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.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.” …
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.
The event will be webcast live at 9:30 AM on www.gov.ca.gov.
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.” …
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “LOVE AMONG THE RUINS.” … From my August 24th column.
** 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: “OUT OF TOWN” … SEASON 3 OPENER SATISFYING NOT SCINTILLATING. … From my August 18th 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. … From my August 13th column.
** WHEN SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE ADVOCATES TRY TO REVERSE CALIFORNIA’S PROP 8? … From my August 11th column.
** OBAMA’S CAIRO ADDRESS: TWO MONTHS ON. … From my August 5th column.
** IS OBAMA GETTING OVEREXPOSED? … From my July 28th column.
** ANOTHER ‘60S ANNIVERSARY: THE UR-ACTION BLOCKBUSTER GOLDFINGER. … From my July 21st 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.
You can listen to my recent video webchat with Schwarzenegger here.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $70 per barrel.
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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
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| Comments (40) |
Barack really delivered with his eulogy of Sen. Kennedy. I like the tone of it very much.
Obama did a good job on that eulogy.
I can’t believe that some people won’t evacuate from a giant fire.
Were the firefighters killed by the fire or by a driving accident?
The California legislature is a joke.
BB: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.
Schwarzeneger’s on time!
Some idiots can’t see the forest for the trees.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:22 am
I can’t believe that some people won’t evacuate from a giant fire.
What forest?
Hey, the post showed right away again!
I loved it! Not too political, exactly right. Plenty on the person.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:18 am
Barack really delivered with his eulogy of Sen. Kennedy. I like the tone of it very much.
It does look that way.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:27 am
The California legislature is a joke.
It was quite good, though not one of his great speeches.
> Jack Aubrey says:
August 31, 2009 at 11:16 am (Edit)
I loved it! Not too political, exactly right. Plenty on the person.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:18 am
Barack really delivered with his eulogy of Sen. Kennedy. I like the tone of it very much.
It’s a learning software system …
> Jack Aubrey says:
August 31, 2009 at 11:15 am (Edit)
Hey, the post showed right away again!
The event was maybe 15 miles from his home in LA.
> Ann says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:41 am (Edit)
Schwarzeneger’s on time!
A driving accident, that would not have otherwise occurred on a steep mountain slope.
> Jonas Blane says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:25 am (Edit)
Were the firefighters killed by the fire or by a driving accident?
It’s the persistence of hope over fact.
Or maybe just plain stubbornness.
> Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:22 am (Edit)
I can’t believe that some people won’t evacuate from a giant fire.
So much for his vacation …
> Jonas Blane says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:21 am (Edit)
Obama did a good job on that eulogy.
The Mount Wilson Observatory complex is threatened by the LA wildfire. In addition to being one of the most prolific and significant astronomical installations in the world, it is a part of LA history. I do hope it survives.
Time for Numbskull Newsom to toss in his chips.
“In California politics, the decidedly undramatic 2010 governor’s race continues in its well-defined fashion.”
Arnold sounds pretty concerned about those fires.
He should be. It’s pretty damn bad in SoCal.
I didn’t see the entire speech Saturday because I slept in.
I knew Bill would have it here.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:18 am
Barack really delivered with his eulogy of Sen. Kennedy. I like the tone of it very much.
The government there wasn’t very legitimate before this. How will this get resolved?
Bill: 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.
I could see why the Admininstration desired a run-off if democracy promotion were central to our mission there. The election would give the Administration cover for a continued presence. But is that sort of nation-building our purpose, or are the Administration’s goals more security-oriented? Or are we even clear on the goals?
George Will is calling for a pull-out. There’s going to be some strange left-meets-right on this thing.
Garamendi should get the Democratic nomination tomorrow before his easy run-off against some Republican. He deserves the seat in Congress. He has the best background, and he got out of JB’s way in the Governor’s race.
… 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. …
George Will calling for a pullout of US ground forces from Afghanistan is nothing short of precious. Too bad his credibility is at zero and going backwards.
Same for the baseball team he loves!
Yeah!
I’d be happy about it too if it wasn’t the team I’ve had a lifelong love affair with!
Will’s opposition means that some anti-neocon Reeps now see an opportunity to both nick Obama and bring some sanity to Republican foreign policy. Whether you like it or not*, Obama’s Afghanistan policy, not popular with his base the way Iraq was with Bush’s base, is in real trouble, and he soon may be, too. If you don’t believe me, ask LBJ.
* Sorry, couldn’t resist
Y’all don’t want to know what team I root for.
Let’s just say that there are two parts to every regular season, these days…rooting for the ‘home’ team…which takes us up to the dog days of August, more or less…and, then, cheering for everyone else against the Yankees…which, hopefully takes us up to the end of the regular season, and no further!
What new video today?
Obama’s new troop town hall and SoCal fires.
Afghanistan is hardly Vietnam.
> Clutch J says:
August 31, 2009 at 11:24 pm (Edit)
Will’s opposition means that some anti-neocon Reeps now see an opportunity to both nick Obama and bring some sanity to Republican foreign policy. Whether you like it or not*, Obama’s Afghanistan policy, not popular with his base the way Iraq was with Bush’s base, is in real trouble, and he soon may be, too. If you don’t believe me, ask LBJ.
* Sorry, couldn’t resist
Especially given the fact that he didn’t write this last year or the year before when things were much worse.
> Elizabeth Miller says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:07 pm (Edit)
George Will calling for a pullout of US ground forces from Afghanistan is nothing short of precious. Too bad his credibility is at zero and going backwards.
I think they want a run-off because there should be a run-off.
There is certainly a lack of clarity in the goals, at least publicly, that is …
> Clutch J says:
August 31, 2009 at 5:18 pm (Edit)
I could see why the Admininstration desired a run-off if democracy promotion were central to our mission there. The election would give the Administration cover for a continued presence. But is that sort of nation-building our purpose, or are the Administration’s goals more security-oriented? Or are we even clear on the goals?
George Will is calling for a pull-out. There’s going to be some strange left-meets-right on this thing.
I think there will be a run-off/power-sharing agreement.
> marcos leon says:
August 31, 2009 at 4:25 pm (Edit)
The government there wasn’t very legitimate before this. How will this get resolved?
Bill: 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.
Indeed.
> marcos leon says:
August 31, 2009 at 4:22 pm (Edit)
I didn’t see the entire speech Saturday because I slept in.
I knew Bill would have it here.
Capitol Boy says:
August 31, 2009 at 9:18 am
Barack really delivered with his eulogy of Sen. Kennedy. I like the tone of it very much.
They’ll save it.
> Brasky says:
August 31, 2009 at 1:04 pm (Edit)
The Mount Wilson Observatory complex is threatened by the LA wildfire. In addition to being one of the most prolific and significant astronomical installations in the world, it is a part of LA history. I do hope it survives.