BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

The Jewish State of Bureaucracy By BEZALEL STERN SHUT UP, I'M TALKING And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government By Gregory Levey Shut Up, I’m Talking , Gregory Levey’s often hilarious, generally fast paced, and ultimately troubling new memoir, starts out with Levey as a second-year law student at Fordham Law School and ends, a (very) few years later, with Levey in Israel, writing speeches for Ariel Sharon. Levey’s rapid rise, as he'd be the first to point out, had less to do with his personal expertise and the quality of his writing (although his writing is generally strong) than with the utter inanity of the ridiculous bureaucracy that is the Israeli government. Levey's stumble into the world of Israeli politics begins when he applies for an internship at Israel’s U.N. mission in New York. After numerous calls to the mission, Levey is invited to the Israeli consular building for an interview with a number of senior members of the mission. Once there, ...

C-C-C-CONDI FOR PRESIDENT? Say it ain't so. I guess the Red States feel she might be a good foil to Hillary or Obama. Frankly, no one is standing out to me this election cycle. They all look the same, sound the same, pander to the same interests and bend over for the same ****. There's no one on the horizon at a time when we need true leadership in this country to clean up the mess that the Chimp-in-Charge and his Bananas have left. Condi isn't dealing with reality. The U.S. won't buy her for the most part. The Jews in the Diaspora I know probably won't be so thrilled about her kissing the derrieres of the terrorists in the Middle East. She needs to develop her own line of shoes or maybe get a boyfriend (or girlfriend, whatever...) and be a real person for a while. And she needs to stop drinking the Neocon Cosmopolitans. But PRESIDENT CONDI? (shaking head, walking away in disgust) Revisiting the possibility of a Rice ticket in 2008 Marcus Mabry, aut...

NOW THAT TRUST IS GONE, CAN OLMERT GET IT BACK? Speaking what I percieve emotionally ( because that is how I react to things and what I work with all the time) PM Olmert has broken trust with the people of Israel. He's full steam ahead and hoping to recover but can he? Will he just turn a blind eye and pretend everything's fine like President Bush? Or since he's determined to hang in there for a few difficult months (probably) since the Winograd Report can he do the hard and painful task of regaining some measure of Israel's trust? Emotional reactions to broken trust with a politician, much like in our personal lives is often composed of some mixture of anger, disappointment, and/or frustration at oneself for trusting and at the offender, in this case Olmert, for exploiting that trust. Olmert's credibility, much like President Bush's - is shot. Poor judgment and ego did that for them - and neither has truly owned up to it. (Bush never will, in my opinion he...

BLONDES DON'T HAVE MORE FUN... OR DIPLOMACY I am strawberry blonde with grey so I guess, according to Aso I am out for negotiations huh? And poor Condi - she really does look like Sandra Dee, doesn't she? Japan's outspoken foreign minister said "blue-eyed, blond" Westerners probably would not be as successful as the Japanese in Middle East diplomacy, media reported Thursday. Taro Aso made the remarks Wednesday during a speech in southwestern Japan, business daily Nikkei reported. National newspaper Mainichi carried a similar report. "Japan is doing what the Americans can't do. The Japanese are trusted. It's probably no good with blue eyes and blond hair," he was quoted as saying by the papers, referring to projects in Jordan River Rift Valley initiated by Japan. "Luckily, we have yellow faces. We have no history of exploitation there or ... fired a machine gun for once," Aso said, according to the reports. Takashi Sasaki, one of Aso...