President George W. Bush stirred up a lot of controversy yesterday with what he says is his final press conference as president, alternately acknowledging mistakes and showing defiance. He delivers a farewell address Thursday night.
** OBAMA ENCOUNTERS SOME TURBULENCE. While Hillary Clinton encountered and mostly surpassed expected questions about her husband’s foreign fundraising for his foundations (it remains to be seen how hamstrung his foundation activities will be by her ascending to secretary of state), President-elect Barack Obama had turbulence on other fronts today.
First, he told his former Democratic colleagues in the US Senate that he will veto any attempt to stop him from using the second $350 billion tranche of the already approved Wall Street bailout. But he will make the program more transparent than it’s been and send a big chunk of money to direct relief for homeowners.
Elsewhere during the day, Obama’s pick for treasury secretary, New York Federal Reserve chief Tim Geithner, found that a tax problem or four of his were now in the Senate’s domain. Team Obama maintains that this is routine, even for a financial expert.
And Obama’s pick for federal budget director, Peter Orszag, was blasted by Democratic Senator and former astronaut Bill Nelson of Florida for offering “mumbo-jumbo” instead of hard facts for his fiscal plans.
** STATE OF THE STATE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will focus almost entirely on California’s chronic budget crisis in his state of the state address on Thursday. No bright colors in his palette for this speech, more a matter of blacks and grays.
Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders have spent most of the day in Big 5 meetings on the budget crisis. No resolution yet.
** ANOTHER DAY: 24 AND THE AGE OF OBAMA. One of the signature TV series of the Bush/Cheney years is back. What relevance, if any, does it have in the new age of Obama? … While there has always been a less remarked upon yet powerful lefty side to the show, let’s talk first about fictional agent Jack Bauer’s propensity to torture, a relentlessly hardball approach that has made him an icon to many on the right, and the show’s inevitable amping up of the terrorist threat.
The Bush/Cheney Administration essentially adopted the thriller approach to politics. What underlies that? The knowledge that most anything seems plausible if you keep things moving too fast for the audience to think about it.
The Bush/Cheney Administration essentially adopted the thriller approach to politics. What underlies that? The knowledge that most anything seems plausible if you keep things moving too fast for the audience to think about it.
We saw it again in the just-concluded season premiere of 24, when Bauer (played by the terrific Kiefer Sutherland), told a balky agent: ”You’re running out of time — you don’t have a better option.”
If that’s how you define the logic of the situation, then extreme measures always seem more plausible.
24 took the thriller genre and amped up the adrenaline even further with the show’s format, in which everything takes place in a 24-hour period, ostensibly in real time, with hour-by-hour episodes replete with not only the requisite fast cuts and handheld cameras of the modern thriller genre adding to the urgency but also regular split screens and a ticking clock motif. … From my new column.
** GALLUP POLL: HILLARY’S SOARING POPULARITY. The new Gallup Poll has Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton at a 10-year high in popularity. That should hold through her confirmation hearings, as what I saw this morning, including her tour d’horizon, looked very impressive.
A new Gallup Poll finds 65% of Americans saying they have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, the highest rating for her in almost 10 years. Clinton had not had a favorable rating above 60% since 1999, after having been consistently above that level during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to the impeachment but ultimate acquittal of husband Bill Clinton. That included Hillary Clinton’s all-time high 67% favorable rating immediately after the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president in December 1998.
Since late 1999, Hillary Clinton’s favorable ratings have been around 50%, ranging from a low of 44% in March 2001 to a high of 58% in February 2007.
The last measure in 2008, taken just before the Democratic National Convention last August and following months of a hotly contested Democratic nomination campaign with Barack Obama, was 54%. Since that time, her image has improved among most key demographic and political subgroups, but much more among women than men.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ANOTHER DAY: 24 IN THE AGE OF OBAMA.
** OBAMA WILL REVERSE BUSH EXECUTIVE ORDERS. Not surprisingly, President-elect Barack Obama will swiftly reverse many of President Bush’s executive orders on torture and interrogation of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and increased secrecy in government.
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration’s most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush’s practice of using “signing statements” to amend legislation.
“Every day we get indications that they’re serious about reversing the abuses of the Constitution,” Feingold, a harsh Bush critic, told Politico. Feingold said Obama’s staff told him to expect executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies on the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and on keeping the records of past presidents secret. He declined to be more specific.
** OBAMA TODAY. President-elect Barack Obama continues work on his transition in Washington. He joins Democratic senators for their weekly lunch meeting and monitors confirmation hearings for members of his Cabinet, several of which are taking place today.
