Gen. Powell's endorsement of Senator Obama is great, but let's not let up now.
We all have to work -- knock on doors, make calls, donate, whatever you can do.
But most importanty, we have to vote! None of the other stuff counts unless we bury McCain in votes!
FactChecking Biden-Palin Debate
October 3, 2008
Posted Sep 17th 2008 1:06PM
by TMZ Staff
John McCain has weighed in over Barack Obama's reported slap in the face to Lindsay Lohan. The Chicago Sun-Times quotes an unnamed high-level Barack source who says they rejected Lohan's offer to host an event because she "is not exactly the kind of high-profile star who would be a positive for us."Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign tells TMZ, "So let me get this straight -- they turned away Lindsay Lohan, but Barack Obama has friends like unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and convicted felon Tony Rezko? Maybe LiLo is just too upstanding for Barack Obama."UPDATE: Tommy Vietor, Obama's spokesperson, just told TMZ, "Glad to see they're focused on the important issues over in McCain HQ."
Ken Burns criticizes McCain's vp pick
Filmmaker says Sarah Palin is 'supremely unqualified'
By Paul J. Gough
Sept 22, 2008
NEW YORK -- Count renowned filmmaker Ken Burns as someone who isn't enamored of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The maker of "The Civil War" and "The War" didn't flinch from criticizing GOP presidential candidate John McCain and Palin when asked at a panel discussion Monday at Fordham University's law school."He (McCain) selected someone who is so supremely unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and he has turned the selection process into a high school popularity contest and an 'American Idol' competition," Burns said. He said that McCain made a "cynical" pick in what he said was the most important decision of his presidential candidacy.Burns, whose lifelong work is in American history, said that "in the whole history of the Republic there has been no one with as thin as a credential" as Palin. He said it was, for McCain, a "Hail Mary pass" that will be decided in November.Burns was being honored, along with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer, with lifetime achievement awards at Monday night's News and Documentary Emmy Awards. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, along with Fordham, sponsors a panel with the winners the morning before the ceremony.Schieffer didn't take a stand like Burns did, but he did defend the mainstream media's coverage of Palin after she was named McCain's running mate."Sarah Palin is a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. The presidency is the most powerful office in the world," Schieffer said. "It seems to me that some would suggest we should just accept on faith that Sarah Palin is qualified."Schieffer paid tribute to Palin and her remarkable and compelling life story but said that the mainstream media -- not the blogs that spread rumors that the MSM ignored -- didn't mistreat her. Schieffer called Palin's selection a "true game changer" that allowed the GOP to seize the momentum coming out of the conventions earlier this month."But the game changer that Wall Street presented last week has trumped that, and now this campaign is no longer about Sarah Palin," Schieffer said. "It is about which of these candidates is going to come up with the right answers on what has happened on Wall Street."
2008 Nielsen Business Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
September 22, 2008Editorial Observer
Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race By BRENT STAPLES
It was not that long ago that black people in the Deep South could be beaten or killed for seeking the right to vote, talking back to the wrong white man or failing to give way on the sidewalk. People of color who violated these and other proscriptions could be designated “uppity niggers” and subjected to acts of violence and intimidation that were meant to dissuade others from following their examples.
The term “uppity” was applied to affluent black people, who sometimes paid a horrific price for owning nicer homes, cars or more successful businesses than whites. Race-based wealth envy was a common trigger for burnings, lynchings and cataclysmic episodes of violence like the Tulsa race riot of 1921, in which a white mob nearly eradicated the prosperous black community of Greenwood.
Forms of eloquence and assertiveness that were viewed as laudable among whites were seen as positively mutinous when practiced by people of color. As such, black men and women who looked white people squarely in the eye — and argued with them about things that mattered — were declared a threat to the racial order and persecuted whenever possible.
This obsession with black subservience was based in nostalgia for slavery. No sane person would openly express such a sentiment today. But the discomfort with certain forms of black assertiveness is too deeply rooted in the national psyche — and the national language — to just disappear. It has been a persistent theme in the public discourse since Barack Obama became a plausible candidate for the presidency.
A blatant example surfaced earlier this month, when a Georgia Republican, Representative Lynn Westmoreland, described the Obamas as “uppity” in response to a reporter’s question. Mr. Westmoreland, who actually stood by the term when given a chance to retreat, later tried to excuse himself by saying that the dictionary definition carried no racial meaning. That seems implausible. Mr. Westmoreland is from the South, where the vernacular meaning of the word has always been clear.
The Jim Crow South institutionalized racial paternalism in its newspapers, which typically denied black adults the courtesy titles of Mr. and Mrs. — and reduced them to children by calling them by first names only. Representative Geoff Davis, Republican of Kentucky, succumbed to the old language earlier this year when describing what he viewed as Mr. Obama’s lack of preparedness to handle nuclear policy. “That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” he said.
In the Old South, black men and women who were competent, confident speakers on matters of importance were termed “disrespectful,” the implication being that all good Negroes bowed, scraped, grinned and deferred to their white betters.
In what is probably a harbinger of things to come, the McCain campaign has already run a commercial that carries a similar intimation, accusing Mr. Obama of being “disrespectful” to Sarah Palin. The argument is muted, but its racial antecedents are very clear.
The throwback references that have surfaced in the campaign suggest that Republicans are fighting on racial grounds, even when express references to race are not evident. In a replay of elections past, the G.O.P. will try to leverage racial ghosts and fears without getting its hands visibly dirty. The Democrats try to parry in customary ways.
Mr. Obama seems to understand that he is always an utterance away from a statement — or a phrase — that could transform him in a campaign ad from the affable, rational and racially ambiguous candidate into the archetypical angry black man who scares off the white vote. His caution is evident from the way he sifts and searches the language as he speaks, stepping around words that might push him into the danger zone.
