2010 California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is cutting nearly 30,000 jobs from the iconic firm once known for its humane “HP Way.” Whitman is a national finance co-chair for her longtime mentor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. She became HP CEO last September.
** QUICK HITS. I’m told that all Obama fundraisers in the San Francisco Bay Area tonight and tomorrow are sold out. Another very big Golden State take for the prez is in the offing. … Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation today to expedite a big solar project in Southern California.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE NEW SPACE ERA TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD (TAKE 2), and MAD MEN: A GREAT LEAPER FORWARD? JOAN, JAG, DON’S RETURN TO ADVERTISING (AND OTHER, ER, TREKS).
Vice President Joe Biden, whose numbers haven’t been very good for the past few years, has reached a new low.
Or high, depending on how you look at it.
Unfortunately for the Veep, the high he has reached is his highest unfavorable rating.
Democrats are sharply favorable, while Republicans are sharply unfavorable. Independents tilt against him by 10 points.
Americans are about equally likely to have a favorable (42%) as an unfavorable (45%) view of Joe Biden, which has been the case for most of his tenure as U.S. vice president. Americans were much more positive than negative toward Biden from the time he was chosen as Barack Obama’s running mate through the first several months of the Obama administration. …
The May 10-13 USA Today/Gallup poll marks the first time opinions of Biden have tilted negative since he became Obama’s vice presidential pick, but they are not materially different from the closely divided but still net positive ratings of Biden from October 2009-March 2011. The current poll was conducted after Biden’s comments in favor of same-sex marriage on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, May 6 — comments that led to President Obama’s announcement that he too supported legalized same-sex marriage. The poll suggests those comments did not have a dramatic effect on how Americans view Biden.
Biden’s favorable rating peaked at 59% immediately after the 2008 election. His current 45% unfavorable rating is his highest so far, though his unfavorable ratings have been at least 40% since October 2009.
Fourteen percent of Americans do not have an opinion of the vice president, similar to the levels Gallup has measured since October 2008.
Predictably, Democrats are overwhelmingly positive toward the Democratic vice president, and Republicans overwhelmingly negative. By 47% to 37%, independents are more negative than positive. …
President Barack Obama declared Wednesday morning that the world has “a new feeling about America” and more respect for its leadership, weaving re-election themes into a commencement speech to jubilant graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE NEW SPACE ERA TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD (TAKE 2), and MAD MEN: A GREAT LEAPER FORWARD? JOAN, JAG, DON’S RETURN TO ADVERTISING (AND SOME OTHER STUFF).
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Colorado, and California.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Colorado Springs, Colorado, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy.
There he met with Air Force Academy personnel and their families, following which he delivered the commencement address.
Following that, he mingled and met with the Falcons and their families.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama departs Colorado Springs on Air Force One en route Denver, Colorado.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Denver.
At 2:35 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency Denver.
At 3:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Denver on Air Force One en route Mountain View, California.
At 6:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Mountain View, California, landing at Moffett Federal Airfield, the former Navy air station.
At 7:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a private residence in Atherton.
At 9:10 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City.
Obama RONs in San Jose.
His latest California trip continues tomorrow.
I understand that Obama will raise another $4 million-plus from Silicon Valley.
The latest round of negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program began today in Baghdad between Iran and the permanent five UN Security Council members (US,UK, France, Russia, China) and Germany.
The international powers are pushing for Iran to limit its nuclear enrichment program, especially pulling back from the 20% level from which further enrichment to weapons grade is far easier. Iran claims it needs all that enrichment for a medical reactor.
Iran has countered with an entirely new proposal, details of which are not available.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s presidential election began today.
The election continues tomorrow.
There have been no major disturbances thusfar.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran could soon sign a deal on the UN agency investigating suspected weapons activities connected to the country’s nuclear program. Yukiya Amano, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday that he reached an agreement with Iran’s government after talks in Tehran, but failed to seal the deal because of “remaining, unspecified differences.”
I’ll write a lot more about this, along with the just concluded NATO summit in Chicago, when the massive round of geopolitical summitry, all of it connected, is concluded.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
California’s governmental efficiency commission, the so-called Little Hoover Commission (explanation for the odd name too lengthy for this space), voted unanimously yesterday afternoon to approve Brown’s plan to reorganize and streamline state government.
Brown’s plan will cut the number of state agencies from 12 to 10, ending many duplicative operations. Unless it is rejected by a majority vote of either house of the state legislature by July 3rd, the plan will go into effect.
Brown has scheduled another national media interview, on the heels of last Friday’s outing on CBS News’s new morning program, to air later this week on National Public Radio’s Marketplace program.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $90 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $56 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $24 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
President Barack Obama, at his intended Chicago showcase NATO Summit, acknowledged that there are “hard days ahead” in Afghanistan as the alliance prepares to withdraw troops from the country and tries to define success.
** QUICK HITS.California’s governmental efficiency commission, the so-called Little Hoover Commission (explanation for the odd name too lengthy for this space), voted unanimously today to approve Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to reorganize and streamline state government. Brown’s plan will cut the number of state agencies from 12 to 10, ending many duplicative operations. Unless it is rejected by a majority vote of either house of the state legislature by July 3rd, the plan will go into effect. … Brown has scheduled another national media interview, on the heels of last Friday’s outing on CBS News’s new morning program, to air later this week on National Public Radio’s Marketplace program. … Another national poll shows President Barack Obama on top of conservative Republican Mitt Romney. Obama leads 47-43 in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. … Obama has a 7-point lead in the latest Fox News poll.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE NEW SPACE ERA TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD (TAKE 2), and MAD MEN: A GREAT LEAPER FORWARD? JOAN, JAG, DON’S RETURN TO ADVERTISING (AND SOME OTHER STUFF).
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
He has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama has no public schedule today.
He’s back from several days of major summitry.
First came the G-8 Summit at Camp David, where world leaders seemed to be moving toward Obama’s overall view that the global economy needs stimulus more than austerity at this critical moment.
Then came the NATO Summit in Chicago, where Obama struggled with relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and, especially, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
And NATO as a whole struggled with its post-Cold War raison d’etre, and how to redefine success in Afghanistan.
The phrase “Afghan good enough” is now very current.
I’ll write a lot more about this when the massive round of geopolitical summitry, now moving on to the Iran crisis, all of it connected, is concluded.
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, following a weekend trip to Tehran, says he is close to a deal with Iran to allow inspection of at least one suspected military nuclear site. But he discloses no details.
This followed talks last week in Vienna.
Negotiations between the P5+1 (US,UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany) and Iran begin on Wednesday in Baghdad.
Obama is also prepping for a big trip to the West.
On Wednesday, he delivers a major address, the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, to which I was appointed by then U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, but which I did not attend.
He has a big fundraiser in Denver before moving on to some bigger fundraisers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I understand that Silicon Valley is in for another $4 million-plus.
I’ll have more on all this.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
The second time was the charm. California’s SpaceX, after a literally last-second abort early Saturday morning at Cape Canaveral, successfully launched the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station early Tuesday morning at the Cape. Much more to follow.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He delivered a largely well-received address early this morning at the annual Host Breakfast sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce.
I’ll have more on that, and what it means for the campaign for his November revenue initiative, tomorrow in a “Jerry-Rigging.” The piece will discuss messaging, which Brown is tightening, operations, and opposition, or lack of same.
Brown also declared today to be Harvey Milk Day in California, issuing the following proclamation:
“As one of the first openly gay politicians to hold office in the United States, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk is remembered as a hero in the movement for acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. His courage in facing a hostile public and his insistence on being treated the same as anyone else contributed greatly to the advancement of this cause. Milk succeeded because he was not just a gay leader but a champion for his district, a brilliant coalition builder and community organizer who brought the real concerns of ordinary people to city hall. His legacy lives on in the vibrant neighborhoods of San Francisco, which he helped restore to vitality at a time when American cities were in crisis.
“Today, on the 82nd anniversary of his birth, I urge all Californians to remember Harvey Milk for his contributions to the more open, free and honest society that we live in today. We should also remember how he died, at the hands of a fellow supervisor, a killing that Milk himself had anticipated because of the virulent opposition he faced. On this day, let us rededicate ourselves not only to the cause of equal rights for all people, but also to the peaceful and democratic process envisioned by our nation’s founders.”
** A BUCKET OF WOE: JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET. In one of the least surprising announcements of late, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled the annual spring revision of the California state budget, proposing steps to deal with what he says has become a $15.7 billion budget deficit, up from $9.2 billion in January. Absent more tough cuts, and passage of his November revenue initiative, things get much worse very fast, especially for the schools.
Meanwhile, things are apt to get significantly worse for social welfare programs and state workers.
