Thousands of American, British, and Afghan troops have converged on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … TONY BLAIR’S GHOST (WRITER).
** QUICK HITS. The U.S. Marine-led assault on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan began around midnight local time and is now well underway. The time in Afghanistan is twelve-and-a-half hours ahead of Pacific time. … While that is underway, something else I’ve written a lot less about is not. That would be the ballyhooed drive for a California constitutional convention. Why the Con Con Collapse? Not enough interest from donors to mount an initiative campaign. I’ve always thought it was something that was a nice idea, but something that doesn’t match up when examined in the light of political reality. For two reasons: It wouldn’t happen for quite awhile, and there is no guarantee that the current dysfunction and impasse wouldn’t continue there. … One thing that is continuing is the drama around California’s lieutenant governorship. Rather than risk a court battle after swearing in his appointee, state Senator Abel Maldonado (who won majority votes in both houses but was not confirmed, and perhaps not rejected, either), Governor Arnold Schwarenegger withdrew his appointment. And then re-appointed the moderate Republican. The reaction to the Assembly vote (the Senate actually confirmed him) has been very negative. Stay tuned.
** OBAMA SETS STAGE FOR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE BILL REVIVAL. Prompted by his success engaging the House Republican Caucus in its Baltimore retreat, using a huge health insurance price hike in California as his rationale, President Barack Obama today invited Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to a health care summit on February 25th.
Obama’s messaging strikes a post-partisan and populist tone, reflecting popular dissatisfaction with political bickering and big institutions. The summit will be on live TV.
Here’s the text of the letter, sent by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius:
We are writing to ask that you join President Obama for a bipartisan meeting at the Blair
House on February 25 to discuss health reform legislation.
We have seen again in recent days that when it comes to health care, the status quo is
unsustainable and unacceptable. The proof is right in front of us: just last week, a major insurer,
Anthem Blue Cross, announced plans to increase premiums for many of its policyholders in
California by as much as 39 percent on March 1.
As the President noted this week, if we don’t act on comprehensive health insurance
reform, this enormous rate hike will be “just a preview of coming attractions. Premiums will
continue to rise for folks with insurance; millions more will lose their coverage altogether; our
deficits will continue to grow larger.”
Now is the time to act on behalf of the millions of Americans and small businesses
who are counting on meaningful health insurance reform. In the last year, there has been an
extraordinary effort to craft effective legislation. There have been hundreds of hours of
committee hearings and mark-ups in both the House of Representatives and Senate, with nearly
all of those sessions televised on C-SPAN. The Senate spent over 160 hours on the Senate floor
considering health insurance reform legislation and, for the first time in history, both the House
of Representatives and Senate have approved comprehensive health reform legislation. This is
the closest our Nation has been to resolving this issue in the nearly 100 years that it has been
debated.
The Blair House meeting is the next step in this process. The session will begin at
10:00 a.m. and be broadcast live in its entirety. Although it is impossible to include every House
Member or Senator who has played a pivotal role in the health care debate, the President is
inviting the most senior House/Senate bipartisan leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking
members of the committees that oversee health insurance reform legislation in both chambers.
A complete list of this group is attached. The President would like each of you to designate an
additional four Members to attend the meeting and be available to participate. It is also
important that each of you have one staff member specializing in health care policy in the
meeting.
We will have a representative from the Office of Management and Budget to provide
technical assistance, and hope that representatives from the Congressional Budget Office and the
Joint Committee on Taxation will also be able to attend.
In addition to the President, attending and participating on behalf of the Administration
will be the Vice President, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and
Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the Office of Health Reform.
The President will offer opening remarks at the beginning of the meeting, followed by
remarks from a Republican leader chosen by the Republican leadership and a Democratic leader
chosen by the Democratic leadership. The President will then open and moderate discussion on
four critical topics: insurance reforms, cost containment, expanding coverage, and the impact
health reform legislation will have on deficit reduction.
Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the
meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package. This
legislation would put a stop to insurance company abuses, extend coverage to millions of
Americans, get control of skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reduce the deficit.
It is the President’s hope that the Republican congressional leadership will also put
forward their own comprehensive bill to achieve those goals and make it available online as well.
As the President said earlier this week:
I’m looking forward to a constructive debate with plans that need to be measured
against this test: Does it bring down costs for all Americans as well as for the
Federal Government, which spends a huge amount on health care? Does it
provide adequate protection against abuses by the insurance industry? Does it
make coverage affordable and available to the tens of millions of working
Americans who don’t have it right now? And does it help us get on a path of
fiscal sustainability?