These maneuvers are often painful to watch. The troubling part is that they are necessary.
Though Koch is a lifelong Democrat, he backed President Bush for re-election in 2004. He said at the time that he thought Bush was better equipped to combat international Islamic terrorism than Democrat John Kerry was. But Koch, who was mayor of New York City from 1977 to 1989, said Tuesday he has concluded that the country would be safer in the hands of Obama and running mate Joe Biden than it would be in those of the GOP ticket, John McCain and Sarah Palin. He said "protecting and defending the U.S. means more than defending us from foreign attacks." Defending the nation also encompasses such concerns as civil liberties, abortion rights, gay rights and access to health insurance, he said. Koch said he is particularly troubled by Palin's record in those areas. "If the vice president were ever called on to lead the country, there is no question in my mind that the experience and demonstrated judgment of Joe Biden is superior to that of Sarah Palin," Koch said. "Sarah Palin is a plucky, exciting candidate, but when her record is examined, she fails miserably with respect to her views on the domestic issues that are so important to the people of the U.S., and to me." In a brief telephone interview, Koch cited news reports that as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin threatened to fire the city librarian after the woman said she would not be willing to censor books. After a wave of public support for the librarian, Palin relented and let her keep her job. "It's Palin primarily," Koch said. "She scares the hell out of me."
(© 2008 The Associated Press.
This afternoon, in my neighborhood deli, I overheard three guys talking about the election. All three of them white, two of them elderly. They all agreed that they could never vote for Sen. Obama because of John McCain's war record.
Not his stance on the environment.
Not his views on the economy.
His war record.
I was furious, but resisted the urge to get into a verbal throw-down with them. What good would that do?
Still, as I crossed the street to go back to my apartment, I thought of my two nephews, both of whom are in the Marines, one of who was wounded (he's fine, thank goodness). And I thought of how John McCain was one of the people responsible for prolonging that Middle East travesty.
I'm well aware of this country's penchant for voting for as much for myth as for reality, but when reality stares you right in the face and you choose to believe the myth, then we're all in trouble.
I'm not saying that John McCain's service to his country was a myth -- indeed, it was honorable and brave. But the idea that his war record somehow qualifies him for the presidency is certainly a myth. If anything, his record on veteran's affairs and on the Iraq conflict makes him dangerous for vets -- and for the nation. Some folks, however, just don't get it.
There is an old saying, used primarily by people in recovery from addiction: "For every bottom, there is a trap door." Its meaning is simple. If you think you've hit bottom from addiction, be careful. That trap door (relapse) is always one step away.
The Republican Party's long-term addiction is to the politics of fear, intolerance, and exclusion. Republicans, of course, explain away their unacceptable behavior by claiming a devotion to "national security" and "traditional values." Anyone who's lost a home, denied proper health care, or been discriminated against because of race, gender, sexual preference, or religion knows better.
You'd have thought that the insane administration of George W. Bush would have scared the GOP straight (I know – wishful thinking). Nope. The Republicans just had to jump up and down on that trap door. And when they fell through it, they landed on John McCain and Sarah Palin. This ticket's Luddite agenda leaves me absolutely befuddled. Do they and their supporters actually believe that they can govern with ideas straight out of the 19th century?
We simply can't allow the Republicans to stagger through the nation's living room like a drunken uncle, ruining lives at home and souring our reputation abroad. They have to go – which is why I just ponied up some more money for the campaign.
August 30, 2008
BELIEFS
For Ex-G.O.P. Official, Obama Is Candidate of Catholic Values
By PETER STEINFELS
When Douglas W. Kmiec endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president last spring, it made waves, especially among Roman Catholics.
A constitutional scholar who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Mr. Kmiec was well known as an articulate opponent of abortion.
He explains his current stance in “Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama,” which will be published in two weeks by Overlook Press. But reached this week in Denver, Mr. Kmiec agreed to give necessarily brief replies to questions sent by e-mail.
Q. What is your position on the morality of abortion, and how is it related to your religious faith?
A. I fully accept the teaching of the church that participating in an abortion is an intrinsic evil. My acceptance of abortion as a grave, categorical wrong is one part respectful deference to authoritative Catholic teaching and one part reasoned deduction from our scientific knowledge of genetics and the beginning of an individual life.
Q. Would you like to see Roe v. Wade overturned?
A. Yes, but not on the terms usually suggested by Republicans. Roe is mistaken constitutional law not just because it invalidated state laws on the subject but because it is contrary to what is described as a self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence, namely, that we have an unalienable right to life from our creator. It may surprise the general citizenry that not a single sitting justice utilizes the declaration as a source of interpretative guidance.
But even employing the jurisprudential methods applied by the modern court, there is no satisfactory showing that abortion as a matter of custom and tradition was properly found to be an implied aspect of the liberties protected by the 14th Amendment.
Q. Given those views, why do you support Barack Obama?
A. There is a widespread misconception that overturning Roe is the only way to be pro-life. In fact, overturning Roe simply returns the matter to the states, which in their individual legislative determinations could then be entirely pro-abortion. I doubt that many of our non-legally-trained pro-life friends fully grasp the limited effect of overturning Roe.
Secondly, pundits like to toss about the notion that the future of Roe depends on one vote, the mythical fifth vote to overturn the decision. There are serious problems with this assumption: first, Republicans have failed to achieve reversal in the five previous times they asked the court for it; and second, it is far from certain that only one additional vote is needed to reverse the decision in light of the principles of stare decisis by which a decided case ought not to be disturbed. Only Justices Thomas and Scalia have written and joined dissenting opinions suggesting the appropriateness of overturning Roe.
So given those views, the better question is how could a Catholic not support Barack Obama?