The deficit number was a surprise to some, probably feigned in some cases, especially by Brown’s longtime conservative critics. … From my May 16th essay.
** MAD MEN: DANGER! SLIPPERY WHEN SOAPY (ESPECIALLY IN DARK SHADOWS). … From my May 15th review.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $22 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The NATO Summit is upon President Barack Obama’s hometown Chicago, and so are thousands of demonstrators.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE NEW SPACE ERA TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD (TAKE 2), and MAD MEN: “CHRISTMAS WALTZ.”
** FLAILING NATO? BIG QUESTIONS SURROUND OBAMA’S SHOWCASE CHICAGO SUMMIT.There’s a lot of confusion about the ballyhooed NATO Summit in Chicago, intended as a big boost to Obama’s geopolitical leadership, showcased in his hometown.
Questions about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded 62 years ago in the early days of the Cold War with the late Soviet Union and its aligned bloc, have abounded for decades. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, which removed NATO’s founding rationale for existing.
But they are getting very loud again. Both in the wake of NATO’s success in Libya — which pointed up how far behind the rest of NATO with respect to US capability its European members have fallen — and in the face of the looming debacle in Afghanistan.
Here are some big outstanding questions about NATO’s future. We’ll see how many get answers in Chicago.
* How will Pakistan play in the big discussion on AfPak strategy? …
* Are countries beginning a rush to the exits in Afghanistan? …
* How will NATO members advance technologically when their budgets are being tightened? …
* How will NATO handle relations with groups that wish to ally, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, and with groups that may be rivals, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its members such as Russia and China? …
* Speaking of which, does NATO have a unified position on Iran? …
* Does NATO have a unified position on missile defense? …
* Does NATO have a unified position on its own expansion? …
As I noted three years ago here on the Huffington Post, when Obama visited Moscow, Putin had Obama come to his sumptuous dacha in a forest outside Moscow. They discussed ballistic missile defense, and Russian dislike of America establishing bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, NATO expansion, and the question of containing Iran, Russia’s decades-long friend of a sort (and centuries-long rival).
The two hour-plus meeting went long — in part because much of it was taken up by a Putin monologue — and Obama ended up late for his major address of the week at the New Economic School back in Moscow.
Having lectured Obama and made him late for the first time ever for one of his major addresses, Putin went over to visit a famous motorcycle club. Which was pointedly headed to a big motorcycle rally in Ukraine, a country which Putin was intent on keeping out of NATO, where pro-US politicians lost the subsequent election. …
There really is no shortage of fundamental questions surrounding NATO. It will be interesting to see how Obama spins up the impression of a success. …
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama says that Congress needs to move forward, not, er, backward, on Wall Street reform in the wake of JP Morgan Chase’s recently revealed $3 billion trading losses.
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Maryland and Illinois.
Obama hosts the G8 Summit at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland and the NATO Summit in Chicago.
First the Saturday schedule for the G8 Summit, then the Sunday schedule for the NATO Summit.
On Saturday, at 6 AM Pacific, Obama attended the first working session with G8 Leaders at Camp David.
He then took part in a family photo with G8 Leaders.
Following that, he attended the second working session with G8 Leaders.
Obama then attended a working lunch on food security.
At 11:25 AM Pacific, Obama attends the third working session with G8 Leaders.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama attends the fourth working session with G8 Leaders.
At 1:40 PM Pacific, Obama attends the fifth working session with G8 Leaders.
At 2:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers a statement.
At 4:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Camp David on Marine One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 4:55 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depart Joint Base Andrews on Air Force One en route Chicago, Illinois.
At 6:45 PM Pacific, the Obamas land in Chicago.
On Sunday, at 8:45 AM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at McCormick Place in Chicago.
At 10:35 AM Pacific, Obama meets with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at McCormick Place
At 11:30 AM Pacific, Obama takes part in the official greeting of the North Atlantic Council Leaders at McCormick Place.
At 12:15 PM Pacific, Obama participates in the opening session of the North Atlantic Council at McCormick Place.
At 5:40 PM Pacific, Obama takes part in a NATO family photo at Soldier Field
At 6 PM Pacific, Obama attends a NATO working dinner at Soldier Field.
Meanwhile, Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng is coming to America to be a fellow at New York University, putting a capper on a recent crisis with the PRC.
Obama will shortly be raising more big bucks in Northern California. I expect him to raise another $4 million out of Silicon Valley.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like.
On Monday, Obama will attend meetings at the NATO Summit in Chicago. Later in the day, the President will travel to Joplin, Missouri, where he will deliver the commencement address at Joplin High School. Obama will return to Washington, DC, in the evening.
On Tuesday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to deliver the commencement address at the Air Force Academy.
Obama will then travel to Denver, Colorado for a fundraiser. In the evening, Obama will travel to California for campaign events in Atherton and Redwood City. He will spend the night in San Jose, California.
On Thursday, Obama will attend a campaign event in Palo Alto.
He will then travel to the Newton, Iowa, area to deliver remarks on the economy at an official event, where he will continue to push Congress to act on his so-called “To Do List,” largely around his economic themes.
Later, Obama will attend a campaign event in Des Moines before returning to Washington, DC, in the evening.
On Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Governor Jerry Brown appeared on CBS This Morning to discuss California’s problems and opportunities.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
** A BUCKET OF WOE: JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET. In one of the least surprising announcements of late, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled the annual spring revision of the California state budget, proposing steps to deal with what he says has become a $15.7 billion budget deficit, up from $9.2 billion in January. Absent more tough cuts, and passage of his November revenue initiative, things get much worse very fast, especially for the schools.
Meanwhile, things are apt to get significantly worse for social welfare programs and state workers.
The deficit number was a surprise to some, probably feigned in some cases, especially by Brown’s longtime conservative critics.
Fox News, to mention the most obvious of these folks, spinning furiously, claimed that Brown is actually worse than JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Why? Because Dimon only hid a $2 billion loss while Brown “hid” a “$16 billion deficit blunder.”
I mention this, not because I take the Fox report seriously, but because it is the preposterous hyper-partisan extreme that illustrates a common problem.
Which is that there is nothing surprising about the budget deficit number, not for anyone who has been paying attention to, and remembering, regular statements from Brown and state Controller John Chiang about revenues, and from Brown about budget cuts being blocked, by the courts and federal government, and balked at, by the legislature.
It was a simple exercise in arithmetic. Add up the revenue shortfalls reported for months, and repeatedly throughout April, with the blocked budget cuts, and you won’t be surprised. (An added factor, as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain points out, is that revenue from corporate taxes is 6 percent lower than expected, and is actually down in absolute terms, even though corporate profits are booming. And corporate taxes make up a shrinking share of the state budget, due to tax breaks.)
Of course, the overall doesn’t get done much in an era of news nibbles via Twitter. And many like to hype the surprise when the overall becomes impossible to miss.
Which brings us to an interesting question. Does the air of shock around the latest in California’s chronic budget crisis count as a failure of Brown’s communications strategy? Or as a success? After all, a bad shock may be what the electoral doctor ordered for Brown’s November revenue initiative. I assume he noticed that the numbers weren’t being added up in the press. …
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
A rocket from California’s SpaceX, set to be the first private spacecraft to travel to the International Space Station, roared to life for a history-making liftoff Saturday, but remained stuck on the ground following a last-second abort at Cape Canaveral. The onboard computer system shutdown the rocket after one of nine engines showed higher than desired internal pressure. This has happened with other test flights, which went off later the same day. But this mission had only a one-second launch window, so the next opportunity comes early Tuesday morning.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed on Friday at $91.48 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $57 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $23 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Iran’s petrochemical exports have plunged nearly 90 percent in the last two weeks, according to traders and shipping data, with Iranian failure to get insurance to transport cargoes due to EU sanctions. The sanctions banning European insurers and reinsurers from covering tankers carrying Iranian petrochemicals came into effect at the start of May. Similar EU measures aimed at crude and oil products will start in July.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE NEW SPACE ERA, AND CALIFORNIA, TAKES A BIG STEP FORWARD and FLAILING WITH NATO.
** QUICK HITS. What will be a bigger influencer in global financial markets? Friday’s big Facebook IPO, or the woes of Greece, headed for another election on June 17th with anti-austerity sentiment strong and rising? … Governor Jerry Brown appears Friday morning around 7 AM on CBS This Morning for an interview with Charlie Rose on California’s fiscal situation. … In the latest kerfuffle that takes up so much attention in politics, a conservative super PAC planned then abandoned TV advertising hitting President Barack Obama for his former pastor’s incendiary comments back in the day, with Mitt Romney forced to disavow and various charges and counter-charges zzzz …
** AMERICANS ELECT FLAMES OUT, OR, HOW NOT TO DEVELOP A THIRD PARTY. Well, something I’ve given short shrift to turns out to deserve even less.
