As with the primaries and caucuses that came before it, Nevada's primary scheduled for this Saturday is sure to be as much of a nail-biter for the Republicans as it is for the Democrats. But with states jockeying for front-runner status and presidential candidates vying for every last vote, contenders from both parties can almost certainly write off one entire constituency as a result of the decision to hold Nevada's caucus on Saturday: the state’s Orthodox and Conservative Jews.

The scheduling of the Nevada caucuses for Saturday, January 19, in the late-morning hours means that Orthodox and Conservative Jews who observe the Sabbath on Saturdays will be unable to participate in what is shaping up to be a pivotal contest. Unfortunately, by the time that Jewish organizations learned about the scheduled date and cried “foul”,  it was too late to change the impending caucus time.

According to an article that appeared in The Forward, both Conservative and Orthodox Jews are raising last-minute vocal opposition:

“The issue is the number of people who have to decide whether to participate in the democratic process or participate in their religious observance,” said Hadar Susskind, Washington director for an umbrella organization of national Jewish groups, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “They shouldn’t be forced to do that.”

While previous election years, including 2004, saw Nevada primaries held on a Saturday, it wasn’t until the current caucus that religious groups raised eyebrows. In past cycles, Nevada’s placement as one of the last presidential primary states rendered its outcome unimportant, but with Nevada this year holding the coveted third spot in the contest lineup, a new spotlight is being trained on the Silver State. And with the leading Democratic candidates locked in a neck-and-neck three-way race there — and no clear front-runner having emerged from Iowa and New Hampshire — a few thousand votes could make or break the election result, say opponents of the Saturday morning timeslot.

What's the impact? According to Rabbi Shea Harlig, regional director of Chabad of Southern Nevada, estimated that Nevada is home to some 200 Orthodox families, and to nearly 1,500 families affiliated with Conservative synagogues. The state counts eight Orthodox congregations in total, with seven in Las Vegas and one further north, in Reno.

The decision has a greater impact on Republican than Democratic turnout since non-observing secular Jews that plan on voting during the Sabbath are more aligned with the Democratic party than the Republican party, which has been traditionally home to observant Orthodox and Conservative Jews.

If you've been led to believe that all Al-Qaeda supporters exclusively comprise Muslims from the Middle East, you need to think again. A growing number of Al-Qaeda supporters are actually white, non-Muslims from other countries outside of the Middle East.

First, there is Adam Gadahn, 28, also known as Azzam al-Amriki or Azzam the American, a former resident of Orange County, Calif., who has been indicted in the Central District of California on charges of treason and providing material support for making a series of propaganda videotapes for Al-Qaeda. Gadahn is the first person to be charged with treason against the United States since World War II.

Then, there is white,non-Muslim support for Al-Qaeda in Europe. According to News Scotsman.com, hundreds of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West. As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

One British security source indicated: "There could be anything up to 1,500 converts to the fundamentalist cause across Britain. They pose a real potential danger to our domestic security because, obviously, these people blend in and do not raise any flags."

"The exact figure of those who have converted to Islam and turned to terror is not precisely known. Not everyone who converts becomes radicalised and it may be that just two-fifths go down that path, but it remains a significant and dangerous problem."

More interesting than the newsworthiness of this article is the reaction from many of its commentators. Most took this tone as echoed by someone named icehawk:

At some point you just get sick and tired of hearing "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! THE TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO GET US!!!"

Enough already. The overblown, rediculous claims that the bad guys are going to get us is getting old. At what point will the news media finally say, enough already.

It's always amazing to see the extent that the secular far-left will go to deny the obvious. Their attempts to comfort themselves with false, misguided, naive, and dangerous denials of the facts and events that surround them every day would make the isolationists in the American First Movement of the late 1930s very proud.

During his tour of the Yad Vashem memorial during his visit to Israel, President Bush commented with tears in his eyes that "We should have bombed it", referring to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. At the time, many U.S. Jews in the 1940s were calling for the bombing of the death camp to halt the genocide of the estimated 1.1 million to 1.5 million Jews that took place at the camp during World War II.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith. Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.

"Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site", said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

The interesting part of this story is that at one point during his visit, President Bush called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site.

