Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, married longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky yesterday in a private ceremony at a Hudson River estate in upstate New York.
** 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.
During Sunday chat show appearances, Defense Secretary Bob Gates said that the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011 will be very small, perhaps a few thousand troops. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also appearing on ABC’s This Week with new host Christiane Amanpour (the former longtime CNN foreign correspondent), said that she hopes the withdrawal is larger than that.
Washington has been rocked for the past week by the gigantic Wikileaks info-dump of classified U.S. intelligence reports, almost all of it unfinished intelligence, recounting the failings of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009 and the multiple involvements of Pakistani intelligence officials with jihadist forces. Gates denied a Wikileaks report that the Taliban are using Stinger missiles in Afghanistan.
July has succeeded June as the deadliest month of the year in the Afghan War for U.S. and NATO troops.
The Dutch today became the first NATO member to withdraw its troops, nearly 2000 of them, from Afghanistan.
Canada is slated to follow suit next year.
The House, with an expanding number of U.S. troops in the field, dutifully voted a few days ago for more massive funding for the Afghan War effort. But more than 100 House Democrats voted no, and Pelosi herself, invoking a customary privilege as speaker, did not vote herself.
Pelosi also said that she is confident that Democrats will retain control of the House after the November elections.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is out of state today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger turned 63 on Friday.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama, who toured successfully revitalized auto plants yesterday in Michigan, talked up the revival of the U.S. auto industry and called on Senate Republicans to stop blocking legislation to help small business.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. 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 traveled to Michigan yesterday to highlight major success in revitalizing the auto industry. Obama highlighted, as he will again next week in Illinois, his administration’s major successes in essentially saving the U.S. auto industry.
U.S. auto industry profits not only again exist, but are up very sharply. The industry is on track to hire some 60,000 workers this year, the most in more than a decade. And all $60 billion of the federal money infused by the Obama Administration will be recovered.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, where a major naval exercise centering around the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup wrapped up on Wednesday Wednesday, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet this week.
But that meeting was canceled as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger turned 63 yesterday.
Rather than spend a private day in Los Angeles, as I’d thought he would do, the action superstar went for the action, journeying to Northern California’s Bohemian Grove to address the secret annual gathering of the Bohemian Club.
From there, he went south to the high desert country north of Los Angeles, where a raging wildfire threatened some homes.
Fortunately, that threat was turned back.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout last week and this with legislative leaders — who met on their own for weeks, to no avail — about the chronic state budget crisis. But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
Schwarzenegger released this statement today on the passing of his moderate Republican legislative ally, former L.A. state Assemblyman Keith Richman, who had long suffered from cancer:
“Keith Richman was a great leader and passionate public servant. He advocated for so many important causes in California, including health care and pension reform, and his work for our state made a lasting impact that will be remembered. Maria and I were saddened to learn of his passing and our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, family, and loved ones during this difficult time.”
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN. Few if any campaigns have been so geared to the ongoing decline of journalism as that of billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican trying to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. In her race against Jerry Brown, Whitman, who let the cat out of the bag last year when she wondered why she needed to talk with reporters since their newspapers were going out of business anyway, uses very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and takes advantage of the emerging post-press era to say whatever she wants, without regard to accuracy or consistency.
By the post-press era, I mean the era in which we are living, in which journalism is rapidly hollowing out and the media is devolving into competing clashes of opinion and propaganda atop a pervasive brew of hype, sensation, and infotainment.
California, with its much diminished state press corps, had seemed to be on the leading edge of the post-press era, just as Whitman calculated for her campaign. I used to read more than a dozen somewhat different versions of the same article; now I see only a few.
The national media, which anachronistically still means East Coast-based, at least to the East Coast-based version of it — which fails to grasp that the Internet has created a post-geographic world even as the old national media retreats from international coverage and analysis — had seemed to be holding on to higher volume and quality. But that illusion surely came crashing down last week, when far right Internet huckster Andrew Breitbart conned the hysterical cable news culture and, stunningly, the Obama Administration, into buying into his latest doctored video. (That would be the Obama crew which in the 2008 campaign rightly disdained the perpetual motion machine cable culture.) … From my July 30th feature.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. … From my July 26th essay.
With another very strong weekend on tap, Inception has emerged as the thinking person’s summer blockbuster movie. After only its third weekend in release, the new film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan should have more than $190 million in domestic box office.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON? Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …From my July 22nd 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 $78.95 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $45 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.
There is a big wildfire in the high desert country north of Los Angeles.
** QUICK HITS. On this quiet Friday … President Barack Obama, in between extolling the revival of the U.S. auto industry that his administration helped engineer, called on Iran to release three American hikers, recent UC Berkeley grads, as they are “not spies.” Well, after they wandered over the border from Iraq, they are certainly not in the intelligence field. … Eschewing a quiet birthday in LA, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed the annual secret gathering of the Bohemian Club in Northern California’s Bohemian Grove, then rushed to the scene of a fire threatening part of Los Angeles. … With their $110 million-plus and counting campaign clearly behind their own schedule, billionaire Meg Whitman’s high-priced consultants are saying they really do have a great campaign and that Jerry Brown’s campaign, which has spent virtually nothing, is lousy. Perhaps so, he’s only ahead of her by a little. Just as he was after the primary. … The U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, acros the border from El Paso, Texas, closed indefinitely under some sort of drug cartel threat.
** HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN. Few if any campaigns have been so geared to the ongoing decline of journalism as that of billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican trying to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. In her race against Jerry Brown, Whitman, who let the cat out of the bag last year when she wondered why she needed to talk with reporters since their newspapers were going out of business anyway, uses very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and takes advantage of the emerging post-press era to say whatever she wants, without regard to accuracy or consistency.
By the post-press era, I mean the era in which we are living, in which journalism is rapidly hollowing out and the media is devolving into competing clashes of opinion and propaganda atop a pervasive brew of hype, sensation, and infotainment.
California, with its much diminished state press corps, had seemed to be on the leading edge of the post-press era, just as Whitman calculated for her campaign. I used to read more than a dozen somewhat different versions of the same article; now I see only a few.
The national media, which anachronistically still means East Coast-based, at least to the East Coast-based version of it — which fails to grasp that the Internet has created a post-geographic world even as the old national media retreats from international coverage and analysis — had seemed to be holding on to higher volume and quality. But that illusion surely came crashing down last week, when far right Internet huckster Andrew Breitbart conned the hysterical cable news culture and, stunningly, the Obama Administration, into buying into his latest doctored video. (That would be the Obama crew which in the 2008 campaign rightly disdained the perpetual motion machine cable culture.) …
President Barack Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act yesterday at the White House.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Michigan today.
Obama travels to Michigan today to highlight major success in revitalizing the auto industry. He receives his daily intelligence and economic briefings on Air Force One.
At 8:05 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Detroit, Michigan.
At 8:50 AM Pacific, Obama tours the Chrysler Auto Plant in Detroit.
At 9:15 AM Pacific, Obama delivers a statement at Chrysler.
At 9:55 AM Pacific, Obama tours the General Motors Auto Plant in Hamtramck, Michigan.
At 10:40 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at General Motors.
At 12:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Detroit, Michigan on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 1:25 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 1:40 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama today is highlighting, this week and next, his administration’s major successes in essentially saving the U.S. auto industry.
U.S. auto industry profits not only again exist, but are up very sharply. The industry is on track to hire some 60,000 workers this year, the most in more than a decade. And all $60 billion of the federal money infused by the Obama Administration will be recovered.
Highlighting this success story comes on a day on which it emerges that U.S. gross domestic product growth in the second quarter of the year was less than forecast, some 2.4%
Consumers have throttled back on spending again as hiring slows. Hiring has slowed because corporations — whose coffers are brimming with cash — are sitting on their cash to see which way the wind blows rather than start hiring again.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, where a major naval exercise centering around the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup wrapped up Wednesday, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
In Afghanistan, the number of U.S. troops killed in action has passed 60 in July, making it the deadliest month of the the Afghan War to date. As expected, given the surge in both U.S. troop strength and in operational tempo.
In Pakistan, government leaders are reacting to some of the impact of the Wikileaks info-dump of classified rough AfPak intelligence reports on the Internet. While the word in Washington is that there’s nothing new here, move along, the word elsewhere is otherwise.
New British Prime Minister David Cameron has called on Pakistani leaders to purge the top ranks of the military and intelligence services of Taliban supporters. Publicly, Pakistani leaders express surprise and displeasure at the Tory’s statements. Not so publicly, the head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service canceled his planned trip to London.
In Iran, regime leaders again say they want only a civilian nuclear program even as they maneuver for expanded enrichment. Today they said that they want a new round of international negotiations, to take place in Turkey.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet yesterday.
Now this meeting has been canceled, as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
Although it is not widely known, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, today’s birthday boy, has appeared in movies.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger turned 63 today.
Incidentally, Sony Pictures announced yesterday that it is remaking, er, “re-imagining” Schwarzenegger’s 1990 smash hit, Total Recall. The image above is from that film, which, as I noted in my essay on Inception, is a mind-bender science fiction action film as well.
There is a recent spate of remakes and sequels to Schwarzenegger hit films, which I’ll get into another time.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout last week and this with legislative leaders — who met on their own for weeks, to no avail — about the chronic state budget crisis. But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. … From my July 26th essay.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON? Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …From my July 22nd essay.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER. … From my July 9th 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 $44 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.
Shirley Sherrod, the U.S. Department of Agriculture staffer wrongfully forced to resign after a deceptively edited video of her supposedly racist remarks was produced and promulgated throughout the blogosphere and cable news by far right Los Angeles web impresario Andew Breitbart, said today that she will sue Breitbart, who has failed to apologize for his actions. Sherrod spoke today at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego.
** QUICK HITS. Republicans in the U.S. Senate today blocked Obama-backed legislation to provide $30 billion in funding for small business loans, The vote of 58 to 42 failed to reach the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. This follows on the heels of a similar vote yesterday on campaign finance reform legislation. Not unexpected results, and designed in part to give Democrats ammunition in the fall campaign. … The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 15-0 to approve President Obama’s choice for director of national intelligence, retired Air Force General James Clapper, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. … Opponents of the Proposition 14 open primary initiative, passed easily in the June California primary election, sued today in San Francisco saying it’s discriminatory against minor parties and write-in votes. That brought this response from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: “It comes as no surprise that Sacramento special interests are trying to overturn the government reforms Californians overwhelmingly support. I will fight these special interests at every turn to protect these reforms that will break through Sacramento’s dysfunction.”
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN.
** CALIFORNIA POLL: BROWN AND BOXER LEAD WHITMAN AND FIORINA, CLIMATE CHANGE PROGRAM LOOKS VERY POPULAR. As I’ve been saying all along, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman’s advertising campaign in her bid to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California is, as the saying goes, off plan. Not only has her record-shattering spending, $110 million-plus and counting, not yielded the 12 to 15-point lead she wanted by now in order to further her hope of preventing a Jerry Brown comeback in the fall, it has failed to yield her a lead of any sort at all.