That would be Americans Elect, a group run by rich people in New York, funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, to develop a third party line for the 2012 presidential elections.
With that kind of money, they of course have been able to buy ballot access in a lot of states. But aside from boiler plate bipartisanship, they haven’t had much of a message other than to say what we already know about the problems of American politics.
And now they have acknowledged the obvious. The effort isn’t going anywhere.
What’s the problem, besides lack of a message and grassroots appeal?
Lack of a candidate.
Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer led the way, as it were, in its online polling, with Ron Paul as the leading “draft” candidate.
But the group decided that neither of these worthies had enough support to take the ballot line.
Which is a wise choice, since neither would mean much in the race, although Paul could effectively end Mitt Romney’s candidacy.
But that would never happen, since Paul made it plain in the course of the Republican presidential race that he is a de facto ally of Romney, whom he never attacked during the campaign.
Here’s the Americans Elect statement, which claims success though it ended up failing:
There is a desire among Delegates and millions of Americans who have supported Americans Elect to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.
However, the rules, as developed in consultation with the Americans Elect Delegates, are clear. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June. The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.
Americans Elect, from the outset, has been a rules-based process, with the rules publicly available and open to debate by the Delegates. Our key priorities have been to: 1) honor the trust Americans Elect has built with the Delegates and American public; 2) require candidates to earn the nomination by building support among the Americans Elect Delegate community and American voters; and 3) create a basis for a solid future for the Americans Elect movement.
This decision honors these priorities.
Through the efforts of thousands of staffers, volunteers and leadership, Americans Elect has achieved its operational goals, including:
· Creating a pathway for nationwide ballot access for a balanced presidential ticket
unaffiliated with the nominating process of either major party to compete in the
2012 race;
· Building the technological platform for the first nonpartisan secure national online
primary at AmericansElect.org;
· Attracting a significant base of more than 4 million supporters, including Delegates,
petition signers and volunteers;
· Educating the national and local media on the Americans Elect mission; and
· Finishing an extensive candidate briefing program involving more than 100
potential candidates.
As always, we thank everyone who has helped build this organization and are grateful for the work, efforts, and trust so many people have placed in Americans Elect. We are continuing the Americans Elect mission of creating more choice in our political system, giving candidates unaffiliated with the nominating process of either major party an authentic way to run for office and giving the American people a greater voice in our political process.
President Barack Obama yesterday posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for valor above and beyond the call of duty to Army Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr., a paratrooper in the Vietnam War.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama is prepping for two major summits coming up, both of which he is hosting.
On Friday, Obama travels to Camp David in Maryland for the G-8 Summit.
Late on Saturday, Obama travels to Chicago, where he will welcome NATO allies and partners for the NATO Summit on May 20-21.
The new Fox News poll shows President Barack Obama opening a significant lead over Mitt Romney, 46-39, with increased optimism on the economy.
I mention it only because it is Fox News.
When a conservative Republican is seven points down in the Fox News poll, that is a problem for the GOP.
However, the Romney/RNC team upped its fundraising in April to $40 million, nearly matching Obama’s $44 million haul.
Obama will shortly be raising more big bucks in California. More to follow on that.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** A BUCKET OF WOE: JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET. In one of the least surprising announcements of late, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled the annual spring revision of the California state budget, proposing steps to deal with what he says has become a $15.7 billion budget deficit, up from $9.2 billion in January. Absent more tough cuts, and passage of his November revenue initiative, things get much worse very fast, especially for the schools.
Meanwhile, things are apt to get significantly worse for social welfare programs and state workers.
The deficit number was a surprise to some, probably feigned in some cases, especially by Brown’s longtime conservative critics.
Fox News, to mention the most obvious of these folks, spinning furiously, claimed that Brown is actually worse than JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Why? Because Dimon only hid a $2 billion loss while Brown “hid” a “$16 billion deficit blunder.”
I mention this, not because I take the Fox report seriously, but because it is the preposterous hyper-partisan extreme that illustrates a common problem.
Which is that there is nothing surprising about the budget deficit number, not for anyone who has been paying attention to, and remembering, regular statements from Brown and state Controller John Chiang about revenues, and from Brown about budget cuts being blocked, by the courts and federal government, and balked at, by the legislature.
It was a simple exercise in arithmetic. Add up the revenue shortfalls reported for months, and repeatedly throughout April, with the blocked budget cuts, and you won’t be surprised. (An added factor, as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain points out, is that revenue from corporate taxes is 6 percent lower than expected, and is actually down in absolute terms, even though corporate profits are booming. And corporate taxes make up a shrinking share of the state budget, due to tax breaks.)
Of course, the overall doesn’t get done much in an era of news nibbles via Twitter. And many like to hype the surprise when the overall becomes impossible to miss.
Which brings us to an interesting question. Does the air of shock around the latest in California’s chronic budget crisis count as a failure of Brown’s communications strategy? Or as a success? After all, a bad shock may be what the electoral doctor ordered for Brown’s November revenue initiative. I assume he noticed that the numbers weren’t being added up in the press. …
Which leads us to the coming campaign.
Last week, Brown and his allies turned in 1.5 million signatures for his initiative, about twice as many signatures as needed to qualify his November revenue initiative, and about twice as many as turned in by heiress Molly Munger’s minions for her income tax hike-for nearly all boost for schools, a zombie presence on the ballot which trails badly in all polling. But many of those signatures will be invalid, as they always are, which accounts for the overage.
While a number of consultants, strategists, and advisers will be involved in the campaign, the lead consultants will be San Francisco-based SCN Campaigns, whose senior partner is longtime Democratic consultant Ace Smith.
Smith was Brown’s campaign director in his landslide victory for California attorney general in 2006.
Then the two men had a bit of a falling out, as Smith, who managed Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s re-election campaign, seemed to feel that Villaraigosa was the likely next governor.
That was unfortunate for them both, because my observation was that Smith did a very good job teaming up with Brown and Anne Gust Brown, who always plays a senior management role.
That view may have been part of his vision of how things would play out in presidential politics. Smith picked Hillary Clinton as the future, serving as her state director in California, where she managed to beat Barack Obama, and in Texas, where Clinton and Obama split the dual primary/caucus contest. Villaraigosa was a national co-chair for Hillary, and as one of the country’s highest-profile Latinos would have loomed very large as a Clinton administration ally.
Brown, in contrast, ran against Bill Clinton in 1992, ending up the distant runner-up for the nomination, and was neutral in the race between Hillary and Obama.
But Hillary did not become president, and no one has ever beaten a Brown for a statewide Democratic nomination in California. This is a streak that goes back to 1946.
Villaraigosa dropped out of the Democratic primary race against Brown, as did everyone else.
But the relationship was not easy to patch up. Smith did aid Brown’s 2010 campaign with some independent expenditure efforts early on, which Brown appreciated. His committee, however, did not become the principal independent expenditure effort. …
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig says it’s up to Oakland owner Lew Wolff to decide whether to consider additional sites for a new ballpark for the Athletics, raising the possibility of a move from the Bay Area.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but state Democratic legislative leaders are still talking about alternatives to some of the actual cuts in Governor Jerry Brown’s latest budget.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $22 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Karl Rove’s Crossroads super PAC has just dropped $8 million on this anti-Obama ad, which will run in eight swing states.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … A BUCKET OF WOE: JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET.
** QUICK HITS. The new Fox News poll shows President Barack Obama opening a significant lead over Mitt Romney, 46-39, with increased optimism on the economy. I mention it only because it is Fox News. … Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but state Democratic legislative leaders are still talking about alternatives to some of the actual cuts in Governor Jerry Brown’s latest budget.
** NEW POLL: SENSE OF OPTIMISM IN RECOVERY. A new Gallup Poll indicates that Americans are becoming much more optimistic than they have been in recent years.
In fact, as many Americans now feel they will be better off in a year’s time as felt that when George W. Bush took office as president, just over 11 years ago.
Which is very good news for President Barack Obama.
What is not such good news for Obama is that only 37% say they are better off now than they were a year ago.
Americans’ expectations for their personal financial situations have recovered from the low point of four years ago, with 63% now saying they expect to be better off a year from now, up from 52% in late May/early June 2008. The 18% who say they will be financially worse off in a year is by one percentage point the lowest since 2003. …
When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, financial expectations were about where they are today — 63% said they would be better off in a year, and 21% said they would be worse off. Americans became a little more pessimistic toward the end of the last decade, and by late May/early June 2008, 52% said they would be better off, while 31% said they would be worse off.
