While they try to ignore reality, many at least do recognize that having a view which conflicts with the consensus of scientific thought is an inconvenience to promoting their views. Therefore there was considerable excitement in the right wing blogosphere to an article at Daily Tech entitled Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate. It would be great if it was true, but unfortunately it is not. It is simply yet another in a long string of examples of the global warming deniers latching on to any story which supports their ideological biases regardless of whether the story has any credibility.

Those citing the story ignore the update which states that, “After publication of this story, the APS responded with a  statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.”  The American Physical Society has issued this response which is currently on the front page of their web site:

APS Position Remains Unchanged

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS.  The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.”  This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

Read: APS Climate Change Statement

Steve Benen summarized some of the responses to the initial story in the conservative blogosphere. Kevin Drum adds:

Lord Monckton, who triggered the original article in DailyTech, may be a lord, but he’s also a longtime global warming skeptic. There’s nothing new here, and, as you might expect, scientists continue to believe that climate change is largely driven by human activity. Nice try, though.

Nice try, but science is determined based upon experimentation and evidence, not based upon one’s personal whims and political opinions. As Climate Progress points out in their discussion of this story, Deniers say there’s no consensus about global warming. Well, there’s not. There’s well-tested science and real-world observations. As they also note, this evidence is more worrisome than a consensus alone, and “one ignorant editor at one unpeer-reviewed newsletter does not explode it.”  While such an unsound newsletter story certainly does not alter the scientific consensus, this is all it takes to get the right wing blogosphere excited once again. That by itself provides for evidence of why their political babbling on scientific issues can be ignored.

Sen. Barack Obama has been meeting secretly with heavy industry CEOs in Washington to discuss issues that he would face as president.

On the campaign trail, Obama has been highly critical of corporate executives and promised them nothing but tougher regulation and higher taxes. But the unannounced, small evening sessions with them since he clinched the Democratic nomination have been nonconfrontational and cordial.

Obama scheduled the meetings without any hopes of winning the captains of industry over from Sen. John McCain, but to show them they would be able to do business with him in the White House and that the president’s door would be open to the corporate leaders. Their consensus was that he has largely succeeded in that purpose.

This is another example in a long list of cases where people’s misconceptions about Obama change after greater exposure to him and his views. I’m referring to the writer of this op-ed as well as the corporate executives. Those who have read Obama’s work and paid close attention to the influence of University of Chicago economists on his views would not characterize Obama as is done in the second paragraph. The ultimate conclusion is probably correct. Top business executives will vote more for McCain just as they vote Republican every year, but I also think that many have already seen through the stereotypes generally promoted by the right.

I’ve known businessmen who both concede that business does better under Democrats than Republicans but continue to vote Republican. The tendency for the stock market to also do better under Democrats might also help to reduce their fears of a Democratic president.

I fear there will be a handful on the left who will also point to this to claim that Obama is some sort of Republican turncoat. (That is also a segment of the left which tends to be as out of touch with reality as those who still think that George Bush has been a good president.) Obama’s willingness to meet with all segments of society and consider a wide variety of viewpoints is exactly why many of us back him despite how new he is to the political scene. We can be certain that Obama meeting with business leaders is quite different from some notable cases of Republicans doing so, such as with Dick Cheney’s energy task force. It is one thing to discuss their concerns and to understand the importance of business to America . It is quite different to pursue a course of corporate welfare as we’ve seen under the Republicans.

Hunter describes his conservative credentials:

I’m a lifelong Republican - a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp’s Empower America.

Hunter explains why a conservative activist such as himself is backing Obama:

The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies - this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.

Taxes, economic policy and health care reform matter, of course. But how we extract ourselves from the bloody boondoggle in Iraq, how we avoid getting into a war with Iran and how we preserve our individual rights while dealing with real foreign threats - these are of greater importance.

John McCain would continue the Bush administration’s commitment to interventionism and constitutional overreach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. That’s what conservatism used to mean - and it’s what George W. Bush promised as a candidate.

Hunter has reservations about Obama on domestic policy but sees reason to believe that he is not as opposed to conservative views as many on the right are claiming:

…he says just about all the wrong things on domestic issues doesn’t bother me as much as it once would have. After all, the Republicans said all the right things - fiscal responsibility, spending restraint - and it didn’t mean a thing. It is a sad commentary on American politics today, but it’s taken as a given that politicians, all of them, must pander, obfuscate and prevaricate.

