** IRAQI PRESIDENT AKS FOR IRAN’S HELP IN SETTLING CRISIS.
“The issue of establishing security in Iraq is the most important part of our talks,” said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani after summit talks in Tehran with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “We are in dire need of Iran’s help in establishing security and stability in Iraq.”
It’s fascinating to watch policy unravel in real time. When President George W. Bush has his own summit with the prime minister of Iraq later this week in Jordan, he will be dealing with a fait accompli.
** EXPECT NEXT WEEK’S HEARINGS ON ROBERT GATES TO PROVE ILLUMINATING, BUT NOT A FULCRUM ON THE IRAQ DEBATE. The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings early next week on the appointment of former CIA Director and current Texas A&M University President Robert Gates to succeed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. If he is approved by the committee and confirmed by the full Senate the following week, he is expected to take office shortly after in December. Note that this is the current Senate, and its Armed Services Committee, doing the honors.
Some, such as incoming Virginia Senator James Webb, want the nomination held over for the new Senate to consider. Webb crossed swords in the late ’80s with Gates as secretary of the Navy. But this appointment is on a fast track, with the White House determined to move Iraq War architect Rumsfeld out the door before the Democrats take over the Senate. What we should get from Gates is an early public preview of the forthcoming views of the Iraq Study Group. A favorite of Bush I, he was an ally of ISG co-chairman James Baker, the cowboy booted, Savile Row-suited former U.S. secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and George Herbert Walker Bush campaign manager. It was Baker who pulled the plug on his boss’s 1980 presidential campaign, thus preserving him as a live option to become Ronald Reagan’s vice president. Bush defeated Reagan in Iowa, then foundered in subsequent primaries, leading Baker to essentially end his campaign for him.
** YOUR ASSIGNMENT, 007, IS TO CRAFT A “REDEPLOYMENT” PLAN. The British defense ministry is saying that the UK will “downgrade” its commitment to the Iraq policy next year, withdrawing thousands of troops from Iraq.
Since there are only about 7,000 British troops presently in Iraq, this amounts to a substantial withdrawal. At the height of the full-scale fighting, Britain had 46,000 troops in the Iraq War, as the only other major participant in the “coalition of the willing.”
** Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a relaxed appearance yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press. On state issues, he said he wanted to find ways to lower health care costs and extend health care to all the uninsured. And to get rid of California’s structural budget deficit during his second term, without raising taxes. Those are expansive goals, not unfamiliar with the former Mr. Universe, with no details attached.
On larger issues, he denounced the most prominent Republican denier of global warming, outgoing U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman James Inhofe of Oklahoma, lauded the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former House Intelligence Chairman Lee Hamilton, and said that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq, on a “timeline.”
Here’s what Schwarzenegger had to say about Inhofe and other global warming deniers: “There’s always in history been people that are back with their thinking in the Stone Age. And I think that the key thing for us is, is to not pay any attention to those things, because as I said, the science is in, we know the facts, there’s not any more debate as to global warming or not. We have global warming and the fact also is that we can do something about it. We can slow it down or we can stop it, but only if everyone is working together.”
** BAGHDAD AIRPORT REOPENS, IRAQ PRESIDENT TO IRAN. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is off to the Iranian capital of Tehran today for a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on gaining Iranian help in settling the spreading chaos in Iraq. Talabani had been scheduled to fly to Tehran on Saturday, but Baghdad international airport was shut down due to widespread sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital. The airport has reopened and a three-day curfew in Baghdad has been lifted. But there has been renewed violence in the strife-torn city.
The reality is that while some in the US debate whether or not there should be engagement with Iran on the Iraq crisis — and clearly Iran is fomenting discord in Iraq, for its own obvious purposes — Iraq itself is already engaging with Iran. This is already happening. First with their energy ministers meeting to discuss reviving the electric power grid disrupted during the US invasion of 2003, as reported here last week. Now with summit discussions on how to settle the violence.
** Monitor computer memory prices on a daily basis.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices are around $60 per barrel on seasonally mild temperatures in the US.
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| Comments (43) |
I wonder who will be last to know about Iranian “engagement.” De Nile ain’t just a river.
Good for Schwarzeneger on the idiots denying global warming. “Stone Age” is right.