The current reading of 63% “better off” compares with 60% in January 2004, 66% in March 1996, and 51% in March 1992 — all years in which incumbent presidents were seeking re-election. In 2004 and 1996, incumbent presidents were re-elected, while the incumbent in 1992 — George H.W. Bush — was defeated. …
The LA Galaxy visited the White House yesterday, where President Barack Obama congratulated Becks and the boys on the team’s 2011 Major League Soccer Cup championship. Soccer, of course, is what the rest of the world calls football, and David Beckham is a longtime global star, having been captain of the England team longer than anyone else in history.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then held a roundtable discussion with small business owners and SBA Administrator Karen Mills.
Following that, he met for lunch with Congressional Leadership of both parties in the Private Dining Room.
At 12:10 PM Pacific, Obama posthumously awards the Medal of Honor to Army Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr. A paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, Sabo performed his act of heroism above and beyond the call of duty during the Vietnam War, then suffered the indignity of having his paperwork lost along with his life.
In the race with Mitt Romney, polling shows that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie doesn’t help Romney as a running mate in, well, New Jersey. He was unlikely to run anyway.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden is taking the fight to Romney, hitting him on Bain Capital.
In larger matters, Iranian negotiators are in Vienna, dickering with the International Atomic Energy Agency ahead of next week’s session between Iran and the P5 + 1 (US, UK, Russia, France, China, and Germany).
The talks are cordial, but have not produced any breakthrough on the UN nuclear watchdog’s ongoing desire to inspect suspected sites, notably a military site which may be in the process of being sanitized.
No progress has been made for months on this issue.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to cut California’s budget further and raise revenues in a November vote is drawing international attention to the state’s chronic budget crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown yesterday morning at a victims’ rights conference hosted by the California District Attorneys Association and the California Crime Victims Assistance Association at the Sheraton Grande Hotel.
There he made reference to this tough state budget revision, and his November revenue initiative, by saying that conservative Republicans react like Pavlov’s dog when the word tax is mentioned, with a reflexive “No.”
As I wrote over the weekend, Brown delivered a very rugged California state budget in the annual “May revise” release on Monday. Brown has been warning for months about the need for more cuts, and the legislature has refused. (As I have mentioned, oh, 50 or 60 times.) Now the situation is, all too predictably, worse.
Naturally, I have a piece coming up on this, as well as the political and media reaction to the situation.
Meanwhile, a peer review panel that previously gave thumbs down on California’s high-speed rail project delivered a measured thumbs up yesterday afternoon at a state Senate hearing.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $93 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $59 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $21 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been charged by the UK’s public prosecutor with perverting the course of justice, as the scandal enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire deepens. Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, was something of a surrogate daughter to News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News.
** QUICK HITS. A peer review panel that previously gave thumbs down on California’s high-speed rail project delivered a measured thumbs up today at a state Senate hearing. … Former President George W. Bush today endorsed Mitt Romney for president. I expect to see that in ads, just not Republican ads. …
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET.
** NEW POLL: VOTERS SEE OBAMA AS THE WINNER IN NOVEMBER. By a very wide margin, President Barack Obama is viewed in a new Gallup Poll survey as the likely winner in November over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
These things have a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, even with most polls showing Romney competitive with Obama.
The history of these things is that the candidate expected to win is the candidate who does win.
Democrats are notably more enthiastic over their candidate’s prospects than are Republicans.
And by a 2 to 1 ratio, independents expect an Obama victory.
Fifty-six percent of Americans think Barack Obama will win the 2012 presidential election, compared with 36% who think Mitt Romney will win. Democrats are more likely to believe that Obama will win than Republicans are to believe Romney will. Independents are nearly twice as likely to think that Obama, rather than Romney, will prevail.
Americans are a bit more likely now to say Obama has a better chance of winning than they were at a similar point in 2008. A June 2008 Gallup poll found 52% predicting Obama would win, while 41% thought Republican John McCain would. By October 2008, weeks after the financial crisis, Americans were more certain Obama would win that election, 71% to 23%.
Including the 2008 election, Americans’ predictions of the four prior presidential elections were also generally accurate.
In three separate measurements in 2004, Americans thought Bush would be the winner in two and were split in their predictions in the other, conducted immediately after the Democratic convention. In the final prediction, from mid-October, 56% thought Bush would win and 36% thought Kerry would.
The accuracy of the 2000 election prediction is harder to evaluate, given that Al Gore won the popular vote and George W. Bush the electoral vote. In four out of five measurements that year, Americans thought Bush would win, though in the final measurement, taken in mid-September, Americans gave Gore the edge.
In an August 1996 poll, Americans overwhelmingly believed incumbent Bill Clinton (69%) would defeat Bob Dole (24%). …
** MAD MEN: DANGER! SLIPPERY WHEN SOAPY (ESPECIALLY IN DARK SHADOWS).If there’s one thing we know for sure about the latest episode of Mad Men, it’s this: All this soapiness can mean only one thing. People are about to die. You simply can’t have so many soap suds flying around without folks slipping and hitting their heads on the sharp edges of all the symbols lying about.
Heh.
I wrote this sentence in the second paragraph of “Mad Men (Finally) Returns: Worth the Wait?,” my piece here on the Huffington Post about the Mad Men season premiere: “I confess to a certain diffidence about it all, all two hours of it.”
I have more than a certain diffidence about the latest episode, which takes us into the final third of a great show’s uneven fifth season.
As always, there be some spoilers ahead. Incidentally, you can see all my Mad Men pieces, going back to 2009, here in The Mad Men File.
Dark Shadows , which I believe refers to the soapy ’60s vampire show, a rather dreadful affair not coincidentally just remade into the quite dreadful brand-new Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp — Megan is doing auditions — is another big turn on the soap opera side of Mad Men.
Big things are happening in 1966 America, and in advertising, the business which the show revolves around, and which one of the lead characters just rejected in a very telling sign of the times. But all that is somewhere over …there.
Here’s what we have over here in this episode. Mostly unhappy self-involved people. And a couple of happy self-involved people.
And the return of Betty Draper Francis. A dieting Betty Draper Francis.
The plot twist of “Fat Betty” was the first of a few big plot twists I found arbitrary and unlikable. January Jones’s pregnancy sharply limited her availability for this season of the show. But she never ballooned anywhere near to the extent that her character did. Making Betty fat spurred a lot of chatter, and made the Betty-hating portion of the audience happy, but bored me. She’s unhappy, so she’s fat, and it’s ironic, which means yada yada.
Some of the biggest and best moments in this show have revolved around Betty, even though she was becoming a largely unlikable character. The “Souvenir” episode, in which the Drapers go to Rome and she dazzles Conrad Hilton with her beauty, smarts, education, and sophistication, illustrates how Don blew it with Betty and how she was left as a Grace Kelly type stuck in the suburbs.
She’s gone on to marry Henry Francis, a top advisor to Governor Nelson Rockefeller when we meet him, now a top advisor to Mayor John Lindsay. He moves in very high-level, sophisticated and, quite frankly, very glittering circles, more so than Don Draper does. Circles in which a wife like Betty is a major asset, as any smart pol knows.
Yet we’ve never seen her in these circles, as I’ve noted before. Where are the Rockefellers? Where are the power players around the glamorous and instantly very famous but somewhat fatuous new mayor of the Big Apple? (Who, incidentally, had quite an interest in advertising.) Instead, what glimpses we’ve had of Betty are in the same old suburban milieu as before, albeit with a different, more attentive husband.
So, Betty is back, again, and it’s more of the same. She’s dieting, but she’s unhappy, and she doesn’t want anybody else to be happier than she is.
Oh, and Don, who is kind of rusty because he’s been so busy being happy happy happy with Megan, does some work in this episode and is a little mean to the talented new guy. I’ll get to that after I attempt to sprint through the bathwater. Oh, and Roger has sex with his estranged trophy wife, because, well, because her character has been under-utilized and because it’s wash day. …
The US Armed Forces are expanding the number of jobs available to female soldiers that potentially would bring them near the front lines. The Pentagon has announced it will open more than 14,000 combat-related roles to women serving in the army, breaking with the long-held policy of excluding female soldiers from most jobs that would potentially put them in harm’s way, a move meant to help US women achieve promotion to the military’s highest ranks.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … JERRY BROWN’S UNSURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY BUDGET.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then delivered remarks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Following that, he welcomed the Major League Soccer champions, the LA Galaxy, to the White House
East Room.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
Panetta is moving to expand the role of women in the US Armed Forces, allowing them to serve closer to the front lines — though that is a rather quaint concept in a time of asymmetric warfare — and have greater opportunity for promotion, especially in the Army.
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with the U.S. Combatant Commanders in the Cabinet Room.
