Pastor Rick Warren has pulled together Barack Obama and John McCain for their first joint appearance of the presidential campaign. The two will appear in a “non-debate” format, open to all media and 6,500 ticket holders, on August 16 at the Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion, which will be held on the Saddleback Church campus in California.

The candidates requested that questions come exclusively from Warren and not by a panel or audience members. Each candidate will converse separately with Warren for one-hour and, as WoW blogged Monday, Obama will go first, as determined by a coin flip.

Warren, author of the best-selling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” said he called each candidate personally to invite him to the forum, which “will focus on how they make decisions and on some of Mr. Warren’s main areas of focus, like AIDS, poverty and the environment,” The New York Times reported.

“We’re honored that the candidates chose the Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion for their first joint appearance, an unprecedented opportunity for America to hear both men back-to-back on the same platform,” Warren said in a press release about the event.

The Saddleback Civil Forum was established this year to promote civil discourse and the common good of all. The first forum featured five Holocaust survivors sharing their stories. The third Civil Forum will feature former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in September.

“In addition to my primary calling to proclaim the Gospel Truth of salvation in Jesus Christ, these Civil Forums further three other life goals: helping individuals accept responsibility, helping the Church regain credibility and encouraging our society to return to civility,” Warren’s press released continued. “The primaries proved that Americans care deeply about the faith, values, character and leadership convictions of candidates as much as they do about the issues.”

Word of the forum came as Dr. James Dobson said he might change his mind and endorse Mr. McCain, according to The Associated Press. “I never thought I would hear myself saying this,” Monday’s “Focus on the Family” radio show. “While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.”

But Dobson’s endorsement may not matter as much as it used to. Chris Bodenner at The Atlantic asked in a column on Monday, “As a moderate Christian leader who focuses on more ‘liberal’ issues like AIDS, poverty, and the environment, could Warren become the new face of political Christianity, eclipsing Christianists like Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson?”

John McCain miscalculated in his Iraq policy. He forgot about the Iraqi leadership variable. With the Iraqi government calling for a timetable, and now potentially for an plan like Obama’s, he’ll have to scramble to drop Obama’s growing foreign policy legs out from under him if he wants a fighting chance.

On Sunday, Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Coming out of that meeting, a government spokesmen said Iraq is hopeful US forces would be out of their country by 2010. Obama too, has laid out a plan for troops to leave around then, saying he’d pull forces out within 16 months of his presidency starting in 2009.

In 2004, at the Council on Foreign Relations, McCain said that if an elected Iraqi government asked the US troops to leave, then we could not stay, especially “when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”  McCain’s current plans calls for ensuring the Iraqi’s can defend themselves and build their economy before we leave. Considering the success of the surge, that might actually be in 2010, not 2110.

There are still over three months before the election, which is plenty of time for McCain to morph a campaign strategy. If he accepts the Iraqi plan he’ll drop Obama’s criticism of him as a warhawk. If he can shape it as his position all along, to respect Iraqi sovereignty and not fight the tide against that view, he’ll quell much of the criticism against him.

McCain can also support Iraq’s desire for a timed pullout knowing that, regardless of who is president, a timetable will ultimately be subject to change. If, in 2010, oil is not secured or Iraq has gone back to heavy violence, we might not leave after all. McCain said last week, “I know for a fact that [troop pullout] will be dictated by the situation on the ground, as it always has been.”

Many in the media are projecting this as a coup for Obama on foreign policy, saying he was de facto endorsed by al-Maliki, even though the Prime Minister has denied that, saying he will stay neutral in the election. But McCain could take this as an advantage to himself with the right political maneuvering.  Either way, the next few weeks will be dominated by the foreign policy question—unless another bank decides to fold.

The faux-elections are over but Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is facing opposition to his rule. The United States and other western powers put forth a stern resolution to the UN Security Council last week, asking for an embargo on weapons shipped to the African nation.  Considering that the Mugabe regime reportedly killed 113 opposition party members in the past three months, this request seems reasonable, but Russia and China vetoed the resolution.

The resolution also asked for an international travel ban and freeze on the personal assets of Mugabe and 13 of his top officials.  Considering that Mugabe forced out his top rivals and declared he would not honor the results of any election he did not win, saying, “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot, this request seems reasonable.

The resolution also asked for a UN special envoy to be sent to Zimbabwe to observe the conduct of the government.  Considering Mugabe’s thugs burned a six-year old alive along with his pregnant mother in June, while his cronies have run the nation’s economy into ground with 2.2 million percent inflation, this request seems reasonable.

The official reasoning from China and Russia is that they believed the resolution was outside the charter of the Security Council. Thomas Friedman wrote in a NYTimes op-ed that China and Russia thought the resolution was illegitimate and dangerous, but “Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation strike [them] as ‘illegitimate and dangerous’. Shameful. Meanwhile, China is hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.”

