Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered an alarming assessment of California’s fire situation.
** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama, back in Washington, got in a round of golf this afternoon at the Army-Navy Club. He goes to Camp David on Wednesday. … The question of Senator Ted Kennedy’s succession moved forward today, with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick setting January 19th for a special election and the state legislature to take up a bill on September 9th allowing Patrick to make an interim appointment. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, says she doesn’t want the seat. … Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi goes into tomorrow’s special election for a San Francisco Bay Area seat in Congress as the clear frontrunner, which he has been since withdrawing from the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and announcing his candidacy. … The California state Assembly this afternoon passed a very scaled-back version of the prison reform bill sought by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on a bare minimum 41-35 vote. We’ll see if the state Senate, which passed a fuller version, goes along. More tomorrow …
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S ASSESSMENT OF THE CALIFORNIA FIRES.There are eight fires burning throughout California, including the Station Incident and Morris Incident in Los Angeles County, Big Meadow fire in Mariposa County, Gloria Incident in Monterey County, Cottonwood fire in Riverside County, Oak Glen III Fire in San Bernardino County, the Red Rock Incident in Siskiyou County, and the 49 Fire in Placer County.
Approximately 104,237 acres have burned since August 21, 2009. 5,890 fire personnel have been deployed to fight the fires. There have been 18 firefighter injuries. Station Incident Command confirmed two (2) LA County Firefighter deaths due to a rollover on the Station Fire on Mt. Gleason. There are three (3) injuries from burns received by residents of Big Tujunga Canyon who did not heed evacuation orders for the Station Incident. The residents have been hospitalized.
12,050 residential, 576 commercial and 2,025 outbuilding structures are threatened.
69 residential structures and one (1) outbuilding have been destroyed.
There are nine (9) Evacuation Shelters and Centers open, with an approximate overnight population total of 190.
There have been 5,457 fires to date with 122,025 acres burned in areas of state and local firefighting responsibility, compared to 4,231 fires and 353,203 acres burned at this time last year.
President Barack Obama’s complete eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A truncated week ahead in presidential politics with Labor Day weekend approaching, as well as another muted week in California politics.
President Barack Obama is back from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, which was interrupted by the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy and his sad duty of delivering the eulogy for his friend and ally. This week he’ll focus anew on health care reform, which was one of Kennedy’s career-long causes, as well as change and turmoil in geopolitics.
But it will be a short week, as he heads to Camp David on Wednesday.
In California politics, the decidedly undramatic 2010 governor’s race continues in its well-defined fashion.
And we see if anything major gets done in the last two weeks of this year’s state legislative session. That looks increasingly doubtful.
Despite all the chatter from the usual chatterers, who really are talking mostly to themselves and those addicted to chatter, Obama will almost certainly get a major health care reform bill through this year. Making all the chatter amount to not much. Will there be a public option in it? I think there’s a good chance of that. Will it be passed on a party-line vote? I think there’s a very good chance of that.
House Republicans have always been unalterably opposed to change on health care. Senate Republicans have negotiated at length, but it looks like a delaying action to me. Obama must decide at what point he has played along long enough to look like he wanted a bipartisan solution.
One of America’s biggest allies, Japan, has a new government, with the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) voted out in a landslide. I stopped following Japanese politics in any detail over a decade ago, but the change has been long in the making.
The LDP has mostly ruled Japan since the American Occupation. In that regard, it’s been not unlike the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a bit of a contradiction in terms) in Mexico, the sway of which over Mexico finally ended in 2000.
But lest we think that the change in Japan is at all radical with the Democratic Party of Japan taking power, consider that incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, a Stanford PhD., is the son of an LDP foreign minister, grandson on his father’s side of an LDP prime minister, and grandson on his mother’s side of the founder of Bridgestone, the world’s largest tire company.
Obama will also be monitoring the situation in Iraq, which has been shaken by a new wave of terrorist bombings designed to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shia and delay the US withdrawal. Vice President Joe Biden meets with the US commander in Iraq today.
And then there is Afghanistan, where the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops — and an Obama-ordered US Marine offensive in the souther part of the country a few months before the August 20th election — is all that allowed that election to take place.
In Afghanistan, as election fraud and irregularity allegations, almost all purportedly on behalf of President Hamid Karzai, mount, vote results slowly trickle out. With about half the vote counted after many delays, Karzai leads Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the former Afghan foreign minister and Northern Alliance spokesman, 46% to 33%. Karzai needs a majority to avoid a run-off sometime in October, a run-off which some in the Obama Administration seem insistent on. There won’t be a full count of the first round of voting till sometime in September.
In California, the state Assembly, after many delays, appears set to pass a watered-down version of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s prison reforms needed to keep the latest rickety state budget together. It will apparently be missing both a sentencing commission and GPS bracelet monitoring of non-violent offenders with months to go on their sentences, thus occasioning yet another problem for the budget.
We’ll also have a better idea this week whether there will be a new water deal. The sides have been intractable for many years.
It does not look like there will be a continuation of this most unproductive legislative year to achieve tax reforms. Schwarzenegger has promised to call a special session of the Legislature to vote up or down on a package to be produced, after some months of delay, by a state tax reform commission. But that package does not appear to be forthcoming. Quite unsurprisingly, it’s the victim of a lack of consensus between corporate, conservative, labor, and liberal interests.
That was hard to see coming.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is back in the White House from his interrupted vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
But not for long, as he leaves for Camp David on Wednesday to get a head start on Labor Day weekend.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
Vice President Joe Biden holds a conference call at 10:30 AM Pacific on implementation of the Economic Recovery Act with governors and mayors from around the country.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Biden meets with the US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.
Two Los Angeles County firefighters were killed yesterday when their vehicle rolled down a mountainside while they fought a fire threatening 12,000 homes. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging affected residents to pay heed to evacuation orders.
UPDATE: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger flies up to Northern California late this morning and tours the fire damage around Auburn, holding a press avail at 11:45 AM.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours Los Angeles Trade Tech College this morning. He will then announce the creation of the Clean Energy Workforce Training Program, a $75 million investment establishing the nation’s largest state-sponsored green jobs training program.
Schwarzenegger will participate later in the morning in a conference call with Vice President Joe Biden on the implementation of the Economic Recovery Act.
** CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.Camelot has ended. Again.
The death late last night in Massachusetts of Ted Kennedy, one of the historic lions of the United States Senate, followed swiftly on the heels of his sister, the Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11th. With the passing of these two very public personalities, only one of the siblings of JFK and RFK, the much more private former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, remains.
Camelot has ended again. Which means that it has ended before. And probably will again. For it is a legend, and legend seldom dies for long, if at all.
Camelot was the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s thousand day administration of the early 1960s, chosen because of the young president’s fondness for the hit Broadway musical about the legendary court of King Arthur.
But it was really about much more than a single presidential administration, or the immediate promise of another under a President Robert F. Kennedy, or the long lingering promise of yet another under a President Edward M. Kennedy, or even the transferred promise of another under a President Barack Obama.
It’s about a spirit, a spirit which to many seemed to have been captured like lightning in a bottle in the early 1960s, an exciting time of promise and peril, which accounts for that era’s powerful hold on the American popular imagination.
Ted Kennedy himself captured the spirit of the thing in his great eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 8th, 1968 when he quoted from his second slain brother’s speech to the youth of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation a few years earlier.
“The answer is to rely on youth. Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” …
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up about $36 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
President Barack Obama eulogized Senator Ted Kennedy yesterday at the Mission Church in Boston. After a lengthy and late motorcade through Washington, including a stop at the U.S. Capitol, the late senator was laid to rest after sunset in Arlington National Cemetery near the graves of his assassinated brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … THE KENNEDY EULOGIES: OBAMA, BIDEN, KERRY. MCCAIN.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama returns to Washington today after a greatly interrupted vacation on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
At 1:50 PM Pacific, the Obama family departs Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 3 PM Pacific, the Obamas arrive at Andrews Air Force Base, where they board Marine One for the flight to White House.
At 3:15 PM Pacific, the Obamas land on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is close to re-starting negotiations on the question of Israel and Palestine, with an announcement likely next month.
Meanwhile, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who presided over the disastrous 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, today became the first chief Israeli leader to be indicted on corruption charges.
And in Japan, the longtime powerhouse LDP (Liberal Democratic Party, a bit of a misnomer) has lost in a landslide to the Democratic Party of Japan. Prime Minister Taro Aso, now the outgoing prime minister, has resigned as head of the LDP.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to California late last night following the burial of Senator Ted Kennedy.