Besides, I suspect Obama is more free-market friendly than he lets on. He taught at the University of Chicago, a hotbed of right-of-center thought. His economic advisers, notably Austan Goolsbee, recognize that ordinary citizens stand to gain more from open markets than from government meddling. That’s got to rub off.

It would be more accurate to say that many Democrats are more “free-market friendly” than the right wing noise machine claims. At least many conservatives such as Hunter are more open to considering a Democrat such as Obama, seeing him as more of a centrist than a left wing extremist. At very least, Hunter believes that Obama would do less harm (from a conservative perspective) than the Republicans have done:

But overall, based on his embrace of centrist advisers and policies, it seems likely that Obama will turn out to be in the mold of John Kennedy - who was fond of noting that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Over the last few decades, economic growth has made Americans at every income level better off. For all his borderline pessimistic rhetoric, Obama knows this. And I believe he is savvy enough to realize that the real threat to middle-class families and the poor - an economic undertow that drags everyone down - cannot be counteracted by an activist government.

Or maybe not. But here’s the thing: Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed-in-the-wool, big-government liberal, I’m still voting for him.

These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil - and lost countless lives - and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.

If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It’s not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.

Gears works on Windows XP and Vista computers with both Explorer and Firefox (another free download you should consider) with support for Safari and Opera pending. I don’t know if any blog software other than WordPress supports Gears yet, but quite a few blogs currently use WordPress and therefore this should speed up your browsing as bloggers using WordPress update to the latest version.

While there are considerable differences between Clinton and Obama on issues, these differences are rarely what motivated most people to back Clinton. I don’t think many people backed Clinton specifically because they agree with her opposition to banning cluster bombs or agree with her support for banning flag burning. I just have not seen many Clintonistas push for Clinton because of her crusades against video games and cartoon sex.

Amy Siskind organized the meeting and gives some clues as to what issues they were interested in:

Siskind said Fiorina agreed to provide details regarding McCain’s stances on mandating health insurance coverage for birth control pills, federal mandates for paid maternity leave and a reinvigoration of federal legislation aimed at giving women equal pay for comparable work.

Woman’s isssues apparently dominated the talks. If this is what the Clinton supporters are interested in, the qualifications I added to the first paragraph sure do matter. While her views and tactics often are at odds with liberalism, Clinton and her supporters are clearly supporters of abortion rights, and therefore fall much closer in some areas to Obama than McCain. How many Clinton supporters really are willing to return to the days of shirt hanger abortions, even if McCain compromises with them on coverage for birth control pills and paid maternity leave?

Nuclear disarmament sure sounds radical. One such radical who previously occupied the White House and sounded like this was Ronald Reagan, as even John McCain realizes. We are seeing sime similarities between Obama and Ronald Reagan on foreign policy–yet again. Sure, it might never be accomplished, but it is a worthwhile goal. On this issue I’ll take the side against the conservative bloggers, along with Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and John McCain. George Bush is also on the other side, but it might have something to do with his difficulties in saying the word.

(I primarily like showing such comparisions between Obama and Reagan in the hopes it causes the heads of a few conservatives to explode. If it also causes the heads of some Clintonistas to explode, that’s fine too.)

It turns out that they mean they are not finished this year. They really think Hillary still has a chance. They are running a story reporting: Breaking: Eight Supers Switching to Hillary.They actually think there is a chance that Hillary Clinton is going to be the surprise winner at a roll call vote at the convention, as if eight votes means anything, even if this rumor is true. They make a big deal out of a story in The Politicothat exaggerates complaints that the Obama campaign has rubbed some Democratic Party insiders the wrong way. This was inevitable as party insiders never like to share their power with the new guy, but there are far more people who would be upset by a second coming of the Clintons.

Reaction is mixed in the blogsophere. Clinton backer Pamela Leavey at The Democratic Daily is skeptical and writes that “I’m not big on the rumor thing and I really believe it’s important to support the nominee.” Initial reaction from the hard-core Clintonistas who have been frequenting her blog does not appear to be in agreement with this support for Obama. Not surprisingly, No Quarter goes along with the idea of a convention victory for Clinton, envisioning an uprising in Denver if there is not a roll call vote.

