With the presidential race up for grabs in both parties, global crises,
and three California statewide elections ahead, it’s best to “Take It Easy.”
NEW YEAR’S DAY UPDATE
** LIES, DAMN LIES, AND, ER, POLLS. You know my problem with the Iowa polls. They’re all taken over the holidays, which have never before this current insane situation been a determinative period, AND most of the periods involved are long weekends. Aside, from that, they are entirely valid … Other polls, aside from the widely acknowledged gold standard Des Moines Register Poll — numbers below — have some different results, though Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee also lead in some among Democrats and Republicans.
The Register poll, as you see from the link below, has a new model anticipating higher numbers of independents participating in the Democratic presidential caucuses than have participated in the past. That accounts for Obama’s rather large lead over Hillary Clinton, and for John Edwards, who is appealing to core Democrats rather than independents. Is the Register correct in assuming that Iowa this time out will behave more like a primary — and be much more reflective of the changing electorate around the country — than a low turnout caucus? We’ll know soon enough. The importance of independents in the New Hampshire primary is why Obama has eliminated Clinton’s lead there in most polls.
** QUICK HITS. Did Mike Huckabee screw up on New Year’s Eve when he unveiled a hard-hitting counterattack ad on Mitt Romney at a press conference only to announce that he wouldn’t use it because he’s against negative campaigning? The conventional national media certainly thinks so. But the Iowa press seems to have mostly presented the story in very straightforward fashion. And somehow I doubt most Iowans over yet another holiday are paying much attention to what Joe Klein et al have to say. … Pakistan is, not surprisingly, postponing the scheduled January 8th national election in the wake of the highly suspicious assassination of Benazir Bhutto. That’s not a popular choice, either, also not surprisingly. When will they be? Probably not any time soon. … San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who according to many torched his career early in 2007 with a sex scandal, only to go on to romp to an easy re-election win, got engaged over the weekend in Hawaii to actress and Stanford alum Jennifer Siebel.Congratulations, Mr. Mayor!
Democrats: Barack Obama 32%, Hillary Clinton 25%, John Edwards 24%.
Republicans: Mike Huckabee 32%, Mitt Romney 26%, John McCain 13%.
I’m off now, but I’ll delve into it in more detail on New Year’s Day.
** HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s going to be a spectacular and complex New Year. When it’s not boring and derivative, of course. Let’s all do our best to relax for a moment or four, in spite of the best efforts of the folks in Iowa and New Hampshire to make the permanent campaign even more permanent than it needs to be.
Democrats: Hillary Clinton 30%, Barack Obama 26%, John Edwards 26%.
Republicans: Mike Huckabee 29%, Mitt Romney 27%, John McCain 13%.
Again, I don’t really buy any of these polls, taken over weekends and holidays.
This poll was conducted entirely over the weekend before New Year’s — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The best in the West USC Trojans go for yet another Rose Bowl
crown on New Year’s Day.
** BOWLING. A lot of college bowl games New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Watching the always entertaining Hawaii offense take on Georgia in the Sugar Bowl should be interesting. And then there is the Rose Bowl, featuring the best team in the West, perhaps the country, USC.
Stanford didn’t do much this season, but they’re the team that kept perennial powerhouse USC out of the national championship game. With John David Booty throwing an amazing four interceptions — turns out he’d broken his finger during the game — Stanford beat USC 24-23. Stanford didn’t do much afterward, aside from confounding slumping and once #2 in the country Cal, but USC has rebounded, losing narrowly to Oregon when it was on a roll and crushing powerhouse Arizona State on Thanksgiving Day. After dominating cross-town rivals UCLA, they’re on to the Rose Bowl and another high national ranking. Illinois will be the Trojans’ last victim of the season.
The lovely, if deeply ironic, Russian holiday fable of Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, provides a nice counterpoint to the harsher view of Charlie Wilson’s War.
** CHARLIE WILSON VS. SNEGUROCHKA. With the critical and popular success of Charlie Wilson’s War, a rollicking true tale of the most successful covert war in history (with a distressing and witlessly handled denouement) — taking down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan — Soviet-era Russia has taken a pounding of late. Cinematic pep talks about “Let’s kill Russians” may feel a bit unseemly given Russia’s renewed role in the world and traditional greatness as a country, culture, and people.
But that is reflective of the time, and the training, I can assure you. The Soviet Union was one of the most menacing presences in world history. The atrocities perpetrated by Soviet forces in Afghanistan were breathtaking in their brutality.
So it’s a pleasure to draw your attention to the charming Russian holiday fable of Snegurichka, the Snow Maiden. Who is associated with both Christmas — December 25th in the modern calendar, January 7th traditionally, due to the old calendar — and New Year’s. The Soviet system suppressed Christmas, so traditions like the Snow Maiden and the grandfather she accompanied, the Santa equivalent, Father Frost (Ded Moroz), officially switched to New Year’s.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Dismissing the Pakistani government’s remaining shards of
credibility, Hillary Clinton wants an international investigation of
the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
It’s frequently said that the fog of war obscures military operations. This time, the fog of merriment is obscuring political operations. Because the good folks of those most unrepresentative of American states, Iowa and New Hampshire, are hell-bent on having their states first as usual in the presidential nomination fights, we’re conducting the height of the first-in-the-nation contest of Iowa during the height of the holiday season. It’s bizarre.
As a result of this lunacy, we may not have a valid statistical read on the race in either party until the morning of the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd. And even then, the data will be flawed and fragmentary. Add to that the unknown impact of the spectacular assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in our now obviously teetering frontline ally in the Terror War.
Barack Obama’s new ad for the New Hampshire primary, where
he has erased Hillary Clinton’s longstanding lead.
It’s strange enough that Iowa — where the two parties are under the disproportionate influence of, respectively, public employee unions and peace activists and religious fundamentalists — plays such a winnowing role in presidential politics. Now the actual contest in Iowa is being preceded by what are essentially two five-day weekends in a row, first over Christmas, and now over New Year’s. Weekend polling is always highly suspect. Just who do you suppose is going to take the time, or even be around, to answer a pollster’s questions on a weekend night? Many campaigns don’t even bother to poll on weekends for that reason, and when it is done, the numbers are always regarded with suspicion.
Add to that the unprecedented holiday factor — when Iowa was first in the presidential nomination contests of 1984, it took place on February 20th — and it’s a formular for rampant confusion.
So we have polls which show Hillary Clinton, the longtime supposedly overwhelming frontrunner, running first. Or second. Or third. Same with her two polished opponents, Barack Obama, who has by far the best challenger operation and is the best orator in the country, and John Edwards, who was usually the best in the debates.
John Edwards decries the “corporate greed” of the Washington
establishment in this new TV ad.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has a big lead in one recent poll, while Mitt Romney has a big lead in another recent poll. The only thing that’s sure is that whomever finishes third is likely to be far back. That could be Fred Thompson, who scraped together some funds to put up a TV ad as he tries to jump start his campaign. That could be John McCain, who is coming on like gangbusters in New Hampshire again, and could surprise in Iowa with the renewed primacy of geopolitics with the Pakistani crisis. (I’ve been writing all year on New West Notes that Pakistan is a major accident waiting to happen.) It might even be Ron Paul. It probably won’t be Rudy Giuliani, the erstwhile frontrunner who will be in Florida on the night of the Iowa caucuses.
The candidates continue their barnstorming across icy Iowa. The weather forecast for January 3rd is clear and cold.
The Edwards strategy is predicated on the reduced universe of proven caucus-goers. Obama and Clinton are each looking to expand that. In Obama’s case, with young people. In Clinton’s case, with older women. Each is probably advantaged by (relatively) good weather.
Mike Huckabee counters Mitt Romney’s blizzard of attacks on him.
Meanwhile, the Republicans keep up their five-sided game of pool across two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, with Fred Thompson trying to restart his car and Rudy Giuliani trying to hold on while the three candidates of the moment — Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and John McCain — all duke it out.
Actually, Romney is forced to fight two formidable foes in two states that are absolutely key to his hopes. McCain is coming on in New Hampshire, where he has all the newspaper endorsements — including the neighboring conservative Boston Herald and liberal Boston Globe, Romney’s key papers when he was Massachusetts governor — and the two biggest papers in New Hampshire, including the famously conservative Manchester Union Leader, issuing “anti-endorsements” of Romney. He’s even ducked over to Iowa for a few days of campaigning. Though he’s done little there, there’s a chance for a surprise third behind Huckabee and Romney.