First Lady Maria Shriver stayed on in the East, attending to family business. She appears today on NBC’s Meet The Press, a special edition on the Kennedy family.
Schwarzenegger is in Southern California today, dealing with the state’s latest fire emergency. He tours some of the fire damage and is briefed on the statewide situation.
At 10 AM, he discusses the situation at the Station Incident Command Post at Hansen Dam in Lakeview Terrace.
Ted Kennedy, Jr. and Congressman Patrick Kennedy eulogized their father, Senator Ted Kennedy, this morning in Boston.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … THE KENNEDY EULOGIES: OBAMA, BIDEN, KERRY. MCCAIN.
** PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S EULOGY FOR SENATOR TED KENNEDY.
Mrs. Kennedy, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran, Caroline, members of the Kennedy family, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:
Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate – a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself.
But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, “The Grand Fromage,” or “The Big Cheese.” I, like so many others in the city where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a mentor, and above all, a friend.
Ted Kennedy was the baby of the family who became its patriarch; the restless dreamer who became its rock. He was the sunny, joyful child, who bore the brunt of his brothers’ teasing, but learned quickly how to brush it off. When they tossed him off a boat because he didn’t know what a jib was, six-year-old Teddy got back in and learned to sail. When a photographer asked the newly-elected Bobby to step back at a press conference because he was casting a shadow on his younger brother, Teddy quipped, “It’ll be the same in Washington.”
This spirit of resilience and good humor would see Ted Kennedy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from the country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his own life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.
It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Teddy to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that.
But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, “…[I]ndividual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in – and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.” Indeed, Ted was the “Happy Warrior” that the poet William Wordsworth spoke of when he wrote:
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others – the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed — the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children’s health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act –all have a running thread. Ted Kennedy’s life’s work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow.
We can still hear his voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature, in support of health care or workers’ rights or civil rights. And yet, while his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did. While he was seen by his fiercest critics as a partisan lightning rod, that is not the prism through which Ted Kennedy saw the world, nor was it the prism through which his colleagues saw him. He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect – a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots.
And that’s how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, but also by seeking compromise and common cause – not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through friendship, and kindness, and humor. There was the time he courted Orrin Hatch’s support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program by having his Chief of Staff serenade the Senator with a song Orrin had written himself; the time he delivered shamrock cookies on a china plate to sweeten up a crusty Republican colleague; and the famous story of how he won the support of a Texas Committee Chairman on an immigration bill. Teddy walked into a meeting with a plain manila envelope, and showed only the Chairman that it was filled with the Texan’s favorite cigars. When the negotiations were going well, he would inch the envelope closer to the Chairman. When they weren’t, he would pull it back. Before long, the deal was done.
It was only a few years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, when Teddy buttonholed me on the floor of the Senate for my support on a certain piece of legislation that was coming up for vote. I gave him my pledge, but expressed my skepticism that it would pass. But when the roll call was over, the bill garnered the votes it needed, and then some. I looked at Teddy with astonishment and asked how he had pulled it off. He just patted me on the back, and said “Luck of the Irish!”
Of course, luck had little to do with Ted Kennedy’s legislative success, and he knew that. A few years ago, his father-in-law told him that he and Daniel Webster just might be the two greatest senators of all time. Without missing a beat, Teddy replied, “What did Webster do?”
But though it is Ted Kennedy’s historic body of achievements we will remember, it is his giving heart that we will miss. It was the friend and colleague who was always the first to pick up the phone and say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or “I hope you feel better,” or “What can I do to help?” It was the boss who was so adored by his staff that over five hundred spanning five decades showed up for his 75th birthday party. It was the man who sent birthday wishes and thank you notes and even his own paintings to so many who never imagined that a U.S. Senator would take the time to think about someone like them. I have one of those paintings in my private study – a Cape Cod seascape that was a gift to a freshman legislator who happened to admire it when Ted Kennedy welcomed him into his office the first week he arrived in Washington; by the way, that’s my second favorite gift from Teddy and Vicki after our dog Bo. And it seems like everyone has one of those stories – the ones that often start with “You wouldn’t believe who called me today.”
Ted Kennedy was the father who looked after not only his own three children, but John’s and Bobby’s as well. He took them camping and taught them to sail. He laughed and danced with them at birthdays and weddings; cried and mourned with them through hardship and tragedy; and passed on that same sense of service and selflessness that his parents had instilled in him. Shortly after Ted walked Caroline down the aisle and gave her away at the altar, he received a note from Jackie that read, “On you the carefree youngest brother fell a burden a hero would have begged to be spared. We are all going to make it because you were always there with your love.”
Not only did the Kennedy family make it because of Ted’s love – he made it because of theirs; and especially because of the love and the life he found in Vicki. After so much loss and so much sorrow, it could not have been easy for Ted Kennedy to risk his heart again. That he did is a testament to how deeply he loved this remarkable woman from Louisiana. And she didn’t just love him back. As Ted would often acknowledge, Vicki saved him. She gave him strength and purpose; joy and friendship; and stood by him always, especially in those last, hardest days.
We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God’s plan for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.
This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy. He once said of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, and I imagine he would say the same about himself. The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy’s shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became. We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy – not for the sake of ambition or vanity; not for wealth or power; but only for the people and the country he loved.
In the days after September 11th, Teddy made it a point to personally call each one of the 177 families of this state who lost a loved one in the attack. But he didn’t stop there. He kept calling and checking up on them. He fought through red tape to get them assistance and grief counseling. He invited them sailing, played with their children, and would write each family a letter whenever the anniversary of that terrible day came along. To one widow, he wrote the following:
“As you know so well, the passage of time never really heals the tragic memory of such a great loss, but we carry on, because we have to, because our loved one would want us to, and because there is still light to guide us in the world from the love they gave us.”
We carry on.
Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image – the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled; smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon.
May God Bless Ted Kennedy, and may he rest in eternal peace.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses recovery from Hurricane Katrina on its fourth anniversary.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, has been in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Today, however, he is in Boston for the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy.
Obama will deliver the principal eulogy for the late senator.
Obama has received his daily intelligence briefing this morning.
He has also met privately with Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the senator’s widow.
The funeral service at Boston’s Mission Church, known formally as Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, begins at 7:30 AM Pacific.
Also in attendance will be former President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Jimmy Carter, along with scores of Kennedy’s Senate colleagues and other dignitaries.
Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke memorably at Kennedy’s wake last night at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, will also be in attendance.
Kennedy will be buried this afternoon at 2:30 PM Pacific near President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery.
This will follow his final motorcade through Washington. Kennedy departs Hanscom Air Force Base at 10:30 AM Pacific and arrives at Andrews Air Force Base at 12 noon Pacific. The final Kennedy motorcade will proceed through Washington and stop at the U.S. Capitol for a prayer on the Senate steps at 1:30 PM Pacific before proceeding to Arlington National Cemetery.
Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, remembered Senator Ted Kennedy last night in remarks at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Boston this morning with First Lady Maria Shriver for the funeral service of their uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy.
From Boston, they will accompany the rest of the family to Washington and on to Arlington National Cemetery for Kennedy’s burial.
You can see the schedule above in the Obama Today section.
** CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.Camelot has ended. Again.
The death late last night in Massachusetts of Ted Kennedy, one of the historic lions of the United States Senate, followed swiftly on the heels of his sister, the Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11th. With the passing of these two very public personalities, only one of the siblings of JFK and RFK, the much more private former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, remains.
Camelot has ended again. Which means that it has ended before. And probably will again. For it is a legend, and legend seldom dies for long, if at all.
Camelot was the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s thousand day administration of the early 1960s, chosen because of the young president’s fondness for the hit Broadway musical about the legendary court of King Arthur.
But it was really about much more than a single presidential administration, or the immediate promise of another under a President Robert F. Kennedy, or the long lingering promise of yet another under a President Edward M. Kennedy, or even the transferred promise of another under a President Barack Obama.
It’s about a spirit, a spirit which to many seemed to have been captured like lightning in a bottle in the early 1960s, an exciting time of promise and peril, which accounts for that era’s powerful hold on the American popular imagination.
Ted Kennedy himself captured the spirit of the thing in his great eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 8th, 1968 when he quoted from his second slain brother’s speech to the youth of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation a few years earlier.
