It didn’t take long for President-Elect Barack Obama and his team to make their first mistakes. During his much anticipated introductory news conference, Mr. Obama joked that he spoke with most of the living president—but didn’t pull a Nancy Reagan. He tried and failed to be funny in recalling how Mrs. Reagan reportedly held séances in the White House in the early 1980s. He later called and, appropriately, apologized to the former First Lady.

The next gaff came from the father Mr. Obama’s newly minted Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, Rahm’s Israeli-born father, last week told the Ma’ariv daily, “Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee called the remarks “an unacceptable smear.”

The son then the father apologized to the group for the disparaging comments.

“From the fullness of my heart, I personally apologize on behalf of my family and me,” Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), said in a telephone call Thursday to Mary Rose Oakar, the president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family.”

According the JTA Wire Service, a spokeswoman for Rahm Emanuel said the Illinois congressman offered to meet with representatives of the Arab-American community “at an appropriate time in the future.”

I’m sure many more mistakes are to come. As Jews, we are quick to point out when others blow it. It’s critical that we are equally diligent about righting our own wrongs as well.

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, remarked about the importance of a two state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian issue earlier this week, “The single most important thing is that the new administration in the United States grips this issue from Day One.”

As an American Jew, I can emphasis how important that is, and I’m sure the 47 million Americans without health insurance, the 6.5 percent of out-of-work Americans and the million employees who depend on the Big Three all think their problems should be addressed on Day One.

Some people believe that energy independence trumps everything else. I think they have a real point. What if President Barack Obama made that his big, hairy, audacious goal of becoming energy independent by 2016 starting with the Big Three?

Already he’s talking about providing loans to the car makers to help them retool for more energy efficient cars. That would help propel America to the leading producer of green technology, harnessing a rusting workforce to once again export American ingenuity.

What might happen were the United States to find alternatives to the combustion engine?

The rest of the developing world would buy green technology from American companies; naturally the price of oil would drop. That would have cascading effects — as we’ve seen in the last few weeks.

Iran is so reliant on oil revenue that it might beg for a meeting with President Obama on our terms; Tehran cannot survive with oil below $75 per barrel. They would be forced to halt their nuclear weapon program, which threatens Israeli’s existence. If Iran cannot take care of its people, it surely cannot fund Hezbollah and Hamas.

Without that funding, Hezbollah and Hamas would have no missiles to launch at Israel, or money to train and pay suicide bombers. They, too, would want to be on President Obama’s agenda, just as Yasser Arafat ran to the United States when his old Soviet/Russian friends’ money dried up as the Cold War ended. A safe, solid two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be achievable, quickly.

Speaking of Russia, when oil drops back to $40, when we have an alternative to the combustion engine, Vladimir Putin won’t be rearing his head in Alaska or in Georgia. (That’s the country, not the state.) He’d be too busy trying to feed his own people to threaten someone else’s.

Oil below $40 per barrel in eight years. Hugo Chavez who?

I’m oversimplifying the solutions. It’s a monumental task to move from a petroleum-based society to other alternatives, such as plug-in hybrids, natural gas, or electric cars. We don’t have the infrastructure… Yet.

But what better time is there to create an FDR-like public works project that can retrofit our nation to take advantage of our wind and solar capabilities?

Last week I met with David Houle, a futurist and author of “The Shift Age.” He believes we are leaving the Information Age into a time defined by three factors: accelerating electronic connectedness; the flow to global; and lastly, the flow to the individual. An example of this is how the power has gone from Media TV titans who told you what to watch and when, to the person controlling the Tivo remote.

He says that our lifestyle based around commuting from the exurbs in our combustion engine cars is not sustainable. However, if we can turn the automobile factory workers in Detroit into people who assemble green technology, we can again be the dominant global force.

David predicted the current crisis, and sees this as a great opportunity for the United States, the world, and this new U.S. administration. “We should be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past,” he told me. “It is this state of mind that ushers in new opportunities and prepares one for fundamental change.”