But how is he going to pay for health care and budget balancing? He doesn’t really think the economy will kepp magically rising, does he?
Talabani is a Kurd, is he not? Are the Kurds on board with the Iraqi Shiites vis a vis Iran?
Yes. And apparently so, at least this Kurd. Talabani reportedly speaks Farsi.
I don’t know what Schwarzenegger’s specifics will be there.
His communications director Adam Mendelsohn described his seemingly more expansive view of health care as a “goal.”
Arnold looked and sounded very good on “Meet the Press.”
When asked about the constitution being changed to allow immigrants to be President, Schwarzenegger joked that Russert had changed the topic to comprehensive immigration reform.
On global warming.. You can’t say the science is in, and at the same time want to change LA city palm trees to some other kind of tree to substantially change global C02. NYT reported on that a day or so ago.
The junk science is when minuscule sources of CO2 are reported as relevant, and huge sources of C02 are dismissed because it doesn’t fit the politics.
I’m not quite following that, Athlon.
Mr. Bradley:His communications director Adam Mendelsohn described his seemingly more expansive view of health care as a “goal.”
On “health care as a “goal”"
That is perhaps being realistic… The Reeps in legislature (especially the Assembly) may prove to be a very big problem for Arnold’s entire agenda…who can he count on besides Bonnie Garcia?
The Republicans go right while the state goes to the center. They elect the protege of Chuckles Khachigian who had his ass handed to him by Jerry Brown. They say they want to cut the budget but won’t say what they’d cut. They don’t represent Republican voters who are not even close to being that right-wing. They’re nutty.
I’m sure the governor can find some Republican votes in the Assembly and Senate. But the plans and the fiscal situation will have to be clearer.
Oops, I should read more carefully before commenting on junk science. Yesterday’s NYT article about LA’s trees says shadier trees remove carbon monoxide – I thought it said carbon dioxide and was outraged they were bringing up global warming in this fun story, which they didn’t. Nevermind.
The palms clonk cars, and occasionally pedestrians, said city officials, who also say that palm trees do not clean as much carbon monoxide from the air as do shadier trees.
My impression has always been that the Kurds have little use for the Iranian theocracy — and I’m pretty sure the vast majority of Kurds are Sunni — but, like Syria, cooperation with Iran offers them security guarantees. For Syria, the pressing threat is from Israel and general Western anger at their work in Lebanon; for the Kurds, the problem is Turkey. If Europe and the US could broker a deal with Turkey — a promise not to attack the Kurds if they become more independent (and wealthier, due to the local oil supply), and perhaps to even cede a little bit of Southern Turkey or just allow emigration of Turkish Kurds to Iraqi Kurdistan — we might peel the Kurds away from Iranian influence permanently.
Jonathan Hemlock’s suicide theory for Litvinenko isn’t looking so good today. The WP says that the poison used can only be acquired from sophisticated gov’t controlled reactors, not the commercial kinds that supply medical radioacives or serve the power grid. I guess he might have been able to get the stuff from a highly-placed contact, but it seems like it’d be pretty tough. Maybe Putin wanted us to know he was behind it — to thumb his nose at any effort to contain his authoritarianism.
re: “And to get rid of California’s structural budget deficit during his second term, without raising taxes.”
Nice sentiment… I’d like the same…
But, it doesn’t seem possible with all of California’s voter mandated spending floors and ceilings and specifically earmarked taxes.
Somehow, extending health care to all the uninsured seems the more achievable goal.
RM, I think we’ve frittered away much of the time needed to play Kurdish bank shots.
JC:”Somehow, extending health care to all the uninsured seems the more achievable goal”
It is. You extend health care to all by reforming the Health Insurance system…
Poor Bob Salladay keeps up the Schwarzeneger snarkfest at La Times political blog. Angerlides lost, get over it.
Well, thank heaven for that.
> You extend health care to all by reforming the Health Insurance system…
Mr. Bradley:Well, thank heaven for that.