If people think the scattered complaints about Obama are meaningful, this is nothing compared to what would happen if Clinton somehow got the nomination. As I’ve discussed many times in the past, Clinton provides virtually none of the reasons which have motivated me to support the Democrats in recent years while she represents the same qualitiesI have opposed in George Bush. Hillary Clinton doesn’t give me much reason to vote for her over and John McCain despite all the nonsense coming from many Clinton supporters that there is little difference between Clinton and Obama on the issues. Besides, someone who ran for president in a manner as dishonest and disrespectful of the basic principles of democracy as Hillary Clinton is likely to govern in the same manner. The Clinton family, like their counterparts in the Bush party, should never be allowed to return to power.

Clintons in the White House with a compliant majority in Congress is a scary thought. Americans realized this in 1994 and acted on the problem (unfortunately also creating a number of new problems). My bet is that they will realize this again and the nomination of Hillary Clinton will guarantee a victory for John McCain. While I doubt I could ever vote for McCain, in many ways a mixed government with a Democratic Congress to hopefully place checks on McCain is less scary than a one-party government under Hillary Clinton.

Bush vetoed the bill as it reduces subsidies to private insurance companies to treat Medicare patients, where it costs an average of 13% more to care for patients than under the government program. The Medicare Advantage program was part of Bush’s Medicare plan which also created the prescription drug benefit, which both plans being created in a manner to channel increased money to the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which contributed heavily to him, as opposed to improving the Medicare program.

That Clinton and McCain would run similar races might seem odd. Their ideological differences are severe, and no one sane would ever call Clinton a maverick or McCain a feminist. But it’s also true that they share a view of politics and policy. They venerate the Senate as a noble institution, not as the imagination-deadening, soul-destroying hellhole that it is. They regard legislative experience, forging compromises in the trenches, as formative and indispensable. They see having national-security chops as a sine qua non for sitting in the Oval Office.

It was this conception of politics and the presidency, however, that got Hillary into so much trouble in her battle with Obama. And while McCain largely avoids the rhetorical traps she fell into—the laundry-listy rhetoric, the countless small-bore policy proposals—the thrust of his campaign is much the same as hers was: The emphasis on résumé, the willful avoidance of grappling with the desire for change so evident in the electorate, and, perhaps most problematic, the eschewal of big, bold, animating ideas and grand thematics.

This was not, it should be said, the kind of campaign that McCain and his advisers planned at the outset. Back in the days when McCain was still being guided by John Weaver, the strategist–cum–soul mate who crafted his message in 2000 and then fell out of favor in mid-2007 when McCain’s campaign imploded, the idea had been to run on a handful of sweeping reformist goals—entitlement reform, ethics reform, immigration reform, spending reform, etc.—and position McCain as willing to put country ahead of personal political ambition. How? As reported first by The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, when McCain announced his candidacy, he was “inches away” from pledging to serve only one term if elected. “It would have been the most selfless act in modern American politics,” a Republican told Ambinder—and one that would have served as a powerful contrast point in a race against either Clinton or Obama.

But McCain was persuaded at the last minute to abandon the idea by his friends Senator Lindsey Graham and former senator Phil Gramm—just as Clinton was convinced not to run a bolder, more human campaign by the more conservative voices in her sphere. Since then, McCain’s effort, like Clinton’s, has been increasingly poll-driven (offshore oil drilling, anyone?), corporate (the phalanx of lobbyists that surrounds him, robbing him of his reformist cred), and almost entirely lacking any positive vision of what he wants to achieve as president, beyond winning the war in Iraq. Indeed, McCain’s assorted flip-flops, notably regarding his position on the Bush tax cuts, have left him vulnerable to the charge that was ultimately most damaging to Clinton and is even more damaging to him, given his image as a principled straight-talker: that he will say and do anything to win.

McCain’s lack of a positive vision, along with the perception that his campaign is primarily about saying anything to win, might be the most damaging comparison to Clinton. Hillary Clinton campaigned as the inevitable winner, failing to give many voters any real reason to support her (unless her gender was a sufficient reason). Once she no longer looked like a sure winner many Democrats saw no reason to support her, and her desperation measures only gave Democrats a stronger reason to vote against her.