These officers, all four-star generals and admirals, command combined US forces in various regions of the world, or specialized commands such as special operations or strategic weapons.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a dinner for the Combatant Commanders and their spouses in the Blue Room of the White House.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters early on Tuesday morning that JP Morgan’s $2 billion loss in risky trades is a perfect example of why President Barack Obama fought so hard for Wall Street reform and why the additional steps need to be taken.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
Brown spoke early this morning at a victims’ rights conference hosted by the California District Attorneys Association and the California Crime Victims Assistance Association at the Sheraton Grande Hotel.
As I wrote over the weekend, Brown delivered a very rugged California state budget in the annual “May revise” release on Monday. Brown has been warning for months about the need for more cuts, and the legislature has refused. (As I have mentioned, oh, 50 or 60 times.) Now the situation is, all too predictably, worse.
Naturally, I have a piece coming up on this, as well as the political and media reaction to the situation.
** NUCLEAR’S ONCE BRIGHT AND SHINY FUTURE BLINKS OUT.Don’t look now, but one of the biggest and most famous industries in the world, nuclear power, once seen as the lynchpin of the future, is reeling yet again after huge political setbacks in Japan and France.
Last year’s disaster at Fukushima is having an even bigger effect than the Chernobyl disaster of the ’80s. The latter could be blamed on the backward old Soviet Union. But Fukushima happened in future-oriented Japan.
May has seen the shutdown of all 54 nuclear reactors in Japan. Nuclear power had provided one-third of Japan’s electric power.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $93 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $59 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $21 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
In his commencement address at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told students that marriage is between one man and one woman.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … JERRY BROWN’S UNHAPPY BUDGET and MAD MEN: “DARK SHADOWS.”
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
On Saturday morning, he and Vice President Joe Biden honored the 2012 National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) TOP COPS award winners in the Rose Garden.
Obama has no scheduled public events on Sunday.
There’s a lot of confusion about the ballyhooed NATO Summit in Chicago, set to begin in little more than a week, and intended as a big boost to Obama’s geopolitical leadership, showcased in his hometown.
Will Pakistan participate at all in the big discussion on AfPak strategy? It doesn’t seem so. Are countries beginning a rush to the exits in Afghanistan?
How will NATO members advance needed technology when their budgets are in sharp decline? Though the US followed the lead of other nations in Libya, it was US forces who provided the necessary value-added in surveillance, intelligence, refueling, targeting, and command and control needed to make the air war a success.
And how will NATO handle relations with groups that wish to ally, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, and with groups that may be rivals, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and members such as Russia and China?
Does NATO have a unified position on missile defense? On expansion? On Iran?
Despite the big success in Libya, NATO’s future is still in question.
Obama is still riding a wave of enthusiasm inside Democratic circles in the wake of his endorsement of same-sex marriage, and in the aftermath of his record-setting fundraiser at George Clooney’s home.
After trying to avoid the issue, challenger Mitt Romney addressed it head on in his commencement address at fundamentalist minister Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in rural Virginia, fully embracing the hardline conservative position on same-sex marriage.
That will help Romney with the 19th century constituency, not so much with the 21st century constituency.
But this is still a risky issue for Obama, who when he emerged several years ago struck me as a figure from the future. There are plenty of voters who are afraid of change, especially change that makes them uncomfortable, as gay marriage does.
Still, Obama had a good couple of days in the West, making effective appearances in Northern Nevada after his big night at Clooney’s. Which he followed up the next morning with a pick-up basketball game in which his and Clooney’s team emerged victorious over a team with Tobey Maguire, the former Spiderman, and some Secret Service guys.
The event the night before raised a record-setting $15 million, $6 million from the people on-site and another $9 million from online donations to a raffle for four lucky winners to attend.
One of those on-hand was my old Hart for President friend and colleague and best man John Emerson, once a top Bill Clinton aide and Hillary Clinton advisor who has become a top fundraiser for Obama, whom he’d known through the University of Chicago Law School connection.
The event drew some of the core Obama supporters, notably movie exec Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks, an early and key Obama backer who played a major role organizing the fundraiser, as well as a number of new major contributors.
Obama praised Clooney to the skies at the event, but also noted amusingly that the actor had been cropped out of the photo used for the famous Obama “Hope” posters. The two had appeared at an event on Darfur.
For his part, Clooney quipped: “Well, we have Iron Man, Spiderman, and Batman present tonight, so the Secret Service gets the night off.”
Clooney was referring to Robert Downey, Jr., Tobey Maguire, and himself. (Clooney played Batman in the last movie in the series before the Christopher Nolan reboot with Christian Bale. Some guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed Batman’s nemesis.)
Obama, as happens at these events, spent time at each table. And so did key members of the White House staff and political team, in what might be called a political form of speed dating.
Included in that were senior advisors David Plouffe and Valerie Jarrett, top campaign staffers from Chicago, LA consultant Larry Grisolano (a longtime partner of Obama strategist David Axelrod), and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is serving as chair of the Democratic National Convention.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like. As usual, it does not reflect the geopolitical crises with which he’s dealing and as usual it has space within to allow for emerging issues.
On Monday, Obama will travel to New York City to deliver the commencement address at Barnard College. While in New York City, Obama will also tape an appearance on The View. Obama will then attend fundraisers before returning to Washington in the evening.
On Tuesday, Obama will deliver remarks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, an annual ceremony honoring law enforcement personnel who were killed in the line of duty in the previous year. Also on Tuesday, Obama will welcome the Major League Soccer champions, the LA Galaxy, to the White House to honor their 2011 season and their MLS Cup victory.
On Tuesday evening, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will host a dinner for the Combatant Commanders and spouses at the White House. These officers, all four-star generals and admirals, command combined US forces in various regions of the world, or specialized commands such as special operations or strategic weapons.
On Wednesday, Obama will deliver remarks in the Washington, DC area, where he will continue to call on Congress to act on his so-called “To Do List” emphasizing his economic themes. Also on Wednesday, he will posthumously award Army Sergeant Leslie H. Sabo, Jr. the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry during the Vietnam War. Sabo, an Austrian native, was killed in the engagement, then suffered the further indignity of having the paperwork recommending his decoration lost for decades.
On Thursday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Friday, he will deliver the opening keynote to the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.
Later on Friday, Obama will travel to Camp David for the G-8 Summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues.
On Saturday, he will remain at Camp David for the rest of the G-8 Summit.
Later on Saturday, Obama will travel to Chicago, Illinois, where he will welcome NATO allies and partners for the NATO Summit on May 20-21.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama again called on Democrats and Republicans to come together and act on his so-called Congressional “to-do list,” which emphasizes his economic themes.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** NUCLEAR’S ONCE BRIGHT AND SHINY FUTURE BLINKS OUT.Don’t look now, but one of the biggest and most famous industries in the world, nuclear power, once seen as the lynchpin of the future, is reeling yet again after huge political setbacks in Japan and France.
Last year’s disaster at Fukushima is having an even bigger effect than the Chernobyl disaster of the ’80s. The latter could be blamed on the backward old Soviet Union. But Fukushima happened in future-oriented Japan.
May has seen the shutdown of all 54 nuclear reactors in Japan. Nuclear power had provided one-third of Japan’s electric power.
Then came the defeat of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The new French administration plans to cut the nation’s use of nuclear power by one-third by 2025. Currently, France relies on nuclear power for 75% of its electricity. (The US gets 20% of its electric power from nuclear.) New Socialist President Francois Hollande’s plan would cut that to 50%. He also plans to shut down Fessenheim, France’s most famous nuclear plant, which is located in an area of seismic activity on the Rhine River.
Before these developments, Germany and Switzerland both decided to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
These are huge developments in the energy economy, and a stunning reversal for a technology that once epitomized the future.
When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich emerged as a leading presidential candidate last year, I went back and read through some novels of the future by Isaac Asimov that he and others, such as left-liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, cite as major influencers of their youth.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, which Asimov began writing in 1941, is set in the far future. It revolves around the fall of the galactic empire and the rise of a discipline called psychohistory, the story element that so attracted Gingrich, Krugman, and others, in which human history can supposedly be predicted by a form of mathematical sociology. One thing that was so amusing to me in the stories, which are charming, is how nuclear power was constantly presented as a totem of advanced civilization, almost to the point of fetishism, with leading characters even having nuclear-powered personal devices.
By the ’80s, of course, nuclear was no longer such an element of faith among futurists. But it had become a staple of the Soviet bloc, with its penchant for centralization, and was well-established in Western countries as well. Such as, well, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
I spoke at anti-nuclear rallies in the ’80s and knew the late German Green leader Petra Kelly well, but I’m open to nuclear power being part of the energy portfolio.
The news flow keeps going in the opposite direction, however, even though the greenhouse effect leading to climate change was advanced by nuclear advocates as a rationale for new expansion.
