Author Elizabeth Pisani talks about the inherent problems in funding towards HIV prevention. (0:59)

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McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Rick Davis says that he believes a comeback is in progress for Sen. McCain. He also said Gov. Palin is still attracting big crowds at her speeches. (0:47)

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In a conference call today, McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Rick Davis said their campaign is “pretty jazzed up” as election day gets closer.
Davis stated that the narrowing polls between the candidates is evidence that “we fight back.” He felt the world was “witnessing one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary.”
Davis also noted that Gov. Palin (R-Alaska) has been generating a lot of excitement about their ticket. He added that the notion that she is hurting Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) “can’t be further from the truth.” He used the example that yesterday, Sen. Biden (D-Del.) had 800 people at his speech, while Palin had 20,000 people at hers.
Davis felt the polling in the last 10 days were the “best 10 days of polling since the convention.” He was also encouraged by the fact that Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) is campaigning in states like Iowa, which were previously thought to be easy victories for him.

2.5 million people will contract HIV this year, a disease that is “preventable” according to Elizabeth Pisani, author of “The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS” at a discussion of her book at the Center For Strategic and International Studies today.
Pisani disagrees with the idea that AIDS is a worldwide problem saying, “There is no global HIV epidemic.” She said that parts of Africa, or 10 percent of the world’s population, have 66 percent (40 million people) of reported cases of HIV. She said that the rest of the HIV epidemic is prevalent in people who “sell sex,” gay men, and drug injectors.
She focused on the multitude of interest groups that will not help in the fight to prevent HIV. She said those in the UN will lose money, politicians will lose votes, religious groups will “compromise their morality,” and AIDS activists do not want to bring this problem back to its “bad days.”
Pisani added that the religious “sacred cows” against prevention of HIV are miscalculated. She said the feeling among the religious that providing condoms is a way of promoting sex is misguided. She said, in her experience, carrying condoms “doesn’t make it any easier to get laid.” She also said that the notion that providing needles promotes injection is untrue as well.
In the U.S. , Pisani said that HIV is “a gay male disease.” She said that prevention in America must be focused on that group.
In regards to to treatment of HIV, Pisani stated that she supported treatment, but “We can’t do it without doing better at prevention.”

General Wesley Clark, former Senators Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.), Max Cleland (D-Ga.), and Jon Stoltz, Chairman of VoteVets.org, held a conference call today on the state of veterans running in the elections. Stoltz said “with our races this cycle, not only do we feel that we’re going to defend all our incumbents, but we feel we have a great shot to pick up 5 or 6 seats.”
General Clark emphasized fully funding veterans health care and education, “particularly at a time when so few of us are paying any price in this war… and there’s a declining number of people who’ve have military experience in Congress.” Clark said, “we need to do a better job at bringing younger veterans into the political process, and especially giving them a chance to run as democrats.”
VoteVets.org has endorsed several candidates who are veterans, raising thousands of dollars for their candidates running for U.S. Congress. The group’s endorsed candidates are: John Boccieri, Ohio-16, Charlie Brown, California-4, Mike Lumpkin, California-52, Ashwin Madia, Minnesota-3 , Eric Massa, New York-29, Walt Minnick, Idaho-1, Jill Morgenthaler, Illinois-6, Gary Peters, Michigan-9, John Murtha, Pennsylviania-12, Steve Sarvi, Minnesota-2, Jim Martin, Georgia – U.S. Senate, and Rick Noriega, Texas – U.S. Senate, as well as incumbents Reps. Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak, Chris Carney, and Tim Walz.

“Important things are happening in Washington today,” John Hamre of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said at a joint press conference with the President of Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, concerning the future of Iraq.
President Barzani stated that his visit comes at a critical time, not only for the United States but for the entire world because the new president of the United States impacts the world. President Barzani said that his visit is intended to express his gratitude to the United States for their assistance in getting Iraq out of a dictatorship.
“A great opportunity has come to Iraq. An opportunity to have democracy and a free state but there are challenges ahead,” President Barzani said. He stated that the role of the Kurds is important and that they have shed blood fighting along side the United States. “The Kurds will continue to play a positive role to have a federal democratic state in Iraq,” President Barzani said.
He further stated that Kurdistan will stay committed and determined to make sure terrorists aren’t able to find foot ground in Iraq. He wants to make sure that Kurdistan maintains good relations with their neighbors. “ A lot of good meetings have happened with Turkey and Iran and we hope it continues for the sake of everyones freedom,” President Barzani said.
President Barzani assured that there is a current agreement being drafted between Iraqi officials and the United States. He said that the agreement has a timetable for withdrawal of troops in 2011 and that this agreement is better then any agreement that has been made in the past. “Fortunately the terrorists have not been able to gain a base in our region. If we look at the situation now, the terrorists have been weakened and are losing ground. If we do not continue on the successes we have had, there is always a chance of them gaining strength again,” President Barzani concluded.