With a little help from his friends, like the California Working Families group, which is nonetheless being heavily out-spent by Whitman, Brown’s Zen rope-a-dope approach to the governor’s race has him in a “surprisingly” strong position, considering that he still hasn’t spent a dime himself.
Whitman’s fellow ex-CEO ticketmate, ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, also trails her Democratic rival, Senator Barbara Boxer, by five points.
In worse news for the Republican duo — both of whom want to do away with California’s landmark climate change program, the law continues to be quite popular.
67% of California voters favor the law, which Schwarzenegger signed into being in 2006 in a splashy ceremony on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. While only a 53-42 margin say they prefer unilateral state action now before the economy improves, far more believe that the climate change program will create jobs than cost them.
This is a serious problem for the proponents of Proposition 23, the initiative to do away with the climate change/renewable energy program.
It’s also a serious problem for Whitman and Fiorina.
Fiorina has cast herself as something of a greenhouse denier, replete with a TV ad ripping Boxer for being too concerned about “the weather.” (Incidentally, 2010 is shaping up as the hottest year on record.)
Whitman has, in her now customary fashion, waffled around the issue.
First she said she wants a one-year suspension of the law, a stance recently ripped by Schwarzenegger as an untenable position that would block greentech investment decisions. California leads the nation by far in such venture capital activity.
Then in the spring, as the Republican primary heated up, Whitman said she wanted to do away with the climate change program altogether.
More recently, she says she wants a one-year suspension.
This is Whitman’s now familiar pattern, of course, of obfuscation and denial of her own statements.
President Barack Obama met yesterday with small business owners at a Tastee Sub Shop in New Jersey.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Obama then delivered an address on education reform to the 100th Annual Convention of the National Urban League at the Washington Convention Center.
At 8:10 AM Pacific, Obama meets with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Situation Room.
In addition to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, expected attendees at the AfPak war council meeting are:
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense
Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff
General James Jones, National Security Advisor
Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor
John Brennan, Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor
Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
David Gompert, Acting Director of National Intelligence
Leon Panetta, Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Rajiv Shah, Administrator, USAID
James Steinberg, Deputy Secretary of State
Jack Lew, Deputy Secretary of State
Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Doug Lute, Coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Mary DeRosa, Deputy White House Counsel and National Security Staff Legal Advisor
General David Petraeus (via videoconference)
Lt Gen John Allen (via videoconference)
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry (via videoconference)
Ambassador Anne Patterson (via videoconference)
At 9:35 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 1:50 PM Pacific, Obama signs the Tribal Law and Order Act in the East Room.
At 4:05 PM Pacific, Obama attends a DNC fundraiser at a private residence in Washington.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, where a major naval exercise centering around the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup wrapped up yesterday, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet yesterday.
Now this meeting has been canceled, as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Ronald Reagan Day into law yesterday at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, along with legislation creating a Reagan Centennial Commission. Next February 6th will be the centennial of Reagan’s birth.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Southern California today.
At 10 AM, Schwarzenegger participates in a roundtable discussion on California’s chronic budget deficit at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout last week with legislative leaders — who met on their own for weeks, to no avail — about the chronic state budget crisis. But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. … From my July 26th essay.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON? Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …From my July 22nd essay.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER. … From my July 9th 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 $44 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.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she will appeal today’s federal court injunction blocking key provisions of her state’s controversial new anti-illegal immigrant law.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN.
** QUICK HITS. As Congress passes major new funding for the Afghan War effort, Virginia Senator and former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, the most highly decorated Marine officer of the Vietnam War, today cautioned President Barack Obama, for whom he campaigned extensively in 2008, not to enter into long-term commitments in Afghanistan without the advice and consent of the Senate. … As California’s chronic budget crisis drags on, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reinstituted a state worker unpaid furlough program. … As the governor’s race drags on, the California Teachers Association joined the California Working Families independent expenditure committee on behalf of Jerry Brown.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: WHAT’S WRONG WITH MEG WHITMAN’S ADVERTISING? I’m looking at the numbers from four recent polls in the California governor’s race, private and public. Despite her massive spending — she started running ads last fall — billionaire Meg Whitman doesn’t have even the slightest lead over Jerry Brown in any of them.
At worst, she is six points behind in a new poll by Public Policy Polling. At best, she is tied in a new private poll.
On average of the four polls, Brown is ahead by three points.
Keep in mind that Brown hasn’t run one ad yet. And has barely spent any money at all.
True, some of his allies, mostly in organized labor, are running TV and radio ads supporting him and knocking Whitman.
But Whitman is outspending those pro-Brown independent expenditure efforts by about a 2 to 1 ratio.
Whitman has already shattered all spending records, not only for a California campaign, but for any non-presidential campaign anywhere in America. She has outspent her primary and general election opposition — that is to say, her COMBINED opposition from all sources, including tenacious primary rival Steve Poizner — by more than 2 to 1.
Her plan by this point was to be 12 to 15 points ahead of Brown, to put him in such a bind that it would be difficult for him to mount a fall comeback.
Well, it’s still not happening.
** NEW SURVEY: THE WORLD IS ENVELOPED BY CYBERSPACE, UNEVENLY. A new Gallup survey of Internet access around the world reveals that linkage to the global communications network continued to expand last year despite the massive economic downturn.
