GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





OBAMA CAMPAIGN ACCEPTS FEB. 21 DATE FOR AUSTIN DEBATE

Will take place in Austin; location yet to be determined, per release from Obama camp.

From the Obama campaign's press release:

"U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today announced that he has accepted an invitation to the Texas Democratic Party, Univision, CNN debate in Austin, Texas on February 21. This will be the 19th debate that Senator Obama has attended during this presidential primary.

"'We’re pleased that Senator Obama will have the opportunity to debate in Texas and that it will air on Univision, ensuring a wide and diverse audience,' said Obama Texas State Director Adrian Saenz.

"Univision and CNN will each provide a journalist to pose questions to the candidates. CNN will provide the moderator for the event. The debate will air live on CNN and will re-air Thursday night at 10:30 PM CT in Spanish on the Univision network. It will also air in Spanish on CNN en Español on Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening.

"The candidates will debate in Austin, Texas on Thursday, February 21 from 7pm-8:30pm, Central. The debate location has not been finalized."

(c) Copyright February 11, 2008 by Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved





Science Debate Is Set; Now, Will Candidates Come?

By Andrew C. Revkin
February 11, 2008, 11:01 am

Question for candidates: Should we keep sending people into space when a robotic rover can take pictures of the Victoria Crater on Mars? (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell)

The organizers of a proposed science and technology debate among the presidential candidates have set a date, April 18, and place, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. This would be four days before the Pennsylvania primary.

The group, ScienceDebate2008.com, has sent invitations to each of the remaining candidates.

Now the big question is whether their handlers will allow them to engage the thorniest scientific issues — like the dribble of money that the United States has invested in energy research through Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses; fetal rights and embryonic stem cell research; the need to add a cost to burning fossil fuels; reconciling science with belief in an all-powerful deity; the theory of evolution, which so many Americans (read voters) reject; etc.

[UPDATE: The organizers pointed out that the invitation specified that they are not “interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate,” although they also said no subjects will be expressly excluded ahead of time.

In an email and then a phone chat today, Shawn Otto, the CEO of Science Debate, Inc., which was set up to make the event happen, said the main goal was to get the candidates to explore how an invigorated science and technology enterprise could form the foundation for sustained, and sustainable, economic activity.

Here’s an excerpt from the email:

“This has never been about a science quiz. It has always been about the big policy issues facing the next president…. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett just signed on because this is an issue of American economic competitiveness. Science and technology have driven 50% of our growth in GDP over the last 50 years, and yet by 2010 90% of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia. That’s a huge fundamental change the next president is going to have to be dealing with, and yet nobody’s talking about it….”

“How are we going to compete? We’re seeing the candidates talk about short-term economic stimulus packages, but what about the fundamentals of our economic engine: our investment in research, and in science and math education? And that’s before we even talk about climate change or the environment, or health care…. This debate is about your pocketbook, it’s about your job, it’s about whether you can still afford health care, whether we’re going to do something about climate change or not, what kind of world your kids are going to be living in in ten or fifteen years, how are we going to respond to peak oil, where is the next transistor economy going to come from? Everybody knows these investments spin off economic engines – the transistor and Google are two examples….

This is the future of America, not some quirky science quiz. I’m not a scientist, I’m a writer and a concerned citizen. I care about the future for my son’s sake and for my own conscience, and I’m doing everything I can to elevate these issues in our national dialogue because they are that important…”]

Is there a big enough constituency passionate about science and related issues for campaign strategists to justify having candidates spend an hour or two on such prickly issues?

The latest polling from the Pew Research Center on public concern (the lack of it, actually) about climate change doesn’t suggest a groundswell. I’d like to think the candidates and their advisers will consent, but my guess is they’ll offer surrogates (although I’ll happily be proved wrong).

John Tierney, over at TierneyLab, asked readers back in December to suggest questions. I posted on the debate prospect when David Goldston, who spent 20 years in the science-policy tussle on Capitol Hill, said it could backfire.

The organizers of the debate have been accumulating thousands of endorsements — including those of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science — and hundreds of possible questions, as well, which can be explored on their Web site.

The site contains reams of useful background provided by the organizers, who include two screenwriters, one of whom is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin (whose 199th birthday happens to be Tuesday), and the science blogger and author Chris Mooney.

If you were an adviser to one of the front-tier candidates, what would you suggest?





From Move On.org

It's only been up a couple hours, and already thousands of people have viewed it. If you think it's funny, please pass it on. If enough of us do, we can make it rise to the top of the YouTube rankings so even more people see it. Here's the video:

There is some mild profanity at one point in the video. We want you to know, in case you don't want to watch. The reason we're sending this video to you is because it does a good job holding McCain accountable for his consistent war-mongering, and shows quite clearly how out-of-touch with the American people he is on the issue of Iraq.

Here's the link to the video: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3409&id=12114-546643-mPH50B&t=1259

Thanks.
--Adam G.





On Middle East, Obama no 'Manchurian Candidate'

ROGER COHEN
SPIEGEL ONLINE - February 11, 2008, 11:39 AM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,534413,00.html

Barack Obama is what the Middle East needs an American leader to be: a strong but not uncritical supporter of Israel. Yet it is a tough position for him to hold.

I believe Barack Obama is a strong but not uncritical supporter of Israel. That is what the Middle East needs from an American leader: the balance implicit in a two-state solution.

Yet it's a tough position for Obama to hold in this presidential campaign because his Jewish credentials are under scrutiny.

On January 22, with Gaza sealed and the suffering of Palestinians prompting calls for a UN Security Council statement deploring their plight, Obama penned a strongly worded letter of support for Israel.

"The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel, and should make clear that Israel has a right to defend itself against such actions," Obama wrote to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the United Nations. Otherwise, he declared, it should not speak at all.





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