“The answer is to rely on youth. Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” …
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed at $72.74 per barrel on Friday. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $39 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Here is a look inside Boston’s Mission Church, known officially as Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, where tomorrow’s funeral service for Senator Ted Kennedy will be held.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … THE KENNEDY EULOGIES: OBAMA, BIDEN, KERRY, MCCAIN.
An American service member died Friday when his vehicle struck a bomb in eastern Afghanistan, making August the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly eight-year war.
The grim milestone comes as the top U.S. commander prepares to submit his assessment of the conflict — a report expected to trigger intense debate on the Obama administration’s strategy in an increasingly unpopular war. The latest death was reported as Afghan officials announced an 80 percent increase in the number of major fraud allegations submitted after last week’s disputed presidential election — a sign of the deep challenges facing the U.S. and its allies in shoring up a legitimate Afghan government capable of withstanding the Taliban insurgency, corruption and drug trafficking.
Major offensives were required to hold August 20th’s national elections. Had they not been held, the election would only have worked in the north, where Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s former foreign minister and a hero of the Northern Alliance in the fighting against both the Soviets and the Taliban, is the clear choice.
Results have been delayed a few times now in the voting to see if President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun whose base is in the Taliban-infested south, is re-elected. His finance minister said on Monday that Karzai had won re-election with 68% of the vote, then was quickly shut up.
American casualties have been rising steadily following President Barack Obama’s decision to send 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to combat a resurgent Taliban and train Afghan security forces to assume a greater role in battling the insurgents. Obama’s decision was part of a strategic shift in the U.S. war against international Islamic extremism — moving resources from Iraq, which had been center stage since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion but where violence has declined sharply from levels of two years ago.
A record 62,000 U.S. troops are now in the country, with 4,000 more due before year’s end. That compares with about 130,000 in Iraq, most due to leave next year. Since the fresh troops began arriving in Afghanistan last spring, U.S. deaths have climbed steadily — from 12 in May to more than 40 for the past two months as American forces have taken the fight to the Taliban in areas of the country which have long been under insurgent control.
At least 732 U.S. service members have died in the Afghan war since the U.S.-led invasion of late 2001. Nearly 60 percent of those deaths occurred since the Taliban insurgency began to rebound in 2007.
Unfortunately, Newsom’s primary opponent, Attorney General Jerry Brown, will probably use these kinds of extreme and dangerous (to the public) positions and actions of Newsom to clean his clock before Republicans ever get that chance.
Check out this video:
As I told Newsom’s now chief strategist, Garry South, early this year, he is in the unusual position (for him) of working for the weakest on crime candidate in the race. At $25,000 per month, more than super-rich former state Controller Steve Westly paid him, well, ever, in his 2006 Democratic primary race against the hapless (against Arnold Schwarzenegger) Phil Angelides. At this stage of the game, Westly was paying South $15,000 per month.
Thousands of mourners are lining up for a second day to visit the late Senator Ted Kennedy, lying in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. 6000 people were still in line when the Kennedy Library closed its doors at midnight last night.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
He is preparing to deliver the eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy on Saturday morning in Boston. Also in attendance will be former President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Jimmy Carter.
The late senator is lying in repose at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Tens of thousands of mourners made a last visit to him yesterday, after his last motorcade made its way from Hyannis Port and then past key Boston locales in his life.
Obama, who is not having much of a vacation, as it turns out, on Martha’s Vineyard, will deliver the principal eulogy for Kennedy tomorrow at the Mission Church in Boston. The official name of that church, which became Kennedy’s favorite when he prayed there throughout his daughter Kara’s successful battle with cancer, is Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica.
Saturday’s funeral mass, featuring Obama’s eulogy, will be from 7:30 AM Pacific to 9:30 AM Pacific. Following the funeral mass, the late senator will be flown from Hanscom Air Force Base outside Boston to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, he will proceed by motorcade to the U.S. Capitol. There the motorcade will stop for a prayer at the Senate Chamber steps allowing for a last farewell from Senate staffers and others in the Capitol community. The Kennedy motorcade will then proceed to Arlington National Cemetery, where a private burial service will be held at 2:30 PM Pacific.
Today back in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden is preparing for his appearance tonight in Boston.
Biden will speak tonight at a public wake for Ted Kennedy at the Kennedy Library, as will 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Other speakers include former Congressman Joe Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.
The event will take place from 4 PM Pacific to 6 PM Pacific. Though I suspect it will go longer.
It will be Biden’s only scheduled public event of the day.
In other action, results are again delayed in August 20th’s Afghanistan presidential election. US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, according to the BBC, held an “explosive” meeting with President Hamid Karzai about the conduct of the election and its counting.
The latest results appear to show Karzai headed to an October run-off against Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the former Afghan foreign minister and close associate of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader who was the most feared opponent of the Soviet Union in the 1980s war, assassinated by Al Qaeda two days before 9/11.
Senator Ted Kennedy made his final trip from Hyannis Port to Boston yesterday.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has one public event in Sacramento this morning before flying back to Boston for tonight’s wake for Senator Ted Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy Library.
At 9 AM, Schwarzenegger will tour the Great California Garage Sale, held at the Department of General Services’ Surplus Properties Warehouse. Thousands of Californians are expected to shop for surplus state property, as well as unclaimed and confiscated property.
Schwarzenegger is personally autographing some of the property.
Meanwhile, a very watered-down version of his prison reform proposal will finally be brought up for a vote in the state Assembly on Monday. After passage on a party-line vote in the state Senate, liberal Democrats in the Assembly balked at proposals they have actually advocated for years.
** CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.Camelot has ended. Again.
The death late last night in Massachusetts of Ted Kennedy, one of the historic lions of the United States Senate, followed swiftly on the heels of his sister, the Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11th. With the passing of these two very public personalities, only one of the siblings of JFK and RFK, the much more private former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, remains.
Camelot has ended again. Which means that it has ended before. And probably will again. For it is a legend, and legend seldom dies for long, if at all.
Camelot was the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s thousand day administration of the early 1960s, chosen because of the young president’s fondness for the hit Broadway musical about the legendary court of King Arthur.
But it was really about much more than a single presidential administration, or the immediate promise of another under a President Robert F. Kennedy, or the long lingering promise of yet another under a President Edward M. Kennedy, or even the transferred promise of another under a President Barack Obama.
It’s about a spirit, a spirit which to many seemed to have been captured like lightning in a bottle in the early 1960s, an exciting time of promise and peril, which accounts for that era’s powerful hold on the American popular imagination.
Ted Kennedy himself captured the spirit of the thing in his great eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 8th, 1968 when he quoted from his second slain brother’s speech to the youth of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation a few years earlier.
“The answer is to rely on youth. Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” …
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up about $39 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Senator Ted Kennedy will be laid to rest on Saturday afternoon in Arlington National Cemetery, not far from the eternal flame that burns there for the late President John F. Kennedy.
** BETTER NEWS FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY, BUT A PROBLEM FOR CALIFORNIA.The US economy moved closer to recovery today with word that the gross domestic product declined only 1.0% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, less than previously reported. Corporate earnings and profits are up nearly 6%, the biggest increase in four years.
But hiring, usually the lagging indicator of ecoomic recovery, has not yet picked up.
“We’re on a pretty decent recovery path,” said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “There was a better mix last quarter with almost every major component of final demand being revised up and inventories being revised down. That puts us in a pretty decent position going into the third quarter.” …
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, fell at a 1 percent pace, less than anticipated, following a 0.6 percent increase in the prior quarter. Purchases were forecast to drop 1.3 percent, according to the survey median.
Spending is likely to increase this quarter. Industry data showed sales of cars and light trucks rose to an 11.2 million annual unit rate in July, the highest since September.
The “cash-for-clunkers” program, which offered buyers discounts of as much as $4,500 to trade in older cars and trucks for new, more fuel-efficient vehicles, produced almost 700,000 automobile sales before ending on Aug. 24, the Transportation Department said yesterday.
One definite fly in the ointment in California is the likely closing of the state’s last auto plant, the the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont. Hailed as a harbinger of a new auto industry back in the 1980s, NUMMI was a partnership between General Motors and Toyota.
But GM, reeling even before the global recession, and since taken over by the federal government, pulled out of the plant. And now Toyota, which is also suffering, is following suit.
Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, who is leading in a September 1st special election for a Bay Area Congressional seat, said he’s still hopeful the plant can be saved.