Well I hope you are serious because that is what they need to do…that is what I believe they will do and that is what Romney did already with some success…you will always need to tailor this to California and legislatively tweak this sort of thing periodically as time goe sby and you see what works and what does not ….but it will happen if there are REEPs that work with him, i.e., Arnold…I hope there are some …I get impatient with all this …there is so little reinventing the wheel to all this, i.e., most public policy solutions …there are so many problems with so many solutions at everyone’s fingertips and too many politicians and staffers intent on making everything seem so difficult and so hard to do…I get so impatient …Arnold said something very important yesterday …he said something like I am a civil servant …he used another term I think, but what he more or less said is I was hired by the people not by any special interest group, or even even one political party or any one ethnic group etc…that is why he has a real chance to get something done…because he has that mindset…
On Gates…hearings:
We all can watch it on C-span!
“Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006
9:30 a.m.
Armed Services
To hold hearings to examine the nomination of
Robert M. Gates, to be Secretary of Defense;
there is a possibility of a closed session in
S-407 following the open session.”
And I JUST (1:27pm) got my C-span updates for today and tomorrow !…Here goes!…Toodles!…need to go riding!
“C-SPAN Highlights
Tonight:11/27 (Times are EST)
* United States Inst. Of Peace on the U.S. & Syria (8pm)
* Israel Broadcasting Authority Newscast (9:30pm)
* SAIS Forum on Intel. & Counterterrorism (9:45pm)
Tomorrow:11/28
* U.S. House: In Recess Until Dec. 5
* The Palestine Center Discussion on Gaza (1pm) – LIVE
* SAIS Discussion on the Prospects for Korean Unification (5:30pm) – LIVE”
Mr. Litvinenko was an ally of Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian billionaire living in England. Mr. Berezovsky, driven from Moscow by Mr. Putin, could probably get the polonium.
Russia is a sieve, Russians are for sale.
Jonathan Hemlock’s suicide theory for Litvinenko isn’t looking so good today. The WP says that the poison used can only be acquired from sophisticated gov’t controlled reactors, not the commercial kinds that supply medical radioacives or serve the power grid. I guess he might have been able to get the stuff from a highly-placed contact, but it seems like it’d be pretty tough. Maybe Putin wanted us to know he was behind it — to thumb his nose at any effort to contain his authoritarianism.
I think Arnold said he is a PUBLIC servant. It’s hard to see him as a civil servant. “Mr. Schwarzenegger, you will simply have to requisition that like everyone else.”
Yes, C-SPAN. Hopefully CNN or Fox or MSNBC carry the Gates hearings live.
If you can find copies of Hedrick Smith’s two books on Russia (The Russians and the New Russians) they are a good start to get a grounding in the Russian character, although both were written decades ago. Our policy toward Russia has yeed and yawed over the years. And as Bill says, things over there are often like the Wild West.
Here in L.A. the buzz is about the downward spiral of City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s ambitions. His lackluster showing in the primary for Attorney General against Jerry Brown (despite outspending Brown by a wide margain) along with various gaffees as CA make clear the whispers that his advisor’s spread a few years ago of a Project 1600 (as in Pennsylvania Ave) was very premature. BTW, Delgadillo is a protege of Richard Riordan.
Re: Medical coverage and Gov Romney
I just googled an article regarding seniors in Mass. being property taxed out of their homes. The article actually noted Ca.’s prop 13. If I could figure out how to post the article I would.
Yes, that makes sense …he serves the “public” …jolly good mindset our Arnold…anyway it is raining like heck so can’t worry about politics/public policy right now …I am confined to an indoor paddock…don’t like being confined…especially on a horse…Toodles!
Opps, actually Delgadillo’s advisors called themselves Team 1600. Still very presumptive, especially given his current dire straits.
If the article is available on Google, you can post a link.
>carole w :
Re: Medical coverage and Gov Romney
I just googled an article regarding seniors in Mass. being property taxed out of their homes. The article actually noted Ca.’s prop 13. If I could figure out how to post the article I would.
Nov 27, 2006 02:21 PM
Didn’t Rick Smith pass away?
Yes, C-SPAN. Hopefully CNN or Fox or MSNBC carry the Gates hearings live.
C-span will carry it live but by all means use the cable and then you can also listen all those BRILLIANT pundits and political consultants who will go on and explaining what is REALLY is going on… what you REALLY heard…like the average person can can’t figure anything out without them!!!…No Thank You!!! I will stick to C-Span.
(and reading you and Sooth! Hey! where the heck is Sooth anyway? I don’t like it when he disappears forever like this…I hope Putin did not go after our Sooth!Cause, I am going to be really mad if he did!) Now, I am really going! Toodles!