If we can leverage our power to shift from the past of a petroleum-based society to creating a new one from alternative energy sources, we can fix our economic problems, solve the Middle East crisis, and save GM, Ford, and Chrystler.

That will make Tony Blair happy and give President Obama plenty of time to tackle our battered healthcare system.

The 2008 presidential election wasn’t even a week ago, and it’s way too early to judge President-elect Barack Obama—although pundits on the left and right were impressed with his poise and demeanor in his first news conference.  He has a large task in front of him and the nation is counting on him to deliver.

From a Jewish perspective, Mr. Obama’s first steps were certainly newsworthy.  During the campaign, his opponents tagged him as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic because of his association with the fiery Rev Jeremiah Wright for 20 years (and Wright’s praise of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan).  That was a cause for concern, and Mr. Obama had to confront it head on. Still, I don’t think that the relationship made Mr. Obama anti-Semitic. 
It’s actions that count. So look at are Obama’s first two major decisions.

1. His choice for Vice President – Sen. Joe Biden.  Israelis and Jewish Americans can rest assured knowing Mr. Biden is a long-time friend of Israel.
2. The first White House staff member picked is Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff.  The very active Jewish Chicagoan is a product of Jewish day school and spent his summers growing up in Israel where he visited his father’s family.  His entire extended family has strong Jewish affiliation; it’s rumored that his wife and two children may remain in Chicago so the kids can remain with their friends in their Jewish day school.

I can understand that Mr. Emanuel concerns some in that he’s very partisan and – as a Clinton White House veteran and a U.S. Congressman – he’s not exactly the change Mr. Obama was speaking about during the campaign. However, I would think his choice would allay Jewish fears that the new president will be either anti-Semitic or would not stand with Israel in her time of need because Rahm Emanuel literally did 1991 when he was a civilian volunteer in the IDF during the Persian Gulf War.

Back in 2004 when George Bush was fresh off a victory over John Kerry, my friend Andy Colyer predicted that Bush’s incompetence would heavily damaged the Republican party, damaging our country which relies on a two party system. 

Part one of his prediction came true. Tuesday night was a huge referendum on Bush’s Republican Party. This is only two years after the GOP suffered terribly in the mid-term elections. Time will shortly tell if a Pelosi-Reid- Obama trio will damage the United States – as happened at other times when there was one party control such as from 1992-1994 and 2000-2006 (despite the Senate tipping to the Democrats for a while in 2002 thanks to an Independent Senator from Vermont).

The post-mortem on the 2008 election reminded me of former Maryland Lt. Governor’s recent book “Failing America’s Faithful: How today’s churches are mixing god with politics and losing their way.” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s premise is that the Catholic Church once stood for issues such as helping the less fortunate, but has now become an organization that is “anti” everything – anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage….

The same thing can now be said about the GOP. The party, which once stood for fiscal responsibility and less government has created the largest government in our nation’s history and racked up debt with too many zeros to run in this blog.

They got stomped in 2008 because they had no defensible platform. They aren’t trusted to make government or our budget smaller. More importantly, they have no workable solutions to our country’s biggest problems: health care, the environment, the economy, and energy independence. Instead they remain the “anti” party. Anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-healthcare solutions, as well as against solutions for global warming and energy conservation. 

People don’t necessarily want more government, but they expect the government to enact solutions to our nation’s problems. Market based solutions haven’t worked on energy, the environment or healthcare. We’re falling behind the rest of the world in education and life expectancy while we consume 25 percent of the planet’s energy.

The Democrats have an opportunity and a responsibility now to deliver on those issues without negative consequences. It’s a huge challenge, and as a country they need to be successful. In the meantime, the GOP will be in Diaspora, hopefully gathering their own ideas on how to fix these problems. 

This is the best Italian food in town. We have tried many others and nothing can top Fazzini’s. Everything is fresh, homemade and delicious.

The pizza here was undercooked and really doughy.
entrees on other tables looked good though.

we like fazzini italian kitchen because of good wait staff and consistently good italian food. everything there is homemade; pasta, sauce,bread,pizza dough,etc.  large portions and reasonable prices and no ambiance!