Growing up the son of a Puerto Rican Catholic father and a Jewish mother was often theologically confusing. But the confusion ended when it came to Israel. Zionist to the core I would die for the Jewish homeland. Like most Jews of a certain age, the notion of a world without an impregnable fortress/sanctuary for the often victimized Jewish race is intolerable. Never again.

But that doesn't mean I think the Israel can do whatever it feels appropriate under the banner of self-defense.

I met General David Petraeus on a dusty, oppressively hot day outside of Baghdad in March 2003. Our forces had invaded Iraq and were swiftly closing on Saddam's capital city. Hussein's once vaunted army was collapsing, but there was sporadic resistance, snipers and so forth, and the oppressive heat remained a formidable enemy, making any physical activity, including war fighting arduous.

This is it, the most important election of our era. Either government is the problem or part of the solution. That is the ideological big picture. But there is something else going on.

Given the nation's changing demographic realty, this may be the last time race will not be the defining characteristic of most voters.  Even now 60+% of Governor Romney voters will be white, 75+% of President Obama voters will be non-white. And every day, each side's relative strength with its favored racial constituency will grow.

While hot-button social issues like abortion and gay rights, and economic issues like jobs, taxes and the deficit will continue to drive many voters, race will be the most obvious determinant.

With Baltimore on the verge of elimination, it was wrenching to switch the channel from the Yankee/Oriole fourth playoff game, but duty called; and truth be told the Vice-Presidential debate had its own October drama. And in that regard it was clear that Alex Rodriquez is to Barack Obama, what Raul Ibanez is to Joe Biden. Just like the journeyman Ibanez pitch-hit for the woeful A-Rod in game three when the Yankee superstar couldn't hit a beach ball, and put the Bronx bombers up over the Baltimore Orioles, so too old Joe Biden bailed out his boss when the president couldn't put two sentences together at last week's debate. The V.P. replaced the underperforming president and saved the Democratic Party's chances in November.

Going to my radio show studio in the dull light of morning, I often pass St. Francis of Assisi Church on West 31st Street, a half block from my office above Penn Station.

Only recently feeling the tide of gentrification lifting adjacent, hipper neighborhoods, the church floats in what was the notorious 'Tenderloin' district -- a sea of hookers, pimps, alkies and bruisers on the near West Side in midtown Manhattan.