The Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured 10 days ago in Karachi in a joint CIA/Pakistani operation. Baradar is the number two figure beside Mullah Omar.
** QUICK HITS. I’m hearing that Senator Evan Bayh’s surprise announcement that he is stepping away from his likely re-election in Indiana — which will make it harder for Democrats to hold that seat — is for the reasons he mentioned. The U.S. Senate is in hyperpartisan mode and he always preferred being a governor. … The California Republican Party board of directors now looks like it will hold a conference call late this week on whether to issue formal invitations to debate at next month’s convention to gubernatorial rivals Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. He wants to debate there; she does not.
** IRAN VIEWED AS ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS THREATS IN NEW POLL. The new Gallup Poll has over 6 in 10 nationally viewing Iran as a serious threat to U.S. interests. Only international terrorism is viewed as a bigger foreign policy threat.
Incidentally, President Barack Obama has a 52% job approval rating in the daily track, with only 41% disapproving.
A Gallup poll finds 61% of Americans viewing the military power of Iran as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests over the next 10 years. An additional 29% say Iran is an important, though not a critical, threat to the United States. The findings come as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seeking the support of several Arab nations for additional sanctions on Iran in a trip to the region this week. ….
A majority of Republicans, independents, and Democrats view Iran’s military power as a critical threat to the U.S., though Republicans are somewhat more likely to do so (at 68%, compared to 60% for independents and 57% for Democrats).
NWN has been covering the percolating Iranian crisis for many months.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: WHITMAN AGAIN TRIES TO CLEAR GOP FIELD, PRESSURE FOR REPUBLICAN CONVENTION DEBATE GROWS, PRO-BROWN INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE LAUNCHES ADVERTISING (IN A WAY). Following on the heels of former Governor Pete Wilson’s insistent statement late last week that California Republicans end their gubernatorial primary before billionarire Meg Whitman ever takes part in a debate or holds a non-disastrous presss conference, the Whitman campaign again tried to get super-rich state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner out of the race, with Wilson’s fellow campaign co-chairs issuing this stentorian statement yesterday.
Assistant Senate Republican Leader Tony Strickland and Chief Republican Whip Nathan Fletcher, statewide campaign co-chairs, issued this statement calling for Republican unity in the 2010 governor’s race:
“Jerry Brown’s allies are nervous about Meg’s strong lead in the polls and her plans to bring a different kind of leadership to Sacramento, and it’s why they’re planning to spend $40 million in a negative campaign against her. Our opponents have sent a clear signal the general election started today, and Republicans need to unite around the strongest candidate to take on the entrenched interests and status quo in Sacramento, and that’s Meg Whitman. Our party is only weakened by a Republican candidate who ultimately aids Jerry Brown and his allies’ fight against the conservative leadership we need in Sacramento. It’s time for all Republicans to unite, and we’re hopeful Steve Poizner will do the right thing and step aside in order to nominate Meg, the strongest candidate to take on Jerry Brown in November.”
As political novice Whitman engaged in her latest episode of attempting nomination by coronation — or, more accurately, by acquisition — criticism of her ramped up over the holiday weekend, as did calls for her to take part in a debate at next month’s California Republican Party convention. She dodged four debates last year, though she had promised to take part in at least one debate last fall.
Veteran Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, a moderate conservative who was a great booster of Wilson during his governorship as well as an old antagonist of Brown, had a blistering column yesterday on Whitman. He described her candidacy as one of “arrogant cowardice.”
As all that was happening, calls for Whitman to debate at next month’s state Republican convention increased. A state party board of directors conference call to issue the formal invitation may take place soon.
One of the pro-Brown independent expenditure committees that emerged last week — I’ve been hearing about them for months, and there seems to be some sort of competition underway — has produced a radio ad attacking Whitman.
And asking for money.
Which is unusual in IE advertising.
That’s from Level the Playing Field 2010, which also popped out a quick web site early this morning at leveltheplayingfield.com. This was done in concert with a blog posting and front page article by the consultants’ favorite conduit — if hardly the Browns’ favorite reporter — San Francisco Chronicler Carla Marinucci.
Amusingly, the Whitman campaign is citing this ad as “evidence” that Democrats are trying to help Poizner with this new radio advertising. (And, naturally, a reason for him to get out of the race.) In addition to asking for money, the ad criticizes Whitman for vowing to roll back California’s landmark climate change legislation. Which is hardly the way to campaign amongst Republican primary voters.
California Democratic Party chairman John Burton has expressed a rather dim view of this.
There appears to be a competition of sorts underway between the consultants behind Level the Playing Field 2010 and those behind California Working Families 2010. As I mentioned last week, when I revealed the existence of the latter group, both groups have been talking about this for months.
The first group announced itself in the Chronicle via the Matier & Ross tipster column. Which prompted the second group to go public here and then elsewhere.
There is a third group, which is an actual ongoing institution, involved, and that is the Democratic Governors Association. As I’ve reported, they announced their intention to help Brown, along with Democratic gubernatorial candidates around the country, last year.
U.S., British, Canadian, and Afghan forces, having taken most of Marjah in the biggest ever American offensive in Afghanistan, are encountering stiff resistance in the remainder of the city.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Maryland today.
Obama has received his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office and toured a job training center in Lanham, Maryland.
At 8:05 AM Pacific, he makes remarks on energy policy and jobs at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26 in Lanham, Maryland. He then returns to the White House.
Obama is announcing $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia. This would be the first nuclear power plant constructed in the U.S. since the early 1980s.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama receives his daily economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 11:20 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan in the Oval Office.
At 11:55 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson in the Oval Office.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Defense Secretary Bob Gates in the Oval Office.
Vice President Joe Biden is in Michigan today promoting economic recovery activities.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Saudi Arabia, where she again ratcheted up the rhetoric against Iran, declaring it the world’s leading promoter of terrorism.
Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Afghanistan, the allied offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah has taken most of the city but has now slowed substantially due to heavy sniper fire, hit-and-run tactics, and some heavy pockets of resistance in urban neighborhoods. U.S. and other forces are slowed by the need to avoid civilian casualties, a need reinforced after the accidental killing of 12 civilians by a pair of American rockets. That system has been taken off-line.
In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari is in a staredown with top judges and much of the country’s legal class over his attempt to make senior judicial appointments without the input of the judges.
Much better news comes from Karachi, the country’s principal port city. The Afghan Taliban’s top military commander was reportedly arrested there in early February.