These are priorities that we all share, and the President is looking forward to examining
with you and your colleagues how we can best achieve the most effective reform possible.
** TOM CAMPBELL’S AMUSING DENIAL. Former Silicon Valley Congressman organized a denial late Wednesday of my story that billionaire California GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s forces used a different tack in clearing him from the field than they’d used with state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Campbell said, as any politician would, that he thinks for himself and makes up his own mind and and no one influenced him, and so on.
In my column, which is linked below, I reported that, not surprisingly, Whitman’s ongoing efforts to clear the primary field — which continued yesterday with campaign chairman Pete Wilson’s statement that the general election has suddenly, magically just begun four months before the primary — also included Campbell. That in December, Whitman operatives began working the circle around Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in whose administration Campbell served as finance director, to help convince Campbell that the grass really was greener in a third bid for the U.S. Senate.
I reported at the time that Campbell was considering getting out of the governor’s race and that I expected him to switch to the Senate race.
Campbell, of course, did exactly that and picked up some surprising new support in the process, as I explain in the column.
Campbell also issued a well-phrased statement from Bob White, who several very well-informed sources told me was at the center of efforts to help Whitman by getting Campbell to switch races.
Here it is: “I had no conversations with the Whitman campaign about getting Tom Campbell out of the governor’s race. I had a very brief conversation with Tom Campbell — which he initiated — and told him I thought he’d make a great senator. Tom Campbell is his own man and I couldn’t have altered his decision if I wanted to.”
Now as you can see in the column, if you’ve not already read it, Bob White, an old friend of mine who happened to drift across my radar screen in the midst of a big story, confirmed to me on Tuesday that he had suggested to Campbell and others that the ex-congressman’s best course was to drop his campaign for governor and enter the Senate race. He also, as I reported, downplayed the idea that he was at the center of things on Campbell’s withdrawal from the governor’s race, rejecting reports that he was taking credit for Campbell’s move.
White, one of the great networkers of our time, with whom I’ve compared notes on Schwarzenegger for many years, has been part of the Whitman effort from the beginning, hosting a get-to-know-you gathering for Whitman with state power brokers early on. Whitman’s campaign chairman Wilson, who again worked to clear the field yesterday, is one of White’s oldest friends. White was his chief of staff in the U.S. Senate and in the governorship of California, as well as the manager of Schwarzenegger’s 2003 campaign and de facto director of his transition. In a largely Republican corporate consulting practice (with a notable Democratic contingent) which nonetheless makes a point of having ties to all candidates, White is the Whitman person at the firm.
When we spoke on Tuesday, he acknowledged speaking with Campbell about exiting the race for governor and entering the race for senator, making the point that Campbell had called him. He did not discuss, however, his conversations with Jim Cunneen.
Cunneen is a chair of the Campbell campaign. He was Campbell’s staff director in Congress and, with Campbell’s help (and that of Wilson and White), became a state assemblyman.
He is also a partner in White’s firm, California Strategies. Cunneen was intimately involved in shaping Campbell’s thinking on his candidacy.
Former President Bill Clinton was released this morning from the Manhattan hospital to which he was rushed late yesterday with a cardiac episode. An actual heart attack was averted, and surgeons placed two stents in a key artery. Clinton has a well-known history of heart trouble, having had quadruple bypass surgery in 2004. It seems that one of those bypasses wore out. Doctors pronounced his prognosis today as “excellent.”
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
With the capital still largely snowed under, he has no scheduled public events.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He is not attending the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Instead, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden are making their way to the picturesque Canadian city on the Pacific Coast. But first, they attend a breakfast in Seattle, Washington with Senator Patty Murray.
At 2:45 PM Pacific, the Bidens deliver remarks at an Olympic kick-off rally for U.S. athletes in Vancouver.
At 6 PM Pacific, the Bidens attend the 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.
Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.
He is especially working behind the scenes on new sanctions for Iran in the wake of its latest nuclear saber rattling. Various European nations, tired of months of Iranian obfuscation after rejecting a deal its negotiators had agreed to, and now alarmed by recent developments, have weighed in this week in favor of new sanctions.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in yesterday’s Revolution Day festivities in Tehran that the regime now has the capability to enrich uranium to more than 80% purity, closing in on the 90% needed for weapons grade nuclear materials. Naturally, he denied any such intention.
Iran has announced that it has begun enriching uranium supposedly toward the lower level needed for medical isotopes. However, it doesn’t have the technical capability needed to produce fuel rods for a reactor.