Nuclear power plants are expensive to construct, despite decades of massive subsidies for fission nuclear power, now a very mature technology. And the biggest subsidies are not the direct financial subsidies, which dwarf those given to renewable energy (as do subsidies for fossil fuels, a long mature industry), but the indirect but very real subsidies of socializing risks posed by radioactive waste and potential accidents and construction costs by shifting those to ratepayers and taxpayers.
And nuclear plants may be vulnerable to cyber-warfare, an increasing concern of defense strategists. Hacking in to take down a wind farm is not catastrophic, aside from the power loss, which can be made up. Hacking in to take down a nuclear power plant is a very different matter.
Looking beyond the problems with fission reactors, nuclear fusion may hold great promise in the future. But that future is still very far off.
Here in California, we had tremendous debates about nuclear in the 1970s and 1980s. Then, during his first two terms in office, Governor Jerry Brown rejected utility plans to build dozens of nuclear plants across the state, focusing California instead on conservation and renewable energy. The state’s moves on energy efficiency were highly successful, and have served as a model for many governments in the US and around the world.
After Brown left office the first time, renewable energy efforts lagged. But when his former chief of staff, Gray Davis, became governor in the late ’90s, he revived them, with a 20% Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Then Arnold Schwarzenegger amped them up tremendously, in the process enacting California’s landmark climate change program.
Now Brown, back as governor for an historic third term, is pushing forward to the target of one-third of the state’s electric power coming from renewable sources by 2020, a target first set by Schwarzenegger. I expect Brown to win another term in 2014, which would place him at the helm of these efforts through January 2019, the year before the 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard is to be reached. …
Governor Jerry Brown announced in this video that California’s budget deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, due to weaker revenues than expected, higher spending than expected due to blocking moves by the courts and federal government, and cuts called for in January that have yet to be made.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events this weekend.
Look for a very rugged California state budget from Governor Jerry Brown in the annual “May revise” release on Monday. Brown has been warning for months about the need for more cuts, and the legislature has refused. (As I have mentioned, oh, 50 or 60 times.) Now the situation is, all too predictably, worse.
Brown and his allies turned in about twice as many signatures as needed to qualify his November revenue initiative, and about twice as many as turned in by heiress Molly Munger’s minions for her income tax hike-for nearly all boost for schools. But many of those signatures will be invalid, as they always are, which accounts for the overage.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in Sacramento on Thursday to meet with Brown and other California leaders, told legislative leaders that it is getting to be time to move forward on high-speed rail. LaHood urged the legislature to approve funds in June to start building the project this year or early next year, rather than put off a vote till September, the customary manana attitude.
Institutional investors are less impressed than many expected by Facebook’s prospects for future growth. I’m no Facebook fan, so it doesn’t surprise here.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $96 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $62 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $18 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Finishing his Western campaign swing today in Reno, Nevada, President Barack Obama called for a new refinancing program that will allow all underwater homeowners to refinance, regardless of whether the mortgage is government-backed.
** QUICK HITS.Look for a very rugged California state budget from Governor Jerry Brown in the annual “May revise” release on Monday. Brown has been warning for months about the need for more cuts, and the legislature has refused. (As I have mentioned, oh, 50 or 60 times.) Now the situation is, all too predictably, worse. … Brown and his allies turned in about twice as many signatures as needed yesterday to qualify his November revenue initiative, and about twice as many as turned in by heiress Molly Munger’s minions for her income tax hike-for nearly all boost for schools. But many of those signatures will be invalid, as they always are, which accounts for the overage. … There’s a lot of confusion about the ballyhooed NATO Summit in Chicago, set to begin in little more than a week. More to follow. … Meanwhile, Israel’s surprise new national unity government is sparking talk of a potentially imminent attack on Iran.Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer is on it in a new column in the Washington Post called “Echoes of ’67: Israel Unites.” Except, well, Israel is not uniting. Major figures from the nation’s security establishment have recently blasted the idea.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … NUCLEAR’S BRIGHT AND SHINY FUTURE IS BLINKING OUT.
** NEW POLL: AMERICANS BACK OBAMA’S ENDORSEMENT OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BY SIX PERCENT. A new Gallup Poll survey has some good news for President Barack Obama.
By a 51% to 45% margin, his endorsement of same-sex marriage is approved.
Democrats back Obama’s move, 71-25. And so most independents, 53-44.
But Republicans, by a 74-23 margin, are even more opposed than Democrats are supportive.
Most, of course, say they won’t be swayed by Obama’s move. And of those who will, more say they are swayed to vote against Obama.
A closer look will reveal that those people were already staunchly anti-Obama.
What it may mean is that same-sex marriage is more important to the base of the Republican Party than it is to the Democratic Party base.
Or it may mean that the people who hate Obama and hate gay marriage are especially vehement in presenting their views.
Having no little experience with these folks, I tend to think the latter.
A majority of Americans, 60%, say President Barack Obama’s newly announced support for same-sex marriage will make no difference to their vote. Twice as many say it will make them less likely to vote for Obama as say more likely, though roughly half of the “less likely” group are Republicans who probably would not support Obama anyway. …
** NEW SURVEY: “EMOTIONAL HEALTH” REACHES FOUR-YEAR HIGH. The economic recovery is certainly wobbly enough, but a new Gallup Poll survey indicates that Americans’ emotional health is at its highest since Gallup started measuring it in January 2008.
It’s up especially since reaching a low ebb in September 2011.
That happened to coincide with the period after the meltdown of governance in Washington over raising the federal debt ceiling.
Americans’ emotional heath improved in April and, by a slight margin, is now higher than it has been in any month since Gallup and Healthways started tracking it in January 2008. Gallup’s U.S. Emotional Health Index score was 79.9 last month, slightly above the previous high of 79.8 recorded in March 2008 and May 2010. Americans’ emotional health has generally been improving since September, when it dropped to its lowest level in more than three years (78.3). …
Americans score better on all 10 of the Emotional Health Index measures in April than they did at the low point in September. The percentage of Americans who did not “worry a lot of the day yesterday” has improved the most. In April, 68.9% of Americans said they did not experience worry a lot of the previous day, up from 66.1% in September. Similarly, the percentage of Americans who said they did not experience stress was 59.9% in April, up from 57.6% in September.
Self-reported “enjoyment” has also increased. The percentage who said they experienced enjoyment a lot of the previous day rose to 85.6% in April, up from the three-year low of 83.0% in September. …
JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank in terms of assets, shocked global markets by revealing a trading loss of over two billion dollars, and acknowledging there could be another billion lost. It admitted there had been “errors” and “bad judgement” while it was attempting to protect itself against losses through a process known as hedging. The incident is particularly embarrassing because JPMorgan Chase’s boss, Jamie Dimon, has been strongly critical of the so-called Volcker rule which would limit such risky trading by big banks.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in California, Nevada, and Washington, DC.
Obama flew this morning from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada on Air Force One.
After arriving in Reno, Obama met with a local family at a private residence.
He then delivered remarks at a private residence pushing Congress to enact his agenda, his so-called “To Do List.”
Which, naturally, they mostly will not do. Which is the point.
Obama placed a special emphasis on mortgage relief in Reno. Nevada has been very hard hit by the housing finance crisis.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama departs Reno an Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 5:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 5:25 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is riding high after what may be the biggest fundraiser in presidential campaign history.
That was Thursday night at the Studio City home of George Clooney. The event raised $6 million on-site for the Obama Victory Fund, with another $9 million coming in online for a raffle for four lucky winners to hang with Obama and Clooney.
According to a source who was present, Clooney quipped: “Well, we have Iron Man, Spiderman, and Batman present tonight, so the Secret Service gets the night off.”
Clooney was referring to Robert Downey, Jr., Tobey Maguire, and himself. (Clooney played Batman in the last movie in the series before the Christopher Nolan reboot with Christian Bale. Some guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed his nemesis.)
More to follow on this event.
Republican challenger Mitt Romney, campaigning today in North Carolina and trying to get past revelations of his past as a prep school bully, had nothing to say about gay marriage. And he had nothing to say about the revelation of billions in trading losses from America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase.
Like the bank’s CEO, Romney opposes new regulation of the sort of trades that led to the losses.
Instead, Romney kept his head down and stuck to his generic message claiming he would be a better manager of the economy than Obama.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
President Barack Obama was hosted Thursday night at the Studio City home of George Clooney. The event raised $6 million on-site for the Obama Victory Fund, with another $9 million coming in online for a raffle for four lucky winners to hang with Obama and Clooney.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He was not at last night’s big fundraiser for President Barack Obama in Los Angeles.