In Iraq, hundreds of Sunni candidates in next month’s national parliamentary elections have been ruled out of the running based on supposed ties to Saddam Hussein.
Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a strong favorite for re-election, shocked the Democratic Party yesterday when he announced that he will not run for re-election. This is a surprise boost for Republicans. The centrist Bayh’s announced reason? He doesn’t like Congress and its lack of bipartisanship. Ironically, his departure will decrease what little bipartisanship there has been.
On Iran, Obama is working out a new international program of sanctions to pressure the regime into turning over its uranium for enrichment to attempt to ensure that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted last week that Iran is now capable of enriching uranium to near weapons grade.
The U.S., France, and Russia have prepared a joint statement criticizing Iran, which is now again talking up negotiations on transferring its uranium abroad for further enrichment.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Sacramento today.
At 12 noon, he holds a press conference in a Bakersfield housing development to discuss his proposal to extend and expand the $10,000 homebuyer tax credit for first-time homebuyers to include the purchase of existing homes as well as new residences.
At 2:30 PM, Schwarzenegger will hold a press conference at the Capitol with state Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) to discuss his re-nomination of the senator as Lieutenant Governor.
At 6:15 PM, Schwarzenegger will deliver remarks at the California Legislative Black Caucus’ Reception honoring The Kinsey Collection and Black History Month. That event will take place at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento.
On January 6th, Schwarzenegger declared a special legislative session on the state’s chronic budget crisis. Under state law he had enacted early in his governorship, if the budget is not resolved in 45 days all other legislative activity goes by the boards.
As a result, the Legislature, which has done little on the budget this year, is rushing to move other legislation forward this week.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
This is up about $43 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.
The U.S.-led offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan is underway. Most of the city has been taken but it will take a lot more time to carefully secure the remainder. 12 Afghan civilians were killed Sunday by two wayward American rockets.
** OBAMA TODAY – MONDAY. President Barack Obama is at Camp David and in Washington today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings at Camp David.
The time of his return to the White House is to be determined.
In a curious development with bad implications for Democrats, Democratic Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana is reportedly announcing his retirement in Indianapolis. The moderate Bayh was a strong favorite for re-election. He’s reportedly saying that he’s distressed by an absence of bipartisanship in Washington, something his retirement would increase.
Obama’s 2008 Republican opponent, John McCain, officially gets a primary challenger today with former Congressman and talk radio host J.D. Hayworth announcing his candidacy in Phoenix, kicking off a three-day tour of Arizona. McCain will have his own counter-event in Phoenix.
Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Afghanistan, the big offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah continues apace. The only significant setback was the accidental killing of 12 Afghan civilians in a U.S. rocket strike. That rocket system has been taken offline.
In Pakistan, the courts and lawyers are challenging President Asif Ali Zardari’s authority to make top judicial appointments without judicial input.
In Iraq, an agency now headed by the U.S. neoconservatives’ late favorite to be prime minister after the invasion, the highly controversial Ahmed Chalabi, has just ruled that only 28 of the 500 Sunni candidates thrown off the ballot for supposed ties to Saddam Hussein may run in next month’s parliamentary elections. Sunni leaders have denounced Chalabi as an Iranian ally, a frequent charge over the years.
On Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared today in a speech to Arab students in Qatar that the Islamic republic is “becoming a military dictatorship.” She said that the Revolutionary Guards organization is in control of Iran’s nuclear program.
With European leaders now on board, Obama is working to bring Russia and China into the mix of new international sanctions against Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is in Moscow today meeting with Russian leaders on the sanctions issue and on the question of whether they will sell the S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran.
California software mogul Larry Ellison won the America’s Cup sailing regatta on Sunday off the coast of Spain. The America’s Cup will now reside at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES – MONDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events today.
Accompanied by First Lady Maria Shriver and two of their children, he attended last night’s NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, just outside Dallas.
Schwarzenegger helped open the 2010 Winter Olympics on Friday in Vancouver.
Accompanied by a Special Olympian, Schwarzenegger handed off the Olympic Torch to two-time Olympic 1500 meter champion Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 London Summer Olympic Committee. Coe later invited Schwarzenegger to the London Olympics as his personal guest.
In an exercise off the California coast, an aircraft-mounted laser system shot down a ballistic missile in boost phase. This is apparently the first successful use of laser technology for purposes of missile defense.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Camp David today.
He has received the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama and his family depart the White House on Marine One en route to the presidential retreat at Camp David.
Obama has no scheduled public events.
He is monitoring the U.S. Marine-led assault agains the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan.
Obama has ordered the largest U.S. offensive ever in Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney Administration committed few ground troops during the takedown of the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11 and refused to order in large numbers of U.S. troops when Osama bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora.
The current assault is reportedly going well with few American casualties (only three reported dead). Most of Marjah has been taken. But securing the rest of the city will take much more time, as the the U.S. and its British, Canadian, and Afghan allies want to take care to avoid civilian casualties and damage to the city.
Marjah is not Grozny, the Chechen capital smashed by Russian forces in that war with jihadists.
Instead, when the city is secured, a team of Afghan civilians will be flown in to work with tribal leaders and run the city’s infrastructure. It will be interesting to see how the residents like that.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Dick Cheney dueled today in competing Sunday chat show appearances.
Biden says that Cheney is trying to “rewrite history” in criticizing the Obama Administration for using civilian courts to try some terror suspects, pointing out that that was a regular practice in the Bush/Cheney Administration. And that the Obama Administration has killed more jihadist leaders than their predecessors.
For his part, Cheney says that another 9/11-style attack is likely and that Biden is wrong in saying it isn’t. “The biggest strategic threat the United States faces today,” said Cheney, “is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind.”
Clearly the conservative plan is to insist that Obama is soft on terrorism and hope to capitalize politically on an attack if it materializes.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events today.
Incidentally, the Winter Olympics, which ski enthusiast Schwarzenegger helped open on Friday, has a bit of a problem.
Unusually warm weather postponed the start of skiing. Downhill practice runs were canceled for several days in a row due to slushy conditions on the slopes.
The men’s downhill, arguably the premiere event of the Games, was canceled on Saturday and tentatively re-scheduled for Monday.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama talks up the importance of the just-signed “Pay As You Go” law.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. 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.
On Sunday, the Obama family will go to the presidential retreat at Camp David.
They will return to Washington on Monday.
Obama makes a video address today to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Doha, Qatar. The event is the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, and it is co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution. Obama is naming a deputy White House counsel and devout Muslim, Rashad Hussain, as special envoy to the OIC, a 57-nation organization.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the U.S. at the Qatar conference, arriving later than scheduled following former President Bill Clinton’s latest cardiac incident. The other U.S. representatives include AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.