What type of answer did Bush think he was going to get to his question from Rice? A history lesson? Perhaps an unbiased view of U.S. Foreign Policy under the Roosevelt Administration?

Maybe the visit was as beneficial for her as is was for him. After all, according to an article in the Washington Times, both Rice and Bush seem to believe that the original roadmap for peace that was approved by former Prime Minister Sharon in 2004 is now considered an impediment to the peach process, instead of a requirement going forward. According to Rice's statement:

The "road map" for peace, conceived in 2002 by Mr. Bush, had become a hindrance to the peace process, because the first requirement was that the Palestinians stop terrorist attacks. As a result, every time there was a terrorist bombing, the peace process fell apart and went back to square one. Neither side ever began discussing the "core issues": the freezing of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the rights of Palestinian refugees to return, the outline of Israel's border and the future of Jerusalem.

"The reason that we haven't really been able to move forward on the peace process for a number of years is that we were stuck in the sequentiality of the road map. So you had to do the first phase of the road map before you moved on to the third phase of the road map, which was the actual negotiations of final status".

Hopefully, the visit to Yad Vashem provided both Bush and Rice an explanation as to why the Israelis are so adamant in requiring that the Palestinians recognize the State of Israel and stop their rocket attacks from Gaza before handing over more land as a condition for peace negotiations. When someone says they are going to anhiliate you, not only do you take them seriously, but you also require your enemy to take very specific measures as a test of their sincerity if you're going to sit down and attempt to negotiate peace.

But given their statements, it appears that both Bush and Rice haven't learned very much from their visit to Yad Vashem. Maybe instead, both President Bush and Secretary Rice need to pick up a book on 20th Century World History are re-read the chapter on the Neville Chamberlain's "peace process" in 1938.

That would provide a much better lesson on how to prevent the next Holocaust from taking place.

Since the New Hampshire Primary, the new media has been wringing their hands in search of an explanation as to why their lavish predictions of a double-digit Obama win were so wrong.

The answer that they have chosen is called "The Bradley Effect", aptly named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election despite a healthy lead (ranging from 9 to 22 percent in various polls) over his opponent. Some pundits have even argued that white voters told pollsters they were intent on supporting the black candidate but that deep-seated racism got the best of them when it came time to pull the leverage behind the voting curtain.

Now according to Commentary Magazine, a similar situation is taking place with Jewish voters that plan on voting for the Republican candidate. Being a Democrat is almost instinctive for American Jews and being a GOP supporter is akin to eating pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise. As Martin Peretz wrote in 2004, signaling his distaste for John Kerry:

"Like many American Jews, I was brought up to believe that if I pulled the Republican lever on the election machine my right hand would wither and, as the Psalmist says, my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth."

But as the Commentary Magazine article explains, there may very well be a block of Jewish voters this election year that will pull the lever for the Republican candidate, but tell their friends that they voted for the Democrat:

"Since 9/11, I’m convinced there is a far larger proportion of Jews than the reported 25 percent that voted Republican in 2004. These Jews–perfectly happy calling themselves Bill Clinton Democrats but more hawkish than a party now headed by Nancy Pelosi–don’t want to admit to anyone that they supported a Republican because everyone in their social circle would call them meshugeh." (a crazy person).

The prospects of what a Democratic President in combination with a Democratic-lead Congress will do with the war in Iraq, our involvement in Afghanistan, the war on Islamic-terrorism, and our relations with Iran, one can only hope that this perception rings true come November.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered a very powerful speech on the current situation with Iran's desire to acquire nuclear weapons. The speech was given to the Jewish National Fund on November 15th, 2007 at the Selig Center for Economic Growth, on the campus of The University of Georgia:

In the speech, he draws several parallels to the Holocaust, the most important of which include:

1. “The complaint about Iraq is a performance complaint, not a values complaint.”

2. “And so we’re living a life of cowardice, and in that life of cowardice we’re sleepwalking into a nightmare.”

3. “Our enemies are peaceful when they’re weak, are ruthless when they’re strong, demand mercy when they’re losing, show no mercy when they’re winning.”

4. ” We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust.”

You can read his entire speech by following this link on Jewish.com. If you would like to see commentary from other bloggers on the speech, it can be found on the Joels Trumpet blog.

