Yep.  I've been promised a diary in which I will be proven to have "been had." I'm not demanding that any particular diarist write it.  I'm not calling anyone in particular out.

But a promise has been made.  Where's the beef?

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Okay.  We've had a few diaries in which a few posters have professed their belief that Barack Obama intentionally leaked his prayer, the one that he left in the Wailing Wall.  A few others have said that, at the least, it's plausible.  This little smear has been making the rounds at all my favorite right-wing websites and I will have no ability to debunk it there.  I will do so here.

I just got off the phone with a Ma'ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is "completely false," and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma'ariv. "No official spokesman for Ma'ariv told this to any of the papers." I've got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I'll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that "the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing."

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank /archive/2008/07/29/obama-vindicated.asp x

The story was complete and utter bullshit and shame on any of you who leapt into believing it because you don't care for Barack Obama.  You are entitled to believe whatever you like.  You are entitled to post it here, if you like.  However, the fact that people were so damned quick and so damned glad to believe in a right-wing smear scares the hell out of me.

It was a fucking lie and you peddled it with glee and abandon.  Shame on you!

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A chance look into the nominee's private thoughts, penned and deposited at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. A local newspaper made the controversial decision to publish the prayer, retrieved by an orthodox seminary student - an act usually considered taboo.

The senator asked for courage, wisdom, humility. From Time:

Obama didn't pray for an election victory, a lottery win to help pay for his campaign, or for his Republican rival Senator John McCain to be felled by lightning or a pecadillo. On the contrary; his prayer hints at the struggle within, how Obama is seeking divine guidance to surmount the obstacles that lie ahead of him in his lonely, awesome challenge to become the next president of the United States. On hotel stationary, he penned the following prayer, according to Maariv, which ran a photo of the note: "Lord, protect my family and me," Obama wrote. "Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

Remarkable words, from a remarkable man.

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This is pretty awful to do and some news we really shouldn't have. A student took Obama's note from the Wailing Wall in Israel and gave it to a paper, who then published it. That's really an invasion of privacy and borderline sacrilegious, but regardless, the note is kinda nice. I wonder if THIS will ever hit a viral email:

Lord -- Protect my family and me,' the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in the note published in the Maariv daily. 'Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

I know there are a lot of people on here who don't like a President who cares about religion, but speaking as someone who was a devout Baptist for the first 15 years of their life and a hopeless cynic ever since, that made me smile.

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I was in the attic of my house a little after 2:30 PM yesterday afternoon, my bedroom, a place and time that will remain burned in my memory until the winding moments of my breathing. I was writing a piece of satire that I planned on publishing to Facebook shortly thereafter, when my mother yelled up to me from downstairs and delivered to me the gut-imploding news. News that I could not feasibly comprehend until at least an hour and half later, and even then it felt like an exaggerated nightmare. News that physically brought me to slump in my chair and stare down at my floor with eyes dimmed and approaching unregistered tears. News that hit the ceiling with the same internal affect one would similarly receive if someone personally close to them had tragically passed on.

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