President-elect Barack Obama yesterday introduced the people who will be running his Office of Management and Budget and discussed the record budget deficit he is inheriting from President Bush along with the epic financial crisis.
** TERRORIST SIEGE IN KEY INDIAN CITY. It’s the middle of the night in Mumbai, India, and teams of terrorists armed with assault rifles and grenades are roaming around the city shooting tourists and locals and taking hostages. Americans and Britons seem to be top targets. Mumbai is a popular tourist destination and India’s commercial capital. Mumbai was formerly known as Bombay.
Over 80 people have been killed, more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks at luxury hotels, a restaurant that is an historic landmark, and a big train station. Hostage situations are underway at two luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi.
No one has taken credit for the attacks, which are ongoing. Previous terrorist attacks in Mumbai have been carried out by Islamic jihadists. This would be a dramatic change in tactics, as the earlier attacks were undertaken with IEDs, improvised explosive devices, not with teams of gunmen. India, which has economic problems like the rest of the world, is looking to tourism as a bulwark.
** OBAMA, ARNOLD, AND THE RENEWED CLIMATE CHANGE FIGHT. From my new Huffington Post column.
** OBAMA TODAY. President-elect Barack Obama holds a press conference for the third morning in a row to discuss the nation’s deep financial crisis. Obama is appointing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head the new President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist who became famous during the campaign after he supposedly told a Canadian consular official not to worry about Obama’s rhetoric on NAFTA, will be the board’s executive director, as well as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors.
This new body is being called the economic emergency board. It’s designed to find crosscut solutions to the multidimensional financial and economic crisis that grips not only Amercia, but the world. Volcker, 81, famed for wringing inflation out of the US economy in the 1980s, has been quietly advising Obama most of this year. The former American central bank chief has unique experience and remarkable connections around the world.
Obama’s Chicago press conference announcing this is at 7:45 AM Pacific. It will be roadblocked on all cable news nets.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no planned public events today.
To no one’s surprise, the lame-duck Legislature failed to pass a new budget adjustment bill once it finally got around to trying a vote late yesterday. Democrats proposed a mix of tax increases and budget cuts.
Schwarzenegger will declare a fiscal emergency on Monday and begin trying to work with the new Legislature.
With legislators traveling around the world during the special post-election budget session — and with Schwarzenegger seemingly unable to win over conservative Republicans and Democrats clearly unwilling or unable to play legislative hardball — it was hard to take seriously the prospect that anything might happen. And so it did not.
I’ll write another time about the political mess which is holding back progress on California’s chronic budget crisis, now deepening in the midst of an epic national and global financial crisis.
California’s new Legislature will have three more Democrats — in a Northern California district, Alyson Huber has pulled ahead in the near-final count — in the Assembly, but no more in the Senate. This will give the Dems a 51-29 advantage in the Assembly and a 25-15 advantage in the Senate. Three more votes are needed in the former and two more in the latter to get to the two-thirds vote requirement for budget passage. California is one of only three states with that requirement.
A Russian naval squadron has arrived in the Caribbean for maneuvers as President Dmitri Medvedev arrives for a Wednesday summit in Caracas with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
** SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: MASTERSTROKE, MOUSETRAP, OR BOTH? Potential Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Masterstroke or mousetrap? Or both? And for whom?
The political world has been all aflutter for the better part of a week at the prospect — initially portrayed as a done deal — that Hillary Clinton will be Barack Obama’s secretary of state. On the Republican side of the aisle, Henry Kissinger calls her “highly qualified” and Arnold Schwarzenegger dubs it “a great move.” The Clintons’ opponents in the Democratic Party have been restrained in their response. The media loves it, running with endless references to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s very fine book on the Lincoln Cabinet, an Obama favorite, “Team of Rivals.” … From my Wednesday column.
** MIAMI BLUES: PALIN AND NATIONAL REPUBLICANS LOOK LIKE THE SAD CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY. … From my November 14th column.