According to The Jewish Week online, the Jewish vote will play a key role in the upcoming primaries, especially with the January 29th vote in Florida and the "Super Tuesday" marathon on Feb. 5, with votes in New York and New Jersey, among others. Each of these states have big, politically active Jewish communities.

In addition, the article indicates a certain degree of fluidity with the Jewish Republican vote:

"Several Republican contenders have more at stake in the hunt for Jewish votes. Giuliani, who seems to have bet everything on the second round of primaries, faces a make-or-break test in Florida, where his popularity among Jewish retirees with New York connections could prove decisive."

Political observers generally agree that there is more "swing" in the relatively small Jewish Republican vote, while Jewish Democrats appear more likely to have chosen their favorites.

"A tremendous amount of the Jewish Republican vote is sitting on the sidelines," said Fred Zeidman, a Texas businessman and leading supporter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz). "They will support whoever is the party’s nominee. On the other side, I see most Jewish Democrats have taken sides already."

You can read the entire article by following this link.

Conservative radio talk-show host Michael Medved, attending the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention in Beverly Hills, entitled “Should Torah Jews Vote Democratic or Republican?”, was asked a question by one conference attendee:

"What about a McCain-Lieberman ticket?"

Smiling slightly, Medved relented: “I don’t think it’s an unthinkable possibility, and it would be a very strong ticket.” Medved also noted, “and people would love a unity ticket that would put America’s interests first.”

As you know, Lieberman was an unabashed Democrat in 2000, when he was tapped by Al Gore to be his running mate. These two are so completely opposite in many of their views today that it's remarkable that they were even on the same page back then.

However, Lieberman’s vocal support for the Iraq war has put him at odds with many Democratic lawmakers and the party’s liberal base. Last year, in Connecticut’s Democratic senatorial primary, he was thrown under the Democratic bus by stalwarts such as Christopher Dodd and Bill Clinton, and lost to an anti-war challenger, businessman Ned Lamont, before coming back to win as a third-party candidate in the general election.

These days, he describes himself as an “Independent Democrat,” and caucuses with the Democrats, securing their control of the Senate. But most recently he endorsed a Republican senate collegue, John McCain for President. And when it comes to issues such as the Middle-East, the war in Iraq, and the world-wide war on terrorism, Lieberman is on the opposite side of the aisle from his former Democratic brethren, making him even more of an Independent.

So is a McCain-Lieberman ticket a good idea? Perhaps. As political pundits agree, in most elections 20% vote for the far left candidate, 20% vote for the far right candidate, making elections decided by the remaining 40% in the center. If that's the case this year, then a McCain-Lieberman ticket might be a very good idea.

The only question is, "What percent of the Jewish vote would this ticket get?" Since the Jewish vote is slowly growing more conservative since 25% of Jewish voters in 2004 went Republican (up from 11% in 1992), such a centrist ticket could quite possibly garner substantially more from both sides.

We'll have to see how well McCain does in Iowa and New Hampshire to find out the rest of the story.

Here is my pick for the most absurd quote from the mainstream, liberal media for 2007. This is courtesy of the Media Research Group's, The Best Notable Quotables of 2007: The 20th Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting (www.mrc.org):

"Al-Qaida really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than al-Qaida - worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Klu Klux Klan ever was."

MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann in an interview with Playboy Magazine.

The prospects that vapid comments like this are going to get any better from the Left in 2008, especially in light of being an election year, is quite slim.

During the Christmas season, Jews should wish their fellow Christians a "Merry Christmas" instead of the more bland and generic "Happy Holidays. An article entitled, "A Plea for Merry Christmas", by Yaacov Ben Moshe really summarizes it very well:

I am a Jew. I grew up in an observant Jewish home in which we greeted Christmas with a mixture of fascination, respect and irritation. I've grownup, though, and I've grown into a new perspective on this whole matter question and, today, when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I have a new response. It's really simple-

I stop what I am doing
I thank them very sincerely
I wish them a Merry Christmas in return.

Here's why: I have come to see quite clearly that even if there are politically correct, multi-cultural, morally relativistic, post modern progressive busybodies who would like us to believe that our Christian friends' and Neighbors' spontaneous Christmas wishes are somehow injurious to us and our culture, they are nothing of the kind. A sincere "Merry Christmas is better for you than the blandest, most guarded "Happy Holidays".

