Apollo 11, the first manned mission to land on the Moon, launched 40 years ago today from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins aboard. The moon landing took place on July 20, 1969.
** QUICK HITS. The American Medical Association today endorsed the universal health care bill championed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, LA Congressman Henry Waxman, and Bay Area Congressman George Miller now moving through the House of Representatives. … US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor went through another day of Senate confirmation hearings unscathed. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote on her confirmation is set for next Tuesday. … Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada says he plans to put universal health care legislation on the Senate floor by the end of the month. … President Barack Obama raised about $1 million for embattled New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine in New York funders. … No progress today on California’s chronic-turned-chaotic budget crisis. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not convene the Big 5 meeting with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. Schwarzenegger is balking at new legislation pushed by Democrats to guarantee billions more in future education spending to make up for contemporary cuts/deferrals. Democratic state Treasurer Bill Lockyer agrees with Schwarzenegger that the budget should be passed without that additional legislation.
** NO REPUBLICAN FILIBUSTER AGAINST SOTOMAYOR (NO KIDDING!). Republican senators say they won’t filibuster Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination on the floor of the US Senate.
While that’s a sign that there may be some Republican votes for Sotomayor, the filibuster issue is largely moot, as Democrats now have 60 votes in the 100-member Senate, enough to block any filibuster attempt.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Sotomayor’s confirmation next Tuesday, with the full Senate expected to do so before the August recess.
** ANOTHER CALIFORNIA BUDGET PROBLEM. As California’s chronic-turned-chaotic budget crisis plods on, there is another looming fiscal crisis. That is California’s unfunded public pension obligations. The Legislature and then Governor Gray Davis enacted bigger pension benefits in 1999, on the promise that the program would be funded by earnings in the stock market. But now the pension funds are coming back to the state government, asking for more money. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s economic advisor David Crane lays out the issue in this Huffington Post piece called “California: The Trouble With Kicking the Can Down the Road.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, any changes to the pension system now appear to be off the table in the current negotiations.
** ROMNEY LEADS REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE, WITH PALIN AND HUCKABEE CLOSE BEHIND. The new Gallup Poll shows former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the early leader in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Soon-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee are fairly close behind, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a solid fourth position. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (who polling shows would lose his own state to President Barack Obama in a landslide) and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour are much further back.
Here are the numbers: Romney 26%, Palin 21%, Huckabee 19%, Gingrich 14%, Pawlenty 3%, and Barbour 2%.
While Palin trails Romney in the current candidate preference test, she leads both him and Huckabee in terms of their respective favorable ratings among Republicans. Currently, 72% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have a favorable opinion of Palin, compared with 56% for Romney and 59% for Huckabee. But her lead on this measure largely reflects the fact that she is better known than the two former governors, given the substantially lower “no opinion” figures for her. Republicans rate each candidate more positively than negatively by better than 3-to-1 ratios.
However, Huckabee’s numbers among all Americans look better by comparison. Although each GOP contender receives a similar favorable rating from the American public — 43% for Palin, 37% for Romney, and 42% for Huckabee — Huckabee’s negatives are lower. As a result, his +19 net favorable score is much better than Romney’s +8 and Palin’s -2. …
Though it is little over a year since the 2008 GOP primaries, Americans’ opinions of Romney and Huckabee have changed significantly. Notably, each seems to have lost a significant share of the public familiarity he built up during the campaign. There has been a double-digit increase in the percentage of Americans who do not express either a positive or a negative opinion of both Romney and Huckabee.
However, the loss in familiarity may not be a bad thing, as the increase in “no opinion” has accompanied a corresponding drop in unfavorable ratings for each, with little change in their favorable ratings. Whereas Romney was viewed significantly more negatively than positively in February 2008, about the time he suspended his campaign, now on balance Americans view him more positively due to a 17-point drop in his unfavorable ratings.
Most Americans aren’t paying any attention to these candidates other than Palin. I think those negatives go back up when the spotlight shifts back to their personas and policies.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave what her aides billed as a major policy address on Wednesday, but said nothing that her boss, President Obama, hasn’t already said.
** HILLARY’S BACK! (OR NOT). Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ballyhooed address Wednesday to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington fell decidedly flat. For a few fairly obvious reasons.
First, President Barack Obama, like a number of other presidents before him, starting with Thomas Jefferson, is his own secretary of state. Second, Obama has already laid out America’s new geopolitics, in a series of major addresses in Prague, Cairo, Moscow, and Accra, Ghana, as well as in announcements here in the US on new policies with regard to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. Thus making Clinton’s speech an exercise in echo. Third, Obama has other very powerful geopolitical counselors, including Vice President Joe Biden (whom a mutual friend told me when he was tapped for the ticket really wanted to be secretary of state), a coterie of special envoys reporting to the White House, and National Security Advisor Jim Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant.