But it did so, of course, rather unevenly.
When adults in countries around the world were asked in 2009 whether or not their homes had access to the Internet, global network linkage ranged from a high of 88% in Sweden to a low of 0% in Cambodia.
The top 10 nations were, in order: Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Canada, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, South Korea, Bahrain, and the United States. (The US with 81% of households linked to the Internet.)
Ireland, Japan, Qatar, Germany, Austria, and Israel follow closely behind.
Afghanistan, incidentally, is near the bottom of the world list, with 6% of adults saying they have Internet access. Coupled with the general lack of roads (helicopters are needed to carry US military supplies), telephones, and television, this only further points up the mountainous challenge of nation building in the midst of a war there.
Among 116 countries and areas Gallup surveyed last year, a median proportion of 2 in 10 adults reported that they have Internet access at home, but the proportion was greater than 3 in 4 adults in 15 countries. These populations in the most connected countries span several global regions, including Europe, Asia, Northern America, and the Middle East.
The most obvious characteristic of all of these countries is that they are developed; none has an annual per-capita GDP lower than $28,000. In countries with per-capita GDPs of at least $25,000, a median of 78% report being online at home. Greece is the only country in this group where less than half of residents (39%) report home Internet access.
As countries’ income levels drop, so does residents’ Internet access at home — most precipitously among countries with per-capita GDPs of less than $10,000. …
Populations in the most connected countries also tend to be highly urbanized, reducing the cost of extending Internet delivery modes — whether phone and cable lines or wireless towers — to a high proportion of residents. Two of the most connected populations in the world — residents of Singapore and Hong Kong — are entirely urban.
Internet access is clearly a function of economic development; as recent trends in China demonstrate, demand for electronics and online services grows as living standards rise along with disposable income levels. Lack of access, however, also means people are missing chances to connect, including opportunities for entrepreneurs to reach broader markets for their products or for community leaders to promote civic engagement.
In many countries where home Internet access is less widespread, communal access is common; Internet cafes have proliferated, or online community centers are available. Public access points help mitigate some effects of the digital divide — though as these data demonstrate, the prevalence of home Internet access is strongly associated with relative prosperity worldwide.
Three weeks into the fight in the volatile Arghandab Valley, a platoon of the 101st Airborne Division is heading to the rear, weakened by casualties and unable to continue its mission. Combat Outpost Nolen has seen some of the most intense fighting of the very slow-starting offensive in Kandahar Province. The area is critical to the U.S. as a main Taliban supply route into Kandahar city.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, DC, New Jersey, and New York today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then met with Senator John Kerry in the Oval Office.
At 8:45 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One for Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Air Force One.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama departs Andrews Air Force Base on Air Force One en route to Newark, New Jersey.
At 9:50 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Newark, New Jersey.
At 10:30 AM Pacific, Obama meets with a group of small business owners at the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, New Jersey.
At 11:20 AM Pacific, Obama delivers a statement on the economy.
At 2:40 PM Pacific, Obama attends a DNC finance event at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.
At 4:20 PM Pacific, Obama attends a DNC finance event at a private residence in New York City.
At 5:50 PM Pacific, Obama departs Newark, New Jersey on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 6:40 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base.
At 6:55 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, where a major naval exercise centering around the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup wraps up today, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
As expected, despite increased criticism occasioned by the Wikileaks info-dump of rough intel on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the House late yesterday overwhelmingly passed the funding bill for the Afghan War. The alternative was to leave troops in the field unfunded as Congress goes on recess. But more than 100 Democrats voted no, nonetheless.
The line from Obama on down is that the massive classified document drop covers a period, 2004 to 2009, in which many mistakes were made and that the U.S. is now on the right course in Afghanistan.
However, the video above reflects current extreme difficulties being encountered there.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet today.
Now this meeting has been canceled, as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver paid their respects at the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan at the Reagan Presidential Library in 2004.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Southern California today.
At 11 AM, he appears in a ceremony at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley to sign a bill creating Ronald Reagan Day in California.
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan will appear with Schwarzenegger, along with the bill’s co-authors, state Senator George Runner and Assembly Minority Leader Martin Garrick.
The first Ronald Reagan Day will occur next year on February 6th, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout last week with legislative leaders — who met on their own for weeks, to no avail — about the chronic state budget crisis. But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. … From my July 26th essay.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON? Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …From my July 22nd essay.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER. … From my July 9th 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.
Troops from the 101st Airborne Division at Combat Outpost Nolen engaged in a firefight today in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province. Meanwhile back in Washington, President Barack Obama and others maintained that the massive Wikileaks drop of classified Afghan War documents represents a bygone period and that things are better now. We’ll get to that argument tomorrow in another video from this same location.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN.
** QUICK HITS. The House today passed a big new funding bill for the Afghan War, seemingly shrugging off the Wikileaks info-dump of classified documents from 2004 to 2009. But the alternative was to leave troops in the field unfunded. And more than 100 Democrats voted against the funding, the most yet. … Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today hailed the launch of the nation’s largest wind farm, in the Southern California desert. He also welcomed California’s selection as a finalist in the next phase of the Race to the Top education challenge grants from the Obama Administration’s Department of Education. And Schwarzenegger welcomed the report of the Western Climate Initiative, which he co-founded, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The WCI encompasses American states and Canadian provinces that represent 20% of the U.S. population and 70% of the Canadian population. …
** CALIFORNIA 2010: BROWN MOVES, WHITMAN ADVERTISES, SCHWARZENEGGER DEFENDS. Attorney General Jerry Brown has made some fancy moves the past few days, first essentially endorsing the public pension reform moves pushed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which a number of unions have begun to accept in contract negotiations, and investigating the scandal in the little LA suburban city of Bell, where local officials governing the barely 40,000 people there have been paying themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as actual public services deteriorated.
