Summary: Former president Jimmy Carter told NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview that he believes race is at the core of much of the opposition to President Obama. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on seventh day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported on a spate of bombings in Iraq coinciding with an unannounced visit by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

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Summary: Opinion polls show support for President Barack Obama and his policies dipping sharply, though he remains personally more popular than his policies. How will these dynamics impact the 2010 election and what do they tell us about President Obama’s personal qualities and leadership style? … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 54th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, volunteers handed out campaign literature in downtown Forest Lake (Washington County) and at the Old Creamery Arts & Crafts Show in Rice (Benton County), while Immelman had a meet-and-greet at the Saint John’s University football season opener in Collegeville. He also featured information from the WCCO voters guide regarding his campaign platform and issue positions.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … With 52 U.S. troops killed, August 2009 became the deadliest month of the deadliest year yet in the Afghanistan war. … The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has called for a new strategy against the Taliban in an assessment of the 8-year-old conflict ordered by the U.S. Secretary of Defense. … The number of civilians killed in Iraq shot up to 393 in August 2009, the highest level since April, after a spate of mass-casualty bombings caused carnage in Baghdad and northern Iraq. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 49th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman visited the St. Stephen Parish Festival with his four children. Afterwards, he made a detour through Rice on the way home to Sartell, for an update on shoreline restoration and water quality issues on Little Rock Lake in Benton County. He also posted updates on Hurricane Gustav, which made landfall as a Category 2 storm near Cocodrie, La.

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Summary: Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge claims in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet to raise the nation’s terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election. … One-year retrospective: On the 38th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman announced the August 22 kick-off of a second walking tour, this time a 50-mile campaign swing from Foley in the east to Paynesville on the western boundary of the Sixth Congressional District. … In line with his campaign focus on national security, he also featured a Newsweek interview with Gen. David Petraeus, in which the former U.S. commander in Iraq explained why vigilance was still needed in Iraq and why Afghanistan in some ways poses an even greater security dilemma for the United States.

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Summary: Aubrey Immelman, director of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, has announced the release of a psychological profile of former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney on Monday afternoon, August 10, 2009. … Update: Barton Gellman reports in the Aug. 13, 2009 issue of the Washington Post that Vice President Dick Cheney’s memoir, to be published in spring 2011, will pull no punches in describing his policy differences and arguments with George W. Bush. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on Saturday, August 9, 2008 — the 26th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District and exactly one month before the September 9 primary election — Aubrey Immelman kicked off his 100-mile walking tour of the Sixth District from Freeport in the northwest to Stillwater in the southeastern corner of the district, on the Wisconsin border. … As a public service announcement to help draw attention to the sacrifice of National Guard citizen soldiers serving in Iraq and the families they leave behind, Immelman featured Part 7 of the Associated Press series, “The Longest Deployment” (the story of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota National Guard and its tour of duty in Iraq).

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Summary: In a curt missive issued by Baghdad Operations Command, Iraq’s top commanders told their U.S. counterparts to “stop all joint patrols” in Baghdad, raising fresh concerns about the safety of U.S. troops in Iraq. … U.S. F-15E fighter jet crashes in Afghanistan, killing crew. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the fourth day of his 2008 campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman responded to a challenge by Eric Zaetsch of the “Developers are Crabgrass” blog to define what he means by “traditional conservative values.”

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Summary: Psychological assessment of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, leadership style implications of Kim’s personality profile, and North Korea threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security. … Update: Washington Post profile of Kim Jong-Un.

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Summary: Sarah Moore and Angela Rodgers, students at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., presented their research on “The Personality Profile of President Barack Obama: Leadership Implications” at the 6th annual Minnesota Private Colleges Scholars at the Capitol event, Feb. 19, 2009 in the State Capitol rotunda, St. Paul, Minn. Their research was conducted in the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, directed by College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University associate professor of psychology Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D.

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Summary: Support for the Kabul government and the United States and European troops trying to bolster it against insurgents is plummeting among the Afghan people, a new poll reports.

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Summary: President George W. Bush presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, with economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly viewing his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation’s thorniest fiscal challenges. Specifically, the number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush’s tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans’ incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush’s father George H. W. Bush.

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