This is the latest follow-on to Obama’s Cairo address last year.
The flip side of Obama’s initiatives in the Islamic world is the U.S.-led offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan, which is now well underway.
This is the largest offensive in Afghanistan since the take down of the Taliban regime in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which were conceived and coordinated out of the Al Qaeda bases there. British, Canadian, and Afghan troops joined 4500 U.S. Marines and 300 U.S. Army personnel in the assault, which began with a helicopter-borne insertion of U.S. Navy Seals and British SAS (Special Air Service) troopers.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Iraq and Iran.
In Iraq, hundreds of Sunni candidates in next month’s national parliamentary elections are again ruled out of the running based on supposed ties to Saddam Hussein.
On Iran, Obama is working out a new international program of sanctions to pressure the regime into turning over its uranium for enrichment to attempt to ensure that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted on Thursday that Iran is now capable of enriching uranium to near weapons grade.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, shown here with an electrifying burst of sprinter’s speed, carried the Olympic Torch through Vancouver’s Stanley Park on Friday morning. He handed off the torch to Sir Sebastian Coe, two-time Olympic champion in the 1500-meter run and chairman of the 2012 London Olympics Committee.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger participated yesterday in the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Canada’s Pacific Coast center of Vancouver. Vancouver is the largest city ever to host the Winter Olympics.
Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events today.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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 closed on Friday at $74.13 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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
Some mixed tidings on the economy today, with the job market improving but foreclosures going up.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … TONY BLAIR’S GHOST (WRITER).
** QUICK HITS. Former President Bill Clinton is spending the night in a New York hospital after suffering another cardiac episode. Two stents were placed in one of his coronary arteries. Daughter Chelsea Clinton is at the hospital now and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on her way there. Clinton underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in 2004. Very best wishes for the president and his family. … U.S. officials dismissed claims by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at today’s Revolution Day rally that the Islamic republic is now able to enrich uranium to near weapons grade. They also expressed alarm about the regime’s unplugging of Google and other Internet services. … The Ghost Writer, the new film from director Roman Polanski based on the best-selling Tony Blair roman a clef novel by former Blair friend Robert Harris, has it world premiere tomorrow at the Berlin Film Festival. …
** THE POINTLESS DRAMA OF CALIFORNIA’S LIEUTENANT GOVERNORSHIP FIGHT. So, after a day of legislative maneuvering, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointee to the lieutenant governorship vacated by new Congressman John Garamendi, easily won a confirmation vote in the Senate but fell short of in the Assembly, while winning a majority of those members casting votes.
Maldonado won the Senate vote, 26 to 7, and the Assembly vote, 37 to 35. However, he has not yet been confirmed by the Assembly because that requires a majority vote of the members. As there are now 79 members, with one vacancy, that means Maldonado needs three more votes to win confirmation outright.
The Assembly’s lawyer, following the cues of its Democratic leadership — outgoing Speaker Karen Bass and incoming Speaker John Perez, after cagily not voting early on, cast no votes later — says this means that Maldonado has been rejected.
Schwarzenegger’s lawyers say that’s not the case.
The law itself is written in a strangely double-jointed fashion.
Here is the relevant section of California law on the matter: In the event the nominee is neither confirmed nor refused confirmation by both the Senate and the Assembly within 90 days of the submission of the nomination, the nominee shall take office as if he or she had been confirmed by a majority of the Senate and Assembly.
Has Maldonado been confirmed by both the Senate and the Assembly? No. Has he been refused confirmation by both the Senate and the Assembly? Also no. Does this mean that he therefore can assume the office of lieutenant governor? Perhaps. You can certainly read the law that way.
But unless three people get off the fence and give Maldonado a majority of the current Assembly membership, as well as a majority of those voting, this thing looks may be headed to court.
Incidentally, I ran into Maldonado with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. They seemed confident, with more than one scenario for success.
The whole thing is fairly ridiculous. At the moment, at least, Assembly Democrats are standing in the way of the desire of Senate Democrats to pick up Maldonado’s seat in an election this year.
** WHITMAN TAKES LATEST STEP IN HER ONGOING EFFORT TO CLEAR THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY FIELD. Billionaire Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor of California continued its months long bid to clear the Republican primary field this afternoon when former Governor Pete Wilson issued a statement saying that the general election has begun today and that Whitman is the Republican candidate.
Wilson, as I mentioned again in yesterday’s column, is Whitman’s campaign chairman.
This ignores the fact that only one of Whitman’s two Republican primary opponents at the beginning of the year, former Silicon Valley Congressman Tom Campbell, has actually gotten out of the race, having been persuaded that the grass is greener in a third bid for the U.S. Senate. Super-rich state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, with nearly $20 million in his campaign warchest, has rejected the various entreaties and threats designed to get him out of the race.
Wilson used the unsurprising news yesterday, reported here, that two Democratic independent expenditure committees have emerged to counter the problem posed by having a super-rich Republican gubernatorial candidate, as his rationale. The Democratic Governor Association, as previously reported, has also launched an effort to counter the super-rich scenario. Today the DGA launched its web site, examing the records of Poizner and Whitman, at www.californiaaccountability.com. Nick Velasquez, former press secretary for LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and former state Controller Steve Westly, is handling the project.
The presumptive Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jerry Brown, is a strong fundraiser but the reality is that Whitman or Poizner can match and exceed anything he does by writing a single check. The two are, as I reported earlier in the week, easily among the biggest political donors of the past decade.
“It is now very clear,” Wilson declares, “that the entire Republican Party must unite behind Meg’s campaign. We have an outstanding party standard bearer. …
“We must unite. Meg and our campaign team are beginning the General Election today, and we are not wasting time.”
Actually, Whitman still has a primary to contest, and debates with Poizner to hold. She is ducking the debate at next month’s California Republican Party convention. But she has committed to a much lower profile debate before a private fundraising group in Orange County.
Whitman has yet to debate at all and the only two press conferences she has had were disasters.
** MALDONADO CONFIRMED BY CALIFORNIA SENATE, ASSEMBLY IS NEXT TEST. Moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be California’s next lieutenant governor, won easy confirmation today in the state Senate on a 26-7 vote.
More Republicans, (4) than Democrats (3) voted against him.
The Assembly, however, looks like a rockier ride.
