A round-up of coverage of Senator Obama’s visit to Afghanistan in the US Media.

From CBS News:

The Washington Post:

Obama, traveling as part of an official congressional delegation, landed in the Afghan capital on Saturday morning under tight security amid a surge of Taliban activity in recent weeks. After a briefing at Bagram air base, he flew by helicopter to the northeastern city of Jalalabad in Nangahar province, where he met with U.S. soldiers and local leaders. From there, according to a U.S.-based aide, Obama set out by helicopter for a look at parts of eastern Afghanistan before returning to Kabul for a dinner with senior Afghan officials.

The presumptive Democratic nominee shied away from public comments as his trip began, belying the intense interest in the trip and its political ramifications. McCain used his new weekly radio address on Saturday to attack Obama’s foreign policy credentials and judgment. But as McCain sparred with his rival, the Illinois senator received an unexpected boost from Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, who told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he looked favorably on Obama’s call for a 16-month timetable for withdrawing most U.S. forces from Iraq.

The Los Angeles Times:

In a speech last week, Obama said that troops should be drawn down in Iraq and two additional combat brigades deployed in Afghanistan, a war he said the U.S. couldn’t afford to lose.

His visit to Afghanistan comes at a time of sharply deteriorating security across the country. Suicide bombings are an everyday occurrence, and the number of foreign troops killed last month was the highest since the start of the war.

The presumptive Democratic nominee and senator from Illinois is part of an official congressional delegation that includes Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). The lawmakers made a brief visit to Jalalabad airfield in eastern Afghanistan, greeting American troops from their respective home states.

At Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Obama and the others met with senior military officials and got a briefing from the commander of American forces in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser. The decision to have the delegation meet with Schloesser probably reflected growing U.S. concern over infiltration of fighters from tribal lands on the Pakistani side of the frontier, which borders Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

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2008 Presidential candidate Ralph Nader discusses the situation in the Gaza strip and challenges Senator Barack Obama’s comments to AIPAC.

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John McCain held a Town Hall meeting today with GM Tech Center employees in Warren, Michigan. Here is part of the Q&A session.

Separately, Senator McCain called for a $5,000 tax credit to help American consumers buy electric vehicles. He had earlier toured the GM plant where the new GM prototype is being designed. From the Los Angeles Times:

John McCain today called for a tax credit to help American consumers buy electrically powered automobiles as part of an effort to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Speaking to General Motors workers after company officials gave him a tour of the design room for the prototype Chevy Volt, the Republican presidential candidate noted that a barrier to the widespread use of electric cars is their exorbitant cost.
“I don’t know if you remember, but the first cellphone cost $1,000,” he told a crowd of several hundred workers in a showroom at the GM Technical Center here.

“I would support tax credits for Americans who choose to buy the Volt and other automobiles that put us on the track to energy independence,” McCain said. He later said the credit would be worth $5,000.

He called the project an “integral part of our ability to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.”

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The McCain campaign unveiled a new ad today attacking Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan. The ad is running in a dozen battleground states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri.

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It is certainly true that fact-finding missions have always come before major policy addresses. With Obama, it appears to be inverse though as is generally the case with Obama, what does it matter? He always changes his views even though he protests that he isn’t changing anything at all. He has always been on message. Still it is hard to regard Obama’s upcoming trip to Europe as anything but a major campaign rally. Generally, presidential candidates of any country when they venture overseas during a campaign treat such visits with circumspect respect. Meetings with foreign leaders are par for the course and are held behind closed doors. There are even addresses to forums, primarily chambers of commerce or economic associations that are not open to general public. Obama is going to change that.

Marc Ambinder in the Atlantic writes:

Obama’s trip to Europe will be a huge event…maybe as big as his convention, maybe as big as a debate. Sheer curiosity will translate into enormous crowds, even as most of Obama’s events will be small and pooled. The European press will go ga-ga, uncritically. If Obama does speak at the Brandenburg gate — and it’s unclear whether he will at this point — you could envision a crowd of more than 200,000 watching and cheering him.

I have no doubt that if Obama were running for President of Europe, he would win in a landslide. But he is not, he is running for President of the United States and delivering an address to foreign crowds represents a dangerous politicalization of an American campaign. What if Obama loses in November, something still in the realm of possibilities, what then becomes of US-European relations?

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Here is an overview of who is spending money where. This has been compiled from various sources including CNN, Advertising Age, Media Hot Line, ClickZ, Internet Age and Ad Week.

Here’s a state-by-state breakdown of campaign television spending in battleground states: Michigan: McCain, $2.6 million to Obama’s $1.6 million; Ohio: McCain, $3.2 million to Obama’s $1.7 million; Pennsylvania: McCain, $4.2 million to Obama’s $2.7 million. Additionally, McCain has dropped $1.5 million into Missouri and another $1.9 million on national cable. These are the totals to date.

Obama has spent $60,000 in Alaska; $3.5 million in Florida; $1.3 million in Georgia; $1 million in Indiana; $100,000 in Montana; $1 million in North Carolina; and $1.8 million in Virginia, according to a new analysis by TNS/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s political television advertising consultant. In terms of Internet advertising, the Obama campaign spent $329,100 in May. Obama’s campaign did purchase ads on an impression-basis in May. It spent $54,000 on CNN.com and $30,000 on Politico for CPM-based ads. Those buys were a validation and amplification of earlier strategies. Between January and April, it spent $24,000 on CNN.com and $36,000 on Politico. This ad spend is aimed more at getting supporters to sign up that to distribute a political message.

