A judge declared today that a one-time top aide to former Senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is in contempt of court for not turning over an alleged sex tape being sought by Edwards’ former mistress. She had Edwards’ child during his 2008 presidential campaign. The ex-aide had been portrayed as the child’s father.
** QUICK HITS. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia today, President Barack Obama honored seven CIA operatives killed in Afghanistan by a bomb-carrying Jordanian agent who was actually a jihadist. The event was closed to the media, but according to a White House transcript, Obama said: “To their colleagues and all who served with them — those here today, those still recovering, those watching around the world — I say: Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war, and to keep our country safe.” … In an interview recorded for Sunday’s This Week on ABC, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that the risk of a double-dip recession is very low and that the economy has begun “the process of healing.” … On her book tour today, California GOP gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman tossed cold water on the notion of an across-the-board tax cut. Which her super-rich Republican rival Steve Poizner sees as an opening in their primary fight. … After Whitman’s spokesperson said, in the wake of the candidate falsely claiming to have lived in California for 30 years, that Whitman feels like she’s been a Californian for 30 years, waggish California Democratic chairman John Burton suggested that the billionaire pay taxes for all those years, to help with the state budget deficit. …
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN CHAIRMAN JOINS THE NATIONAL TEA PARTY CONVENTION. California Republican Party chairman Ron Nehring is in Nashville, Tennessee today with the National Tea Party Convention.
Nehring, who long worked for famed DC-based anti-government lobbyist Grover Norquist, is teaching two seminars today at the far right convention on organizing and coalition-building techniques.
The convention is at the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.
** UPDATE: WHITMAN CHANGES HER TV AD, REMOVING HER FALSE CLAIM OF CALIFORNIA RESIDENCY. Meg Whitman today changed her ad, which hadn’t actually aired anywhere yesterday, to get rid of her false claim of having lived in California for 30 years.
WHITMAN YESTERDAY: “The state is in the worst shape that I’ve seen in the 30 years that I have lived in California.”
WHITMAN TODAY: “The state is in the worst shape that I’ve seen in the many years that I have lived in California.”
However many that may be.
** WHOOPS! HOW DID I MISS MEG WHITMAN’S FALSE CLAIM IN HER FIRST TV AD? Well, how did I miss the fact that Meg Whitman, the billionaire ex-eBay CEO running for the Republican nomination for governor of California, falsely claimed in her introductory TV ad to have lived in California for 30 years?
Frankly, I wasn’t paying that much attention to what she was saying when I saw the ad and wrote about it yesterday.
I was in the middle of something else, totally unrelated, at the time. It was only when California Democratic Party chairman John Burton put out a statement late yesterday pointing out Whitman’s false claim that I realized it.
Of course, I should have realized it from the text, reproduced below, not to mention watching the ad itself, which I did three times.
Whitman says she’s lived in California for 30 years. But unless she is older than she says she is, that’s simply impossible. Obviously.
She was born and raised in New York state, then went to college and graduate school on the East Coast. That’s nearly half her life there. Then when you add in the fact that we know she spent most of the 1990s working elsewhere, it’s clear that she’s lived in California for a lot closer to 20 than 30 years.
The reality is that Whitman went where her marketing executive career took her.
Which is something that is pretty hard to parody, if you think about it.
I scanned her script and noticed the same old catchphrases from her radio ads, my eyes gliding right over the obviously false claim about her California residency.
What I was really interested in, with the half of my brain I was using at the time, was how Whitman’s consultants tried to deal with the major problems they encountered with focus group participants last month. Their solution, as I mentioned yesterday, was to minimize her presence in her own spot, having her look away from the camera in the brief snippets she was shown speaking, and to try to jazz up totally generic footage that played during the great bulk of her narration.
It’s an interesting patchwork approach.
Republican Scott Brown was sworn in yesterday as a U.S. senator, taking the Massachusetts seat long held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy and, before him, the late President John F. Kennedy.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Virginia, and Maryland today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then attended a memorial service at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
At 9:10 AM Pacific, Obama meets with small business owners in Lanham, Maryland.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on job creation and small business initiatives in Lanham, Maryland.
At 11:20 AM Pacific, Obama meets with the 2009 Little League World Champions at the White House.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Obama, as you may have noticed, frequently does economy-oriented events when major financial statistics are released.
Today the unemployment numbers came out, and they were surprisingly good. Which is not the same as good.
Unemployment unexpectedly dipped from 10% to 9.7%.
This is the second week in a row of positive numbers. Last week we learned that the economy grew by a whopping 5.7% during the last quarter of 2009.
The recession is over, but employment continues to lag. Not that I put too much stock in the striking GDP number, though it’s obviously a positive sign. It’s inflated somewhat by government stimulus and by manufacturers having had to at last replace a drawdown in inventory.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq.
In Afghanistan, as I wrote a week ago, the trend is now clearly towards seeking a coalition government with major elements of the Taliban. Comments yesterday by General David Petraeus made this clear. This should, in the long run, relieve some of the pressure in Pakistan.
Which does not mean there’s not substantial fighting ahead. U.S. Marines are prepping for a major offensive in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, joined by British troops and a contingent of Afghan troops.
