I had some fun earlier today with Michael Bloomberg being floated as a potential veep for Obama, but Roger Simon has a much more serious take at why the Nanny State Mayor is being used as temporary window dressing:

It wasn't long ago (yesterday) that Michael Bloomberg was being hyped as the answer to Obama's Jewish problem, but I think the problem goes a lot deeper than floating the self-promoting NY Mayor for a running mate. It now seems Obama's church has been sending out the most old-fashioned anti-Semitic canards in their newsletter, including the nonsense we have been hearing for years about Israel being an "apartheid state" (shades of the Durban conference). And this was published by the church in June 2007, doubtlessly arriving Chez Obama in the midst of his campaign. (Do his children read the newsletter?) Barack didn't say anything about it until now. Of course you could just call this all "free speech," but if such racist bilge came out of any organization I was a member of, I'd be resigning post haste... and this man is running for POTUS.

Just one more point: one of the anti-Semitic screeds in question - with quotations around the 'state' of Israel - was published over six years after the Taba Conference when a Palestinian state was offered to Arafat by the Israelis and, as we all know, the deceased caudillo walked out for fear he might actually have to govern a country. He launched Intifada II instead. If I were Obama I'd be mighty embarrassed by the rubbish his church is publishing. And now with the current minister accusing Wright's critics of a "lynching" for expressing their natural indignation toward the retired pastor's appalling statements, I would be wondering whether my church was indeed "liberal" in any definable sense of the word or simply reactionary.