Various European nations have signaled this week that they are ready for a new round of sanctions.
In Afghanistan, U.S. forces continue to shape the battlefield around the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan. That means they are undertaking various probing actions to determine fields of fire and other defensive set-ups, which includes extensive fields of mines. The roads are all cut off, leaving the remaining Taliban only the open desert across which to flee.
In Iraq, controversy over the banning of hundreds of Sunni candidates from next month’s parliamentary elections continues. Of 500 initially barred from running for supposed ties to Saddam Hussein, now only a few dozen are being allowed on the ballot. This is a serious problem.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, seen here in The Running Man, today carried the Olympic Torch through Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Vancouver today.
Schwarzenegger is taking part in the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
Early this morning, he ran a leg of the Olympic Torch Relay, carrying the Olympic Torch through Stanley Park.
Schwarzenegger handed off the torch to Sebastian Coe, two-time Olympic champion in the 1500 meter run for Britain, who was later a member of the House of Commons and now a baron.
Schwarzenegger, incidentally, in addition to his many world titles in bodybuilding was also a world champion in powerlifting and Austrian national champion in weightlifting.
At 12:30 PM, he takes part in the first annual leaders forum of the Pacific Coast Collaborative, which brings together the premier of British Columbia and the governors of Washington, Oregon, and California. They will discuss the environment and the economy. It’s also, obviously, a good way to be in Vancouver for the opening of the Olympics.
Back in Sacramento, the customary dysfunction is ensuing, with a dispute over whether moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, Schwarzenegger’s appointee to replace new Congressman John Garamendi as lieutenant governor, has been blocked from the office.
Maldonado won easy confirmation in the state Senate on a bipartisan vote of 26 to 7. In the more fractious and hyperpartisan Assembly, Maldonado won a majority of those voting, 37 to 35, with most Democrats opposed. But to win confirmation, Maldonado needs a majority of the membership, currently 79 with the one vacancy. Notably, his opponents were unable to muster a majority of those voting, much less a majority of the membership.
Does this mean he was rejected? Unless he is rejected by vote of the Legislature, he can assume the office. There are a variety of ways to look at what is, to say the least, a very awkwardly written law.
I’ll undoubtedly have more on this ever fascinating topic.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: BEHIND HER ATTEMPTS TO ELIMINATE COMPETITION AND HER WHOPPER ABOUT HOW LONG SHE’S LIVED IN CALIFORNIA. In her spend-whatever-it-takes bid to jump from being a billionaire ex-CEO to the governorship of California, Republican Meg Whitman presents herself and her ideas in very simple, straightforward terms. The reality behind the facade, as we see from her attempts to avoid a primary contest and duck debates and the press, as well as her false claim about herself in her introductory TV ad, is different.
Last week it emerged that Whitman, whose only claim to fame in public affairs is her role as national co-chair of the McCain/Palin campaign, had engaged in a heavy-handed and wildly unsuccessful project to force her super-rich Republican rival, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, from the race. I’ve since confirmed that Whitman was out to clear the Republican primary field entirely, having engaged with greater success in inducing former Silicon Valley Congressman Tom Campbell to withdraw from the race for governor and enter the race for Senator Barbara Boxer’s seat.
While Whitman’s operatives employed coercion in their backfiring bid to get Poizner out of the race, they employed persuasion to remove Campbell from the equation. While consultant Mike Murphy played the heavy with Poizner, several sources say that another former consigliere for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bob White, the longtime chief of staff to former Governor and Senator Pete Wilson who now heads a powerful corporate consulting firm in the state capital, played the lead role for Whitman on the Campbell project. Wilson is Whitman’s campaign chair.
In December, according to well-informed sources, Whitman operatives began trying to influence people in the orbit around Schwarzenegger to persuade Campbell to switch out of the governor’s race and into the Senate race. Campbell, whose varied career has included stints as a Stanford law professor and head of the UC Berkeley business school, had been the state finance director in the Schwarzenegger Administration. … From my February 10th column.
** 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? … From my February 2nd column.
** WHAT A DIFFERENCE TWO MONTHS MAKES AS THE FATE OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY PLAYS OUT FAR FROM WASHINGTON. … 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. … 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 $74 per barrel.
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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Read 
| Comments (51) |
The company brokerages network will give you access to a big pool of individuals who’ve the information about companies for sale and buyers or investors looking for any company venture. By producing good use in the info you’ve, you might be cutting a provide and make a handsome profit out from the transactions.