The primaries became all about Obama. It soon became clear that Obama would win as long as he could convince the voters he was ready to be president. Experience did not matter much as all three of the top tier candidates had far less experience than the second tier candidates. Obama’s lack of experience might even have been a plus. For those of us who have been dissatisfied with the status quo in government, and found the Democrats to be preferable to the Republicans but only marginally so, an outsider to Washington might have been the best solution. Having experience teaching Constitutional law and in the state legislature provided Obama with sufficient experience to  still be considered a credible candidate.

With McCain following Clinton’s strategy, the general election campaign remains all about Obama. He will likely win as long as he can convince voters in the general election campaign that he is capable of being president. The Republicans might run an even dirtier campaign than Clinton, but this is far from certain as Obama has shown considerable skill in deflecting dirty attacks. Just as dirty tactics backfired against Clinton by providing more reason to vote for the alternative, Republicans who resort to Rove style attacks will also remind voters of why they don’t want four more years of Bush/Rove/Clinton style politics. Unless McCain gives voters a real reason to vote for him, a majority are likely to vote for Obama, regardless if they are doing so out of a desire for change, support for his views, or just because they are excited about the fresh new face in politics.

Obama’s plans for Michigan can be seen in the memo sent out this morning which I will post under the fold.

TO: Michigan Campaign for Change Partners

FROM: Amy Chapman, Michigan State Director, Obama for America RE: Michigan Campaign Update DATE: July 14, 2008

Here is an update since our last meeting three weeks ago. At that time, we spoke about the structure and organizational goals of Obama for America and the Michigan Campaign for Change. We also followed up with you about existing staff and the need for additional resumes and assistance in more permanent office space. In addition, we asked for your thoughts about what has worked programmatically in past elections and how we could adapt those successful ideas to our current campaign.

Since that meeting, taking your suggestions into account, we now have a large and ever growing structure that will benefit the party and candidates up and down the ticket, not just the top of the ticket. Our progress in Michigan since Senator Obama secured the Democratic nomination has been swift, and we continue growing daily. We are confident that the unprecedented structure we are building will allow us to secure a victory for Barack Obama in Michigan while increasing the electoral success of Democrats at all levels across the state.

Senior Staff

In the past weeks, we have moved quickly to put in place a leadership team that will build and manage the largest general election campaign in Michigan history. To date, we have made the following hires:

Deputy State Director/Political Director—Michael Blake
General Election Director—Pat Maloney
Field Director—Elizabeth Wilkins
Communications Director—Brent Colburn
Constituency Vote Director – Amanda Stitt
Policy Director – Jenna Pilat
Director of Travel—Barb McCallahan

We are confident in the expertise and experience that this team brings to the table. They represent a balance of experience in Michigan, nationally, and with the Obama campaign. They will all be looking to work with you to leverage your expertise and insights as we build towards Election Day.

Field Staff/Operation

To date we have hired close to 90 staffers (mostly field organizers) and will have another 80 (mostly field organizers) hired by early August. In total we will have a minimum of 150 field organizers throughout the state working through the Michigan Democratic Party/Campaign for Change. These organizers will oversee neighborhood teams, where people will lead the local change in their communities by registering voters, knocking on doors, making phone calls and securing more supporters and volunteers for a Michigan victory.
In addition, there are 5 full-time constituency voter coordinators who will oversee the execution of our outreach efforts to a minimum of 13 different constituencies ranging from Women to Veterans.

This is the largest field mobilization that the state has ever seen in any election. These organizers will be working with the nearly 2,000 precinct captains that have been recruited by the state Democratic Party over the past four years and with the local activists and volunteers that you have worked so closely with. Activists will also be working as a part of neighborhood volunteer teams with Obama-recruited volunteers to do the important program work that will help all of us win in November .

As all of us know, this volunteer, neighborhood-based, person-to-person contact, starting now will be the most important way we can properly introduce Barack Obama to voters and fight back when the inevitable falsehoods and intentional inaccuracies spread by our opposition.

These 150 field organizers will be supported by over 50 additional paid staffers, bringing our total in state presence to over 200 paid staff.

As a comparison, the Kerry-Edwards general election effort in 2004 employed 112 staffers, including 87 field staff.

One of the most gratify things about putting together our team, with your assistance, is that our staff represents not just those who had been with Obama early on, but Clinton supporters, Edwards supporters and those who had been neutral during the primaries. I will send our current staff list and contact information later this week.