“California and Toyota have a special relationship,” said Garamendi. “California is one of Toyota’s biggest global markets and the NUMMI auto plant is one of their most efficient, indirectly employing 25,000 to 35,000 hardworking Californians. I would hate to see that relationship disrupted by the closure of NUMMI and I am optimistic that a resolution can still be reached that works for Toyota, their employees, their vendors and California.”
That sounds pretty optimistic to me. Meanwhile, the plant, the first ever to be shuttered by Toyota, which is struggling itself, is scheduled to close next March, costing 4700 jobs directly, and many in more in affiliated businesses.
Toyota is slashing its global vehicle production by nearly a million units.
** JERRY BROWN AND THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL. That made you sit up straight …
Former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown holds one of the real action-oriented offices in California government. As you might guess, not being the shy and retiring type, he doesn’t lay back in the job. Most of the things he does I never mention here, in part because the purported race he’s in, for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, isn’t really a race at all. (Not that Brown has actually announced he’s running, mind you.)
Yesterday was one of his more intriguing days, as he went to the city of Imperial and announced a move against Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel. Brown’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement worked since January with Imperial County authorities to determine how the Sinaloa cartel is smuggling drugs into California. Surveillance and undercover operations across Southern California established that Calexico is a key transit point, utilizing vehicles with hidden compartments.
Brown announced the indictment of 16 individuals for drug trafficking, four of them unnamed to avoid compromising ongoing investigations, and the seizure of weapons, millions in cash, and hundreds of pounds of cocaine. He also met with the attorney general of the Mexican state of Baja California to discuss the problem along with the sheriff and district attorney of Imperial County.
Incidentally, I mentioned that Moore Methods poll the other day that has Brown ahead of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, 49% to 20%. I forgot to mention that Brown also leads the super-rich Republican hopefuls by large margins.
It’s Brown 42%, ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman 32%. And Brown 45%, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner 32%. Newsom, in contrast, trails.
The only reason why the scenario of Jerry Brown vs. a super-rich Republican nominee holds any real interest is because of their ability to spend large amounts of money out of their own bank accounts.
President Barack Obama spoke yesterday at Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark, Massachusetts on the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings.
He is preparing to deliver the eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy on Saturday morning in Boston. Also in attendance will be former President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Jimmy Carter.
After a last motorcade from Hyannis Port to Boston, departing at 11 AM Pacific, the late senator will lie in repose at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston this afternoon and evening.
Back in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden meets today with General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and later with Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Biden will speak Friday night at a public wake for Ted Kennedy at the Kennedy Library, as will 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
The usual quiet life outside the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts is upended by the massive media presence occasioned by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, preparing to go back East for another Kennedy family funeral, gives two speeches today in Southern California.
At 9:15 AM, he appears at the 2010 California Complete Count Committee Regional Convening meeting where he will deliver remarks.
The convening will discuss how to reach “Hard To Count” populations in Los Angeles County for the 2010 Census.
Then Schwarzenegger goes to the San Diego area where he will tour a charter school in Chula Vista.
At 11 AM, he will deliver remarks at Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School on the need for California to qualify for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top Federal Funding.
** CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.Camelot has ended. Again.
The death late last night in Massachusetts of Ted Kennedy, one of the historic lions of the United States Senate, followed swiftly on the heels of his sister, the Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11th. With the passing of these two very public personalities, only one of the siblings of JFK and RFK, the much more private former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, remains.
Camelot has ended again. Which means that it has ended before. And probably will again. For it is a legend, and legend seldom dies for long, if at all.
Camelot was the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s thousand day administration of the early 1960s, chosen because of the young president’s fondness for the hit Broadway musical about the legendary court of King Arthur.
But it was really about much more than a single presidential administration, or the immediate promise of another under a President Robert F. Kennedy, or the long lingering promise of yet another under a President Edward M. Kennedy, or even the transferred promise of another under a President Barack Obama.
It’s about a spirit, a spirit which to many seemed to have been captured like lightning in a bottle in the early 1960s, an exciting time of promise and peril, which accounts for that era’s powerful hold on the American popular imagination.
Ted Kennedy himself captured the spirit of the thing in his great eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 8th, 1968 when he quoted from his second slain brother’s speech to the youth of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation a few years earlier.
“The answer is to rely on youth. Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” …
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up about $37 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
On vacation this week not far from Ted Kennedy’s family home, President Barack Obama emerged this morning to describe the late senator as “a singular figure” in American history.
The official tributes and funeral services for Senator Edward M. Kennedy will begin on Thursday morning, when his body is carried by motorcade from the family compound in Hyannis Port to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
There, his body will lie in repose beginning in the afternoon and evening for public viewing, and again on Friday. On Friday evening, a formal wake will be held at the library, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Senators John Kerry and John McCain among the notable featured speakers.
On Saturday, a funeral mass will be held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica. President Obama will speak at the mass. Afterward, Senator Kennedy’s body will be carried by plane to Virginia, where a burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery will take place in the afternoon. The times have not yet been officially released.
He will be buried near the grave of his late brother, Robert F. Kennedy. In addition to his central role in American life as US senator for nearly half a century, Ted Kennedy also served in the US Army. Unlike his three brothers, Joe, Jack, and Bobby, who were all Navy men.
Senator Ted Kennedy’s dramatic speech to the 2008 Democratic National Convention came a year to the day before his death. “The hope rises again, and the dream lives on.”
** CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.Camelot has ended. Again.
The death late last night in Massachusetts of Ted Kennedy, one of the historic lions of the United States Senate, followed swiftly on the heels of his sister, the Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11th. With the passing of these two very public personalities, only one of the siblings of JFK and RFK, the much more private former Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, remains.
Camelot has ended again. Which means that it has ended before. And probably will again. For it is a legend, and legend seldom dies for long, if at all.
Camelot was the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s thousand day administration of the early 1960s, chosen because of the young president’s fondness for the hit Broadway musical about the legendary court of King Arthur.
But it was really about much more than a single presidential administration, or the immediate promise of another under a President Robert F. Kennedy, or the long lingering promise of yet another under a President Edward M. Kennedy, or even the transferred promise of another under a President Barack Obama.
It’s about a spirit, a spirit which to many seemed to have been captured like lightning in a bottle in the early 1960s, an exciting time of promise and peril, which accounts for that era’s powerful hold on the American popular imagination.
Ted Kennedy himself captured the spirit of the thing in his great eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on June 8th, 1968 when he quoted from his second slain brother’s speech to the youth of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation a few years earlier.
“The answer is to rely on youth. Not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” …
Senator Ted Kennedy passed away late last night in Massachusetts.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings.
He appeared briefly early this morning to note the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, calling him “the greatest senator of our time.”
“Even though we knew this day was coming, we awaited it with no small amout of dread,” Obama said. “For his family, he was a guardian. For America, he was a defender of a dream.”
Back in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden, diverging from planned remarks at an event at the Department of Energy, fought tears as he recalled his fallen friend.
“I truly, truly am distressed by his passing,” Biden said. “You know, Teddy spent a lifetime working for a fair and more just America. For 36 years, I had the privilege of going to work every day and sitting next to him and being witness to history. He restored my sense of idealism.”
Later today, Biden holds a Middle Class Task Force planning luncheon with Cabinet members and agency representatives at the White House.
Biden also Biden delivers remarks at the Minority Enterprise Development Conference at the White House.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will soon have another Kennedy family funeral to attend with First Lady Maria Shriver.
At noon today, he participates in a moderated Q&A with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams at http://www.tweetcast.in/.
Schwarzenegger yesterday launched www.MyIdea4CA.com, a Web site for Twitter users to share their ideas for moving California forward. Ideas can be submitted to the Web site through a Twitter account with the hashtag #myidea4ca.
He issued this statement very late last night.
Maria and I are immensely saddened by the passing of Uncle Teddy. He was known to the world as the Lion of the Senate, a champion of social justice, and a political icon. Most importantly, he was the rock of our family: a loving husband, father, brother and uncle. He was a man of great faith and character.
Teddy inspired our country through his dedication to health care reform, his commitment to social justice, and his devotion to a life of public service.
I have personally benefitted and grown from his experience and advice, and I know countless others have as well.
Teddy taught us all that public service isn’t a hobby or even an occupation, but a way of life and his legacy will live on.
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up about $37 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
President Barack Obama’s rumored vacation round of golf with Tiger Woods may not occur after all. It seems the duffer pol had a slight mishap on the second hole in Martha’s Vineyard.
