American Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAmerican Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAlready one of the poorest countries by many measures, Yemen — a nation of roughly 22 million people — has been struck by severe droughts and depleted water supplies in recent years. Some Yemenis are calling the situation a potential time bomb.
A new political party in Germany has made saving the working class and the country's welfare system rallying points for attracting votes. Die Linke, or the Left Party, is drawing support from mainstream parties with a radical message.
I'm getting this in while I can - the interwebs are acting up at Casa Pastor today.
But did anybody else see that our own br t got quoted in the Boston Globe?
To win the race for gold at this summer's Olympics, China has been looking to sports where the medals are plentiful. Many of these sports, like rowing, are not China's traditional strong suits.
The argument is threefold: Bayh lacks support in the progressive netroots, he was a vocal Clinton supporter throughout the primary process and, surprisingly, he is "too safe."
Although certain bloggers do have a tendency to overstate their significance, I'm not one to diminish the power of the 'roots. That being said, I simply don't buy the idea that Bayh's centrist history would in any way keep the highly motivated progressive voting bloc away from the polls come November. Barack Obama is too strong a candidate, McCain is too reactionary, and at the end of the day, I believe any uproar would be limited to a flash in the pan, rather than anything more problematic. In my mind, the pros definitely outweigh the cons on this one.
Regarding Bayh's support of Hillary Clinton throughout the primary process, I don't think this should really be held against any Democrat. People picked their horse, the race was run, and at the end of the day, the Democratic Party emerged stronger than ever. But don't take my word for it, because Sen. Bayh himself put out the same message last week. It's compelling, if for no other reason than it's true.
Finally, I think the most entertaining section of the piece is the assessment of Bayh as "too safe" for Obama's ticket.Bayh is widely seen as the safest pick Obama can make. He brings relatively little baggage (or potential baggage) to the ticket and is so on message that it's hard to see him making any big mistake while out campaigning in the fall.
But, the very safety that recommends Bayh to many Democrats is seen as a potential problem by others. The theory goes that Obama has generated so much excitement and interest from all sorts of people -- traditional Democratic constituencies and even those who have never been interested in politics before -- that picking a standard-issue Washington politician would drain some of the excitement and sense of "candidacy as movement" from Obama.In other words: Evan Bayh's biggest negative is his lack of apparent negatives.
I'll give Chris an 'A' for effort, but if I were the Obama campaign, the last thing I would want in a running mate is someone who is creating stories on their own.
At the end of the day, after re-reading Cillizza's previous "Case for / Case against" pieces, I'm convinced that our friend over at the Post has convinced himself that, in the least, Evan Bayh stands a serious chance in the veepstakes. And, more importantly, he would be a legitimate asset to the ticket if selected.
Agree with me? Disagree completely? Let's hear it.
This may not make me very popular, but I do have to wonder what it is anybody thinks a non-debate between John McCain and Barack Obama at Rick Warren's church is going to accomplish, other than stoke Warren's ego. The candidates aren't actually going to interact, and they won't take questions from audience members. They might just as well unveil a matched set of campaign ads and save us all 59 minutes.
This is indeed a curious event. What does Faith and Public Life get out of co-sponsoring the forum? Rick Warren is hardly a liberal. While he's good on a couple of issues like poverty and HIV/AIDS, " he opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and supports the death penalty" - and he's endorsed some truly nasty African homophobia.
I was all in favor of the last such event at Messiah College. That allowed Democrats to explore their values in a novel context. I'm sure that this one gives my friends at FiPL a higher profile, but the cost for that is putting a blessing on Warren as a centrist, a benediction I'm not sure he deserves.
But the powers that be within the Democratic party have apparently decided that their top priority in religious outreach this year is getting the kind of people Rick Warren represents. I don't know if that has anything to do with Leah Daughtry's program, or the influence of the usual suspects. It's a bad idea, whoever it belongs to. Here's the partisan ID among selected religious groups, according to the Pew Forum:
And here's how those same people broke for the candidates in a recent poll:
Given the first results, I'm willing to bet that the second is a bit of an outlier, especially since the second is based on Registered Voters, not a solid measure at this stage of the game. But the point remains the same either way. If you look at the numbers, Catholics and mainline Protestants are the swing vote this year, not Evangelicals. So what makes the latter so much more desirable than the former? I've never gotten a straightforward answer to that question.