Zimbabwe claims the resolution could spark a civil war and turn the county “into another Somalia.” Zimbabwe’s U.N. mission sent a letter to the Security Council arguing that, “in their obsession with ‘regime change,’ Britain and the USA are determined to ignore real, entrenched, fundamental and enduring issues that lie at the heart of Zimbabwe’s internal politics.”

Though the UN resolution said nothing of removing Mugabe by force or dissolving his government, Zimbabwe insisted the resolution would “Somalianize” the nation by leaving it without a leader.

Oil prices fell sharply today—again. The stock market is on a surge. But inflation is on the rise, and food prices are higher than ever. The market is in a 6.0 Richter scale level flux. Opinion abounds on how to fix it, including doing nothing, but it might be that even the power of the United States government is no match for juggernaut market forces.

Light crude oil has dropped nearly $15 a barrel this week from its high of $147 last Friday. Despite the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, financial institutions issued positive reports, spurring a rapid recovery of Wall Street stocks. Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia, and Citigroup all were on the rise Wednesday morning.

Still, inflation reports this morning were bleak, up 5 percent on the year. And food prices continue to increase, up 1 percent in June after growing just 0.3 percent the month before. While a stronger stock market is encouraging news for the economy, most Americans feel the real effects in their wallet at the grocery store. Even if we haven’t hit a technical recession, doesn’t mean Americans  the perception that we have isn’t real.

Politicians specialize in putting band-aids on these perceptions, and the recent round of federal regulations is a perfect example. Not wanting major banks to fail, the Fed has stepped in to prop up what amounts to a business failing because they did not operate well. While this would never be done for a failing hardware store, banks (and airlines, according to the government) are critical components of American infrastructure that must be supported.

Not all in Congress agree with the government’s recent decisions. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) lashed out against the takeovers in a hearing Tuesday: “Giving the Fed more power is like giving the neighborhood kid who broke your window playing baseball in the street a bigger bat and thinking that will fix the problem. When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turns out socialism is alive and well in America. The Treasury Secretary is asking for a blank check to buy as much Fannie and Freddie debt or equity as he wants.”

The politically hot nature of the economy is fast becoming central to the Presidential campaign. With talks of a troop withdraw from Iraq already in the works, the war on terror may take a back seat come August and September. No matter who wins, they will face an array of economic problems, from the continuing fallout of the mortgage crisis to high energy costs to inflationary concerns.

People love polls, no matter how often they prove worthless.  Consider the polls before the New Hampshire primary that put Obama up by 20-some odd points, only to suffer a double digit loss). Right now, the various polls have Obama and McCain scattered all over the place.

Gallup’s latest survey has Obama up 46-43 percent. Quinnipiac gives the Democrat a slightly larger edge at 50-41. Rasmussen found the race a close 47-45. And Newsweek posted recent results at 44-41. Most of those are statistical ties, given the margin of error. (The same Newsweek poll four years ago had Kerry leading 47-44). The change is stark considering that just a few weeks ago Newsweek had Obama up 15 points, 51-36. Three weeks before that they found the two in a dead heat 46-46.

Given these quick switches, is there any good way of projecting the race? If there is, it involves a principle: follow the money. Any pundit can get on CNN or Fox and say why McCain or Obama will win in November. They can camp out on weak reasoning to draw the public along. But to put money down on who you think will win takes a little more conviction.

Intrade, an online “prediction market,” allows you to buy and sell “belief” in a particular candidate. If you think McCain will win, you can put money down on it, though its more like buying stock than gambling because you “buy and sell,” not just place a one-time bet.

Prediction markets have a track record of incredible accuracy. The reason is simple: people don’t throw money away. If you have the inside scoop, markets like Intrade are where you can profit from your knowledge. Currently the lines have the Obama up 65.1-30.7. If there is any poll McCain should be worried about, it is this one.

Rasmussen also has a prediction market, powered by Intrade. With them, Romney is the favorite to get the Vice Presidential nomination, though at a weak 24 percent. You can also bet the index of a select field of candidates.

Prediction markets are telling in other ways too. On Intrade, only 30 percent believe we will go into a recession (and no we are not in one yet, just a slow economy).  Only 14 percent believe the US and/or Israel will strike Iran. If that number spikes up at any point you can bet it’s because people “in the know” are preparing for war—and Tehran should take it as a strong warning.

It’s not that the Bush Administration hasn’t done enough for the poor in America—they’ve just been ineffective. Thus says Barack Obama, and his position reveals a particular mindset when it comes to the role of government.