** Late Night Update — NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CAMELOT ENDS, AGAIN: THE PASSING OF SENATOR TED KENNEDY.
** FRAMING/UNFRAMING: OF POLLS AND SPIN … FROM THE NOTEBOOK. A quiet summer day, so something from the notebook, something illustrative. If not actually important with regard to the outcome of a California race. Or “race.”
Yesterday came news of two new polls showing former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown with a huge advantage over his struggling rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Which is no surprise here, since as you know I barely cover this alleged contest.
One, a statewide poll by Moore Methods, a Sacramento-based firm, shows Brown leading Newsom, 49% to 29%. The Moore poll in late June, after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa withdrew, had Brown up, 46-26.
A second poll was even worse for Newsom, possibly a swift campaign-ender. That poll by San Francisco pollster David Binder, has Brown way ahead of Newsom, too. In San Francisco.
In the city where Newsom is the mayor, it’s Brown 51%, Newsom 34%. A similar poll helped trigger Villaraigosa’s withdrawal, when Brown was only five points behind the LA mayor in LA (with Newsom a very distant third).
As the San Francisco Chronicle, which is generally a big Newsom cheerleader, put it: “The numbers in the Binder poll also show Brown ahead of Newsom for every age bracket over 30 and in every San Francisco supervisorial district except the Marina, which Newsom represented on the board before being elected mayor in 2003.”
Interestingly, Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci presented something very different on August 13th. That’s when a poll for the Daily Kos showed Brown as the only Democrat leading all the Republican candidates, with Newsom in no better than a tie with any of them. And, quite unlike Brown, having a net negative favorability rating among all California voters.
But the poll had a huge undecided, and showed Brown leading Newsom, 29% to 20%.Needless to say, Newsom strategist Garry South leaped on this as purported evidence of a big surge by Newsom. Despite the fact that the recent news about Newsom was mostly negative, and there’d been no negative news about Brown, who keeps getting favorable publicity for his work as California’s attorney general.
Wrote Marinucci: “San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is gaining ground on State attorney general Jerry Brown in the 2010 California governor’s race, according to a new poll from non-partisan Research 2000 which calls the Democratic contest “anyone’s game.”
“The poll commissioned by the Daily Kos showed that Brown leads Newsom by just 9 points, 29-20 — a gap that has been cut in half since a J. Moore Methods poll in late June showed Brown with a 20 point lead over the San Francisco mayor.”
Unlike Marinucci, who cited Moore’s poll as the basis for her frame that Newsom had gained a lot of ground in the Democratic primary, I contacted Jim Moore.
Moore, who’s been around a long time and talks to all the pollsters, told me that he hadn’t seen or heard of any numbers like the Kos poll. He said that the difference between the Kos poll and his poll was not on account of Newsom gaining ground, but because “sampling error” in the Kos poll.
The poll for Daily Kos was done by Research 2000, which had apparently not previously conducted a California poll. Later, others pointed out that the poll significantly under-sampled older voters.
I’ve known Carla Marinucci so long that I can’t remember when we first met. Garry South I met in 1992 or 1993, not long after he moved to California and worked for LA mayoral candidate Mike Woo as his press secretary. Later, I got to know him quite well when he went to work for then state Controller (and future Governor) Gray Davis, whom I’ve known for around 30 years.
Clearly, Carla made the obvious error of falsely comparing apples and oranges. You don’t take a poll new to California, with unknown methodology, and compare its numbers with another poll and jump to the conclusion that it shows a change in the dynamic. Even if that’s what Garry wants you to do.
Garry has long been a very influential source for Carla. Way back in the distant past, in this case, 2003, I was writing in the LA Weekly that Arnold Schwarzenegger intended to run for governor of California in the recall election and would do so if he could work various things through, which he was in the process of doing. That’s because I knew Schwarzenegger, and because that’s what I was gathering, both from him and from other information. Incidentally, Schwarzenegger’s statements were pretty consistent on this. But everyone else was reporting that he would definitely not run. That’s because their sources, who are political consultants like Garry, told them that.
Garry, who believed that he had frightened Schwarzenegger off, told me on the record when I caught up with him on the phone in a noisy restaurant that Schwarzenegger would definitely not run. Which I quoted. He told Carla and everyone else that, too.
I finally told three reporters that they really should get off the very shaky limb of reporting that Schwarzenegger wouldn’t run. Carla was one of those reporters. (The others were at the Sacramento Bee and San Jose Mercury-News.) But she wouldn’t alter her coverage that Schwarzenegger wasn’t running, because that’s what she was getting from her sourcing. So it was an amusing moment at Schwarzenegger’s Tonight Show taping at the Burbank Studio on August 6th, 2003, when, sitting next to Carla, I turned to her just before the segment began and reminded her that I’d advised her against reporting that Schwarzenegger wouldn’t run for governor.
President Barack Obama took a break from his vacation this morning to reappoint Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke.
** FEDERAL RESERVE LOSES ITS BID TO BLOCK DISCLOSURE OF EMERGENCY LOAN RECIPIENTS. Just as President Barack Obama has reappointed Ben Bernanke (first appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006) as head of the Federal Reserve, comes word that a federal judge in New York has ordered the Fed to disclose the recipients of massive emergency loans used to reinflate the US financial system. Bernanke has presided over the greatest expansion of Fed power in its history.
Not only have the recipient firms not been disclosed, the full scale of Fed lending has not been disclosed, either.
The Fed also refuses to submit to audits by the Government Accounting Office, and a House bill may be brought up next month to compel it to do so.
Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled against the central bank yesterday, rejecting the argument that loan records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions.
The Fed has refused to name the financial firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, most put in place during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued on Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.
“The Federal Reserve has to be accountable for the decisions that it makes,” said U.S. Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, after Preska’s ruling. “It’s one thing to say that the Federal Reserve is an independent institution. It’s another thing to say that it can keep us all in the dark.”
The judge said the central bank “improperly withheld agency records” by “conducting an inadequate search” after Bloomberg News reporters filed a request under the information act. She gave the Fed five days to turn over documents it told the reporters it located, including 231 pages of reports, and said it must look for more at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which runs most of the loan programs.
The central bank “essentially speculates on how a borrower might enter a downward spiral of financial instability if its participation in the Federal Reserve lending programs were to be disclosed,” Preska wrote. “Conjecture, without evidence of imminent harm, simply fails to meet the Board’s burden” of proof.
David Skidmore, a Fed spokesman who said the board’s staff was reviewing the 47-page ruling, declined to comment on whether the central bank would appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings.
He also took a break from his vacation, early this morning, to re-appoint Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Obama praised Bernanke for “calm and wisdom” in helping avert a near-meltdown of the financial system.
Preliminary results in the Afghanistan presidential election are expected later today.
With 10% of the vote counted, President Hamid Karzai holds a slight lead over former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, 41% to 39%. A 50%-plus one vote is needed to avert a run-off in October.
Back in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden hosts a conference call with Tribal leaders on the economic recovery act.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours a school in Fresno this morning and discusses his move to brin California into compliance with federal guidelines to compete for the Obama Administration’s Race To the Top education grants.
He and First Lady Maria Shriver also announced the 2009 inductees to the California Hall of Fame in an early morning statement.
Schwarzenegger tours Jefferson Elementary School and delivers remarks in the school library at 10 AM.
On July 24th, President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan outlined federal requirements for states to compete for the largest pool of discretionary funding for education reform in U.S. history, $4.35 billon. California is ineligible to compete in the program due to state law de-linking teacher evaluation from student performance.
Last week, Schwarzenegger called a special session of the Legislature and announced a legislative package to ensure that California meets the Obama Administration’s eligibility requirements.
Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver this morning announced the 2009 inductees to the California Hall of Fame. They are: entertainer Carol Burnett, former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, Governor and U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, decathlete and philanthropist Rafer Johnson, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, philanthropist and peace activist Joan Kroc, film-maker George Lucas, football commentator John Madden, gay rights advocate and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, artist Fritz Scholder, author Danielle Steel, fitness and bodybuilding pioneer Joe Weider, and Air Force test pilot General Chuck Yeager.
The inductees will be honored at a ceremony at the California Museum in Sacramento on December 1st.
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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.
Quentin Tarantino had his biggest domestic box office opening ever this past weekend with InglouriousBasterds, his re-write of World War II. Now we’ll see if it has legs.
** 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 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.
This is up about $40 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
The fraud allegations are coming fast and furious in the aftermath of last Thursday’s Afghanistan presidential election. Preliminary results, expected on the weekend, have been delayed till at least Tuesday.