But Romney has the resources that Huckabee and McCain lack, and is a polished campaigner.
Fighting John McCain’s resurgence as well as the loss of his Iowa
lead to Huckabee, Mitt Romney is running this new TV attack ad.
The polls are very awkward now. I’m not convinced that any poll taken over the Christmas holidays is valid. In New Hampshire, Obama has closed up on Clinton, making that race, in Clinton’s long thought firewall state, a dead heat.
Obama and Hillary are criss-crossing Iowa. So is former President Bill Clinton, campaigning all-out now as a virtual doppelganger candidate to his wife, the original campaign conception of using him sparingly now completely out the window.
Hillary is also benefiting from two “independent” expenditures. One on her behalf, by the big public employees union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). That’s hitting Obama for not advocating the requirement that all American buy health insurance. Ironically, Obama’s position is the same as many of Clinton’s backers. The other help for Hillary comes in the form of a so-called “527” committee, after the government code section. This group, headed by John Edwards’ former campaign manager, is taking unlimited contributions and spending on Edwards’ behalf. And also attacking Obama. Of course, if she is to lose Iowa, the Clintons would vastly prefer an Edwards win to an Obama win, reasoning that Edwards is in much weaker shape to capitalize in New Hampshire and other states.
John McCain responds to Romney’s attacks by calling him a
flip-flopper on immigration in this new TV ad.
On the Republican side of the presidential race, this stark reminder of the centrality of security issues in a challenging, interconnected world should help John McCain. Rudy Giuliani wants it to help him, but unlike McCain, he hasn’t been to Waziristan, now Al Qaeda’s safe haven, and doesn’t know President Musharraf or the Bhuttos. On the Democratic side, one might think it would help Hillary Clinton. It would certainly help Bill Clinton. But a recent New York Times feature sharply undercut her claims of expertise in the field, and it’s unclear whether the extremely high profile taken of late in her campaign by the former president reassures people about the couple, or underscores the notion that he is the superior in the relationship.
It’s not helping Mike Huckabee, who is proving to be more than a bit gaffe-prone. He already had his hands full with the freespending Romney’s barrage of attacks, on the air and in the mail.
While the Republicans flail away at one another, the Democrats have more settled campaigns, and Hillary’s theme is that she is the security candidate. Security as in she’s been there and, if not done it, been around it, and security in the sense of being the known quantity. Obama’s theme is that he is the turn-the-page candidate, not stuck in the debates of the 1990s and free from Hillary’s past alignments with Bush policy. Edwards is running as the tailored populist, always a smooth and strong performer in front of the microphone, he is now an increasingly fiery one. …
Eight minutes from Charlie Wilson’s War: The playboy congressman (Tom Hanks) and maverick CIA officer (Philip Seymour Hoffman) meet and forge a sardonically amusing and fateful partnership to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Which will hinge, as present irony would have it, on the participation of Pakistan.
Democrats: Hillary Clinton 31%, Barack Obama 27%, John Edwards 24%. All other candidates are way back in single digits.
Republicans: Mike Huckabee 29%, Mitt Romney 28%, John McCain 11%. Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, thought a few weeks ago to be fighting it out for third, are both at 8%, as is Ron Paul.
A major caveat. I’m leery of any polling conducted over the holidays, not to mention polling on a weekend.
12/29 REPORTS
** RIGHT TIME FOR CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR? It’s an historical irony that Charlie Wilson’s War is out now as Pakistan dominates the headlines and newscasts. For it was with a necessary partnership with Pakistan that the US was able to prosecute the most successful covert war in history — the taking down of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The US forged an alliance with Pakistan’s dictator of the time, General Zia, to train and equip Afghan insurgents.
Zia, as it happens, overthrew Benazir Bhutto’s father, Prime Minister Ali Bhutto. Who was then tried by a tribunal and executed. Following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, Zia himself was killed — along with a planeload full of top generals and advisors, as well as the US ambassador — in a mysterious plane crash. This happened before the last Soviet troops, led by General Gromov, marched out of Afghanistan across the inaptly named Friendship Bridge in 1989.
The movie, incidentally, is also succeeding. Its box office this weekend will be higher than last weekend’s opening, which is quite unusual. The movie has garnered five Golden Globe nominations, for best picture, best screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), best actor (Tom Hanks), best supporting actress (Julia Roberts), and best supporting actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hanks, by the way, is a San Francisco Bay Area native and alumnus of Sacramento State.
It’s succeeding where other war/Middle East-themed pictures have failed. I have to admit that I haven’t seen the Iraq-type pictures which came out in the fall. They looked boring and earnest and depressing. I deal with that stuff all the time in real life; I don’t need to be “entertained” by it. Apparently, and not surprisingly, few others did, either.
This movie is serious, but it’s also quite entertaining.
** IOWA, IOWA, IOWA. AND NEW HAMPSHIRE. The candidates continue their barnstorming across icy Iowa today, with the top three Democrats locked in a what might be a three-way statistical dead heat. Most soundings continue to give Barack Obama a slight edge over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, depending upon how turnout is measured. Obama, Edwards, and Clinton each have four rallies today across the Hawkeye State. The weather forecast for January 3rd is clear and cold. In California terms. At 34 degrees, it’s positively balmy by Iowa standards for this time of year.
The Edwards strategy is predicated on the reduced universe of proven caucus-goers. Obama and Clinton are each looking to expand that. In Obama’s case, with young people. In Clinton’s case, with older women. Each is probably advantaged by good weather.
Meanwhile, the Republicans keep up their five-sided game of pool across two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, with Fred Thompson trying to restart his car and Rudy Giuliani trying to hold on while the three candidates of the moment — Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and John McCain — all duke it out.
Actually, Romney is forced to fight two formidable foes in two states that are absolutely key to his hopes. Despite some spin put out by Bob Novak, who is helping lead the charge against Huckabee, the ex-Arkansas governor continues to lead in Iowa. McCain is coming on in New Hampshire, where he has all the newspaper endorsements — including the neighboring conservative Boston Herald and liberal Boston Globe, Romney’s key papers when he was Massachusetts governor — and the two biggest papers in New Hampshire issuing “anti-endorsements” of Romney.
But Romney has the resources that Huckabee and McCain lack, and is a polished campaigner.
Pakistan, America’s frontline ally in the Terror War, is in a
suppressed state of chaos following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
** PAKISTAN CRISIS. Rioting continued for a third day across Pakistan, but declined in its intensity. Nevertheless, a survey of media reports indicates that few are buying the government’s story about how Benazir Bhutto died. The government, after initially saying she was shot to death, then saying she was killed by an explosion, is sticking with its third version of the story — that she was killed when her head hit the lever on her SUV’s sunroof. I don’t have an SUV, but my sunroof, moonroof, actually, doesn’t have a lever. Whatever.
The government story is incredible. Meanwhile, Bhutto advisors are saying that the government repeatedly denied her security requests. And no one has explained how her exit point came to be jammed by a crowd as she attempted to leave her kick-off rally site.
** NEW ENGLAND GOES FOR THE RECORD(S). The New England Patriots go for two records on Saturday as a team, and two key records for their star players. If the Pats beat the New York Giants tonight, they will break two amazing records. The perfect 14-0 regular season record set by the Miami Dolphins in 1972. Against a weak field, as it happens, with opponents who won barely a third of their games. And the 15-game regular season win mark first established by the 1984 edition of the San Francisco 49ers. Whose sole loss came on a hotly disputed pass interference call against the Pittsburgh Steelers. But who’s counting that? Besides NWN …
Also, Tom Brady goes for the single-season touchdown pass record tonight. At 48, he’s one away from Indy QB Peyton Manning’s 49. And Randy Moss goes for the single-season touchdown receptions record. At 21, he’s one away from 49er Hall of Famer Jerry Rice’s mark. Of course, Rice’s mark was set in a strike-shortened 12-game season 20 years ago, so if the astonishing Moss — so ill-used by the presently benighted Oakland Raiders the last couple of seasons before his escape to NFL nirvana in New England — breaks it, there will be an asterisk.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil closed at $96 per barrel on Friday, down after flirting with $100 in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination yesterday as the returned exile
opened her campaign for a third term as Pakistan’s prime minister
ends a fateful pro-Western political dynasty and throws the future of
America’s troubled ally, the only Islamic nuclear power, further into doubt.