Barack Obama has met with top Israeli and Palestinian officials. His basic message has been that he is a friend of Israel who is committed to the special relationship between the two countries. He also said he would use "big sticks and big carrots" with Iran.
Republican John McCain held a town hall meeting in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and had a news conference scheduled for later in the day. Even so, he finds himself struggling to keep up with the attention paid to Barack Obama's foreign travel.
The federal minimum wage goes up 70 cents an hour on Thursday, to $6.55. Although only 2 percent of hourly earners are paid the federal minimum, it does indirectly affect many more workers.
An Israeli professor believes that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear program within the next four to seven months. He bases that timeline on unsuccessful diplomatic efforts and Iranian tehnological advances.
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After living as a fugitive for more than a decade, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested Monday on charges related to genocide and war crimes during the Bosnian war. U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke discusses a meeting he had with Karadzic in 1995.
My dear grandmother, God bless her soul, used to talk about Chuck Grassley as "her Senator." Why a Danish immigrant who worked her way up from having barely two nickels to rub together - before the Depression hit - would endorse a conservative toad like Grassley over an ex-miner like Tom Harkin, I cannot say. She just did.
What would she have said about this?
Evangelical Christians in Iowa, dominant in the state's Republican Party, have denied Sen. Charles E. Grassley his request for a place on the state's delegation to this summer's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Mr. Grassley may attend the party's Sept. 1-4 nominating convention in St. Paul, but not as a voting delegate.
With a majority of nine out of 17 members on the Iowa Republican central committee, religious conservatives made Iowa Christian Alliance President Steve Scheffler chairman of Iowa's 40-member delegation in a vote immediately after their state party convention July 12.
"The Republican Party of Iowa is moving significantly to the right on social issues," the just-ousted Iowa Republican National Committee member Steve Roberts told The Washington Times. "It hurts John McCain's chances to win this state."
Other party officials said money for the party is drying up because of past mismanagement and current religious dominance, which has turned traditional Republican politics upside down.
"It's pretty well controlled now by the Christian Alliance," Mr. Roberts said. "If somebody came to me and wanted to be a delegate to the national party convention, I used to say, 'Talk to the state party chairman or to Grassley.' Now it's very simple. You go to the Christian Alliance, and they determine who is a delegate, and you have to do exactly as they say."
In recent weeks, religious activists replaced Mr. Roberts as the national Republican committeeman and also replaced the national committeewoman with pro-life advocates who also oppose gay marriage.
Barring Mr. Grassley from voting-delegate status is seen as a blow to him as the senior Republican official in the state, who normally might have led the convention's delegation.
Mr. Grassley had said "yes" when asked by Iowa Republican Chairman Stewart Iverson if he wanted to be a voting delegate to the national convention, Mr. Iverson said.
Political observers in Iowa saw the move against Mr. Grassley as retribution for his having tangled with evangelical pastors in his state. He initiated a Senate Finance Committee investigation of six televangelists for conspicuous personal spending.
Now, there's no love lost for Grassley, who's demonstrated his willingness to use religion to suit political purposes before.
But in addition to demonstrating how state GOP's are marching steadily to the right and on out of the mainstream, this story provides a huge opportunity for progressives willing to use it. Religious concern trolls constantly berate the Democrats for supposedly refusing Bob Casey Sr. a speaking spot at the '92 convention because of his pro-life positions. Can we pretty please with sugar on top do the same here? Oh, sure, the Republicans will deny it. But you and I know better. The modern GOP is so off-the-hook that they bounced a Senator from his delegation for the sin of demanding financial accountability from religious con men.
Repeat as necessary.
(Via our friends at Right Wing Watch.)
Iraq's parliament passed a long-sought provincial election law, but only after Kurdish lawmakers walked out in a dispute over the way elections would be conducted in the northern city of Kirkuk. Iraq's president rejected the draft law as unconstitutional.
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