giffords. "Giffords bailed out Wall Street With Your Money" said one. Another said "Giffords Stole $500 Billion From Your Health Care." They popped up overnight in clusters like Burma Shave signs.

I have seen hundreds of political campaign signs over the years. I never saw one before that was purely negative and didn't even mention the name of the person being supported.

President Obama actually pushed the already bizarre Arizona political scene over the edge two years ago when he asked our governor, Janet Napolitano, to be his Director of Homeland Security. For years, Napolitano was the lone voice of reason in state government and her vetoes kept the Republican legislature in check. But after she left for Washington and was replaced by Republican Jan Brewer, all reason, sanity and human decency disappeared from Phoenix and the inmates took over the asylum completely.

Last year, as Arizona's real-estate based economy sank into depression and our state dropped to 49th in the nation in public education, Brewer and the Republican state legislature were completely focused on dealing with their version of the state's two great problems. The first was a law enabling and ordering state police to harass people who looked like they were Mexican and didn't belong here. It is called an "immigration law" but it has nothing to do with immigration which is a federal, not a state issue.

The second was a law that made sure that any resident could buy automatic weapons and carry them concealed without obtaining a permit. That eliminated the requirement that gun buyers receive any training and is one of the reasons why it was so easy and perfectly legal for the alleged shooter--a 22 year old with a documented history of criminal behavior and mental issues--to walk into the Sportsman's Warehouse here a month ago and buy a 19 mm semi-automatic Glock pistol along with several extended magazines and all the ammo a mass murderer could possibly need.

It also made it perfectly legal for that mass murderer to wander into a crowd of people in a shopping center with that Glock and magazines loaded with more than 60 bullets concealed until he walked up to his Congressman and shot her through the head. The act itself could obviously have happened anywhere but Tucson and Phoenix are the only major American cities where it could it have happened legally.

This has all happened with a national backdrop in which tens of millions of emails are manufactured, received, and forwarded every day in which the angriest among us are increasingly referred to as "patriots" and "real Americans" are urged to take back our country from our president and Democrats who are trying to destroy America and the values that real patriots hold dear.

The cable TV and radio airwaves are full of angry demonizing voices that lend credibility and critical mass to statements that in the past would have been viewed as over the line and shameful.

That is not a clear cut provocation to murder or violence but let's be honest. What is a true patriot supposed to do when he is constantly told by well-funded professional marketers and charismatic communicators that our socialist, alien president and his liberal accomplices in Congress are traitors who are destroying everything that has made America great?

For years, Fox News celebrity Bill O'Reilly ranted about and demonized Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller--calling him "Tiller the Baby Killer" on dozens of occasions and saying that Tiller had "blood on his hands". In June, 2009, Scott Roeder walked into Tiller's church and shot the doctor at point blank range. Reasonable people can and have disagreed about whether O'Reilly was responsible for the murder. But there can be little doubt that when a passionate or troubled person hears a doctor he is predisposed to hate referred to as a killer of babies repeatedly by a respected TV celebrity, it makes it much easier for that person to make the leap from disapproval to violent action.

The same can be said about those Orthodox rabbis who placed a death sentence on Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin 15 years ago and the thousands who held rallies (at which current prime minister Netanyahu actually spoke) where "death to Rabin" was chanted.

None of those people actually went up to the young and passionate Yigal Amir and told him to go to Tel Aviv and murder Rabin at a peace rally, but there can be little doubt that the tone of violence and demonization set by responsible and respected people played a role in Amir's decision to go from being a passionate student to a murderer.

As Gabby Giffords said last year and Sheriff Dupnik repeated after Gabby was gunned down, when people choose to exercise their legal right to spout hatred and demonization and target others as traitors, there are consequences.

Tucson is now awash in media personalities and government officials. Many of the political figures who endorsed the efforts to demonize Gabby two months ago are now singing her praises. The law enforcement people will spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars trying to figure out exactly what happened. They will learn nothing new. We all know what happened here. A troubled young man legally carrying a concealed assault weapon without a permit went on a rampage and murdered and wounded 20 innocent defenseless people.

More decent people will echo the comments about the dangers of living in a society where guns and hatespeech are put on a pedestal and others who have created those values will complain that those liberals are trying to blame good honest American values for the actions of a nut case acting on his own.
There will be a lot of heat and very little light.

None of it will make the murder rampage here in Tucson less horrific or devastating.

But please don't call it shocking.

Instead, look at the emails you have received and forwarded lately and decide if they have created a tone that makes our country and the world a better place.

I'm not a person who prays much, but please pray for our friend Gabby and our state and our country.
And remember what she and the sheriff had to say.

That when we make choices about what kind of behavior and speech is right and decent, those decisions are not without consequences.

Let's Be Honest--About Social Security and Why We're Going Broke

2010-11-27T15:18:00.000-08:00

It's funny how you often find insights where you least expect them.

A few weeks ago, my dog Kiva got bitten on the nose by a rattlesnake and I ended up with a better understanding of our health care system. This week, I came to understand why our Social Security system is in such danger just by reading the mail. Actually it was a letter that a friend of mine received from the Social Security Administration outlining his future benefits.

This friend is almost 45 and isn't working at the moment. He worked for a total of about 20 years before his current hiatus. During that time, he paid about $17,000 into the Social Security system--an amount that was matched by his employer bringing the total contribution to $34,000. He also paid a total of $4,200 into the Medicare system.

According to the letter, When he turns 62, he can start collecting more than $10,000 a year in benefits (with cost of living increases it could be double that) for the rest of his life. So given how long healthy people are living these days (see my recent article on health care reform), he will probably pull between 10 and 25 times more out of the system than he and his bosses ever paid in.

He paid $34,000 into the system and will probably take out between $300,000 and $500,000 over time. And there are tens of millions of hard-working American citizens just like him. And in 20 years, his $4,200 Medicare investment will buy him lifetime health care coverage that will also be worth a fortune.

Let's be honest.

The main reason our Social Security system faces so many challenges is pretty simple. We were promised and are receiving benefits based on formulas that tax us too little while we are working and assume that we would not live much past 70 years of age. Now that millions of Americans are living well into their 90s (with the help of very expense drugs and medical treatments that are paid for by the government) our new-found longevity has created a national financial catastrophe.

Just after reading my friend's letter and doing the Social Security math, I left to spend Thanksgiving in St. Louis, the place of my birth. My 84-year old mother (who still drives--which is one of the reasons why I don't live there) lives in a retirement community where the average age of the residents is 92 and most of them show up for Happy Hour every day. The young woman who works as the bartender says she is constantly being proposed to by the feisty older men.

This is not the demographic scenario that the people who set up the formulas for Social Security and Medicare had bargained for. The dozens of people I talked with during Happy Hour have been collecting Social Security for an average of 30 years each and have pulled millions more out of the system than they ever put in. And not one of them was an illegal immigrant or a welfare queen or a Muslim. These once hard-working, "real" Americans are the ones who are bankrupting us--not the foreign invaders and poor people that Fox and the Right would suggest are to blame.

Responsible Americans need to have a grown-up discussion about what kind of benefit systems we can realistically promise our citizens and what our kids are going to have to pay in taxes to fund it now that we're living so damn long. It's the same grown-up discussion that we have needed to have since 9/11 about how to pay for our wars and security going forward.

But let's be honest.

These conversations have not yet taken place and there is no appetite for them now. Instead, we are encouraged by our political leaders and the cable and radio screaming heads to invent villains and blame them for everything that's wrong with the world--and some of the things that are right. Even the Tea Partiers who are angry about spending money on anything are not interested in dealing honestly with Social Security, Medicare, paying for our wars, or sharing sacrifice by calling for mandatory military or public service.

They just like to complain about politicians in general, Obama in particular, and how big government has gotten out of control. When it comes to specific details of what needs to be done or any kind of positive agenda they don't have much to say. And they sure don't want to talk about the morality of sending poor young rural kids to serve a dozen terms in Afghanistan draft or the economics of their favorite entitlement programs.

Instead of having that honest conversation, they spread phony allegations that the costs of providing Social Security and Medicare to illegal immigrants are what is driving us broke. Or they spread professionally manufactured email lies about free "Obamaphones" and other benefits that our president has allegedly decided to give to illegals, freeloaders, and drug dealers as though that would be enough to bankrupt America even if it was true--which it isn't.

They also like to talk about how we should be investing our own Social Security accounts in stocks and gold and whatever we want. But that's not honest either because it implies that we actually have money in our accounts to invest--which we don't. Our taxes go to pay our parents' generation and there is no money actually set aside for us to be invested even if we wanted to. That's the way Social Security has always worked and the news media and politicians know it.

Let's be honest.

We can't even begin to address these serious issues until we can have an honest discussion about the current situation and what our real choices are to effectively deal with it.

But promoting fear and outrage and creating villains is apparently so much easier that it seems unlikely that honest grown-up conversation will take place any time soon. As I've mentioned, CNBC now has a daily segment on Larry Kudlow's show that's called "Viewer Outrage." They are committed to finding people who are really pissed off about something every single day and giving them a podium from which to rant.

When we start seeing segments entitled "Viewer Sacrifice" and "What You Can Do For Your Country" where people talk about the responsibilities that each of us needs to take on to help make things better, then we will be getting closer to the road to fiscal sanity.

If the national obsession with fact-free anger, fear and demonization continues to grow, then maybe I will stop writing and move back in with my mother. Those folks seem to enjoy life more than most of my current friends and they don't seem to be afraid or outraged about anything except running out of Chardonnay during Happy Hour. They won't make very good villains because most of them are white and don't speak with an accent.

Besides, that bartender is really cute.

Let's Be Honest--About Health Care Reform

2010-11-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago our dog Kiva was bitten on the nose by a baby rattlesnake. Kristen was walking him on a bike path near our home in Tucson and Kiva pounced on a bush hoping to feast on a lizard but got much more than he bargained for.

She took him to our vet whose office was fortunately just a few blocks away and she was told that the situation was serious. Kiva needed at least one vial of antivenim serum ($900 a vial) along with numerous blood tests, IVs, and other treatments IF everything went well. Within an hour, Kiva's head looked like a pinata after a wild party but he was lucky and made a full recovery in just a few days.

But this is not an article about my wonderful dog or our good fortune. It is about the epiphany I experienced during the 24 hours that he was in the doggie hospital.

Actually it is about the check-in process. Before the hospital would agree to accept Kiva as a patient, we had to go into a special room to make financial arrangements. We were told that his treatment would cost between $2,500 and $4,000 and that they wouldn't admit him unless and until we gave them a credit card up front and let them charge us up front for $2,400--60 percent of the high estimate. If we didn't have the cash, we could take Kiva home and take our chances.

They then told us that unless we signed an agreement to pay them an additional $600 (minimum) up front, they would take no action to resuscitate him if he suffered a heart attack or some other crisis in the middle of the night.

We agreed to their terms and, happily we picked up our very valuable canine son the next day well on his way to a full recovery. The treatment was a complete success. Everyone at the doggie hospital was delightful and responsive to our calls and treated Kiva and us wonderfully.

But it got me thinking.

Our dog is alive today because we had $4,000 that we were willing and able to pay to keep him alive. I'm pretty sure that he received a higher level of care than the vast majority of the humans in the world and most in our own country.

In the U.S., no hospital would turn away or refuse to treat an accident victim or someone whose life was in imminent danger. But follow up care, treatments for life-threatening conditions, and cutting-edge surgeries are often only available for those who are willing or able to pay up front. My doctor friends here all confirm that is the case.

As a type-1 diabetic with a fake hip, no thyroid, and spots on his lung I am not unfamiliar with doctors' offices. In recent years, the biggest change in their decor are the many signs prominently announcing the types of insurance that are not accepted and other declarations that the physicians understandably want to make sure that they will get paid before treatment is dispensed.

Let's be honest. About health care

We live in a country where we pay several times what residents of other nations pay for health care and by any objective measure our outcomes are much worse. There are still more than 50 million Americans who lack any insurance coverage at all and where those of us who are insured have been paying more and more each years for less coverage, higher deductibles, and co-pays that have gone through the roof.

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama accurately identified health care reform as a top priority and most Americans agreed with him. After dozens of incarnations and versions (each of which was labeled "Obamacare" by his political enemies), an inadequate but important first step was passed and signed into law this year.

The response of the Republican leadership and and their media promoters has been to convince Americans that this undefined Obamacare has made us worse off today than we were a couple of years ago. That we are being charged much more (we aren't) for coverage that will somehow be worse (it won't)--even though most of the provisions of the bill haven't even kicked in yet and really haven't been set in stone anyway.

They have convinced millions of Americans that we are being bankrupted by a health care system that caters to dark-skinned people who pay nothing and get everything for free--Mexican immigrants and black welfare freeloaders--at the expense of the rest of us.

But let's be honest.

All those people really get is the assurance that if they walk into an emergency room bleeding to death or with some other pressing ailment that they will be treated whether they have insurance or not.

Beyond that, tens of millions of Americans who are too young for Medicare deal with the health care system in the same way that Kristen and I dealt with Kiva's vets. If you have a long-term chronic condition or symptoms of something seems like it might be serious, you'd better be covered by insurance that your doctor accepts (an ever shrinking list) or come up with a whole bunch of cash up front. Otherwise they face the choice that we did with our dog. Find the money or go home and hope you don't die.

All of the fact-free ranting about Obamacare has mainly succeeded in distracting Americans and keeping many of us from coming to grips with what a total disaster our current health care system has become. A comparison with Canada (which has socialized medicine) shows that we spend about 60 percent more per capita on health care than they do and yet our infant mortality rates and life expectancy is far worse than theirs.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen cites a CIA study that shows the U.S. ranking first in the world in health care costs and 49th in life expectancy and 47th in infant mortality. His piece on the subject is well worth reading.

On top of that, about half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S.--millions a year--are due to health care costs. People who don't have the money choose to spend it anyway to save their loved ones or themselves. Who do they think they are?

To make matters worse, most of them have financed those life-saving treatments by maxing out multiple credit cards which has only hastened their slide into bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, in Canada there are zero bankruptcies due to health care costs.

Reasonable people can disagree about how to best fix our broken system. But right now, Republicans seem to be only focused on undoing Obama's efforts to make things better--and undoing Obama altogether.

Let's be honest.

Our health care system is one of many things that are driving us broke not because of freeloaders or illegals or whatever your definition of Obamacare might be. It's because the rest of us are living much longer than we were supposed to. The whole system was financially based on the assumption that we would work until we were 65 or so and live a few years after that before succumbing to old age and/or diseases. Today, many of the members of my golf club are over 80 and can beat me scratch. We all have relatives who are in their 90s and are doing just fine.

They paid in a little and are taking out five and ten and twenty times as much in benefits. Many of them are retired and been net takers for almost as long as they worked and paid into the system. Two bipartisan committees have just recommended that benefits to retirees be cut significantly in the future as part of our effort to get out of debt but polls show that most of us and our elected officials just don't want to go that route.

We'd apparently rather get angry and outraged at blacks and Mexicans and single mothers and poor people. And, of course, Obama.

I tried to explain this all to Kiva but he just licked my face and begged for a treat. I'm not giving him anything until he learns to bark at Glenn Beck.

Let's Be Honest--About Jobs and the Economy

2010-09-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I have been obsessing lately about the way in which truth and facts have seemingly become irrelevant and missing from the public conversation of politicians and our news media. It's not about whether one agrees or disagrees with the point of view of another. It's about the way issues are framed in a way that often has nothing to do with the truth and, more often than not, in a way that makes no sense.

This will be the first in a series of articles entitled "Let's Be Honest." Each article will deal with an important issue which our news media and political leaders are framing in a way that is so distorted and misguided that it makes rational discussion impossible.

For example, reasonable people can disagree about whether Barack Obama is doing a good job as president. But they can't disagree about whether he is a Muslim (more than 30 percent of Republicans believe he is) or was born outside the U.S. (more than 40 percent of Republicans believe he was). Those are simply lies.

The same would seem to apply to any reasonable assessment of where our economy and job situation stand right now and whether our president's policies have helped or hurt. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of Obama's approach and about the long term ramifications. But, as with so much else these days, the news media and politicians have chosen to make rational discourse almost impossible by filling the airwaves and print with so many lies and distortions that useful give-and-take can't even get started.

For example, we are constantly hearing about the horrible condition of the U.S. economy and how Obama's socialist preoccupation with bailouts, redistributing wealth, and taxing us to death is killing business.

But let's be honest. When Obama became president the economies of the world were in an American-induced economic death spiral. Stock markets and commodities prices were in free-fall, our economy was shedding 800,000 net jobs a month, credit was not available to most companies at any price. General Electric and Goldman Sachs had to pay Warren Buffett 10 percent interest and provide an equity kicker just to get a loan which should give you an idea how impossible it was for mere mortals to borrow. There was a very real risk that hundreds of major companies and financial institutions would disappear. Many actually did.

We still have enormous economic challenges, but let's be honest. It is now 18 months later and the stock markets in the U.S. and around the world are 50 to 100 percent higher. With federal help, General Motors and many other companies staved off bankruptcy and are now able to sell stock to new investors. Commodities prices have recovered broadly and credit is widely available to a broad range of credible borrowers.

We have enormous debts to repay once we get the economy on even better footing and other challenges remain. But the sequencing of the "experts" is backwards. We already had the economic crisis they are predicting for the future and it had nothing to do with Obama, taxes, or socialism. It was due to good old American greed and free-market capitalism run amok. People are buying less because they are worth less, owe more, and are earning nothing on their savings. They are doing the responsible thing by paying off debt and putting more money away for a rainy day--not because of uncertainty about what Obama will do to them next.

We are repeatedly told that making the richest Americans pay the same level of income tax as they did during the boom times in the '90s would kill the economy. But let's be honest. How many millionaires do you know who are putting off purchases and denying themselves stuff that they would run out and buy if they only had an extra few grand? Most people are buying less because they are nervous about the future--in part because they are told all day in the media and by politicans that they should be outraged and afraid. It has nothing to do with uncertainty about a proposed small increase in taxes for a handful of the wealthiest Americans.

The one problem that remains very real for far too many people is jobs. Most companies downsized their work forces during the economic meltdown but now that business has come back--in many cases stronger than ever--they are not hiring new workers. In most cases, they haven't even hired back the ones they laid off during the crisis.

The U.S. unemployment rate is hovering just below 10 percent and the number of people who are holding jobs that pay and require skills far below their qualifications is at least as high. We are told by financial "experts" and politicians that Obama-induced fear is to blame for reasons that make no sense.

They claim that corporate CEOs are not hiring more workers, even though many of their companies are doing more business than ever and are flush with cash, because they are "uncertain" about the impact of health care reform and tax increases they fear may be coming in the near future. These paralyzing uncertainties are simply the icing on the Obama anti-business, anti-America socialist cake which is yet another reason why the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress in a couple months. Or so the story goes.

But let's be honest. Back during the Clinton years when taxes were much higher and when health care costs were going through the roof each and every year, companies were hiring like crazy. Many, like my employer, offered big bonuses to any employee who referred a prospect who ended up being hired by our firm. It had nothing to do with certainty about the future or tax rates or socialism or health care costs.

It was all about our CEO's belief that we were missing out on a lot of business because we didn't have enough people. So we hired more people.

Today many companies that survived the financial crisis are flush with cash and very profitable. But instead of hiring back the workers they laid off, they are investing in new equipment and productivity-enhancing technology that will enable them to do more business with even fewer employees in the future. They are also using their huge cash hordes to buy other companies so they can lay off even more workers in the future and become even more profitable--at least in the short run.

And when companies make more money, their CEOs (the same ones who decide whether to hire or fire more workers) make LOTS of money. A recent report issued by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the 50 companies that laid off the most workers last year saw their profits go up an average of 44 percent. And (surprise surprise) the CEOs of those companies made an average of $12 million last year--almost 50 percent more than average CEO pay at America's 500 largest companies.

So let's be honest. There's not a thing that Obama or any other politician can do to lower unemployment in the private sector as long as CEOs and shareholders of our largest companies are getting richer and richer because of mergers, productivity gains, and layoffs. And our free market capitalist system--which I heartily support and have earned my living managing for more than 30 years--is based on their ability to do just that.

So, if we're going to be honest there is a lot to talk about and figure out. It will be tough and it will be complicated. It is so much easier to create villains and phony issues to keep people busy being outraged and afraid. Maybe that's why so many of our politicans and media celebrities are doing just that instead of telling is the real story and helping America.

Anger and Outrage--America's Fastest Growing Religion

2010-08-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I had an epiphany.

I have been operating under the mistaken belief that those who continually forward emails full of vicious lies and distortions smearing President Obama, his family, and others with whom they politically disagree were simply mistaken. I was sure that if I could send them conclusive proof that they were forwarding deliberately manufactured lies--not honest mistakes--then they would be grateful and thank me.

But they never did. In fact, they almost always got angry and berated me for being a liberal--which I guess is a term they use to describe people who care about the truth. They never said "Thank you so much! I can't believe I just sent a horrible lie about our president to a whole bunch of my friends. I will have to get back in touch with all of them right away and make sure they know it's not true!"

Then my friend Doug, a highly respected attorney, helped me see the light. I had just responded to a number of people who had sent me an email claiming that President Obama had sent $17 million dollars in stimulus money to officials at Oregon State University to help save the job of Michelle's brother, Craig Robinson, who was supposedly about to be fired as the school's basketball coach.

Now to any reasonable person (particulary a sports fan familiar with the Pac 10), this piece was obviously phony. In the first place, Robinson is the best coach Oregon State has had in over a decade and has turned their basketball program around. OSU fans were scared that he would leave for a bigger school and were thrilled when he signed a contract extension through 2016 last March. As Snopes, Urban Legends, and other truth sites have pointed out, every sentence in the email is false. And, as with all these creations, it is a professionally manufactured lie--not the result of an average person making an honest mistake.

So I wrote back to the friends who forwarded me this piece (under a headline encouraging me to be outraged) along with proof that it wasn't true. But this time I asked Doug "now that you know it's a lie, what are you going to do?" His response made it clear to me just how misguided I have been--and a whole lot more.

"I'm going to keep sending it out," he said. "After all, Obama lies all the time so we have the right to lie too."

Then it hit me. We are not dealing with rational discourse about politics, economics, and what is best for America any more. We are dealing with a religious cult of tens of millions of people who are addicted to anger, outrage, and hatred and the media outlets that feed that addiction. Issues that most of us consider to be questions of truth and reason have now become questions of religious faith.

These are Americans who now believe with perfect faith the our black president, dark-skinned Muslim terrorists and Mexican immigrants, and liberal Democrats are the cause of every problem we face in America today. These self-described patriots don't just disagree with their adversaries--they actually think the bad guys are pure evil and out to deliberately destroy everything that is great about America.

These cult patriots are true believers in the same way that Orthodox Jews believe that the entire Hebrew Bible was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai--in the same way that devout Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. It is not a matter that lends itself to intellectual discussion. It is not about reason or facts--it is a matter of faith.

Rational discourse and fact checks that prove that what is being said is untrue have become irrelevant to people for whom this was never about truth and accuracy. Glenn Beck has become the high priest of Fox News and of the new religion and his language and demeanor have become increasingly evangelical as this trend has continued.

The business network CNBC has jumped on board as well. The late-morning business program "The Call" now includes a regular segment entitled "Viewer Outrage." Think about that. They are now committed to a televised segment of outrage on a daily basis in the way The 700 Club might commit itself to airing daily prayer or bible passage.

But all this anger and outrage and thinly veiled racism and bigotry and lies are only the symptoms. The disease is the widespread and growing sense of fear that is gripping millions of Americans who just a few years ago felt smart and confident about their circumstances and future but who today are more frightened and confused than they have ever been in their lives.

For an entire generation, most people got used to secure employment, a growing economy, rising home, stock, and real estate prices. There were ups and downs along the way but we were all told that if we worked hard, owned quality investments, and hung in for the long term that things would work out fine. And for 25 years they did.

If a person put away a nest egg, they could count on at least 5 percent a year from risk-free investments and an average of 10-15 percent a year in riskier investments. Most of my clients who retired during that period (I work as a financial advisor when I'm not busy saving the world) would go on to buy the nicest house they ever owned, live better than they did when they were working, and see their net worth go up year after year due to the rising value of their investments. This was the case despite the stock market crash in 1987, the savings and loan crisis of the early '90s, the popping of the tech bubble, and even 9/11. We always came back stronger than we were before.

But all that has changed for the worse during the last five years. Million of Americans have lost 100 percent (or more) of the equity in their homes. Most growth-oriented investments such as stocks and real estate have been losers instead of winners. More importantly, most investors have lost confidence in the future pulling more than $33 billion out of stock mutual funds already this year and moving that money into bonds and CDs that are yielding virtually nothing.

Ten years ago there was full employment and companies such as mine were offering a $1,000 bonus to any employee who helped find a new worker because the labor market was that tight. Today, we have tens of millions of Americans out of work and most companies are looking to make even more cuts even as business has improved dramatically.

In its effort to stimulate the economy by dropping interest rates to zero, the Federal Reserve has actually hurt most investors by making it impossible to get any income at all from bank deposits and money market funds. A person with a million dollars in the bank used to be able to get $50,000 or more a year in income. Now they are lucky to get $1,000.

People who thought they had a grip on their lives are now scared and looking for someone to blame. They used to look forward to leaving something to their children and grandchildren. Today our kids are inheriting a reverse annuity--a mountain of debt they can never outlive. The Patriots blame estate taxes and Obama's anti-wealth policies, but deep down they know the truth. We just didn't have the guts to act like grown-ups. We paid our bills with credit cards and when we were maxed out, we put them on our kids' tab.

We have two basic choices. We can look in the mirror and realize that the challenges we now face are due in large part to choices we made as voters and citizens. We elected and supported government leaders who spent too much and taxed us too little. We wanted to keep our Medicare and drug benefits and Social Security and to expand homeland security and fight two wars but we didn't want to pay for it. We re-elected a president and Congress who told us we could have it all and make no sacrifices. Those same officials allowed our financial institutions and oil drillers and miners and others to take huge risks in search of profits and personal gain without regard to the consequences to all of us when those gambles crapped out.

And it's not all about money. There are a whole lot of older people who confused brains with a bull market. They made millions of dollars between 1980 and 2000 mainly because they were alive and in business or the stock market or real estate at the right time. They worked hard and some were quite intelligent but because they lived during a time when the stock market went from 1,000 to 14,000 and real estate went through the roof they got rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Human nature being what it is, most of them came away feeling really smart instead of really lucky. Now that things aren't working out so well, instead of feeling really stupid (which is no fun at all) they are just getting angry and blaming all of their challenges and things they just don't understand on the villains cited above. The truth, of course, is that they were never that smart in the first place and now they are not that stupid but rather than unpack all that, they are forwarding slanderous emails and listening to the media high priests of fear and hatred who are preaching exactly the exact sermon they want to hear.