** GLOBAL OBAMA: BIG OPPORTUNITIES, BIGGER CHALLENGES. If he wins, Obama will have the global popularity that no American president has had in a great many years. But what sort of challenges will counter the global opportunity that an Obama presidency might afford America? … From my October 24th Huffington Post column.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns on the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $51 to $52 per barrel range.
OPEC forecasts a 0.6% decline in global oil consumption in 2009. But sees a 2.5% growth in oil consumption in developing nations.
The drop of $96 per barrel since the record high over the summer comes on acknowledgment that the weak US economy will cut future demand and on the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. It is clear that that, contrary to much chatter, neither the US nor Israel is about to launch a strike against Iran. And the Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
Read 
| Comments (56) |
Bill,
As always…good stuff. Look forward to your piece on the California legislature.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!
Obama’s not as good at press conferences as he is at speeches but he’s good.
Russia’s all over Latin America. What DIDN’T Bush and Cheney screw up?
Barack’s press conference was very good yesterday. He’s projecting calm and stability and balance. All those things Bush and Cheney were known for.
Russia and Venezuela, more good news.
Obama is bringing in the pros from Dover.
I don’t know if he’s a MASH fan.
May we live in interesting time …
># Capitol Boy Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 7:49 am edit
Russia and Venezuela, more good news.
Indeed.
># Capitol Boy Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 7:38 am edit
Barack’s press conference was very good yesterday. He’s projecting calm and stability and balance. All those things Bush and Cheney were known for.
Give me a week and I’ll think of something.
Who said that originally, and in what context?
># Jonas Blane Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 7:07 am edit
Russia’s all over Latin America. What DIDN’T Bush and Cheney screw up?
He’s definitely getting better.
># Jonas Blane Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 6:56 am edit
Obama’s not as good at press conferences as he is at speeches but he’s good.
Thanks. You, too!
I might even feel well enough to enjoy Thanksgiving.
># Sacramento Solon Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 6:49 am edit
Bill,
As always…good stuff. Look forward to your piece on the California legislature.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!
“Give me a week and I’ll think of something.”
Ike’s response when asked what meaningful suggestions Nixon had made during Ike’s term.
Have a great Black Friday, too, everyone. Buy stuff or we’re all screwed.
You got it. An underappreciated president and a great commander.
Right about Nixon on both counts.
But after Bush, EVERYBODY gets reassessed, and moved up a notch.
“Have a great Black Friday, too, everyone. Buy stuff or we’re all screwed.”
I’m maxing-out my credit cards, then returning everything a week later — just to screw with the economists.
I know it’s like blaming the weatherman for rain, but those guys (and almost all of them are men) are really pissing me off these days.
Be a patriot. Buy, buy, buy. I think I will buy a cappucino and watch the “crowds.”
See Democracy Now 11-9-06 for a reality check on the real Bob Gates. While I am not surprised that Obama chose to keep the old-guard warmonger who played a role in Iran-Contra scandal and who wrote the book on falsifying ‘intelligence’ and lying, I’m shocked that the popular consensus seems to be that Gates is somehow a good Sec of Defense or has done anything worthwhile. He was part of a criminal enterprise (but then again, that’s SOP for the CIA). Gates was praised as someone who helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, which of course involved arming, funding and training the terrorist mujahadeen who became al-Quead and the Taliban, selling opium to raise funds. Gates is partly responsible for the blowback that resulted in the terrorist attacks on the Us on 9-11-01. So much for ‘change we need’
“Be a patriot. Buy, buy, buy.”
I’m going to pay my bills, do with less and get more Democrats elected.
Plus, I refuse to give Bush any credit for my spending. I have two big ticket items that I won’t be buying until at least mid-January.
I am sure that Ralph Nader would be a bad Secretary of Defense. Gates is winding down Iraq and kept the crazies from going after Iran.