Offices

We are currently in the midst of finalizing office space across the state. We will have a total of at least 40 offices to start, with other offices opening as we move closer Election Day. Once again, this presence is more than ever before. We are also, as I mentioned at the meeting, looking to co-locate with as many local candidates and local parties as possible to help pool our resources and benefit the ticket. We anticipate that at least three-quarters of these offices will be shared spaces. This co-locating will increase our ability to coordinate our efforts with candidates up and down the ballot in every corner of the state. We will be getting you office opening information later this week as well.

Moving Forward

I want to continue to emphasize that the Michigan Obama for America campaign and the Campaign for Change is committed to working with each of you and your organizations and supporters to create a plan that helps all Democrats this Fall. As we continue to refine our programs and targets, we want your input so that everyone benefits from our collective efforts.

We have met with many of you individually and appreciate the time you have spent in getting our team up to speed. I look forward to our larger meeting later in the week to give you more specific information.

Please feel free to contact me at REDACTED. if you have any questions or comments or would like additional information before then.

Thanks again.

The above cover from The New Yorker has received quite a bit of publicity and comment. It is clearly meant as a satire of all the right wing misconceptions and smears about Obama, and I did find it amusing. Many other are offended, and it is understandable that the Obama campaign felt it to be necessary to issue a statement condemning it. If he failed to do so, there would inevitably be some saying that Obama considered this an accurate portrayal.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, was interviewed by The Huffington Post and had this to say:

I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics. I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed “lack of patriotism” or his being “soft on terrorism” or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.

To some degree reaction to the cover depends upon one’s view as to the intelligence of those seeing it. One problem is that while readers of The New Yorker are likely to pick up on the satire, those in the general population who see it due to being publicized by the media might not. Unfortunately the same people who are susceptible to the whisper campaign about Obama are the ones who would interpret this as an accurate portrayal of what they believe is the real Obama. It might have been more effective if this was portrayed as the thought balloon of a conservative, or shown as coming up in someone’s email box.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

Obama makes it clear that he plans to leave Iraq. He lays out a sixteen month schedule, but as he has often done in the past, he make sit clear that the specifics can change based upon the situation at the time and the advice he receives from the commanders on the ground:

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

Obama concludes with another clear example of where his views differ from McCain’s:

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

Hopefully this puts an end to the erroneous media reports that Obama has changes his views on the war.

Obama was also interviewed about his foreign policy views on CNN by Fareed Zakaria. The interview included Obama’s views of Muslim extremism from the perspective of someone who has lived in a Muslim country, and how he would handle bin Laden if captured:

ZAKARIA: But how do you view the problem within Islam? As somebody who saw it in Indonesia … the largest Muslim country in the world?

OBAMA: Well, it was interesting. When I lived in Indonesia — this would be ‘67, ‘68, late ’60s, early ’70s — Indonesia was never the same culture as the Arab Middle East. The brand of Islam was always different.

But around the world, there was no — there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions like rule of law.

And now in Indonesia, you see some of those extremist elements. And what’s interesting is, you can see some correlation between the economic crash during the Asian financial crisis, where about a third of Indonesia’s GDP was wiped out, and the acceleration of these Islamic extremist forces.

It isn’t to say that there is a direct correlation, but what is absolutely true is that there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there’s bottom-up economic growth.

You know, the way we have to approach, I think, this problem of Islamic extremism … is we have to hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively.

But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse.

And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together result in us not only being less effective in hunting down and isolating terrorists, but also in alienating what need to be our long-term allies on a whole host of issues.

ZAKARIA: If U.S. forces in Afghanistan captured Osama bin Laden, what would you do with him, and you were president?

OBAMA: Well, I think that, if he was — if he was captured alive, then we would make a decision to bring the full weight of not only U.S. justice, but world justice down on him. And I think that — and I’ve said this before — that I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty. I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes. But I certainly think plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach. Watch what Obama says about bin Laden »

Now, I think this is a big hypothetical, though. Let’s catch him first. And the fact that we have failed to seriously go after al Qaeda over the last five years, because of the distraction of Iraq, I think we are now seeing the consequences of that in Afghanistan.