Instead of looking at how they need to change their own behavior and expectations, these cult Patriots have chosen to blame others and get very angry. They have chosen to blame a president who wasn't even around when everything had already come unglued. They have chosen to blame every member of Congress, even though WE were the ones who elected them. They have chosen to blame a variety of dark-skinned people starting with our Black president but not ending there. We also blame dark-skinned immigrants who, like most of our parents and grandparents came to America seeking a better life and who make a huge contribution to our economy and society.

And now, nine years after 9/11 during which Presidents Bush and Obama have repeatedly insisted the U.S. is at war with terrorists--not Islam, Fox News and opportunistic politicans are choosing to revive a new wave of bigotry and resentment against the millions of law-abiding, tax-paying Muslim Americans (thousands of whom serve in our military and dozens of whom were killed in the 9/11 attacks) under the guise of showing respect for the Real American victims at the World Trade Center.

The anger and hatred and lies being spread about Muslims and the leaders of the cultural center are yet another embarrassment to our country. The notion that an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory three blocks from Ground Zero is "hallowed ground" while there are already two strips clubs operating even closer to the site without any concern is yet another indication of how our sense of nation fear and confusion has eliminated any pretense of honesty or fairness in how we think or what we today come to call "news.

My friend, teacher and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield of CLAL has taught that anger and fear can be very useful as an alarm system--the flashing red lights and clanging bells that alert us that we are facing a serious challenge. But he goes on to point out that people should not make important decisions while they are angry or afraid, wisely pointing out that those actions never seem to work out well and are often disastrous.

Before a disease can be cured, it has to be accurately diagnosed. As long as a growing group of people continues to believe that our national sickness is all about dark-skinned people who are not like us and evil politicians, our problems will only get worse. This first step toward a cure has to be a return of honesty and rational, fact-based conversation regarding where we are and how to proceed.

And the first step toward that first step must be a rejection of news media and politicians who are the false prophets and leaders of this new fast-growing cult. And finding the "delete" button on our computers when we receive an email that blares in its headline that we should be angry and outraged and claims to have identified the villains who got us into this mess.

It's going to be long and hard but, as Will Rogers once said, when you find yourself in a hole and need to get out, the first thing to do is stop digging. Because they are angry and afraid, too many Americans have used anger, outrage, and demonization as a shovel and as a result they are sinking deeper and deeper into the pit.

The Ground Zero Muslim Center--How Low Can We Go?

2010-08-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

During the last few years Americans have seen facts and truth play a smaller and smaller role in political discourse. At the same time, lies, distortions, nastiness and demonization have replaced civility and respect in our public conversation. Racism and bigotry, always present in subtle ways in the past have become more thinly veiled as these trends have taken a firmer hold and anger and outrage have gained new traction and acceptance as part of political and media dialogue.

All of these toxic trends have come together during the last month and have been reflected in the media coverage, political opportunism, and email conversation about the new Muslim Center that is being built blocks away from Ground Zero.

Ironically, least affected by all of this hysteria was the government process of the City of New York. The center is being built on private property on a non-descript piece of land and in conformance with all relevant zoning and use guidelines. Approval of the center breezed through the required process with the support of Mayor Bloomberg and unanimous votes by the relevant committees. For years there have been discussions and proposal for development of Ground Zero itself that aroused virtually no national interest.

As has been the case with all proposals on and near ground zero, the developers are long-time American citizens with no legal or tax issues who have a long history of working for pluralism and greater understanding among people. The difference with this project of course is that the developers are Muslim.

That is not supposed to matter in America. We are a country with a long and proud legal and moral tradition of people being innocent until proven guilty. For decades it has be considered both immoral and illegal to discriminate against anyone based on race, religion, color, or ethnicity. Unfortunately, those days seem to be long gone--the victim of the addiction to anger and outrage and the need for dark-skinned villains that has overtaken our national conversation.

As has become normal in matters of manufactured outrage and controversy, the symbiotic partnership between Fox News and the Republican Right got the ball rolling. But the trend toward more thinly veiled bigotry and demonization of people of color and "the other" continued its acceleration.

As you may have noticed, according to Fox and the Right, the only real racists in our country are now people of color. President Obama, Van Jones, Sonia Sotomayor, and Shirley Sherrod. There are apparently no white racists any more. And every economic, law enforcement, and national character problem Americans face can be directly linked to our socialist Black president, dark-skinned Mexican immigrants, and Muslims (every one of whom is assumed to be a terrorist or embrace a religion that's focused on death and destruction). Not a single one of our national ills can be traced to the behavior of the rest of us. The job of Real Patriots and Real Americans (white people) is to be increasingly outraged and point out how "we" are the victims of "them."

The tactics surrounding the debate over the Cordoba Muslim Center issue have taken this national embarrassment to a whole new level. As Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama, and many others have pointed out, there is no way any law-abiding American can oppose the right of American citizens to build a Muslim Center on private land unless they believe that all Muslims share responsibility for 9/11 and that all members of a religion are guilty of the crimes that were committed by a very small group of their co-religionists. As Michael Kinsley has convincingly explained, this thinking is flawed, illegal and un-American on every level.

The most ironic aspect of the debate has been that opponents have claimed that allowing the center to be built would grant a victory to the terrorists. As Jeffrey Goldberg and others have accurately pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. A Muslim Center run by an Imam who has written a book entitled "The American Dream is the Muslim Dream" and who has worked for decades to promote cooperation and understanding will become the number one target of Muslim terrorists because he is the ultimate affront to their core belief that infidels should be destroyed--not embraced.

The fact that presidential hopeful and Fox analyst Newt Gingrich has compared building a Muslim Center led by American citizens committed to peace and interfaith cooperation to putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum is disappointing (Jeff Goldberg called Gingrich "an ally of Al Qaeda") but not a surprise. The fact that Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have spread vicious lies about Imam Rauf and implied that most families of victims of 9/11 are opposed to the center (they aren't--many are strong supporters) is also not a surprise. That's how Fox and the right roll.

But as a Jew who is deeply involved with and committed to a number of community organizations, the biggest shock has been the extent to which so many Jewish leaders and organizations have gone to the dark side on this issue. Jews have suffered for centuries from bigoted group-think and the spread of slanderous lies which has led to shameful discrimination. And no group has fought more energetically and effectively to combat bigotry, relgious discrimination, and to uphold the rights of all Americans.

That's why it was such a shock when the Anti Defamation League came out in opposition to the Muslim Center. More than any other Jewish organization, the ADL and its long time director Abraham Foxman have been true to their stated mission of protecting and defending the rights of all groups who were victims of religious discrimination. As a result of its shocking flip when it comes to Muslims, the ADL has earned the criticism of respected Jewish writers, organizations, and rabbis and had distinguished journalist Fareed Zakaria announce on CNN that he has returned the award and $10,000 honorarium he received from the ADL five years ago to honor his commitment to the First Amendment and his outstanding reporting.

In response, Foxman issued a release expressing no regret for his position and saying basically that he hopes Zakaria comes to his senses and changes his mind.

Even though the Muslim Center has received approval and will be built, I continue to receive a flood of emails from fellow Jews trying to help me understand through cherry-picked quotes from the Koran and provocative 4 minute videos that Islam is a religion of death and suggesting that "they" need to express remorse for the attack on 9/11 nine years ago before "they" should be allowed to build a mosque in New York--or, as Newt Gingrich has suggested and the New York Times has reported--anywhere else in the U.S.

These suggestions are contrary to American law and tradition on their face, but they are particularly shocking coming from a group that until recently suffered so broadly from the same kind of broad brush discrimination. I ask my fellow Jewish friends how they would respond to a suggestion that since it is common knowledge that Jews are greedy and will do anything to make money legally or otherwise at the expense of others, that rabbis and Jewish leaders should publicly apologize on behalf of all Jews for the actions of financial terrorists Bernie Madoff and Orthodox Jews like former Enron CFO Andy Fastow and Jack Abramoff who swindled and bankrupted thousands of innocent people.

The idea is appropriately greeted as offensive, slanderous and un-American on its face. But for some reason, those who demonize all Muslims don't realize that they are holding millions of peaceful, law-abiding, tax paying, American citizens to a similar warped standard. The angry critics also never point out that dozens of Muslims were victims of the 9/11 attacks--including six members of Imam Rauf's mosque. Are the families of those victims part of the "they" or are they part of the "real" victims?

Are the families of the thousands of Muslims who bravely serve in our armed forces part of the "they"? Should all these brave Americans be forced to apologize for horrible acts committed 9 years ago by a couple dozen of their co-religionists or are they exempt from the rest of Muslims who owe us an apology and and explanation?

Are our "allies" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan who we are spending trillions to defend and support and on whose behalf tens of thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed in recent years part of the "they?" Lest we forget, they are all Muslims.

The roles of truth and civility have been shrinking and the role of outrage, lies, and demonization have been skyrocketing in our public conversation and news media in recent years. And as
it has become more obvious and apparent the problem is getting worse--not better.

By any reasonable standard, there never was a real controversy over whether the Cordoba Muslim Center should have been approved and now that American justice and values have prevailed there is really nothing more to discuss. But we all know that this is not about a Muslim Center. It is about political opportunism, the desire for media profits, and our growing dysfunctional need for anger, outrage and villains. After all, without villains we might have to look in the mirror and realize that is was us and the representives we elected who have created the multiple crises we now face. But that's worth a whole article of its own.

That's also why for some time to come, there will be a great deal of heat and very little light created around this and other issues. We have reached a new low in the quality and civility of our national conversation. But there can be no doubt that we haven't yet hit the bottom. This is looking and feeling more and more like a Black Hole where there is no limit to how far we can sink.

So Much Heat--So Little Light

2010-07-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone who thinks Aspen is only an upscale liberal enclave clearly hasn't been here lately.

On the same day last week those who were looking for a Right wing perspective on a broad range of issues had some tough choices to make.

They could either attend the Aspen Institute event featuring five A-list Republican governors (Rick Perry-TX, Tim Pawlenty-MN, Haley Barbour-MS, Bob McDonnell-VA, and Linda Lingle-HA) or the day-long Aspen Counterpoint session on "Conflict and Conscience" featuring six speakers who enlightened them about the evils of militant Islamic strategies, Islamic persecution of women, and the media's one-sided treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Both events drew large crowds although those of us who believe that President Obama is not a Muslim terrorist in disguise or that a peaceful two-state solution is even worth pursuing in Israel felt like we had wandered on to a different planet. But we're getting used to that. What I continue to find shocking is that the message, tactics, and unrelenting anger of the Republican Party are becoming echoed and displayed by so many Americans who call themselves "pro-Israel."

Back in the days of civil discourse when people of goodwill and common positive intent could disagree about issues in a mutually respectful way, it was possible to say things like "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it." That has been replaced by "You are a horrible person and every belief you hold represents a mortal threat to everything decent people hold dear." If you were in Aspen last week, you would have heard it in stereo when it came to the issue of President Obama and his true feelings about Israel.

One minute, I heard Governor Rick Perry of Texas (a renowned student of international affairs who happened to be sporting a t-shirt stating that "Marshall Law (sic) has been declared") state "the way the Obama administration has treated Israel is an absolute affront to all democracies around the world."

A couple minutes later and a few hundred yards away I was listening to Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick state that Obama has been by far "the worst president for Israel since the state was founded 62 years ago."

Thankfully, we live in America where people are free to express their opinions. But I remember a time when if a governor or journalist was going to level that kind of attack against the president, they would feel obligated to cite at least one quote or statement or action that backed those charges up. As a proud and serious Jew, I expect more from our people. But apparently facts are no longer required to smear people in the Jewish and Israeli press now as well.

During the last few weeks, Glick (whose rants were greeted with huge applause and no challenging questions at the conference) has stated as fact that Obama has "declared war on Israel" and had told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu weeks ago that unless Israel released hundreds of Palestinian terrorist prisoners immediately that neither Obama nor anyone from his administration would meet with Netanyahu.

Since then, the two heads of state have met twice and no prisoners have been released. Glick never followed up with a correction or retraction and, as far as I know, none of her equally rabid followers have complained. She has also never cited a single example of a statement or action by Obama that indicated he was at war with with Israel.

She, along with fellow panelists John Bolton and James Woolsey, assured the crowd that Obama had in fact rudely and deliberately snubbed Netanyahu two months ago when the two had a short, hastily planned working meeting in Washington. Of course, none of them were at the meeting or indicated they had talked with anyone who was.

Just a few days earlier, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told an Aspen Ideas Festival audience that he had been present for every minute of each of the five meetings between Obama and Netanyahu (more than Obama has met with any other head of state) and there was never a snub or a slight of any kind. Oren systematically debunked all the lies that have been spread by those who were outraged. For example, the snub rumors state that Obama walked out on Netanyahu to go have dinner upstairs with Michelle and the kids. Oren said Obama's wife and children were not even in Washington at the time.

Glick's response to Oren setting the record straight was not to thank him for clearing things up but rather to slam the ambassador in writing and demand his resignation for essentially being a traitor to Israel. She stated that Oren takes his inexplicable desire to be Obama's head cheerleader more seriously than his job to represent Israel's interests. Again, no facts supplied.

Of course there was no mention by any of the speakers that Obama courageously told Muslims in Cairo last year that they needed to abandon terrorism and accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Or the fact that Obama has repeatedly emphasized his unshakable support for Israel. Or the fact that Obama recently pushed through strong sanctions against Iran in both the U.N. and Congress. Or the fact that Obama has never made a negative statement about Israel.

For good measure, Glick took a shot at Thomas Friedman who she accused of being in the pocket of the Saudi royal family. The self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace organization J Street was also vilified by Glick and most of the panel as being "horrible for Israel." Glick has chastised J Street in writing for being opposed to sanctions against Iran. The problem (apparently only for some of us) is that J Street has come out strongly in support of sanctions against Iran.

One had to come away wondering how she has the energy to hate so many people (there are surely many others) and still get through her day. She seemed like an Israeli Glenn Beck. Always outraged, often wrong, but never in doubt.

Don't get me wrong. Much of what was said at the conference is true. Israel faces enormous challenges. It is unfairly held to a double standard by much of the world and the international media. But not every word of criticism is completely unfair and the result of Jew hatred and media bias . Israel is surrounded by neighbors who want to destroy her. But it also has an increasing number of neighbors who really do fear the threat of a nuclear Iran more than they do Israel.

It is very challenging to negotiate with terrorists and others who have shown they cannot be trusted. But it is also true that Israel cannot continue to exist as a Jewish democracy for much longer. The birth rate of the Arab and Palestinian residents of Israel and the West Bank is so high that in a few years they will outnumber the Jews. The math is unforgiving.

Like most of the difficult challenges facing the world today, these are complex and troubling issues. But what is more troubling are those who believe that simply demonizing others and backing sketchy claims with partial truths is the answer.

Jews have a tradition of being firmly committed to the truth. We have survived and grown by getting together to talk, study, argue, disagree, and speak freely and try to learn from each other. As our most visible "pro-Israel" leaders take on the values and tactics of the American Right wing, we run the risk of losing a big part of what has made us so special and enabled us to prevail against huge odds for so long.

For centuries, the greatest risks to the survival of the Jewish people and our values have come from the outside--from those who have hated us and wanted to destroy us. Those threats are still very real and can't be ignored.

But at a time when Israel and the American Jewish community have never been stronger, I worry at least as much about the threats from within.

The Talmud says, "Who is truly wise? He who learns from all people." It is a pluralistic mantra that has served us well for thousands of years. We risk a great deal by disqualifying all but a few true believers from the conversation and only learning from those with whom we already agree.

As we have sadly learned in recent months, that approach generates far more heat than light. And far more damage than good.

A Whole Bunch of Inconvenient Truths

2010-07-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom did not have a good week--at least not in my neighborhood.

This disconnect between what people like (or need) to believe and the facts is not just annoying. It has actually become pathological since so many seem to feel so angry and out of control about so many things in their lives that it is both convenient and sometimes necessary for them to demonize other individuals and groups and blame them for everything that is wrong with our world.

The problem, of course, is that while their designated villains do have bad qualities and do some nasty things, they are not the pure devils we'd like them to be. Every now and then we get hit in the face with inconvenient truths that should pop the mythical bubbles.

Unfortunately, the need for villains and demons is so pervasive that these facts no longer seem to matter.

Take the self-serving myths that exist regarding the challenges in the Middle East and Israel. Please.

Early in the week, President Obama had his fifth meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu--more than he has had with any other foreign head of state. As he has since before becoming president, Obama made a statement after the meeting (as did Netanyahu) emphasizing the close and unshakeable bonds between our two countries and how the U.S. maintains a firm commitment to Israel's security and right to self defense.

Many of the self proclaimed "pro-Israel" leaders have been ranting for months that our current president is no friend of the Jewish people and our homeland. But annoying facts keep popping up and getting in the way of a good rant. How inconvenient.

Forget about the fact that it was Obama's appointees and staff who led the successful push in both the U.N. and out Congress to get tough economic sanctions passed against Iran.

And the fact that Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. (who has been present for every minute of every meeting between Obama and Netanyahu) claims that there has never been a crisis or unproductive interaction between the two leaders.

Instead of thanking Oren for the insight and praising the American president as a true friend of Israel, the ideologues prefer to shoot the messenger and bash Oren as a liar. Typical of the pro-Israel Right is Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post who has simply decided that Oren has turned traitor to Israeli interests and has become a liar and Obama cheerleader.

After all, if you've boxed yourself into an ideological position that is THE TRUTH, competing inconvient truths must be ignored or discredited.

Many of these same people have been complaining for months that the Goldstone Report (that suggested that members of the Israeli army behaved badly during the Gaza invasion) was the latest in a long chain of unfair assessments prepared for the U.N. by Israel-hating anti-Semites. Virtually every Jewish and pro-Israel group in the world has condemned Goldstone and his report and AIPAC has succeeded in getting most of the U.S. Congress to join the chorus.

After reading Goldstone, I tend to agree with the critics that the report unfairly suggested that the Israeli government attacked Gaza in an effort to systematically punish innocent Gazan citizens. It also didn't acknowledge the fact that nearby Israeli towns were suffering frequent missile attacks from inside Gaza and that the Israelis had to do something to make it stop.

But the emerging inconvenient truth is that the Israeli government and courts have been issuing a number of indictments and charges against soldiers that suggest that parts of the Goldstone Report seems to actually be true.

Orthodox Israeli rabbis encouraged soldiers to be particularly ruthless to Gazans during Operation Cast Lead--reportedly encouraging them to show no mercy to innocent Gazan citizens, women, and children. There is an increasing amount of solid evidence that shows many of those soldiers followed those instructions and behaved very badly--perhaps criminally.

The response of most "pro-Israel" Jews to this has been "why did they have to print that in the paper?" Not a single one has said, "Thank God we found out the disturbing truth." Again, it's a case of the pesky truth getting in the way of a clear cut good guys--bad guys situation.

How inconvenient.

Another simplictic view that is promoted in "pro-Israel" emails is that all Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslim are essentially the same. They are all bad and are either terrorists or condone terror.

But I just attended a lunch here at the Aspen Ideas Festival where the ambassador to the U.S. from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made it clear that he and his people live daily in mortal fear of Iran--not Israel.
He went on to say that he would applaud a decision by the U.S. or Israel to bomb Iran in order to take out that country's nuclear capability.

"If the U.S. bombed Iran it would be a disaster," said ambassador Yousef al Otaiba--an attractive, sharply clad young man who my wife described as "hot" (pictures available upon request). "But if Iran gets a nuclear weapon it would be a bigger disaster."

He added that he would personally be grateful to Israel if it was the country that took out Iran's nukes although he acknowledged that Israel would face severe criticism from the Arab "street" if that happened.

"Israel gets blamed no matter what it does," said the Ambassador from the United Arab Emirates.

He went on to say that the day that the Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace agreement, 22 moderate Arab nations would immediately recognize Israel and its status as a legitimate nation. He suggested clearly that most Arab states fear the rogue nations among themselves far more than they fear Israel.

He made so much sense and talked so rationally that for a brief second I forgot where I was. I actually believed that there are a lot of Arabs in the Middle East who are just as worried about threats from other rogue Arab nations as we are. That they want peace and a better life for themselves and their families as much as we do--even enough that they would applaud and support actions that would make that outcome more likely.

But then I checked my Blackberry and slipped back into the fact-free zone of simplistic explanations and widespread demonization. I had just received an email from one of my Jewish friends explaining to me how Koran is chock full of lines commanding good Muslims to kill infidels so it is foolish and naive to suggest that we can trust any of them. This friend would not know a Koran if it hit him between the eyes, but he knows THE TRUTH.

At the end of the day, many of us must need villains more than we need hope, real solutions and intellectual honesty.

How inconvenient.

What To Do When You Get Screwed By the Refs

2010-06-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I was among the hundreds of millions of sports fans around the world who looked on with outrage last week as an incompetent referee from Mali stole the game-winning goal from the U.S. soccer team in its World Cup match against Slovenia.

The ref clearly blew it--as he had all game long--and ruined the Americans' amazing comeback from a 2-0 halftime deficit to what would have been a 3-2 win that would have propelled them into the next round of World Cup competition.

I was among the millions of baseball fans who looked on with ourage as umpire Jim Joyce blew the call on what should have been the final out in Detroit pitcher Armando Gallaraga's perfect game.

I am among the millions of Jews around the world who have looked on with outrage repeatedly over the years as the United Nations and much of the world have consistently held Israel to an outrageous double standard. The U.N. has routinely ignored horrible behavior on the part of dozens of nations around the world while it routinely sanctions, criticizes, and calls for investigations of Israel for actions that seem very tame and often justifiable in comparison. Much of the angry and truly vicious anti-Israel response to Flotillagate over the last few weeks can be cited as an example of that double-standard and the plain fact that there are people and nations around the world who are always looking for an excuse to criticize and delegitimize Jews and Israel.

What do we learn from all this?  The most obvious lesson is that for reasons ranging from bias to incompetence to just making an honest mistake, sometimes the refs get it wrong. Players, teams, people and countries that deserve better sometimes get screwed. In an imperfect and often unfair world, stuff happens.

But these events of the last month can teach us valuable lessons right now regarding how to respond to these injustices in the most productive way.

Players and coaches of the U.S. soccer team at first expressed anger and frustration over the blown call that cost them so dearly. It would be shocking if they didn't. But within a few hours, they seemed to be focused on their next game against Algeria in which a victory would still put them into the next round of the World Cup.

The news media, which ran replays of the horrible call non-stop for more than 24 hours, tried repeatedly to prod U.S. coach Bob Bradley into launching a tirade against the offending official, but Bradley knew that while that response might be fair, it would not be productive.

"You end up saying that's just how it is sometimes and you move on and get ready for the next game," said Bradley after the game.

It is safe to assume that during practice sessions over the next several days, much more time was spent watching tape of the two early goals the U.S. gave up to Slovenia and figuring out how to keep those kinds of mistakes from happening again than was devoted to watching the blown call that cost them the game. If the U.S. team had not played horribly during the first half, the final call would have been meaningless.

The same admirable maturity was shown by the 21-year old pitcher Gallaraga who seemed very philosophical about the baseball immortality that was denied him--particularly after the guilty umpire apologized to him for blowing the call.

"No one's perfect," was Gallaraga's artistic comment after the game.   Like the U.S. soccer team, he could have dwelled on the unfairness of it all for a very long time but instead he chose to move on. His whole life and career are ahead of them and what's done is done.

As an American Jew who cares a great deal about Israel, I hope that my many "pro-Israel" friends can show more of that kind of maturity and wisdom when it comes to dealing with the many challenges the Jewish homeland continues to face.

It would be possible and perhaps even justifiable to rant about how unfairly Israel has been treated in the worldwide reaction to Flotillagate as well as dozens of other issues over the years. In fact, I have received dozens of emails and read many articles in recent days that make just that point. Many of the complaints are valid and much of what is said is substantially true.

But like the athletes who have been dealt with unfairly (admittedly with far less at stake than in the case of Israel), the wisest course of action for that nation's leaders and supporters would be to focus on their future game plan and try to learn from the many questionable decisions its own government has made that might have been counter productive.

In short, focus your time and energy on the things you can control--not on all the factors (fair or unfair) over which you have no influence.

Instead of demonizing all Muslims in the world, constantly ranting about the biased refs, and insisting that Israel has done everything right and its enemies have done everything wrong, it might be more useful for the "pro-Israel" community to do a little more soul searching, self-analysis, and planning for the many games that remain on the schedule.

It has been disappointing to see how many of my fellow Jews have unfairly characterized the Turks who were killed in Flotillagate as "terrorists" and who have asked members of Congress to sign letters affirming that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Israel shared none of the blame for the fatal confrontation. This has all come in response to an incident in which none of the participants could fairly be labelled as terrorists by any definition and where Israel was never under attack.   None of these emails and articles are helpful or productive and they change no one's mind.

The issue here is not about right and wrong or fair and unfair. It is about smart and productive versus one-sided and self-defeating.

Most of Israel's political leaders and supporters in the U.S. are far more educated and experienced than the athletes who have suffered injustices this month. But in this case, the older and wiser group could learn some valuable lessons about how to respond to getting screwed by the refs--about not losing the insight that the season is long and that players and teams who learn from their mistakes, bounce back from the bad calls, and continually work on their game plans are the ones who win in the long run.

The 11th Commandment--Thou Shalt Support Israel

2010-06-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

I have been a Jewish Leader for the last 26 years.  This is undisputably true because I have the plaques to prove it. I remember when I first met Thomas Friedman in Israel back then he told me that he never met a Jew in Israel who wasn't a "leader." He said he had yet to meet a Jewish Follower.

From the very beginning, the organized American Jewish community has been all about supporting Israel. The United Jewish Appeal and Federations (where I chaired campaigns and will again) have raised hundreds of millions of dollars every year from American Jews who back in the day would often borrow money to give more than they could afford. Assuring the survival of Israel at a time when that was much more in doubt than it is today was the defining issue and for many it still is. Israel Bonds (where I chaired the Wisconsin campaign and served on the national board) did and does have the same focus.

AIPAC (where I served on the Tucson board until I was recently asked to resign) has exploded onto the scene in recent years as an effective booster club and lobbying organization for Israel and is attracting support from Jews and non-Jews alike.

At most Jewish agency gatherings, Hatikva is sung along with the American national anthem.    That custom seems bizarre on its face since virtually all of the audience is American and few know the words to the Israeli national anthem. I have never understood why EITHER is sung at a fundraiser for a local nursing home or day school but it is yet another sign of how support of Israel is woven into the essence of everything Jewish in this country.