** PAKISTAN: LOCKING DOWN REALITY. I’m not really aware of anyone who buys the official spin about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. To say it doesn’t track is to understate the obvious. The Democratic presidential candidates are advocating an open international investigation. The Republicans are much more circumspect, following their lead from the Bush White House.
Meanwhile, riot-torn Pakistan is under military lockdown. Which only further legitimizes opposition to established authority. To the unending delight of Islamic jihadists.
The truth is, the US is kind of out of good options in Pakistan. The situation has deteriorated, as NWN has been reporting for months, quite dramatically, as America continued in its fateful fixation with the now less-bad situation that is another make believe country, Iraq. General Musharraf may nor may not be whatever he is, but he’s it. At least for now. Along with the army. Does that mean that he, or they, are behind the assassination? Not at all.
We simply don’t know what we know about that. But what we do know is that the most credible civilian modernizer in Pakistan is already under the ground. And that Pakistan, America’s key frontline ally in the Terror War, is close to destabilized and already the world’s foremost haven for the forces which actually attacked America on 9/11.
** QUICK HITS. Meanwhile back in the Golden State, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, once mortal enemies, continued their buddy picture by filing the necessary financing ballot measure for the universal health care plan which has passed the Assembly but is pending in the Senate. Assuming the plan gets through the Senate, the necessary funding proposition, geared for next November’s statewide ballot, may yet find itself orphaned in a drastically different political landscape than contemplated a year ago, or now. More about that another time. … Schwarzenegger, as was reported over Christmas, oddly enough, will get a new communications director next year. Adam Mendelsohn, who’s done yeoman service in the resurrection of the former action superstar’s political career in the wake of his 2005 meltdown, is stepping away. Replacing him is Matt David, a very familiar figure to longtime NWN readers as head of Schwarzenegger’s rapid response team in his highly effective 2006 re-election campaign. Not that Mendelsohn is going far. He’ll be very involved in the governor’s political operation next year. David arrives in a week and a half, and will undergo a transition period with Mendelsohn for some time after that. More about that next week …
** BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: GETTING THE STORY STRAIGHT. There are now three very different and conflicting reports as to the cause of death of assassinated Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto. In the first version, disseminated around the world yesterday, she was killed in the blast set off by a suicide bomber. In the second version, she was shot twice and killed by the assassin, who then set off a suicide vest to martyr himself and take as many of her supporters with him as possible. In the third version, she was killed not by gunshot or explosion, but by hitting her head on the lever of her vehicle’s sunroof as she hastily tried to duck back inside after emerging to wave to her supporters as she left her rally. Her lawyer calls this latest version from the government complete nonsense, and maintains that she was killed by gunshots.
Bhutto was buried today. Intriguingly, no autopsy or serious post-mortem examination of her body was conducted beforehand.
How she actually died is key to helping determine how she came to die. If she was killed by the detonation of an explosive vest, that is something that does not require a highly skilled individual. However, if she was shot to death, that implies a certain level of skill.
Another bizarre element here is how she came to be ambushed in the first place. Her motorcade, exiting the rally site, was slowed to a near standstill. By supposed supporters who flooded the exit lanes. Why wasn’t this exit point held open by security forces? Bhutto was under house arrest on at least three occasions after General Pervez Musharaff instituted martial law. On those occasions, her home was surrounded by hundreds, and at one point, thousands of troops and police. Yet adequate forces were not available to keep the exit from her rally free from a crowd.
** BARNSTORMING IOWA. The top three Democrats are all barnstorming through Iowa today. Barack Obama, clinging to an edge in most polls, is doing six events today as part of his “Stand For Change” tour. Hillary Clinton, who has come back some in most soundings, is only appearing at three events today. She’s reportedly somewhat under the weather. John Edwards, in contrast, is doing five events today and is again coming on strong.
The Republican candidates are also hitting Iowa in force. Fred Thompson scraped together enough money to put an ad on the air, keeping his hope for a distant third alive. John McCain has rallied there, hoping for his own surprise even as he and Mitt Romney engage in a TV ad war in New Hampshire, where Romney is trying to hold off the Arizona senator.
Huckabee leads in Iowa in a new AP poll, but may have gaffed again by saying that Pakistanis trail only Mexicans for illegal entry into America. Romney is inundating Iowa with negative ads and mail on Huckabee.
** DISASTER IN PAKISTAN. Short of Islamic jihadists getting ahold of a nuclear weapon, it’s hard to think of a single worse thing that could happen in Pakistan than what just did happen there.
Without former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, there is no widely recognized figure who can bridge the gap between an authoritarian military and more secular moderates.
US strategy in Pakistan is now officially in shambles. The hope of the Bush Administration, and it was a logical hope, was to rein in and retain Musharaff and forge an alliance between him, Bhutto, and the military, now headed — as NWN readers know from before his actual appointment — by General Afshaq Kayani, former head of the ISI intelligence service and one-time military attache to Bhutto. Thus making him perfectly positioned as a modern military officer.
The army, which was created by Britain in the colonial days, is the most coherent institution in the country. Of course, it, and the the intelligence service, have substantial jihadist elements within. Those elements may well have helped facilitate the assassination of Bhutto.
What next? Likely a reimposition of some form of martial law. The elections, set for January 8th, in which Bhutto and her party were likely to emerge in first place, are likely to lack legitimacy if they take place. The other major opposition leader, Saudi-backed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who lacks the nationwide base that Bhutto had, is again calling for a boycott.
On the Republican side of the presidential race, this stark reminder of the centrality of security issues in a challenging, interconnected world should help John McCain. On the Democratic side, one might think it would help Hillary Clinton. It would certainly help Bill Clinton. But a recent New York Times feature sharply undercut her claims of expertise in the field, and it’s unclear whether the extremely high profile taken of late in her campaign by the former president reassures people about the couple, or underscores the notion that he is the superior in the relationship.
Even as her campaign lowballs expectations, Hillary Clinton is
putting on a full court press in Iowa, with positive and negative
campaigning. Here’s the up message, her new “High Stakes/New
Beginning” TV ad.
** HUNTING HILL. The polls are very awkward now. I’m not convinced that any poll taken over the Christmas holidays is valid. That’s especially true of polls taken on Christmas Day itself. That said, it would seem, emphasize seem, that Hillary Clinton has closed up a bit on Barack Obama’s lead in Iowa. And that John Edwards is either a strong third or perhaps in a statistical dead heat with the top two.
In New Hampshire, Obama has closed up on Clinton, making that race, in Clinton’s long thought firewall state, a dead heat.
Obama and Hillary are criss-crossing Iowa. So is former President Bill Clinton, campaigning all-out now as a virtual doppelganger candidate to his wife, the original campaign conception of using him sparingly now completely out the window.
Hillary is also benefiting from two “independent” expenditures. One on her behalf, by the big public employees union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). That’s hitting Obama for not advocating the requirement that all American buy health insurance. Ironically, Obama’s position is the same as many of Clinton’s backers.
The other help for Hillary comes in the form of a so-called “527″ committee, after the government code section. This group, headed by John Edwards’ former campaign manager, is spending on Edwards’ behalf. And also attacking Obama. Of course, if she is to lose Iowa, the Clintons would vastly prefer an Edwards win to an Obama win, reasoning that Edwards is in much weaker shape to capitalize in New Hampshire and other states.
Mike Huckabee went hunting Wednesday in Iowa. Pheasant hunting.
** HUNTING HUCK. After Mike Huckabee went pheasant hunting in Iowa Wednesday morning (take that, Mitt Romney), he went to Florida for some needed fundraising later that day and Thursday. Depending upon the poll, the former Arkansas governor either has a narrow lead in Iowa over Romney or a huge lead (that would be the Bloomberg/LA Times poll, 37% to 24%). I think it’s somewhere in between. He’s not taking off in New Hampshire, where there aren’t many evangelicals, but is leading or close to it in Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, and even Florida.
The man on the move in New Hampshire is John McCain. He’s a strong second there behind Romney. The disaster in Pakistan points up the Vietnam War hero and veteran senator’s national security credentials. He’s even ducked over to Iowa for a few days of campaigning. Though he’s done little there, there’s a chance for a surprise third behind Huckabee and Romney.
