Last weekend I had a chance to participate in a YK panel on Global Poverty organized by the ONE campaign– only the opening of the session is available in the Ustream archive but you can get a taste here. Susan McCue, Harry Reid's former Chief of Staff and now Executive Director of ONE led off,Rev. David Beckmann of Bread for the World, Natalie Sugira, a native Rwandan and ONE ambassador, and Gene Sperling, Director of the Center for Universal Education joined in. All of these folks are doing important work - with a real grassroots base - on the issues of extreme poverty and hunger - and as "netroots" we are natural allies who can and hopefully will work together more in the future. Issues like the Farm Bill are ideal areas where we can join forces.

Jim Wolf of Reuters has a catchy story today:

Like the maker of an out-of-favor car or sneaker, the U.S. military needs a new "branding" campaign to earn civilian support in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots, a report for the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

"We will help you" could be the pitch, said the 211-page survey by RAND Corp...

snip

"Like commercial firms that must update unattractive brand identities, so too should the United States consider updating its military's brand identity to suit current and future operational environments," the report said.

Today Sen Reid ended his press conference with the following comment:

Reid: Feingold/Reid called for American troops to remain in Iraq to do counter-terrorsim…to protect our assets in Iraq. To train the Iraqis. There are estimates that that would still leave tens of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq. No one is calling for precipitous withdrawal in Iraq. No one…

In response, I received a message from some friends who are in Iraq at the moment. (These friends have extensive military experience but not with US forces.) They ask a terrifying question: "How many tens of thousands are the US willing to see killed - tens of thousands of US troops that is?"