You see, the U.S. was founded by Christians. Not just any Christians. The early colonists were both devout and independent. They were fervent Protestants whose purpose in coming here was to leave the Kings, Priests, state religions and archaic laws of the old world behind. They came here to build a country where every man could read scripture for himself and be his own priest, where he could be free to elect political leadership that he could follow gladly. Ultimately, that enterprise gave rise to the constitution and form of government we have today. At two hundred years old it is still the one in the entire world that best honors the individual and guarantees his rights.

If we do anything this holiday season, we need to loosen up and get a perspective on this "Merry Christmas" thing. It is not the people who say "Merry Christmas" and mean it that we need to be discouraging in America at this time. It is the people who find something wrong and suspect in the energy, enthusiasm and good-will that animates that "Merry Christmas" that we need to discourage....

By saying "Merry Christmas" in public we are not agreeing that Jesus was the son of God, we are just acknowledging that some very good people believe it. When we say it, that does not constitute accepting Jesus as our personal savior; it does show his followers that we see them as fellow countrymen, friends and brothers-in-arms in the defense of the highest ideals of our civil society. What is the problem with that?

You can read the entire article by following this link.

According to an article in the Jewish Daily, The Forward, Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are the top two hopefuls among American Jewish voters that were recently polled in a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 self-identified American Jews between November 6 and November 25, presents the Jewish community as being somewhat out of step with the broader American electorate. According to the survey results, Clinton garnered a “favorable” rating from 53% of all respondents. The senator’s onetime rival and fellow New Yorker, former Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani, was viewed favorably by 40% of the survey’s participants — a result far higher than the 15% who considered themselves members of the GOP, and slightly better than those posted overall by Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Among Jewish Democrats, Clinton won a favorable rating from 70%, compared with 48% for Edwards and 45% for Obama. In comparison, Clinton was rated as favorable by 68% of Democrats nationwide, versus 36% for Edwards and 54% for Obama, according to a poll released Tuesday by The New York Times and CBS News.

Giuliani scored a favorable rating from three-quarters of Jewish Republicans — a score that far exceeds the favorable rating he won from 41% of Republicans nationally in the Times/CBS poll. Given the high proportion of Democrats in the AJCommittee’s survey sample — 58% — Giuliani’s overall favorability rating of 40% suggests he could win votes from a significant number of Jewish voters should he advance to the general election.

Here's an important point: The former New York City mayor is estimated to have won at least two-thirds of the Jewish vote during his successful runs for office in 1993 and 1997 — far greater than the 19% and 24% captured nationwide by President Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Overall, the results show a clear advantage for Clinton and Giuliani among Jewish voters. At the same time, other candidates continue to draw from larger pools of currently undecided voters. For example, whereas less than 20% of Jewish Americans said they were currently unable to form an opinion about Clinton, slightly more than 35% have yet to make up their minds about Obama and Edwards.

 

Don't worry, be happy: If you're a Republican, those words should be easy to follow.

According to pollster Gallup, a recent report based on a roundup of their health polls over the past four years finds that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to report having excellent mental health.

The survey found that 58 percent of Republicans polled reported having excellent mental health. Only 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Independents reported the same. The study concluded it was unclear why there was such a strong correlation, but the relationship between party affiliation and mental health was virtually constant even within categories of income, age, gender and other factors.

"The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican," the study said.

The study speculated that the fact that Republicans have on average higher incomes than members of others parties could play a factor. But in the study, even Republicans making less than $50,000 a year reported having excellent health far more than Democrats earning the same.

The study was based on interviews with 4,014 American adults who were at least 18 years old, conducted from November 2004 through 2007. The margin of error was 2 percent.

According to blogsite, "Yid with Lid", Ehud Olmert's bending over backward rush to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinian's will result in a divided Jerusalem, making East Jerusalem forever unavailable to the Jewish people.

"If Olmert has its way and Jerusalem is Divided...you will never again be able to travel to the Jewish holy sites in Eastern Jerusalem, because the Arabs do not believe that there are any Jewish Holy Sites in east Jerusalem...or that any part of Jerusalem that was ever Jewish."