It’s been scientifically determined that the best staging area in
future for Santa Claus and his global operation is not the North
Pole, but Kyrgyzstan.
** CHRISTMAS, RIGHT, THE OTHER DAY … A Swedish firm has scientifically determined that, for a global operation the likes of Santa’s, the Arctic is no longer optimal. And not because of climate change.
No, due to systems analysis of population patterns around the world, and given Santa’s mission of delivering toys upon a single night, it’s been determined that Santa Claus and his elves should relocate their headquarters operation to Kyrgyzstan. And because you read NWN, you actually know what Kyrgyzstan is.
The mountainous country, home to America’s sole remaining post-9/11 base in Central Asia, through which the defeated Red Army retreated following its defeat in Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s. While its capital city of Bishkek — known as Frunze when it was part of the Soviet Union, after the inventor of much early Soviet military doctrine, revolutionary hero Mikhail Frunze — didn’t have much in the way of snow cover in the video above, the RT corrrespondent didn’t have far to go to find the sort of winter wonderland in which Santa is most at home.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Please Come Home For Christmas, with the original California
poolside single sleeve from 1978.
Please Come Home For Christmas, the blinking big house Christmas
lights version.
Please Come Home For Christmas, an (arguably) amusing Eagles
retrospective version.
Please Come Home For Christmas, the ranch
house synchronized blinking Christmas lights version.
Please Come Home For Christmas, the beautiful and heartwarming
Hallmark card version.
** HAPPY POLITICALLY CORRECT HOLIDAYS!
As a warm breeze wafts its way through, with all five versions of “Please Come Home For Christmas” playing at once on the trusty Apple laptop — each of them slightly and exquisitely out of synch with one another — I’m reminded that I have had no serious message for this most meaningful time of year.
After at least a minute of deep contemplation, here it is: Always keep your beginner’s mind. In this troubled and frequently dark world, remain open and alive to new and positive possibilities. Except for the really stupid ones.
Merry Christmas!
** NOTE: NWN is on a reduced holiday publishing schedule. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some columns and updates and videos; just not nearly so many. The Forum will of course be open. The relative break is coming sooner rather than later because of the frankly insane presidential campaign schedule, which sees Iowa and New Hampshire within a week of New Year’s Day. For some perspective, when I did first-in-the-nation Iowa for Gary Hart, it was on February 20th.
Two days after Christmas, NWN throttles back up full bore through the February 5th presidential primaries in California and elsewhere.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Barack Obama’s Christmas TV ad, with wife Michelle and their
two daughters.
The week ahead in presidential politics is, frankly, bizarre. It’s the first time in history in which very consequential campaigning takes place during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. For that, we can thank our friends in Iowa and New Hampshire, who cling to to their traditional first-in-the-nation status beyond most semblances of rationality.
And so yesterday saw the former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, and his former first lady wife, Hillary Clinton, trying against the odds with full schedules in icy Iowa for each, to stave off the candidacy of freshman Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Who was also all over Iowa, where he has a narrow but consistent lead. The Clintons, proprietors of the most awesome political machine in America, were further motivated in their quest to tamp down the tyro who would be America’s first president of color by fresh news from their “firewall” primary state, New Hampshire, where Obama has just taken the merest sliver of a lead after trailing by 20 points in November.
Now, on Christamas Eve, and at least continuing into Christmas Day, we are in what in campaign terms is called a “float.” No campaigning. Well, except for whatever might be arriving belatedly by mail.
Hillary Clinton’s Christmas TV ad. She is now in big trouble in
New Hampshire, as well as Iowa.
The Clintons are struggling with one of the most fundamental questions of all. Who is the principal? Is it the New York senator and former first lady who has seemed, at least to the credulous, a dominatingly inevitable frontrunner all year long. Or is it the popular former president, without whom Hillary might well be, not to put too fine a point on it, Hillary Who?
As to which is first, or at least, on first, that is a larger question than I am willing to deal with over Christmas. Hillary may, or may not, have made Bill possible. But without President Bill, there is probably no Senator Hill, much less would-be President Hill.
Beyond which we get into questions of interest only to diehard Clinton loyalists. Or to the dramatists of miniseries. Hold that thought. Although for now, let’s say that a little President Bill in a campaign in which he is not the candidate — and in which his presence reminds that the candidate may not be the principal — goes a very long way indeed. A long way that doesn’t even begin to cover this world statesman spending most of the past week shlepping around the snow drifts of Iowa.
For Democrats have a strong field this year, including John Edwards, who in another year would not be Barack Obama’s spoiler, but the clear favorite, and Obama himself, the best orator in the country, a record-breaking fundraiser, and the first black candidate with a very serious chance to win the presidency.
So serious, in fact, that he is leading in largely lily-white Iowa, and in at least a dead heat with Hillary in her supposed firewall state of New Hampshire.
Incidentally, with regard to Hillary and her Christmas TV ad … Why would she, or anyone in her campaign, suppose that any normal voter would know what she is referring to with “universal pre-K?”
Obama, who at last turned in a good debate performance on December 13th — better late than never — is showing one of two things. Either he has improved dramatically, or the press — which slavishly followed the Clinton campaign meme of the “inevitable” Hillary for many months — is at last realizing that what Hillary was saying about refusing to talk to enemies and a silly notion of nuclear “deterrence” is more ahistorical nonsense than political good sense. Which is another way of saying that actual voters, when they considered it, didn’t buy the Beltway conventional wisdom.
For the umpteenth time in history, for those who care or notice.
Who’s that comeback “kid?” John McCain.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is holding onto the lead in Iowa. Which he seized from the megabucks frontrunner there, Mitt Romney, against all odds. Which means, hello again, John McCain.
The Republicans are in the midst of vicious civil war now. Their evangelical Christian component, which doctrinaire conservatives in the Washington and pundit class, would-be and otherwise, have been happy to have supply needed votes and otherwise keep out of the way, have found their man. And it’s the unwanted man, a Baptist minister and successful governor of godblasted Arkansas, who doesn’t believe in evolution, does believe in the greenhouse effect, and thinks that a certain populist concern for the less than rich is more important than the party’s no new taxes mantra. Or the bomb Iran mantra, which was thoroughly disrupted last month by the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which found no clear and present danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon. And so Rudy Giuliani’s dramatic reboot of his campaign last weekend — “America needs strength” — fell flat.
Giuliani, the social liberal/warhawk erstwhile frontrunner, is not a political hemophiliac exactly. But he is rapidly fading off the radar screen, following after another touted candidate, Fred Thompson, who — barring a dramatic comeback — essentially ended his candidacy when he announced it on The Tonight Show. As I rather politely alluded to, at great length, that very night this past September.
Mike Huckabee jams on bass guitar during a break from his Iowa
bus tour.
This would leave Mitt Romney as the doctrinaire and clearcut choice as the GOP nominee, but for three inconvenient truths. He has recently changed his position on some of the biggest values issues of our time. He is a Mormon, which evangelicals and many other Americans consider to be a science fiction religion. (To say that Democrats would enjoy running against Romney is to engage in considerable understatement.) And he is behind in Iowa, where he has spent more money than any candidate in history, and has been caught in New Hampshire, the neighboring state to his one-term Massachusetts governorship — which he won by espousing a politics quite different from the one he is currently running on — by a guy who has already been killed off twice in this very year which is about to end.
That would be Captain John McCain, USN (retired, for medical reasons). The veteran Arizona senator, son of CINCPAC (Commander-In-Chief-Pacific Command), one of the most famous heroes of the Vietnam War, started the year as the Republican presidential frontrunner. Only to fall, not once, but twice. First, because independents and moderates abandoned him for his stubbornness on the Iraq War surge. Then as conservatives excoriated him for his moderation on illegal immigration.
But the truth is that every top Republican other than Thompson is “squishy” on illegal immigration. Vide Romney’s household workers, Huckabee’s scholarships, and Giulian’s “sanctuary city.” And McCain, given the real but of necessity limited military success of the surge — which now requires political progress with Iraqi factions and engagement with Iran in order to ultimately succeed, just as the Iraq Study Group pointed out a year ago — looks rather prescient. McCain warned for years that the wrong course was being followed in Iraq. Too few boots on the ground, too little challenging of Iraq’s various factions to get off their asses if they wanted their country to succeed.
