Search

There is no “Jewish vote.” Jews vote. A small number of them vote for Republicans. Most of them vote for Democrats. Every cycle the Republicans try to improve on their last performance, but Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. So Republicans try to draw them in by talking about Israel, an issue very few of them vote on, but an issue that has the added benefit of helping Republicans shore up their evangelical base.

So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginative lives. Without electricity, we have no escape. Without Playstations and Xboxes, we have no other-worlds. Without fully charged mobile devices, we have no social media. Without our screens, we have lost our spaces of order, our promised places of reliable rules, our escape from reality. Whereas some New Yorkers contented themselves with flashlights and novels during Sandy’s aftermath, others felt compelled to trudge up to the gaudy power-lit mega-screens of Times Square, where at least you could see commercials and fight for seats at Starbucks.

Looking at the online flood zone map of our neighborhood I feel calm.

In the book, Gene Robinson tackles questions like why marriage is an issue for LGBT people, why straight people should support it and why civil unions, while they are a good first step, simply won’t be enough to satisfy the LGBT community.

NOM is pulling out all the stops to defeat Obama and marriage equality—and starting its post-election spin.

Romney was 31 when the ban on blacks in the priesthood was lifted.

More on the electionpocalypse.

More from the annals of shallow theodicy.

Big Tobacco, Bain, Russia, and Mormon Doctrine.

Speaker of Parliament trying to force a vote, defending bill as an attack on Uganda’s sovereignty and culture.