Senator Obama’s articulated concerns with the payment of a living wage, access to health care, stabilizing the market for shelter, special attention to the needs of the disadvantaged and the importance of community are all part of the church’s social justice mission.
Applying this to the issue of abortion, the senator has repeatedly indicated that he is not pro-abortion, that he understands the serious moral question it presents, and, most significantly, that he wants to move us beyond the 35 years of acrimony that have done next to nothing to reduce the unwanted pregnancies that give rise to abortions.
Q. But all the same, isn’t your support at odds with Catholic teaching?
A. Quite the contrary. Senator Obama is articulating policies that permit faithful Catholics to follow the church’s admonition that we continue to explore ways to give greater protection to human life.
Consider the choices: A Catholic can either continue on the failed and uncertain path of seeking to overturn Roe, which would result in the individual states doing their own thing, not necessarily, or in most states even likely, protective of the unborn. Or Senator Obama’s approach could be followed, whereby prenatal and income support, paid maternity leave and greater access to adoption would be relied upon to reduce the incidence of abortion.
It is, of course, not enough for a Catholic legislator to declare himself or herself pro-choice and just leave it at that, but neither Senator Obama, who is not Catholic except by sensibility, nor Joe Biden, who is a lifelong Catholic, leaves matters in that unreflective way.
In my view, Obama and Biden seek to fulfill the call by Pope John Paul II, in the encyclical “Evangelium Vitae,” to “ensure proper support for families and motherhood.” It cannot possibly contravene Catholic doctrine to improve the respect for life by paying better attention to the social and economic conditions of women which correlate strongly with the number of abortions.
Q. You have been fiercely attacked by some Catholic abortion opponents and in one instance barred from receiving communion.
How do you feel about that?
A. To be the subject of an angry homily at Mass last April 18 and excoriated as giving scandal for endorsing Senator Obama and then to be denied communion for that “offense” was the most humiliating experience in my faith life.
To be separated in that public manner from the receipt of the eucharist, and to be effectively shunned or separated from the body of Christ in the sense of that particular congregation, has left, I very much regret to say, a permanent spiritual scar. Thankfully, it has also given me a new appreciation for the significance of the sacrament in my daily worship. And the priest, having been called to order by Cardinal Roger Mahony, sent me an apology, which of course I have accepted.
Nonetheless, I remain deeply troubled that other church leaders not fall into similar traps. That would do untold damage to the church within the context of American democracy.
There are clearly partisan forces that want nothing more than to manufacture or stir up faith-based opposition to their political opponents. The church has been careful to underscore that Catholics have unfettered latitude to vote for any candidate so long as the intent of the Catholic voter is not to express approval of a grave evil.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Analysis: A perfect night for Clinton, Obama?
By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer
For one evening, their political world was perfect. Or so it seemed.
Standing before thousands of delegates, almost half of them her backers, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton declared it time "to unite as a single party with a single purpose" and urged her followers to help elect once-bitter rival Barack Obama. "We are on the same team," she said, after allowing the applause to build to a crescendo and linger, longer than usual — much like the Democratic primary race itself.
"Barack Obama is my candidate," she said. "And he must be our president."
But did she mean it? And would it matter?
True, her challenges Tuesday night were impossibly high, perhaps mutually exclusive.
She had to both promote her political future and unify her party. Clinton had to somehow convince people that she honestly thought Obama was ready for the presidency. But something stood in her way: Her words.
_Dec. 3, 2007: "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on Day One ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate."
_March 2008. "I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."
_Feb. 23, 2008: "Now, I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified.' The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."
There in no such thing as a perfect world, though the Clinton and Obama image teams tried their best to create one. Hundreds of "Hillary" signs danced before the TV cameras, bearing her breezy blue signature. Her misty-eyed husband, former President Clinton, watched from above.
By the time she was done, Sen. Clinton had delivered a strong, convincing affirmation of Obama and, just as importantly, a thumping of McCain. She did her part. Her husband takes the stage Wednesday and then Obama must make his case to the American people that he will be ready on Day One.
That there's more to him than a single speech.
That he's the perfect man for troubled times. She brought the party together, for one night anyway, and now it's up to Obama to close the deal with voters.
Unlike Obama, she no longer needs to worry about her favorability ratings so there was no pulling punches.
"No way," Clinton said. "No how. No McCain."
She said McCain would be an extension of the Bush administration. No jobs. Poor health care coverage. High gas prices. Home foreclosures. "More war," she said, "Less diplomacy. More of a government where the privileged comes first, and everyone else come last."
In other words, Clinton seemed to say, even if Obama is everything she said during the campaign, he's still a better candidate than McCain. The speech was as much of an attack on McCain as it was an embrace of Obama. "We don't need four more years of the last eight years," she said.
The crowd, Obama and Clinton delegates alike, loved it.
She took the high road Tuesday night because it was also her best road politically; if Obama wins, she still emerges as a central voice in American liberalism, replacing the ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy. And if Obama loses, as Hillary said he would during the campaign, she is blameless and the party can turn back to her without guilt in four years.
Behind the scenes Tuesday, the Obama and Clinton camps struck a tentative deal that would allow some states to cast votes in a roll call before somebody — possibly Clinton herself — cuts short the tally and asks the convention to nominate Obama by unanimous consent. This was her price for ending her historic bid for the presidency in a manner that, however messy, still left Obama in a stronger position than Kennedy left Jimmy Carter in 1980, when the Massachusetts senator extracted platform concessions and shrank from the traditional unity show at the final gavel.
But she did extract her price.
The bill came due Tuesday. The crowd. The applause. The promise of a vote Wednesday, and a speech laced 17 times by some variation of the pronoun "I."