Brown’s move on pension reform neutralizes the conservative Whitman attack against him that he is a tool of the public employee unions — some tool, as newspaper articles are beginning to show his longtime record of independence both in his first two terms as governor of California and in his two terms as mayor of Oakland — and is consistent with his rhetoric of many years. In fact, the last governor to have a veto overridden was Jerry Brown. The issue? A pay raise for state employees.
For her part, Whitman, under widespread criticism for her highly inaccurate TV attack ads against Brown, today unveiled a new positive 30-second TV ad. This one shows pictures of her policy book — the one she loves, and pushed her staff to unsuccessfully try to place in public libraries across the state — and extols her three-point plan for California. You know, “targeted tax cuts” to revitalize the economy, strict spending limits for the state budget, and putting more money into school classrooms.
Trouble is, Whitman’s “targeted tax cuts” are targeted to the super-rich — in the form of the elimination of the capital gains tax, which would blow a $10 billion-plus hole in the already reeling state budget — and corporations.
Whitman has no plan for strict spending limits. What she does have is a pledge to cut 40,000 state jobs, but she still can’t say where they would come from. And she claims the ability to eliminate $15 billion in “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Again, she can’t say where that is, or how it might have survived the recent massive budget cuts.
As for the problem of putting money into classrooms, Whitman has already been exposed for putting out false statistics on how much already goes into classrooms.
Back to the drawing board.
Whitman did agree to a second debate with Brown, this one in September at UC Davis sponsored by the Sacramento Bee. She had previously agreed to one in October at Marin’s Dominican College.
Brown challenged Whitman to 10 freewheeling town hall debates, which she has ducked, and has accepted more than a dozen debate invitations.
For his part, Schwarzenegger, who blasted those who want to “suspend” the state’s landmark climate change law (read: Whitman, though she actually has said she wants to end it as well) in an interview last week, has fresh support for his drive to defeat the oil company-financed initiative to end the innovative climate change/renewable energy program.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a San Francisco money manager who heads Farallon Capital, is putting $5 million into the No on 23 campaign. That will put the No side, which leads in the polls, ahead of the Yes side on funding for now.
Steyer has joined former Secretary of the State and Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz, the Republican icon that Schwarzenegger recruited for the task, as a co-chair of the No on 23 campaign.
Meanwhile, the Texas oil companies behind the Yes on 23 campaign announced today that they are suing to overturn the ballot description of their initiative published by Attorney General Brown. They say his depiction of it as a rollback of environmental regulations is unfair.
Lots of luck …
** DEMOCRATS MAINTAINING ADVANTAGE IN GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL POLL. For the third week in a row in the new Gallup Poll, Democrats have an edge over Republicans in the preference for Congress.
Prior to the past few weeks, things seemed to be going the Republicans’ way.
Democrats have a 48% to 44% advantage for the week of July 19-25 in Gallup tracking of registered voters’ preferences for the 2010 congressional elections. This marks the second straight week in which Democrats have held an edge of at least four percentage points.
Although Republicans have moved to a four-point or higher advantage on three separate occasions, this is the first time either party has held an advantage of that size for two consecutive weeks. Republicans and Democrats have been tied on average across the 21 weeks of Gallup’s tracking.
Republicans continue to be substantially more enthusiastic about voting, as they have been since March. Their current 18-point lead in voting enthusiasm is down slightly from last week’s 23-point lead, but it remains slightly higher than the average 16-point lead they have enjoyed since tracking began in March. …
This past week marks the second time since March that either party has held any type of edge on the generic ballot for three consecutive weeks. Exactly what is behind the uptick in support for Democrats is not clear, although last week’s gains coincided with the passage of the financial reform bill. Independents continue to be more likely to say they will vote for the Republican rather than the Democratic candidate, while both Republicans and Democrats maintain more than 90% allegiance for their party’s candidates.
Democrats’ improved position on the generic ballot is counterbalanced by the continuing wide advantage Republicans have in voting enthusiasm. This GOP enthusiasm gap foreshadows a typical Republican turnout advantage in midterm election voting, meaning that Democrats need a substantial lead on the registered voter generic ballot to offset their turnout disadvantage. Still, the results show that expectations of an assured Republican landslide in the congressional elections this fall are not a foregone conclusion. …
Beleaguered BP CEO Tony Hayward is out, amidst record corporate losses, off to work with BP’s Russian joint venture. He and incoming CEO Bob Dudley faced the press outside the firm’s London headquarters today, and Dudley said he will work to build strong relationships on the Gulf Coast and in Washington.
** 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.
He then met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Mitch McConnell, Congressman John Boehner, and Congressman Steny Hoyer in the Cabinet Room.
At 9 AM Pacific. Obama delivers a statement to the press from the Rose Garden.
At 9:20 AM Pacific, Obama has lunch with House members in the Roosevelt Room.
At 12:05 PM Pacific, Obama congratulates the Warner Robins Softball World Series Champions, who are from Georgia, in the East Room.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Defense Secretary Bob Gates in the Oval Office.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama attends a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet on Wednesday.