** QUICK HITS.I can tell you the books that President Barack Obama is supposedly reading on his vacation. They’re all quite serious. As are those book lists issued by all politicians, including some I am quite certain barely read. Now, when I relax, I don’t tend to read really serious books. And neither do you … Yes, I know about the polls showing Jerry Brown with big leads over Gavin Newsom in a Democratic gubernatorial primary, not only statewide in California but also in San Francisco, the city which Newsom serves as mayor. (He’s currently out of town again for three days, this time visiting Mexico.) Readers know my view of this “race.” I’ll be explaining, from past notebook material, some bad framing/spinning of polls that has gone on lately, which appeared to benefit Newsom, who was actually in the same place he is now. …
** U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER TO APPOINT SPECIAL PROSECUTOR ON SELECTED TORTURE CASES.Attorney General Eric Holder will reportedly appoint a special prosecutor to look into a dozen potential instances of violation by CIA officers and contractors of the nation’s anti-torture laws. This will not be a wide-ranging inquiry.
Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.
Durham’s mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.
The attorney general selected Durham in part because the longtime prosecutor is familiar with the CIA and its past interrogation regime. For nearly two years, Durham has been probing whether laws against obstruction or false statements were violated in connection with the 2005 destruction of CIA videotapes. The tapes allegedly depicted brutal scenes including waterboarding of some of the agency’s high value detainees. That inquiry is proceeding before a grand jury in Alexandria, although lawyers following the investigation have cast doubt on whether it will result in any criminal charges.
** ANOTHER DELAY ON CALIFORNIA’S PRISON REFORM LEGISLATION. The state Assembly was to have followed the state Senate’s lead late last week to pass legislation needed to reduce prison inmate rolls by 27,000. This is a key part of the latest rickety state budget, amounting to some $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion.
But Assembly Democrats could not muster enough votes, even on a simple majority vote basis, deep into Thursday night. They didn’t try again on Friday, nor over the weekend, waiting for Monday to take up the bill again.
But just before noon, Speaker Karen Bass signaled another delay, issuing this statement: “Work is moving forward on a revised plan to increase public safety, improve the effectiveness of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and reduce state budget costs. There were a number of calls and meetings throughout the weekend with various stakeholders, including law enforcement. Those conversations are continuing. When we arrive at a responsible plan that can earn the support of the majority of the Assembly and makes sense to the people of California, we will take that bill up on the Assembly floor. We will provide advance notice when a vote on the public safety package is to be scheduled.”
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “LOVE AMONG THE RUINS.” Mad Men is a show about themes and characters. Not so much about plot. The action tends to be slow and usually subtle, with pieces moving into place over time. Recapping the show can make it sound like a soap opera, and it’s much more than that. Yet in all reviews of Mad Men, there will be substantial spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, you’ve been warned.
This third season’s theme of change kicked into gear in “Love Among the Ruins.” But that change is tempered by confusion, and ever shadowed by the overhang of the past.
The episode, named after a Robert Browning poem about the ruins of a once great capital and the need to choose love over passing glory, starts off with a big dose of the coming ’60s sexual energy and closes with a reverie about finding peace through touching the earth, followed by a brief coda of mentor Don Draper and protege Peggy Olsen working together.
In between, we learned more about the characters and the changes taking place in this pivotal year. And tapped into very contemporary themes about corporate disarray and aging parents. … From my new column.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A slow week on tap in presidential politics with President Barack Obama on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. And ostensibly a more eventful week in California politics, with the state Legislature back in session. However, despite promises, the Legislature is having real trouble getting major things done, even long-promised things requiring only a majority vote.
Obama, as has been discussed here, is suffering a bit from over-exposure. Well, more than a bit.
This week, the White House promises little news from the president. His job approval rating, despite illusory crowing to the contrary from the right, huffing and puffing from the center, and hand-wringing hysteria from the left, is in the mid-50s.
But it’s time for a time-out for Obama to reclaim the upper hand on health care and economic messaging. And a number of things are shaking out on the geopolitical front.
Chief among them, of course, is the Afghan presidential election. Which was a success in that it actually happened. It’s clear now that, prior to various moves of the past few months, including the Marine offensive Obama ordered in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban would have thoroughly disrupted the vote. As it was, they depressed turnout through intimidation.
Now the struggle to define the election’s results is underway in earnest, even as those results are delayed. Allegations of elections fraud against the president inherited by Obama, George W. Bush favorite Hamid Karzai, are rampant.
Preliminary results were expected on the weekend, then delayed till Tuesday. We’ll see when some numbers actually come out. Karzai’s principal challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a former Afghan foreign minister who was a close associate of assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in the war against the Soviets and later in the struggle against the Taliban — while Karzai served as a fundraiser outside the country — is gaining a lot of traction with his charges in the election’s aftermath.
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens this week in California politics. The Legislature is in session till September 11th (and perhaps after to consider a proposal from a state tax reform commission, assuming there is one).
Schwarzenegger’s plan to reduce crowding conditions, and the state budget by more than a billion dollars per year, by reducing the prison inmate population by 27,000 was brought up last Thursday in the Legislature.
It had to pass on a Democrats-only vote, as conservative Republicans do not want to be on record supporting such cuts.
The bill passed the state Senate, 21 to 19, but stalled in the state Assembly. Even though Democrats have an overwhelming majority and mostly safe seats, not enough votes were mustered.
The Assembly will take up the bill again this week, supposedly on Monday. Without it, the state’s rickety budget is again very out of balance. These sorts of reforms have been called for by legislative Democrats for years. But quite a few are balking when it can actually happen, including three Democratic Assembly members who are running for state attorney general and don’t want to be attacked as “soft on crime.”
They shouldn’t worry about that, because it’s unlikely they can beat the only major woman running, San Francisco District Attorney and major Obama backer Kamala Harris.
The irony is that legislative Democrats have consistently voted for various tax increases, which they knew could not be passed, as well as a single-payer health care system, naturally without getting around to voting for taxes to fund it. But when they have a chance to actually get something enacted, it’s not happening, at least so far.
Which will it be? Easy symbolic politics, with the fallback of knowing there are no consequences as it’s not real, or actual politics?
We’ll also see how things go on water policy, supposedly a major area of focus in the remaining days of this year’s rendition of the Legislature. And on public pensions, the obligations for which appear to be wildly out of whack with their current funding.
In the California governor’s race, unannounced frontrunner Jerry Brown, the former-governor-turned-attorney general, is working away at his job, as is Republican hopeful Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner. Ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican presidential campaign chair, is touring local Republican groups. And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who’s trying to run for the Democratic nomination, is out of state again, this time in Mexico for the first three days of the week on a trip funded by Pacific Gas & Electric, the big utility company.
The Obamas are off to Martha’s Vineyard, where they arrived yesterday, for the president’s first vacation since his inauguration.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama, along with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is in Martha’s Vineyard this week on vacation.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
Obama will receive his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the morning.
Obama is playing tennis in the morning and golf in the afternoon. He’ll also be doing some reading.
In lieu of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’s daily White House briefing, Bill Burton holds the daily briefing at the Oak Bluffs School in Martha’s Vineyard at 7:30 AM Pacific.
In the afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden delivers closing remarks at the White House Conference on Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, ever hopeful of action on water policy in the midst of a drought, delivers remarks this morning at the Star Bend Setback Levee groundbreaking ceremony in Yuba City, a rural community about 40 miles north of Sacramento.
Schwarzenegger expedited funding for this local and regional flood control project last year. Prior to his getting involved, virtually nothing had been done to shore up the state’s aging levee system in decades.
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my August 20th column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up over $40 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
In Afghanistan, the top challenger to President Hamid Karzai, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister, says that Thursday’s vote and its aftermath have been marked by many irregularities.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama goes to Martha’s Vineyard today for a week-long vacation.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama receives his daily intelligence briefing early in the morning at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Maryland countryside.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama, accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia, departs Camp David on Marine One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 10:40 AM Pacific, the Obamas arrive at Andrews Air Force Base.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, now aboard Air Force One, they depart Andrews Air Force Base en route to Martha’s Vineyard.
At 11:55 AM Pacific, the Obamas arrive at Martha’s Vineyard.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama dissects “myths” about health care reform and discusses the “moral imperative” for action.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama has no scheduled public events today.
Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Malia and Sasha are at the presidential retreat at Camp David today. The Obamas then go to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Sunday.
Obama will receive his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the morning.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events this weekend.
Schwarzenegger’s plan to reduce crowding conditions, and the state budget by more than a billion dollars per year, by reducing the prison inmate population by 27,000 was brought up Thursday in the Legislature.
It had to pass on a Democrats-only vote, as conservative Republicans do not want to be on record supporting such cuts.
The bill passed the state Senate, 21 to 19, but stalled in the state Assembly. Even though Democrats have an overwhelming majority and mostly safe seats, not enough votes were mustered.
The Assembly will take up the bill again on Monday, without which the state’s rickety budget is again very out of balance. These sorts of reforms have been called for by legislative Democrats for years. But quite a few are balking when it can actually happen, including three Democratic Assembly members who are running for state attorney general and don’t want to be attacked as “soft on crime.”
They shouldn’t worry about that, because it’s unlikely they can beat the only major woman running, San Francisco District Attorney and major Obama backer Kamala Harris.
Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah are claiming victory in Thursday’s presidential election in war-torn Afghanistan. Preliminary results aren’t expected now till Tuesday.
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my new column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed on Friday at $73.89 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $40 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Before heading to Camp David, President Barack Obama called yesterday’s election in Afghanistan a “step forward.”
** GARAMENDI IN STRONG POSITION FOR STRETCH DRIVE IN S.F. BAY AREA CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION. California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi is in a strong frontrunner position for the stretch drive into the September 1st special election to replace East Bay Congresswoman-turned-US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher.
Garamendi, a former US deputy interior secretary, two-time state insurance commissioner, and former state Senate majority leader, has a lead in all polls that I’m aware of, has the most money raised and most cash on hand in the multi-candidate field, and has most of the biggest endorsements, including those of the California Labor Federation, the Sierra Club, the California Teachers Association, and various central labor councils, community groups, and local elected officials.
Garamendi has also been endorsed by former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore.
Since stepping away from the Democratic gubernatorial primary, Garamendi has been the frontrunner in the congressional special election and has done nothing other than to bolster his position.
Winning the Democratic nomination on September 1st will be tantamount to election for Garamendi, though he will need to run against a Republican in a run-off since he is unlikely to break the 50% mark.
** U.S. ECONOMY LOOKING BETTER, CALIFORNIA UNEMPLOYMENT UP AGAIN. US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said today that he thinks the economy is close to returning to recovery. But California’s unemployment rate went up again last month, to 11.9%, over 2% higher than the national rate.
Speaking at an annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wy., Bernanke echoed a statement made by the Fed earlier this month, saying that “economic activity appears to be leveling out, both in the United States and abroad.”
Bernanke went a step further though, indicating that “prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good.”
But the central bank chief warned that problems remain in financial markets around the globe, and that with banks facing “substantial” additional losses ahead, businesses and consumers will continue to have trouble accessing credit.
“Because of these and other factors, the economic recovery is likely to be relatively slow at first, with unemployment declining only gradually from high levels,” he cautioned.
The New York stock market rallied today on Bernanke’s remarks, with the Dow Jones average up 156 points to 9506. You will recall that many worried that 7000 might not be a floor only a few months ago.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had this to say about California’s unemployment rate: “These numbers indicate that we must do everything possible to get California moving forward again. We must fix what is broken in this state – whether it is our water infrastructure, our prisons and pensions systems or updating our tax structure – these are the critical issues that need to be addressed to rebuild the Golden State. These reforms along with our on-going efforts to jump-start the economy and put Californians back to work will ensure that our state is on a direct path to recovery.”
** HEADING OFF TO VACATION, OBAMA SAYS HE’S SATISFIED WITH AFGHAN ELECTION. Just before flying over to Camp Davis for the first phase of his August vacation, President Barack Obama stood on the White House South Lawn and said he felt the election yesterday in Afghanistan went well. Some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were deployed to prevent the Taliban from carrying out their threat to stop the election.
As he headed off to Camp David for the weekend, the president stopped to deliver a statement hailing the successful conclusion of the balloting as a victory for the USA and its Afghan allies. “We knew the Taliban would try to derail this election,” Obama said.
The president, who has made Afghanistan the main front in the USA’s war on terror, hailed “the record number of women” who ran for office in a country where the Taliban once banned women from obtaining an education.
But the president reserved his highest praise for the voters. “I was struck by their courage in the face of intimidation and their dignity in the face of disorder,” the he said.
There may be more Taliban violence to come, Obama warned. And his administration still doesn’t know with whom it will be working to quell that violence. Obama noted that the USA — a close ally of incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai during the Bush administration — did not back him or any other candidate.
Martha’s Vineyard is getting ready to welcome the Obamas for a week-long vacation on Sunday.
UPDATE: Obama will deliver remarks on the presidential election in Afghanistan at 10:20 AM Pacific on the South Lawn of the White House, and depart for Camp David on Marine One at 10:30 AM Pacific.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama heads to the presidential retreat at Camp David today as his summer vacation begins. The Obamas then go to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Sunday.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 7:30 AM Pacific, he meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 8 AM Pacific, Obama meets with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in the Oval Office. Daschle, a top advisor in the Obama campaign, was to have been his health and human services secretary.
At 9:50 AM Pacific, Obama delivers brief remarks on the recent elections in Afghanistan on the South Lawn of the White House.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route to Camp David.
** OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T. The Obama Administration should be sighing with a sense of relief after the presidential election in Afghanistan. However, for those with nascent/encroaching nation-building fantasies, what happened with the Afghan election should be thoroughly disabusing.
The Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised spectacular attacks demonstrating a strong military capability. But that’s to be expected, as some 300,000 US, NATO, and Afghan troops were fanned out across the county to prevent just that. Better to keep our eyes on the real world goals in Afghanistan: Denying it as a base to Al Qaeda, and moving on in the mission of dampening Islamic opposition to America.
While we slid by in this election, it would be a huge mistake to imagine that we are any closer to realizing persistent nation-building fantasies in Afghanistan. It’s nowhere near a 20th century democracy, much less a 21st century democracy. Perhaps a 19th century democracy. But for the powerful forces ever insistent on dragging it back into the Dark Ages. … From my new column.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has private discussions today in and around the Capitol.
Schwarzenegger’s plan to reduce crowding conditions, and the state budget by more than a billion dollars per year, by reducing the prison inmate population by 27,000 was brought up yesterday in the Legislature.
It had to pass on a Democrats-only vote, as conservative Republicans do not want to be on record supporting such cuts.
The bill passed the state Senate, 21 to 19, but stalled late last night in the state Assembly. Even though Democrats have an overwhelming majority and mostly safe seats, not enough votes were mustered.
BBC coverage as Jamaica’s Usain Bolt did it again yesterday at the world championships in Berlin, shattering his own world record in the 200-meter dash with the astounding time of 19.19 seconds, just four days after shattering his own world record in the 100-meter dash with a 9.58.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** 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 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.
This is up about $40 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
The Taliban failed today to seriously disrupt the presidential election in Afghanistan. Turnout appears to have been low in the south, however, a longtime Taliban hotbed, where threats against voters with the purple ink signifier on a finger were rampant. Preliminary results won’t be available till the weekend.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA AND THE AFGHAN ELECTION: WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT DOESN’T.
** QUICK HITS. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said today that there will be no universal health care reform without a “public option.” … For his part, President Barack Obama pushed back against the idea that the option won’t be included in the package. Bloggers have been going nuts over this issue, right and left. This of course may mean that Democrats will have to pass the bill on their own, as Republicans seems fine with the current health care system. Will 51 out of 60 US Senate Democrats buck the insurance industry on an optional program? Or do the industry have such little faith in the efficacy of its offerings? … In case you were wondering about the dysfunction of the California Legislature, prison reform barely passed the state Senate on a 21-19 vote. That includes an Arnold Schwarzenegger-backed reduction of 27,000 prison inmates (through alternate means of incarceration/probation for low-risk folks) and a sentencing commission to explore sentencing and parole guidelines around the state. A federal judicial panel has already ordered a much more stringent reduction of 43,000 prison inmates. … Incidentally, one of the four state Senate Democratic votes against prison reform came from the gubernatorial campaign chairman for erstwhile new generation leader San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, noted showhorse Alex Padilla of LA, who is bringing no one with him in Newsom’s hopeless fight against Jerry Brown. Padilla has a safe district. … And if anyone wondered which is the most dysfunctional house of a dysfunctional California Legislature, the prize again goes to the state Assembly. Where in late afternoon, Democrats with a 50-30 majority are unable to muster a bare minimum of 41 votes for the prison reform. … Which, mind you, is over $1.2 billion of the current rickety budget solution. … The Assembly, mind you, sent Schwarzenegger a budget that was over a billion dollars underwater (not counting the prison reform it’s currently balking at) and then screamed bloody murder when he exercised his line item veto authority. … Really amazing stuff. And now back to serious politics, finishing my column on Obama and Afghanistan.
