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So whom did Midstream support for president? Financial meltdown; terror in Mumbai; Gaza rockets; changes at Midstream and an appeal to readers.

Article Excerpt
This editorial is being written in late November, some three weeks after the monumental nation-wide vote that resulted in the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States and Joseph Biden as vice-president. The unprecedented triumph of an African American in the race for the presidency, the highest office in the country and, in effect, the most powerful office in the world, was undoubtedly a landmark event. Even many of those who did not vote for him could not avoid being moved by the joyous emotional response within black communities throughout the land. Television images caught moments of elation and tears, especially among older blacks who lived in the years of enforced segregation and humiliation down south and even elsewhere and the subsequent civil rights revolution of the 1960s led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. An elderly woman who remembered that time of trial and heroism said it best. "I did not think I would live to see this day. Thank God that I did."

The lovely woman who could have been anybody's grandma was inadvertently expressing the essence of the Hebrew blessing that Jews recite with similar emotion: "Baruch atah ha-Shem ... she-hecheyanu v kiyimanu v'higianu laz'man ha-zeh. (Blessed art Thou O God ... Who has kept us alive and sustained us and allowed us to reach this [glorious] time.) The Hebrew blessing is recited by Jews at the close of the kiddush prayer at the beginning of every holiday. It is also recited by parents and friends upon living to witness a landmark family or communal event--the marriage of a son or daughter or even the 600' anniversary this past year of the founding of sovereign State of Israel. It is certainly an appropriate sentiment at the election of America's first African American president.

Along with the presidential campaign and the election came the shocking meltdown of the domestic and international financial system that reminded one and all of the tragic events of the depression era in the 1930s. Within weeks, if not days, thousands of homes throughout the land went into foreclosure as hard-pressed homeowners could not meet their mortgage payments. Banks and financial institutions stuck with worthless paper which they had invited in the drive for higher profits, courted bankruptcy and sought government bailouts. Unemployment rose to heights not seen in years, small businesses went broke, and giant businesses like the Big Three automakers in Detroit sent their CEOs to Washington on private jets to beg for government bailouts to save them from bankruptcy. The stock market went into a tailspin that wiped out ten years of value in a fortnight and put into shock countless retirees whose 401K and 403B investments in stock funds nosedived and slashed their available retirement income in half and perhaps more. Who could envy the president-elect and his financial team who would be taking office in a little more than two months on January 20th only to inheri such a disaster?

Who could envy Barack Obama's situation now? Joy turned to prayer mixed with fear and trembling. In almost every synagogue where prayers are recited every shabbat for the welfare of our American government (and also for the welfare of the government of Israel), the routine words blessing our leaders, asking God to grant them wisdom and to bring peace and contentment to all the people carried special meaning and was recited, I suspect, with greater fervor.

To lighten this discussion, let me talk about Midstream and the presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. During the campaign, our friends and relatives discussed every step and misstep made by Obama and McCain and their staffs, every revelation, and every rumor and lie that made the rounds of the Internet and the press. Even the vice-presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were subjects of passionate political discussion among us. We all knew where each of us stood; after all, relatives and...

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