Now this meeting has been canceled, as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown yesterday issued subpoenas to determine how officials of tiny Bell, California came to pay such outrageous sums to city officials. The city council last night revoked the high salaries.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles, Riverside, and Sacramento today.
At 10 AM, Schwarzenegger will participate in a demolition ceremony in Riverside to make way for the construction of March Memorial Hospital, part of the March LifeCare project.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout last week with legislative leaders — who met on their own for weeks, to no avail — about the chronic state budget crisis. But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. … From my July 26th essay.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON? Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. … From my July 22nd essay.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER. … From my July 9th 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.
Wikileaks, which opposes U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, says there is evidence of “war crimes” in the wake of its release of reams of classified U.S. reports sent to it by an Army enlisted man.
** QUICK HITS. As I expected this morning, the Wikileaks story on AfPak is the big noise story of the early part of the week. Much of it is not new, of course, (and these are spot intelligence reports, not to be taken as finished intelligence) but it is massive, and comes at a time when, as I’ve warned for months, the effort in Afghanistan is definitely flagging. … BP CEO Tony Hayward is out, given a post with the energy giant’s Russian partnership, and a massive sinecure. … While billionaire Meg Whitman tries to get a lead, any lead, with her massive advertising in the California governor’s race — she was supposed to be up 15 by now — Democrat Jerry Brown drew massive media attention today in LA as he continued to investigate the incredible salaries being paid city officials in the tiny city of Bell. Needless to say, all those salaries are going to be rolled back.
** MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER?Mad Men returns with “Public Relations,” in more ways than one. Lots and lots of it. Naturally, there be spoilers ahead.
Season 4 of Mad Men got off to a cracking start Sunday night with an episode called “Public Relations,” and darn if that doesn’t mirror what the best show on television is getting a lot of.
After its very consequential Season 3 won the top prizes for a dramatic series from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, Mad Men picked up 17 Emmy nominations a few weeks ago, the most that the two-time winner for best drama on television has ever garnered, this time with six members of the show’s cast nominated for acting honors. Especially after Lost’s disappointing series finale, it has to be the favorite to win a third straight Emmy for best dramatic series. The show has had a lot more PR than that, which I’ll get to after running through the exciting season premiere.
It’s November 1964, not quite a year since the end of Season 3, and change continues to be very much in the air, at least for most of the characters and the country as a whole. There’s sprightly, jazzy music early on, which a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly identifies as music like that of the theme for The Name of the Game, which the writer mistakenly thinks was a 1964 TV series. It actually ran from 1969 to 1971. The music helps establish the new scene for a new ad agency in a new time. …
** NEW GALLUP SURVEY: WITH MORE STATES COMPETITIVE, CALIFORNIA RATED “SOLID DEMOCRATIC.” A new Gallup Poll survey of party identification in America shows that the Democratic edge is down sharply over what it was in 2008. And that the number of states rated “solidly Democratic” is down sharply as well.
But the big gainers are not Republicans, who generally seem stalled, but the ranks of the undecided.
In the West, California, Oregon, Hawaii, and New Mexico are rated solidly Democratic states, with California and its plus-14 point advantage for Democrats over Republicans one of the most solidly Democratic states in the country.
Nevada and Oregon are rated “lean Democratic,” with swing state Colorado rated “competitive. The other Western states — Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska — are rated lean or solid Republican.
More states are politically competitive this year than was the case in 2009, as fewer Americans nationwide identify with the Democratic Party. Vermont — along with the District of Columbia — is the most Democratic state in the U.S. in 2010 so far, while Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho are the most Republican. …
Theaccompanying map shows each state’s relative party strength in the first half of 2010. States in which one of the parties enjoys at least a 10 percentage-point advantage in leaned identification are considered solid supporters of that party. States in which a party has between a five- and a nine-point advantage are considered leaning toward that party, and states with less than a five-point advantage for one of the parties are considered competitive.
Solidly Democratic states tend to cluster in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, with a few exceptions in the far West (California, Hawaii, and Oregon), one in the Midwest (Illinois), and one in the Southwest (New Mexico). Solidly Republican states are all West of the Mississippi, including Alaska and states in the Mountain West (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana) and the Midwest (Nebraska and Kansas).
The most politically competitive states in the Union, all of which have Democratic-Republican gaps of less than one point, are Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia.
There are 10 fewer states in the solid Democratic category thus far in 2010 than there were in 2009, and one fewer state in the leaning Democratic category. At the same time, there are three more solid Republican states, and four more in the leaning Republican category. Sixteen states can be classified as competitive, four more than last year.
It is important to note that the classification of states reported here is based on the political affiliations of all residents, and does not necessarily match the party preferences of registered voters or indicate how a state might vote in a given election. Also, the partisanship figures include independents who have a partisan leaning along with each party’s core identifiers. This makes the states more comparable because the percentage of independents varies widely by state, and can understate a party’s true strength in a state.
Nationwide, Democrats have a 4-point party identification advantage over Republicans in 2010 (44% to 40%), down from an 8-point advantage in 2009 and a 12-point advantage in 2008.
While Democrats’ party strength fell in each of the last two years, Republicans have not gained concomitantly. Instead, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with or lean toward either political party has increased.
Some shift toward independent party identification is to be expected in the years between presidential elections; in presidential election years, party allegiance tends to be at its height. The key finding at this juncture is that Democrats, not Republicans, have been the net losers as Americans shift away from the major parties. …
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A big week in presidential politics, and a relatively quiet one in California politics. This week may end up being dominated by charges of war crimes in the Afghan War.