Maldonado is to replace Congressman John Garamendi, who resigned the office he won in 2006 after winning a special election to replace Undersecretary of Defense for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher in her old San Francisco Bay Area seat.
I ran into Maldonado on Tuesday with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and will have more on that later.
“Snowmageddon” at the White House.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
The federal government is again shut down but for emergency services due to heavy weather.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama meets with the 2009 and 2010 March of Dimes Ambassadors in the East Room.
The House has adjourned for the week. Members had difficulty getting into the capital.
The Senate is adjourned today. It may not convene again this week, though senators who are in town will participate in party caucuses.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to pass the new economic stimulus bill has fallen by the boards, as the Senate will be in recess next week following the Presidents Day holiday on February 15th.
Obama received a bit of good news on the jobs front today, with unemployment claims dropping more than expected.
Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Afhganistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Afghanistan, US forces are shaping the battlefield around the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan. They are also urging civilians to flee the scene, but there are some signs that the Taliban aren’t allowing that to happen.
In Pakistan, another top Taliban leader viewed as a potential successor to Hakimullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader killed last month in a U.S. missile strike, has been reported dead, victim of the same missile strike. Mehsud’s predecessor was also killed in a U.S. missile strike, six months ago.
Mehsud was in a video with the Jordanian agent who reportedly killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan released not long before the U.S. missile strike which killed him.
More aerial photographs of the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack in Manhattan have been released.
In Iraq, controversy over the banning of hundreds of Sunni candidates from next month’s parliamentary elections continues. Iraq today ordered 250 former Blackwater employees now working for other security contractors out of the country.
Iran celebrated Revolution Day today with festivities marking the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic fundamentalist revolution against the Shah of Iran.
There were massive rallies across the country, along with counter-demonstrations by pro-democracy protesters. Those were forcibly put down.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed 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.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
At 10 AM, at the Los Angeles County Fire Department, he participates in a recognition event welcoming home the urban search and rescue team he dispatched to Haiti in the wake of the massive earthquake there.
His appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, scheduled to have a confirmation vote today in the Assembly.
If he is not rejected by the Legislature by February 22nd, Maldonado takes office.
If he is approved by February 16th, Schwarzenegger will schedule the special election to replace him as part of the June primary election. This would aid Democratic efforts to win Maldonado’s swing district seat.
While Maldonado has support in the Senate, where he was endorsed last week on a 4-0 vote by the Senate Rules Committee, his fate is far less sure in the more fractious and hyperpartisan Assembly. Indeed, his nomination was forwarded to the floor without endorsement. Sharp opposition has already emerged from a few liberal Latino legislators. They criticize Maldonado for not voting for various liberal bills, while giving him no credit for critical votes on which he’s crossed the aisle.
They also dislike him for pushing the open primary idea, which is very popular with independents and most Californians, but hated by most partisans of the two big political parties.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
Former Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, the legendary party-hardy “liberal from Lufkin” and one of my all-time favorite rogues, died today of a heart attack. Wilson, portrayed by Tom Hanks, was immortalized in my favorite movie of 2007, Charlie Wilson’s War. Written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, based on the book of the same name by 60 Minutes producer George Crile, it’s the true story of how Wilson, an Annapolis grad (and holder of the Naval Academy record for demerits) serving on the little-known House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, came to fund the biggest covert war in history against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
** QUICK HITS. To my amusement, I see the kids at the Sacramento Bee “reporting” that an “unprecedented” three independent expenditure committees will enter the California governor’s race on the side of presumptive Democratic nominee Jerry Brown. Really? Well, that would be the committee I mentioned earlier today, which has been in the works since December, the committee mentioned this morning in the SF Chronicle, also in the works since December, and the Democratic Governors Association — which always does this, here and around the country — as I reported last year. However what is left of the conventional media in California spins it, it’s not good news for Republicans. But this is anything but a surprise. A major issue in California is the collapse of the state press corps, of which the Bee is hardly the best example of decline. … As part of their crackdown on “Western media” supposedly serving the interests of CIA and MI6 in advance of tomorrow’s Revolution Day celebration, Iran is disrupting Silicon Valley-based Google’s Gmail operations in the country. Iran has identified the Internet, and mobile phone networks, as key vectors of sedition.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: DEMOCRATIC INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE CAMPAIGNS GEAR UP. It may not surprise you to learn that independent expenditure efforts on the Democratic side in California have been percolating since late last year to counter the potential nominations for governor and U.S. senator of super-rich Republicans Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, and Carly Fiorina. Now the committees are beginning to emerge from the shadows.
This morning, the Matier & Ross tipster column in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a committee calling itself Level The Playing Field 2010 is gearing up to oppose the free-spending Whitman. The principal figures include opposition research maven Ace Smith, who was chief consultant on Jerry Brown’s landslide winning campaign for California attorney general in 2006, former Clinton White House spokesman Chris Lehane, and fundraiser Michelle Maravich.
I can report now that another committee, California Working Families 2010, is emerging as well.
Its principals include Obama media consultant Larry Grisolano, a partner with David Axelrod and David Plouffe in their former consulting firm, who managed Gray Davis’s re-election campaign for governor of California; former Davis press secretary and California Democratic Party spokesman Roger Salazar, Obama campaign senior labor advisor Jason Kruger, and Frank Quintero, a senior executive of the Yucaipa Companies, the holding company controlled by former President Bill Clinton’s old friend Ron Burkle.
Each committee says it will spend upwards of $20 million.
** 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. …
With Washington essentially snowed under, President Barack Obama met yesterday with congressional leaders from both parties. Obama is pushing a post-partisan stance again, which is popular in polling. Republicans are blamed much more than he for hyperpartisan gridlock.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama has had his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 8:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with African American leaders in the Oval Office.
Washington is again brought to a near standstill by heavy weather conditions.
The House has adjourned for the week. Members had difficulty getting into the capital.
The Senate is adjourned today. It may not convene again this week, though senators who are in town will participate in party caucuses.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to pass the new economic stimulus bill has fallen by the boards, as the Senate will be in recess next week following the Presidents Day holiday on February 15th.
Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Afhganistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Afghanistan, US forces are preparing to assault the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in southern Afghanistan, engaging in oppositions designed to shape the battlefield. They are also urging civilians to flee the scene, but there are some signs that the Taliban aren’t allowing that to happen.
In Iraq, the national elections commission is working to undermine an appellate court decision to restore hundreds of Sunni candidates in next month’s parliamentary elections to the ballot. This could easily disrupt the elections.