At 8 PM, Brown will attend the Asia Society Northern California’s 9th Annual Dinner at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco where he will be honored for his longstanding work to strengthen California’s relationship with Asia.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in Sacramento yesterday to meet with Brown and other California leaders, told legislative leaders that it is getting to be time to move forward on high-speed rail. LaHood urged the legislature to approve funds in June to start building the project this year or early next year, rather than put off a vote till September, the customary manana attitude.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $96 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $62 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $18 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Chinese travel agencies have suspended trips to the Philippines because of rising tension between the two nations over a disputed island in the South China Sea.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … NUCLEAR’S BRIGHT AND SHINY FUTURE BLINKS OUT.
** QUICK HITS.New unemployment claims dropped last week, following a sharp drop the week before. It comes at a good time for President Barack Obama. … U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in Sacramento to meet today with Governor Jerry Brown and other California leaders, told legislative leaders that it is getting to be time to move forward on high-speed rail. LaHood urged the legislature to approve funds in June to start building the project this year or early next year, rather than put off a vote till September. … Legislators hoping for Facebook’s IPO to stave off, at least on a one-time basis, cuts Brown has been pushing since January are about to get some bad news. Institutional investors are less impressed than many expected by Facebook’s prospects for future growth.
** SCHWARZENEGGER OP-ED PRECEDED LATEST EXAMPLE OF THE REPUBLICANS’ BIG EXTREMISM PROBLEM. As if on cue, Indiana Republican primary voters provided just the latest dramatic example of extremism in the once Grand Old Party. The landslide vote rejecting Senator Richard Lugar, for decades one of the most important figures in geopolitics, in favor of a rather random Tea Party type, followed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Sunday LA Times piece, “GOP: Take Down That Small Tent,” by only two days.
Lugar had some sharp things to say about the corrosive effects of hyper-partisanship, especially in the Republican Party, in his Tuesday night speech.
“I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.”
Schwarzenegger, who is off to New Orleans to shoot the third of his post-gubernatorial movies, left office 16 months ago. He won two landslide elections as governor, each by 17 point margins. His job approval, which had sunk to the low 20s in the summer of 2010, in the midst of all sorts of crisis, improved to the low 30s by the time the final Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll came out in December 2010.
Since taking over in January 2011, successor Jerry Brown has run afoul of the same intractable forces Schwarzenegger grappled with.
Schwarzenegger’s Sunday article — in which he expressed dismay about the loss of two promising young Republicans to the ranks of independents, state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, running for mayor of San Diego, and former Assemblyman Anthony Adams, running for Congress — actually prefigured what was about to happen to Lugar.
I’ve been writing my memoirs recently, and looking back at how I came to my political identity has reminded me that this election cycle marks my 44th year as a Republican. I can’t imagine being anything else.
That’s why I am so bothered by the party’s recent loss of two up-and-coming Republicans: San Diego mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher, currently a state assemblyman, and former assemblyman and current Congressional candidate Anthony Adams, both of whom left the party to become independents. On the one hand, I respect their standing up for principle. On the other, I hate to see them go.
I’m sure they would have preferred to remain Republicans, but in the current climate, the extreme right wing of the party is targeting anyone who doesn’t meet its strict criteria. Its new and narrow litmus test for party membership doesn’t allow compromise. …
To succeed, Republicans need to embrace true Reaganism, and that means embracing the true Reagan, a brave and independent leader who believed in solutions and compromise.
As governor, Reagan was never afraid to buck his party. He raised taxes when he saw no other way to get California out of the red, and he created the California Environmental Protection Agency because, as strongly as he believed in eliminating unnecessary government regulation, he also saw wisdom in protecting our natural resources.
As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary. In 1983, he doubled the gas tax to pay for highway infrastructure improvements.
Today, that would be enough for some of the ideological enforcers to start looking for a “real” conservative to challenge him in a primary.
Some Republicans today aren’t even willing to have conversations about protecting the environment, investing in the infrastructure America needs or improving healthcare. By holding their fingers in their ears when those topics arise, these Republicans aren’t just denying themselves a seat at the table; in a state such as California, they also deny a seat to every other Republican.
The GOP’s history is filled with leaders who rejected ideology in favor of seeking solutions.
Teddy Roosevelt is still a hero among environmentalists for his conservationist policies. Dwight Eisenhower believed in the value of investing in infrastructure, and we can thank him for our highway system. Nixon, who originally attracted me to the party, nearly passed universal healthcare. He also created the national Environmental Protection Agency, which some modern Republicans want to close down.
Being a Republican used to mean finding solutions for the American people that worked for everyone. It used to mean having big ideas that moved the country forward.
It can mean that again, but big ideas don’t often come from small tents.
In my late March piece, “California Republicans Have Only Themselves To Blame,” I recounted my experience with Schwarzenegger’s prescient September 2007 speech to the California Republican Party convention outside Palm Springs, in which he decried the party’s sharp rightward move and warned of what was to follow in California politics if it continued. The slide rightward continued and so did the slide of the party, in registration and results.
Of course, political reforms pushed successfully by Schwarzenegger, namely the open primary and redistricting reform initiatives, are likely to have major impacts.
They will either force the Republicans to jettison much of their current leadership and approach. Or they will hasten the move of remaining moderate Republicans into the independent ranks.
I’ll have a lot more to say about this.
** NEW SURVEY: WIDESPREAD BELIEF IN BUSINESS CORRUPTION. Well, it’s not an era of trust.
A new Gallup Poll survey of opinion around the world shows widespread support for the belief that corrupt business practices are widespread.
In the US and Canada, 60% believe that corporate corruption is widespread, something which could be a major factor in the presidential elections. And that 60% figure is the low around the world for a region.
About two in three adults worldwide believe corruption is widespread in the businesses in their countries. This belief is relatively commonplace everywhere in the world — ranging from 60% in North America to a high of 76% in sub-Saharan Africa — but it tends to be higher in lower income regions. …
According to the World Bank, corruption is “one of the single largest obstacles to economic and social development.” Corruption in business is an important global concern that involves developing and developed countries. It can be difficult to accurately monitor corruption in business, particularly in countries with little or nonexistent transparency, making tracking their residents’ perceptions even more relevant.
Strong leadership, policies, laws, and greater transparency are necessary to fight corruption, which in turn may actually promote job creation and economic development. Business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs rely on a stable environment, but widespread corruption makes it difficult to estimate the risks involved in starting new enterprises.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who began her own political career as Maryland political director of Governor Jerry Brown’s 1976 presidential campaign, calls President Barack Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage an “historic” event and says he did the right thing even if it costs him votes in the upcoming election.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, DC, Washington State, and California.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Seattle, Washington.
At 11:55 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Seattle, Washington.
At 12:50 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at a private residence.
At 3:15 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.
At 4:15 PM Pacific, Obama departs Seattle, Washington on Air Force One en route Los Angeles, California.
At 6:25 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Los Angeles.
At 7:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the home of Oscar-winning actor George Clooney.
Obama will RON in Los Angeles.
Tonight is the very big Obama fundraiser in LA at George Clooney’s home. The event, which was already big, is getting somewhat bigger in the wake of Obama’s dramatic endorsement yesterday of same-sex marriage.
These estimates float around, of course, but it looks like this event will raise about $15 million.
Which would make it the biggest fundraiser in presidential campaign history.
The money will be split between the Obama campaign per se and the Democratic National Committee fund devoted to promoting Obama’s re-election.
It breaks down to, roughly, $6 million from the people on hand at Clooney’s house, and another $9 million mostly raised online as promotion for a raffle to see which grassroots contributors get to hang out with Obama at George Clooney’s house, as the come-on actually puts it.
The country is split on the issue, but Hollywood certainly is not, nor are most elites, who believe that “it’s time to get into the 21st century,” as even Fox News host Shepherd Smith put it yesterday.
Mitt Romney is diametrically opposed, having come out not only against same-sex marriage but in favor of a U.S. constitutional amendment banning it, which would take away the rights of states to allow it.
Obama’s position is that the states should decide. Which happens to be the law as it stands today.
So Romney is actually more radical in his legal and policy stance than Obama.
Romney led a group of boys who pinned down the student and cut his hair, which Romney dubbed both too long and too blonde.
The Romney campaign, far from acting as though it has the upper hand on the gay marriage issue — which it might, with some swing voters in some swing states — is almost frantically trying to change the subject back to the economy.
But there, too, Obama has some new good news, in the form of gasoline prices that are going down. And oil prices have stabilized below $100 per barrel, even though the status of the Iran crisis is unclear with the Kadima party moving from opposition in Israel into a national unity government, taking away the September elections that loomed not long ago there.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Governor Jerry Brown, accompanied by First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown and a dog called, I believe, Sutter Brown, turned in the petitions to qualify his November revenue initiative this morning at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters. Incidentally, I think the dog looks exactly like the Queen’s.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
This morning, he filed the signatures to qualify his November revenue initiative at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters. Brown and his allies gathered over 1.5 million signatures.