The post references an article that appeared in CAMERA (the Committee for Acuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), entitled, "Jerusalem: Arab Denial of Jewish Ties", where Arab's discount any historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel:

"In 2002, Sabri wrote a booklet, entitled Palestine – the Human Factor and the Land which was published in Egypt in August 2002. In it, he used as evidence the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"to support his allegation that the Jews have for centuries been secretly plotting to take over Palestine. He denied any Jewish historic connection and right to the land, labelling the Jewish Temple built by Solomon as "imaginary."

"Historian and former Arafat advisor Jarar al Qidwa makes similar assertions: Solomon’s Temple, I believe, was built by the Canaanites who were the neighbors of the Israelis, the Israelites... I want to state several words clearly: the Bible became an archival document, not representing what the Israelis and the first Jews were, but what they thought they were, what they imagined. The Temple is the fruit of their imagination. In any case, when our nation or our Canaanite forefathers came to Palestine, they built the Temple… a temple in Jerusalem... ...The issue of the temple is a Zionist innovation. No one said that the temple that was built in Jerusalem, neither the Canaanite nor Roman, no one said that it was in the place of the [Islamic] Al Haram."

Yid with Lid correlates these false Arab claims with a dark assessment of Jerusalem's future:

"If you read the entire CAMERA article it is obvious that not only do the Palestinians believe this rubbish but most of the Muslim world..and people believe that the PA will care for Jewish Holy Sites. Not in this reality. They destroy them the same way they destroyed Joseph's tomb. And Jews will never be allowed to visit them again...the same way we were not allowed to visit the Jordanian controlled sites before 1967. Ladies and Gentleman, THAT is the future of Jerusalem if Olmert gets his way. A Jerusalem without Jews and eventually without Christians either. A future where Jewish and Christian Holy Sites are destroyed."

Let's hope that for Jerusalem's sake, this latest attempt to broker peace with Palestinians fails just like the countless number of similar peace agreements over the past four decades. One can only look to how the Gaza Strip turned out to get an idea of what will happen to East Jerusalem if it is turned over to the Palestinians.

BTW- check out Yid with Lid's list of "Blogs Against Hillary" on the lower right of his blogsite.

According to an article posted on the Jewish Policy Center website, the head of Britain's MI5 intelligence agency has revealed that more than 2,000 people were involved in an "al-Qaeda brand" of terrorist activities inside the UK, thanks to a permissive preaching environment and lax laws. The question for the U.S. is could this be happening to mosques in this country, too?

The answer is yes, it's happening here, but to a lesser extent. According to one FBI agent interviewed in Ronald Kessler's new book The Terrorist Watch, about one in ten of the United States' 2,000 mosques are believed to preach hatred. That number was higher before 9/11, however, as radicals now seek to evade U.S. intelligence agencies.

But the problem extends beyond mosques. Islamic schools play a role, too. According to scholar Daniel Pipes, a Saudi textbook at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, VA, teaches first graders that, "all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians," while books used by New York City's Muslims schools include, "sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians."

A new report issued by the New York Police Department indicates that radical Islam continues to have an appeal among Manhattan's Muslims, often through "informal groups or clusters of young men…usually associated with a particular venue – community center, non-governmental organization, university group, housing project, café or even a particular mosque." NYPD also noted the, "growing trend of radicalization that has permeated some Muslim student associations (MSA's)."

This environment has undoubtedly impacted America's Muslims. According to a Pew Research Poll, roughly one-quarter of young Muslims (ages 18-29) in the United States believe that suicide bombing is justified under certain circumstances.

Could radical Islam in America grow to be as bad as it is in the UK? Unfortunately, the extent to which radical Islam has penetrated the United States is not known. The aforementioned reports, along with scores of others, provide only a thumbnail sketch of the problem.

For Jews in the U.S., we can only hope that moderate Muslims will do the right thing and report extremist activities, networks and institutions. Until they do so, the picture that we see of Muslim extremism in this country will remain unclear, requiring us all to be cautious of our fellow Muslim citizens.

