Barack Obama is a neighborhood organizer at heart. He knows the importance of getting boots on the ground and talking to people. He wants volunteers to contact every voter in America and personally deliver his message of hope and change. dday wrote a diary about how Obama’s strategy is not about top down messaging through national ads. He is not trying to change minds en masse but one voter at a time, one contact at a time. Obama is counting on winning through registering new voters and getting them to the polls. Now we have to ask the question, "Will these new voters show up to vote for Obama?"

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee emerged from the GOP nomination process as the leaders of their respective GOP factions. Huckabee represents the social conservatives. He aspires to speak for the evangelicals, who reportedly make up 25% of the electorate. Romney represents the business side of the GOP. He is the consummate executive and as a former CEO is the GOP’s possible poster boy for someone to fix the economy. These two factions are warring for the chance to have someone from their camp land as the McCain VP and the fight has major long-term implications for the party.

Passed by Congress in 2000, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act was designed to allow the prosecution of civilians contractors employed by the Department of Defense for crimes committed while overseas on official business. The original intention was to close a loophole allowing civilians to escape prosecution for serious crimes because they were not subject to military law and U.S. prosecutors lacked jurisdiction. The law is set to be used for the first time todoay.

It sounds almost like a conspiracy theory when you read. It is pretty scary stuff, very shady. It is work on the Monetary Industrial Complex. I am not going to claim expertize in this matter but it is something that i found very interesting and thought should get more publicity. The core of this theory is that the Federal Reserve works towards reelecting Republicans. Pretty crazy right? Well maybe not as crazy as you might have thought. Maybe the Federal Reserve is acting playing politics in a way we have not suspected.

With the success of ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, the Muqtada al-Sadr ceasefire, and the Sunni Awakening Councils Iraq has become less of a war zone than before. These developments though are precarious and the wrong actions could easily restart the civil war. It looks like Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki might be intent on doing just that. I think that it has become clear that the surge failed in its stated goal of bringing about political reconciliation. Distracted by Georgia we should not become blind to the concerns coming out of Iraq. If the concerns coming out of Iraq come to fruition Iraq is about to return to Civil War.

Remember when every one was freaking out because the campaign was revolving around Obama to the extent everything McCain was doing was being ignored? Well the opposite seems to be going on now. As Obama has gone on vacation to Hawaii and the Georgia—Russia Conflict erupts McCain has been sucking up the oxygen with his "Pretend I’m President" week. I think the result of this has been that Obama can now sit back and hit McCain from the shadows on offense instead of reacting to McCain’s attacks.

Obama’s crossover appeal has been one of the big arguments in favor of his candidacy. At least it was in the early days. Back in those days there was a lot of talk about post partisan governing moving beyond the divisions that have plagued us for decades. It sounded really good. Then there are the anecdotal reports of high profile Rswho are endorsing Obama and the rumors of those who might. Doug Kmiec, Jeffrey Hart, Armstrong Williams, Richard Whalen, Lincoln Chafee, Susan Eisenhower. Constant rumors about endorsements by Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel. The question is whether these types of voters exist in real numbers.

Joshua Green’s piece in the Atlantic, The Front Runners Fall, based on the internal communications of the Clinton campaign makes many people look bad. It makes Clinton look bad and it makes Mark Penn look bad. The few mentions he receives make Bill Clinton look less than stellar. The trials and tribulations of the Clinton campaign are well documented in the article. The mistakes made by the players are glaring and in many cases reinforce outside observations of the campaign. The one person who comes out looking fine is Harold Ickes.

Yes there may be a war going on in Georgia. Despite this i feel comfortable in saying that it is not a big deal and has no impact on the US in a significant way. My evidence for this pronouncement? Our President is headed on vacation. Again.

You thought he was gone didn’t you? Well it appears that it is tough to keep a good story down. By good, I mean a story of high drama, back stabbing, and discord. Just as the wounds of the primary have apparently healed the behind the scenes story of the Clinton campaign threatens to revive them. The article in question is by Atlantic Senior Editor Joshua Green and will be forthcoming in the magazines September issue. A sneak-peak was written by Politico's Mike Allen Most of the talk regarding the Clinton camp revolved around Mark Penn and the fact he was universally loathed. This article we be interesting for reasons beyond Penn though.