"You never gave up," Clinton told her delegates, a phrase that so perfectly fits her. "You never gave up. And together we made history."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: Ron Fournier has covered politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years.
Culture: Will China Become the No. 1 Superpower?
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 15 August 2008 11:44 am ET
As the world focuses on China during the Olympics and keeps a watchful eye on Russia's military moves in Georgia, there is an underlying expectation — and for some, fear — that China is poised to become the world's new No. 1 superpower.
In fact, a good number of people in many countries believe the torch has already been passed.
In Japan, 67 percent of the people think China will supplant the United States as the world's premiere superpower, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Fifty-three percent of Chinese see that as their fate.
"Most of those surveyed in Germany, Spain, France, Britain and Australia think China either has already replaced the U.S. or will do so in the future," according to the Pew report released in June.
In the United States, hope reigns: 54 percent of Americans doubt China will win out.
Most experts on the topic range from unsure to very skeptical that China is ready to climb the podium. Yet there are clear signs of serious progress.
According to one projection, China is on the verge of supplanting the United States as the primary driver of the global economy, a leading role that dates back to the end of World War II. The Georgia Tech researchers who make this claim have little doubt that China, owing to all the money it now invests in research and development, will soon become the No. 1 technological superpower. Another study, done last year, points out that the sheer numbers of people in China will propel such a transition by mid-century.
All of this has many global citizens worried.
"The perception that China fails to consider the interests of others when making foreign policy decisions is widespread, particularly in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and among China's neighbors South Korea, Japan and Australia," the Pew analysts wrote earlier this month.
But people have been predicting China's ascendancy to world dominance since Napoleon's time. So what does it mean to be the superpower? The answer to that question renders China's fate as murky as the skies over Beijing.
Four elements of a superpower
A superpower "is a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time," according to Alice Lyman Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and an associate professor in National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Four components of influence mark a superpower, Miller says: military, economic, political, and cultural.
After World War II, the United States was virtually the only country left standing and it accounted for 40 percent of world trade in the post-war years, according to Miller. Most countries pegged their currencies to the dollar. English came to be the dominant language of global politics and business and American culture grew globally pervasive. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States became inarguably the top superpower.
One key to this supremacy is hegemony. The word derives from a Greek term for leadership. It is the ability to dictate policies of other nations. It's often accomplished by brute force, as in the days of the Roman and British empires. Germany took a crack at it in the late 1930s. Russia has worked at it but by many historians' accounts never achieved hegemony in any global sense. China is often considered regionally hegemonic.
In addition to sheer military might, the United States achieved hegemony through economic, political and cultural influence — factors that many see as being on the wane now.
A couple years back, the presidential hopeful Ron Paul echoed what many analysts perceive: The "dollar hegemony" — U.S. currency's strength and attractiveness — has been a key factor in U.S. dominance, but "our dollar dominance is coming to an end."
Though it has become a great power in a "spectacular" rise over the past two decades, "China is not now a superpower, nor is it likely to emerge as one soon," Miller wrote in 2004, standing by that argument this week in an email.
Yet superpowers come and go. And one way to bring them down is to stretch them thin.
Adam Segal is the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. In a telephone interview this week, Segal said you could spin a very pessimistic scenario in which a regional conflict like the one between Russia and Georgia might occur in Asia, involving China. The United States would be faced with "lots of pretty unattractive policy options considering we don't really want to have war with either Russia or China, given the fact that we're fighting two wars already."
Segal stresses, however, that he doesn't see that happening. China's behavior since the mid-1990s "has been pretty moderate," Segal said. The country's mantra has been "harmonious development," an effort to convince neighbors that what's good for China (economic growth) is good for them.
"China's relations with most of its neighbors are pretty good," Segal said.
In fact, many people who study these things see the world possibly entering a new phase where superpowers are not what they used to be. Rather than a unipolar world, where one country calls the bulk of the shots, the future might prove to be multipolar, where three or more nations share the preponderance of influence. Most analysts agree China is taking a seat at the world power table, the question is whether the country is motivated to seek world domination or prefers to play nice.
"The Chinese government does all that it can to avoid clashes with the United States," said Susan L. Shirk, director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Shirk is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for U.S. relations with China and author of "China: The Fragile Superpower" (Oxford University Press, 2007).
"It [China] would rather be on the same side of an international issue than at odds with us," Shirk told LiveScience. "Compared to many other countries, including our friends and allies, China has been much less critical of U.S. actions in Iraq."
World views
Meanwhile, a look at several reports from Pew illuminates public sentiments and concerns about China, from within and from the outside.
The results, mostly from surveys done this year, paint a picture of a people growing more satisfied with their country's status and direction and increasingly confident that they will ultimately be the world's top dog.
More than 80 percent of the Chinese people surveyed have a positive view of both their country and their economy. Of 24 countries polled on these points, China was first in both categories.
"Although levels of personal satisfaction are lower, and by global standards Chinese contentment with family, income and jobs is not especially high, these findings represent a dramatic improvement in national contentment from earlier in the decade when the Chinese people were not nearly as positive about the course of their nation and its economy," the Pew analysts state.
A Pew survey released in July found "broad acceptance among the Chinese of their country's transformation from a socialist to a capitalist society." Some 71 percent said they like the pace of modern life and 70 percent said they think people are better off in free markets.
Not everyone is keen on the site of the 2008 summer games, of course, with many activists and politicians citing a human rights record that could use some improvement.
A Pew survey released in June asked people if they thought hosting the Olympics in China was a good idea. The answer was "no" from 43 percent of Americans, 55 percent of Japanese and 47 percent of Germans. But in 14 of 23 countries, "clear majorities favor having the games in Beijing." The largest "yes" percentages came from Nigeria (79 percent), Tanzania (78 percent) and India (76 percent).