John McCain, whose Christmas ad — Why are they doing Christmas ads? Because this crazy campaign has the candidates campaigning over the holidays, that’s why. — goes Mike Huckabee’s notorious “floating cross” spot one better by overtly using an incident from his prisoner of war days to invoke the cross, is coming back for a third time in this campaign. And at just the right time. He’s backed by a raft of newspapers, right and left, and the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee-turned-independent senator, Joe Lieberman.
Previously knocked down and seemingly out by the loss of moderates and independents over his war stance, and conservatives over his immigration stance, McCain is taking advantage of the chaos that is the Republican presidential field to come on again in New Hampshire and other early states. He’s picked up the endorsement of both big papers in the former Massachusetts governor’s erstwhile home town — the conservative Boston Herald and liberal Boston Globe — as well as the Des Moines Register and most of the papers in New Hampshire, including the staunchly conservative Manchester Union Leader. All of which is an aggravation to Romney, who has counted on his neighbor status from his Massachusetts governor days to make him a favorite son. …
Charlie Wilson’s War is a rollicking true tale of the most successful
covert war in history — taking down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
With one or two side effects.
On the Democratic side, it’s Obama 30%, Clinton 28%, and John Edwards 14%.
On the Republican side, it’s Romney 28%, McCain 25%, and Rudy Giuliani 14%.
These amount to statistical dead heats.
Obama has taken his sliver of a lead by hollowing out Hillary’s support in the Manchester area of the state, especially among blue collar workers. She once led him there by nearly three to one. Now he has a tiny edge.
** CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR. Terrific movie. Perfect? No. Fun and mostly accurate? Yep.
Tom Hanks, not perfectly cast but making a more than game stab at it, plays the roguish Texas Democrat hawk (but social and economic liberal) congressman who helped bring down the Soviet Union by proving to be the necessary lynchpin to fund the covert war against it in Afghanistan. Charlie Wilson’s War, written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin (disclosure: I did some consulting for the show, after he left it) and directed by Mike Nichols, is based on a terrific best-selling book by the late 60 Minutes producer George Crile.
Some on the right, naturally, are attacking the movie because it doesn’t give all credit to St. Ronald Reagan, and because Wilson is a Democrat. Well, the truth is that covert operations in Afghanistan — invaded by the Soviets in the late ’70s — were authorized by Democratic President Jimmy Carter (upon the advice of his staunchly anti-Soviet National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, an Eastern European immigrant now advising one Barack Obama) — and that those covert operations were then adopted by Reagan and his CIA Director Bill Casey.
But the operations languished. Until Wilson, a former naval officer and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, became convinced that they needed to be ramped up. Dramatically. And no matter how you spin it, without the massive funding that Wilson arranged through his utterly key role as a keeper of the Congressional appropriations keys, there’s no successful covert war in Afghanistan.
The film is also attacked from the left, as by a witless film critic in the LA Times, on grounds that it was a bad idea to make Afghanistan Russia’s Vietnam and take down the Soviet Union. Because, um, they won’t say all of the “because,” because that sounds a bit too nostalgic for the good old Soviet days. But they will say that it was a bad idea because it built up Al Qaeda.
Reality check. Al Qaeda had next to nothing to do with the Afghan War. That’s a myth. Osama bin Laden barely made it into the country while any actual fighting was going on. It did give the Islamic jihadists of today the idea that if one superpower could be defeated, so could another. But if America had paid attention to Afghanistan after the Soviets were ousted — which it most assuredly did not, as all the books make clear — the Taliban would never have risen and Al Qaeda would never had found its safe haven there. As it was, Al Qaeda only ended up there because its preferred hidey holes wouldn’t have them.
Now for the movie. Hanks isn’t perfectly cast, but the All-American icon clearly has fun playing against type as the playboy congressman. Julia Roberts plays a camp version of herself as the very right-wing, very rich Texas socialite Joanne Herring who helps seduce Wilson into championing the mujahedeen and Pakistani dictator General Zia. (Who later died in a plane crash. Watch out for that, General Musharraf.) Philip Seymour Hoffman is perfect as the the unkempt, un-clubbable CIA officer Gust Avrakotos who spearheaded the covert op.
It’s a fun political movie, with a happy and yet ironic ending. Kind of like the world we live in. Well, except maybe for the fun part.
** FIELD POLL: CALIFORNIANS DOWN ON BUSH, IRAQ, DIRECTION OF AMERICA.The latest Field Poll continues to dribble out and contains no surprises. California voters are very down on President Bush, his Iraq policy, and the direction of America. Bush has just a 28% job approval rating in the Golden State. The Iraq War, on which voters are permanently soured no matter what short-term progress is achieved by the surge, is favored by only 24%. A whopping 67% see America on the wrong track, the highest level of displeasure since 1992, when George Bush I was in the White House.
** NOTE: NWN is on a reduced holiday publishing schedule. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some columns and updates and videos; just not nearly so many. The Forum will of course be open. The relative break is coming sooner rather than later because of the frankly insane presidential campaign schedule, which sees Iowa and New Hampshire within a week of New Year’s Day. For some perspective, when I did first-in-the-nation Iowa for Gary Hart, it was on February 20th.
Two days after Christmas, NWN throttles back up full bore through the February 5th presidential primaries in California and elsewhere.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
John McCain’s Christmas TV ad. Yes, it contains the new
conservative fashion accessory, a cross. But in the case of the U.S.
Navy Vietnam War hero, the use of the cross is anything but covert.
** THE RESURRECTION OF JOHN MCCAIN. Hey, it’s the season. Not to mention the fashion, at least on the Republican side. John McCain, whose Christmas ad above — Why are they doing Christmas ads? Because this crazy campaign has the candidates campaigning over the holidays, that’s why. — goes Mike Huckabee’s notorious “floating cross” spot one better by overtly using an incident from his prisoner of war days to invoke the cross, is coming back for a third time in this campaign. And at just the right time.
Previously knocked down and seemingly out by the loss of moderates and independents over his war stance, and conservatives over his immigration stance, McCain is taking advantage of the chaos that is the Republican presidential field to come on again in New Hampshire and other early states. As noted below, he is now a closing second place to Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. He’s picked up the endorsement of both big papers in the former Massachusetts governor’s erstwhile home town — the conservative Boston Herald and liberal Boston Globe — as well as the Des Moines Register and a raft of smaller papers in New Hampshire. He already had the big Manchester Union Leader up in New Hampshire, all of which is an aggravation to Romney, who has counted on his neighbor status from his Massachusetts governor days to make him a favorite son.
If Mike Huckabee carries on in Iowa, New Hampshire is looking good for McCain. Then it’s anybody’s guess. Actually, it’s the Monday Morning Quarterback column.
But there’s a dark cloud on the horizon. A leaked story on the Drudge Report, the famous conduit for mostly right-wing dirt. Or, as is often the case there, a leaked notion of a story. That the New York Times is going to drop a bomb on McCain with an investigative piece about him doing favors for telecom companies, and their female lobbyist, in his Senate Commerce Committee.
Actually, the Drudge Report said the story would run today in the Times. It’s not there. Whatever is going on, McCain thinks it’s serious enough he’s hired heavyweight DC lawyer Bob Bennett to deal with the situation.
Incidentally, I think that if politicians want to wear their crosses on their sleeves, as it were, it’s their right to do so. (Personally, I enjoy Huckabee’s floating cross ad and McCain’s ad.) I also think that it is fair game to take a hard look at the specifics of their religious beliefs.
** HUCKABEE SURGES TO MICHIGAN TIE WITH ROMNEY AS GIULIANI SLUMPS. The Michigan Republican presidential primary on January 15th will be big. Mitt Romney’s dad was governor of Michigan, so that helps him a lot. But now he’s in a statistical tie with Mike Huckabee, 21% to 19%. Rudy Giuliani, who previously had big hopes there, has dropped about half his support, back to third at 12%.
** ROMNEY’S MARTIN LUTHER KING GAFFE. It was a big moment in Mitt Romney’s “Faith In America” speech earlier this month, when the Republican presidential candidate hoped to get past concerns about his controversial Mormon faith. He dramatically stated that “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.” Romney repeated this on Meet The Press.
For a candidate with a serious flip-flopper problem, not to mention some other arguably amusing false statements — “I am a lifelong hunter” — it ain’t good.