A suicide bomber on motorcycle blew up a bus packed with Shi’ite Muslim worshippers in Karachi, the main seaport and financial capital of Pakistan. A bomb then exploded at the hospital where the bus casualties were being treated.
And serious unrest continues in Pakistan, increasingly spreading to the nation’s largest city, its financial capital Karachi. Two attacks today, apparently carried out by Sunni against Shia, killed dozens.
In Iran, there has been no apparent progress on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s unspecific statement earlier in the week that his country is now prepared to ship its uranium abroad for further enrichment. Which is to say, it hasn’t gotten more specific, meaning that it may be the latest attempt to obfuscate and buy time for a rogue nuclear program.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and San Diego today.
At 10:15 AM, Schwarzenegger will hold a press conference to promote the extension and expansion of the $10,000 homebuyer tax credit to include the purchase of existing homes as well as new residences. This is part of his job promotion initiative.
The event will take place in a housing development in Chula Vista, which is in the San Diego area.
The event will be webcast live on www.gov.ca.gov.
** LOST IN LOST. … From my February 4th essay.
** SELLING MEG WHITMAN: GLITCHES EMERGE IN THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLAN TO ACQUIRE THE CALIFORNIA GOVERNORSHIP. What would Don Draper do?
The selling of Meg Whitman has been underway for more than a year, the billionaire ex-eBay CEO and public affairs novice assiduously promoting herself as a potential governor of of the nation’s largest state even as she dodges debates and substantive interviews. After making no public appearances in California in January, but venturing back East last week to launch her CEO memoir, “The Power of Many,” she’s appearing up and down the state this week to promote her book, if not to discuss the pressing issues of the state she would presume to govern.
Meanwhile, her eighth radio ad to date (featuring her campaign chair, former Governor Pete Wilson) blankets the state, as the others have for months. All is “on plan” in the selling of Meg Whitman. Or is it?
There’s just one thing. Television.
Well-informed sources tell me that Whitman and her panoply of high-paid consultants are having trouble coming up with a way to introduce the would-be governor on television to her hoped-for constituents.
In January, Whitman’s consultants presented 22 potential introductory TV ads to a focus group in Sacramento. The ads didn’t fly. The reaction to Whitman’s TV presentation was particularly problematic with women. … From my February 2nd column.
** WHAT A DIFFERENCE TWO MONTHS MAKES AS THE FATE OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY PLAYS OUT FAR FROM WASHINGTON. What a difference two months makes. Way back then, as it were, the staunchly resolute talk on Afghanistan was all about the big military surge just announced by President Barack Obama, with NATO leaders pledging to ante up lots of troops, too. (Even as actual national commitments were, well, lacking.) Now the talk coming out of Thursday’s big 70-nations conference in London on Afghanistan centers on talking with the Taliban, and on exit strategies.
While all the attention — in the hyperventilating aftermath of the Democrats’ eminently avoidable Massachusetts special election loss — was on Obama’s State of the Union address, an event of far greater relevance to the fate of his presidency played out not in Washington, but in London.
In Washington, there was barely a word on the issue on which I think Obama’s re-election will turn, that of getting further into, and then out of, Afghanistan.
The economy is slowly recovering. One way or the other, Obama will be able to campaign for re-election in 2012 having staved off another Great Depression inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. Which he focused on effectively in his big speech. The question is how quickly and fully the recovery comes prior to the mid-term election, in order for Obama and the Democrats to limit expected losses. … From my January 29th column.
** MAD MEN SWEEPS THE LATEST AWARDS AND LOSES A KEY CHARACTER. … From my January 27th column.
** SCOTT BROWN NEED NOT APPLY: CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS IN THE POST-ARNOLD ERA. Is there a Scott Brown-like figure to surprise California Democrats this year? No. The politicians who are vying to replace Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as the ranking California Republican could scarcely be less like Scott Brown. Or, for that matter, Schwarzenegger. … From my January 26th column.
** WHAT SCOTT BROWN KNEW IN 2010 AND BARACK OBAMA KNEW IN 2008. … From my January 22nd column.
** 24 NATION.… From my January 19th column.
** THE LAST CLINTON MELODRAMA? (AND OTHER SENSATIONALIST GAME CHANGE GOSSIP) … From my January 14th column.
** OBAMA’S SECURITY PROBLEMS: THE MEDIA, CHENEY AND, OH YES, THE ISSUE. … From my January 12th column.
** THE BAND OF THE DECADE: THE BEATLES?! What does it say that the biggest musical group of the first decade of this new millennium recorded its last album 40 years ago? … From my January 1st essay.
** THE COMMON THREADS OF AVATAR. Is Avatar the future of cinema? Probably. … From my December 22nd essay.
** HOW JERRY BROWN CLEARED THE DEMOCRATIC FIELD FOR GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA. … From my December 9th 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, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** HELP FOR HAITI.
You can donate to the new Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, www.clintonbushhaitifund.org, by clicking here.
** 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, 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.
** 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 $73 per barrel.
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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… I saw the Whitman ad on TV over the weekend, in the “many years” Californian version.