** SCHWARZENEGGER PUSHES ON EDUCATION AND PRISON REFORM. At a Capitol press conference this morning, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed for legislation to enable California to participate in the Obama Administration’s “Race To the Top” education reform program, a series of competitive grants amounting to $4.35 billion nationwide.
California is currently ineligible because of state legislation actively de-linking student performance from teacher evaluation.
As President Barack Obama said announcing the program earlier in the year: “Success should be judged by results, and data is a powerful tool to determine results. That’s why any state that makes it unlawful to link student progress to teacher evaluations will have to change its ways if it wants to compete for a grant.”
Schwarzenegger, who called a special legislative session on the issue, was joined by civil rights and education reform leaders pushing for the change.
He was also asked about legislation being debated today — which is key to the rickety latest version of the state budget — to allow reduction of the prison inmate population by 27,000. He does of course support it, and supports a sentencing commission, which will look sentencing and parole practices around the state. This will have a clear ongoing fiscal impact, which one reporter seemed not to grasp.
Asked about complaints that some legislators are supposedly just seeing the legislation now — this is legislation which was thoroughly discussed during the latest budget go-round, and was not passed then only because Republicans didn’t want to specifically vote for it — Schwarzenegger noted that this is always the excuse used when confronted with issues which have festered for decades.
NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, a California native, showed off his racing car to President Barack Obama yesterday on the South Portico of the White House.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
He has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 7:30 AM Pacific, he meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10:10 AM Pacific, Obama appears on conservative Michael Smerconish’s radio program, broadcasting today from the White House.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama participates in the Organizing for America National Health Care Forum at Democratic National Committee Headquarters, an online and conference call event. The forum is scheduled to last for 90 minutes.
Vice President Joe Biden is in Illinois today.
At mid-day, Biden leads a roundtable discussion with health care professionals on health insurance reform in Chicago. In the evening, he headlines a fundraiser for Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, also in Chicago.
Obama and Biden are also monitoring today’s presidential election in Afghanistan. The polls have closed in Afghanistan, which is GMT plus 4.5, or eleven-and-a-half hours ahead of Pacific time.
New US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, a retired Army three-star general, visited Mazar-e-Sharif on election eve in this Al Jazeera footage. Mazar, once a key Soviet base, was the last major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban, and the first to be retaken by the Afghan Northern Alliance and US Special Forces after 9/11.
It’s not so much the election itself that is in question but whether the Taliban can make good on their threat to thoroughly disrupt the election.
The Taliban launched some attacks in the run-up to the election around the country, but they were terrorist strikes only, nothing in main force, and caused fewer than 20 fatalities.
I’m writing a column about this, but at the moment it seems clear that the Taliban failed to disrupt the election. Their units apparently did not dare to appear in main force and voting took place throughout the country. Turnout figures are not yet available, and preliminary results reportedly won’t be known till the weekend, but turnout seems to have been high in the much more peaceful north and lower in the south, where the Taliban have held sway prior to the recent US Marine offensive there.
President Hamid Karzai is attempting to avoid a run-off, but his support is greater in the south than it is in the north, where he is challenged by Abdullah Abdullah, the former Afghan foreign minister and a medical doctor. Abdullah was the longtime spokesman for the Northern Alliance, fighting alongside Ahmad Shah Mahsoud, in the war against the Soviet Union and against the Taliban.
Mahsoud, the Afghan commander most feared by the Soviets, was assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives masquerading as journalists two days before the 9/11 attacks. The assassination was designed to remove the strongest potential US ally in Afghanistan in the likely event that America came after the Taliban after 9/11.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a couple of major items on his plate today in the Capitol.
At 10 AM, he holds a press conference to announce a solution to a major problem, the fact that recent moves in California have made the state ineligible to compete for billions in education challenge funding available from the Obama Administration.
In other action, Schwarzenegger’s plan to reduce crowding conditions, and the state budget by more than a billion dollars per year, by reducing the prison inmate by 27,000 will be brought up today in the Legislature.
It will have to pass on a Democrats-only vote, as conservative Republicans do not want to be on record supporting such cuts.
The right-wing is already complaining about a provision for a sentencing commission to review sentencing and parole practices around the state.
** MAD MEN: “OUT OF TOWN” … SEASON 3 OPENER SATISFYING NOT SCINTILLATING. … From my new column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS: THE ‘60S ADVERTISING DRAMA IS A TIME TUNNEL TO THE PRESENT.The much acclaimed, if not so much watched, Mad Men makes a welcome return for its third season Sunday night. I’ve found the series, now the flagship show on AMC, a channel once best known as a reliable source for late night viewings of Commando, to be very compelling from the beginning, if not exactly action-packed.
There are a number of ways to view Mad Men. For my own part, I can take it as a period piece, a sort of time capsule of the early ’60s, at once relatively close yet far enough away to be intriguing for its unfamiliarity. Or as an evocation of style, with the sort of glamour and cool associated with JFK and the early Bond films, in this case a New York variant including chain smoking, constant drinking, and sexual play continually tinged with sexual harassment.
It’s a character study, as well, for the surface glitter of the persuader class and those who attend them masks confusion and lack of identity. That could also make it a cautionary tale, albeit one set during the height of the post-war expansion of American affluence.
Which makes it, in turn, a meditation on the American Dream. Not entirely unlike The Sopranos, on which Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner served as an Emmy-winning writer and producer. Well, except for the fact that Mad Men protagonist/anti-hero Don Draper is a charismatic and enigmatic New York ad man, not a perpetually depressed, poetically crude New Jersey mob boss. … From my August 14th essay.
** SOTOMAYOR, OBAMA, AND THE LOOMING REPUBLICAN RACE PROBLEM.Is it a long-term problem for Republicans that they are largely diametrically opposed to the first black president and first brown Supreme Court justice? You bet.
What struck me while watching yesterday’s White House reception for President Barack Obama’s first apppointee to the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is how far out of synch with the future of America that the Republican Party is positioning itself. Lily white is hardly the color of America’s future, but that is how the Republican Party has chosen to play it (notwithstanding the hapless Michael Steele at the Republican National Committee).
First, the party brushed aside the post-partisan offerings of Obama, keeping to the same hyper-partisan hostilities of the 2008 election. Then it turned on Sotomayor, who was actually appointed a federal judge by none other than the first President Bush, branding her a “racist,” pounding away for months on the theme that she’s a dangerous radical. … From my August 13th column.
** WHEN SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE ADVOCATES TRY TO REVERSE CALIFORNIA’S PROP 8? When should Californians try to reverse last November’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage? That’s the question on tap this week, and for awhile going forward.
While Barack Obama won a 61% to 37% victory in California last November, the Prop 8 amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage also passed, 52% to 48%. It was a striking rebuke to pro-gay rights forces, who had just won the right in a notable California Supreme Court decision, and seemed poised to hold it in the election.
This week, a few organizations championing same-sex marriage will announce their opinions as to to whether to try to reverse Prop 8 in 2010 or 2012. In order to place an initiative on the November 2010 ballot, initiative language must be submitted to California Attorney General Jerry Brown by September 25th. Equality California and Courage Campaign will announce their decisions this week. This won’t end the process, of course, as key funding decisions are yet to be made.
So, the question for human rights advocates is, when best to try again, the seeming slam dunk of 2008 having been screwed up in various ways.
California’s same-sex marriage advocates have heard from their pollsters, they’ve heard from selected political consultants, and they’ve heard from activists. Now they need to decide whether to try to reverse Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment adopted last November, in 2010 or in 2012.
The pollsters said that 2012 would be a better option. The political consultants said that 2012 would be a better option. The activist leaders prefer 2010.
If there is to be an initiative to bring back the right to same-sex marriage — established by the California Supreme Court last year and overturned by California voters last November — ballot language is due by September 25th. … From my August 11th 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 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.
This is up about $39 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
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