The overall plan, which is somewhat Rube Goldberg-like in its complexity, hinting at future problems in an actual campaign, is favored by a whopping 64% to 23%. The funding mechanism, in addition to levies on businesses, of increasing the tobacco tax to $2 per pack of cigarettes, is favored by a whopping 63% to 33%.
A larger tobacco tax increase for health care was narrowly defeated last November. But that one was opposed by the popular Schwarzenegger.
The numbers: Barack Obama 32%, Hillary Clinton 32%, John Edwards 18%. Clinton led Obama earlier this fall in New Hampshire by some 20 points. The poll was released early Friday morning in the East Coast.
On the Republican side, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, has a narrowing 34% to 27% lead over John McCain. Rudy Giuliani is a fading third, at 11%.
** CALIFORNIA’S CLIMATE CHANGE PROGRAM. Widespread reports that the senior staff of the US Environmental Protection Agency urged EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to approve California’s landmark law cutting tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases in new vehicles. And that he was warned that the EPA would likely lose if he denied the customary waiver and California sued the federal government.
After the holidays, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown have made plain, that suit will be filed. And many other states will join them. 16 other states had either adopted legislation or nearly adopted legislation modeled on the California plan.
Meanwhile, the only functioning California program to cut greenhouse gases is Jerry Brown’s methodical pursuit of settlements with local governments and polluting businesses. What more can the state do for now, beyond what an imaginative and powerful attorney general who, as the former governor, knows how to move the system?
State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, an ally of Brown’s when the ex-governor was mayor of Oakland, has this thought: “I share the outrage expressed by the Governor, the state Attorney General, and others over this misguided action, and strongly support the state’s efforts to reverse it through the federal courts, both on our state’s behalf and for the other states which have followed its lead.
“However, in addition to pursuing legal remedies, there exists a clear statutory and administrative remedy in the hands of your board and the Administration to achieve these emission reductions. Unlike federal litigation, which could take months or years to resolve (and several years beyond that to achieve emission reductions), this remedy can be implemented in time to begin to achieve the reductions originally contemplated by the state Legislature under AB 1493
“Fortunately, the California Legislature anticipated the potential for delay of the AB 1493 vehicle regulations last year when it enacted AB 32 (Chapter 488 statutes of 2006). Specifically, Health and Safety Code Section 38590 directs the ARB to “backfill” or make up for any loss of emission reductions under AB 1493 through the adoption of alternative regulations.”
12/20 REPORTS
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, Vladimir Putin, answers
questions from Time editors.
As has been discussed on NWN for months — even before the live link below to the Russia Today news channel was added in early October — Russia under Putin has become central to any informed semblance of US presidential politics. If you don’t understand the Russian factor, you don’t understand what is going on in geopolitics, or in America’s efforts in the Middle East and around the world. If you don’t understand what’s going on in the Middle East, it’s difficult to understand some fundamental drivers of American domestic politics.
From Time’s citation: In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad’s politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer’s Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga—one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.
Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.’s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world—and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world’s largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
** DESPITE ATTACKS, HUCKABEE HOLDS SIGNIFICANT IOWA LEAD. With no one else in double digits, Mike Huckabee holds a 35% to 27% lead over Mitt Romney in the new ABC News/Washington Post poll of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses. Romney is stalled, with his Mormonism and negativity apparently cutting against him. Huckabee leads by 3 to 1 among evangelicals and has a hefty lead among conservatives.
Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani are all far back in single digits. The poll is out on December 20th.
** CLINTON ATTACKS OBAMA. Hillary Clinton, still trailing Barack Obama in Iowa, will have congressional surrogates attack Illinois’s junior U.S. senator for his having voted “present” on a number of issues during his past decade in the Illinois state senate.
Former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown and
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, seen in this NWN video last
month announcing California’s lawsuit against the Bush Administration
for stalling on the state’s greenhouse gas law, will again sue.
** CALIFORNIA TO SUE BUSH ADMINISTRATION FOR UNPRECEDENTED REFUSAL TO APPROVE ANTI-POLLUTION LAW. For some 40 years, the US government, mainly through its Environmental Protection Agency, has regularly issued waivers allowed California under the Clean Air Act to pursue more aggressive anti-pollution legislation than that of other less-polluted areas or of the federal government itself. 40 of these approvals have been issued, and despite industry wailing at the time of many of them, the economy has not crashed and in fact has flourished.
In fact, these customary EPA waivers under the Clean Air Act have led to significant techological innovation and major environmental gains. Until now.
After years of obvious foot dragging, and seeing its position of doing nothing about a climate change threat that President Bush nonetheless acknowledges is all too real rejected by court after court, including the conservative US Supreme Court, the Bush Administration yesterday denied California approval of its landmark 2002 law to curtail tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases in new vehicles.
Last month, as seen in the NWN video above, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown announced a state lawsuit to force the EPA to at last act. Soon they will announce another lawsuit, this to challenge the EPA decision.
In the meantime, the one functioning California program to cut greenhouse gas emissions is that of Jerry Brown. The former governor-turned-attorney general has been methodically pursuing a series of agreements with local governments and major polluters around the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are the numbers: Giuliani 25%, Huckabee 17%, Mitt Romney 15%, John McCain 12%, and Fred Thompson 6%.
Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both hold big leads over their Republican rivals in general election match-ups.
12/19 REPORTS
Mike Huckabee wishes you a very Merry CHRISTmas in this new ad.
** MIKE SAYS “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Republican presidential frontrunner (?!) Mike Huckabee has a new TV ad to cut through the political clutter as Iowa insanely prepares to vote on January 3rd. It’s a nice, soft Christmas spot. In which Reverend Huckabee has a glowing bookcase backdrop with the shelves forming a white cross. The shot, naturally, moves slowly from this backdrop to a Christmas tree. The former Arkansas governor naturally insists that the cross is simply a bookcase.
It’s quite clever.
** AN INTRIGUING JOHN EDWARDS VIDEO. I don’t know if the breaking National Enquirer tale of John Edwards having an affair with a now pregnant producer of a series of videos about him — which his campaign has never used — is true or not. He denies it. This video, in which she interviews him on his campaign jet, is nonetheless intriguing.
In the last Field Poll, Hillary led Obama by a whopping 25 points. Now it’s down to 14 points. The numbers: Clinton 36%, Obama 22%, John Edwards 13%. That gap can disappear very quickly, as I’ve been saying for months, depending on trends and momentum developed elsewhere. Obama is significantly more popular than Clinton with independents, and more acceptable to Republicans.
Ironically, before I took off for the holidays, I was at the last monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club for the year, on Monday, which featured Field Poll director Mark Di Camillo and Public Policy Institute of California chief Marc Baldassare. Di Camillo revealed that the Field Poll was then conducting a statewide poll, and presented his findings from previous polls. He laid out a scenario in which Clinton had a very powerful lead in California, due to her extraordinarily strong positions with female and Latino voters.
Of course, that is already sliding away. Sitting right in front of the Field Poll director, I was tempted to challenge his assessment of the California primary from his past polling. But it’s Christmastime.
Obama’s lead is bigger among those who say they are certain to participate on January 3rd. The race basically breaks down on vision vs. experience and younger voters vs. older voters, with Obama having the edge on the former points and Hillary having the edge on the latter points.
If Obama weathers the storm and deconstructs the experienced Hillary scenario, it’s his election.
The Democrats all favor their BlackBerrys and iPods. The Republicans are, let’s say, a bit vaguer than that. Rudy Giuliani likes his CD player, and John McCain his TV remote control.
** PRO-ABORTION ROMNEY. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been scored repeatedly for changing his positions on the valence issues of abortion, guns, and gays. In the course of it all, he’s denied making a contribution to Planned Parenthood, attributing it to his wife, who in his rendering of the story used their shared checking account. Here is a photo of Romney attending a Planned Parenthood fundraiser.
Romney was pro-choice on abortion when he ran in 1994 as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. He was also pro-choice when he ran for governor and was elected in 2002.
Putin’s Christmas tree is 100 feet taller than Arnold’s.
** PUTIN’S IS BIGGER THAN ARNOLD’S. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest movie star in Russia before turning to politics. His movies were pirated there — Russia rivals China as the world center of counterfeit goods and stolen intellectual property — before they were released in the US.