That’s not the only problem we have in Afghanistan. We have not dealt with the narco-trafficking that’s taking place there. We have not provided farmers there an option beyond poppy. I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence.

So, there are a lot of problems there. But a big chunk of the issue is that we allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda to regenerate itself when we had them on the ropes. That was a big mistake, and it’s one I’m going to correct when I’m president.

The strategy being employed in Louisiana by proponents of ID - including the Seattle-based Discovery Institute - is more subtle and potentially more difficult to challenge. Instead of trying to prove that ID is science, they have sought to bestow on teachers the right to introduce non-scientific alternatives to evolution under the banner of “academic freedom”.

“Academic freedom is a great thing,” says Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California. “But if you look at the American Association of University Professors’ definition of academic freedom, it refers to the ability to do research and publish.” This, he points out, is different to the job high-school teachers are supposed to do. “In high school, you’re teaching mainstream science so students can go on to college or medical school, where you need that freedom to explore cutting-edge ideas. To apply ‘academic freedom’ to high school is a misuse of the term.”

“It’s very slick,” says Forrest. “The religious right has co-opted the terminology of the progressive left… They know that phrase appeals to people.”

The article disccusses Jindal’s connections with the religious right:

On 28 June, Louisiana’s Republican governor, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, signed the bill into law. The development has national implications, not least because Jindal is rumoured to be on Senator John McCain’s shortlist as a potential running mate in his bid for the presidency.

Born in 1971 to parents recently arrived from India, Jindal is a convert to Roman Catholicism and a Rhodes scholar - hardly the profile of a typical Bible-belt politician. Yet in a recent national television appearance he voiced approval for the teaching of ID alongside evolution. He also enjoys a close relationship with the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a lobbying group for the religious right whose mission statement includes “presenting biblical principles” in “centers of influence”. It was the LFF which set the bill in motion earlier this year.

“We believe that to teach young people critical thinking skills you have to give them both sides of an issue,” says Gene Mills, executive director of the LFF. When asked whether the new law fits with the organisation’s religious agenda, Mills told New Scientist: “Certainly it’s an extension of it.”

Opposition to this attempt to teach creationism instead of legitimate science is not limited to the left. Last week I quoted John Derbyshire’s criticism of the Discovery Institute. The same post criticizes this bill and refers back to a previous post in which he criticized the bill on sound conservative grounds:

The entire effect of this law, if Gov. Jindal signs it, will be that one cartload of Louisiana taxpayers’ money will go to the Discovery Institute for their mendacious “textbooks,” then another cartload will go into the pockets of lawyers to defend the inevitable challenge to the law in federal courts, which will inevitably be successful, as they always are, and should be.

Any Louisianian who wants his kids to have a religious education can send them to parochial schools; although if the parochial school is Roman Catholic, the kids will learn standard biology (”Darwinism”) in science classes, since the RC Church — Gov. Jindal’s church — approves it. Or they can home school them. Everybody’s fine with this. I’m fine with it. Louisiana Coalition for Science is fine with it. Raise you kids the way you want to. You may not, though — you constitutionally may not — oblige taxpayers to fund your religious beliefs.

Veto this bill, Gov. Jindal, or explain to Louisiana taxpayers the pointless waste of public money that will inevitably ensue from your signing it.

A Schwarzenegger appointment would add even more star power to a hypothetical Obama administration, and would allow Obama to make an appointment from across the aisle that would not upset his core supporters.

It probably would not upset his post-partisan core supporters but some long-time Democrats might not go along. I find via Memeorandum that Pamela Leavey at The Democratic Daily does object. Seeing this objection to Schwarzenegger raises a question in my mind about support or opposition to California politicians.  Pamela, at least back in the days when I worked with her at The Democratic Daily , did seem to support Diane Feinstein. She is a Democrat that, while certainly not as bad as Lieberman, is one which I think the Democrats would be wise to get rid of. Between her right wing record on civil liberties issues and her support for Bush’s Medicare policy she has not been a Democrat who I would see any value in voting for (beyond backing her over a worse Republican opponent).