And fourth, Clinton has been neatly mouse-trapped by Obama. She and her husband have been moved off the political gameboard by Team Obama. As I expected when I wrote about her appointment here on the Huffington Post when it was rumored last November. …
President Barack Obama visited Ghana on Saturday, saying that the 21st century won’t be determined only “in Rome, or Moscow, or Washington” but in Africa as well.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama pushes his health care plan again and is on the road again today.
He has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 8 AM Pacific, he meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 8:30 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Senator Ben Nelson Nebraska to discuss health care reform. Nelson is a conservative Democrat who has been balking on universal health care.
At 8:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine to discuss health care reform. Snowe is a moderate Republican who has been balking on the issue.
At 10:25 AM Pacific, Obama departs Andrews Air Force Base on Air Force One en route to New York City.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in New York.
At 12:35 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser for New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. The former Wall Street mogul is down in the polls, trailing in his race for re-election this November.
The New Jersey governor’s race, along with the Virginia governor’s race, is one of two key off-year elections this year.
At 4:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks to the NAACP’s 100th anniversary conference.
At 5:15 PM Pacific, Obama attends a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner.
At 7:10 PM Pacific, he departs New York en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 8:15 PM Pacific, Obama is back at the White House.
Vice President Joe Biden is in Virginia today.
Biden holds a meeting of the Middle Class Task Force, which he chairs, in Alexandria.
Then he travels to Richmond, Virginia’s capital, where he will highlight successful elements of the economic recovery act at a community college.
In the evening, Biden appears with Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds, who is in a close race to succeed Governor Tim Kaine, the Democratic national chairman who is prevented by term limits from running again.
Deeds is the Virginia state senator who handily defeated longtime Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia Democratic primary.
Meanwhile, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick for the US Supreme Court, is back on Capitol Hill for a fourth day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nothing has happened to derail her confirmation as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds private meetings and discussions in and around the Capitol, focusing on California’s chronic-turned-chaotic budget crisis.
Schwarzenegger held a Big 5 meeting with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders from 4:30 PM to 10 PM, with an hour dinner break.
Yesterday’s Big 5 meeting started three hours late.
The leaders will reconvene today, but when I do not know.
Big 5 negotiations between Schwarzenegger and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders began again late Friday afternoon, continued over the weekend, took a break Monday for staff consultation, then continued Tuesday and Wednesday.
Progress is reportedly being made, but we’ve been down that road before. The reality is that they seem hung up, as usual, on matters relating to the Prop 98 education funding requirements. Democrats want billions in deferred/cut education spending to be spent in the future. But it’s unclear where that money comes from.
** DIMINISHING RETURNS FOR OBAMA’S SUMMITEERING? President Barack Obama returned early Sunday morning from a near week-long international tour that took him to a key summit in Moscow, a G-8 summit, and his first appearance in Africa as president. But some suggested, with his poll numbers down a bit and media attention mostly elsewhere, that his summiteering is having diminishing returns.
Perhaps. But I think it has at least as much to do with the media culture.
American media, especially cable TV news, is moving more into infotainment mode, stuck on a few areas. Geopolitics has never been its strong suit, and political coverage is mostly focused on food fights. Which was unfortunate, as following on to his addresses in Prague and Cairo, Obama gave the final two of his advertised four major speeches on his new geopolitics last week, in Moscow and in Accra, Ghana. … From my July 12th column.
** OBAMA DOES MOSCOW, AND VICE VERSA. Flying to Italy Wednesday morning for the troubled G-8 summit, President Barack Obama departed Moscow after a very intriguing summit with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
This was the so-called “Reset Summit” to bring American/Russian relations out of the neo-Cold War depths they’d sunk to last year. It certainly succeeded at that, and at some other things as well, especially with regard to sharp reductions in nuclear weapons, aid for the US effort in Afghanistan, and a pullback on NATO expansion, a longtime thorn in the side of Russia. But other sticking points remained, on a US anti-missile shield and on Iran.
All amidst some notable intrigue, some of it generated from the Obama side. …
Unlike most of the rest of Europe, Russia is hardly in the grip of Obamamania. He’s certainly more popular than George W. Bush or John McCain, but that’s damning with faint praise. … From my July 8th column.
** OBAMA’S CONSEQUENTIAL FIRST 4TH: NOKO, AFPAK, IRAQ, RUSSIA, PALIN (PALIN?!) Quite a consequential first 4th of July as president for Barack Obama.