The unwritten commandment to support the Jewish homeland is a good one and, in their own way, most American Jews obey it religiously (or secularly).  That's not the problem. The challenge is coming up with a shared definition of what it means to support Israel and how to do it.

This is a problem that is common to commandments. There is a misplaced belief that God gave us a complete guide at Mt. Sinai.  The truth is that most the Ten Commandments are so vague and subject to interpretation that they have raised far more questions than they answered.

The best example is the commandment to honor your father and mother. It sounds simple. The commandment is one sentence. But tens of thousands of pages have been written struggling with how to do it in real life.

This dilemma was clear to the Talmudic rabbis. In Kiddushin 32a, Rabbi Eliezer deals with the issue of how a son honors a senile father who is about to throw his life savings into the sea in front of the entire community.

Do you honor your father by not embarrassing him publicly and allowing him to leave himself destitute or do you honor him by grabbing his wallet and lovingly leading him back home--saving his money but causing him to lose face?

Rabbi Eliezer, who was a supporter of Judaism, said you honor your father more by not embarrassing him and letting him throw his money away. Other rabbis, also supporters of Judaism, disagree strongly. They felt the father would recover from (and might not even remember) the embarrassment but the consequences of throwing all his money away would cause him physical and emotional distress for the rest of his life.

Rabbis on both sides of the issue were religious people who wanted to "support" the commandments and do the right thing. And as with all disputes, there was room in the Talmud for a number of different opinions and approaches.

There was an understanding back then that seems to be missing today that being part of a religious community or wisdom tradition means finding room at the table for those who seek the same goal but disagree, often strongly, about how to best get there.

I fervently support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish democracy. I believe Israel has the right to defend itself against its numerous enemies who seek her destruction by any means necessary. I strongly condemn the fact that Israel is held to a double standard and constantly faces unfair criticism from the UN and foreign countries.

I also believe that we show our love and support for Israel by pointing out what we believe to be mistakes and bad decisions made by its government in the hope that our voices will lead to clearer thinking and better solutions.

That's why President Obama was showing support for Israel when he was critical of Prime Minister Netanyayu's decision to cave into that country's worst elements--the political Orthodox and Settler movements--and his decision to expand an Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem with no strategic value at a time where the act could only be viewed as provocative.

That's why Jeffrey Goldberg was being staunchly pro-Israel when he suggested that the Israeli response to Flotillagate showed a lack of "seichel"--a yiddish term for wisdom.

For going public with this kind of thinking, I was recently asked to resign from our local AIPAC board by a friend and national board member. He accused me of asking inappropriate questions and writing in a way that made it clear I deserved no respect from the community. Goldberg and others who care about Israel so much that they air their views regarding how it can be better have suffered from slings and arrows as well.

The American Jewish community is not in crisis but it is facing a number of serious challenges. Ironically, most of them are the direct result of the successful battles that were fought by our parents to gain us access to every nook and cranny of the American experience, but that's worth its own article. Israel is facing daunting challenges as well but it too has never been stronger and more accepted as a legitimate country in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

There are obviously people and countries who hate Jews and Israel, but as M.J. Rosenberg points out, the vast majority of the criticism of Flotillagate has not come from those who think Israel shouldn't exist.
It comes from people who support the formation of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israel is often unfairly criticized and is held to an outrageous double standard by the U.N., most of the world media, and the Far Left Wing in the U.S. As with all injustices, those should be pointed out and criticized by fair-minded people.

But instead of branding those Jews who agree with us as pro-Israel and those who don't as anti-Israel and self-hating Jews, it it time to take a long hard look at what it does and should mean to "support" Israel.

Are our community organizations and their leaders required to show that support by unquestioningly applauding every action of the current Israeli government?

Does it show support to forward each other hundreds of emails claiming that Israel was 100 percent the victim of Flotillagate and made no bad judgments and did nothing unwise?

Do we show that support by forwarding emails saying the President of United States has thrown Israel under the bus and has declared was on Israel when he has done neither?

Do we show that support by sharing videos of Muslim extremists saying hateful things and behaving badly and telling each other that the Israeli government can't be expected to talk with these horrible people?

I don't claim to have those answers but I do know that we need to have a conversation. The essence of Judaism has always been about having conversations. We need to return to the Talmudic model outlined by my hero Shimon Ben Zoma who described one who is truly wise as "he who learns from all people."

Jewish leaders may not agree with Peter Beinart's important recent article describing how a persistent move to Right Wing intransigence by many Jewish organizations is causing widespread alientation of younger Jews and leading to the gradual disappearance of liberal Zionism, but they ignore it to the detriment of the organizations they lead and the causes they claim to support.

I became passionate about Judasim more than 20 years ago when I discovered the brilliance and relevance of our wisdom tradition. To the extent that the American Jewish leadership is throwing out that pluralistic model and stifling the conversations that are essential to meeting our challenges, they are guaranteeing a sad legacy.

To mean well is not always to do well. The mark of true leadership is knowing the difference.

What In the World is Going On with Stocks?

2010-05-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

This week has provided yet another perfect example of why so many people hate the stock market.

For the first four months of the year business conditions have been improving pretty steadily. Bailed out corporations like General Motors and many banks have retooled and stabilized and paid much of the money back to taxpayers. When Barack Obama became president, the world faced an imminent and obvious financial crisis. The U.S. job market was shrinking as more than 150,000 more jobs were being eliminated than were being created every single week for months on end.

Today it was announced that during April, almost 300,000 more jobs were created than were lost. That's a net gain of more than a million jobs per month from where we were a year ago. Company after company has announced improved profits based on growing sales and reduced overhead.

The stock market seemed to be right in synch with the improving reality. After posting large double digit gains last year, most market averages were up nicely for this year just a few days ago. On Monday of this week, all the major indices rose more than a full percent. Things seemed on track. Now just a few days later, in the absence of any apparently earth shaking news and without warning everything has seemingly changed.

On Tuesday, the bottom dropped out of the stock market and just two days later full blown panic set in as the Dow dropped almost 1,000 points in less than an hour before it came back to fall "just" 347 points for the day. All of the gains that most accounts had built up in 2010 have been erased in just a few days.

The analysts and experts have been clueless. No one has yet been able to explain the cause of the 1,000 point roller coaster ride. Most have chosen to blame the overall carnage on computer glitches and news about credit problems in Greece--problems that have been around and in the headlines for months and which on their face just don't seem to be big enough to warrant the rout and panic that have hit the markets with a vengeance. It appears that the experts don't have a clue what is going on in the stock market so they are grabbing at any news headlines they can find.

On the positive side, the market selloff this week has caused investor sentiment to shift from complacency to outright panic. The violent swings of the last few days have looked and felt like forced selling from funds and investors just throwing in the towel without regard to price. This type of capitulation tends to almost always take place at market bottoms--not in the early stages of a protracted bear market.

It also shows that even though the market has been in solid rally mode for more than a year, most investors have never really trusted the move. They just have too many bad memories and the news about deficits, unemployment, and foreclosures have just been hard to ignore.

Skepticism and fear are typically bullish signs because it shows that many investors are still afraid of stocks. The market, like a dance floor, fills up fastest when lots of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a song they like. Once everyone is dancing, the floor can't get any fuller--it can only empty. But if the dance floor is already pretty empty, the downside is more limited. That's why high levels of investor fear are viewed as a bullish sign while complacency can be a harbinger of trouble ahead.

Certainly there has been no fundamental shift in the earnings or prospects for most companies during the last few days. And yet many of those companies have lost 20 percent of their value or more despite the fact that their recent earnings reports and outlook have been quite upbeat. Either these stocks represent attractive value at these levels or something very bad is about to happen to our economy that we just can't see or feel right now.

There is always a chance that the economic disruptions in Greece will spread throughout Europe and eventually to our country as well. There is also legitimate uncertainty and concern about the huge deficits that are being racked up by the U.S. Government and what economic consequences will ensue. But it seems like a doomsday scenario is already being priced into the markets long before it is clear that the current uncertainty will lead to widespread economic problems.

One other complicating factor may have been the proliferation of "super sized" Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that have become increasingly popular with many investors. ETFs grew in popularity as a way for ordinary investors to participate in specific market sectors, indices, or geographies in a quick and easy way. But in recent years, the most popular ETFs have been a broad range of "funds on steroids" that provide a way to make leveraged bets with 2 or 3 times the "pop" of simple vanilla index funds.

As a result, individuals now have the ability to make riskier bets using the kind of leverage that used to only be available to larger institutions. A byproduct of that approach is greater volatility at all times but particularly during buying and selling panics when everyone is trying to get through a small door at the same time.

At the end of the day, it seems prudent to move assets away from those markets which might be less resilient to these disruptions and also away from the overweight positions in basic materials which are vulnerable to the impact of the rising dollar which has been moving up against the currencies of countries that are in even worse shape than we are.

But generally speaking, I remain upbeat on the U.S. stock market in general and technology, pipelines, credit card issuers, and some financials in particular.

There is a risk that the disruptions in Europe and elsewhere will grow into a huge economic problem that will cause people to stop buying new TVs and new I-Pads and will slow down business in general. There is also a risk that the long-predicted financial calamity will play itself out as the consequences of huge deficits, major unemployment, and widespread foreclosures come home to roost.

But it seems the bigger risk would be to sell good companies at what seem to be low prices only to watch prices rise dramatically when the sense of panic lifts. I'm just not convinced that the companies that have done so well over the last year and are forecasting more growth are facing a huge setback due to forces that are hard to see clearly on the horizon.

People should never put money they are going to need over the next few years into stocks. They should also keep as much additional money out of harm's way to enable them to sleep at night during weeks such as this. But for investors with a long term horizon and a tolerance for some risk and volatility, it seems we remain in a time of great opportunity for growth across a broad range of companies and sectors.

The Flogging of Goldman Sachs--A Shell Game, A Semantic Problem, or Populist Rage Gone Wild?

2010-05-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

Back before law and order came here to Arizona, they used to just take guilty people out and hang them. But, as locals love to point out, eventually justice became more process-oriented. Since then, they have made a commitment to give the criminals a fair trial before they hang them.

The U.S. Senate and the news media showed last week they are still in the Wild West days. Several Goldman Sachs traders and executives were summoned to the Committee on Investigations to be publicly whipped and shamed for whatever it was they supposedly had done wrong. The message was clear. We know these guys are horrible people and need to be publicly berated and hung. The fact that none of them has broken the law is an irrelevant nuisance that shouldn't slow us down.

Perhaps the most telling line of the 11-hour Senate committee ordeal was spoken by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) who commented at one point that "it's like we're speaking a different language here." Tester was referring to his belief that the Goldman representatives were being evasive and unresponsive to many of the questions they were asked by committee members.

In fact, the Goldman folks weren't being evasive. They really were speaking a different language. The most dramatic example of that disconnect occurred during the opening question asked by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) of the four young mortgage traders who were involved in the Abacus deal targeted by the SEC. "In your role as a financial advisor," Collins asked each of them, "do you believe you should always act in your client's best interest?"

The traders looked confused by what sounded like a pretty simple question. Collins thought that their confusion must have been contrived and part of a strategy to chew up time. But the fact is that none of the four men she confronted with the question was a financial advisor. I know, because I am a financial advisor. I work with unsophisticated successful people who count on me to tell them what to do with their money. That's what an FA does. In any transaction, I only have one client and I always try to look after their best interests.

But these men were traders and market makers. Their clients are all sophisticated institutions that already know what they want to do with their money. Those clients come to Goldman's trading desk seeking good transactions--not advice. The question posed by Collins was a non-sequitor and completely irrelevant to their circumstances.

As a market maker, you arrange a transaction between two or more valued clients--some of whom want to buy and others who want to sell. It is guaranteed that the deal will work out well for one side and badly for the other. As a market maker in custom-designed mortgages, your job is to make sure you are providing a good and fair market--to provide liquidity and markets for otherwise illiquid securities. That's looking after everyone's best interest.

This would be a conversation worth pursuing if the goal of the hearing in the Senate was to shed real light on any aspect of the situation. The fact that virtually no Goldman clients have stepped forward to complain would also be telling, if informing the public about the issues was the real goal of all this. But we all know that this hearing was not about providing clarity or truth.

Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) spent most of the lengthy inquisition repeating his concern and outrage over how wrong it is for an investment firm to package a security for sale to its clients and then make a bet that it will go down in value. But while Levin made it clear many times that Goldman and the people in front of him should be ashamed of themselves, he never suggested that any of them violated any rules or laws.

In fact by continually pointing out that we need a whole bunch of new laws and rules to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again, he essentially was admitting that those laws do not exist today. In other words, the people at Goldman didn't break the law because there are no laws against what they did, even if they did what he said.

A number of very smart people seem to share that assessment. During the week, great thinkers known for their objectivity and brilliance came to the same conclusion. First, Bill Clinton came out and said he isn't sure that Goldman did anything illegal. Then reporter Fareed Zakaria went further and said he didn't think Goldman broke any laws. Finally, billionaire Warren Buffett, known on and off Wall Street for his acumen, generosity, and high ethical standards, told his shareholders he was proud to be a Goldman Sachs customer and investor and he fiercely defended the company's ethics and policies.

This set of facts leads to the following question: Are all these SEC suits and Senate inquisitions and leaked reports of the Justice Department coming down on Goldman supposed to lead to something real? Or has it all been part of a political shell game designed to get the public to divert its attention from the real issue?

Has this entire Goldman show trial been a distraction to take everyone's eye off the ball while, armed with populist rage, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress set about the business of "protecting Main Street" with far more rigorous and game-changing financial regulation than they could have ever pushed through before the Goldman sideshow whipped everyone up?

Obama and the Democrats are either ideologues with tunnel vision who just don't get it or they are savvy political tacticians who have succeeded in getting everyone to keep their eye on Goldman Sachs while the real story is taking place in the financial regulation committees on Capitol Hill.

If Goldman's stock dropped 20 percent last week over concern about the SEC suit and possible criminal prosecution, it is probably a huge over-reaction. If it dropped because draconian new regulations and tax increases on investments are on the way, then it may have been justified.

I have to admit that I can't figure out which it is.

Which is the whole point of a shell game--isn't it?

Et tu Frank Rich?--Goldman Sachs and the Death of Journalism

2010-04-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

For years now we have suffered through the gradual disappearance of fact-based reporting and journalistic standards. As frustrating as it has been, there were always at least a few places we could turn where facts and accuracy still counted for something.

But for all this slippage over the last few years, this was the week that the music truly died. The feeding frenzy to demonize Goldman Sachs has claimed the last bastions of solid journalism in just a few days.

The all out attack against Goldman began months ago because, unlike their competitors, this was the one firm that was smart and responsible enough not to put their entire company and the world financial system at risk by using huge leverage to make a single bet on a losing number. Instead, Goldman chose to hedge its bets and as a result, unlike many of its former competitors, it is alive and thriving today.

Goldman has been unfairly singled out by the media and politicians from the outset, but on April 16, the SEC filed a civil fraud charge against them with so much fanfare that there was a general media presumption that Goldman must have been caught red-handed doing something really terrible.

The SEC accused Goldman of arranging a high stakes bet between a fund manager named John Paulson who was bearish on the sub-prime mortgage market and two sophisticated institutional investors who felt that high-yield lower quality mortgages represented a good investment since, even during bad economic times, most Americans always found a way to make their house payments.

Paulsen helped select the mortgage portfolio on which the bet was to be based. Goldman went to ACA, a highly respected firm which proudly declared on its website that they were the most sophisticated mortgage experts in the world. Paulson and ACA then sat down together and decided on the final portfolio. ACA made a lot of substitutions to the portfolio and eventually signed off on it.

A German bank bet $150 million and ACA bet $850 million that the value of the portfolio would go up. Paulson's fund bet $1 billion that it would go down. Goldman took a $15 million fee for being the bookie and says it bet $100 million of its own money along with the banks.

As the subprime mortgage market collapsed, Paulson pocketed the whole $1 billion while Goldman lost a net $85 million and the German bank and ACA lost their bets as well.

The SEC claims that Goldman committeed fraud because it didn't tell ACA up front that Paulson was the one who was betting against the portfolio. This charge makes no sense for a number of reasons. First, given the magnitude of the collapse of the market, the outcome of the bet would have been the same no matter who picked the sub-prime mortgages.

Second, the claim is false on its face because Paulson did not, in fact select the portfolio on his own. He did it along with ACA which made many changes before signing off.

Third, the only Goldman person named in the suit is a 28-year old junior vice-president who himself was bearish on the mortgage market (although, at the time, his bosses weren't) and was foolish or immature enough to try to impress his girlfriend with his power and prowess by raving about his own brilliance using his Goldman email. No managers. No bosses. No executives. Just one kid.

In a world where real journalists still existed, one might have expected them to point these things out in their news reports following the SEC charge. How the alleged "duped" investors were actually just two huge savvy institutions who wanted to make the bet they did. How no Goldman management was cited as having done anything wrong. How any winner-take-all bet between two willing and qualified parties by definition entails huge risk.

But instead, they caved and joined the Goldman-bashing party. It seems that the demand to feed the beast has just become too powerful. No media outlet (except the Wall Street Journal) has resisted the temptation to demonize the one firm that had the chutzpah to be right when everyone else was wrong. How dare they stay alive at a time when everyone else was doing the patriotic thing and going broke! They couldn't resist suggesting that the mighty omniscient pariah Goldman was preying on thousands of small helpless investors.

One might expect this kind of sensationalism from publications such as Rolling Stone which was first out of the box last year when reporter Matt Taibbi called Goldman "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." In his current Truthout blog, Michael Winship calls Goldman "the Blackwater of finance--the lastest in a long line of companies you love to hate."

But until now, there were cooler heads around in the media--reporters who realized that mass hysteria and a lynch mob mentality do not constitute proof of wrongdoing. No more. Everybody is now in the pool.

The first journalistic pillar to crumble was the New York Times, which ran a front page news story this week claiming that Goldman had unleashed "a ticking time bomb on unwitting investors." Why would Goldman deliberately help build a time bomb in an investment in which they themselves ended up losing $85 million?

But the more outrageous claim is that Goldman targeted "unwitting investors," implying that thousands of unsophisticated normal families were pressured by Goldman salesmen to put their nest eggs in these things. There were other firms out there doing that at the time, but Goldman was not one of them. Goldman doesn't deal with unwitting investors in transactions like this. They served as the casino where a few very sophisticated gamblers could find someone on the other side of their bet by paying Goldman a fee.

The second major pillar to fall was CBS News which ran a story (watch it here) detailing how in 2007, while people who had borrowed $500,000 to buy a $400,000 home that cost $200,000 to build were losing their homes, Goldman Sachs executives were joking and laughing about all the money they were making on their cynical bets against America. This was based on 4 emails in which Goldman employees expressed joy over the fact that they were making money on bets they had recently placed against the mortgage market.

To link the two pieces of the story in the way they did was deceptive and outrageous. The foreclosure crisis that is still going on in America was caused when real estate developers, lenders, and real estate brokers encouraged ordinary people to pay more than they could afford for homes that were worth much less than the purchase price. Goldman Sachs had nothing to do with any of that.

We live in a 24-7 worldwide financial trading market where it is possible to bet on the future direction of the price of anything. For CBS, the New York Times, and others to suggest that this is somehow unpatriotic is the height of foolishness and only misleads Americans.

I am a huge University of Arizona sports fan. Five years ago, LSU was coming to Tucson to play our Wildcats. I had watched our team and knew they were just in the early stages of rebuilding and had no chance to win the game. LSU was favored by only 8 points. I thought the spread should have been 50 points so I bet $1000 on LSU--against the team I love. Arizona lost by 63 points and I made $1,000.

My bet had no impact on the outcome of the game just as Goldman's bets against the mortgage market had none on the catastrophe that befell millions of Americans. Neither the homeowners nor the sports teams even knew the bet existed and each bet was irrelevant to the result on the field.

Back in the good old days, the responsible media would be helping us understand the difference. Instead of piling on and adding to the distortions and misunderstanding, they would be writing articles like this one. But the appetite of the beast for outrage is growing daily and it needs to be fed with more and more villains.

Today was the worst--the true stake in the heart. The dagger. The final straw.

I stay up until midnight on Saturday night (it's only 9 here in Arizona) to read Frank Rich's column in the Sunday Times. On just about every issue, I think he has made sense over the years and has done the best job of any columnist of sorting through the political jungle during complicated times.

Part of today's column explained well how the Goldman saga has been used effectively by President Obama to push forward his agenda for new broader financial regulation. Classic Frank Rich. But then he picked up a burning cross and joined the mob concluding that Goldman and "those who shorted the housing market bet against America."

Does Rich also believe that those who buy life insurance are betting against themselves and rooting for their own demise or that those who buy fire or car insurance are hoping that they have a catastrophic accident?
Was I untrue to my Wildcats when I used the mispricing of risk in Las Vegas to make some money?

Does Rich think that the firms like Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and dozens of others who placed huge bets on the home team with borrowed money and subsequently went broke and created a world financial crisis are the true patriots? Does he think that the network of regulatory and rating agencies who all failed to do their jobs were all just great patriots as well? That Goldman Sachs is the major and only villain in this passion play?

I'm sending this article to Rich. If he apologizes, I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm truly finished. If he doesn't, I'm just going to watch and read more about sports and weather, saddened by the thought that today's reporting bears about as much resemblance to journalism as Hulk Hogan does to an Olympic champion.

If arrogance were against the law, hundreds of people at Goldman Sachs would probably spend the rest of their lives in jail. They were major architects of a toxic Wall Street culture for which we have all paid dearly.

If a reporter says that, it's journalism. But if he writes the kind of trash I talk about in this piece, he's one of the many who have brought the media--all of it--to its current sorry state.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a managing director of an international investment firm that works and competes with Goldman Sachs. I have many friends and a family member who are current or former employees of Goldman. It is my honest belief that none of those facts played a role in shaping the opinions expressed in this article.

Confessions of a Pro-Israel Obama Supporter

2010-04-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

I confess.

I voted for Barack Obama and I'm glad I did. Like most of my fellow Jews, I think he's doing a pretty good job as President of the United States. I also feel a special connection to the State of Israel and strongly support its right to exist as a democracy, defend itself, and not be held to a double standard by the U.N. or the rest of the world as it so often is today.

Those sentiments don't sound or feel the least bit radical or incongruous to me. But that just shows how out of touch I must be with millions of other people who also say they care deeply about our country and the Jewish state.  Many of them have never been angrier or more concerned that Obama would like nothing better than to sell Israel down the river in his spare time as he bankrupts and destroys America with his socialist agenda.

I would apologize for supporting this horrible man if I could just figure out what he is doing wrong.

We have a representative democracy that seems to have served us well over the years. A majority of Americans elected Obama president 16 months ago . The margin was even more dramatic if you consider that he won pretty much every state outside the former Confederacy and the Wilderness states where a large double-digit percentage of the voters acknowledged they would never vote for a Black man. He was particularly popular with Jews who supported him by a 3-1 margin.

But many American Jews who identify themselves as staunchly "pro-Israel" have never been comfortable with Obama.  In recent weeks, several respected Jewish leaders have joined others who seem so confused that they don't know the difference between Haman and Mordechai--the villain and the hero of the Purim story in which an evil politician tries to destroy the Jewish people.

Obama is no Haman. He has made it clear from the outset that he would like to be a force for progress in bringing about the two-state solution that is essential if Israel is to remain a Jewish democracy for longer than a few more years.

He has repeatedly stated his commitment to Israel's security and safety and has made it clear that the Palestinians and Arab states need to renounce terrorism and violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

Obama first voiced his unshakable support for Israel during his address to AIPAC prior to his election and recently sent Vice-President Biden to Israel affirm that commitment yet again.

But when March Madness began on the basketball court, March Mishegos took over the Jewish press and several pro-Israel organizations. And the insanity continues.

Like his predecessor, Obama has stated that the U.S. role in making peace would be made easier if Israel stopped building neighborhoods in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. So the White House was understandably annoyed with both the timing and the substance of the decision to build 1600 new housing units in part of Jerusalem that was announced during Biden's visit.

The White House has made it clear that this awkward incident was a spat among friends--not a crisis or a major game-changer in U.S.--Israel relations. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu apologized for the timing of the announcement and has repeatedly insisted that this incident did not provoke a crisis between his country and the U.S.

It never seemed like that big a deal. But a number of Jewish "leaders" and journalists clearly disagree.
AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., immediately called on the Obama administration to "diffuse the tensions" with Israel, branding statements by the White House "a matter of serious concern." the AIPAC statement cites no specific comments or incidents as the cause of the undefined tension nor did it state what the Israeli government should be doing to help improve the situation.

The next day, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick announced that the incident in Israel "drove Obama into a fit of uncontrolled rage from which he has yet to recover" which caused him to "foment a crisis (and) launch a political war on Israel."

Glick never offered quotes or any documentation for her dramatic claims but her column was lapped up and spread through the email network by concerned Jews.

A few days later, New York Post and Fox News military analyst Ralph Peters wrote a column featuring a very old photo of Obama standing next to Reverend Jeremiah Wright and stated that "regarding Israel, a lifetime of extremist associations has infected Obama with an emotional loathing for the Jewish state and a romantic vision of Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters." Like Glick, Peters cited no quotes or facts to substantiate his accusations. But that email has also been widely distributed.

Then Former New York City mayor and Obama supporter Ed Koch went on Fox News to echo what he had just written--that Obama had "thrown Israel under the bus."  Koch criticized our president for his "abysmal attitude toward the State of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Netanyahu." According to Koch, Obama insulted Bibi by having only a single photographer take pictures when the two met in Washington last week. That was the humiliating treatment. No specifics, facts, or quotes were cited by Koch to back his other serious accusations and criticism of Obama.

Netanyahu has said nothing publicly other than to "condemn and deny" a quote attributed to an anonymous source who quoted him as calling Obama "a disaster for Israel" and to assert in a speech at AIPAC, that Israel has the right to build settlements in Jerusalem or anywhere else it wants to.

So what am I missing? Where is the tension? Where is the rage? Where is the outrageous treatment of Netanyahu? Where is anything resembling a crisis?

After the embarrassing housing announcement in Israel for which Netanyahu apologized, Biden made a speech there in which he said:

"I am here to remind you, though I hope you will never forget, that America stands with you shoulder-to-shoulder in facing these threats. President Obama and I represent an unbroken chain of American leaders who have understood this critical, strategic relationship. As the President said recently, “I will never waver from ensuring Israel’s security and helping them secure themselves in what is a very hostile region.”

Doesn't sound like a crisis to me.

All this happened at the time when Obama was working around the clock to get health care reform passed during which he never mentioned Israel once.  After its passage, every time he appeared on TV he seemed downright giddy over his legislative triumph. No anger or rage. No mention of a war on Israel or any talk about a crisis.