The Olympics will help China's image, say 93 percent of the Chinese surveyed.
Co-opting U.S. strategy
The United States has driven the world economy since the end of World War II. But part of the formula relied on for that success — heavy investment in research and technology — is being co-opted by China, just as Japan and other countries have done in recent decades.
Meanwhile, many American scientists complain that morality-based politics and a lack of federal funding has seriously eroded the U.S. leadership in science and technology in recent years.
A study earlier this year by the Georgia Institute of Technology projects China will soon pass the United States in the ability to export technology-based products.
"For the first time in nearly a century, we see leadership in basic research and the economic ability to pursue the benefits of that research – to create and market products based on research – in more than one place on the planet," said Nils Newman, co-author of the study. "Now we have a situation in which technology products are going to be appearing in the marketplace that were not developed or commercialized here. We won't have had any involvement with them and may not even know they are coming."
The study, which relied on both statistics and expert opinions, finds the gains China is making "have been dramatic, and there is no real sense that any kind of leveling off is occurring," Newman said in January.
"China has really changed the world economic landscape in technology," said Alan Porter, another study co-author. "When you take China's low-cost manufacturing and focus on technology, then combine them with the increasing emphasis on research and development, the result ultimately won't leave much room for other countries."
Porter said Chinese scientists now write more scientific papers in international journals than any country for a number of key emerging technologies. China has also entered the exclusive club of nationsputting people in space.
"They are also dramatically increasing their R&D," Porter told LiveScience. "When they get better at innovation — taking the results of that R&D and fueling new technology development — they will be the No. 1 technology superpower."
Porter notes that technically based economic competitiveness is not the only measure of a superpower, but he thinks it may be the most important one. He and Newman note that the United States has a mature economy, while China is just getting started.
"It's like being 40 years old and playing basketball against a competitor who's only 12 years old – but is already at your height," Newman said. "You are a little better right now and have more experience, but you're not going to squeeze much more performance out. The future clearly doesn't look good for the United States."
A study last year by Siddharth Swaminathan and Tad Kugler of the La Sierra University School of Business projected that China will dominate the international economy and become the top superpower by mid-century. They note that India will be close on China's heels.
While the U.S. population is 305 million people, China's is 1.3 billion, and India's is 1.1 billion.
"These emerging superpowers, through the sheer size of their respective populations and coupled with increasing access to education and technology, may become contenders for international dominance even before reaching the income per capita levels of the developed nations of today," the researchers write.
Challenges remain
Segal, of the Council on Foreign Relations, is skeptical that the Chinese will emerge as a superpower. He does not think they'll have the economic, military, political or cultural might to go for the gold anytime soon. They have no aircraft carriers and no ability to extend their military reach beyond the Pacific, he points out. And while their economy is growing rapidly, the focus is largely on domestic development, he said.
America's open, democratic society, and the fact that other nations sought to emulate it, was an important factor in the U.S. becoming a superpower, other historians say.
China lacks the sort of transparent political system that Segal sees as necessary to achieving superpower status.
"China's behavior during the SARS epidemic, when it hid what was going on and lied to the international community, suggests that it is not ready for that type of leadership," Segal said. "We saw more openness after the Sichuan earthquakes, but the fundamental system remains the same."
"No other country seeks to emulate China's political model," Miller argues. Culturally, Miller points out that Chinese is unlikely to supplant English as the language of international politics anytime soon.
Some analysts think the Olympics could mark a turning point for China.
The goal of Chinese leadership in hosting the Olympics was to "signal to the rest of the world that China has arrived," said Jeffrey Bader, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
"China will enter a new era after the Olympics," said Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The country will become "more open, more transparent and more tolerant. But this will not be achieved overnight. It will take time." If China is to become a major power, the government has to deal with minority issues, such as Tibet, in more sensitive ways than simply cracking down, he said. He does not think the Chinese government nor its people recognize that yet, "but I hope the Olympics serve as a wake-up call."
Economic juggernaut?
By one economic measure, China falls short of global domination for now. The country's gross domestic product — the value of goods and services it produces annually — is about $7 trillion, second place to the United States ($13.8 trillion).
Miller acknowledges that China is becoming the manufacturing hub of the world. But if the aim is superpower status, there remains much to be done.
"China is nowhere close to becoming a world financial center," Miller says. And to become a superpower, China's "dramatic economic growth must continue indefinitely, a prospect about which there are grounds for skepticism."
Still, there's that increasingly common "Made in China" label that gives many Americans the impression of a country aiming to take over. A lot more labels would be required.
"China's rise further depends critically on the continuation of such [economic] growth rates, and there are reasons to wonder how long the spectacular rates of the past 25 years can continue," Miller says. "The high proportion of China's economy occupied by its exports makes it sensitive to the ups and downs of the international economy generally and to the engine of American consumption in particular."
Other say there's no reason, however, to expect a significant slowdown anytime soon.
"The U.S. isn't going to disintegrate into a backwater economy," said Porter, the Georgia Tech analyst. "But if you scan the contributing factors to technology-driven economic prominence, the Chinese upside is far greater. They are educating more scientists and engineers. Their government puts a high priority on technical capability and entrepreneurial activity. If you look at our educational system (especially K-12), our investment (savings rate), debt, and so on – prospects are scary."
For now at least, let the games continue.
© Imaginova Corp. All rights reserved.
June 16, 2008
By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG
He did not assign blame for the first big misstep of the general election campaign, participants said. But he asked his aides to assess the gravity of the problem and listened as they charted a course to proceed.
Mr. Obama did not deliver the bad news himself — he seldom does — but he accepted the resignation of Mr. Johnson, who faced Republican criticism for getting cut-rate mortgages from the troubled lender Countrywide Financial.