Living far from California I am certainly not as aware of all the specifics of the positions held by either Feinstein or Schwarzenegger but I have a hard time seeing how someone could support a conservative Democrat such as Feinstein and oppose a liberal Republican such as Schwarzenegger. While there might be some specific examples, in general I do not see that overall Feinstein is any closer to liberal Democratic positions than Schwarzenegger. In both cases I am sure there are positions where I would agree and disagree, and therefore I would not care if either wound up in a cabinet position dealing with an area where I agreed with them. To support Feinstein and have such a blanket opposition to Schwarzenegger can only be based upon pure partisanship. Hopefully reducing such knee jerk partisanship will be one of the accomplishments of Obama.

Pamela also writes:

It’s incredibly far-fetched that Obama would even consider Schwarzenegger for the role of “energy czar” when there’s a wealth of Democrats far more qualified than Schwarzenegger. Of the top of my head, Schwarzenegger doesn’t hold a candle on environmental issues to Democratic Party environmentalists like Al Gore, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

Perhaps our views on Feinstein aren’t as far apart as she does pick the better of the two California Senators.  I doubt Gore would be interested in the  position. Kerry would be a fine choice but I would prefer to see him as Secretary of State, or possibly even Attorney General.  Energy policy might actually be a good position for a  liberal Republican to  help develop a bipartisan consensus, so the appointment of Schwarzenegger does actually sound like a reasonable choice.

The Los Angeles Times look at the areas where Obama and McCain agree. Both support ending the federal ban on funding stem cell research. They quote John Isaacs, an arms control advocate, of finding common ground between the two and coming to this conclusion:

“It debunks the common view that Obama is the most liberal Democratic senator,” Isaacs said. “And it debunks the view that McCain is really the third Bush term.”

They find other areas where their views are similar:

On immigration, faith-based social services, expanded government wiretapping, global warming and more, Obama and McCain have arrived at similar stances — even as they have spent weeks trying to amplify the differences between them on other issues, such as healthcare and taxes.

The article does overlook some significant differences on these issues. Obama’s position on faith-based social programs takes steps to preserve separation of church and state which McCain disagrees on, making it a mistake to say the two agree on the issue. McCain’s support for cap and trade sounds similar to Obama’s view on the surface, but McCain’s program is far weaker. The article is inaccurate in claiming that Obama’s views on Iraq have come any closer to McCain’s. The fundamental disagreement remains that Obama understands that our presence in Iraq is part of the problem and supports leaving while McCain is willing to remain in Iraq for one hundred years.

The article is also inaccurate on their positions on FISA. While both supported the compromise, they came to the compromise from different perspectives. Democrats such as Obama who supported the compromise saw this as an improvement over the status quo and desired to reduce even further the ability for the government to engage in warrant-less wiretapping, along with opposing the retroactive immunity. Republicans who supported the compromise would prefer that some of the restrictions not be included. In a democracy two different groups might both vote for a compromise bill, but that does not mean that their views are the same. Obama and McCain will likely handle this issue far differently if elected. Obama would be far more likely to respect the rule of law in ordering wiretaps, and would be far more likely than McCain to have previous abuses investigated.

Another area where the two do have similar views is immigration:

Although those issues are not prominent in the campaign debate, the candidates are also converging on the major issue of immigration — to the surprise and delight of immigrant advocates and businesses who depend on their labor.

“The best news all year is that after competitive presidential primaries in both parties, we end up with nominees on both sides who get it on immigration,” said John Gay, an official with the National Restaurant Assn. who heads a business coalition favoring a legalization plan for undocumented immigrant workers. “That was by no means a certainty when the campaign got started.”

Unfortunately McCain has actually been all over the place on immigration when it came time to vote. He also used his influence to prevent an immigration bill from being considered this year to avoid having it become a campaign issue. While one businessman above might be happy with McCain, this has caused a number of headaches for businessmen in the tourist industry here in Michigan (and I assume elsewhere as well).

While not discussed in this article, yet another issue where the partisan divide is now decreased is over torture. At least in terms of rhetoric, McCain breaks from the Bush administration’s support of torture, but he has been less consistent when voting.

A race between Obama and McCain does have two candidates with views more attractive to the center than was the case four years ago, with McCain representing an improvement from the extremism of George Bush in some areas. The Republicans under Bush had moved so far towards the extreme right that they had no choice but to move a bit towards the middle to win any election, including primary battles among long time Republicans. While an improvement, McCain remains far to the right of center. leaving Obama as the better alternative for independents and centrists, as well as Democrats.