Hedrick Smith is very much alive: http://www.hedricksmith.com/
Carole — You might also note that Mass. is struggling with its own public employee pension and retiree health care costs. Unsustainable benefits are a problem throughout the US.
Mr. Kandy,
I am listening…keep talking…I am trying to copy and paste my article.
I thought Mr. Smith had passed away.
Additional information on Alcee Hastings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701020.html
It will probably be necessary to cut and paste the entire long URL address.
Well, at least the congressman’s own lawyer is still saying he’s a great guy.
This would be the lawyer who represented him while he was impeached by the Democratic House and convicted by the Democratic Senate.
After a panel of judges remanded the case to the attention of Congress.
Very convincing.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Turn out the lights …
The accounts I’ve read of Romney’s reform suggest that the part for subsidizing the purchase of insurance by those at the lower end of the income scale is underfunded by 60% or more of what will actually be needed in even the medium run (5-10 years), unless costs can be brought under control. While the forced-purchase route has the non-trivial advantage of being palatable enough to Republicans that it’d be much easier to pass, I’m not convinced it’s actually a better solution than just directly providing insurance. I don’t think we need to gov’t to get into the business of running hospitals (though the relative success of the VA in recent years suggests that might not be crazy), but at the very least, we should make the insurers compete with a low-cost gov’t option might force them to get their overhead down from 20+% spent on administration (i.e. executive pay and perks, resisting paying claims, trying to filter out potentially-costly applicants and find excuses to dump sick policyholders) towards Medicare’s less-than-5%.
Re: Kurdish bank shots — well, yes, I don’t think we can actually accomplish anything good at this point. Bush apparently can’t figure out which end of the cue is forward, let alone make a bank shot.
It turns out it is not that hard to get Polonium-210.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/28/MNGHSML5LM1.DTL
RMHarman: “The accounts I’ve read of Romney’s reform suggest…..”
The subsidy is from a fund of monies raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments. There are medical transparency provisions built into the program which will have positive impact on costs down the line. Keep in mind, this legislation was just passed last year…there will no doubt be adjustments needed possibly amendments …but this is a remarkable plan and there is a great deal of good stuff here in the Romney/Massachusetts Plan for other states to ape…or again, tailor to their demographics
Moreover, (and this goes for ANY government program) … a government program is ONLY as good as its implementers so that is very important to factor in, but basically in MA they did NOT reform Medicaid (our MediCAL) they reformed health insurance via a bi-partisan effort. They wanted to make health insurance affordable not expand medicaid/medi-Cal.
When you canvass the uninsured population you always find a significant number that qualify for Medicaid/MediCal but have not registered. So you get them registered…the bigger problem are the working poor /low income wage earners but do not buy insurance because it is too expensive
This plan has them purchase a plan of their choice (via sliding scale/means tested)
Anyone who refuses to be insured has to demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care.
Will the Senate dig into Mr. Gates’ sordid past and his support for mining Nicaragua’s harbors in violation of International Law? Will he be questioned about his manipulation of ‘intelligence’ to serve a political/imperial agenda? Will anyone in the Bush Administration be held accountable for their war of agression and the chaos they’ve caused in Iraq?
Here’s some food for thought:
Anatomy of a Civil War: Writer Nir Rosen on Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/27/1447216
Iraq Nears the “Saigon Moment”
By PATRICK COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.com/
I agree that the Romney reform is significant, but I think the bigger picture is that the insurance industry itself is a huge part of the problem. Too many paper pushers and Assistant Vice Presidents; not enough doctors and nurses. (There are comparable problems in education, from the gov’t side — overgrown bureaucracy can be private or public sector…)
If mandatory-insurance with subsidies is all we can get, well, OK. I’m not a “heighten the contradictions” type, hoping to stall a poorer reform to make the problem more acute and get momentum for what I see as a better one. Too many real lives are involved to dither over such degrees.
Nonetheless, it looks to me like the Romney method is a stop-gap, and I worry that it will entrench another corporate-welfare subsidy — handing money to inefficient private insurers. In the long run, I think we’re going to have no choice but to fundamentally change the way we pay for healthcare (including pharmaceuticals), in ways that insurance industry lobbyists aren’t going to like.
What, Bush is going to appoint Noam Chomsky secretary of defense? lol
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