 

One of the reasons that many Republican loyalists are falling out of favor with their party is the realization that leading political figures are doing and saying things that go seemingly go against the grain of long-held beliefs. For example:

President Bush fails to secure the Mexican border, and embraces a Democrat proposal that would grant illegal aliens "pseudo" amnesty status.

John McCain co-authors the McCain-Feingold Act with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, enabling the 527 political designation and giving birth to far left political groups such as MoveOn.org.

Now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, a person who has long been considered a rising star in the Republican party, has shown the Jewish community and supporters of the state of Israel that this admiration may have been a little premature.

An article from The Bulletin of Philadelphia, entitled, "JERUSALEM SYNDROME AND U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice", indicates that Rice now seems to have become emotionally aligned with the Palestinians in the Middle East. According to her remarks, the Palestinian experience in occupied Israeli lands is somehow analogous to her experiences  in the segregated South during the 1950s and 60s. The article states:

"For Dr. Rice the struggle of the Palestinians is analogous to that of the Afro-Americans for civil rights, and she identifies with the Palestinians. She recalled what it meant to travel in segregated buses as a little girl in Alabama. She also compared the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to the Rev. Martin Luther King, because, in her mind, both were committed to peace. Rice views Abbas as committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence and, like Martin Luther King, opposed to terror and violence."

While Condi may be a highly-intelligent and scholarly woman in the area of political science, she is sorely lacking on the subject of history. She wishes to remain ignorant of the fact that Palestinians have consistently rejected peace with Israel. The best example was the Intifada of 2000 which started after Israel offered the Palestinians 97% of their demands to hand over currently occupied lands.

This position also ignores the many suicide bombings, and blatant examples of anti-Semitism over the past years promoting the killing of innocent Israeli citizens. Funny, but I don't recall Martin Luther King ever advocating that blacks during the civil rights protests of the 1960s blow themselves up in the public square. Wasn't his message "Silent Disobedience"?

Her lack of historical awareness and perceptions that are based on a false and oversimplified analogy, prevent her from seeing the facts objectively and dealing fairly, which are the prerequisites for statesmanship and the position of U.S. Secretary of State.

Once again, Jewish Republicans must hang their heads in disbelief, shame, and embarrassment.

So you think you're in the minority as a Jewish Republican? It could be worse. You could be a Jew supporting Republican Presidential candidate, Ron Paul. Now that's a minority!

According to an article posted on JewishJournal.com entitled, "The few, the proud, the Jews for Ron Paul", the candidate commands a loyal, albeit small, Jewish following. This Jewish support has followed the same pattern as Paul's backing from other groups -- coming from out-of-the way places on the Internet and taking mainstream media and political organizations by surprise.

Among his followers are two distinct poltical groups: Jews for Ron Paul, and Zionists for Ron Paul -- Jewish supporters that believe that it would be best for Israel if the United States kept out of Jerusalem's affairs. They also believe that American aid to Israel is dangerous because it feeds the perception that Jews wield too much influence over U.S. foreign policy.

"Many of us believe the current relationship between the United States and Israel is a very unhealthy relationship, like that of a man and concubine, or a slave and master," said Yehuda HaKohen, an American immigrant to Israel and head of the group, Zionists for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul's views towards the state of Israel and the Middle East conflict show a similar disconnect from reality. "Our foreign military aid to Israel is actually more like corporate welfare to the U.S. military industrial complex, as Israel is forced to purchase only U.S. products with the assistance. We send almost twice as much aid to other countries in the Middle East, which only insures increased militarization and the drive toward war."

Ron Paul is an interesting example of political extremes. Even though he may represent one aspect of the far-right, It's not doubt that many of his views are similar to those of far-left candidate Dennis Kucinich. Both are in favor of bringing our troops home from Iraq and all foreign locations immediately. Ron Paul even complimented Dennis Kucinich in a recent interview on C-SPAN. You can watch his glowing remarks in a 9-minute YouTube video. (Just advance it to 7:45 to see this comment).

Talk show host Hugh Hewitt said it best, "Clearly Ron Paul is as mad as a hatter. Both he and Dennis Kucinich would make the perfect circus freak-show act". It just goes to show you that, like two opposite points on a circle, both the far-right and the far-left can get to the point where they meet each other on the far side of that circle.