Like most presidential candidates, Mr. Obama is developing his executive skills on the fly, and under intense scrutiny. The evolution of his style in recent months suggests he is still finding the right formula as he confronts a challenge that he has not faced in his career: managing a large organization.
The skill will become more important should he win the presidency, and his style is getting added attention as the country absorbs the lessons of President Bush’s tenure in the Oval Office. Mr. Bush’s critics, including former aides, have portrayed him as too cloistered, too dependent on a small coterie of trusted aides, unable to distinguish between loyalty and competence, and insufficiently willing to adjust course in the face of events that do not unfold the way he expects.
Mr. Obama’s style so far is marked by an aversion to leaks and public drama and his selection of a small group of advisers who have exhibited discipline and loyalty in carrying out his priorities. The departure of Mr. Johnson, who was brought in to provide managerial experience to the vice-presidential search, was a rare instance of the campaign’s having to oust one of its own in the midst of a messy public crisis.
He reads widely and encourages alternative views in policy-making discussions, but likes to keep the process crisp. He is personally even-keeled, but can be prickly when small things go wrong.
As the chief executive officer of Obama for America, a concern of nearly 1,000 employees and a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Obama is more inclined to focus on the big picture over the day-to-day whirl.
He delegates many decisions, and virtually all tasks, to a core group that oversees a sprawling, yet centralized operation in his Chicago campaign headquarters, which going into the general election season is absorbing many of the political functions of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Obama stays connected to advisers and friends via a BlackBerry, sending frequent but unsigned messages that are to the point. A discussion that cannot be conducted in a sentence or two is likely to be finished by telephone.
A night owl, Mr. Obama is known to send e-mail messages well after midnight. Laurence H. Tribe, his Harvard law professor who now serves as an informal adviser, said he received an e-mail message from the candidate at 1:30 a.m. on June 4, when he had received enough delegates to claim the nomination.
In interviews with more than two dozen senior advisers, campaign aides and friends, a portrait of Mr. Obama emerges as a concerned but not obsessive manager. By now, his associates have learned, there is no need to deluge him with unnecessary details, so long as someone knows them.
No state was more important to his candidacy than Iowa, but when he arrived there for campaign visits he stopped aides who tried to give detailed accounts of developments.
“I’d get in the car with him and talk a mile a minute,” recalled Paul Tewes, who was the campaign’s state director. Mr. Tewes recalled that on the candidate’s fifth visit to the state, Mr. Obama interrupted one of his detailed updates, saying: “You know what, Paul? All I want from you is for you to do your best, and I trust you and you know what you’re doing.”
On policy issues, Mr. Obama can have a photographic memory of intricate details, but he often struggled to remember the names of local political supporters he had met. A cool demeanor on primary election nights, even in defeat, can give way to a short temper when a speech text is not on the podium, a loudspeaker crackles or an aide has not brought over a throat-soothing herbal tea.
“Who’s handling sound? Who’s handling sound?” he snapped at his staff when a microphone repeatedly went haywire at a campaign event in South Carolina.
Most high-level gatherings involving Mr. Obama are held either in his kitchen or at an office away from campaign headquarters, and are expected to unfold in an orderly manner. Written agendas and concise briefings are preferred.
He does not stir dissent simply for dissent’s sake, but often employs a Socratic method of discussion, where aides put ideas forward for him to accept or reject. Advisers described his meetings as “un-Clintonesque,” a reference to the often meandering, if engrossing, policy discussions Bill Clinton presided over when he was president.
“He doesn’t sit there for hours chewing on it and discussing it,” said Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama who worked in the Clinton administration. “He’s very thorough, yet efficient about it.”
If a presidential campaign is intended to be a test-run for the presidency, his chief priorities are the words in his speeches, messages in his television advertising and policy pronouncements. On other matters, even if he disagrees, he often allows himself to be overruled.
Mr. Obama was not thrilled with a campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In,” that was unveiled last September. And he did not initially like the campaign’s blue and white logo — intended to appear like a horizon, symbolizing hope and opportunity — saying he found it too polished and corporate.
“He made his concern clear, but said, ‘We have bigger fish to fry here,’ ” recalled David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist who was behind the logo’s design. “That’s one of his talents, his ability to distinguish between things that are absolutely essential and things that aren’t. He’ll give you some latitude based on your expertise.”
But Mr. Obama’s ease belies a more controlling management style. For all the success his campaign has enjoyed with grass-roots organizing, the operation is highly centralized around Mr. Axelrod; David Plouffe, the campaign manager; Robert Gibbs, the communications director; Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend from Chicago; and a handful of senior advisers that has barely changed since he opened his campaign in January 2007.
Nearly all information is funneled to him, but he also makes his own inquiries.
Last month, only hours before he was scheduled to make his first campaign appearance before skeptical Jewish voters at a Florida synagogue, Mr. Obama received word that an important vote had been scheduled in Washington. He was needed in the Senate.
Mr. Obama was annoyed, but senior advisers traveling with him were livid at the prospect of the senator canceling a meeting with this critical constituency. Mr. Obama let them huff and puff, and began making calls himself.
Soon, he was on the line with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, who said he was trying to be accommodating, but his fellow senators needed to vote on a spending bill and military legislation before leaving for a long weekend. It sounded reasonable, Mr. Obama told his aides, and plans were made for him to fly to Washington and delay — not postpone — the meeting in Boca Raton, Fla.
Mr. Obama’s circle of advisers takes seriously his “no drama” mandate. It is a point of pride in his campaign that there have been virtually no serious leaks to the news media — small leaks are immediately investigated — about internal division or infighting. He is a careful reader of daily newspapers and magazines (titles from Foreign Affairs to Maxim are stocked on his campaign plane). He takes his briefing books — three-ring binders filled with political memorandums and policy discussions — to his hotel room or home every night, but aides say how well he reads the materials may depend on what is on ESPN.
