The meetings between new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
and President George W. Bush find the “special relationship”
between America and its chief ally still quite special.
** OBAMA CATCHES HILLARY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL. I still need to write up an after-action analysis of last week’s dust-up between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the circumstances in which one meets with leaders of rogue nations — I had a lengthy item last week after I questioned former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, naturally a Clinton backer, and yesterday’s Bill Clinton item — but here is an interesting item. For the first time, in the aftermath of last week’s CNN YouTube debate and foreign policy dust-up, Barack Obama has caught Hillary Clinton in a New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary poll.
It comes in a poll by American Research Group, which in my experience generally shows Hillary running better than other polls. Here are the numbers: Obama 31%, Clinton 31%, John Edwards 14%, Bill Richardson 7%. Rudy Giuliani has a very slight lead on the Republican side over Mitt Romney.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: STATE HAS STIFFED PROGRAMS AND VENDORS OVER A BILLION BUCKS SO FAR. THAT WILL TRIPLE IN AUGUST. California state Controller John Chiang said today that the absence of the budget made it impossible for him to legally pay some $1.1 billion in July to nursing homes, special education programs, community colleges, cancer detection programs and the businesses that provide various services to state government. He projects that he will have to withhold another $2.1 billion in August should the budget stall continue.
** MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI. Italian director Michelangelo Antonio has passed away in Rome at age 94. Antonioni was a pioneer of modernist film, specializing in long takes and cinematic meditations on existential themes of perception and alienation in films such as Blowup, The Passenger, and Red Desert. In my favorite, Blowup, a photographer in swinging ’60s London thinks he may have inadvertently found evidence of a murder. So he keeps blowing up his images to see how clearly he can discern the reality of it. Not well at all. In The Passenger, Jack Nicholson is a TV journalist in Africa, trying to run down a story he doesn’t understand about a war he doesn’t understand, an observer in his own life. Frustrated, he switches identities with a dead man. These are not films for the jumpcut generation.
** CRUDE OIL: RECORD HIGH CLOSING PRICE. Trading in crude oil just closed for the day on a record high of $78.21 per barrel, more than a dollar higher than the previous record close of $77.03 per barrel, set last July 14th during the Israel-Hezbollah War. The intraday trading record of $78.40 was challenged before the close.
Why is oil so high? That’s a good question. I’ve heard a variety of explanations, not at all consistent, and they don’t quite add up. This is not something that lends itself to instant analysis.
** CRUDE OIL 17 CENTS BELOW RECORD HIGH. Crude oil is trading up to $78.23 per barrel, just 17 cents below the record high hit last July during the Israel-Hezbollah War.
** PARTY LEADER REBUKES ARNOLD-CARPING RIGHT-WING BLOG. A fellow member of the California Republican Party’s executive board has sent a letter rebuking Flash Report proprietor and Southern California party vice chairman Jon Fleischman for several of his statements about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Jon-
You are quoted in the July 30, 2007 Contra Costa Times:” With the party base, I think there’s a bit of chagrin that we elected a fiscal conservative who got into office and completely changed”. But former Senate Republican leader Jim Bruilte, in a July 26, 2007 article in the Riverside Press-Enterprise entitled “Arnold a big spender? Hardly?” came to the opposite conclusion. He reported that the annual rate of state spending increases under Governor Schwarzenegger is “almost identical to former Gov, Pete Wilson’s frugal track record and much better than Govs. Davis, Deukmejian and Brown-or even Reagan-were able to achieve!”
And as far as “chagrin” in the party base, the article that quoted you stated quite the contrary. “He… (The Governor)…remains hugely popular among registered Republicans-a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California pegged his approval rating within the party at 75 percent…” In crafting the headline, the editor must have read only your quote rather the rest of the article when he made its head the totally inaccurate and misleading: “Governor’s GOP popularity in free fall.”
The “chagrin” may be yours, but the overwhelming majority of California Republicans must agree with conservative columnist Robert Novak that the Governor is the California Republican Party’s “greatest asset.”
We need to hear more cheering than sniping from our own benches.
Doug Metz
CRP Executive Board Member
Contrary to some expectations, British troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq until Iraqi authorities are deemed capable of handling their own security. But a British pull-back from combat patrols, started by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, will continue. This may become the position of a critical mass of Republicans, as well, this fall.
It was probably a stretch for some to assume that a politician who vacations at Cape Cod and is a friend of Alan Greenspan — that would be Brown — would share the anti-Americanism of so many of Blair’s critics.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is pushing hard for action on Darfur from the US and the UN, and he may get it.
** ARNOLD’S EVEN BIGGER HIT! The Simpsons Movie, featuring a character named “President Arnold Schwarzenegger,” is an even bigger hit than I thought. It didn’t gross the estimated $71.9 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. It grossed $74 million. Fantastic.