On Iran, Obama is working to shape coming sanctions against the regime’s leadership and the Revolutionary Guards organization. He evidently believes that Russia is coming on board (Russia’s deputy foreign minister said today in Moscow that Iran is unwilling to compromise and that sanctions are sometimes necessary) and working to assuage China’s concerns.
The New York City Police Department has released aerial photographs its officers took of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is building for a show of strength in tomorrow’s Revolution Day festivities marking the success of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic fundamentalist revolution against the Shah of Iran. And it has begun enriching uranium supposedly toward the level needed for medical isotopes. However, it doesn’t have the technical capability needed to produce fuel rods for a reactor.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events today.
He will have private talks in and around the Capitol.
His appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, had a confirmation hearing yesterday afternoon before the Assembly Rules Committee. Maldonado won approval from the Senate Rules Committee on February 3rd.
If he is not rejected by the Legislature by February 22nd, Maldonado takes office.
If he is approved by February 16th, Schwarzenegger will schedule the special election to replace him as part of the June primary election. This would aid Democratic efforts to win Maldonado’s swing district seat.
But while Maldonado has support in the Senate, where he was endorsed last week on a 4-0 vote by the Senate Rules Committee, his fate is far less sure in the more fractious and hyperpartisan Assembly. Indeed, his nomination was forwarded to the floor without endorsement. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass says that the Assembly will vote tomorrow, and sharp opposition has already emerged from a few liberal Latino legislators. They criticize Maldonado for not voting for various liberal bills, while giving him no credit for critical votes on which he’s crossed the aisle.
They also dislike him for pushing the open primary idea, which is very popular with independents and most Californians, but hated by most partisans of the two big political parties.
Schwarzenegger is also dealing with state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s stopgap budget proposal, emerging today. Steinberg would deal with about a third of the state’s $20 billion budget deficit for the current and coming fiscal year, deferring any action on painful programmatic cuts till mid-year, when the the budget for the following fiscal year is due.
In case it isn’t obvious that the thinking under the Capitol Dome is to kick the budget down the road, this should make it clear.
** 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. … From my January 29th 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.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
In a surprise Q&A today with reporters at the White House, President Barack Obama addressed health care, the economy, new energy policy, and coming sanctions on Iran.
** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama’s pro-labor appointee to the National Labor Relations board, former SEIU lawyer Craig Becker, was blocked for confirmation today in the Senate when an attempt to block a Republican filibuster against his appointee fell short on a 52-33 vote. 60 votes are needed to stop a filibuster. The problem for Becker is his support of card check legislation. … Moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointee to replace Congressman John Garamendi as the state’s lieutenant governor, had his appointment moved to the state Assembly floor for a vote later this week on a unanimous vote by the Assembly Rules Committee. The committee, unlike last week’s Senate Rules Committee vote endorsing Maldonado’s appointment, took no position on the merits. I spoke to Maldonado today, and he’s optimistic about his chances. More about this later. …
** MEET THE BIGGEST CALIFORNIA POLITICAL CONTRIBUTORS OF THE NOUGHTIES. The California Fair Political Practices Commission has just compiled a list of the Top 10 donors to state campaigns in the decade just past. From January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009, these 10 individuals collectively contributed over $266 million of their personal wealth to campaigns for state office and initiatives.
1. Steve Bing $58,050,783
Southern California Businessman
2. Steve Poizner $43,205,282
Insurance Commissioner; candidate for Governor (2010)
Poizner’s total includes personal spending on his 2004 race for the state Assembly and on various initiative campaigns, including his leading role in the defeat of the term limits reform initiative last year.
3. Steve Westly $41,728,277
Former Controller; candidate for Governor (2006)
Westly’s total includes spending on his race for state Controller and on inititiatives.
4. Arnold Schwarzenegger $25,871,398
Governor
Schwarzenegger’s total includes spending on his two campaigns for governor and on initiatives.
5. Jerry Perenchio $23,267,738
Former owner of Univision Communication
6. Meg Whitman $19,642,200
Candidate for Governor (2010)
Whitman’s total was all spent on her campaign for governor, and does not include another $20 million she put into her campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination last month.
7. Angelo Tsakopoulos $15,795,379
Sacramento Area Developer
8. John Doerr $15,347,847
Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist
9. Reed Hastings $13,412,315
Founder of Netflix
10. Bill Simon $10,308,214
Candidate for Governor (2002)
GRAND TOTAL $266,629,433
** GLOBAL PERCEPTIONS OF U.S. LEADERSHIP ARE UP.A Gallup survey has more evidence of the sharp improvement in international perceptions of U.S. leadership with Barack Obama replacing George W. Bush in the White House, even as Obama continues major U.S. roles in Iraq and Afghanistan and aggressively prosecutes intelligence and military action against Al Qaeda.
Perceptions of U.S. leadership worldwide improved significantly from 2008 to 2009. The U.S.-Global Leadership Project, a partnership between the Meridian International Center and Gallup, finds that a median of 51% of the world approves of the job performance of the current leadership of the U.S., up from a median of 34% in 2008.
Gallup has asked residents worldwide to rate the leadership of the U.S. since 2005, which enables a comparison of how perceptions of U.S. leadership have changed from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. The global median approval of U.S. leadership remained relatively steady from 2005 to 2008. In 2009, a bare median majority approves of the job performance of U.S. leadership (51%) — a first since Gallup began asking the question worldwide in 2005.
Significant improvements in sentiment toward U.S. leadership are evident in all four major global regions, with the largest year-over-year increase in approval measured in Europe. Median approval of U.S. leadership increased by 28 percentage points between 2008 and 2009 in this region. A median of 47% approves and a median of 20% disapproves — the first time disapproval has dropped below 50% in Europe since Gallup first asked the question.
** HEAVY WEATHER SHUTS DOWN THE HOUSE. Because of the inclement weather in and around Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives is shutting down business for the week.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer released this statement:
As a result of the inclement weather affecting Members’ ability to travel to Washington, DC this week, there will be no votes in the House for the remainder of the week. The change this week means that we will add two days to the schedule as we look to take action on a jobs bill and other critical measures. Therefore, the House will reconvene on Monday, February 22, one day earlier than previously scheduled. The House will now also be in session on Friday, February 26th.
Iranian regime leaders are vowing a show of national solidarity and power on Revolution Day, February 11th. The Islamic republic risks tough new sanctions in pushing ahead with its nuclear program.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Washington continues to groan under the weight of extreme weather.