Obama wants change, and in order to effectively change, his policy must incorporate an understanding of history. Poverty was in a steady decline in America—until the War on Poverty began. As government poverty policies began to take effect, the rate of poverty decline slowed. It has in fact created today’s lower class, and established a “poverty bubble” both in age and regional demographics.

This problem has plagued not just Bush, but his predecessor as well. Obama, coming from a urban planning background, knows as well as anyone the failure of Clinton’s “Section 8 Rental Voucher Program” that sought to tear down public housing to promote home ownership. The result, Hanna Rosin reveals in this month’s Atlantic, was that it exported crime from city centers to lower-middle class suburbs.

On his website, Obama claims to know the problem: “Government programs aimed at strengthening metropolitan areas are spread across the federal government with insufficient coordination or strategy.” His solution: create a White House office of Urban Policy, or as he called it, an “Office on Poverty.”

The problem Obama has identified is not that government coordination is incapable of truly understanding what the poor need because they lack sufficient knowledge—which is what economists F.A. Hayek and Leonard Read have argued—but that government just hasn’t done it right yet. Lying beneath this initiative is a fundamental belief that the government can solve this problem.

Obama also claims, “many federal programs inadvertently undermine cities and regions by encouraging inefficient and costly patterns of development and local competition.” His solution: restore funding to the Community Development Block Grant program to provide housing and jobs for low-income people.

Again, the Obama view is that the government has simply been misdirecting its dollars, and that he has the solution everyone has missed for the last fifty years. One of those ideas is to “Increase access to capital for underserved businesses.” In short, the federal government would give grants to small businesses owned by women and minorities that are failing so that they can innovate and provide high-paying jobs.

All of it sounds nice, but what of the alternative view? Obama has not answered the question of why small business would choose to innovate if the government is willing to give them money for failing. His speeches have not yet clarified how this program would encourage perpetuating growth. Nor has he said how he would promote values of personal responsibility, or how providing funds to families facing foreclosure wouldn’t simply encourage them to continue mismanaging funds.

Yet, just because he hasn’t answered those questions or clarified his points, doesn’t mean he’s out of time. He can still clarify how his program is different from all the others and convince us his policies aren’t simply a new way of old thinking.

The Iran-Israeli War of 2008 has yet to begin, but its onset has come a step closer with reports coming from several Israeli news agencies that IAF planes have been practicing in Iraqi airspace.

According to Iraqi Ministry of Defense officials, Israeli warplanes have been coming through Jordanian airspace and conducting exercises from several US military posts including al-Assad airbase outside Haditha, Iraq. The officials also suggested that the practice runs were for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear reactors.

The endless tension over a possible conflict has been a key factor in the rising price of oil. The new reports Friday of Israeli planes in Iraqi sent the price up $5 to over $147 per barrel.

Last month, Israeli planes conducted a massive exercise over the Mediterranean, traveling an equal distance to what it would take to reach Iran, practicing refueling and rescue maneuvers. Some reports suggested it was a “dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran, but the new Iraqi reports would put them much closer to their target.

Posturing and speculation has been mounting for months—even years considering Iran’s “Axis of Evil” designation—about a new Iranian war. Iran President Ahmadinejad has threatened the complete destruction of Israel countless times. Israeli officials have said time is running out to attack Iran. And in the middle is the United States, pushing sanctions on Iran, but only quietly contemplating war.

An Iran-Israel war could not happen without the green light of the United States. Israeli planes would need to cross Turkish, Saudi, or Iraqi airspace—and the first two are not likely to agree. If Iran chooses to strike first, Secretary Rice said yesterday that the US would defend Israel.

Iranian reports have recently claimed that any attack on its soil would result in attacks on Israel and American military bases in the region. Thus, allowing Israel to strike Iran would not be a passive move by the US military, and it would complicate the Presidential election.

Each time the religious-right has risen to McCain, some of their energy seems to be sucked away by Obama’s surf to the center. Pointing out the disappointments of the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiatives, Obama surprised many by proposing not to shut them down, but to fix and expand the program.

Frequently critical of McCain’s “Bush-like policies”, Obama was careful to point out his difference: tax money would be used to subsidize religious activity if the government grants were used only for secular programs.  Funded groups would also have to follow federal hiring laws, and couldn’t discriminate based on race, sex, religion or (Obama proposes) sexual orientation — a change that may make some faith-based organizations balk.

As Michael Gerson said Tuesday and WMB later blogged, “There is nothing exclusively Republican about the faith-based agenda. The main beneficiaries, contrary to some accusations, are established groups such as Catholic Charities or Lutheran Social Services… they also tend to embrace political liberalism.”