In its sixth weekend of release, the vaunted Michael Moore film on US health care woes, Sicko, grossed $1.2 million. Its total domestic box office to date is $21.5 million.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: MOVING GOALPOSTS. I’m told that state Senate Republicans — who have held up California’s budget following its bipartisan passage in the Assembly — have provided yet another new wrinkle after a day of negotiations with Democrats and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They now want tax cuts. Again. The objections have been vague — secret cuts was the line for quite awhile — and changeable for weeks.
This is all very exciting.
** WESTLY ON PORT POLLUTION. Decrying the increased risk of asthma and cancer and growing traffic gridlock around California’s ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the San Francisco Bay Area, former state Controller and eBay honcho-turned-cleantech venture capitalist Steve Westly argues in a Sacramento Bee column for a bill by state Senator Alan Lowenthal. The bill would create a $30 per cargo container fee to mitigate pollution and promote transit around the ports. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been cool to the idea in the past.
** AN ESSENTIALLY UNOPPOSED GAVIN NEWSOM. As reported yesterday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom now looks to end up running this year for re-election essentially unopposed. This, despite a much ballyhooed personal scandal earlier this year and the great enmity of many on the left. (Yes, I know Newsom is on the left. We’re talking more left; it’s San Francisco.) Despite his woes, Newsom maintained a 70%-plus job approval rating, which led former Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, who ran a close race against Newsom in November 2005, to conclude that the charismatic young mayor is unbeatable.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 79th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices have hit a one-year high at $77.50 per barrel.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
Read 
| Comments (0) |
A billion bucks and counting on the state budget. Good work, boys.
Agreed. But accomplished professionals weren’t going to undertake such projects when it was so professionally dangerous to do so, so you got amateurish student stuff and exploitational “B” work by hacks. It took awhile for people who understood that era to gain the skills and stature to make good movies. Remember that Fonda did The Trip and the even more horrible Wild Angels before he and Hopper hooked up to do Easy Rider. The master filmmakers who would later chronicle the mood of the 60s and 70s were still at USC and UCLA then.
That was a wild time in 70s’ film when the studios finally decided to indulge artists who wished to create counterculture-oriented works rather than suppress them. Ever seen Preminger’s Skidoo? He later tried to bury it, because it was so embarrassing in hindsight for all those 40s-50s era actors to do such a weird hippie acid flick. Peter Boyle gets an Oscar nomination for Joe, but apparently nobody really wanted to distribute it very aggressively because it was SO damn dark. I find current era filmmaking tediously formulaic by comparison to the artistic chances being taken in the 70s.
yeah Ledeen’s other buddy Chalabi who many believe is an Iranian agent…In THE ITALIAN LETTER Bill Murray state’s “every one tells me Michael Ledeen is not a stupid person…then why does he persist in this fronting?” Murray was talking about Ghorbanifar but he could have been talking about Chalabi also…Chalabi fed Shulsky…Feith and the rest of Team B a lot of the cooked of intel
forgot to add in last post murray is the former CIA chief of Paris…
forgot to add in last post murray is the former CIA chief of Paris…
Yes, probably most people thought Bill Murray is the superstar comedian/actor.
GO OBAMA ! That business of trotting out Albright to make bitchy digs and dragging Bill aroud as her warm up act is getting old…now I am off for dinner on the town Toodles!
The former Paris bureau chief was very funny roleplaying as a spy in “The Man Who Knew Too Little.”
Is this a Kevin Bacon thing?
The Albright thing didn’t work all that well. Which is why Hillary escalated with a personal attack.
Wilbur, you’re a man of the New Hollywood. Which began with Bonnie & Clyde and ended with Star Wars.
Must-See TV: Bill Clinton tonight on Nightline on how he envisions his role as First Gentleman.
I think this is all very difficult for Bill Clinton.
In that he could definitely be president again absent term limits.
And were he not married to Hillary, Obama would be his natural protege.
Can’t really reject the New Hollywood guy label. I was studying film and doing my own amateurish stuff then and was consumed by the artistic revolution going on in film, and you’re right, it went flat for me around the time Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola et al moved on to their great but artistically less daring works which have made them adn the studios a bizillion dollars. I greatly enjoy a lot of what has been produced since then, but as entertainment, not art.
What’s going on with the stupid California Republicans?
Will no sane person defend the hyper-right Republicans?
Just got off the phone on that topic.
I think they want to relate in their own milieu.
A lot of great art produced in the New Hollywood, including my all-time favorite film, Chinatown.
Although it’s a bit downbeat and pessimistic as a genre …
>Wilbur :
Can’t really reject the New Hollywood guy label. I was studying film and doing my own amateurish stuff then and was consumed by the artistic revolution going on in film, and you’re right, it went flat for me around the time Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola et al moved on to their great but artistically less daring works which have made them adn the studios a bizillion dollars. I greatly enjoy a lot of what has been produced since then, but as entertainment, not art.
Jul 31, 2007 06:41 PM
Love to hear about THAT.
Love to hear about THAT.