Today President Barack Obama will hold an event at the White House to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
On Tuesday, he will attend meetings at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel to New Jersey, where he will discuss the economy in Edison. Later, he will deliver remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York City.
On Thursday, Obama will deliver a major education reform speech at the National Urban League 100th Anniversary Convention in Washington, D.C. Obama will also meet with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On Friday, Obama will visit Chrysler and General Motors Plants in Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan.
The White House has also revealed that Obama and his family will spend a weekend in mid-August on Florida’s Gulf Coast, presumably to help stir up tourism again in the wake of the BP Gulf oil disaster. On August 19th, the Obamas go to Martha’s Vineyard for a 10-day summer vacation.
Speaking of the BP Gulf oil disaster, BP CEO Tony Hayward is on his way out, for obvious reasons. After numerous failures and much obfuscation, major progress has finally been made in capping and stopping the undersea oil flow, though it’s been slowed of late by heavy weather.
As you can see by his schedule, Obama is again trying to focus on the economy, which is merely the number one issue in the country. But he may be sidetracked this week by revelations in classified materials released online by Wikileaks, a whistle-blowing organization.
In this case, Wikileaks is a whistle-blowing organization strongly opposed to U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, now clearly bent on proving U.S. war crimes there, as you see above in today’s comments in London by the group’s director. The documents, provided by a 22-year U.S. Army enlisted man, also detail numerous complaints about the role of elements of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service in helping the Taliban. The ISI helped set up the Taliban movement of religious students to fill the void in mid-’90s Afghanistan while the mujahideen leaders who fought the Soviets engaged in civil war.
In California politics, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger continues private talks with legislative leaders on the state’s chronic budget crisis.
Prior to last week, the legislative leaders met among themselves for weeks, but got nowhere. It’s not even clear that the Democrats have a unified negotiating position. The Legislature returns from a month-long summer recess next week.
The governor’s race continues with billionaire Meg Whitman spending a few million dollars every week, mostly on TV attack ads against Jerry Brown which have been widely panned as dishonest.
For his part, Brown came out with his policy on public pension reform, which is much the same as Schwarzenegger’s. This should neutralize Whitman’s core argument that Brown will simply do what the public employee unions tell him to do. Which was certainly not the case during his first two terms as governor, nor his two terms as mayor of Oakland.
The race for the U.S. Senate is also ongoing, with charges and counter-charges. While she and her campaign are spirited, unless ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina finds a way to to get off her rightward tack, she is going to have a very rough time defeating Senator Barbara Boxer, no matter how close the polls or how unpopular Congress is.
The USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup is leading a joint U.S./South Korean naval exercise off the Korean Peninsula. Tensions are high in the wake of the determination by international investigators that North Korean sank a South Korean Navy ship last spring.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
At 10:15 AM Pacific, Obama receives the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama receives the daily economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 1:50 PM Pacific, Obama meets with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and other leading members of Congress in the Oval Office.
At 3 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at an an event to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet the week before last, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Now it is scheduled to meet on Wednesday..
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He holds a roundtable discussion on California’s chronic budget crisis with members of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce at 9:15 AM.
Inception bested superstar Angelina Jolie’s Russian spy thriller Salt at the box office for another first place weekend finish. Inception, with $143.7 million in domestic box office after two weekends, is well on its way to blockbuster status.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON?Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …From my July 22nd essay.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER. … From my July 9th 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 $45 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.
President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance via video address at the left-liberal Netroots Nation conference Saturday in Las Vegas. His video featured commentary by MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on the many accomplishments of his administration. Obama was introduced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most “netroots” folks, incidentally, were for John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primaries.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
A joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercise began today off the Korean Peninsula. The exercise, a show of force which comes in response to North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean Navy ship last spring, is taking place over the next few days in the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea.
It features the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battle group. The Washington is a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered supercarrier.
North Korean has threatened a “nuclear” response if the exercise goes forward, which it is right now.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have apparently captured two U.S. Navy members in Afghanistan. Five other U.S. military personnel were killed on Saturday in Afghanistan.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses his signing of historic Wall Street reform legislation and contrasts his economic plan with that of the Republicans.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. 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.
There is a setback in the BP Gulf oil disaster after weeks of progress. A brewing tropical storm forced recovery workers to evacuate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This will lead to a delay of approximately two weeks in the drilling of the relief wells that are the ultimate solution to stop the undersea flow, which is currently capped.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen is in Pakistan today to meet with General Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief.
Interesting developments in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized Russian President Dmitri Medvedev for his budding alliance with Obama and the U.S. He may be trying to drive a wedge between Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is historically far less pro-American than his former chief of staff. This indicates Ahmadinejad’s sharply heightened concern that Russia, a long-time ally and historic rival, is now tilted against Iran.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet last week, but that has been postponed for an indefinite period.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
With California’s chronic budget crisis still stuck in legislative gridlock, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger discusses how efficiencies here and there add up.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger talked throughout the week with legislative leaders about the chronic state budget crisis.
But a solution has yet to emerge.
The state Legislature will be back from its month-long summer recess on August 2nd.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON?Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER.Just over 35 years ago, 4th of July weekend moviegoers across America thrilled to the tale of how a huge shark cleared 4th of July weekend beaches faster than a huge oil spill. What they didn’t know then is that a movie that would fill a generation with an unrealistic fear of sharks was also changing the culture of movies, less than a decade after they had shifted in a dramatic new direction.