One of the undercurrents of this election cycle has been the effect of the Obama candidacy on Black oriented politics. A larger discussion of the tension and political dynamics occurring in the African American community has been written by Matt Bai in the New York Times. The main argument of the piece is that there is a transition happening in the type of African Americans that are entering politics. Bai discusses this transition from Civil Rights era to Boomer and Post-Boomer era politicians. The ultimate question is whether the Obama candidacy signals the coming end of Black Politics.

Actually, not McCain per se -- but some one in his employ. This person is Taylor Griffin, a veteran of the Bush White House and Treasury Department, who serves McCain as a senior adviser. His idea is contained in a leaked memo, the "Economic Communications Plan", obtained by the Huffington Post. The core of this memo is that McCain should target the economy as an issue with a specific focus on families. This is actually a smart plan.

The debate about the effectiveness of Barack Obama’s proposal that we all perform routine auto maintenance was considered by many on the left to be somewhat of a farce. Everything pointed to Obama being correct that that action, performed by enough people, would be more effective than off shore drilling. In contrast, the GOP thought that they saw a potential opportunity here. In fact, they were so excited that many on the left were left perplexed as to why. They were wrong, all the evidence said so. To understand why the GOP thought they had a winner requires that one change your entire world view and think like a Republican. Step one, assume the American people are either stupid or lazy or both.

What is going on in Afghanistan has been slowly generating attention. As the debate over the surge and immediate withdrawal has declined, people have noticed that Afghanistan is not going so well for us right now. Afghanistan has always been the foil to the Iraq war. Where Iraq was illegitimate and unnecessary, Afghanistan was just and required for American safety. Iraq has been a dismal failure on almost every front but Afghanistan was being judged a success. Now as the gains that were made in Afghanistan have apparently slipped into the ether questions are arising over whether or not America and the West should stay in Afghanistan. Perhaps surprisingly the answer is becoming a tentative no.

In many ways, I think McCain is running the campaign that Clinton wishes she could have run. Clinton’s personal opinion of Obama at the end of the primary was, from all appearances, not very high. Clinton’s strategy was to paint Obama as an elitist, as someone too inexperienced to handle the job, as someone without substance. Just speeches, choir of angels, change you can Xerox, remember those? That was the original Obama mockery. Except in that case the demographics, the electorate was different. Can McCain win running the same race that Clinton ran?

Her story is a tragic one. At the age of 15, Jammie Garcia Yanez-Villegas is alleged to have died due to an infection contracted during an abortion procedure in a Houston clinic. It is a terrible story that evokes strong emotions in the hearts of those who hear it. The death of such a young girl is tragic. Her story, according to those who support California Proposition 4, is also one that could have been prevented. These people contend that if California had a parental notification law Jammie – Sarah was used to protect her identity- would have been saved. Proposition 4 is the third attempt to enact such a notification law in California. Prop 4 would amend the California constitution to prohibit abortion for unemancipated minors until 48 hours after a physician notifies the minor's parent or legal guardian. There is just one problem; 'Sarah's Law' would not have applied to 'Sarah'.

John McCain is not winning the election at this point in time. There has been a great deal of handwringing over the fact that Obama is not currently projected to win every state in the union. The expectations for him are a little on the high side because there are so many factors working against the Republicans and John McCain. The argument is based on the idea that things are so positive for Democrats that Obama should be up by 15 or more points across the board. I think people should calm down a little take a deep breath and realize that if the vote were held today Obama would win.

The latest GOP attack line against Obama is that he is "arrogant, presumptuous and overconfident"-maybe even uppity. The GOP has gotten the media to run with this for a while so it might seem as if it is a successful smear. I think it is a very poor choice of attacks. There are several reasons for this. Whenever one candidate attacks the character of another candidate the attacker needs to be conscious of the way that attack will be perceived by those who hear it. In the case of the presumptuous attack, you have a 72-year-old white man telling a younger black man to stay in his place and mind his manners. The attack oozes racism. Second, the age of McCain makes the attack sound jealous or bitter, "I waited my turn! It is my chance now!" Jealousy is not a particularly inspiring attribute. Third, McCain has taken many actions that could be considered just as presumptuous.