The larger and more troubling question is why so many Jewish organizations have jumped on the bandwagon expressing their concerns.  Their thinly-veiled message seemed to be that despite his repeated public statements of support for Israel they essentially agreed with those who questioned Obama's sincerity and motives.

None of these individuals or groups did themselves or the Jewish people a service by adding to and promoting the unwarranted anger and hysteria that has swept the "pro-Israel" community.  A series of polls taken in both Israel and U.S. in recent days that show that most Jews support Obama and his concern about the negative impact of the radical settler movement and their damaging role in shaping Israel's domestic policies.

Polls released in two Israeli newspapers this week revealed that Israelis are evenly split on the issue of whether all neighborhood and settlement growth in the West Bank and Jerusalem should be halted. A clear majority of non-Orthodox Jews in Israel support such a freeze.

A separate poll of Israelis showed that  69 percent of Israelis view Obama as "fair or friendly" to Israel while only 21 percent viewed the U.S. president as "hostile."

Recent polls by J-Street and Gallup show that more than 60 percent of American Jews approve of the job Obama is doing as president--15 percentage points higher than the U.S. population as a whole.

In addition, a Rasmussen poll of U.S. voters show that a majority believe that Israel should stop growing neighborhoods in the West Bank and Jerusalem. By a 3-1 margin, American voters also believe that the Palestinians should recognize Israel's right to exist.

So not only are the alarmists who are trying to convince us that a U.S.-Israel crisis exists in the absence an any evidence, they are also out of touch with the majority of the constituencies they claim to represent.

There IS a serious crisis in Israel but it has nothing to do with Obama or the U.S. It is the toxic impact of the Religious Right and the settler movement--a group that is small in numbers but huge in influence due to Israel's form of government which requires a leader like Netanyahu to put together a majority coalition to remain in power. The religious Shas party is a key part of that group and Bibi had to name a Shas interior minister to form his government.  That minister is the one who blind-sided his own boss with the untimely announcement of the new construction in Jerusalem during Biden's visit.

Bibi's greatest challenge is not Obama. It's deciding if and when he is going to spend more time and energy working on the inevitable two-state solution and less on sucking up to the fundamentalist fanatics who have consistently worked against the peace process. Most American Jews don't want to acknowledge (much less deal with) those complexities so they just bash Muslims and Obama and define being "pro-Israel--American style" to include positions that most Israelis would find frightening.

Surveys have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis would be willing to give up the settlements if it would help the cause of peace. Netanyahu certainly has the right to do whatever he wants. The issue is whether it's smart for him to fly in the face of common sense, the will of his own people and most American Jews.

As a deeply committed Jew who has made almost two dozen trips to Israel and has held top positions in Federation, Israel Bonds, Jewish days schools, and other organizations I am aware of serious concerns in our community about continuity and the shrinking base of Jews who are choosing to become involved with existing community organizations.

It doesn't help our cause for those who claim to be leaders and staunchly pro-Israel to be so out of touch with the values and ideology of the majority of our people--particularly those who are not yet on Medicare. They are our future and my sense is they are driven even further away by the posturing and lack of a factual basis for many of the claims and accusations that are supposedly being made on their behalf.

Jews are no strangers to crisis and we have suffered in the past under presidents and political leaders who were either indifferent or worse to our legitimate rights and concerns. Now that we have a president and many other leaders who are truly advocates of peace and hope, it seems silly and counter-productive to ramp up the rhetoric and accusations without any facts or documentation to back them up.

Purim and March Michegos are over as is April Fool's Day. Hopefully we can move forward from here with an approach that generates much more light and a lot less heat. And if the leaders of the Chosen People or anyone else want to level vicious attacks against our president, they should at least back them with facts and sources.

That's a change we can all believe in.

Feeding the Golem--My Fellow Jews Are Addicted to Anger and Fear Too

2010-03-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

In a recent article, I wondered out loud why most of people say they want to be happy and yet spend an ever-increasing amount of time and energy reading, watching, and listening to people who promise to make us angry and afraid. Our need for anger and fear has become so insatiable that it borders on the pathological. We are not just addicted—we spend much of our time seeking out the very stuff that we claim to find repulsive and should want to avoid.

If that doesn’t make you feel bad enough, it is even worse among my fellow Jews—particularly for those of us who consider ourselves to be “pro-Israel” and purport to care a great deal about the well-being of our Jewish homeland.

I have dealt with this theme in separate articles about anti-Semitism and the schizophrenic relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel. But the facts on the ground seem to be getting so much better and yet the problem seems to be getting so much worse that it seemed important to bring it up again.

Just last week, the Gallup Poll revealed that Israel is now viewed more positively by Americans than at any time in history. A full 63 percent of us favor the approach the Israelis are taking in their disputes with the Palestinains while only 15 percent of Americans say they think the Palestinians are behaving better.
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That comes on top of a Gallup Poll taken last year which shows that Jews are more widely respected that any other religious group in America.

That comes on top a a poll taken a few years ago that showed that more than 80 percent of non-Jewish parents would be moderately to extremely pleased if their child married a Jew. When a similar poll was taken of the same group 50 years ago, the results were a mirror image—more than 80 percent of the non-Jewish parents said they would be moderately to extremely upset.

That comes on top of the fact that discrimination against Jews in the workplace, neighborhoods, private clubs, and universities that was once so common has virtually disappeared.

There are certainly still bigots out there who say and do horrible things. But when they do, they are vilified and marginalized by broader society. There is still Jew-hatred out there, but there is no government or societal anti-Semitism. There is no place in our country where that type of racist and bigoted behavior is considered acceptable.

As I write this article, I am in Beunos Aires where, like dozens of other places in the world, true anti-Semitism exists. If a Jew suffers from discrimination or an act of Jew-hatred, the broader society is indifferent at best and is often tacitly approving of the act. That used to be the case in much of the U.S. but, thankfully that is no longer the case. It is important to use vocabulary that acknowledges the difference.

We also now have an American president who surrounded himself with Jewish advisers and who has made it clear that he regards Israel as a unique and trusted ally in the Middle East and has repeatedly stated that American support of Israel will never waver.

With all of these amazing and wonderful developments, it seems as though the American Jewish community should be in a state of euphoria and constant celebration. Just about everything we worked and prayed for over the last 40 years has seemingly come to pass.

As we all know, we are seeing the exact opposite.

Every email I receive from a fellow Jew has the same theme as those I get from my friends on the Right wing.

Be very angry and very, very afraid.

My friends who claim to be pro-Israel (none of whom has a first, second, or third home there) are constantly pointing out the horrible behavior of Arabs in general, Palestinians in particular, and those who believe that Israel is to blame for the problems in the Middle East.

They also make sure we are aware of how unfairly Israel is treated by the U. N. and that the Jewish state is held to a punitive double standard by the international community in general.

We are constantly warned of the risks created by a nuclear Iran and reminded that the only realistic course of action is a pre-emptive attack by Israel, the U.S. or some combination of our allies.
We are also told of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incidents on college campuses such as the recent heckling and demonstrations against Israeli ambassador Michael Oren when he spoke at UC-Irvine.

I want to be very clear. Every single one of these complaints and observations has a factual basis. Every one raises valid concerns. We Jews who care about Israel should be aware of the issues and not be naïve or stick our heads in the sand.

But where is the balance? Where is the acknowledgement and exultation over the list of wonderful facts I cited earlier? Would anyone who did nothing but read emails and posts from their pro-Israel friends ever have even a hint of all the positive developments that have occurred in recent years?

An old joke that you don’t see much anymore gave the definition of a Jewish telegram.

“Start worrying. Details to follow.”

That joke was the product of an era where most of the details were not good. There was very little good news that followed for most Jews for many centuries.

But now that so many of the details are so positive, isn’t it about time that we sent a new telegram.

“Stop worrying all the time. Some of the details are actually pretty good.”

Feeding the Beast--Our Addiction to Anger and Fear

2010-02-25T10:10:00.000-08:00

If you ask most people what they want the most for themselves--and certainly for their children--the vast majority would say "happiness." We want to be happy and we want our friends and family to go through life with every reason to wear a big smile. If you Google "how to be happy" you will find 165 million distinctive links.

So why do so many people spend every waking moment watching, listening to, and reading things that tell us up front are specifically designed to make us angry or afraid?  This isn't the unpredictable bad stuff that just happens as part of the ups and downs of life.  This is going out of our way to to listen to people and read things that advertise their goal is to make us angry and miserable.

During a single 12-hour period last week, I received emails headlined "Do you want to get really mad?"--obviously a rhetorical question since the presumed answer was "of course I do"--another saying "We should all be afraid," and a third that was simply called "OUTRAGE."

Each email was sent by a seemingly normal, well-balanced friend who had included me on a list of 12 or more other recipients. Two of the emails showed a long history of others who had received and forwarded them--more than 100 people in a matter of a few hours for each. Instead of deleting these messages that promised to deliver misery and despair, my friends apparently couldn't wait to open them and send them on as quickly as possible to friends and family members who they presumed also wanted to get more angry and afraid.

If most people say their goal in life is to be happy, then why do they spend so much time and money convincing themselves and others how furious and fearful they should be? Why do millions of us spend much of the day listening to ranting, raving, outraged people on the radio, come home and watch the angry Right wingers on Fox or the angry Left wingers on MSNBC and then read the steady stream of emails telling us how mad and scared to death we should be of our own government, Muslims, Arabs, Obama, Liberals, Congress, the media and everyone else in the world?

It gets even more bizarre. Our addiction to anger and fear has become so insatiable that there doesn't seem to be enough terrible and/or scary real news out there to meet our ever-growing need for outrage. The truth has become irrelevant as we stretch to feed our addiction to the beast of anger, blame, and fear.

The vast majority of emails, blogs, and other angry stuff are full of lies and distortions. The business of providing raw material to the misery pushers has become so large and successful that a number of websites thrive doing nothing other than check the veracity of stories that are flying around the internet. Snopes.com, factcheck.org, and others get millions of hits from people who are suspicious about the truthfulness of the hateful emails they get.

But it gets even more bizarre. When I fact check the angry lies and find out that President Obama did NOT really attend Occidental College under his real Kenyan name or that Michelle Obama did NOT run up a $450 room service bill for a snack at the Waldorf Astoria or that or that the calls for a 28th Amendment to the Constitution reigning in Congress are based on phony assertions, I assume that the friends who sent me and others the lie in the first place would appreciate knowing that they were spreading falsehoods.

Guess what? Every time I have informed them of the fact, they get angry at ME, accuse me of being a liberal, and never go back to their sources or the people they have misinformed to correct the mistake or apologize for spreading lies in the first place. One friend said he always fact checks emails before he forwards them but the one full of lies that he sent me was "too good to check out."

Just to be clear, these emails and media reports are not honest mistakes or matters of opinion. They are lies that were created (often with time-consuming care, elaborate layouts, and artwork) and disseminated by people who knew they were lies from the outset. They were never designed to inform or enlighten. On the contrary they were created for the specific purpose of creating anger and demonizing their targets.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman once said that "addicts never tell the truth to their pushers." He was referring to the unwillingness or inability of the U.S. government to call the Saudis to task for their role in financing and promoting terrorism around the world. Friedman explained that since we are addicted to Saudi oil, we can't or won't ever be truly honest with them for fear they might cut us off.

It would appear that millions of American have become truly addicted to anger and outrage. Fox News and talk radio figured it out first and years ago became the crack pipe of the angry Right. They realized early on that there's no money in real journalism any more but they could get rich feeding our insatiable need for heroes and villains.

The other cable channels were slower to catch on, but now MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and the rest all want to make Fox-sized money ($700 million in profits last year with $23 million going to Roger Ailes, the CEO) so they have abandoned journalistic standards as well. Their idea of "balanced coverage" is getting the most extreme advocates of competing positions, putting them on stage together, and encouraging a food fight.

When was the last time you saw a guest on a cable station advocate a nuanced, pluralistic position and acknowledge the partial truth of opinions of the other side? My friends who used to appear frequently on these programs now say they can't get on the air unless they promise to be rabidly partisan.

So, to paraphrase Stan Laurel, "this is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Rush." We all want happiness more than anything else and yet we have become hopelessly addicted to media and emails that promise to make us UN-happy. How do we shed our demons and get back on track?

Here's a thought.  First, stop watching cable news and listening to talk radio. I did that six months ago and haven't missed a thing. I have not missed the people I used to disagree with all the time (not surprising) but I also haven't missed the people I used to agree with that are trying to make other people angry. I have seen 132 episodes of NCIS, Law and Order, and CSI and know a lot more about sports and the weather than I used to. I even read a book.

When you get emails that promise to make you angry or unhappy, either delete them or if you have to read them, fact check them and let the sender and other recipients know if they are based on lies. If they are written anonymously, contain provocative pictures and inflammatory phrases, provide no contact information for the original author, and encourage you to forward it to the whole world if you agree but instruct you to delete it if you don't, it is almost guaranteed to be full of lies and distortions. Dozens of examples are available upon request.

Finally, we need to stop looking for villains and start looking in the mirror. What ever happened to the notion of shared sacrifice and shared responsibility? What ever happened to John Kennedy's exhortation to ask what you can do for your country? These are very hard and challenging times for most Americans. The solutions do not lie in anger and demonizing the other. They lie in our own hope, perspective, ingenuity, and ability to be part of the solution.

We may not come up with a lot of good answers right away.  But if we can stop feeding the beast and start to break our addiction to anger and fear and villains and hatespeech it would be a good start.

A Very Bad Week for America

2010-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

America and democracy just had a very bad week.

The biggest headlines were garnered by the truly shocking victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Brown won the Senate seat that had been held for decades by Teddy Kennedy and will represent the only state to vote for George McGovern.

That surprise was the result of democracy in action. The people of Massachusetts have spoken and it is what it is. The bad part is that somehow the will of the people doesn't matter any more in the Senate. For the first time in my lifetime, it now takes 60 votes to pass anything. Now that Brown has joined the 40 other GOP Senators from the Confederacy and the Wilderness states, they can essentially make sure that nothing happens in Congress this year even though they represent states that have just 20 percent of the population.

In short, the will of 80 percent of Americans can be thwarted by representatives of 20 percent due to a quirk in Senate rules. I'm pretty sure that's not what the Founding Fathers--or anyone else--had in mind. Not good for America.

Then the Bush-stacked Supreme Court checked in with a 5-4 ruling that gives corporations the right to spend an unlimited amount of money on political advertising. During the health care reform debate we have already seen how little corporations care about the welfare of the people and how much they care about promoting their own profits.

More than $500 million has been spent on Congressional health care lobbying by the drug and health care companies. That's about $1 million per member of Congress. That's over and above the millions that the drug and health care companies recently contributed to the campaigns of Max Baucus and Charles Grassley, the ranking members of the Senate committee that gutted the final bill.

As a result, we will end up with either no health care reform at all or some watered-down version that will accomplish little. This is occurring at a time when 50 million Americans are uninsured and more than half of all personal bankruptcies are due to a catastrophic illness. No one who is not on Medicare is happy with their health care insurance which costs more and more each year and covers less and less.

The Constitution begins with the words "We the People"--not We the Corporations. It seems like a strained interpretation at best to grant profit-making companies unlimited access to mind-bending advertising in the name of free speech. At the end of the day, we will certainly end up with more lies, distortions, and half-truths designed to get Americans whipped up and angry over provisions that are probably in their best interest but which might cost companies profits. Not good for America.

Finally, it seems that pundits on both sides of the aisle have deemed Obama's presidency an abject failure and are counting the minutes for just three more short years before we can replace the bum.

I find all this fascinating and yet another step forward in the lies and distortions become fact mode of our media and the perpetually angry people who are...well, perpetually angry.

I mean we do have a president who has put in place economic policies that caused the stock market to rise more than 60 percent creating more than $5 trillion in net worth for average Americans. That 10 month rally began at a time when most experts were advising investors to put their money in safe t-bills at zero percent after their portfolios had already been destroyed.

He is also a president who has made it very hard for the terrorists around the world to raise money or recruit new suicide bombers since he has reached out to dialogue with our international friends and enemies instead of lecturing and threatening them. His earning the Nobel Peace prize was not all that popular on Fox News but it was a good sign that the rest of the world appreciates what he has been doing.

But the election in Massachusetts and the reaction of the media and markets is sending a message to our friends and enemies that the American people may not be firmly behind our president anymore. As a result, our creditors (the same friends and enemies around the world) have pulled back from our markets causing the biggest one week decline of the year in stock prices. Not good for America.

So we've had a rough week. That much I know for sure. As far as the deeper meaning of all these developments is concerned I don't really have a clue. As always, I'm pretty sure that most of the pundits have it wrong. I'm also completely certain that the anger that I see in emails, blogs, and the broadcast media will only rise since there seems to be so much money to be made from that approach.

As far as the long term impact is concerned, we'll all just have to stay tuned. But there IS one thing I know for sure.

None of it is good for America.

Windows and Mirrors

2010-01-20T21:18:00.001-08:00

Any house that we would want to inhabit should have a good number of both windows and mirrors. The windows are needed so we can look through them and see what is going on outside the house. The mirrors are needed inside so we can look back at ourselves critically with an eye toward self-improvement.

The balance is important. In a house with only mirrors and no windows, we might conclude that we are perfect just the way we are since we would have no external standards or basis for comparison.

I started thinking about this after having lunch with a friend of mine who is truly an expert on the situation in the Middle East. He works as a consultant to armies and governments here and around the world advising them on a broad range of strategic and security issues. When I'm with him I sometimes don't know if I should feel super safe or scared to death.

He was talking about Al Jazeera, the Arab owned and operated TV news station that is carried around the world but is the only news option in many Middle Eastern countries. "Television news is supposed to be a window to the world," he said. "It is supposed to broaden your horizons. But the way Al Jazeera operates, it is really a mirror--not a window. Their viewers don't get to see what's outside. All they get is what's going on inside flashed right back at them and the call it news."

In many Arab countries, Al Jazeera is the only news source available. Most citizens there don't have the choices that we have in the Western World.

But despite our limitless choices, we live in a society where millions of us have voluntarilty wrapped ourselves in a windowless news and information cocoon where the only thoughts, information, and opinions we choose to hear are those that confirm the beliefs we already had to begin with.

There is actually a name for this phenomenon--or pathology. It is called Confirmation Bias. It is defined by multiple sources as "a tendancy of people to prefer information that confirms their prevailing beliefs or hypotheses regardless of whether or not it is true. It can lead to disastrous consequences--particularly in military or political situations."

When I was a television news reporter a few decades ago, it was harder to avoid the windows and surround yourself with mirrors. There were 3 national television networks and they all broadcast the news in a pretty straight-forward manner. I can remember being told that a really good reporter or journalist was one whose personal beliefs on a issue were impossible to determine.

I watched Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley for many years and they became my role models To this day I have no idea what their personal politics were or how they voted. And I really didn't care. I was using them as a window--to inform me what was going on in the vast world outside. That was their job--not to tell me how I should feel or which candidate to support.

During my 10 years as a reporter, my editors repeatedly hammered home the need to be fair and objective and not let any personal feelings I might have get in the way of my reporting. They were also obsessed with fact-checking and accuracy. I never had to run a retraction because I never reported anything as fact that wasn't true. If we couldn't prove it, we didn't report it.

But times have changed and the architecture of our media houses has changed as well. We now have a proliferation of 24-7 news, opinion, and reality shows (often undifferentiated) coming from dozens of television networks. Most of the time there is just not that much compelling news going on, so virtually all television, radio, and internet news programming is geared to provide us with flash, controversy, and titilation.

For decades we have been able to listen to sporting events broadcast by the home town announcers who want our team to win every bit as much as we do. Our Confirmation Bias causes most of us to prefer listening to our sporting events that way. But now we can get our news the same way--delivered by celebrities who are more concerned about being the first with exclusive details on the Balloon Boy than they are about determining if they are promoting a hoax. They are pushers of of biased presentations designed not to inform us but to feed our addiction and make us feel smart about the beliefs we already have.
A person on the political Right can get all his television news from Fox and when he is in his car he can choose from literally dozens of perpetually angry people who creatively and loudly blame Liberals and Democrats for all of the real and imagined horrible crimes and disasters that afflict us daily. If this person is ever away from radio and television, he can go on line to hundreds of websites devoted to the same agenda while sorting through the dozens of forwarded emails he receives daily from his friends hammering home the same message.

It is possible, although slightly more difficult, for a person on the political Left to do the same. They can get all their news from MSNBC and listen to National Public Radio and Democracy Now in their cars but the choices are far more limited and lack the volume and their inability to match the visceral anger of the Right Liberals also tend to forward fewer emails.

But let's be honest. Fox made $700 million last year--more than all the other cable channels combined. Its CEO Roger Ailes made $23 million. There are dozens of angry Right wing radio hosts for every angry Leftie and Rush and friends are making millions while their Liberal counterparts are on NPR and living on food stamps. Fox is in a class by itself since it creates the news and promotes phenomena like the Tea Parties, sends its "reporters" to appear in them--often for a big fee, then reports on the very news they have helped create, and they make a fortune every step of the way. There are living in the mirrored penthouse cocoon while the Left wing wannabes like MSNBC are in the mirrored housing projects.

It's partly because they're better at it but mainly because their customer base is so much larger. My friends on the Left who live in an information cocoon know they are doing so and they're comfortable with it because they believe they are smart and Right wingers are stupid. My friends on the Right actually believe they are getting Fair and Balanced news and that Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh are giving them a broad view of the world.

But the net effect is the same. Millions of people now go through life feeling well informed and very much on top of the major events in the world even though they spend all their time looking in the Confirmation Bias mirrors and they have no enthusiasm for windows at all.

Four years ago, the Vice-President Dick Cheney came here to Tucson to make a fund-raising speech. The local newspaper did a story on the accommodation requirements of the V.P. I was quite taken by the fact that Cheney's advance team told the hotel that only two things were absolutely required. The first was that there be decaf coffee, 4 cans of regular Sprite and a tub of ice in the room. The second was that all the TVs in the room be tuned to Fox News before Cheney arrived.

The Vice-President of the United States was so determined to be only exposed to the Fox version of events that he didn't want to run the risk of having the TV stop on CNN or MSNBC even for a second as he was searching for his TV mirror. So it had to be set up in advance.

I read that article shortly after President Bush stated in a interview--without embarrassment--that he never read the newspapers or watched or listened to radio or TV news. He said that his staff filled him in on all the news he needed to know. I was later able to better understand how Bush spent four days riding his bike and clearing brush in Crawford, Texas after Katrina--apparently oblivious to the tragedy that the rest of us were watching unfold on TV. Bush wasn't watching TV, and none of his staff had the guts to break the news to him.

Many of my liberal friends are different--but no better. They tend to be more aware of a broader range of opinions and points of view that are floating around. But they just assume that the positiions they agree with are so logical and superior that everyone will gravitate in that direction. They are dissmissive of views to the Right of them in a very condescending and annoying way.

At the end of the day, my Right wing friends would rather die than read the New York Times, watch MSNBC, or log on to the Huffington Post. My Left wing friends would never watch Fox News, read the editorial page of the Fox-owned Wall Street Journal, or boot up the Drudge Report. Not only would they never look out the window to see what's going on in those other places--they would look at me as though I was crazy for even suggesting it.

Two years ago, I wrote an article about the importance of pluralism--the ability to find the partial truth in the opinions of those with whom we disagree. Or at least to try. That was the reason that this committed Jew leapt at the chance to study Buddhism for several days with the Dalai Lama and his teachers. It was an amazing experience during which I looked through a window and learned from Buddhist wisdom in a way that I hope has made me a better Jew and human being.

But unless we as a people start replacing some of the mirrors in our houses with windows, we are going to end up like the millions of people under repressive regimes who watch Confirmation Bias disguised as news all the time. The sad difference is that those people have no choice. We do.

We chose to leave a house that had both windows and mirrors. We chose to abandon a history of national dialogue and a level of civility based on windows and mirrors that served our democracy well for centuries. Instead we have allowed modern technology and the profit-hungry media to brick over all the windows and have chosen to surround ourselves with mirrors.

And all we have to show for it is more and more anger, hatred, lies, and distortions. Instead of getting all our information and feedback from those mirrors, maybe we should spend more time looking long and hard into them and taking a good look of what living in our new house has done to us as a people.

Both the blessing and the curse of democracy is that we own the results of the choices we make. We will get the kind of government and the level of civil discourse the we demand and deserve. But we won't find it by only looking in the mirror. We need to look out the window and find a higher standard for our national dialogue and our own behavior.

Lying is Fun-Payback is a Bitch

2009-12-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

My Inbox is still empty as many of my angry friends try to figure out how to cope with the shocking and disturbing news of the day.

Friday morning the government announced that roughly as many jobs were created last month as were lost. That was a far better result than was anticipated. In addition the unemployment rate dropped instead of going up again as expected.

Many of these friends--who are united in their hatred of the President of the United States--are already reeling from the fact that the stock market has gone up for nine months in a row producing the sharpest rally in our lifetimes. And now this!

Throughout it all, angry and ominous emails have been arriving almost daily warning that President Obama is ruining the economy and the country with his horrible Obamanomics and terrible policies. These screeds of course have ignored the fact that when Obama took office the economy had already been ruined by his predecessor's policies and that the world was already facing the very real threat of a complete meltdown of the financial system.

They also have repeatedly bemoaned the fact that under Obama our national deficit would grow to more than a trillion dollars a year and our biggest and most irresponsible banks and financial institutions would be bailed out to the tune of trillions more. These expressions of outrage--which continue unabated to this day--also ignore the fact that all of that had already happened during the Bush years as well.

They are like a person who's dying of cancer going to see an oncologist to seek treatment and then blaming the doctor for giving him the disease in the first place. It seems ridiculous but, as we have all learned too well, if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Lenin said it first, Karl Rove refined it and took it to a new level, and bloggers, emails, and hate-radio and cable jocks have made it their mantra.

Despite this adoption of virtual reality as truth by so many friends, I have continued to cling to the old-fashioned notion that no matter how many people believe a verbal rant or a forwarded email full of falsehoods and distortions, a lie is still a lie.

Like Bernie Madoff, Tiger Woods, and others, my friends are now finding that when you build your life on a foundation of falsehoods, you need to tell more and bigger lies just to keep from having to admit you were wrong in the first place. Eventually the liar has no choice but to admit that everything has been a fraud from the beginning. It can be dangerous. You can end up in jail for the rest of your life or lying in your driveway with a 3-iron lodged in your head.

This harsh reality is now confronting former CNN entertainer Lou Dobbs. Dobbs decided a couple of years ago that he could develop a huge devoted following among American racists by spending all his time attacking illegal immigrants and essentially blaming all of our nation's real and perceived problems on them.