Obama was off to an early start this morning as First Lady Michelle Obama joined him and other administration officials in the Oval Office to sign an executive order targeting childhood obesity.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden then received the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
Following that, Obama and Biden met with Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate to discuss the economy and jobs in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden have a working lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 11:30 AM Pacific, Obama receives the daily economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
In a major development, the Pakistani media reported today that both government and Taliban leaders are acknowledging that the principal leader of the Taliban in Pakistan was killed last month in a U.S. missile strike ordered by Obama.
The Taliban first claimed that Hakeemullah Mehsud survived the American attack, but refused to provide any proof of life. Later they were silent on the matter.
Assuming that the reports are correct, this is the second time in six months that a U.S. missile strike has killed the principal leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The Taliban denied that at first as well, until the succession fight could be worked through.
Perhaps Republican presidential frontrunner Sarah Palin will twitter again or post another Facebook status update about Obama being soft on terrorism.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles, Tulare, and Sacramento today.
Schwarzenegger tours the annual World Ag Expo this morning in Tulare with state Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura. As the name suggests, this is the world’s largest agricultural exposition.
Schwarzenegger holds a media availability at 10:15 AM.
His appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, has a confirmation hearing this afternoon before the Assembly Rules Committee.
Maldonado won approval from the Senate Rules Committee on February 3rd.
If he is not rejected by the Legislature by February 22nd, Maldonado takes office.
If he is approved by February 16th, Schwarzenegger will schedule the special election to replace him as part of the June primary election. This would aid Democratic efforts to win Maldonado’s swing district seat.
But while Maldonado has support in the Senate, where he was endorsed last week on a 4-0 vote by the Senate Rules Committee, his fate is less sure in the more fractious Assembly.
** 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. … From my January 29th column.
Ringo Starr received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on its 50th anniversary last night. The former Beatles drummer, whose son Zak Starkey was drummer for The Who at their Super Bowl half-time show, was introduced by his brother-in-law, Eagles lead guitarist Joe Walsh. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was also on hand outside the iconic Capitol Records Tower.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
This is up about $38 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.
Congressman John Murtha, the longtime chairman of the House Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations and a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, died today from complications from gall bladder surgery. Murtha became an outspoken and influential opponent of the Iraq War. His subcommittee is one of the most influential of all congressional panels. Through his membership on this body, and his influence over Murtha and others, then Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson was able to fund the covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
** QUICK HITS. Congressional Republicans are agreeing so far to join President Barack Obama for televised negotiating session later this month on the national health care bill. This is perilous ground for them, given how things went when he appeared at the House Republican Caucus retreat. … California Attorney General Jerry Brown today called on the nation’s two largest public pension funds, California’s Public Employee Retirement System and State Teachers Retirement System, to demonstrate some action under the state law requiring to divest from companies doing business with Iran that are not ending the practice. Brown noted that the funds have reported on their 2009 activities but have failed to reveal whether they have actually divested or taken any steps. He spoke at rallies last year in support of Iran’s pro-democracy demonstrators who were forcibly suppressed by the Tehran regime. … Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointee to be the state’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, was to have had a confirmation hearing this afternoon in front of the Assembly Rules Committee. That’s been postponed till tomorrow. He’s drawing more opposition in the Assembly than in the Senate. … Schwarzenegger will be in lovely Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday morning to run in the last leg of the Winter Olympics Torch Relay. Schwarzenegger has done a lot on energy and environmental issues with the Canadian provincial government, which will help host the Opening Ceremony of the Games later that day.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a longtime man of the left, both said today that the European Union will join the U.S. in insisting on tough new sanctions against Iran.
“We don’t have any other option than to go to the Security Council for further measures,” Morin was quoted as saying following a meeting with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “On the Iran nuclear issue, our views totally converge.”
Also speaking on the Iranian nuclear issue was French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who was quoted by AFP as saying Monday afternoon that Iran’s usage of “blackmail” over its atomic program was forcing Western powers to insist on sanctions. “Negotiation is not possible,” he reportedly said.
After announcing Sunday that it would begin to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated entreaties by the UN and Western leaders, the regime in Teheran declared on Monday that it would enrich the potentially fissile material to 20 percent.
Iran’s announcement also served as a final, official rejection of a UN-brokered plan which would have required the Islamic republic to ship most of its uranium abroad to France, where it would undergo further processing into metal fuel rods.
** HOW LONG HAS MEG WHITMAN LIVED IN CALIFORNIA? In her introductory TV ad, released to the media on Thursday, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Whitman, the former national co-chair of the McCain/Palin campaign, said she has lived in California for 30 years.
As that was obviously impossible, she changed the TV ad on Friday to say that she’s lived in California for “many years.”
In a getting-to-know-you softball interview, Stahl asked Whitman — who had just become national co-chair of the John McCain for President campaign — what she and her husband, Dr. Griff Harsh IV, like to do for fun.
We actually really like to hike. And it’s something that we do together, and locally. One of the great things about living in California is the state parks, all up and down the coast. So we do a fair amount of hiking together. This was a fun thing we did about a month ago. We went down to see the elephant seals at Año Nuevo. I have lived in California for nearly 20 years and I’ve never been to see the elephant seals. And we had a ball. We drove to Half Moon Bay, drove down the coast, had a picnic lunch, went to see the elephant seals, on the most spectacular California day that you have ever seen. And then took off to a hike in the redwoods that’s just north of … or just a little bit south of Half Moon Bay, and did about a 10-mile hike, which I was dying at the end of.
One wonders how Whitman got from having lived in California for less than 20 years — when talking with Leslie Stahl as she accepted the national co-chairmanship of the 2008 Republican presidential campaign — to having lived in California for 30 years in her much-rehearsed introductory TV ad for governor of California.
Space shuttle Endeavour blasted off last night from the Kennedy Space Center, heading toward the International Space Station on a construction mission. Monday’s lift-off was the final night time launch before the space shuttles are retired.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
Another big week in presidential politics, and a semi-big week in California politics.
President Barack Obama has a complex series of moves to make on the economy, health care, and geopolitics, especially with regard to Iran.
In California politics, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is hoping for legislative cooperation on his appointment of a new lieutenant governor and some action on the chronic budget crisis. Jerry Brown, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, edges closer to actually declaring his candidacy, having made a campaign-like speech and taken questions over the weekend in San Francisco. And the Meg Whitman camp is probably breathing a sigh of relief that California’s much diminished press corps didn’t bother to cover any of her public appearances last week.
One great development for Obama over the weekend was the definitive re-emergence of Sarah Palin as a political figure following her book tour. She’s clearly not just going to play media celebrity.