Paul B, there’s much truth to what you say about Gates. That’s why it will be good to have him as the face of President Obama’s policy of withdrawal from Iraq, since it will be impossible for the real neocons who support permanent occupation to pin it entirely on the Dems. Gates has evolved somewhat since the ’80s and is now a proponent of “soft power.” Having a Reep-approved Sec’y of Defense means that Obama can bring about what amounts to a bipartisan repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies.
But I don’t take it all for granted, and we should all watch closely.
Don’t change, Paul Burton.
lol
What in hell is going on in India?
After the fall of France in 1940, FDR appointed new Secretaries of War and Navy. They were, respectively, Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, and the GOP VP running mate of Alfred M. Landon. These appointments certainly worked to limit any partisan criticism after Pearl Harbor.
Prospero, great job on the quote, but I’m betting Bill was speaking of Eisenhower in both instances below.
>Prospero Says:
Right about Nixon on both counts.
>>Bill Bradley Says:
You got it. An underappreciated president and a great commander.
And of course, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, was James Buchanan’s Attorney General.
Let’s hope Obama is to Bush what Lincoln was to Buchanan.
Speaking of ol’ Abe, did y’all know that we have him to thank for the day off Thursday?
Too funny not to share–Scrooge McDuck applies to TARP:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/853tzmct.asp
Shows some conservatives still have principles, and see how TARP makes a mockery of their movement…
“TERRORIST SIEGE IN KEY INDIAN CITY”
I got an email (I get a lot of emails) from a Conservative Christian group about Hindis attacking Christians (especially missionaries) after a group of Hindis were reportedly killed (for which Christians were blamed).
It all appears to have gone down in the Orissa part of India at least a week ago. That’s s on the opposite side of the country, so I don’t know if the incidents are linked.
It looks like Islamists. It’s targeted to disrupt India’s commercial capital.
That’s cute.
># Dana Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm edit
Too funny not to share–Scrooge McDuck applies to TARP:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/853tzmct.asp
Shows some conservatives still have principles, and see how TARP makes a mockery of their movement…
That’s a good catch, Chris.
># Chris M Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 2:13 pm edit
Let’s hope Obama is to Bush what Lincoln was to Buchanan.
Speaking of ol’ Abe, did y’all know that we have him to thank for the day off Thursday?
But of course …
># Sullihan Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm edit
And of course, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, was James Buchanan’s Attorney General.
That’s true.
># Chris M Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 1:13 pm edit
Prospero, great job on the quote, but I’m betting Bill was speaking of Eisenhower in both instances below.
>Prospero Says:
Right about Nixon on both counts.
>>Bill Bradley Says:
You got it. An underappreciated president and a great commander.
Bill Cohen was Clinton’s defense secretary.
># Sullihan Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 1:11 pm edit
After the fall of France in 1940, FDR appointed new Secretaries of War and Navy. They were, respectively, Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, and the GOP VP running mate of Alfred M. Landon. These appointments certainly worked to limit any partisan criticism after Pearl Harbor.
# Chris M
Actually, I can tell you that the neocons HATE Bob Gates.
They hated him when he ran CIA. They hated him when he was on the Iraq Study Group. They hate him at the Pentagon.
Incidentally, he’s not a Republican.
># Chris M Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 12:20 pm edit
Paul B, there’s much truth to what you say about Gates. That’s why it will be good to have him as the face of President Obama’s policy of withdrawal from Iraq, since it will be impossible for the real neocons who support permanent occupation to pin it entirely on the Dems. Gates has evolved somewhat since the ’80s and is now a proponent of “soft power.” Having a Reep-approved Sec’y of Defense means that Obama can bring about what amounts to a bipartisan repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies.
But I don’t take it all for granted, and we should all watch closely.
It’s hard to think of someone — okay, George W. Bush — who has gone down more since the turn of the century than Ralph Nader.
># marcus waldron Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 12:17 pm edit
I am sure that Ralph Nader would be a bad Secretary of Defense. Gates is winding down Iraq and kept the crazies from going after Iran.