Not only did he have 20 of daughter Malia’s schoolgirl friends over for a Camp David sleepover in honor of her 11th birthday on the 4th of July — just wait till her “Independence Day,” Dad — he had a few other things on his plate, as well as the barbeque for military families and the fireworks show. Not counting his inherited worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
North Korea was to have been the drama of the day. But it turned into a major fizzle. … From my July 4th column.
** THE GOP’S PALIN FOOD FIGHT: WHY NOW? You have to hand it to Sarah Palin. For a sideshow, she’s very good at being the center of attention. Even when she doesn’t want to be.
She had a few big controversies earlier this year — her on-again/off-again headlining of the big GOP congressional fundraiser, her pregnant teenage daughter, the usual Alaska stuff — but she’s hit the jackpot this week with a huge food fight among big name Republicans. What’s unexamined is this question: Why now? … From my July 2nd column.
** TRANSFORMATIVE: LE CINEMA DE MICHAEL BAY. … From my June 29th essay.
** STAR TREK FIRSTS … 43 YEARS ON. … From my June 23rd essay.
** OBAMA AND THE AYATOLLAH. . … From my June 19th column.
** OBAMA’S CRISIS MANAGEMENT: NORTH KOREA, AGAIN. … From my June 12th column.
** REMEMBERING AMERICA: OBAMA’S D-DAY SPEECH AND TWO DAYS IN JUNE. … From my June 8th column.
** REPOSITIONING AMERICA: OBAMA’S CAIRO SPEECH AS THE ULTIMATE IN EVENT MARKETING. … From my June 4th column.
** TERMINATING THE DARKNESS: HOPE FLOATS, BUT ANXIETY ABIDES. … From my May 31st column.
** THE AVOIDABLE TRAGEDY OF CALIFORNIA’S PROP 8. … From my May 26th column.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th 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.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ 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 last fall, prior to the global economic meltdown, 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.
You can listen to my recent video webchat with Schwarzenegger here.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record last July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $61 to $62 per barrel range.
This is up about $27 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program. But oil has been slumping over the past week or so from recent highs on fears that the global economic recovery is happening too slowly.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
Read 
| Comments (55) |
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
There’s something wrong with the second video.
The second video runs fine. It’s a great little video of Barack in Ghana.
I think Hillary is okay now, but I am so glad that Barack won and that she and Bill Clinton lost.
They and most of their ilk around them do not represent a really positive politics for the future.
Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
There was a glitch that’s been corrected.
> Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am (Edit)
There’s something wrong with the second video.
There’s a friendlier and more inclusive machine in power now.
> Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:20 am (Edit)
I think Hillary is okay now, but I am so glad that Barack won and that she and Bill Clinton lost.
They and most of their ilk around them do not represent a really positive politics for the future.
Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
It’s a pretty flat document, at that.
> Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am (Edit)
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
I see it now.
Bill Bradley says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:23 am
There was a glitch that’s been corrected.
> Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am (Edit)
There’s something wrong with the second video.
Great column on Hillary on HuffPo. Really lays it all out!
Hillary was always over-rated. She would never have been anything if she hadn’t been married to the President.
That clip of her from AP doesn’t have her saying anything interesting.
Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
Great, my post showed up right away. I never know with this system here.
I do like that.
Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:16 am
The second video runs fine. It’s a great little video of Barack in Ghana.
Congrats on another good HuffPost column. Obama was a political genius taking Hillary out of the Senate and putting her and Bill right where he can keep an eye on them. My hat’s off to the guy.
Bill, you cogently laid out the terms of the Obama-Clinton(s) relationship. But there’s another story here to be written, namely the extent to which State is (or, perhaps, is not if you disagree) continuing its decline relative to Security and Defense.
If I had a hat.
The Moon mission news clip is great. It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years. Hard to believe we haven’t done anything with it.
I suppose the shift from State to Defense under Bush was based on a fundamental shift in policy from diplomacy to preemptive military action. Obama is emphasizing diplomacy, but not placing primary responsibility for it at State.
Yes, Obama is running things out of the White House as his own secretary of state.
But it’s important not to slip into Internet thinking, that history began with Bush II’s election.
The defense secretary has usually been more important than the secretary of state, since World War II when he was the secretary of war.
It’s really nothing new, and not a function of the evil W.
> Clutch J says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:45 am (Edit)
I suppose the shift from State to Defense under Bush was based on a fundamental shift in policy from diplomacy to preemptive military action. Obama is emphasizing diplomacy, but not placing primary responsibility for it at State.
Why am I not vacationing on the Moon?
> Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:35 am (Edit)
The Moon mission news clip is great. It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years. Hard to believe we haven’t done anything with it.
You’re right, that’s a very good story idea.
Thanks!