Obama’s language is clearly from this politically-left, social gospel persuasion. He links religion and secularism together in a way no James Dobson or Pat Robertson diehard ever would. His speech echoed the tones of left leaning ministers of faith: “The challenges we face today—from saving our planet to ending poverty—are simply too big for government to solve alone,” adding that we need to “empower faith-based organizations.”

Jacques Berlinerblau, on his blog “The God Vote”, points out that Obama cannot be accused by conservative Christians of flip-flopping on this issue. In Audacity of Hope, Obama said “Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before they enter the public square.” Obama seems to have a genuine desire to shift the Democratic Party’s views on religion and government.

His faith-based speech seems to have taken the first step towards that end. Berlinerblau believes Obama will “continue to entice ‘Obama-Curious’ Evangelicals and Catholics. More importantly, it might drain interest away from McCain by getting religious conservatives to shift from a ‘no way’ to a ‘whatever’ response, when thinking about Obama’s candidacy.” Striking away at Obamaphobia is a step away from gaining a supporter.

And that may be Obama’s strategy. Michelle Cottle of The New Republic told ABC News This Week, “Obama doesn’t need to win this group, all he has to do is get his numbers with evangelicals up to the 30% that Bill Clinton got. He’s probably going to get elected.” Just a 10 percent shift of white evangelicals from the GOP could be enough to tip the election.

Here’s a novel idea: Considering the high cost of gas these days, the government should raise the gas tax. Sounds too unbelievable?

The Virginia state senators passed a resolution raising the state gas tax another 6 cents.  Though Republicans in the House of Delegates are determined to stop the resolution there, the measure highlights a continuing trend across the country. As crude oil prices spike past $140 per barrel, even the government seems unable to help the problem.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Wednesday that he wants a half-cent increase for his city. West Virginia has a planned 6-cent gas tax increase scheduled for January 1, 2009. Even New Jersey, with the nations third lowest gas tax rate, is hesitantly considering a hike.

Governments claim they need the gas money to fund new transportation projects. Lawmakers blame the oil companies for the high prices, and many don’t feel government work should stop just because business “greed” has set a high price.

A look at the statistics though, shows that it’s actually state and federal treasuries who earn more—twice as much over the past 25-years—from tax revenues than the big oil companies do from their profits.  While Exxon and their bandit gang have been earning their billions, the government has been taking in trillions.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama supports the current federal gas taxes, and has called for more corporate taxes on the oil companies themselves. He said earlier this month, “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills,” though it’s unclear how he’ll keep those companies from passing on their increased costs to the consumer at the pump.

Karl Rove countered Obama further in a Wall Street Journal op-ed June 20. He said that oil companies only make about 8.3-cents in gross profit from each dollar sale. The electronics industry’s 14.5-cent profit per dollar sale and the Microsoft margin at 27.5-cents.

On the flip side of the issue, John McCain has proposed an 18.5-cent cut in gasoline rates and a 24.5-cent cut on diesel fuel, which will bring in less money for the government and hypothetically force it to curb spending.  And ignoring its fellow states, Arkansas voted down a fuel tax increase, instead choosing to issue bonds to fund its road projects.

Zimbabwe’s election went on, even with just one candidate remaining, and the nation’s  violence continued, too.  Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai dropped out of the race earlier this week, ahead of Friday’s vote, after violence towards his supporters produced a horrifying death count.

As of Wednesday there were 36 reported deaths of known opposition leaders and members.  Military-backed Mugabe Party militants reportedly caused more than 2,000 injuries, and unofficial reports claim the number could be higher.

Christians in the country have been attempting to help the victims of Mugabe’s violence by offering shelter, blankets, and food despite government restrictions of the provision of direct humanitarian aid. Zimbabwean church leaders say there is no sign of a letup in political violence, even after Tsvangirai’s withdrawal.

Christians have been targeted with violence as well. Earlier this week Zimbabwe riot police raided the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance offices. The ZCA claimed at least one staff member was assaulted, and its workers were taken to the Harare Central Police station for questioning.

Useni Sibanda, national coordinator for ZCA, can’t see any reason for the attack. “This is pure harassment of church organizations,” he said, “We are just doing our usual work and we don’t understand why we should be attacked by riot police like this.”

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader for the past 28-years, lost the general election last March to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but forced a run-off.  He says he feels betrayed by the country he led to independence, and that he wants to lead the country back to prosperity. Zimbabwe is in its 10th year of recession with an inflation rate of 355,000% after a decade of positive development as the “bread basket” of Africa.

Though the US, UN, and African leaders don’t believe a free and fair election is possible, Zimbabwe has ignored their demands for the election’s postponement.  Mugabe has said he will not be “dictated to” by foreign leaders and added, “There are countries that have had elections in worse conditions in Africa and we have never interfered.”