Mr. Obama has tried to learn from the mistakes of others. During the course of two long dinners at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington this year and last, Mr. Obama sought the advice of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. “We covered a lot of territory,” Mr. Kerry said, adding that he had advised Mr. Obama to concentrate on his rapid-response operation. “I was as clear as I could be: you don’t let a moment go by unchallenged.”
Mr. Kerry said Mr. Obama was a “quick study” who is as sure-footed on the national stage as he was new to it when he ran for president four years ago. Mr. Kerry, whose campaign was at times riven by division, said Mr. Obama’s operation seemed free of any such issues. “His staff is exceedingly loyal,” Mr. Kerry said.
These days, Mr. Obama pays little attention to his fund-raising, a stark change from a year ago. “Barack was interested daily in knowing how we were doing, were we on track or were we not,” said Penny Pritzker, the campaign’s national finance chairwoman. After a record-setting first quarter tally of $25 million, he stopped asking as often.
One area where he does not easily acquiesce is on speeches and television commercials, where he often rewrites words that shape the core message of his candidacy. Mr. Obama generally gives his ad-makers room to produce his spots, but he reviews scripts and often reworks them if he believes they do not capture his natural speaking style.
“He’ll say, ‘that is not my voice,’ ” said Jim Margolis, a senior media consultant to Mr. Obama who oversees television advertising. “Definitely this isn’t somebody you just throw the script to and he’ll say anything that comes up on the screen. He tries to make sure that he’s got his imprint on it.”
Three days after claiming the nomination, Mr. Obama, who makes infrequent visits to the campaign’s Chicago headquarters, offered his gratitude by way of a motivational pep talk.
“I want everybody to catch your breath. Do what you do to get your ya-ya’s out — that’s an old ’60s expression — and then understand that coming back we’re going to have to work twice as hard as we’ve been working,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re going to have to be smarter, we’re going to have to be tougher, our game is going to have to be tighter.”
Before finishing, he included a self-assessment, adding, “I am going to have to be a better candidate.”
GORI, Georgia – Russia's foreign minister declared that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity on Thursday and Georgian and Russian troops faced off at a checkpoint outside the key city of Gori, calling an already shaky cease-fire into question.
In Washington, an American official said Russia appears to be sabotaging airfields and other military infrastructure as its forces pull back. The U.S. official described eyewitnesses accounts for The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The official said the Russian strategy seems like a deliberate attempt to cripple the already battered Georgian military.
The United States poured aid into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Thursday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched emergency talks in France aimed at heading off a wider conflict.
The comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to come as a challenge to the United States, where President Bush has called for Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."
There were at least five explosions near Gori. It could not immediately be determined if the blasts were a renewal of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces, but they sounded similar to mortar shells and occurred after a tense confrontation between Russian and Georgian troops on the edge of the city.
The strategically located city is 15 miles south of South Ossetia, the Russian-backed separatist region where Russian and Georgian forces fought a five-day battle. Russian troops entered Gori on Wednesday, after the two sides signed the cease-fire that called for their forces to pull back to the positions they held before the fighting.
Georgia early Thursday said the Russians were leaving the city, but later alleged they were bringing in additional troops. In Washington, a Pentagon official said U.S. intelligence had assessed that the number of Russians in Gori was small — about 100 to 200 troops.
But the Russian presence in Gori, only 60 miles west of Tbilisi, was viewed as a demonstration of the vulnerability of the capital.
Russian deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn blamed the Georgians for Russia's decision to stay.
"The position of the Russia side is not proceed beyond the peacekeeping zone. But we have to respond to provocations," he said.
Georgian government officials who went into the city for the possible handover left unexpectedly around midday, followed by a checkpoint confrontation outside Gori which ended when Russian tanks sped toward the area and Georgian police quickly retreated.
A Russian general in Gori had said Wednesday it would take at least two days to leave the city. Lavrov said troops were evacuating Georgian weapons and ammunition from a military base there.
Some Georgian police said irregular fighters from South Ossetia had refused to leave Gori, where a BBC reporter saw them looting and burning Wednesday night.
Two planned U.S. aid flights arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi late Wednesday and Thursday, carrying cots, blankets and medicine for refugees displaced by the fighting. The shipment arrived on a C-17 military plane, an illustration of the close U.S.-Georgia military cooperation that has angered Russia.
Besides the hundreds killed since hostilities broke out, the United Nations estimates 100,000 Georgians have been uprooted; Russia says some 30,000 residents of South Ossetia fled into the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia.
Russian troops also appeared to be settling in elsewhere in Georgia outside the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.
The Georgian Foreign Ministry said Russian troops remained in Poti, a Black Sea port city with an oil terminal that is key to Georgia's fragile economic health.
An APTN crew in Poti saw one destroyed Georgian military boat, about 60 feet long, two Russian armored vehicles and two Russian transport trucks inside the port. They were blocked from moving closer by soldiers who identified themselves as Russian peacekeepers.
Earlier Thursday, on Poti's outskirts, the APTN crew followed a different convoy of Russian troops as they searched a forest for Georgian military equipment.
Another APTN camera crew saw Russian soldiers and military vehicles parked Thursday inside the Georgian government's elegant, heavily-gated residence in the western town of Zugdidi. Some of the soldiers wore blue peacekeeping helmets, others wore green camouflage helmets, all were heavily armed. The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.
"The Russian troops are here. They are occupying," Ygor Gegenava, an elderly Zugdidi resident told the APTN crew. "We don't want them here. What we need is friendship and good relations with the Russian people."