The principal one, of course, is for Hillary Clinton. She’s up on Capitol Hill promoting an approach called “smart power,” a blend of diplomacy and military options. As opposed, presumably, to dumb power, which we may have been watching for the past several years.
Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton talks Middle East strategy in her Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing.
Clinton has some questions to answer about an AP story which, not surprisingly, finds that Senator Clinton supported projects pushed by some of the contributors to President Clinton’s foundation.
Obama wants the second $350 billion tranche of the Wall Street bailout to be released, but Congress is balky. Probably because the first $350 billion was spent in ways largely unaccounted for. Obama says he, too, wants restrictions, and that much of the money should go to homeowners in need of relief.
Meanwhile, the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza continues. Troops have moved closer to the central area of Gaza City. Hamas rocket attacks into Israel are continuing, though causing few casualties. The Israelis say their goal is to stop the rocket attacks and smuggling of military supplies into Gaza.
And the Russia/Ukraine natural gas crisis, affecting all of Europe, continues, with both sides accusing the other of tactics preventing full natural gas flows. Russia’s deep aim, of course, is to turn the former Soviet republic, much flirted with by the US and NATO, back to an alliance with Moscow.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has private meetings and discussions in and around the Capitol today around his state of the state address on January 15th and California’s chronic budget crisis. He has no scheduled public events.
Will his state of the state address focus only on California’s chronic budget crisis, or will it address a broader agenda for the state?
** CIA: THE PANETTA PICK AND THE FEINSTEIN FACTOR. President-elect Barack Obama named his top intelligence leadership team on Friday. And, as I expected, new Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein rather quickly backed down from her opposition to Leon Panetta and championing of a CIA insider for the post, of only a few days ago. The whole exercise was very instructive in old and new political dynamics. … From my new column.
** CIA: PARSING THE PANETTA PICK. … From my January 6th column.
** OBAMA: VACATION’S END. … From my January 2nd 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 $38 to $39 per barrel range.
The drop of $109 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 previous 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.
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| Comments (67) |
Yes.
The German trailer for the first season of 24 is very cool.
Your HuffPo column on 24 isn’t bad, either.
Bill, I don’t like that crappy famous show “24,”but it’s very cool you have the Huffington Post front page story on it.
This is it, exactly.
I mean to say with regards to your Huffington Post essay.
I love 24.
What nw video today?
Incidentally, NWN passed 77,000 comments sometime in the past week.
Nw video?
Hillary, bin Laden, and Gaza.
># Jonas Blane Says:
January 14th, 2009 at 7:50 am edit
What nw video today?
Thanks.
># Jonathan Hemlock Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 9:43 pm edit
I mean to say with regards to your Huffington Post essay.
I was pleased.
># marcus waldron Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 9:28 pm edit
Bill, I don’t like that crappy famous show “24,”but it’s very cool you have the Huffington Post front page story on it.
Well, you know that German is the language of love …
># Jack Aubrey Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 8:37 pm edit
The German trailer for the first season of 24 is very cool.
I get it.
It”s useful.
># Ann Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 8:05 pm edit
Does anybody else bother to “subscribe” to the SAC BEE Capitol “Alert?”
lol
Ah, the Solon surfaces.
># Sacramento Solon Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 8:25 pm edit
Yes.
Very true.
># Dana Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 6:43 pm edit
Before I dash off to have a savory dinner of savory smoked sausages a friend gave me I’ll just note leadership is a tricky thing. A bunch of folks online lost it when Metro here in L.A. gave some initial estimates how long the Wilshire subway project may take to complete given uncertain funding at this time. Obviously we are going to work to alter the situation but these things take time and wigging out is unproductive. I know being one of the seasoned hands on this stuff I need to put together something to encourage everyone to chill out and explain the big picture, but it takes a while to work out that sort of uber commentary. People often react to the day to day and it is important to be mindful of the medium and long term also. Dealing with these complicated aspects is how it is when you are out front. No glory but it needs doing.
I hope she doesn”t become Jack’s Mini-Me …
># Dana Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 6:33 pm edit
Good column on “24″. Yeah, I was also unhappy with with how quickly Agent Walker agreed to the use of torture after the set up that the FBI folks found it distasteful. Manny Coto, the Executive producer, has solid writing chops and hopefully he’ll eventually have the character re-evaluate her abrupt change of attitude and question was it the right call.
“The knowledge that most anything seems plausible if you keep things moving too fast for the audience to think about it.” HA! When I took my Mom to the first Mission Impossible movie during a visit she complained everything was happening too fast. Essentially I told her that was to keep you from noticing the gaps in the storyline. Glad to see Bill you have the same analysis in a similar situation.
I think the setting up of moral amiguity and greater good paradoxes could make for a strong season. And that is certainly relevant to our realpolitik world.