> Clutch J says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:25 am (Edit)
Bill, you cogently laid out the terms of the Obama-Clinton(s) relationship. But there’s another story here to be written, namely the extent to which State is (or, perhaps, is not if you disagree) continuing its decline relative to Security and Defense.
It’s worked out very well for Obama. And he has the Clintons at his disposal.
It’s important not to underestimate their talent. I think Hillary is getting up to speed and can do more once Obama has clearly laid out his template around the world.
> Jack Aubrey says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:24 am (Edit)
Congrats on another good HuffPost column. Obama was a political genius taking Hillary out of the Senate and putting her and Bill right where he can keep an eye on them. My hat’s off to the guy.
The software can be finicky.
> Jack Aubrey says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:04 am (Edit)
Great, my post showed up right away. I never know with this system here.
Well, since Obama has already laid it all out in a series of major tentpole addresses, there’s not much left for her to say.
> Jack Aubrey says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:03 am (Edit)
That clip of her from AP doesn’t have her saying anything interesting.
Jonas Blane says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to say in her speech.
The flip side is that Bill Clinton probably wouldn’t have been president if he hadn’t been married to Hillary …
> Len says:
July 16, 2009 at 9:31 am (Edit)
Hillary was always over-rated. She would never have been anything if she hadn’t been married to the President.
Thanks.
> Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 9:18 am (Edit)
Great column on Hillary on HuffPo. Really lays it all out!
I guess when I was a kid ol’ Henry seemed like a pretty powerful Sec’y of State. Schulz and Baker seemed to hold their own, too. But you’re right, America’s power has been rooted in its economic and military (and media) prowess, not diplomacy.
True. Though Kissinger also proves the usual rule.
He was Nixon’s all-powerful national security advisor, then took over as secretary of state — a title he always craved — from the forgotten Rogers.
Baker also wanted the title, after being White House chief of staff.
Thank you for a very powerful article on Hillary Clinton in the Huffington Post. The “rookie” President has his former enemies right where he wants them.
Who knows, maybe Hillary will turn into a good Secretary of State.
I dearly love the Apollo mission footage. I’m too young to have seen it when it happened in the day. It’s thrilling anyway.
I hope you have more as the anniversary of the Moon landing approaches.
That is a wonderful clip. Right there, you see the difference that having Obama as President makes in the world.
Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 8:16 am
The second video runs fine. It’s a great little video of Barack in Ghana.
Marcos, you’ll love this website I heard about on the radio–a real time recreation of the Moon mission
http://wechoosethemoon.org/
Nixon gutted NASA’s budget in the early 1970s even as he in public praised the agency and its accomplishments. If we had kept at the pace started by JFK we maybe would have had the Moonbase you saw in 2001 by 2001. But the future isn’t what it used to be…
>20.Bill Bradley says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:49 am
Why am I not vacationing on the Moon?
Is the California budget over yet?
>> Capitol Boy says: “Is the California budget over yet?”
It’s The Song That Never Ends.
And just as annoying.
lol
What a crackpot.
lol
Jack Aubrey says:
July 16, 2009 at 5:47 pm
What a crackpot.
Check the Billary fanatics attacking Bill over on HuffPo for reporting how Hillary’s been squelched.
They’re hysterical!
Better!
TRIATHLON says:
July 16, 2009 at 5:07 pm (Edit)
The “PUMAs” I believe they are called. They became most irrational and hateful last year. They have not recovered, I see. A fine article by Bill.
Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Check the Billary fanatics attacking Bill over on HuffPo for reporting how Hillary’s been squelched.
They’re hysterical!
Hey, thanks!
Dana says:
July 16, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Marcos, you’ll love this website I heard about on the radio–a real time recreation of the Moon mission
http://wechoosethemoon.org/
Only so long as she does not “overcharge” us we are happy to have Mrs. Clinton in Moscow with her big “reset” button.
What new video today?
Obama at the NAACP, and Obama with Willie Mays on AF1.
That was not one of her better moments …
> sergei says:
July 17, 2009 at 12:29 am (Edit)
Only so long as she does not “overcharge” us we are happy to have Mrs. Clinton in Moscow with her big “reset” button.
Thanks. I keep encountering groups of zealots, of one stripe or another.
> marcus waldron says:
July 16, 2009 at 10:13 pm (Edit)
The “PUMAs” I believe they are called. They became most irrational and hateful last year. They have not recovered, I see. A fine article by Bill.
Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Check the Billary fanatics attacking Bill over on HuffPo for reporting how Hillary’s been squelched.
They’re hysterical!
That was clearly orchestrated …
> Capitol Boy says:
July 16, 2009 at 6:54 pm (Edit)
Check the Billary fanatics attacking Bill over on HuffPo for reporting how Hillary’s been squelched.
They’re hysterical!