A discussion at the Brookings Institute focused on campaign effects of the money, ads and mobilization of the 2008 presidential election.
Both campaigns broke records and raised a combined total of $1 billion, said Anthony Corrado, a fellow at the Brookings Institute. While McCain’s campaign was well-funded, it was dwarfed by Obama’s campaign, which raised more money than John Kerry’s and George Bush’s 2004 presidential campaigns combined.
In order to compete with Obama, McCain had to rely heavily on the Republican party to run advertisements, said Corrado. Thus, McCain had less control over the messages of the ad. Overall the Republican ads took a negative tone and also attacked other Democrats running for office, making them appear more partisan than Obama’s ads.
The overall increase in campaign financing and the huge advantage that Barack Obama has isn’t troubling to political scientists, said Larry Bartels, director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. “To put [it] into historical comparison,” said Bartles, “if you go back to before the reforms 1970s, it was quite common for Republican presidential candidates to have two-to-one funding advantages over their Democratic opponents…to gauge the effect of that on the election outcomes, it looks like that contributed something like three percentage points to the average Republican vote margin.”

The Obama-Biden campaign today announced a very confident and committed position in the presidential election. With several million volunteers around the country. the Obama-Biden campaign manager, David Plouffe, said “we like what we’re seeing in all the states with the early vote.”
Today the campaign released two 30 second TV ads in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia. Plouffe said that even though the McCain-Palin campaign has criticized the Obama-Biden campaign about heavy advertising, “the McCain spending levels this week have been quite high. In the Tampa market, they’re spending over 5,000 points of television, which may be the most amount of television ever bought in a political race.”
Through advertising, voter contact, and resources, Plouffe said he feels the Obama-Biden campaign is doing everything they need to do in the swing-states. Plouffe also said the campaign is organizing polling information at popular locations that youths hang out at in the swing states.
Plouffe said that in the tossup state of Nevada, 43% of democrats voting early are new or sporadic. In North Carolina, 19% of democrats voting early never voted in an election before. In Florida, 1/4 of sporadic voting democrats have voted early. Plouffe said the campaign is putting special focus on voters who recently committed to Obama, because they’re known as “sticky” and still vulnerable to vote for McCain. Even though the campaign feels confident in their state of the race, Plouffe said this does not take away from “the fierce urgency of trying to win Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.”

UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) organized a panel of Israeli and Palestinian women rights activists through the membership of the International Women’s Commission. The International Women’s Commission is a global organization that fights for a just and sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine. The panel of women activists and experts will meet with the Security Council today to promote United Nations Resolution 1325, on women’s peace and security. Women have long held a strong role in conflict resolution and the panel of women from several prominent activist organizations based in the region will ask the Security Council to 1) put on the agenda of the monthly briefings the progress of women’s issues, 2) organize a thematic mission and visit women’s programs to see what women are doing in the region, 3) establish a monitoring mechanism for stability with the guidance of UNIFEM and UN organizations underscoring the experiences of women in both the Israeli and Palestinian territories.

The Washington Bureau will be covering The Center for Strategic and International Studies address by Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani on “The Kurdistan Region and the Future of Iraq,” The Woodrow Wilson Center discussion on “Iraqi Women as Agents of Peace,” the Brookings Institution discussion on “Campaign Effects in the 2008 Election: Money, Ads and Mobilization,” and the Center for Strategic and INternational Studies book discussion on “The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS.”
The Washington Bureau will also be covering a conference with Retired General Wesley Clark, Former Senators Max Cleland and Bob Kerrey, and Chairman of VoteVets.org, Jon Stoltz, on the state of the race for VoteVets.Org candidates, and a conference with the Obama-Biden campaign on the state of the race.