Let the battle begin: Here’s the video.

Brave New Films invites you to meet: Rev. Rod Parsley, the televangelist megachurch pastor from Ohio who hates Islam. According to David Corn of Mother Jones, Parsley has called on Christians to wage war against Islam, which he considers to be a “false religion.” In the past, Parsley has also railed against the separation of church and state, homosexuals, and abortion rights, comparing Planned Parenthood to Nazis.

Wow. He sounds friendly.

On Beliefnet, David Gibson seems to regret that political leaders in the US are forced to create a distance between themselves and their religion to make themselves electable (he is talking about Obama not McCain).

Seems more to me like they are forced to align themselves with one crazy faith or another to even be considered for nomination. I wish America’s leaders wouldn’t lend credibility to all the nonsense that goes on in the name of faith.

Take this song from Jamaica for instance – it’s much better than anything that could have come out of the Obama campaign itself (via The World Wants Obama).

Jamaican reggae star Cocoa Tea has released a new song “We Want Obama”. The lyrics include this line: ‘This is not about class nor color, race nor creed. It’s about the changes, what the Americans need.”

Want more? Here’s a song about Barak Obama from Grenadian-Trinidadian artist, The Mighty Sparrow. These are the first lines of the song (see full lyrices here). This is not light fare, listen to the whole thing:

The respect of the world that we now lack,
If you want it back then, vote Barack!
Because this time we come out to vote!
Stop the war!
Stop genocide in Darfur!
No matter what,
Get health care for who have not!
The Foreign Relations Committee,
Can attest to his tenacity,
For homeland and job security.

No question US politics could do with a little more music, and I don’t mean this boring old stuff. Who will be the first to sell compilation CD’s of all the songs out there to raise money for the Obama campaign?

I had Obama-supporting friends visiting over the weekend, and it became clearer to me how Hillary is stuck with the unfortunate image of a politician who will compromise on any ideal to get ahead.

The week before, I had a friend visiting from out of the country who horrified a group of Democrats over dinner by suggesting that Hillary should have left Bill after the Lewinsky affair. Never mind what ordinary wives do in this situation, she said – how can a female public figure just keep holding up appearances? (That great scene in the Sopranos, when the mafia-wives sympathise with Hillary comes to mind)

I personally don’t care very strongly what Hillary does or doesn’t do. I am just making a frivolous point. From a PR-perspective, I can’t help thinking a little separation or divorce is exactly what it would take to short circuit the current media trajectory. Bill hasn’t exactly been helping her image much in the last weeks of campaigning (with the race baiting and sleeping), so maybe now would be a good time to get that revenge for the Lewinsky affair!

People could no longer claim she wasn’t strong and independent, or into “change”. She would steal all the headlines. Other divorcées and women with faithful husbands would vote for her, and once she was elected, the media could engage in a long Brad and Angelina-type coverage of them getting back together. Sweet.

On a more serious note (also arising from this weekend’s conversations), wouldn’t it have been awesome to have a female candidate who made single mothers her campaign issue? She could have touched on education, health care, reproductive rights, poverty, family, gender, labor, immigration, welfare, and peace, all at once.

MoveOn’s ad is scary enough.

But check this out:

Who are these crazy people? Huckabee on evolution and Giuliani on foreign policy are particularly hair raising.

There are few subjects that spark the imagination of bloggers worldwide – and United States foreign policy is one of them.

Global Voices challenges people to listen to people beyond their own borders. We translate back and forth from blogospheres in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe in hopes that people may come to understand and care for one another across borders.

We also encourage international media to talk to and report on the concerns of ordinary citizens around the world. Hopefully, looking at US politics more closely through a kaleidoscope of world blogs will be a compelling and thought-provoking experience. Send us links to blogs you would like us to link to, including your own.

Global Voices Middle East and North Africa Editor, Amira Al Hussaini is going to be editing the website with help from other Global Voices editors and volunteers. Check in regularly at Voices Without Votes until Americans finally hit the polls and elect a president in November 2008.

Meanwhile, the world is still talking! Are you listening?

More than enough silliness coming out of Fox these days to keep this site busy: Fox Attacks. Barak Obama refused to go on Fox for months, but this morning (in spite of a petition for him and Edwards to refuse the network) he granted an interview to the show, Fox & Friends about the New Hampshire primary.

CNN just asked their correspondents around the world to report on the US, and they nearly all said people around the world were cheering for Obama (especially in Kenya). The only exception was in Ramallah, where the correspondent said people were not in the least optimistic about any of the candidates.

Global Voices has a couple of reports about Obama from Iranian and Caribbean bloggers, and we’ve got another global round up planned for later today. How depressing, that the fact that a candidate is popular abroad could actually work against him in the United States… When you think back to all the global negativity about Bush in 2004, it’s really startling that he still won.

Right now, in Israel, bloggers are upset that President Bush’s current visit to Israel is costing taxpayers an astonishing $25,000 an hour, among other things.

So, the right wing Liberal government led by prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen continues for another term. And the most depressing thing about the election is actually that turn out was excellent (82%) and voting was fair – but the Danish public still voted for the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Danish People’s Party in huge numbers. It remains the third biggest party of the country.

I didn’t follow the elections closely this time. It was very rushed and the outcome was pretty much predicted from the start. Also, I am no longer allowed to vote, because my genius government believes I am less Danish if I have lived outside the country for more than 2 years. Or maybe it’s just that I am less likely to vote for a bigot?

One of the interesting things about these elections is the way the internet has factored in. In the United States they say 2004 was the first “internet election”. Presidential candidates discovered blogs, online fundraising, and social networking. Danish media and politicians have had a comparable epiphany in 2007 with the supercharged additions of Facebook, YouTube, and Google map APIs. If you read Danish, the regional RSS aggregator Overskrift.dk has some great analysis of which politicians blogged, who blogged about them, and what they all talked about.

They are doing this over 5 Mondays, each week discussing a different article (1st week: Initiation & Continuation of Illegal War, 2nd week: Torture & Extraordinary Rendition, and so forth).

Mondays will tackle five articles of impeachment directly, through depositions, modeled on actual impeachment hearings ­ bringing in renowned lawyers from both sides of the argument, who will interview expert witnesses culled from the arenas of the military, public policy, international negotiation, and media.

Culture Project is bringing together some of the most important and knowledgeable thinkiers: Michael Ratner (President, Center for Constitutional Rights), Bruce Fein (Assoc. Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan; member, ABA Task Force on presidential signing statements), Retired Colonel Ann Wright, writer Joe Conason, attorney Martin Garbus, attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, and many others.

It’s guaranteed to be a lot less frivolous and salacious than the Clinton impeachment hearings, not to mention depressing and aggravating – but I wouldn’t miss it. If no one is willing to actually do this in real life, the least we can do is support the make believe version.

My industrious father Dan Larsen has launched a new blog in Danish called Borgerdemokrati.dk. It’s about e-democracy, citizen journalism, and political uses of the internet in Denmark and abroad. With only 13 days left until the national election in Denmark, he’s not letting any politicians off the hook. It’s probably the best blog in Danish. Ever. Check it out.