When that act got a little tired, Dobbs expanded his racist product line and became the poster boy for the Birther movement--those who didn't want to just come out and say that it drove them crazy that Americans wanted a black man as president so they continued to claim that Obama was really born in Kenya and wasn't an American at all.

Now Dobbs has been fired by CNN and wants to seek public office. Not surprisingly, he received moral and financial support from Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC)--arguably our nation's most racist anti-immigrant group. But now, in his effort to become palatable to people outside America's most virulent hateful and lunatic fringe, Dobbs, who is now running for a Senate seat in New Jersey, says he might support just a smidgen of amnesty for some illegals.

Like all liars and those who count on the worst of us for their support, Dobbs has found that if you sleep with enough dogs, eventually you will come away with fleas. His most ardent racist supporters have now called Lou a traitor to the cause and have thrown him under the bus as well. So now Dobbs still has no support from the vast majority of Americans who stopped watching his racist rants years ago and got him fired from CNN and he also has lost his friends on the racist Right. What's a liar to do?

Most of us also get regular emails demonizing Nancy Pelosi from the same Obama haters. We are repeatedly told that the Speaker is almost as evil as the president himself. They say she wants to tax us all into oblivion and take away our rights.

Of course these tomes ignore the fact that no one's taxes have been raised this year, no one's rights have been taken away, and now Pelosi is opposing the proposal of fellow Democrats who want a temporary War Tax be instituted so we can start paying for the wars we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last eight years.

I'm still waiting for the emails praising Ms. Pelosi for working to keep our taxes down but my Inbox remains sadly empty.

By the way, the Speaker's decision not to make Americans pay for our wars is wrong and immoral. As a fiscal conservative, I am a strong believer that we should pay our bills and that we shouldn't make our children and creditors pick up the tab for money that is being spent on our behalf today. It is also clear that our economy and job picture are still dismal and in the very early stages of recovery. Huge problems and challenges remain.

But this piece is not about political ideology. It is about the dangers of making a strong case for a position based on lies and distortions. It is sad that so many Americans have resorted to this and it is more outrageous that the news media have been so complicit. As a result of their lax and often non-existent Balloon Boy style fact-checking, they routinely give a platform to liars in the name of balanced reporting.

If you live long enough, your choices can come back to haunt you. I feel concern for my troubled friends and wonder how they're going to cope. Their choices are limited. They can kick the can further down the road with more lies and distortions or they can man-up, admit they were wrong all along, and change their ways. Keep checking your Inbox and your favorite cable channel. Their answers will show up soon enough.

Life is tough enough for those us who try to tell the truth. I can only imagine how much harder it is for those who don't. I'm trying to feel sorry for them. It's not working yet but I'll keep you posted.

Feeding the Beast--Our Insatiable Need For Villains

2009-11-23T20:12:00.000-08:00

The truth? Jack Nicholson was right. We can't handle the truth. Either that or we just prefer not to hear it..

The truth is that America is still suffering from what is likely to be a very long hangover after a decade of binge spending. Led by George W. "Keep Shopping" Bush and his friends in Congress, we spent most of the last decade digging ourselves into a deep and wide economic hole.

No one behaved like a grown up. We elected and supported representatives who ran our government into debt while we ran ourselves into debt with the help of our financial institutions who loaned too much money to people who couldn't pay it back. When all the bills came due at once, no one had any money to pay them. So the government is printing money and the ultimate bills will be paid by our creditors, our kids, and people who own dollars that will buy less and less over time.

If this wers a movie, we would come away from this humbling experience chastened, embarrassed, wiser and determined to get it right the next time.

But in real life it's apparently much easier to just get angry at everyone except ourselves and look for villains to blame. We are told that we didn't do anything wrong. We're the victims here of the bad guys who brought us down and continue to screw us at every turn. Nothing is our fault--it's all about those horrible folks who did us in.

At first the villain was simply called Wall Street Greed but that was too general to be truly satisfying. During the last few months that problem was solved by simply blaming everything on Goldman Sachs and the people who run the company. The depth of our addiction to bad guys became clear when even the New York Times piled on last week with an editorial saying that Goldman--only Goldman--should be ashamed of itself.

The international crisis was created by Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the other Goldman competitors who leveraged up themselves and the system to levels that caused a true meltdown when their bets went wrong.

To blame Goldman--which was not the major player when it came to creating the toxic assets and which did not leverage itself up on one bet like the others did--would be like blaming a manufacturer of automatic weapons for what happened at Fort Hood.

The system didn't get brought down by bad mortgages. It was brought down by major investment firms (not Goldman) who decided to leverage up 30 and 40 to 1 in a single asset class. As result, instead of just taking a hit on a bad bet--which happens all the time--they were wiped out and the international financial system was put at serious risk.

The government (not the taxpayers because we haven't paid a dime yet) bailed out AIG to the tune of $170 billion and counting. Goldman received $12 billion or almost exactly 7 percent of that money. And yet, they are the only name ever singled out as the bad guys who ought to be ashamed of themselves for having the nerve to benefit so dramatically from the recovery in the markets because they're better than everyone else.

What about the companies and people that got the other 93 percent? Do you ever hear any of them singled out for special demonization the way that Goldman has been? Is there any indication that anyone at Goldman committed a crime or did anything illegal? Has anyone been charged?

Goldman did what investment firms are supposed to do. They invested legally and wisely in a way designed to make themselves and their shareholders wealthy at the expense of others who were less insightful. Until a year ago, that's what American success was all about. A "good" accountant is one who figures out a way to help his clients pay as little tax as is legally possible. A "good" lawyer is one who can get you off no matter how guilty you might be. A successful person or company is one that makes an enormous amount of money. Someone must have changed the rules without telling the rest of us.

For many angry Americans, the Big Three--Obama, Pelosi, and Reid--have been the ultimate villains since their first day in office. It's ironic that there are two major seemingly contradictory complaints about Obama. One is that he is doing too much and he's ruining the country. The other is that he hasn't done anything at all and he's ruining the country. But when you're dealing with demonization, facts become an irrelevant nuisance. The important thing is to get really angry and encourage others to do the same.

So at the very time when we face serious problems and desperately need intelligent and nuanced discussion of complex issues, we are getting the exact opposite. At the time when we most need to become reacquainted with true patriotism involving shared sacrifice, we are being told that we are not the cause of any of our problems so there is no need for us to be part of the solution.

Instead we are told to get really angry and focus on the villains who got us into this mess with their greed, avarice, and evil motives. It certainly won't help solve any of our problems but it is not nearly as painful as looking the real nature of our challenges and the key to surmounting them squarely in the eyes.

For most of us, those eyes stare right back at us when we look into the mirror.

The Outsourcing of Patriotism

2009-11-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Each of us interfaces with major news events in our own way. We take reported facts and run them through the personal opinions and filters that we use to shape our view of the world.

So when Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire and gunned down dozens of his fellow servicemen at Fort Hood, it was predictable that some would conclude that you just can't trust Muslims while others saw it as yet another sign of the ancillary tragedies of war. Some came away concerned that there would be an outsized backlash against Arab and Islamic Americans while others called for just that. Was Hasan a lone wolf acting on his own or part of an international terrorist plot?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Not really.

We claim to demand answers to these questions but, in truth, we don't care so much. The questions are rhetorical. Politicians and ideologues take snippets of information and use them to support conclusions and positions reached long before anyone heard of Major Hasan.

That's because at no time in U.S. history have so few of us had any personal or finacial skin in the game of defending our country. Most of the victims at Fort Hood, like most casualties of our current disastrous wars, were from small rural towns that most of us don't even know exist. Only 2 of the 13 who were killed hailed from metropolitan areas.

The rest were from West Jordan UT, Bolinbrook IL, Mountain City TN, Havre de Grace, MD, Kiel WI, Woodbridge VA, Willistron ND, Plymouth IN, Racine WI, Tillman OK, and Cameron TX.

The vast majority of Americans live in cities with populations of more than 100,000 but 85 percent of those killed at Fort Hood and most American victims of the war did not. I've been checking the hometowns of our war victims for years and they are always disproportionately rural. Try it yourself. You'll be shocked.

The sad truth is that we have outsourced virtually every aspect of our military effort to paid government contractors and young rural men and women who are attracted to the economic package of six-figure enlistment bonuses, death benefits, and educational opportunities available in the military. Adding to the irony is that Major Hasan himself apparently enlisted for financial reasons--not because he longed to serve America. He just wanted a free trip to medical school and was willing to do his time in the service to pay for it--until he wasn't.

Being patriotic used to involve actions and not just words. Patriots were those who enlisted in the military--not those who bought an "I Support the Troops" decal at a gas station. Patriots were those who gladly paid higher taxes to support the war effort--not those who demanded tax cuts and held tea parties to complain that they had to pay any taxes at all.

The sadder truth is that most of us have substituted words, blast emails, blogs, and rants we hear and see in the media for truth and actions. The politicians and angry screamers on cable TV and the radio argue incessantly about what we should do in Afghanistan and Iraq but the fact is that most of us really don't care. Very few people could find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map or know a single soldier who has ever served there.

Each TV and radio station has dozens of hosts and guests who argue constantly over what military course President Obama should take but most of those same stations have no reporters on the ground actually gathering facts and covering the wars in which our country is engaged.

Most of us don't complain about the lack of coverage because we just don't care. Most of us lose more sleep over the ups and downs of our favorite football team than we do worrying about the fate of Americans (no one we know) serving in the Middle East.

Shortly after 9/11 most Americans wanted to know what we could personally do to help fight the new terrorist threat.  President George W. Bush told real patriots to "keep shopping" and pay less in taxes--not more--even as the U.S. was about to embark upon a dangerous ordeal that would cost tens of thousand Americans their lives and health and would run up a tab of more than a trillion dollars.

That became the model for the new patriotism. Don't enlist, don't encourage your children and grandchildren to serve their country, and don't even think about making financial sacrifices to help pay the bills. Just keep shopping, vote Republican, and question the courage and patriotism of those who raise questions.

Don't worry about sending your kids to fight. We'll just keep raising the bribes we pay to poor rural kids who want and need the money enough to risk their lives and then once we get them in we'll send them back for four and five tours. Those soldiers who survive may be physically or mentally crippled for life but your kids and finances will be fine.

Since Obama was elected, it is no longer required to even pretend to care. The "I Support the Troops" decals are hard to find now. We have become sadly complacent and comfortable in our new role as armchair patriots. We're too busy getting angry, demanding new entitlements, and feeling screwed by our government as we pay the lowest tax rates in our lifetime.

Now, just a couple of weeks after the horrific murders at Fort Hood, not even the news media pretends to care so much.  After an initial flurry of reports and commentary, there are hardly any news stories about the massacre. Much more airtime is being given to Sarah Palin's book tour than to the wars, Major Hasan, or his victims. The compelling and important story of the Ballon Boy got at least double the coverage.

That's the real story from Fort Hood. It's not just about a Muslim officer who maimed and murdered dozens of his fellow American soldiers. It's about the consequences of the outsourcing of patriotism in our country and the sad fact that most of us don't even care enough to be ashamed.

The Market's Not That Complicated

2009-11-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

The markets continue to frustrate most investors as trends that have been in place for much of the year remain operative long after most of the experts believed they had already gone way too far.

Most pundits have been advising caution for months as world stock markets continue to march higher. They have been declaring buy-and-hold strategies to be long dead in this new age of high-speed trading strategies and risk management.

The new way of thinking is perhaps best showcased on CNBC’s Fast Money—a daily one-hour program where the underlying assumption is that intelligent trading and investment strategies change every minute and the only way to make money in this complex world is to shorten one’s time horizon accordingly.

I couldn’t disagree more.

There are new developments on a daily basis that do affect the prospects for specific industries and companies and one does need to pay attention to the news. But the trends that have been driving the markets this year are macro and secular and should be with us for a long time to come.

Here are the four themes that have driven and continue to frame my investment approach:

1. The U.S. and other countries that were devastated by the financial meltdown last year have responded by printing mountains of paper money that is backed by no tax revenues or assets in an effort to stimulate their economies and avoid what would have been a systemic collapse.

As a result, it is taking more and more of those pieces of paper to buy real stuff—hard assets like gold, copper, energy, and other basic materials. The pundits keep talking about the falling value of the dollar but it goes beyond that. We are in the early stages of a period where the currencies of many countries should be viewed with suspicion as the weak economy and low tax rates continue to reduce tax revenues as the printing presses around the world continue to crank out more and more pieces of paper money.

This is not a trend that is likely to change in the foreseeable future.

2. The U.S. has developed a culture of entitlement and our demographics make us far less attractive to investors than many other markets.

I am part of the problem. I’m a baby boomer who will be a productive, tax-paying worker for several more years but for most of the rest of my life—which will hopefully be several decades—I will become an expensive national liability consuming social security, Medicare, and other entitlement dollars.

I am not alone. It seems that countries like Brazil, India, Taiwan, China, Korea, Australia and other nations where the average age and national and personal debt levels are much lower are better positioned for growth going forward.

Fortunately, it has never been easier for investors to buy into specific geographies and industry sectors as part of a portfolio strategy than it is today.

3. There is an apparent disconnect between the U.S. economy and the stock market. The market has advanced for eight straight months and hundreds of companies are reporting excellent earnings even as unemployment has risen into double digits and many people remain deeply in debt.

There are actually two trends at work here, neither of which is likely to change in the near term.

First, most companies have eliminated lots of jobs and have cut other costs dramatically. They are more focused than ever on getting more work and productivity out of the employees that remain. From an investment perspective, this trend has helped the business of technology companies and others who provide products and services that enhance productivity and make operations more efficient.

The second trend relates to the weakness of the dollar. Those U.S. companies that do most of their payroll and manufacturing spending in dollars but derive most of their revenues from overseas are doing very well in this environment and are likely to continue to benefit going forward.

4. Interest rates on U.S. Treasuries and government guaranteed deposits have been kept artificially low by federal authorities who are trying to keep the cost of funds to the banks at rock-bottom levels and create the illusion that there is still solid demand for our nation’s debt.

I believe this has created a ticking time bomb for conservative investors who remain heavily invested in cash equivalents and government bonds. At some point, inflation and higher interest rates will have to kick in and when that happens, investors who have sought safety will find that they had the same number of dollars as they did before but those dollars may buy far less goods and services than they used to.

We continue to monitor the economy and the markets carefully and I will keep you posted regarding the situation going forward.

Fans Who Hate Obama More Than They Love America

2009-10-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

As a college athlete, a former basketball and football referee, and a passionate sports fan I have both received and delivered withering verbal abuse over the years. Fans loudly and routinely question the judgment, sanity, integrity and wisdom of the officials. But they only get upset when the call goes against their team.

No one ever boos the refs for making a bad call that goes in their team's favor. And I've never seen a team argue against or refuse to accept an unfair decision that helped them win the game.

What brought all this to mind was the news that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the subsequent reaction from many Americans who criticized the selection and urged the President to turn down the award because he didn't deserve it.

First let's focus on the decision to honor Obama. Did the five Norwegian referees on the Nobel committee blow it? I don't think so. Upon review the ruling on the field stands as called. Despite the boos from the stands, Obama deserves the award right now. The officials had a better angle and got it right.

In announcing the award, the Nobel Committee cited Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy" and providing the leadership required for the "USA to play a more constructive role" by creating "a new direction in international politics."

The announcement concludes that:

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

But Obama has already done much more to make the world a safer place than just set a new tone. There are many tangible signs of progress in reversing the broad range of domestic and international disasters that were created or exacerbated by George W. Bush.

First and foremost, since Obama's election, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations who want to destroy us have had a real problem finding new recruits. Former President Bush had become a poster boy for terrorist recruiting as America's standing as a moral force in the world came to be defined by the horrific pictures from Abu Ghraib and torture stories from Gitmo.

Obama's outreach to the Arab and Muslim world have made it almost impossible for our country's enemies to portray us as "the Great White Satan" and find healthy young people willing to blow themselves up to kill us. The rest of the world seems to know better than to believe the Right wing lies about how Obama has weakened and apologized for America. Admitting past mistakes is not weak and definitely not an apology.

In addition, President Obama has made it clear that he will be personally engaged and take a balanced approach as he works for a sustainable peace in the Middle East. Although many of my fellow Jews claim he is a secret Muslim who has abandoned Israel, the fact is that since Obama was elected, Hamas has had a very hard time maintaining the support of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas leaders have been pushing hard to have next January's elections postponed since they fear a big defeat at the polls if the voting takes place as scheduled.

Domestically, Obama has worked tirelessly to confront a broad range of crises in our country. He inherited an American-made economic crisis that was threatening to send the entire world into a massive depression. The financial markets were in a death spiral that many believed would take us all permanently down the drain.

During his 9 months in office, the U.S. and world stock markets have gone higher for eight months in a row for the first time in decades. Investors who didn't panic at the bottom have made up losses that most believed would never be overcome. Our employment picture, as predicted, is taking longer to come back but three times as many Americans say they are optimistic about the future as felt that way nine months ago.

He has attacked our health care crisis head on but has been slowed by the Republican leaders in Congress who have promised to make sure nothing gets passed and by members of both parties who are so financially tied to health care interests that they have made progress difficult. Things have moved forward very slowly but it took us decades to get into this mess. It will take more than 9 months to get out of it.

So the refs in Norway made the right call--at the very least it was a defensible call. And it helped the U.S.--the home team of every patriotic American. We are all better off if our President and the Commander in Chief of our armed forces is recognized for promoting peace and making the world a better place.

So why are so many of the home fans booing?

Some honestly believe the refs made a bad call. Fair enough. They say Obama hasn't done enough yet to deserve this honor. I disagree, but some of their arguments are reasonable. But so what? As I said before, when have you ever seen the home fans boo the refs and get up in arms when a questionable call is made that favors the home team?

But the people who seem most upset--often apoplectic--over Obama being honored are the same folks who were cheering wildly just a week earlier when it was announced that Chicago was not getting the 2016 Olympic Games.

There is only one explanation that makes any sense at all. These folks just don't want the home team to win or even play well as long as Obama is president and will get some of the credit.

They hate Obama more than they love America.

This may seem like idiocy to an intellectual but sports fans understand it perfectly. I know dozens of smart rational people here in Tucson who are big University of Arizona fans and who hate Arizona State. They hate ASU so much and so viscerally that they always root for the Sun Devils to lose--even in cases where it would be to Arizona's advantage in the rankings if ASU won. None of them can give you a credible reason for their hatred. They just can't help themselves.

It is this type of baseless hatred that confronts Obama here at home. The haters have their own booster club (Fox News) and cheerleaders (Right Wing radio hosts and bloggers). Since they have no facts to back their feelings, they simply make stuff up and broadcast and email it back and forth to each other, call it news, and claim to be telling the truth.

Paul Krugman wrote last week (before the Nobel Prize announcement):

"If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America."

I may not know much about politics, but I know what it means to be a fan. No true fan of Team America would ever scream at the refs for making a call that helped our team win. In that regard, Rush Limbaugh may have said it best:

"Our president is a worldwide joke. Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award. Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something with the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban."

As usual, Limbaugh did not say more than he meant. He might have said more than he meant to say.

There are those on the Left who hated Bush. But mostly there were people like me who simply thought he was a horrible president. The millions of opponents of the Iraq war would have never cheered an American defeat or an enemy victory. We loved America far more than we disliked Bush.

Obamahate is very different. It is better organized and is embraced by thousands of influential media and Republican leaders. And its biggest casualties have been the truth, true patriotism, and civil discourse in our country.

Thankfully, the refs who were calling the Nobel Prize game live in Norway where millions of their citizens don't watch and listen to hatespeech against the president 24-7. I remember when America was like that.

The selection of Obama was controversial--maybe even a call that deserved to be reviewed.

But the reaction of millions of American fans--most of whom would describe themselves as patriots--was both telling and shameful.

A New Year's Resolution

2009-09-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

These are the most important 10 days of the Jewish calendar—the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we negotiate with God—making the case that we are worthy to be inscribed in the Book of Life for yet another year.

The biggest part of that process involves t’shuvah—repentance. We try to be honest about things we have done wrong and need to do better during the coming year.

That is obviously a very personal negotiation and each of us has very different issues to consider as part our heshbon ha nefesh—the examination of our soul.

But as a people, I would suggest that this is a time when all Jews need to look not just at what we do during the coming year but at what we say and how we say it.

The Jewish tradition has always been obsessed with the destructive potential of speech. Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Chait confession we recite on Yom Kippur, 11 of them are related to speech. The Talmud tells that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that God designed us in a way so it is hidden from view and behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse.

In the book of Leviticus, there is a specific prohibition against rechilut—being a tale-bearer. The Hebrew word rechil refers to a trader or a merchant. A tale-bearer—a biblical reference to a blogger or talk show host—is someone who deals in information instead of other goods. Long before there was talk radio, cable news, and the internet the Torah--the Hebrew Bible understood that information is not idle chatter. It is a product. It is real.

The gravest type of rechilut is lashon hara which literally means “the evil tongue.” It is the practice of discrediting or saying negative things about a person even if those things are true. A person who spreads slander or untrue negative information about a person is considered the lowest of the low—a motzi shem ra--one who delivers a bad name. Many commentators rank these people on the same scale as murderers and far worse than thieves since the money or property stolen by a thief can be replaced but a person’s good reputation never recovers from slander.

There is a well-known story about a rabbi who was asked how one could repent for spreading vicious slander. He replied that it was like trying to put the feathers back in a pillow that has been ripped open during a windstorm. It simply can't be done.

The great Chasidic rabbi the Chofetz Chayim was preoccupied with the evils of lashon hara—so much so that it is said he would stay inside his house for weeks at a time because he found it impossible to go out in public without being exposed to evil gossip. Today, he wouldn’t be safe even in his home. He’d have to turn off his TV, throw away his radio, and shut down his email and the internet as well.

Throughout history, no people has suffered more from sinat chinam—baseless hatred—than the Jews. That hatred has come both from within and outside our community. Many of our sages say that the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed due to our sins against God but the Second Temple was destroyed due to sinat chinam—baseless hatred shown toward each other by differing groups of Jews.

Over the years, anti-Semitism grew and thrived based on lies that were spread by those who hated Jews more than they loved the truth. These bigots justified their prejudice by claiming that Jews were financial pariahs, murdered Jesus, used the blood of gentile children to make their Passover matzahs and a variety of other hateful slurs. Without these lies and those who willingly spread them, history might look very different.

American Jews have always taken pride in knowing that in the area of politics and public affairs we have been the most sophisticated, influential, and intellectually honest minority group in our country’s history.

But on this Yom Kippur there is reason for concern. The politics of rumor, innuendo, and lies—sinat chinam—is on the rise in our community and it hurts us all.

Former President Bush was a victim of this type of treatment. After Bush visited Yad Vashem, a prominent Jewish blogger wrote that "the President cares about dead Jews. Live Jews--not so much."

During last year's presidential campaign, nine leaders of non-partisan Jewish organizations signed a letter condemning the smear campaigns aimed at Jewish voters that had been launched against President Obama. They took this action not because they supported Obama politically but because they understood the danger of these lies.

What started as fallacious emails claiming that Mr. Obama is a secret Muslim who cavorts with Jew haters has actually ramped up since his election as our president. It has now made its way to semi-respectable websites and the pages of the Jerusalem Post. In several pieces by Jewish authors our president is associated with Islam, Jew hatred, and anti-Israel sentiment ignoring his voting record, statements on Israel, and commitment to fighting anti-Semitism.

Sinat Chinam spills into our community’s internal discourse as well. Hatespeech and uncivil conversation are on the rise. A good friend of mine just quit her job in our Congressman's office in part because she couldn’t take the daily barrage of obscene and hateful phone calls she was fielding on a daily basis.

Jewish Democratic leader Ira N. Forman wrote an insightful article about the rise of hatespeech within the Jewish community. He reported that he had received calls from fellow Jews accusing him of being "a liar and a stooge for the Hitlerite appeasement of Islamofascism."

Jewish Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson cites ominious comparisons between the tactics of today's promoters of hatred and the brilliant propaganda breakthoughs that enabled Hitler to promote his evil agenda.

Speaking of blast emails and the internet in general, Gerson says "the least responsible contributors see their darkest tendencies legitimated and reinforced, while serious voices are driven away by the general ugliness."

Being Jewish has always involved rising above the trends taking place in the broader community and holding ourselves to a higher standard—the standard that has caused us to survive as a people committed to civil discourse and Tikkun Olam--repairing the world.

This year, it is important to our country and also to our biblical commandment to be or l’goyim—a light unto the nations—for us to commit ourselves to focus on what we say and how we say it during the coming year.

It’s not about being politically correct—it’s about doing God’s work and fulfilling our most important Jewish traditions.

May you and your families have a happy, healthy, and rewarding new year.

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Back to the Future -- The Tension Over Tense

2009-09-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that most things people say they are worried might happen in the future are things that have already happened? Once the dreaded event has taken place, they start speaking in the future tense about it as though it hadn't happened yet--but they're worried that it might.

That was this year's Rosh Hashanah insight that got me through the day as we Chosen folks ushered in 5770 the other day.

As a financial advisor I have seen it repeatedly over the years. Investors and the business news media always seem to consider the market to be risky after it has already been crushed. It is only near market tops that people tend to be comfortable owning stocks and are losing sleep because they don't own enough hot issues.

We saw panic at the bottom after the stock market crash in 1987 and again last March when people were so worried about how risky the market had become that they wanted to sell every stock they owned--including companies that were trading at valuations that were less than the cash they had in the bank. That, of course, was AFTER their accounts had been crushed and the people sold their stocks without regard to price just so they could sleep at night.

We saw the mirror image of that behavior during the late 1990's during the tech bubble. "Conservative" investors fired their money managers for not owning enough high-flying stocks that had already gone up by 1000 percent or more. Then they turned around and sued their new managers in the early 2000's because they owned too many of the internet companies that the investors themselves ordered them to buy.

It's easy to poke fun but in fact human nature tends to lead us astray under a variety of circumstances. With investments, mob psychology takes over. People get greedy at the top and afraid at the bottom. At the end of the day, the almost always default in favor of sleeping at night.

What is harder to understand is why people speak in the future tense about their worries months after the worst has already happened and the risk would seem to be gone.

The same phenomenon seems to apply to the criticism and concerns expressed about President Obama. The very issues that many detractors say they are most worried about seem to be events that already happened long before Obama even took office.

For example, critics say they are worried that Obamanomics will create huge federal deficits and destroy the economy. But during the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, what had been a budget surplus turned into $5 trillion in deficits and that doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war and other expenses that were made off budget.

To save the economy, Obama will certainly run $1 trillion-plus deficits in coming years, but Bush already did that in 2008. John McCain has admitted that had he been elected the deficit numbers would have looked pretty much the same.

As far as destroying the economy is concerned, that was pretty much a done deal at this time a year ago--months before Obama was even elected.