But the Governator’s Christmas tree is much smaller than that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin, incidentally, is Time Magazine’s new Person of the Year.
This will come as no surprise to NWN readers. Putin has agreed to his presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev’s suggestion that he become prime minister after his constitutionally-limited president term ends early next year. Putin presented Medvedev — his former chief of staff — as his, er, the consensus of various parties, pick for president in the March election. Medvedev then said he wanted to make Putin prime minister. After due, um, consideration, Putin has agreed to continue in government as the premier. Working under his former chief of staff, of course. Can you say … “Musical chairs?” Or hide the pea?
Certainly nothing like that could ever happen in California. With, say, a famous governor. Whose former chief of staff goes on to become governor. Who later backs the first governor to become governor again. Yet I digress.
Schwarzenegger lit the California Christmas Tree earlier in the month in a splashy ceremony outside the state Capitol which was webcast through a link here. It’s a big tree, 55 feet high. Yet Putin’s tree, outside the Kremlin, is a whopping 50 meters high. That’s a hundred feet higher than Schwarzenegger’s. I won’t say longer since it is, of course, vertical. Which is where we leave this particular discussion.
** WESTLY BACKS TERM CALIFORNIA LIMITS REVISION INITIATIVE, WHILE WILSON OPPOSES IT. Former state Controller Steve Westly, former eBay honcho who is now a leading venture capitalist, has come out for the term limits revision initiative, Proposition 93 on the February presidential primary ballot. He will be a campaign chair for the initiative, playing something of a countering role to Republican Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who made his Silicon Valley fortune as an inventor of technology to track cell phones and heads the campaign against the initiative.
Former Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican who backs the idea of relaxing term limits, has come out against the initiative, which would cut the total number of years allowed in the Legislature from 14 to 12, but allow all of them to be served in one house. Current law limits service to eight years in the state Senate and six years in the Assembly. Why does Wilson oppose the initiative? Because he says that it should have been accompanied by a redistricting reform initiative.
** NOTE: NWN is on a reduced holiday publishing schedule. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some columns and updates and videos; just not nearly so many. The Forum will of course be open. The relative break is coming sooner rather than later because of the frankly insane presidential campaign schedule, which sees Iowa and New Hampshire within a week of New Year’s Day. For some perspective, when I did first-in-the-nation Iowa for Gary Hart, it was on February 20th.
Two days after Christmas, NWN throttles back up full bore through the February 5th presidential primaries in California and elsewhere.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading between $91 and $92 per barrel. Turkey has withdrawn its battalion from northern Iraq after a successful raid on Kurdish separatist guerillas, but the US inventory situation is worrisome.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger struck his then customary
conciliatory pose with his party’s anti-government faction at last
January’s state Republican convention, in this NWN video.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t exactly solved his Republican problem. In many ways, of course, it’s not a problem for him. California’s Republicans, out of step with the state’s mainstream, and in some cases their own voters, are contracting rather than expanding, locked into a permanent and in many ways self-selected minority status.
The California Republican Party is in the grip of the state’s anti-government faction, even more than California’s Democrats are dominated by the state’s ultra-government faction. They cleverly refuse to allow independent voters, the state’s fastest growing political tendency and the future of California politics, to participate in their presidential primary, and have fallen so far as to have to cut back their own local organizing efforts due to the party’s incipient anemia.
Which is the sort of thinking that Schwarzenegger derides as a “losers’ mentality.”
Of course, had the former action superstar paid more attention to dealing with his party’s anti-government mentality, and to reining in the Democrats’ ultra-government faction, he might not be facing the latest outbreak of California’s chronic budget crisis.
When Schwarzenegger came into office four years ago following his landslide victory in the spectacular California recall election, he had a mandate to kick ass. But he had, let’s say, an incomplete plan. On the then enormous state budget problem, actually bigger than today’s, he had a soundbite and polling data indicating that most voters thought that as much as one-third of state spending was waste. Which, as it happens, is false.
He also had a commitment — thanks to the championing of the concept by state Senator Tom McClintock, the distant third place finisher in the gubernatorial replacement election and darling of California’s far right — to cut the state’s car tax. Which Schwarzenegger promptly did.
Today that cut amounts to about $6 billion a year. Absent that, the state government doesn’t have much of a fiscal problem.
What Schwarzenegger might have done in 2004, as I pointed out, was drag his party out of the 19th century and the Democrats into the 21st by adopting a temporary tax hike and a ruthless effort to root out governmental inefficiencies.
Instead, he placated the anti-government faction and the ultra-government faction. Though he insisted he would not, he let his own California Performance Review die — with nary a peep from Republicans, mind you, in fact killed by Republicans in his administration — and passed on the tax hike. Though he had the clout to do both.
Instead, he constitutionalized, through passage of a popular initiative, massive deficit borrowing on the bond markets already undertaken by the Legislature and former Governor Gray Davis.
Then, from a political standpoint, he alternated between indulging — to the extent of nearly ending his political career in 2005 with his ill-conceived and disastrously executed “Year of Reform” special election initiatives — and ignoring the right-wingers who make up most of the Republican apparat in California.
As recently as this past January, as seen in the NWN video above, Schwarzenegger was still placating the purveyors of a politics that can’t win and which he had already eschewed. Only earlier this fall, when he addressed the party convention outside Palm Springs, did he air his obvious differences with the anti-government faction.
Not that that has affected their behavior. With the state’s chronic financial woes deepening in the midst of an economic slowdown driven by a housing crisis and near record oil prices, the anti-government faction calls for big cuts in state spending.
What do they want to cut?
They won’t say.
Were this coming from one of those Young Americans for Freedom conventions, it would be irrelevant. Coming from a still major political party which does have relevance — thanks to California’s highly unusual two-thirds legislative vote requirement on fiscal matters — it is absurd.
Schwarzenegger could have short-circuited these highjinks in 2004 and 2005. In 2007, he’s been busy elsewhere, with climate change and, of course, the year-long effort to produce a universal health care program for California. Along with a decent start at reforming California’s long ridiculous prison system and a so far fruitless bid to jump-start the state’s stalled water policy.
Yesterday, Schwarzenegger at last got a version of universal health care through the state Assembly. Along with a number of business and labor leaders — including, most notably, national Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern — there was exactly one Republican politician, Fresno Mayor Alan Autry. Schwarzenegger doesn’t really need Republican pols to reform health care, though he is still far away from actually doing that with the current Rube Goldberg contraption. And perhaps he should have settled for “merely” providing health care to all children and stopping the insurance companies from denying care to people with pre-existing conditions.
But because of the state’s anachronistic requirements for super-majorities on key fiscal matters, he does need to bring more Republican pols into a governing consensus. That hasn’t happened. So unless the right-wing Republican pols are hiding their light under a bushel with regard to their refusal to spell out the massive program cuts they are insisting on — in other words, unless they have identified the governmental efficiencies that the California Performance Review they so meekly let die was not allowed to ferret out but for some odd reason have chosen to become Alfred Hitchcock’s successors as masters of suspense — California is going to be subjected for at least part of next year to a particularly absurd form of deadlock.
** NOTE: NWN is on a reduced holiday publishing schedule. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some columns and updates and videos; just not nearly so many. The Forum will of course be open. The relative break is coming sooner rather than later because of the frankly insane presidential campaign schedule, which sees Iowa and New Hampshire within a week of New Year’s Day. For some perspective, when I did first-in-the-nation Iowa for Gary Hart, it was on February 20th.
Two days after Christmas, NWN throttles back up full bore through the February 5th presidential primaries in California and elsewhere.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH.Crude oil is trading around $92 per barrel on reports of a Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq. Northern Iraq, which really is not governed out of Baghdad, is one of the world’s major oil sources and a safe haven for Kurdish separatist guerillas who carry out attacks inside Turkey.
Former President Bill Clinton criticizes Barack Obama as Hillary
Clinton falls back in early contests.
The week ahead in presidential politics sees the longtime frontrunners in both parties, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, in deep trouble, with most of the candidates converging on Iowa for the rest of the month. Along with Bill Clinton, now trying to boost his wife back into the lead there, the strain showing in his late Friday night appearance on Charlie Rose where he spent much of his time criticizing Barack Obama, his face flushed and his advisors in the control room reportedly trying to get the producers to end the interview.