While a number of consultants, strategists, and advisors will be involved in the campaign, the lead consultants will be San Francisco-based SCN Campaigns, whose senior partner is longtime Democratic consultant Ace Smith.
Smith was Brown’s campaign director in his landslide victory for California attorney general in 2006.
Then the two men had a bit of a falling out, as Smith, who managed Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s re-election campaign, seemed to feel that Villaraigosa was the likely next governor.
That, of course, proved not to be the case. And it was unfortunate, because I felt that Smith did a very good job teaming up with Brown and Anne Gust Brown.
But the relationship was not easy to patch up. Smith did aid Brown’s 2010 campaign with some independent expenditure efforts early on. More to follow as we go.
Late yesterday, Brown issued the following statement on Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, which Brown has championed for years:
“Equality before the law is a pillar of American democracy. I applaud President Obama’s support for the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
Brown is working on the “May revise” to his state budget proposal. As he does so, word came on Tuesday from state Controller John Chiang that revenues have ended up over $2.4 billion below expectations. As Brown has been warning all along, this 20% shortfall is something that needs to be made up.
And, after the customary legislative foot-dragging on state budget cuts, Brown yesterday warned state employee groups to expect more cost cutting, as predicted here.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $97 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $63 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $17 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
In an interview today with ABC News, President Barack Obama said he now supports same-sex marriage, ending a long period of equivocation.
** QUICK HITS. New/renewed Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend will not attend the Obama-hosted G8 meeting on May 18-19 at Camp David. Instead, he will send Obama’s friend former President-turned-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Obama and Putin did not hit it off when Obama first visited Moscow, with the Russian powerhouse making Obama late for his big Moscow speech by forcing him to come to Putin’s dacha for a private meeting and then making the meeting run late. And Putin does not like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s criticism of his tough response to protesters. … Putin will, however, attend the big UN Summit on Sustainable Development next month in Rio. This meeting comes 20 years after the first Earth Summit in Rio. … As will newly elected French President Francois Hollande. … Unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister. … But like former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. … Schwarzenegger’s successor, Governor Jerry Brown, who was at that first Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago, after his presidential campaign, is unlikely to attend this time. He has the state’s chronic budget crisis to deal with. And, after the customary legislative foot-dragging on state budget cuts, Brown today warned state employee groups to expect more cost cutting.
** OBAMA’S UNSURPRISING “SURPRISE” ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. Surprised that President Barack Obama has just come out in favor of same-sex marriage?
Well, he hits California tomorrow for some fundraising, notably a potential record-setting event at George Clooney’s crib.
Think the issue might have come up?
Vice President Joe Biden kicked things off the other day when he allowed as how he is now very comfortable with gay marriage.
Think of it as a trial balloon from the famously loose-lipped pol.
Then Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Obama’s friend from Chicago, said that he is for gay marriage.
Duncan can be fairly plain-spoken. But he’s not that out-spoken.
And another big balloon floated free.
The truth is that the country is pretty evenly split on same-sex marriage now, a major improvement for its advocates.
There is probably a slight edge in its favor.
And it has been shaping up for several years now as the prime civil rights issue of the era. It’s certainly time for straights to get over their squeamishness on the issue.
How could Obama not end up for it? And did you ever imagine that he did not privately back it?
His administration did a very effective job of reversing the Clinton era Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military. And former President Bill Clinton himself had already come out for gay marriage.
Obama himself opposed California’s Prop 8 anti-same sex marriage initiative in 2008 even as he was running for president the first time around.
What Obama has done is simply get his official position in line with what it had to be, all along.
Which is not to say that it is not risky.
Obama’s announcement comes just the day after North Carolina voters approved an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment with a whopping 61% of the vote. North Carolina is a swing state that Obama carried in 2008, in something of a surprise.
It’s not a state that Democrats have written off, either, as it will host this summer’s Democratic National Convention.
Virginia is another swing state in which his prospects could be negatively impacted by Obama’s announcement. But I expect that coverage from the Washington media market will impact that over time.
The reality is that same-sex marriage is inevitable. It’s a matter of when people become acclimated enough to accept it.
Mitt Romney, incidentally, is not only against gay marriage — though he seemed more pro-gay rights than Ted Kennedy when running against him for the U.S. Senate in 1994 — he is for an amendment to the Constitution banning it.
That’s change you can count on.
** NEW SURVEY: UNDEREMPLOYMENT RAMPANT AMONG YOUNG ADULTS. A new Gallup Poll survey reveals a big fissure in the employment market. Young adults, aged 18 to 29, are much more likely to be under-employed than their older counterparts.
While underemployment has worsened for young adults over the past year, it has improved for others.
Is this a problem for President Barack Obama in his re-election campaign?
Or is it an opportunity.
I think it’s both.
The lagging progress there can depress Obama’s turnout among young voters, who tend to favor him overwhelmingly.
But it also provides Obama the opportunity to portray Romney as a threat to any improvement.
Thirty-two percent of 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. workforce were underemployed in April, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment. This is up from 30.1% in March and is slightly higher than the 30.7% of a year ago. …
Gallup’s U.S. underemployment measure combines the unemployed with those working part time but looking for full-time work. Underemployment among 18- to 29-year-olds has hovered around 30% for most of the past year, showing no real improvement. Underemployment among all Americans has declined over the past year to 18.2% in April from 19.3% in April 2011. …
FBI Director Robert Mueller this morning urged Congress to renew wide-ranging surveillance authority to thwart terrorism plots like the latest reported one in which an Al Qaeda-engineered explosive device was to have been detonated on a U.S.-bound airline flight.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 11:10 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen in the Oval Office.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 4:15 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a concert in the East Room honoring songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David as part of “In Performance at the White House” series.
Last night’s landslide defeat of Indiana Senator Richard Lugar removes a sometime Obama ally on geopolitical matters but puts a Senate seat in play for Democrats.
Lugar and Obama worked together when Obama was a freshman senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, and the veteran Indiana senator, first elected in 1976, continued their relationship during Obama’s presidency.
But Lugar, who helped settle the big Philippine crisis in the ’80s, while a conservative, wasn’t nearly conservative enough for a radicalized primary electorate. It’s the Republicans’ loss, really, and the country’s.
Senator Richard Lugar, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its ranking Republican member, lost in a landslide last night in Indiana’s Republican primary to a Tea Party candidate. Lugar’s defeat ends the Senate career of someone who helped forge bipartisan geopolitical solutions and puts Indiana’s Senate seat in play.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
At 11:30 AM, Brown honors fallen highway workers at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) 22nd Annual Workers Memorial Ceremony.
Brown this morning appointed Malcolm Dougherty to be director of the California Department of Transportation.
Daugherty, appointed chief deputy director by Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been acting director of the sprawling agency since last year.
Brown is working on the “May revise” to his state budget proposal. As he did so, word came from state Controller John Chiang that revenues have ended up over $2.4 billion below expectations. As Brown has been warning all along, this 20% shortfall is something that needs to be made up.
I’m not sure how honored state employees will feel after seeing the revised state budget. There is a price to be paid for putting off cuts.
** MAD MEN: REJECTING ADVERTISING, OR, DON DRAPER MEETS ACID ROCK, POP BUDDHISM, AND AN INDEPENDENT WIFE.
“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. It is not dying, it is not dying.
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining.
That you may see the meaning of within. It is being, it is being.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney
from Tomorrow Never Knows, on the album Revolver
Don’t look now, but something important just happened on Mad Men. A major character, someone with real talent in the field, just rejected advertising. Someone who happens to be ad guru Don Draper’s bright and shiny new wife.
Megan Calvet Draper’s Marxist academic father, who so disapproves of her work in advertising, and of her life of easing into wealth by marrying a rich older man, evidently got through to his daughter in the episode before this. She’s now pursuing her dream, which was unclear then but turns out to be acting. And she is resonating to big cultural influences posing fundamental questions about the big money machine she’s a cog in on Madison Avenue. …
Megan is certainly familiar with the concept of false consciousness from her Marxist academic father. The Beatles song that she tells Don to listen to gets at false consciousness, not from a materialist standpoint, as her father would have it, but from a spiritual standpoint.
This is the first time I can recall an actual Beatles song being licensed for use on a TV series. It’s extremely expensive to do, and it’s hard to get approval even with payment, so I would bet that Matthew Weiner has a reason for doing it. At the reported $250,000 (!), he had better.
Megan’s not the only one questioning advertising. Irritating Stan, who arrived at the agency as something of a star after doing some work on President Lyndon Johnson’s re-election campaign, reacts to Megan’s departure by noting that you work hard for a long time on an account, and for what? “Heinz. Baked. Beans.”
Really now, Stan, what do you think this is, anyway? The ’60s?
Before we get back to that, let’s deal with the soapy side of the show. …
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $97 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $63 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $17 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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