There is also a lot of hand-wringing and fear that Obama wants to redistribute wealth and take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor. But wasn't it Bush who pushed through a $170 billion stimulus bill more than a year ago where checks of up to $1,200 were sent to the poorest Americans in a failed effort to avert a recession? Where were the cries of "socialism" and the teabagging parties back then? And wasn't it Bush who redistributed billions of in the opposite direction with his tax cuts for the wealthy?

The same is true regarding many concerns about health care reform--not the phony ones which are just based on lies. Outrage is routinely expressed about having a government-financed health care system in which the care itself would be rationed.

But isn't that what we already have with Medicare, Medicaid, and the V.A.? And isn't health care already being rationed by our current system?

I am covered by a "gold-plated" health plan but my premiums and co-pays go up every year and the procedures that are covered by my insurance keep going down. In recent years, I have been told more and more often that "your insurance doesn't cover that procedure" and have seen an increasing number of doctors refuse to accept patients covered by certain insurers because their reimbursement levels have dropped so dramatically.

Perhaps the most ironic line of this whole debate comes from the millions of Republicans who have cautioned Obama and the Democrats to "keep the government away from my Medicare."

There are many reasons to be concerned about the future of health care in our country and how we're going to pay for it. But those who are most concerned about the government controlling coverage or about care being rationed in the future are waiting for a train that left the station years ago.

My guess is that 95 percent of the things most people worry about either have already happened or will never happen. Having said that, there is no doubt that fear about the future can be a useful tool. But only if it is used to keep us out of trouble or to spur us on to imagine and work to create better outcomes and a better world.

Today, however, fears and worries seem to mainly just whip up anger, hate, and demonization of our leaders and institutions.

Hopefully during the coming year we will funnel more of our energy to finding constructive solutions to the many problems that confront us and waste less worrying about things that have already happened or never will.

Steering the Ship of State and our personal lives is tough enough under the best of circumstances. It becomes impossible if we spend all our time looking in the rear view mirror.

The State of Denial Has Zero Electoral Votes--But It Seems to Be Winning

2009-09-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Right Wing purveyors of hatred, fear, and anger have adopted a new strategy. Unfortunately, it seems to be working as well as their old one.

Until now, they have focused on spreading lies and distortions about President Obama. He is a socialist and a Nazi (an interesting combination) wants to kill granny. He wants to ruin our wonderful health care system--which is working well for virtually no one under the age of 65. He wants to run up trillions in debt--but Bush already did that. He wants to take away all our freedoms and liberties--but Bush already did that. He wants to take away our guns--but he let patriots bring assault weapons to a meeting where he spoke.

You know the drill and the litany. I thought it had gone about as far as it could go. But, as we've all learned, never underestimate the power of racism and hate.

Today we broke new ground. The haters on the Right are now basically saying that the election never happened. Obama didn't really win and he's not really our president. If he was really president, there would be nothing new or controversial about his desire to do a video address to school children regarding how important it is to study hard and stay in school.

George H.W. Bush did the same thing almost 20 years ago. He addressed school children and asked them to help him be a better president and no one complained or even batted an eye. That's because Poppy Bush was a real president and once someone is actually our commander in chief, there's nothing partisan or controversial about him asking anyone and everyone to help him do a better job.

But when Obama asked students to write him letters with advice regarding to how he could do a better job, he received a torrent of abuse from the Right calling it a blatantly partisan act. They are successfully demanding the schools not carry the speech and instructing parents to keep their kids home from school on Tuesday so their young ones will not be damaged by hearing directly from their president.

Ronald Reagan also addressed students before that and actually did try to promote his agenda. He lectured our kids regarding the merits of tax cuts. But you see Reagan was a real president, not a Black guy born in Kenya who never should have been allowed to run in the first place and therefore never really won.

Today, in perfect harmony almost as if they were singing in a choir, Right wing media superheroes Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin blasted Obama for his blatantly partisan effort to "indoctrinate" the minds of our children by talking to them about the importance of education. In unison, they called on all responsible true American parents to keep their kids home from school on Tuesday.

The rest of us Liberal fools are operating under the illusion that we had open and honest election where we were free to work hard for the candidate we preferred. But when elections are over, then the winner is the president of ALL of us for the next four years. The campaigning is over, the negativity is over, the mudslinging is over. We're all on the same team--particularly in times of war and financial crisis.

But due to his impostor status, Obama's policies are vigorously opposed regardless of his positions. When he alters his stimulus package to include Republican proposals for tax cuts, it's still "Obamanomics" and therefore it's bad. When the stock market goes up 50 percent and is higher six months in a row and three times as many Americans are optimistic about the future compared to a year ago--that is in spite of Obama, not because of him.

When he adopts 82 Republican amendments to his health care reform plan and waffles on the public option, it's still "Obamacare" and therefore it's bad. Just put his name on it and oppose it. That way the facts don't matter. It's all about discrediting and bringing down the man.

Every president before Obama has had what they call a honeymoon period. It's a time when everyone gives the new guy a chance, pulls in the same direction, and prays that he will succeed. But every president before Obama was not Black.

We should have seen this coming. A year ago when the presidential campaign was nearing its end, issues like Obama's friendship with terrorists and racist ministers were being emphasized by some Republicans. Questions about his place of birth were also being stirred up by the same crowd.

After November it stopped for an instant. He was approved and sworn in as president without dissent. Even the most ardent Conservatives admitted that he was born in Hawaii. We stopped hearing about Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi and Reverend Wright. We had a new president and it was time to move on.

But a lot of folks just couldn't seem to shift gears. A few months ago, the Birthers (championed by "newsman" Lou Dobbs) reappeared with no new information but with more energy than ever--more than a year after they first raised the issue and dropped it due to lack of facts or proof.

This week, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer resurrected the names of Ayers, Wright, and Khalidi--calling them the friends that Obama has learned from--as he went on to explain (citing no facts of course) why his presidency is already a complete failure.

But this kerfuffle over the speech to students takes things to a new level. Some of us actually believe that Obama is the President of United States. When he asks adults or children to help him be a better president, it is not a partisan act unless you reject the notion that whether you voted for him or not, Obama is the president of all of us and will be for at least 3 1/2 more years.

But apparently in addition to being a socialist, a terrorist, a Kenyan, a Nazi, a granny killer, and like Hitler--Obama is not even really our president. The whole thing was just a big liberal lie--a huge mistake. He's just a pseudo-president or someone who wants to be president some day. Otherwise all these charges and concerns are bogus on their face.

Meanwhile, dozens of school districts around the country have succumbed to pressure from Right wing parents and decided that a speech to all American students will not be carried in their schools on Tuesday. If you really believe that Obama is the President of the United States, how do you make that call?

I guess that Rush, Sean, Glenn, and Michelle are the true leaders of our country. Or at least they are able to call the shots in an environment where anger and fear reign and truth, justice, and the American way have become empty words.

The State of Denial (population--millions and growing) has zero electoral votes but it seems to have won the election. Unless, of course, the rest of us demand a recount.

Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones--But Words Can Get You Killed

2009-08-24T19:56:00.000-07:00

We all grew up being told to be very fearful of sticks, stones, and other threats to our physical safety but not so much of words which we were assured could never hurt us.

Like many childhood sayings, this one was never true. As my dear friend and teacher Rabbi Joseph Telushkin points out in his wonderful book Words That Hurt, Words That Heal, the greatest pain most of us suffer in our lives comes from mean and inconsiderate words--not from physical injury.

But there's a big difference between mean and hateful. Mean words can hurt your feelings. Hatespeech can get you killed.

As I recently wrote, most criticism is not hatespeech. In all healthy, vibrant democracies it is essential that good people feel free to openly criticize decisions made by political leaders. But there are lines of civility, honesty, and decency that shouldn't and can't be crossed without turning healthy dissent into something very toxic and potentially deadly.

Reports from both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (prepared during the Bush administration) and the Southern Poverty Law Center have indicated a startling rise in both the number and activity level of Right wing militias and groups promoting domestic terrorism in the name of Conservative values.

As hatespeech, lies, and racism have become the dominant language of the Right wing in our country, it is depressingly reminiscent of what happened in Israel 15 years ago. The comparisons are becoming more frightening all the time.

In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. He agreed to turn parts of Gaza and the West Bank over to the Palestinians and freeze the growth of Israeli settlements in exchange for Yasir Arafat's pledge to renounce violence and recognize the right of Israel to exist.

The move was hailed as a major breakthrough in much of Israel and around the world. Rabin. a former general and war hero, was hailed as a visionary who allowed hope to supersede his military past and his first-hand knowledge of Arafat's legacy of terror and broken promises. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award in 1994.

But not all Jews were happy. The ultra-orthodox leadership in Israel and Brooklyn were outraged. Just as Obama has been branded by the Right wing as a racist, a terrorist, and a Nazi who wants to destroy the American way of life, Rabin was demonized by the religious Right in Israel and America as a traitor who was destroying the Jewish state by ceding holy land to Palestinians.

As is the case in America today, lies and hatespeech took over the conversation and squeezed out reason and truth. Rabbis in America and Israel put a death curse on Rabin invoking the long obsolete notion of din rodef--a religious death sentence placed on the head of one who hands over his people or their land to the enemy.

Anti-Rabin rallies (town hall meetings? tea parties?) were held outside his residence and in Right wing strongholds including Jerusalem. Most Israelis dismissed these frightening activities as the actions of a handful of kooks, crazies and whack jobs. Sound familiar?

Not wanting to waste a political opportunity, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu spoke at a major anti-Rabin rally in Jerusalem in October, 1995 where he was cheered by a mob screaming "death to Rabin" and carrying posters showing Rabin dressed as Hitler, and Rabin wearing a Nazi SS uniform.

As Bibi slammed Rabin for "giving away parts of our homeland." Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly pleaded with Netanyahu to "restrain your people. Settlers have gone crazy. Someone will get murdered--if not today then soon."

Rabin was angered by the tactics but apparently not that concerned about his safety. He refused to wear a bullet-proof vest at a peace rally in Tel Aviv weeks later when a Right wing Jewish rabbinic student--a follower of the rabbis who had called for Rabin's assassination--murdered him with two gunshots fired at point blank range.

The murderer Yigal Amir was about as far away from Rabin as Scott Roeder was from Dr. George Tiller when he walked up to him in his Kansas church in May and murdered him at point blank range.

Dr. Tiller had been vilified by Fox News host Bill O'Reilly dozens of times over a period of years. O'Reilly repeatedly referred to him as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and "a man with blood on his hands" since Tiller had a long history of performing controversial (but legal) late-term abortions in his Wichita clinic.

Today, 14 years after Rabin's murder, Amir remains unrepentant and is considered a hero by a large segment of Israel's religious community, many of whom still hold rallies in his honor. He was allowed to marry and father a child in prison and polls show that his eventual pardon is supported by 30 percent of all Israelis and more than half of those who describe themselves as "religious."

Today, months after Tiller's murder, his assassin remains unrepentant and is considered a hero by a large segment of America's pro-life community. Leaders of the pro-life movement reportedly communicate with and visit him in prison on a regular basis.

In each case, hatespeech-inspired murder seems to have accomplished its goals. Tiller's clinic was permanently closed a few weeks after his killing and there is no plan to reopen in Kansas or anywhere else. Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of Israel less than a year after Rabin's murder and the peace process was dealt a blow from which it has yet to recover.

Like O'Reilly, Netanyahu insists to this day that his demonization of the ultimate murder victim had nothing to do with the way things played out.

When I met with Leah Rabin, the prime minister's widow, in her Tel Aviv apartment one year after his death, she made it clear that she personally blamed Netanyahu for the role she felt he played in whipping up angry mobs who had vowed to kill her husband.

"He incited them against my husband," she said. "I will never forgive him."

Mrs. Rabin was also critical of the majority of Israelis who stood by and did nothing as the hatespeech grew in volume. "They were too silent when the handwriting was on the wall," she said. "We now know it is no longer possible to remain silent."

Today, as then, we are too anxious to call these people crazy and say they are kooks but they are neither. They are evil and they are very focused.

When Glenn Beck calls Barack Obama a racist who hates white people or a Nazi who wants to destroy American way of life, he is either lying or he should hail as a hero anyone who would take the initiative to go after our President. Rush Limbaugh compares Obama to Hitler. Is there any Jew or patriotic American who wouldn't have taken Hitler out before he had the chance to murder millions of innocent people?

This is hatespeech pure and simple crafted to encourage true believers--an American version of Yigal Amir to do the right thing--the patriotic thing--and remove this liberal, socialist, death panel forming, terrorist, Nazi cancer from our midst.

In recent weeks, the hatred and threats against Obama have become less subtle. When a town hall audience member in California proudly declared himself to be "a proud Right wing terrorist," Republican Congressman Wally Herger said "Amen. God Bless You. There's a great American." When an Iowa town hall audience member said Obama is "acting like a little Hitler" and stated he would "take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me, Republican Senator Charles Grassley said nothing to discourage him. Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins said last week that what the Republican party needs most is "a Great White Hope"--a phrase first used by racists 100 years ago referring to their desire to find a white man to unseat Black boxing champion Jack Johnson.

Could the message be any clearer? What a disturbing and growing number of people on the Right wing want is some patriot with the courage to step up and do what needs to be done to restore control of our country to it's rightful owners. A Black president from Kenya? A Puerto Rican woman as a Supreme Court justice? What the hell has happened to our country? We need to take it back!

Sticks and stones? That's child's play. We're talking about toxic words--potentially fatal hatespeech--being invoked by people who claim to be true patriots but who are in reality potential accomplices to the unwinding of our democracy.

The only question is if and when the rest of us will stop calling these evil people "crazy" and start fighting back.

We live in a free country. People are entitled to their opinions. But they do not have a constitutional right to air them on television and radio channels that claim to be reporting news. And the sponsors of those programs certainly don't have the right to be exempt from blame for making that possible.

Those of us who still care about decency and healthy debate need to exercise our right to take our country back from the lying, angry haters who seem determined to pollute and distort public dialogue.

Some of them would clearly like nothing better than to see our duly elected leader meet the same fate as the late Israeli leader--a man who symbolized hope and "change you could believe in" to so many but who made the mistake of assuming those who despised him were a crazy fringe group of harmless lunatics.

It Was Never Fair and Balanced--Now It's Not Even News

2009-08-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

We are all painfully familiar with the many casualties of the deep economic decline that has ravaged the value of our homes, businesses, and investment accounts.

Another less obvious victim of the economic crisis has been the truth. Hatespeech and lies have been on the rise in politics and the media while fact checking has almost disappeared. The actions of those with a political agenda are reprehensible but at least easy to understand.

But I have always assumed that the real journalists would step in at some point and refuse to cover the rantings of crazy people, fanatics and liars as though they were actually news. For decades these types have stood on street corners handing out pamphlets and screaming about the coming end of the American way of life but none of them ever showed up on the national news or was written up in real newspapers.

But that has all changed in a big time hurry. Forget about "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In." What we now see on cable TV is nothing resembling news. The entertainers who pose as newsmen now routinely spew lies, distortions, and biased opinions or provide a platforms of legitimacy to the sociopaths who do.

It's all right to have personal opinions expressed on television or the radio. Just label them appropriately.

There is a guy who sits near me at the University of Arizona games who starts screaming at the referees at the opening jump ball and never stops for a minute throughout the game. He and the other fans don't want the game called fairly--they just want their team to win. You certainly wouldn't ask the president of the Booster Club to be the referee. He would have no interest in being fair and balanced and could never be objective.

But that's what we now have on cable news. People who are on the payrolls of or involved with partisan groups or political parties are introduced as "analysts" with no disclosure of their obvious conflicts of interest.

For years Fox News has been the unofficial network of the Right wing and Republican party while hilariously calling it's coverage "fair and balanced." If Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity were actually fair and balanced then none of the Fox viewers would watch them--and they know it.

But during the last year, Glenn Beck has taken hatred, bias, and unabashed lying and demonization to a level that Hannity and O'Reilly could only dream about.

Last month, Beck went on the air and called President Obama "a racist--who hates white people" without giving any support or documentation for his claim. He also did not explain if Obama's hatred of white people extended to his own mother and white family members of the hundreds of white people he has chosen to advise and represent our country in his administration.

Just a few days ago, Beck came up with a blatant lie claiming that Mark Lloyd, the newly appointed FCC Diversity Chief will levy exorbitant taxes against Right wing radio stations with the proceeds slated to go to public radio, The fact is that Lloyd has neither the plans nor the authority to do any such thing. Non-Beck watchers should view this link as Beck and his guest talk in very specific terms about a complete falsehood.

When this happened, I was at the Aspen Institute FOCAS conference with 40 media leaders from around the U.S.

When the News Corp (the parent company of Fox) people at the Aspen conference were asked about how Beck could keep his job given his record of blatant fabrications and racist rants they admitted that they were personally embarrassed by his behavior. But they confessed that Fox has made so much money by pandering to the hateful Right wing that nothing is going to change in the foreseeable future. Maybe the fact that many of Beck's sponsors have recently cancelled their advertising on his show will make a difference.

The unfair and unbalanced hatemeisters of Fox have been recently joined by Lou Dobbs of CNN ("The Most Trusted Name in News") who for years has railed on a daily basis about how Americans are being victimized by foreign countries and undocumented immigrants who come here in search of a better life. In recent weeks, Dobbs became of hero of the Right wing with his endorsement of the Birther movement.

Apparently Dobbs and a many Republicans believe that Americans should not have had the right to vote for the man they wanted to be their next president because he was born in Kenya. The Birther movement is a thinly veiled racist effort to undo the will of the American people that has been promoted by a depressingly large group of people who simply can't deal with the notion that we have elected a Black president by an overwhelming margin.

The management of CNN, like the leaders of Fox, have not been able to turn their backs on the revenues that have accompanied the journalistic malpractice that in the past would have caused Dobbs to be fired. Today, the truth is apparently just a matter of opinion and it's just fine for a newsman to call the President of the United States a traitor, socialist, Nazi, Kenyan, and such with no evidence or supporting facts.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC provides a more troubling case study. Matthews has repeatedly questioned the sincerity and "grass roots" credentials of protesters at the health care town meetings and the sanity of the Birthers accurately claiming that they are either paid or political stooges or well meaning real people who have fallen under the influence of the political operatives who are trying to bring Obama down.

He has referred to the Birthers and the anti-health care reform mercenaries and liars as "whack-jobs, crazies, and nut cases." But then he invites these very people to be guests on his show to state their cases.

He does not seem to understand that once you provide liars, haters and people who bring loaded guns to presidential meetings with a platform, you have already lost the battle. If a person is crazy or hateful, they should get no platform at all. Once you start presenting "both sides" of an issue where one side feels free to rant and lie you have already lost.

There was a time when we could have expected our most respected journalists and news reporters to be an effective filter and only present us with issues and stories that had real merit. But the economic crisis facing all types of journalism have put us in a different place.

During the three days I spent with a broad range of print, internet, and media managers and contributors in Aspen, most of the conversation focused on financial survival and ways to monetize the variety of information services being provided and how to keep from going broke in a very challenging environment. Many were mourning the imminent loss of print journalism. Few were grieving over the ongoing loss of journalism itself.

I came away from this experience with a better understanding of what is going on and why. It didn't make me happier. Even in a tough environment, there is no way to excuse the blatant lying, distortion, and almost complete absence of fact-checking that is now business as usual at media organizations that claim to be reporting news.

It's just plain wrong to call it "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In" and it has been for quite a while.

Now there's no way to justify calling it "news" at all.

The Difference Between Criticism and Hatespeech

2009-08-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

A number of friends and readers have called me to task in recent weeks claiming that I have been unfair to Republicans or that I have been giving the "crazies" way too much attention and actually helping their cause by getting so upset. Others have said that my strong level of disgust with the migration of the Right to hate, lies, and slander that I have become every bit as much a hater as those I have criticized.

But I got an email from my friend Ricky today that turned on a light bulb and brought the difference between criticism into clear focus.

It was a link to an article in Harper's by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz entitled The $10 Trillion Hangover. It explains--using real facts, charts and figures--just how badly the Bush administration's policies--or lack thereof--damaged our society, our economy, and exploded our national debt. I urge you to click on the link and read it.

It documents how during eight years of Bush, every aspect of government spending exploded, our national debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, and how 95 percent of all income growth went to the richest 10 percent of Americans due to fiscal and tax policies designed to produce that result. Despite the huge government deficits and stimulus, at the end of Bush's eight years virtually every aspect of our economy had collapsed.

It was a critical piece but unlike most of what we read today, it dealt with established facts and used footnotes to back it's conclusions. There was nothing hateful about it. Bush wasn't called names or demonized. He was criticized for things he actually did.

It stands in sharp contrast to what is flowing more and more freely from the Right wing and the Republicans every day. I know I have written about this before, but it's getting worse and squeezing what's left of truth and logic out and replacing it with hatred, anger, and lies.

In a recent piece, "business columnist" (actually no more since he was just fired by the New York Times for being a shill for a credit reporting agency that exploits poor people) Ben Stein gave his most recent toxic assessment of our president, Barack Obama.

During one short piece, he referred to Obama as "cunning, anti-American, anti-white, ultra-left with a total zero academic record, completely lacking in scholarship, not a fan of this country, way too cozy with terrorists in the Middle East, someone who gave Iran a complete go-ahead to have nuclear weapons--complete betrayer of our country, and a man dedicated to taking away all our freedoms."

The piece was long on frightening and demonizing adjectives and completely devoid of facts, links to source materials, and examples.

The same was true of popular Right wing Fox News personality Glenn Beck who recently called Obama "a racist--a man who hates white people." while again failing to cite a single example or fact to back this slur.

The same was true of self-proclaimed super-Republican Rush Limbaugh who joined the chorus of those on the Right who have compared Obama to Adolf Hitler but, again, have provided all heat and no light.

The same is true of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx and others in Congress who have announced on the floor of the House that they are opposed to Obama's health care reform because they are "pro-life and refuse to support a plan that would put our senior citizens to death." Ms. Foxx then sat down without giving anyone a clue regarding what facts she had to support that claim. That's because there are none.

The same is true of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (recently critical the media for "makin' things up") who said she fears the "Obama death panels" that would have the power to kill her parents and son Trig (who has Down Syndrome) if the president's health care plan passes.

The same is true of the "grass roots protesters" who are really well-funded and organized Right Wing shock troops that announced weeks ago that they had a game plan to disrupt town hall meetings in Congressional districts to make sure nothing could be discussed and no questions could be asked or answered.

The same is true regarding the leaders of the "birther" movement who claim that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore not qualified to be president. Buoyed by support from Republican members of Congress and CNN "newsman" Lou Dobbs, radio hatemonger Mark Levin, these liars now have a majority of Republicans nationwide doubting Obama's citizenship and a large majority of all Southern Whites saying they're either certain or doubtful that Obama was not born in this country.

If these racists, bigots, liars, and nut jobs were truly part of some lunatic fringe as some of my friends have suggested, I would probably comply with their requests that I just back off the whole subject of hatespeech and media irresponsibility and move on. But the problem is getting worse, not better, and it's becoming clear that these people are no longer on the fringe.

They are whack jobs or hard-wired haters, but their influence and numbers are growing among what's left of the Republican party, the news media, and the former Confederacy. More important, there is an increased reluctance among "good" Republicans to publicly distance themselves from these people--to tell them that they bring discredit to and are killing the party with their hatred, bigotry, and lies.

Meanwhile, the GOP is cultivating the future by electing a Louisiana woman chairman of the Young Republicans after she supported a man who called Obama "a commie and a coon" on her webpage. After the incident, she won 60 percent of the vote on the first ballot and is now setting the tone and running the show for future Republican leaders.

It's the people who want to have a fact-based discussion regarding what's best for our country that are now on the fringe. And those who don't realize it are the true lunatics.

Punching the Tar Baby

2009-07-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I suggested that the Republican party was at a crossroads of sorts. They could continue down the road of hatespeech, fear, anger, and thinly-veiled racism or they could take a cue from Conservatives like David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Colin Powell, David Frum, and many others and engage in dignified, constructive, fact-based criticism of policies and statements with which they disagreed.

Now, just a few days later, the "dignity" option seems to have been taken off the table. The Republican chosen and designated leaders just can't seem to help themselves. They just keep flailing away at the tar baby (a term I use deliberately) so vigorously that they don't realize that they are caught in a trap of their own making that is leading to both their unmasking and their undoing.

A few days ago, the national Young Republicans elected 38-year old Audra Shay as their new chair. As I wrote last week, Ms. Shay is an Arkansas native who now lives in Louisiana and was endorsed for the position by her governor, Bobby Jindal.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, she gained some unwelcome notoriety during the week prior to her election for cheering on a participant in a conversation on her Facebook page who referred to President Obama as "a commie and a coon." Participants in the conversation who criticized her response were immediately defriended and blocked from the website. Eric, the commie and coon guy, was not.

This and other arguably racist comments she has made caused a number of Young Republicans, including John McCain's daughter Meghan, to encourage her to drop out of the race. Instead she won election by a comfortable margin after scrubbing her Facebook page in an effort to destroy the evidence of her past remarks.

The next day marked the beginning of the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a 17-year Federal court veteran who has been nominated by Obama for the Supreme Court.

From the moment Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the court, the Right wing made it clear that they were going to play the only card left in the Republican deck--the race card. The water carriers of the Right immediately launched into racist attacks against her on the radio with Limbaugh, Levin, and others branding her a "bigot" and Glenn Beck calling her "Hispanic Chick Lady" in their dignified and nuanced commentaries on her qualifications.

Despite the fact that Sotomayor's confirmation should be a formality--she has extensive experience on the bench and has been given the highest rating for her qualifications by the American and New York Bar Association--the focus on her race and ethnicity continued.

Ranking Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama--who himself was rejected for a Federal judgeship by a GOP controlled Senate committee years ago based on his numerous apparently racist comments--humiliated himself with his line of questioning expressing his surprise and disappointment that Sotamayor didn't vote along with her fellow Puerto Rican in the Ricci case. His clear implication was that it is surprising that all judges of Puerto Rican descent don't think and vote alike.

Can you imagine a Senator expressing surprise that Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Breyer don't vote alike because they are both white males? Can you imagine repeatedly citing a line about "wise Latina women" that Sotomayor used in speeches eight years ago as a reason to repeatedly express concerns that she would be biased in favor of minorities who claim they have been victims of discrimination?

Maybe. If it weren't for the FACT that in the 90 cases Sotomayor has heard from people alleging discrimination, she has ruled AGAINST the plaintiffs in 80 of them. And in all but one of the cases where she determined discrimination took place, she was part of a unanimous decision.

The next day, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma)--who you may remember as Senator John Ensign's spiritual advisor and marriage counselor--did his best Ricky Ricardo imitation in a response to a Sotomayor answer telling her that "she had a lot of 'splainin' to do."