Georgia, bordering the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
A steady, dejected trickle of Georgian refugees fled the front line in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons, heading to Tbilisi on the road from Gori. One Soviet-era car carried eight people, including a mother and a baby in the front seat. The open back door of a small blue van revealed at least a dozen people crowded inside.
The Russian General Prosecutor's office on Thursday said it has formally opened a genocide probe into Georgian treatment of South Ossetians. For its part, Georgia this week filed a suit against Russia in the International Court of Justice, alleging murder, rape and mass expulsions in both provinces.
More homes in deserted ethnic Georgian villages were apparently set ablaze Wednesday, sending clouds of smoke over the foothills north of Tskhinvali, capital of breakaway South Ossetia.
One Russian colonel, who refused to give his name, blamed the fires on looters.
Those with ethnic Georgian backgrounds who have stayed behind — like 70-year-old retired teacher Vinera Chebataryeva — seem increasingly unwelcome in South Ossetia.
As she stood sobbing in her wrecked apartment near the center of Tskhinvali, Chebataryeva said a skirmish between Ossetian soldiers and a Georgian tank had gouged the two gaping shell holes in her wall, bashing in her piano and destroying her furniture.
Janna Kuzayeva, an ethnic Ossetian neighbor, claimed the Georgian tank fired the shell at Chebataryeva's apartment.
"We know for sure her brother spied for Georgians," said Kuzayeva. "We let her stay here, and now she's blaming everything on us."
North of Tskhinvali, a number of former Georgian communities have been abandoned in the last few days. "There isn't a single Georgian left in those villages," said Robert Kochi, a 45-year-old South Ossetian.
But he had little sympathy for his former Georgian neighbors. "They wanted to physically uproot us all," he said. "What other definition is there for genocide?"
Associated Press writers Misha Dzhindzhikhavili in Tbilisi; Mansur Mirovalev in Tskhinvali, Georgia; Jim Heintz in Moscow; and Anne Gearan, Matthew Lee and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press.
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
posted: 12 August 2008 09:10 am ET
Whether Sen. Hillary Clinton stands at the side of Sen. Barack Obama during his bid for the U.S. presidency or not, her exit from the race could give him the boost he needs, a new marketing study suggests.
The research supports an assumption often discussed by pundits: that undecided voters are likely to go with the candidate most similar to the one that drops out.
The study found that if two options vie for a consumer's or voter's preference, and a third option enters and leaves the market, the remaining option most similar to the exiting one benefits. The similar features get more attention, and consumers think, "Oh, that must be important," the researchers say.
"This is exactly what happened in the Democratic primaries this year," said researcher Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "We have Obama and Clinton going at it for months after the Republican primary has been decided. John McCain couldn't buy media attention at that time because everybody is focused on the attributes that Obama and Clinton were arguing about."
He added that by withdrawing after the primaries, Clinton left in her wake an impression that the shared Obama-Clinton attributes and issue stances were important. With Clinton out of the picture, Obama could take all of that popular appeal.
Rao and his colleagues tested this phenomenon by having groups of undergraduate students complete questionnaires in which they had to choose between three options, one of which subsequently became unavailable.
These sets of options included unnamed political candidates, beer, healthcare plans, cars and cruise lines.
In one scenario, participants were asked to respond to a newspaper poll about unnamed presidential candidates who had been rated on economic and international policy. One candidate performed well on economic policy, the other on international policy, and the third candidate either dominated the other two on both attributes or outperformed the so-called target candidate on one type of policy.
When the third candidate stayed in this virtual race, 72 percent of the participants chose that person, while nobody chose the target candidate. When the third option dropped out, more than 50 percent of those who originally selected that third option chose the target. None of the participants who had chosen the rival were swayed toward the target.
Asked if staunch "Hillary supporters" would sway toward Obama, Rao said his results can't answer that question. But the findings do speak to swing voters, which make up about 20 percent of U.S. voters, according to recent Gallup poll estimates.
"The presence or absence of the third option influences people whose attribute preferences are labile — they don't know which attribute is important," Rao told LiveScience. "Is energy policy more important than foreign policy? ... The fact that you've got two candidates talking ad nauseam about energy policy makes them turn their heads and say that must be important."
The results will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.
In Pictures: John McCain's Celebrity Counterparts
From Bill Cosby to Robin Williams, these 10 celebrities share personality traits with the Republican nominee for president.
By Clifford Marks
http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/17/obama-mccain-celeb-oped-cx_cm_0617poll2_slide_2.html?partner=email
In Pictures: Barack Obama's Celebrity Counterparts
From Tim Russert to J.K. Rowling, these 10 celebrities share personality traits with the likely Democratic nominee for president.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/17/obama-mccain-celeb-oped-cx_cm_0617poll_slide_4.html?partner=email
Paris counters with an ad of her own:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4178033806
Paris Hilton's mom takes offense at McCain's humor
Paris Hilton's mother doesn't share John McCain's sense of humor.
McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said last week that his campaign ad mocking Democrat Barack Obama with images of Hilton and singer Britney Spears was part of an attempt to inject humor into the presidential race.
On Sunday, Hilton's mother, Kathy Hilton, a McCain donor, registered her disapproval.
"It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs," Kathy Hilton said in a short article posted on the liberal Huffington Post Web site. "And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next president of the United States."
The ad plays on Obama's popularity by dismissing him as a mere celebrity, like Hilton and Spears. The Obama campaign has said the ad is proof that McCain would rather launch negative attacks than debate important issues.
McCain on Friday denied that his campaign had taken a negative turn, saying, "We think it's got a lot of humor in it, we're having fun and enjoying it."
Kathy Hilton, however, was unpersuaded, calling the ad "a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign."
Kathy Hilton and her husband donated a total of $4,600 to McCain's campaign earlier this year.