The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, who quit as Alaska’s governor midway through her first term, keynoted the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, ripping in to Obama as soft on terror. She received $100,000 for her speech.
Palin sounded a lot like a presidential candidate, both before the Tea Party crowd and on Fox News today. Which, as I write this, is not much of a distinction.
“We need a Commander-in-Chief, not a law perfessor standing at the lectern,” she declared to screams of approval.
Palin led a preference poll of Republicans for president last week.
For his part, Obama now has to follow through on his weekend pledge at the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee to revive the national health care bill, which in different forms had passed both houses of Congress only to stall with the upset loss of the Massachusetts special election for Senate.
Obama is also pushing for a second, smaller economic stimulus bill as part of his newfound focus on job creation. The unemployment rate dropped for the first time in months but the situation is still sluggish at best.
While Obama monitors the welcome re-emergence of Palin, he places a bit more attention on several geopolitical crises he inherited, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Pakistan, it appears increasingly evident that the new head of the Pakistani Taliban was killed in a U.S. missile strike inside Pakistan ordered by Obama. The Taliban have refused to provide any proof of life for Hakimullah Mehsud.
The U.S. strike was in mid-January.
Mehsud’s predecessor was also killed in a U.S. missile strike ordered by Obama.
In Iran, regime leaders have further muddied the waters by vowing to host an international conference against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Even as they vowed to begin further enrichment of uranium, though not to weapons-grade levels, for medical purposes. Once uranium is enriched to 20%, it is much easier to then turn around and further enrich it to 90% for weapons purposes.
They also say that they want to send uranium abroad for further enrichment. But they don’t like the deal their negotiators agreed to late last year.
Defense Secretary Bob Gates, appearing today in Paris with French Defense Minister Herve Morin, said that the U.S. and its allies have no choice but to pursue stringent sanctions against the Iranian regime. At the same time, the U.S. and the European Union released a scathing joint statement on Iran’s human rights practices in the wake of last year’s disputed presidential election.
Things are not quite so good in Iraq, either. Last week, it appeared that the government was going along with an appellate court ruling restoring some 500 Sunni candidates for the March parliamentary elections. They had been banned for supposed links to the late Saddam Hussein, in a move that many considered a Shiite power play. Now it’s not so clear.
In Afghanistan, preparations continue for the first big military offensive since the Obama surge. U.S. Marines and British troops will take the lead, assisted by Afghan forces, in a major move against a Taliban enclave in southern Afghanistan.
Back in California, there’s been little action in the special legislative session on the budget called by Schwarzenegger. A state Senate committee has heard some testimony. An Assembly committee finally convened, but only to hear criticism of Schwarzenegger’s plans. The state will run out of money at the end of March if action is not taken.
While remaining state reporters and bloggers were transfixed by the sensational last week in the Republican contests for governor and U.S. senator — Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner’s claim that Whitman’s campaign violated the law in trying to force him from the race, Whitman’s clumsy attempt to force him out, Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s cockeyed “demon sheep” video attack on Tom Campbell, and Whitman’s false claim to have lived in California for 30 years (when she was national co-chair of the McCain/Palin campaign she said she’d lived in California for less than 20 years) — Whitman herself moved around the state all week promoting her book.
And no one covered the billionaire gubernatorial hopeful. True, they were book tour events, not campaign events. Which is, well, nonsense. It’s all part of her campaign.
Whitman managed to appear, as I wrote 10 days ago that she would, in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sacramento. And to my knowledge, no journalist bestirred him or herself to attend, observe, and ask her a few questions.
Not that she would give much in the way of answers, but that’s the point. The press complains that Whitman isn’t available, that her staff gives boiler plate robot answers, that she won’t (or can’t) engage.
She’s not an author on a private book tour, she is an official candidate for governor of California. Everywhere she goes she is on the record.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in the Oval Office.
Due to the massive snow storm along the Atlantic seaboard, Washington is essentially shut down today. Federal government offices are closed.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger surprised James Cameron Saturday night in Santa Barbara, presenting him with the Modern Master award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Cameron’s new film, Avatar, has already broken the domestic and global box office records set by his Titanic. Cameron and Schwarzenegger worked together on several major films.
UPDATE: Schwarzenegger’s event in San Luis Obispo will now be at 11 AM instead of 10 AM.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Sacramento today.
His appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, has a confirmation hearing this afternoon before the Assembly Rules Committee.
Maldonado won approval from the Senate Rules Committee on February 3rd.
If he is not rejected by the Legislature by February 22nd, Maldonado takes office.
At 10 AM, after touring REC Solar in San Luis Obispo, Schwarzenegger and Maldonado hold a press conference there to highlight Schwarzenegger’s proposal to promote green jobs through training and hiring incentives.
** 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. … From my January 29th 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.
The long-suffering New Orleans Saints, whose city was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, upset the favored Indianapolis Colts in convincing fashion in the Super Bowl, 31-17.
** 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.
This is up about $38 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.
2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, sounding much like a presidential candidate, keynoted the National Tea Party Convention last night in Nashville. She ripped into President Barack Obama for supposedly being soft on terrorism and called for another American revolution.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama will hold a Super Bowl viewing party in the White House. Unlike last year, when the Pittsburgh Steelers (who gave Obama a great deal of support and whose owner became the U.S. ambassador to Ireland) were playing the Arizona Cardinals, Obama has no particular favorite in this game. He won Indiana, whose Indianapolis Colts are favored today, in 2008 and lost Louisiana, home of the New Orleans Saints. But New Orleans is a sentimental favorite, with the city having nearly been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Washington is snowed under by the biggest blizzard there in the modern era.
2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who quit as Alaska’s governor midway through her first term, keynoted the National Tea Party convention last night in Nashville, Tennessee, ripping in to Obama as soft on terror.
Palin sounded a lot like a presidential candidate, both before the Tea Party crowd and on Fox News today. Which, as I write this, is not much of a distinction.
“We need a Commander-in-Chief, not a law perfessor standing at the lectern,” she declared to screams of approval.
Palin led a preference poll of Republicans for president last week.
She received $100,000 for her speech.
While Obama monitors the re-emergence of Palin, he places a bit more attention on several geopolitical crises he inherited, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.
In Pakistan, it appears increasingly evident that the new head of the Pakistani Taliban was killed in a U.S. missile strike inside Pakistan ordered by Obama. The Taliban have refused to provide any proof of life for Hakimullah Mehsud.