After three days of hearings, the Republicans on the committee have revealed themselves to be so obsessed with race and bias that their efforts to transfer their own bigotry and "concerns" to Sotomayor has come across as childish, transparent, dishonest, and scary.

But the way things are playing out with the entire party and its chosen leaders and spokesmen, that puts them right in sync with the program. The only question remaining is where independents like me will find the next legitimate and credible alternative to the weak and frightening Democratic leadership in Congress in the future.

The Republicans are a decade late and a trillion dollars short. There just aren't enough racists and bigots still around to give them a base on which to build. Instead of opting for facts, reason, and dignity they continue to flail away at those pesky Black and Hispanic tar babies. The harder they punch, the more ensnared they become in the sticky, unyielding mess.

That may play well in the former Confederate states that voted against Obama and with a smattering of proud and closet racists here and there.

But we all heard those Uncle Remus stories growing up.

And we all know how they end.

Hatespeech or Dignity--Republicans at the Crossroads

2009-07-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

I want to make something perfectly clear. I have supported many Republicans in recent years including my current senators John Kyl and John McCain. I have held fundraisers in my home for Tommy Thompson when he was the Republican governor of Wisconsin. I have supported Democrats as well. I am a true independent.

Many of my good Republican friends have come away with a much different impression based on recent articles I have written that are critical of the thinly-veiled racism and vicious attacks that seem to be emanating more and more from the very top circles of the GOP.

Several of those friends complain that I am applying a double standard here citing the numerous criticisms of President Bush and, more recently Sarah Palin that have filled the blogosphere and the mainstream media for some time.

In fact we are talking about an apples to oranges comparison on a number of levels. Many people, myself included, were outraged by the arrogance, incompetence, and deception that became the hallmark of the Bush administration over a number of years. I am truly sad that he turned out to be such a terrible president but that is not hatespeech.

Sarah Palin is much more of a victim than a villain. I was strongly critical of John McCain for selecting her to be his running mate because she was completely unqualified for the job. That lapse in judgement more than anything caused an election that would have been a narrow victory for Obama to become a landslide.

She is Eliza Doolittle saying yes to Henry Higgins. For whatever reason, he made her an offer she couldn't refuse. She is what she is. Just as Palin was unable to resist the opportunity to run for national office, the media has been unable to resist the temptation of ridiculing her. It is a sad for everyone involved.

She has been called greedy, ignorant, overly ambitious, unethical, self-centered and a lot of other nasty things. She is now in a death spiral of self-destruction where she goes out of her way to put herself and her family in the public eye and then gets whiny when the coverage doesn't go her way. She is the subject of predictable ridicule from a media that can't seem to help itself either. But none of that is hatespeech.

Hatespeech is different. It's when you accuse the President of the United States of being a socialist, a terrorist, a Muslim, an anti-Semite, or a traitor based on lies and distortions. And it becomes particularly meaningful when the venom comes not from the radical fringe--as it often does from the Left--but from the heart of the party leadership--as it often does from the Right.

This weekend, the Young Republicans will meet to elect their national chair. Audra Shay, a 38 year old military veteran and mother from Louisiana is considered one of the front-runners for the job. A few days ago, she moderated a session on her Facebook page where a participant called Obama "a commie and a mad coon." Shay's response to the young man was to urge him on. "You tell em Eric" she said.

When a number of participants criticized her for not condemning the racist statement, Shay responded by "defriending" all of those who were critical which blocked them from further participation in the conversation. That is hatespeech being endorsed from the highest levels of the party.

It is eerily reminiscent of Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman sending a CD including the cute song "Barack the Magic Negro" as a Christmas gift to the members of the Republican National Committee last year. That clever song had been played repeatedly by Rush Limbaugh for much of the prior year. Limbaugh was picked in a recent Gallup Poll of Republicans as the person who best represents the party--a title he also claims for himself.

At the time, Saltsman was a front-runner in the race for Chairman of the Republican National Committee--grownup version. He was edged out by Michael Steele at the end but this is another example of stupidity, racism and hatespeech coming from the top.

Just today, I heard my Senator John Kyl tell Bill Bennett that Obama is more interested in cutting an arms reduction deal with the Russians that he is in protecting the country. That is accusing the President of the United States of being a traitor with no facts at all to back it up. That is hatespeech.

Some of my favorite people are Republicans. I got to spend some time with New York Times columnist David Brooks here in Aspen last week. He is a great writer and a solid Republican who is critical of several of the decisions that the president has made and is supportive of others. But, at the end of the day, he seems to be more worried about what is happening to the dignity of his party. Be sure to check this column written by a solid dignified Republican.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing people in power. It is essential in a democracy and our ability to do so has helped make our country great. But there are ways to do it hatefully and ways to do it with dignity. It is the hatred and anger that seem to ooze so effortlessly from the leaders of the Republican Party that are so disconcerting.

It is up to all of us who believe that our country needs a dignified and credible Conservative voice to seize control back from the slimers. If we can't, then the Libertarians should be viewed as the credible alternative to Liberal Democrats. They actually believe in small government and fiscal responsibility.

Republican keaders used to carry that banner before they got so caught up in issues surrounding gender, reproductive choice, and race that they lost their way. Hopefully they can regain the high ground and again become a productive part of the political dialogue.

In Dependence Day 2009

2009-07-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

For the last several years I have spent the Fourth of July here at the Aspen Ideas Festival which has always ushered me into the holiday with a new perspective on democracy and the freedoms that have always been unique to our great country.

Last year, a session on "Patriotism" prompted one of my first posts since it made me realize how Geroge W, Bush's most toxic legacy was the way he completely eliminated the notion of shared sacrifice from that noble concept.

This year, it became increasingly clear that the damage was far more severe. (As an aside, the former president--who shamelessly announced last year that he hoped to parley his status into "a little coin" from high paying speaking engagements when he left office--spoke at the newly-renovated Woodward, OK rodeo grounds as part of a Fourth of July celebration featuring Tanya Tucker, Asleep at the Wheel, and Sawyer Brown. Bush was paid for his appearance but I'm sure it wasn't the major coin he had in mind. It was apparently the only offer he got.

This year's Aspen Ideas Festival had no sessions on patriotism. In one way or another, it was mainly about the economy and how in eight short years we went from being the only super power in the world to a bankrupt nation that now is forced to go hopelessly in debt to keep our banks and the world financial system from total collapse.

We have gone from being the most independent country in the world to one that is now largely dependent on foreign lenders and government bailouts and stimulus using trillions of dollars that we don't have.

The irony, of course, is the the Republican Party that controlled everything for six of those years campaigned on its commitment to family values and fiscal responsibility.

We've all seen the true story on the family values part. Enough said there. And we've all seen the true story on the financial responsibility part. Enough said there as well.

The many economists and and financial historians I heard during the last week fell into two camps: Those who believe that we are now forced to take on unconscionable amounts of debt right now to keep the world financial system from collapsing but there are still places to make money in the world--like China--and those who agree with the first part and believe that there is no place to hide anywhere.

They all dismissed the notion that President Obama had anything to do with the underlying problem. They disagreed about the wisdom of what Obama is doing to deal with the economic crisis but they all praised him for putting together the best, smartest team we have seen in Washington in quite a while. When confronted with a situation in which there are no good options, it is easy to find fault with whatever course of action is taken. Some choose to be critical and others don't.

But at the end of the day, most experts seemed to agree that any recovery that is on the way will be slow in coming and very shallow. Americans are deleveraging out of both choice and necessity and that means we will be saving more and spending less.
That is a formula for slow growth and a long painful period during which we continue to define what the new normal will look like.

But none of the presenters seemed to address the bigger issue that I wrote about last year--the terrible toll that the last eight years have taken on our national character. As I said then, under Bush and Cheney we went through the biggest redistribution of wealth in at least a century--all of it moving from the bottom and middle to to top.

We engaged in a war of choice in which none of us was required (or even encouraged) to fight. Instead our military offered six-figure signing bonuses to new recruits and the promise of fast-track citizenship to others. Just as we are now dependent on foreign lenders to keep us afloat financially we have become overly dependent on poor, rural, foreign-born soldiers who have no other economic prospects for our national defense.

Don't get me wrong. These are brave people and we should all be grateful for their sacrifice. It is a commentary on the rest of us who have been told for eight years that we can be true patriots by simply never questioning the president and putting an "I Support the Troops" decal on our cars. No other sacrifice or payment has been required. Those Americans who have come to believe this can be heard daily on Fox News and Right wing radio--talking very tough while their kids are sitting safely at home and not paying a penny to the wars they so vocally support.

For years I have been checking the the names and hometowns of those killed in action. They seem to be disproportionately Hispanic and most of them come from cities and towns I have never heard of. Very few are from major metropolitan areas. When was the last time you heard a young man or woman say they had just been accepted to college or had a great job offer but they had decided to first serve their country by enlisting in the military?

While we increasingly complain about the quality of our representatives in Washington, we continue to elect and re-elect people who treat us like children that just can't handle the news that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don't exist. Tens of millions of Americans have come to feel entitled to and dependent upon an ever-growing list of programs like Social Security and Medicare--programs we can't afford at today's tax rates and which will become increasingly untenable as more and more of us live longer and longer.

Republicans in and out of Congress have no solutions. All they do is continuously criticize President Obama and say we should lower taxes which would, of course, make the problem ever worse. Democrats have not been much better and lately they have just been so happy to watch the parade of Republican "leaders" who are quitting their jobs or acknowledging sexual indiscretions that they aren't doing much either.

One thing seems certain. Until further notice, the Fourth of July should be renamed "In Dependence Day" because we have never been more reliant on the generosity of others and less able to act like grown-ups and fend for ourselves than any time since the Revolution. It won't be as much fun, but it would be a far more useful reminder of what we need to do going forward.

It's heart warming but a little hollow to celebrate the independence we won from the British more than 225 years ago at a time when we have so abused the responsibilities of democracy that we now face a seemingly endless period of dependence on foreign money and unfunded government programs to sustain us financially and the patriotism and financial desperation of a relative handful of our poorest citizens to protect us.

Maybe it's time for a little less bravado and triumphalism and a little more focus on personal responsibility. Then and only then will we able to truly celebrate Independence Day in a meaningful way again.

The Numbing Code of Hatespeech

2009-06-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

In a recent post (I Just Don't Get It), I wondered out loud why so much of the criticism of President Obama is on the one hand so vicious and hateful and on the other hand seems to make so little sense. My article clearly struck a nerve with many people on both sides of the issue as it generated more than 110 strong comments.

It's sad but expected to see these types of over-the-top distortions during election campaigns--and we did. But once the country has made its choice and a four-year, no-cut contract is given to a new president, it is normal and logical for everyone to come together for at least a while to see how the new guy does.

But we are seeing the exact opposite. Since Obama took office six months ago, the hate, anger, distortions, and demonization has only picked up in volume and intensity--even as he has attacked head-on the numerous disasters and challenges he inherited.

I talked about this in my last article and was still left scratching my head. I just didn't get it.

Then Bill Maher came here to Aspen. He seemed to get it perfectly and gave us his version of the answer. "You know why all these Republicans and Right wingers are calling Obama a socialist, and a Nazi, and a terrorist, and a secret Muslim? Because they can't call him the word they really want to use. Nigger."

That sounded a little harsh to me but his audience--the average age was well above 60--all seemed to be nodding their heads and sending knowing glances back and forth.

The N-word is a little jarring for my taste but it got me thinking--and doing a little research. First I Googled "obama nigger" and came up with half a million links. . That seemed like a lot.

So I went further and checked a few of them out. Not pretty.

But aren't these racists really part of the radical fringe? Certainly most of them are. But all those liberals who were nodding their heads at Bill Maher's comments were saying something as well. As I've said repeatedly, I just don't get it. So let's dig deeper.

Townhall.com is arguably the New York Times of Conservative websites. All of the top Right wing commentators post there. So when I get an email from Townhall offering me 50 percent off on their latest bumper sticker, that's pretty Republican mainstream. And what is that sticker? It is a clever jab stating "Somewhere In Kenya, A Village Is Missing It's Idiot." The promotion goes on to point out that it is a well-known fact that President Obama was born in Kenya--not in Hawaii as his birth certificate says--so not only is he an idiot, he is a Black African idiot.

I then hear about the Missouri state legislator Cynthia Davis--the chair of the House Standing Committee on Families and Children--who has stated her strong opposition to continuing the government meal programs that provide free lunches to poor children through the summer. Ms. Davis points out that the program ignores the value of hunger as a motivational tool and she goes on to point out that giving hungry kids free meals in a group setting undermines family bonding. Her amazing and outrageous position (which she repeated several times during her week of notoriety) received national attention and now is yesterday's news.

But as someone who was born and raised in Missouri, I heard the Republican legislator and mother of seven from O'Fallon loud and clear. In Missouri, when you talk about programs for the poor, you mean handouts to black, neglected children from St. Louis and Kansas City whose irresponsible families are being supported by the good American (white) citizens of the rural counties who have the right values and raise their children properly. You just have to know the code.

And then there are the upscale Republican Women of Anne Arundel County (MD) who came out on their website last week encouraging all their members to wear something patriotic (and comfortable shoes) to the Annapolis Fourth of July parade. That was right above the paragraph in which their president wrote a piece comparing Obama to Hitler. Like Rep. Davis of Missouri, the suburban Washington D.C. ladies were upbraided on national television and eventually removed the attack from their site claiming it was the opinion of one person--not the organization. No apology from the group--but then again they only compared the new president of United States to a genocidal murderer. No big deal.

Yet another example comes from Republican strategist Frank Gaffney who declared after our president's amazing speech to the Muslim world in Cairo that Obama may "still" be a Muslim--our first Black Muslim terrorist president. He cites numerous code phrases used by Obama during his Cairo speech that gave him away. In his Washington Times column Gaffney goes on to say Obama might not be a Muslim but he is certainly like Hitler.

There's that Hitler thing again. Is it only crazy radicals who would make such an outrageous connection? Apparently not. A Google check of "Obama Hitler" yielded almost 7 MILLION links. The "Obama Hitler Similarities" check came up with only 1.6 million. As with "Obama Nigger" it makes for some pretty shocking reading and viewing.

So what's going on here? I have said that I just don't get it and even after Bill Maher's epiphany it is still somewhat confusing. Maybe it's that vicious spurious attacks have become so numbingly common that they're just part of the background noise. But I'm paying more attention to the code of hatespeech and things are becoming a little clearer. And a lot more depressing.

I Just Don't Get It

2009-06-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or does more and more of what we see and read in the media make no sense? Why do so many seemingly intelligent people keep repeating lies and distortions as though they were true? Why do those same people speak in the present or future tense about things that have already happened? Why do "journalists" seek responses and reactions to these distortions as though they were real news instead of just ignoring them? I just don't get it.

For example, I keep hearing concerns and warnings about President Obama's socialist plan to redistribute the wealth in our country. But we know for a fact that has already happened.

Over the last eight years, we have witnessed the greatest redistribution of wealth in our country's history. We saw unprecedented amounts moved from average investors and workers into the pockets of those who run companies and work on Wall Street. We have seen the Bush tax cuts tilt the playing field to reward the richest Americans at the expense of everyone else. Those aren't opinions--those are facts.

Although I haven't seen statistics, I am certain that we now have more Americans who earn more in a month than the average worker makes in a whole year than ever before. And yet, now that the horse is out of the barn, there is a huge outcry that Obama wants to redistribute the wealth. I just don't get it.

Critics are also wringing their hands and screaming on a daily basis on the radio, Fox News, and CNBC that the Obama government is taking over businesses, deciding how much money executives in private companies should make, and destroying the free market system that has served us so well over the years.

But wait a minute. That system DIDN'T serve us well at all. It brought us to the brink of economic meltdown. Last year the conservative free market Treasury secretary Henry Paulson gathered the heads of all the major banks in a room and ordered them to accept $125 billion in TARP money immediately. He told the country that without an immediate $800 billion government bailout, our whole world financial system would collapse.

This was LAST year, when Bush was still president. You remember Bush. He's the guy who told us weekly that the economy was fundamentally sound right up until the minute that his Treasury secretary accurately told us we were on the verge of falling into the abyss.

Bush is the guy who spent more than a trillion on the Iraq war (including hundreds of millions in cash that were thrown off the back of trucks (to appease the Iraqi masses) and billions in no-bid contracts to his buddies and contributors from Blackwater, Halliburton, and others who have since been charged with ripping off the American people. He's the guy who passed the prescription drug benefit with no discussion or apparent concern regarding how we would pay for it. He's the guy who took a budget surplus and in eight years more than doubled the national debt to over than $10 trillion.

At no time during this bankrupting of our country during good economic times did the subject of how we were going to pay for all this ever come up in the Republican-controlled Congress or from the White House. Never. Instead the richest Americans got tax cuts and we were all told to go shopping and keep borrowing.

Now all of Bush's former supporters and defenders have suddenly become fiscal conservatives and are screaming their outrage claiming that Obama wants to do what Bush and Cheney have already done--run up trillions in deficits and bury the country in debt. Only unlike Bush and Cheney, Obama has an excuse--the economy is in a death spiral. Politics aside, this criticism coming from the very people who created the problem seems to make no sense. I just don't get it.

They claim that Obama wants to take over and run our banks and auto makers. But these banks and auto makers were broke and came to Washington on bended knee asking for life support. The leaders of these companies made hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves while they made stupid and greedy decisions that ran their companies (and our economy) into the ground and jeopardized the jobs of hundreds of thousands of their workers.

So Obama has come up with money to save the economy but now insists that the same people and practices that created this mess will not be allowed to continue on the taxpayer's dime. He has never talked about putting conditions and restrictions on a successful company. If he was taking over and running Google or Apple or Procter and Gamble then his critics might have a point. But we're talking about American corporate institutions that were destroyed by incompetent, greedy managers.

And for this, CNBC's Larry Kudlow and the Fox News chorus scream out in harmony that our president is a socialist who is stifling free enterprise and ruining the system that made America great. It seems pretty clear that he is actually insisting that we change the approach that led the economy off a cliff. I just don't get it.

Finally, we are now dealing with the election in Iran. Obama's response has been measured, smart, and consistent according to most people including a broad range of conservative commentators. But the Right wing attack dogs have been relentlessly critical from the moment the election ended and it became clear that there were irregularities to the last few days when Iranian demonstrators have been shot in the street.

It has been striking to watch Republican lawmakers like Saxby Chambliss, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and others talk about how our president has a responsibility to to get very involved in the internal election process of another country where it appears there have been irregularities that caused the wrong person to win.

I'm old enough--and so are they--to remember our own presidential election of eight years ago. Many around the world believe that Bush's brother, the Florida secretary of state, and a Republican Supreme Court stole the presidency of the United States from its rightful winner. Reasonable people can disagree about whether that actually happened but there is no doubt that there was at least the impression of impropriety.

How would these Republicans who are so critical of Obama have weighed in if the leaders of France, Germany, or Saudi Arabia tried to become actively involved in helping us sort out what happened? What if they questioned the accuracy of our results and the morality of our elected officials and said they could not sit quietly by and watch the will of the people overwhelmed by politics? It's a rhetorical question. We all know the answer. And oh, by the way, I just don't get it.

Obama responded perfectly in his news conference when he said that these critics have the luxury of shooting from the hip and saying whatever they want. He's the only one who is President of the United States and has to think before he talks. As one commentator put it, "Obama is playing chess while the rest of these guys are playing checkers. He's thinking ten moves down the road while they are thinking about today's news cycle."

I have only met Obama once and don't know him well. He has made some mistakes and will surely make more. By the way, he has been sharply criticized by members of his own party and Left-leaning commentators like Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olberman for several his statements and positions. He has also been praised by those same people. THAT I GET.

But I can't understand the level and intensity of attacks that are being levelled at a man who, by all assessments, has surrounded himself with good people of both parties, who has brought our economy back from the brink of collapse, and who has three times as many Americans believing we are now on the right track as felt that way six months ago.

If there was an election coming up next month then it might make sense. But Obama is just a few months into a four year, no-cut contract. We are at war. He inherited an economy that was and still is a disaster. He was given the ball in the top of the ninth with his team behind 9-0 and told to go out and win the game. Is it fair to blame him for the loss if his team comes back to lose 9-7?

He's going to need a lot of luck and all of our support but instead he has been greeted with a solid barrage of unfair criticism from people who claim to be patriotic and care about our country.

I just don't get it.

My Pro-Israel Friends Need Pro-zac

2009-06-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

Before writing this, I think it is important to talk a little about who I am.

For the last 25 years, my involvement in the Jewish community and Israel have shaped my life. I have chaired campaigns, led missions, and served on the boards of Israel Bonds, Federation, United Jewish Appeal, CLAL, AIPAC, and two Jewish day schools. I have made 20 trips to Israel and studied Jewish texts religiously (I couldn't resist the pun). I still work hard, serve on and chair boards of, and have great affection for those organizations and take my Judaism very seriously. Jewish wisdom is the filter through which I try to run the major decisions in my life.

That's why I am so shocked and dismayed over the debilitating pathology that has gripped much of the organized Jewish community today--particularly those of my friends who proudly call themselves "pro-Israel."

What was once a proud, smart, intelligent, nuanced, and diverse movement has devolved into a combination cult-booster club championed by a handful of amazing people who lead a throng of angry, paranoid, one-issue folks with tunnel vision who often blur the difference between being a player and a fan.

Many of these people are my good friends--folks I really like, hang out with, and respect for most of what they do. That's what makes this so sad.

The deterioration of logic and perspective has been building for a while but it kicked into high gear over the last year when my Jewish friends discovered the power of blast emails. Suddenly ominous screeds decrying acts of anti-semitism and Israel hatred (most of them full of lies and distortions) started flying around the internet like shrapnel.

The senders seemed far more interested in being the first to share the latest tale of outrage than they were in determining the truth of what they were forwarding. I commented on this phenomenon last year (There's Never Enough Anti-Semitism to Make Some Jews Happy) and again when the hatred and paranoia hit new levels with the demonization of Obama during the presidential campaign.

While all this was going on, these same people were sending me more and more blasts making sure that I never forgot that 6 million of our people were killed by "them" during the Holocaust along with constant reminders that Obama was a secret Muslim, a friend of terrorists, not really an American, and wanted to destroy Israel. On a more pleasant note, there were constant triumphalist reminders of how fabulous and accomplished the Jewish people are and testimonials from real or fabricated Israelis telling us how wonderful things are in our homeland but that they need our hopes and prayers.

Discussion--a hallmark of Jewish interaction--was not encouraged. We were often instructed to forward the email to hundreds of our friends if we agreed--whatever that means--but we were told to simply delete it if we took issue with anything.

This was the biggest red flag of all. Judaism has survived and grown against all odds over the years due to its focus on dialogue and discussion. We are instructed by the Talmud to learn from all people. We are the people of "reply to all," not of "delete." We have always been the people of factcheck--not those who blindly race to forward provocative lies in order to be first in line.

This pathology seemed to peak last week after President Obama delivered his amazing speech in Cairo.

As most Americans, Israelis, and the rest of the world expressed their hope and admiration, my Jewish pro-Israel friends were going crazy with fear and anger. My strong suspicion is that few, if any, of them actually listened to Obama's speech. They were simply forwarding emails they received from self-proclaimed pro-Israel writers who knew before Obama opened his mouth that they would hate what he said.

Some have characterized me as an Obama apologist who will defend him no matter what he does. I admit that I am thrilled that Obama is our president but he doesn't need me to defend him. Many of his critics seem to have forgotten that the election is over and we have Obama as our president for the next 43 months regardless. We can't get upset over a speech and vote him out of office tomorrow. It doesn't work that way.

My agenda is not to defend Obama. It's to keep our conversation focused and balanced and to weed out the lies, distortions, anger, paranoia and triumphalism that have fouled our collective garden in recent years.

As bad as these qualities are, they are not the biggest loss we have suffered from this phenomenon.

That loss is the lack of focus on many of the challenges and issues that we need to confront as a people that get completely lost in the din created by the pro-Israel cult.

For example, with all the legitimate concern expressed over Iran and the Palestinian terrorists who want Israel, Jews, and America destroyed (all valid concerns), there is no discussion at all of the fact that Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a religious Jewish terrorist named Yigal Amir who to this day is regarded as a hero by most religious Israelis. Although he remains proud of his murderous act, the pardon of Amir is supported by a shocking 30 percent of all Israelis. Worth a discussion?

There has been much emailing accurately documenting the continuous bombing of Sderot and other locations near Gaza which prompted the Israeli incursion and bombing of that area months ago. I haven't heard a word, however, about the press accounts documenting that prominent Israeli rabbis were encouraging soldiers to behave cruelly and "show no mercy" to the Gaza civilians they encountered. Worth a discussion?

Ultimately, the "other"--in this case the Palestinian leaders and Muslims in general--are portrayed as being completely unwilling and/or disinterested in engaging in productive peace negotiations. Many of them deserve that criticism. But the implication is that their Jewish and Israeli counterparts are far more open-minded, and eager for peace.

My friend Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic--a Jewish American who lived and served as a West Bank prison guard in the Israeli army--shared this disquieting piece in his blog. This is a must-see for my many triumphalist Jewish friends. if you don't open any other links in this post, please watch this one. Worth a discussion? Have you received a copy of this from your Jewish pro-Israel friends?

What does it mean for an American Jew to be pro-Israel anyway? We are lucky enough to live at a time when any of us could literally move there tomorrow if we really wanted to or cared that much. We could vote in their elections and have our kids serve in the Israeli army and be full participants in the future of the Jewish homeland. Short of that, we could learn to communicate in Hebrew and own second or third or fourth homes there. That's what my Israeli friends have told me they would like us to do.

But none of my most strident pro-Israel American friends have done any of those things. They just pontificate, forward emails, get more and more afraid and angry, and try to convince others to do the same. Call me a self-hating Jew, but I don't think this is a good thing.

Now a growing number of those friends tell me they have never been more fearful than they are right now and I am right there with them. It's just that we are afraid for different reasons. They are worried that Obama has a secret agenda to "slit Israel's throat" and deliver the Jewish state into the hands of its enemies. I can't find a single reason to share that concern. Everything Obama has said and done and the team he has chosen to help him deal with the Middle East gives me reason for great hope.

My fear is that the principles of fairness, honesty, and intellectual rigor and the values that have made and kept Judaism great and vibrant over the centuries are being cast aside by a group of people who call themselves leaders and mean well but who now define being Jewish and pro-Israel as a spectator sport.

They sit in the stands screaming at the refs and complaining about the dirty play of the other team--often justifiably. But they no longer look in the mirror and focus on the one thing that we can actually do something about--how we can do better and take our own game to a higher level.