The irony, of course, is that, were he not married to Hillary Clinton, the ex-president might well be advising Obama, whom he clearly admires even as he insists he’s not qualified.
The presidential races have taken quite the turn. On the Democratic side, in a direction that should be no surprise for New West Notes readers. On the Republican side, into more chaos. None of which is to say that presidential nomination contests in either party are anywhere near over.
Giuliani is, according to sources, scaling back his TV advertising in the New Hampshire primary. He isn’t joining the rush to Iowa. Poised to take advantage of these developments is John McCain, who this morning is endorsed by independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee.
McCain and Lieberman are friends, and together co-authored a major bill to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But Lieberman’s move is also about the problems of the two most hawkish candidates, Giuliani and Fred Thompson. The former Law & Order star has melted to nothing in New Hampshire and is sagging in the South. Thompson is trying to get back in the race with a big push in Iowa between now and January 3rd; back in the race meaning a third place finish there behind Huckabee and Mitt Romney.
The introductory video to Rudy Giuliani’s reboot speech.
“America wants strength.”
Giuliani has been bleeding support for the past month over his close association with his driver-turned-New York police chief-turned-Giuliani business partner Bernie Kerik — indicted on federal corruption charges — along with a raft of stories about the New York police ferrying his then girlfriend Judy Nathan about.
Over the weekend, and tellingly in Florida rather than New Hampshire, Giuliani attempted to turn the tide with a major address laying out his governing vision for America. Much of his emphasis was on his longstanding hole card of the terrorism/national security/Iranian threat. But the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program has neutralized a lot of that message. The speech was familiar material and didn’t seem to make much of an impression in the media. Giuliani is in big trouble in the early contests and Florida, his longtime firewall state, isn’t till the end of January. And now he’s in trouble there, too.
Which may leave for national security hawks, as Lieberman is pointing out, John McCain. The former frontrunner was right for years about how badly the war in Iraq was going. His solution was not to pull out, it was to change course. Now, since the US armed forces are very capable and most guerillas are smart enough, as the history of counter-insurgency shows, to get out of the way of large forces in their midst, the time-limited military surge in Iraq is having an effect. A space has been created for a political settlement in the country. McCain is a famous Vietnam War hero who runs well in general election match-ups and looks prescient among Republicans. And he might win in New Hampshire if Giuliani falters further there and not all the independents go for the action in the Democratic primary around Obama and Clinton.
After some turbulence last week, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has seemingly stabilized his lead in the next door New Hampshire Republican presidential primary in a new poll. He is, however, threatened everywhere else by Mike Huckabee. John McCain’s running well back in second, with Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee bunched right behind. Fred Thompson has melted away to 2%. Romney’s whole campaign has been predicated on winning Iowa and New Hampshire.
Now Iowa looks unlikely for Romney, making New Hampshire even more crucial for him. The good thing for Romney is that there aren’t many evangelicals in New Hampshire, so Huckabee’s surge in Iowa and the South isn’t cresting in the Granite State. The bad thing for Romney is that McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 and knows how to win it again. And he doesn’t have to waste his time between now and January 3rd in Iowa.
Romney’s big speech on religion didn’t help him much. Partly because he didn’t address concerns about his Mormon faith. Actually, he refuses to talk about it with any specificity. He could explain how he disagrees, if he does, with certain of its tenets that many Americans find to be weird. But his biggest problem as a candidate is that he’s a bit too perfect. Too smooth, too well-coifed and well-dressed. And that slickness plays into concerns about his recent changes of position on major valence issues like abortion, guns, and gays. He needs to be mussed up, develop a bit of a stammer. Too late for that sort of stage craft.
In contrast to Romney, Huckabee is greatly advantaged. He’s not, let’s say, overly glamorous. Which actually helps him fend off attacks and move beyond mistakes, of which he’s made quite a few.
Then there’s the Ron Paul factor. The libertarian anti-imperialist Republican congressman from Texas — whose views make those of Huckabee, now being denounced by much of the conventional right for his apostasies, look downright conventional — is still in single digits in every poll. But he is raising money hand over fist.
In fact, Paul’s reportedly raised an astounding $17.5 million in this quarter. Which puts him up in the Obama and Clinton class financially, far ahead of Giuliani, Thompson, and the rest of the Republicans scraping along without Mitt Romney’s very big checkbook.
This new Hillary Clinton spot features the senator with her mother
and her daughter. The campaign is trying to warm her up.
You may be noticing a raft of articles now about the problems with Hillary Clinton’s “inevitable” candidacy and the rise of Barack Obama. In fact, well, I did tell you so. Which does not make Obama inevitable. Ideally, you want to ambush the “inevitable” frontrunner a bit later than this.
Wild card element: The Christmas and New Year’s season. Who really wants to hear a negative campaign counterattack over Christmastime? I’m referring to normal people, of course.
Which brings us to the sad case of Hillary’s now former national co-chairman, Billy Shaheen, husband of former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, who attacked Obama for his teenage drug use, which Obama already chronicled in his autobiography. Shaheen resigned the next day, and Hillary apologized to Obama for the incident as they were about to board a plane taking them to the Des Moines debate. But the Clinton campaign keeps mentioning the word “cocaine.” Which is perhaps not the best strategy for the campaign of the wife of America’s famous playboy president.
Speaking of last week’s Iowa debates, they did nothing to hurt either Huckabee or Obama. The editor of the Des Moines Register, always a fairly dull newspaper, did her level best to make these debates — which should have been barn burners — absolutely soporific. Very bad for those of us watching in the middle of the day. The Register, incidentally, endorsed Hillary Clinton. The last time the paper backed the Democratic winner in Iowa was Walter Mondale, back in 1984. Probably not an association the Clintons are anxious to have out there. The Register also endorsed John McCain, but he’s not playing in Iowa and I doubt most Republicans care.
Obama, who leads in most of the recent Iowa polls, turned in an assured, polished debate performance. He also had the line of the debate. Asked by editor Carolyn Washburn how he can bring change in foreign policy when some of his top advisors in the field are former Clinton Administration officials — which prompted a loud and sustained laugh from Hillary Clinton, who said: “I want to hear the answer to that!” — Obama allowed as how he has advisors with a number of backgrounds. And then the zinger: “I’ll be happy to have you advising me, too, Hillary.” Which got the big laugh from the audience.
Hillary’s campaign is in trouble. Her subtext of inevitability, never real, is belatedly being jettisoned by even the most credulous reporters. Her theme of having the experience to make change work is under serious question. Her attacks on rival Obama aren’t very effective.
She tried for a long time to discredit Obama as a naif for wanting to talk with Iran. But the US National Intelligence Estimate, discounting years of saber rattling rhetoric in its assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, makes Obama look prescient to Democrats and Hillary behind the curve. A series of scatter shot attacks on other fronts haven’t worked.
Then she decided to roll out a new advertising theme. Chart a new beginning with a theme of “New Beginnings.” In this ad, full of sunny vistas filled with appropriate Americans, all of it scored with cinematically uplifting music, Clinton calls for new beginnings on health care, education, and Iraq, running past themes and slogans through a media blender. It’s hard to see this doing much for her, although it may make her supporters feel better about the campaign.
Bill Clinton, according to several sources upset and frustrated about the situation — since he can’t step on stage and right it by himself, being term limited — went to Iowa last week to campaign but was sidelined by the ice storm. Making him even more frustrated. The former president is back in Iowa again this week for most of it.
John Edwards is trying to sprint from third to first in
Iowa. Backers say he’s found his “Voice,” in this new spot.
John Edwards is still a big factor in Iowa, though not so much anywhere else. Hillary’s hope is that he can either find a way to win Iowa, or at least split the anti-Hillary Democratic vote to enable her to squeak through. Her fear has to be that Obama and Edwards knock her into third place. Which might just destroy her candidacy then and there. …
** NOTE: NWN is on a reduced holiday publishing schedule. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some columns and updates and videos; just not nearly so many. The Forum will of course be open. The relative break is coming sooner rather than later because of the frankly insane presidential campaign schedule, which sees Iowa and New Hampshire within a week of New Year’s Day. For some perspective, when I did first-in-the-nation Iowa for Gary Hart, it was on February 20th.
Two days after Christmas, NWN throttles back up full bore through the February 5th presidential primaries in California and elsewhere.
** 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, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
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