The U.S. strike was in mid-January.
Mehsud’s predecessor was also killed in a U.S. missile strike ordered by Obama.
In Iran, regime leaders today further muddied the waters by vowing to host an international conference against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Even as they vowed to begin further enrichment of uranium, though not to weapons-grade levels, for medical purposes.
They also say that they want to send uranium abroad for further enrichment. But they don’t like the deal their negotiators agreed to late last year.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SUNDAY. Governor Arnolf Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
Early this morning, he toured the mud and debris slide which occurred yesterday in the LA area’s La Canada Flintridge.
Acting Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County on January 21st due to the effects of severe storms in the across the state. That state of emergency remains in effect.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama gave short shrift to the lowest unemployment rate in nearly a year and talked up small business as job creator.
** STATEWIDE CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES APPEAR IN SAN FRANCISCO. Most of the California Democrats’ statewide candidates will appear Saturday afternoon at a forum hosted by the California Young Democrats at an SEIU hall in San Francisco.
Among those speaking is Jerry Brown, an undeclared candidate who has nonetheless cleared the Democratic field for governor of California.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama received his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
He then went to the Capitol Hilton to give the morning address at the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee.
Obama pledged that he will not stop his push for national health care reform, which hit a major pothole with the upset election in Massachusetts of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate, depriving Democrats of the 60th vote needed to block Republican filibusters.
Obama made his way to the DNC meeting through deserted streets. The nation’s capital is in the grips of the biggest snowstorm in modern history.
Washington is a town which short-circuits with a little weather. With this sort of heavy weather, not much is going to happen there.
Washington, D.C. is literally snowed under by the biggest blizzard in modern history.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq.
In Afghanistan, as I wrote over a week ago, the trend is now clearly towards seeking a coalition government with major elements of the Taliban. Recent remarks 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.
Taliban leaders today pledged stiff resistance, saying with bravado that they welcome the allied troops venturing out of their bases.
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.
Germany today denounced Iran’s position, saying that it is time for the Islamic republic to accept the deal its negotiators accepted last year.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
His appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, has a confirmation hearing in the state Assembly on Monday.
Maldonado won approval from the Senate Rules Committee on February 3rd.
If he is not rejected by the Legislature by February 22nd, Maldonado takes office.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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 closed on Friday at $71.19 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The suicide bomber who killed three U.S. Special Forces soldiers in Pakistan on Wednesday — singling out their car in a motorcade — may have had inside information, police say. The attack has raised new questions over the role of the U.S. military in the country.
** QUICK HITS. Scott Brown, the surprise winner of the Massachusetts special election for the late Ted Kennedy’s old seat in the U.S. Senate, was sworn in today as a senator. He won’t get Ted Kennedy’s desk, however, which was previously used by John F. Kennedy. That goes to John Kerry. Who would probably rather not be getting it. … Speaking of Browns, California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office was cleared this afternoon by the Alameda County district attorney of any wrongdoing in the taping by an aide of interviews with Brown and other officials conducted by a few reporters. This was hardly a surprise, as the interviews were for publication and in no way could be considered to be confidential conversations.
** AMERICANS VIEWS ON SOCIALISM AND A FEW OTHER MATTERS.A new Gallup Poll asked an interesting series of “Just off the top of your head what do you think of …” questions. Pretty much everybody has a positive view of small business. Big business, not so much. And socialism, well, 36% like it, 58% don’t.
More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of “socialism,” while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.
“Socialism” was one of seven terms included in a Jan. 26-27 Gallup poll. Americans were asked to indicate whether their top-of-mind reactions to each were positive or negative. Respondents were not given explanations or descriptions of the terms.
Americans are almost uniformly positive in their reactions to three terms: small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. They are divided on big business and the federal government, with roughly as many Americans saying their view is positive as say it is negative. Americans are more positive than negative on capitalism (61% versus 33%) and more negative than positive on socialism (36% to 58%). …
Wall Street, unfortunately, was not tested in this poll.
** WHITMAN SHOWS HER FIRST TV AD. Billionaire ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman has rolled out her first TV ad. She narrates it. However, she barely appears in the spot, which focuses instead on generic footage.
As I’ve reported, her campaign for the Republican nomination for governor of California is struggling with the reality that the candidate does not test well with focus groups.
MW: “I will say the number one thing, I think, that faces California right now is actually a crisis of confidence. People are scared to death that California cannot be fixed.
The most important thing that the next governor of California has to do is actually deliver the goods. The professional politicians have been fighting in Sacramento for years and the state is in the worst shape that I’ve seen in the thirty years that I have lived in California.
We can turn California around. I think, actually, I can make a difference. I have run large organizations, I know how to create jobs, I know how to focus, I know how to balance a budget and I think a business perspective is a bit of what California needs right now.
The things that I think we need to focus on are first, creating and keeping jobs in California. Second is cutting government spending and third is fixing our education system.
We need to have California be what it once was and I think we can do it. Let’s say what we mean, mean what we say and let’s get it done.”
The TV ad’s text simply repeats what her radio ads say. By my trusty Seamaster, Whitman is on screen for 13 of the ad’s 60 seconds, for no more than four seconds at a time.
President Barack Obama, speaking this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, said that the country needs to regain a sense of civility and that prayer can touch our hearts with humility.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama had a very early start to his day today as he and First Lady Michelle Obama attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast, where he gave the main address.
Obama then received his daily intelligence briefing and met with Democratic congressional leaders House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Steny Hoyer in the Oval Office.
Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama has lunch with business leaders in the State Dining Room.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 2:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks and takes questions at a Democratic National Committee fundraising reception at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
At 5 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a DNC fundraising dinner at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.
France today joined Britain in pushing for tough new sanctions against Iran if it does not follow through on its renewed seeming acceptance of shipping its uranium abroad for further enrichment.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
At 7:30 PM, Schwarzenegger discusses the priorities in the final year of his governorship in an address to the inaugural dinner gala of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce at the Beverly Hilton.
Schwarzenegger’s appointee as California’s new lieutenant governor, moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado, won a confirmation vote late yesterday afternoon from the state Senate Rules Committee. But the full Senate, not to mention the Assembly, might vote to reject him before February 22nd, at which point he automatically becomes the lieutenant governor otherwise.
** 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. …
** 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.
** 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.
** 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.
On Tuesday, James Cameron’s Avatar passed his Titanic for the top spot on the all-time domestic box office list with over $601 million. With record-breaking international box office, Avatar had already broken Titanic‘s global box office record.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
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