“America means shopping.”
># Brasky Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 11:47 am edit
“Be a patriot. Buy, buy, buy.”
I’m going to pay my bills, do with less and get more Democrats elected.
Plus, I refuse to give Bush any credit for my spending. I have two big ticket items that I won’t be buying until at least mid-January.
Bill Bradley Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
It’s hard to think of someone — okay, George W. Bush — who has gone down more since the turn of the century than Ralph Nader.
——————–
Is that what Mrs. Bush is always smiling????
How about see me for a reality check?
That’s quite simplistic, Paul.
Absent presenting Moscow with its very own Vietnam, in the form of Afghanistan, we still have the Soviet Union.
A much more troublesome presence than Al Qaeda.
It’s a myth that Al Qaeda was born of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. It is a myth that bin Laden himself promotes.
Bin Laden only set foot in Afghanistan once, towards the very end of the war. The Afghan Arabs did very little in the war.
Al Qaeda took many years to come together after Afghanistan.
The problem with Afghanistan is that the US forgot about it after taking the Soviets down there. By that time, Reagan was long out of office, Bush I was heading out of office, and, ah, somebody else was coming into the White House.
># Paul Burton Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 11:41 am edit
See Democracy Now 11-9-06 for a reality check on the real Bob Gates. While I am not surprised that Obama chose to keep the old-guard warmonger who played a role in Iran-Contra scandal and who wrote the book on falsifying ‘intelligence’ and lying, I’m shocked that the popular consensus seems to be that Gates is somehow a good Sec of Defense or has done anything worthwhile. He was part of a criminal enterprise (but then again, that’s SOP for the CIA). Gates was praised as someone who helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, which of course involved arming, funding and training the terrorist mujahadeen who became al-Quead and the Taliban, selling opium to raise funds. Gates is partly responsible for the blowback that resulted in the terrorist attacks on the Us on 9-11-01. So much for ‘change we need’
“America means shopping.”
I love how conservatives ask the middle-class to spend the country back into fiscal health, but they oppose middle class tax cuts…
“It’s hard to think of someone — okay, George W. Bush — who has gone down more since the turn of the century than Ralph Nader.”
Yup. That guy jumped the tracks a long time ago.
“The problem with Afghanistan is that the US forgot about it”
Groundhog’s Day…
CNN reports unconfirmed news of a car bombing outside the US Embassy in Kabul. And 101 killed in Mumbai. It sure seems that somebody wants to wreck Thanksgiving. BTW: Cohen never served in a GOP cabinet. But at least one cabinet member of the opposing party has a long tradition.
What new video today?
“Barack Obama holds a press conference for the third morning in a row…”
I heard KNX newsradio (L.A.) head political reporter Dick Helton quip when noting Obama’s recent multiple press events that while Obama has been saying the country only has one President at a time, maybe Obama has suddenly realized it is him. Note the bailout folks are careful to mention how much they consult with the transition team. The Obama Presidency is basically already underway!
I wonder whether in the aftermath of this dangerously long lame duck period we will be debating a Constitutional amendment to further shorten the interregnum period. There seems to be no compelling reason to leave ourselves so vulnerable to indecision and delay for such an extended period every four or eight years.
It does seem long.
But on the other hand, it is very difficult to put together a functioning national government.
># Jonas Blane Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am edit
A good Obama speech. Very uplifting.
However, Obama doesn’t actually have state power.
># Dana Gabbard Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 9:17 am edit
“Barack Obama holds a press conference for the third morning in a row…”
I heard KNX newsradio (L.A.) head political reporter Dick Helton quip when noting Obama’s recent multiple press events that while Obama has been saying the country only has one President at a time, maybe Obama has suddenly realized it is him. Note the bailout folks are careful to mention how much they consult with the transition team. The Obama Presidency is basically already underway!
Obama Thanksgiving, Bombay unthanksgiving.
># Jonas Blane Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 8:46 am edit
What new video today?