< Bill Bradley :
Just got off the phone on that topic.
I think they want to relate in their own milieu.
Jul 31, 2007 08:01 PM
The last 2 lines quote me.
BTW, a few ultra-conservatives are, well, whining about how hard I’m supposedly being on them.
I would advise them to check in with Rob Reiner, former liberal candidate for governor of California, to gain some badly needed perspective on that particular point …
Whoa, you ripped the Flush Report a new one! lol
There is more.
Looking forward to it.
I just looked at the Globex market. The overnight stock futures trading is not acting normally, I’ve never seen it so deeply red. Better than 50/50 odds the Dow and Nasdaq sell off hard tomorrow.
There are dark clouds on the economic horizon. If you think this year’s budget fight is tough, wait til next year.
I just looked at the Globex market. The overnight stock futures trading is not acting normally, I’ve never seen it so deeply red. Better than 50/50 odds the Dow and Nasdaq sell off hard tomorrow.
There are dark clouds on the economic horizon. If you think this year’s budget fight is tough, wait til next year.
I think I know what you mean. I hope you don’t turn it on me.
I don’t think we’re being given most of the information.
>James :
I just looked at the Globex market. The overnight stock futures trading is not acting normally, I’ve never seen it so deeply red. Better than 50/50 odds the Dow and Nasdaq sell off hard tomorrow.
What else is new? lol
Re: Obama ties HRC in NH
Bill, how resilient would the Clinton campaign be if Obama inched ahead for a month or two? Is her core financial/feminist backing enough to sustain her through a lengthy down period, or is she finished as soon as she loses the aura of inevitability?
——
If Obama grabs the lead and holds it for any length of time, I suspect that Clinton (and Bush) fatigue would become the meme of the MSM.
Bill: Although it’s a bit downbeat and pessimistic as a genre …
Indeed. dark and foreboding almost always had a least a walk-on. Like a seven-year-old’s post-Disneyland depression, we were mourning the death of innocence after our heroes were slaughtered, he machine didn’t collapse and the war seemed unstoppable despite of our fervent but incompetent wishing otherwise A deep cynicism started settling in, in an uneasy symbiosis with lingering idealism. That disappointment and pessimism shows in many of the best the films of the era, but usually mixed with a heroic determination to continue the struggle. I think what made Zabriskie Point so unsettling was the ease with which the progenitor adopted murder as a practical way of pursuing peace. That ungrokkable plexer reflected a shizoid break in values which was going on out there behind the bong, (though it came more naturally to those of us who had our hippie dream abruptly interrupted by a tour of the People’s Republic of Whatarewedyin’for.)
Life and society now seem much more pasteurized and temperature-controlled, so those films probably wouldn’t be right for this time and probably feel oddly dated to today’s youngsters. I don’t see the same well of passion and angst in the audiences and voters, so maybe those spooning out pablum have the right formula after all.
Obama and Clinton in NH is big news. He will slowly gain on and when the primaries come pull away from her.
That sounds like big news.
I don’t expect Obama to take the lead in national polls. Nor is in his interest to do so.
>Chris M :
Re: Obama ties HRC in NH
Bill, how resilient would the Clinton campaign be if Obama inched ahead for a month or two? Is her core financial/feminist backing enough to sustain her through a lengthy down period, or is she finished as soon as she loses the aura of inevitability?
——
If Obama grabs the lead and holds it for any length of time, I suspect that Clinton (and Bush) fatigue would become the meme of the MSM.
That’s the ’70s all right, Wilbur, nicely put.
>Indeed. dark and foreboding almost always had a least a walk-on. Like a seven-year-old’s post-Disneyland depression, we were mourning the death of innocence after our heroes were slaughtered, he machine didn’t collapse and the war seemed unstoppable despite of our fervent but incompetent wishing otherwise A deep cynicism started settling in, in an uneasy symbiosis with lingering idealism. That disappointment and pessimism shows in many of the best the films of the era, but usually mixed with a heroic determination to continue the struggle.
“I don’t expect Obama to take the lead in national polls. Nor is in (sic) his interest to do so.”
I hear ya’. Better for him to continue to get his footing as a campaigner (while expectations for him are still somewhat tempered) and catch her just in time for the early primaries.
Was Wilbur a Hippie? If so..I would like for him to write about Haight/Ashbury… I have lots of questions? What was it like growing up in that era? The music from the that time and place is wonderful…
Carole, hippie-wannabe suburban kid would probably be more accurate. Spent my teen years in the late 60s living on the east side of the Oakland Hills, so hanging out on Telegraph Ave, the Fillmore and peace marches took the place of football games and dances in my high school years. While not immersed in the dropout lifestyle, I was there at ground zero of the 60s revolution and soaked it all up, the good and the bad, both of which still shape my life and thoughts in many ways.
So yeah, kinda-sorta.
Wilbur,
Very cool…
Wilbur,
Very cool…
Incidentally, NWN passed 36,000 comments sometime last week.