Unless and until we define being pro-Israel and seriously Jewish as involving BOTH of those behaviors then we will truly have reason to be very afraid.

Seeds of Hatred--Reaping the Harvest

2009-05-31T17:11:00.000-07:00

I was shocked to learn that President Obama and others said they were shocked that Dr. George Tiller was murdered in cold-blood while serving as an usher in his Kansas church. If you believe that you reap what you sow then the murder of Dr. Tiller is not shocking at all.

What we are seeing could be the harvest of the seeds of the vile and unrestrained anger and hatred that have been planted, spread and nurtured by the sleazemeisters of the Right Wing--self-described media stars and politicians who claim to be true conservatives, real Republicans, and patriotic Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

George Tiller was one of the few doctors in the U.S. who continued to perform controversial late term abortions. For years he has been literally (he had been shot before) and figuratively in the cross hairs of pro-life groups who oppose abortion in general and late term abortions in particular. He was a frequent target of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly who, referred to the doctor as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and characterized him for the last four years as a "Nazi-like" criminal with "blood on his hands."

The Tiller murder comes just weeks after a man who said he was concerned that "Obama wanted to take away his guns" went on a rampage that left three police officers dead in Pittsburgh. The words the killer used to characterize his concerns were an almost verbatim recitation of a rant aired by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck just a few days earlier. Beck has referred to Obama as a man who wants to destroy America and the capitalist system. Beck once delivered an ominous warning about the president's agenda with Nazi soldiers marching on a screen behind him and ominous martial music playing in the background.

I'm certain that O'Reilly will insist, as Beck did, that it would be both wrong and unfair to link the inflammatory rhetoric and the vicious language of his repeated attacks against Dr. Tiller to the fact that a passionate true believer may have taken him seriously and decided to rid the world of this murderous Nazi abortionist.

But the venom spewers can't have it both ways. In their zeal to make headlines and establish themselves as true leaders of a movement and a party that has become consumed by anger and hate, these "celebrities" have chosen to abandon their civility, reason, and sense of responsibility. They either mean what they say--in which case those who rid the world of murderers, Nazis, and other liberal villains should be hailed as heroes--or they don't in which case they are simply cowardly liars committing libel in the name of the First Amendment as they discredit their once proud movement and/or party.

They have made a bargain with the devil in exchange for ratings and their 15 minutes of fame. Now we are all paying the price.

This gutterization of discourse hit full stride during the presidential campaign last year when Obama was characterized repeatedly as a friend of terrorists, a secret Muslim, and a person who wanted to destroy America, slit the throat of Israel, and desecrate values that all true patriots hold dear.

Since he became president, the attacks have actually picked up in volume, intensity and scariness. I have seen President Obama portrayed as a Nazi, a socialist, a communist, an enemy of Israel, the destroyer of capitalism, and a racist. And that's in the self-described "mainstream" media.

When you troll with the true bottom dwellers (Limbaugh, Hannity, Liddy, O'Reilly, Savage, Beck, Gingrich, Cheney. Levin, and such) it gets really ugly. Each of these scumbags claims to speak for the Republican party. While none holds any elective position, the party leadership treats them with deference and respect. Is it any wonder that fewer people identify themselves as Republicans today than at any time in a generation and the number continues to drop on a daily basis? Anger and hate apparently just aren't in vogue this season.

Reasonable people can and will disagree about whether the deaths of Dr. Tiller, the Pittsburgh policemen, and other recent victims of violent outbursts can be attributed in part to the increasingly vile and vicious attacks coming from the Right.

But there is absolutely no doubt that we are suffering mightily as a society from the spread of hatespeech and the decline of civility in our public discourse. The truly racist, bigoted, and inaccurate attacks against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotamayor have taken the level of discourse to a new low--not just because of the outrageous and ugly rants themselves but even more so due to the way they have been legitimized and spread by the true mainstream media.

This has nothing to do with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. People are free to express their opinions--that's what makes America great. But people do not have a constitutional right to viciously attack and slander people with lies at hateful comments on our commercial airwaves. The decision to provide these vermin with an electronic soapbox is a commercial decision that is made daily by owners of radio and TV stations who are putting their desire for profits ahead of the public good.

We are paying a huge price as a society for our unwillingness to marginalize these evil people and the media outlets that provide them with airtime and credibility. Unless and until we start making better choices and acting more responsibly, we will continue to reap the bitter harvest that will continue to sprout from the toxic seeds being sown in our midst.

Edmund Burke is credited with telling us that "all that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." We can all start by changing the channel when these egomaniacal zealots are posturing or are being quoted by others and inform the station management that we are V-chipping them until they start acting responsibly.

It is not necessary or even good if all of us agree about the issues. But we cannot afford the luxury of tolerating those who are angry and hateful and want us to be the same. The one value we can all stand for is the importance of civility.

We can't honestly call ourselves civilized until we learn to disagree like grownups.

Investment Update -- Stocks, Stuff, and the Bond Bubble

2009-05-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

This is a good time to look at where we've been to help figure out where we're going.

For months now I have been very worried that the U.S. Treasury bonds that so many frightened investors have flocked to seeking safety are not safe at all.

I've also talked about how it’s a time of great risk and great opportunity. About how it’s not time to be bullish or bearish but it’s time to be smart. About how that means owning stocks and stuff—quality technology companies with proprietary, productivity enhancing products, consumer staples, and emerging markets on the stock side and commodities, basic materials, infrastructure products, and energy on the stuff side.

The underlying thesis has been that we are in a deep recession where debt-strapped people and companies will only buy necessities and value-added products. We are in a bad demographic place in the U.S. with too many of us old fogies who will live way too long and be net takers from society and the economy so it’s better to invest in countries where there are more young people.

We have a president who says he is committed to building infrastructure, clean energy technology, and saving the economy at all costs. ALL costs.

Since early in the previous administration, the U.S. has been printing trillions of dollars with no tax revenues to back those pieces of paper up. Once we reached the the brink of financial collapse, those efforts were ramped up even further. As a result, the cost of stuff is about to go up and our loan sharks (the institutions and countries that buy our debt) will demand much higher interest rates going forward.

No matter which party is in control, we will never raise enough tax revenue to service and pay down our debt so the Treasury will simply print more dollars with nothing to back them to give our creditors the “money” they have coming. We won’t default—we will just inflate.

As usual, the experts and pundits have been clueless. All of the cable conversation been about whether the stimulus will work (whatever that means), whether the banks will all go broke (as the stock market seemed to predict two months ago), whether the banks will all come storming back (as the stock market has been predicting lately), whether Obama is a socialist, whether Nancy Pelosi is a liar, whether Rush Limbaugh or Colin Powell is a better Republican (just the fact that they’re having the conversation is scary), and a whole bunch of other stuff that range from inane to not a big deal.

Here's what's important. The economy is terrible. Tens of millions of Americans are hopelessly in debt, out of work, or underemployed. But things have started to get worse at a slower pace and eventually things will get better. That's because Obama has decided to take a complete financial collapse and economic depression off the table for now by printing money. The price we will pay for that in the future is not totally clear but some things are getting clearer by the day.

The long-term borrowing costs for the U.S. government have increased by well over 50 percent during the last few months and will go higher. The value of “safe, guaranteed, and risk-free” treasury bonds has dropped sharply during that period. These are the holdings in the funds battered investors turned to in March to get away from the volatility of risky equities. Since then, the stock market has soared (to great fanfare) while sharp drop in the Treasury market has gone relatively unnoticed.

Short term interest rates—which the Federal Reserve can control—have remained near zero. But the free-market forces in the long-term bond market are suddenly making it very clear that even with the Fed out there buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bonds, there is still way more supply than demand at these interest rate levels. The yield on 10-year notes has jumped from 2.00 percent to 3.45 percent and the 30-year rates have gone from 2.50 to 4.30 percent since the first of the year.

The rise in rates could provide the catalyst that many are looking for to trigger the correction that most investors are expecting after the recent straight-up move of more than 30 percent in most stock averages.

But something else could be going on.

It may well be that with all its problems, the economy is at least on the right track and will, albeit in fits and starts, keep moving in the right direction. It could also be that the mountain of money that moved into cash and bond funds earlier this year will start moving into stocks and that correction everyone is now expecting will come from much higher levels.

We have already seen cash lose its buying power as those who own oil, gas, gold, silver, copper, and other raw materials are demanding more dollars for the same amount of stuff. Did anybody out there check out gas prices over the weekend? As the cost of stuff goes higher, the cost of essential products will go up as well. The value of the companies that make those products could go up with the tide.

That assessment may only be partly right and things may not unfold exactly that way. The fact that we don’t really know is why we diversify.

I'd want to keep owning stocks and stuff and buy more if we get the pullback in prices that everyone has been predicting--which is why we might not get it.

It’s time to look past all the stupid chatter coming from the media and be smart. I’m here for you and anxious to talk about how to invest in this very challenging environment. Everybody's investment objectives and risk tolerance are unique. There are a lot of question marks out there, but smart is still smart.

Be well and stay in touch.

Investment Update -- What Now?

2009-05-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

It was just nine months ago that George Bush was assuring us that the economy was fundamentally sound and Phil Gramm accused Americans of being a bunch of "whiners" who were going through an imaginary recession. That was, of course, the time when the value of virtually every asset in the world (stocks, bonds, real estate, oil, commodities, businesses) was about to go into a death spiral that slashed at least half the value from the best companies and assets and more from the rest.

At that point investors either chose or were forced to sell pretty much everything they had because many felt the last one out of anything and everything was certain to get zero.

That panic mentality peaked on March 9--the bellweather day when I received five calls and emails from different clients demanding that I sell everything they owned (I talked four of them out of it). As it always has, that panic-fest marked a bottom from which we have seen most markets shoot higher by at least 35 percent over the last two months.

That rally has occurred in the absence of anything that could be called a clear sign of recovery in business conditions. Housing prices continue to fall. The problems in commercial real estate are just beginning to get truly ugly. Most consumers are still deeply in debt. Our economy continues to lose more than 500,000 net jobs a month as almost 9 percent of Americans are unemployed and a larger percentage are significantly underemployed. Any yet, since March the riskiest assets and stocks are the ones that have appreciated the most.

Stocks of home builders have doubled or tripled as have the shares of the most troubled banks and other financial institutions. At a time when mortgage defaults are skyrocketing, the stock of MGIC--the world's largest mortgage insurer--has gone up by 500 percent in just eight weeks. That, of course, is after it dropped from $60 a share to less than a buck. But still...

So here we are. The easiest money has been made. The banks that everyone thought would all be worthless are now way up in price (from the bottom) and actually are selling billions of dollars worth of stock daily to hungry investors--a topic which I was asked about today on National Public Radio's Marketplace.

Has the whole world gone crazy? Is all forgiven? Is this the beginning of the new bull market? Is this a bear trap? Are investors about to get their hearts and 401-k's crushed again? What now?

The answer, of course, is that no one really knows. But the course of action that I've been recommending for months should continue to provide good returns over time as it has recently. That's because during these times of great uncertainty there are some things that we actually know for sure.

We know that our government is determined to stoke the economy with trillions of dollars of stimulus money targeting infrastructure, alternative energy, technology, and creating the jobs of the future. We also know that as an inevitable consequence of the deficits that will accompany that stimulus, interest rates will rise and the cost of tangible assets and many products will go higher--a lot higher.

We also know (with credit to Rod Smyth and Michael Jones of Riverfront Investment Group) that price matters. Historically, people who buy good stuff and good companies at low prices do better over time than people who invest at high prices. By many measures, a lot of good assets and great stocks are cheap right now although prices could pull back some after the recent two-month straight-up run.

So my advice is to buy those things over time and plan to own them for a while.

But there are other things we know. We know that the boom years that just went bust were fueled by unrealistic assumptions about unending growth and by mountains of consumer debt. Most of those bills have not yet been paid and even when they are it is unlikely that lenders or borrowers will get themselves into that big a mess for a while. That will translate into lower consumer spending for some time to come.

We also know that health care costs are killing us (no pun intended). There is going to be pressure on the profit margins of insurers and providers for the foreseeable future.

We also know that our country's demographics do not bode nearly as well for growth as do those of many other countries in the world where there are a lot more young people and a lot fewer old people who will live well into their 80's and 90's. The economies of those emerging, younger markets will probably do better going forward than those loaded down with us fogies who have neither the energy, the appetite for risk, nor the inclination to work as hard as we once did. So an overweight position in selected emerging markets makes sense.

What we don't know is whether the TARP, the bailouts, and the recent spate of stock offerings will put our biggest banks on sound footing again. They are all doing great on an operating basis now taking in deposits at zero percent and loaning the money out at much higher rates. But those pesky balance sheets may still be telling an ugly story that I, for one, don't understand so I'm sort of staying away. If things work out well--and I hope they do--then that's just money someone else will make.

So if I had to make a guess--and I actually do since I do this for a living--I would say that emerging markets, hard assets, technology, commodities and infrastructure companies should be over weighted in portfolios going forward and long term U.S. Treasury bonds should not be owned at all.

Since I first took this strong stand against treasuries, the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond has lost 15 percent of its value as rates have quietly but steadily climbed.

That means that an investor who sold his or her stocks two months ago and invested the proceeds in a "safe" government bond fund has missed out on the 30 percent up move in the market while losing 10 percent of their money in their "safe and guaranteed" investments. Who knew? Actually, I did and I have the blogs to prove it but I've done enough own-horn tooting lately.

Be well and stay in touch.

What Is So Enraging About Paying Our Bills?

2009-04-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

I can't help it. I am just furious about all the rage that is out there.

All my Republican friends are pissing me off with their anger over how Obama's a socialist and how he wants to take away their freedoms. But what really gets me worked up is all this rage over taxes. Now they're going to teabagging parties and holding rallies on Fox News because they are fit to be tied over how they're being taxed to death.

Maybe you can help me with this. I mean what is it about the whole notion of taxes anyway?

I always thought that taxes were the way we paid our bills. In a democracy we have elected representatives who spend money on our behalf on things like defense, security, wars, bridges, roads, health care benefits--all kinds of stuff. If we don't like the way they're spending it or we think they are spending too much, then we have a chance to replace them at very frequent intervals. But in a democracy, we own the results of our elections and the decisions our elected officials make are our decisions.

Taxes are the bills we have to pay for the stuff our government buys us.

Now the fact of the matter is that for the last eight years, we have been running huge deficits because Mr. Bush and the Republicans who controlled Congress for six of those years decided not to make us pay for all the stuff they were buying for us. Because they didn't tax us enough to pay our bills, they've run up a multi-trillion dollar tab that will be paid either by our kids or by no one some time after we're gone.

If Republicans and other angry people wanted to hold protests over how unfair it is that we are not being made to act like grown-ups and pay our bills, that I could understand.

But that's not what the rage and teabagging are about. At a time when we are being taxed at the lowest rate in our lifetimes and running the biggest deficits in history, these clowns are getting apoplectic because they think taxes are too high! That would actually be funny if it wasn't so outrageous.

But it gets better--or worse.

Most of them are also outraged because there are so many people who are out of work or so poor or underemployed that they pay little or no tax at all. They think these people are "freeloaders" who have it made. Of course I've never heard anyone volunteer to trade places with any of these poor folks. They're too full of rage to even respond to the question.

So all the rage is being directed at poor people and immigrants who really don't have any money to pay the government anyway. At the same time, in addition to paying the lowest tax rates ever, those of us who DO pay taxes have apparently forgotten or refused to cough up an estimated $500 billion that we legally owe our government but simply choose not to pay.

In addition, I see and hear TV and radio ads every day that describe the Internal Revenue Service as the agents of the devil and offer to help good hardworking Americans settle their debts to the government at 5 and 10 cents on the dollar. One ad brags that they were able to get a client who had not even filed a tax return for six years and swindled the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars off the hook for pennies on the dollar.

Where are the rage and the teabagging parties to protest those criminals? Instead of being vilified (treatment that is apparently reserved for the most unfortunate among us), the Right Wing crazies seem to feel that swindling the government and committing crimes that actually cost us a fortune are perfectly admirable behavior since we are all being taxed to death in the first place and Obama only wants to make it worse.

I have voted for and donated money to many fine Republicans over the years. I believe we desperately need a viable fiscally responsible alternative to the Democrats and the liberals. But Arlen Specter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and I have joined millions of thinking Americans in concluding that the Republican Party and the Right Wing have allowed themselves to become a very bad sick joke.

What was a party of responsibility and conservatism has evolved into a mob of religious fundamentalists, bigots, liars, and angry people who seem to have a need to blame everyone but themselves and the elected officials that they supported over the last eight years for the many huge problems that now confront our nation and its leaders--problems that didn't exist eight years ago but which have brought is to our knees over the last year.

Instead of taking a look in the mirror, these self-centered blowhards have blamed everyone but themselves for the colossal mistakes, lies, and fiscal irresponsibility that characterized the period they were in complete control of all federal branches of government.

Instead of figuring out where they went wrong and what to do to fix things, they have just become filled with rage. They have morphed from a responsible political party to a cult of scary and angry people. I'm not talking about all Republicans. I'm just talking about the people who have taken over leadership of the party and seem to be calling all the shots. If they continue on this path, they'll be the only ones left.

If I weren't so furious, I might help them figure out how to deal with their rage. Thankfully, none of them have asked. I might just rip their stupid heads off.

Lenin Rules!

2009-04-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

I have really been struggling lately to figure out what in the world has happened to my Republican friends who used to make so much sense and to the so-called cable news channels which have become more and more of an oxymoron. But I struggle no more.

I now realize that what appears on the surface to be self-destructive insanity is really just a posthumous victory lap being run by that great champion of the Right--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

It was Lenin, after all, who almost 100 years ago stated what has become the mantra of the angry Right and the deluded media nearly a century later:

A lie told often enough becomes the truth

It's ironic but appropriate that at a time when Right wing leaders are comparing Obama to Mussolini, Hitler, and Marx that the GOP should get in on the historical bandwagon. And it couldn't come at a better time. With the Republican Party leaderless and falling in popularity, the Right is in desperate need of a philosophical guru with a solid resume and a recognizable name.

Actually, the first sign of the GOP's modeling of Lenin appeared during the 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign in South Carolina when "Bush's Brain" Karl Rove launched a massive phone smear campaign against John McCain during which callers told the locals that McCain had fathered a black baby. In fact, McCain and his wife had adopted a child from Bangladesh.

When caught in the lie, instead of apologizing and stopping the calls, Turd Blossom (as his boss affectionately referred to him) Rove ordered his charges to just keep smilin' and dialin' and repeating the lies with greater conviction than ever. Bush knocked McCain out of the race and thus a movement was born.

Once elected, Bush carried Lenin's formula to new levels. He assured us that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and had tried to procure nuclear fuel from Niger long after he knew that neither statement was true. He talked about Pat Tillman's heroic death at the hands of a hostile enemy for weeks after he was told that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. He assured us that Americans don't torture--even as he insisted we needed to keep doing it. He promised us that no American need worry about abuse of warrantless wiretaps--even as he claimed they were essential. It was Lenin's model--lie, and if you get caught, keep lying. No apologies, no shame, just lies.

That's a mini recap. Everyone but Dick Cheney now knows all that stuff. But it helps explain a lot.

Otherwise one might think that the clowns who now call themselves leaders of the GOP came up with this whole idea about lying and lying some more on their own. It is comforting to know they're just copying their gurus Lenin and Rove.

So when President Obama insists on not bailing out bankrupt banks or car makers without getting rid of bad management or limiting executive pay and Republicans accuse him of nationalizing American business or being a socialist--now I know they're not stupid, they're just lying.

And when they say that Obama is raising all our taxes when he's actually cutting them for all but a handful of the wealthiest Americans, I am comforted that they're not confused. They're just doing what Rove did when he assured Scott McClellan and the American people that old Turd Blossom had nothing to do with the outing of Valerie Plame.

I no longer worry about those who still believe that Obama is a secret Muslim or that he is not an American. They are just angry hateful people who lie to give their screeds a thin patina of respectability--very thin.

And when my Republican friends call for a teabagging party (I'm not even going to go there) and complain that we're being taxed to death at the very time when taxes have never been lower in our lifetimes, I don't even bother trying to straighten them out any more. Because I know they are not misinformed--they are just lying and lying and lying and lying.

Actually, most Americans know they're lying too. That's why while the Right claims that there is a revolution afoot and the common folk are mad as hell, polls continue to show that Obama's popularity is rising toward 70 percent while the popularity of Republicans is at a 30-year low. Those same polls show that three times as many of us believe the country is now on the right track as felt that way six months ago. That doesn't sound or feel much like a revolution to me.

Based on those polls and common sense, it seems that Lenin's mantra might not be working so well in an age of blogging, the Internet, Google, fact-checking, Wikopedia, and YouTube. It's really a shame. Now, after honing the art of lying and denial to a perfect science, my Right wing friends might have to look for another approach.

So much to do and so little time. No one ever said it would be fair.

Back To The Future

2009-03-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

Over the last several months I have been repeatedly asked by friends and clients when the economy,the stock market, and life in general will get back to normal.

I tell them that we are getting back to normal every day. The challenge is that none of us knows exactly what the new normal will look like. One thing is for sure--it will bear little resemblance to the life that many of us have become used to over the last 20 years.

I vaguely remember what normal looked like 40 or 50 years ago. You worked until you either died or had enough money saved up to support yourself and your family for the rest of your life. If you worked for a company long enough, you got a fixed pension along with your social security when you retired and that, along with your savings, was pretty much it.

The assumption was that you would spend your savings down and you hoped you would have enough to maintain a lifestyle that was not too much worse than when you were actually working and earning money.

When you bought a house, you planned to live in it for a very long time. You put 25 to 40 percent down and paid off the mortgage as fast as you could. If you were lucky, you were able to sell it for about what you paid for it. After all, it was new when you bought it and you had worn it out over all those years. People didn't have huge debts because no one would lend you enough money to get into trouble and what would you spend all that money on anyway?

That is not the scenario that most people have in mind when they ask when things will get back to normal. Most of them are talking about the expectations we developed during the last 20 years which seem less and less normal by the minute.

In recent years, millions of people worked until they had enough money to retire. That often occurred during their fifties and occasionally even sooner. They would then get a second home in a warm place that was generally much more expensive and larger than the home they had raised their families in for years. They could afford it because their first homes had skyrocketed in value during the 80's and 90's.

They would travel, visit and entertain friends and family, eat out often, ski, cruise and play golf, and buy more expensive stuff than they did when they were working. And in spite of it all, their net worth kept going up and up anyway since the value of their homes and investments were rising faster than they could spend the money. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the super-rich who have always lived this way. I'm talking about millions of "normal" people.

Between 1981 and 2001, the Dow Jones Average went from 800 to 14,000--an increase of more than 1500 percent in 20 years. Millions of people benefited since they--not their employers--now directly controlled the investment of their 401-K, profit sharing, and retirement plans.

Real estate values skyrocketed. In the Sunbelt states, average people could buy land, homes, and condos with very low down payments and flip them for a huge profit after a year or two and sometimes even sooner.

During the tech bubble in the stock market 10 years ago, I remember telling a client that "we live in a time where no level of irresponsibility is going unrewarded." To a great extent that line describes what we came to view as "normal" over the last 20 years.

When the stock market stopped going up eight years ago, people were able to keep spending more and more using home equity loans and a seemingly unlimited supply of credit cards to make up the difference. They built up mountains of debt, but it seemed responsible because their assets, on paper, kept increasing in value.

Until they didn't.

So here we are. Now millions of normal people are deep in debt and/or have no more piggy banks to shake or equity in their homes or investment accounts to draw on. The credit card companies have suddenly pulled in the reins as well.

It is easy and popular to blame the villains of Wall Street and Washington for the mess we're in and they certainly played a large role in creating and deepening the current economic mess. But deep down, most of us know that the dramatic changes in our own behavior and expectations were a huge factor as well.

The good news is even though the economy hasn't bottomed it appears that the stock market has stabilized and the credit markets have started to thaw. We are getting back to normal.

And although it may not be as much fun as the more recent version, the new normal will probably (and hopefully) look more like the normal of my youth than the unsustainable glory days of the last 20 years. We now realize that while that might have been enjoyable--it was never normal.

We Are So Angry That We've Lost Our Minds

2009-03-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

I remember reading news about the race riots in Detroit and Los Angeles when I was growing up during the '60s. It was confusing to me at the time because I could never understand why enraged mobs would vent their anger by killing people and destroying businesses and homes in their own neighborhoods. I could understand the rage, but the actions it prompted seemed totally counter-productive.

Now, more than 40 years later, self-destructive mob rule has come to Capitol Hill. The same members of Congress who were either complicit or clueless while our financial system self-destructed are now so angry over the outrageous bonuses granted to a handful of AIG employees that they have passed legislation that threatens the underpinnings of our whole system.

More than anything else, what has made America unique and great over the years is that we are ruled by laws and not by men or women. If the laws need to be changed then we change them but we never take a Mulligan. We never go back and change the rules retroactively or in the middle of the game because we are angry. Until now.

Last week, in its first bipartisan vote of the year, Republicans and Democrats in Congress were so angry at bonuses that were paid to a few managers at AIG that they overwhelmingly passed a bill that would retroactively punish thousands of employees of several other financial services companies.

A government bond trader or research analyst at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley who was told six months ago that he or she would get a bonus (which on Wall Street is really part of their annual salary structure and not something special) and received the check three months ago may now have to give much of that money to Uncle Sam.

The legislation passed by the House calls for all income over $250,000 earned by any employee of any of the top investment firms to be taxed retroactively at a rate of more than 100 percent (counting Social Security and Medicare). That is not just for bonuses earned at AIG--which is 80 percent owned by the government--but at all firms that took TARP money.

Some of these firms have behaved recklessly in recent years and many executives have become rich by exploiting the system. Anyone who broke the law should be pursued aggressively and pay a heavy price for their transgressions.

But outrage, even justifiable outrage, is no excuse for vengeful, destructive legislation which would have a chilling effect on our economy going forward. What business executive in his or her right mind would commit capital to a venture if they thought the rules of the game might changed by the government after the contract was signed?

Halliburton and defense contractors have admitted that they defrauded and overcharged the U.S. government in the past. Should Congress pass a law today taking back bonuses paid to all employees of those companies years after the fact? That the kind of logic they're using to justify the more than 100 percent tax on Wall Street bonuses they just passed.

Fortunately it seems that some sanity is working its way through the anger and outrage in the Senate and White House. It now appears likely that the bill that sailed through the House with huge support will come under closer scrutiny in the Senate and cooler heads will prevail.

President Obama says we should stay angry but express our outrage in productive ways. I say we should get rid of the anger altogether. We don't have the time or energy to waste on villains--even if they deserve to be punished. That's the job of the legal system--not our legislators. We need to focus on results--not revenge.