For the week of July 8 - July 14, the McCain campaign had media buys in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. The McCain Campaign is spending the most money in Michigan ($393,566.58), followed by Ohio ($373,357.71) and Pennsylvania ($310,630.01). In addition, the RNC is running ads on McCain’s behalf in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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The McCain campaign tracks Obama’s own Iraq quagmire. This ad is Internet-only. It runs 8 minutes.

What amazes me is how often Obama stutters and is left gasping for air.

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I’m taking the plunge. I’ve reached my breaking point. What’s yours?

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Today in Chicago, the Green Party committed political suicide. No wonder that Ralph Nader walked away. From the International Herald Tribune:

The Green Party, which captured less than 1 percent of the vote in the last U.S. presidential election, has chosen the former Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney as its 2008 presidential candidate.

McKinney, 53, will be joined on the ticket for the election in November by vice presidential candidate Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist and activist.

McKinney received 313 out of 532 votes cast Saturday at the party’s nominating convention in Chicago, Scott McLarty, a spokesman for the party, said.

In the 2004 presidential election, the Green Party drew 119,859 votes, or 0.1 percent of the total votes cast, finishing in sixth place behind the two major parties and three other third-party tickets.

The party’s best performance came in 2000 when Ralph Nader led the ticket and won 2.8 million votes, or 2.7 percent of the total. Some political analysts say Nader, a political and consumer activist, may have drawn votes from the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, and helped tip the election in favor of George W. Bush.

Nader is running for president again this year, as an independent candidate.

McKinney served six terms in Congress but lost her bid for re-election in 2006. She was the first black woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Another former House member from Georgia, Bob Barr, who served as a Republican, is running as the Libertarian Party candidate for president. The major-party presumptive candidates are Senator Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party.

The U.S. Green Party says it is a partner with the European Federation of Green Parties and the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas.

“Green parties are the first parties to recognize that our role in the world is stewardship of Earth’s natural resources rather than domination and unrestrained consumption of the goods of the Earth,” the party said in its proposed platform for the 2008 election.

I appreciate Ms. McKinney’s candor and zeal, but she is also divisive. For the Green Party, this is likely a step back. They would have been better served by nominating an environmentalist, not a political activist. I see the Green Party capturing less than one percent of the vote.

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Here is the Friday, July 11th, 2008 edition of events and news from around the world.

UK Housing Prices Tumble
Negative equity is when you owe more on an asset than what it is worth. In the UK, negative equity fears grow as house prices take record tumble. Negative equity is one of the reasons for increased foreclosures or defaults on loans. More on the situation in Britain from the UK Guardian.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to Face War Crime Charges
The UK Guardian is reporting that the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is likely to face war crime charges at the International Crime Court.

The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, issued a statement yesterday announcing that he would be submitting evidence “on crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years”. The statement said he would then publicly “summarise the evidence, the crimes and name individual(s) charged”.

Moreno-Ocampo told the security council last month that he intended to go after top Sudanese officials, saying the “entire state apparatus” was involved in systematic attacks on civilians.

Long over due and we will see where it goes. Another report on this development from the New York Times.

China and the US Presidential Election
The Asia Sentinel looks at the US Presidential contest and how each candidate might handle US ties with the People’s Republic of China.

Radical Islam in Indonesia
Under Suharto, the radical fringes of Islam were kept under tight wraps but with Indonesia’s nascent political liberalization, there has been a proliferation of Islamic groups across the political spectrum. The Asia Sentinel looks at some of the more radical groups.

India Debates Its Nuclear Agreement with the US
India’s politics is not for the feign of heart. It’s not easy running a nation of nearly a billion people who speak some 700 different languages to boot. It is amazing to watch to India’s political scene. First of all, Prime Minister Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will seek a confidence vote in the Lok Sabha next week. The Indian Communist Party will vote against the agreement. The four Left parties formally withdrew their support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, they sharpened their offensive and vowed to make it “politically impossible” for the Manmohan Singh government to go ahead and clinch the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal. The General Secretary of Indian Communist Party called the agreement a “shocking betrayal”. Meanwhile the opposition Hindu Nationalist Party BJP seems amused by the whole debate. Its leader and likely the next Prime Minister of India should Singh’s government falter said he had “never seen so many people in despair” over an issue. Indian politics. All stories are from the Hindu Times.

Pyongyang Remembers Kim Il-Sung
In case you have ever wondered what a news release from North Korea looks like, here is your chance. Today’s feed from the Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK. Some tidbits:

A delegation of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League headed by Kil Chol Hyok, secretary of its Central Committee, left here today by air to attend the meeting of the Coordinating Council of the World Federation of Democratic Youth to be held in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, the State Academy Beryozka Dancing Troupe of Russia Named after N.S. Nadezhdina headed by Mira Koltsova arrived here today.

Big news I suppose but not a word on the six party talks under way in Beijing on the North Korean nuclear talks. For news on this subject, coverage from Reuters.

Chinese Polar Exploration Sets off from Shanghai
The race for polar resources is on. With hundreds waving goodbye on the dock, an ultra-modern icebreaker left the eastern Shanghai port on Friday morning, marking the start of China’s third scientific expedition to the North Pole. The full story from Xinhua Net.

Sarkozy Lectures The Irish
Ever the diplomat, Nicholas Sarkozy yesterday told “our Irish friends” to get going and not to wait to long to make a decision about how to get out of the mess created by the No vote. Le Monde reports that he, as rotating president of the EU, wants to propose a solution either at the October or the December EU summit. More from Euro Intelligence.

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