Another film which had its 35th anniversary earlier this year, Shampoo, captured much of what was best about the so-called New Hollywood movement, more realistic, youth-oriented, and anti-establishment. Sexy, funny, candid, incisive, and satirical, Warren Beatty’s Shampoo, released in February, was a big hit, too, the fourth biggest of 1975. But nowhere near the scale of Jaws.
Jaws, directed by a 27-year old Steven Spielberg, marked a pronounced shift change in the culture of movies, from New Hollywood to high-concept blockbuster. Considering that the New Hollywood era had dawned just eight years earlier, with Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde, and that the blockbuster era is still very much with us, it was in hindsight a sudden and dramatic shift. … From my July 9th essay.
** THE AFGHAN WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF JEFFERSON. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Today he is best known as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and in particular for that starburst of Enlightenment thought you see just above. It’s because of the famed document that he largely wrote in June, adopted with a few edits by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, that we celebrate the 4th of July. But Thomas Jefferson wasn’t just a writer, intellectual, and political theorist, he was a politician and a president.
And a rather cagey one at that, for all his famed idealism and lofty intellectualism.
After serving as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson was America’s first secretary of state, appointed by George Washington, and our third president.
One of the amusing intellectual parlor games of recent times is contemplating what some great historical figure might do. “What would Jesus do?” Or, more recently: “What would Don Draper do?”
So on this 4th of July weekend, with General David Petraeus taking command of U.S. and NATO forces there, what would Thomas Jefferson do in Afghanistan? …From my July 3rd 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.
Mad Men season 4 premieres on Sunday night. My reviews will resume on the Huffington Post.
** 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 around $78.98 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $45 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 chief engineer of the destroyed BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform testified that the rig’s warning alarms were “inhibited,” with company approval, so as not to disturb the crew’s sleep with “false alarms.”
** QUICK HITS. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking today in South Carolina, said that “the heavy lifting” for the Obama agenda is essentially done for this year in Congress and it’s time to go out and make the case. … The California Field Poll, perhaps finally done coming out in dribs and drabs, find that support for offshore oil drilling has dropped in the wake of the BP Gulf oil disaster. Offshore drilling is now opposed in California by a 2 to 1 margin. Billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial hopeful currently buying up the airwaves, supported offshore drilling until a few months ago. Jerry Brown has always opposed it. … Speaking of Jerry Brown, he has released his public pension reform program, and it essentially endorses the approach that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has successfully taken with half a dozen union bargaining units. …
** REPUBLICAN INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE GROUP INTERVENING IN NEVADA SENATE RACE FUNDED BY TEXAS OIL BILLIONAIRES. That Republican group headed by Karl Rove called American Crossroads — which describes itself as “a grassroots operation” — turns out to be funded almost entirely by four billionaires.
Salon looked into it and discovered that, along with the fact that three of the four billionaires are based in Dallas, Texas.
Virtually all of the $4.7 million raised by Karl Rove’s new conservative outfit was contributed by just four billionaires, three of whom are based in Dallas, Texas, and two of whom made their fortune in the oil and gas industry.
The IRS filing of American Crossroads, an outside 527 group that was conceived by Rove and ex-RNC chair Ed Gillespie, gives a good taste of who is funding the GOP effort to make big gains in the House and Senate come the fall. The group has already burned through $600,000 on ads attacking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is facing a reelection contest against Republican Sharron Angle (see one of the spots below). Chaired by another ex-RNC chair, Mike Duncan, American Crossroads has pledged to raise $50 million to beat Democrats in the midterms and has been seen by some as a competitor to the Republican National Committee itself.
And despite the group’s description of itself as “grassroots,” Salon’s review of its IRS filings show that four billionaires have contributed 97 percent of the $4.7 million it has raised to date. There are no limits on how much corporations, unions, and individuals can donate to 527 groups. Here’s a guide to American Crossroads’ four donors:
* Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Dallas-based Chief Oil and Gas, gave a $1 million donation to American Crossroads just as the group was starting in April. That’s small money for Rees-Jones, who, Forbes estimated in 2009, amassed a $1.5 billion fortune investing in gas prospects around America. He has also been a big donor to John McCain and the Texas Republican Party, Politico reported.
* Bradley Wayne Hughes, chairman of Public Storage Inc, is American Crossroads’ biggest donor, contributing $1.55 million to date. Hughes founded Public Storage in 1972 and the company has grown into a self-storage behemouth with over 2,000 locations. Worth $3.9 billion, he lives in Lexington, KY, where he actively raises thoroughbred horses at Spendthrift Farm. (Hughes’ son, B. Wayne Hughes Jr., is on the board of former Senator Norm Coleman’s new conservative group, the American Action Network.)
* A company called Southwest Louisiana Land LLC donated $1 million to American Crossroads in June. It turns out Southwest, which doesn’t have much of a public footprint, is owned by Dallas billionaire investor Harold Simmons — no stranger to conservative causes. Since the 1980s, he has ponied up for everthing from Oliver North’s defense fund, to Newt Gingrich’s PAC, to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, to the American Issues Project, a group that ran ads attempting to tie Obama to Bill Ayers in 2008 (Simmons was the sole funder of the Ayers effort, giving nearly $3 million.) Simmons is worth $4.5 billion.
* TRT Holdings, owned by Dallas’ Robert Rowling, gave American Crossroads $1 million. Rowling, whose firm owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym, got started at his father’s successful company, Tana Oil & Gas. He’s now worth $4.4 billion. In 2004 Rowling gave $1 million to Progress for America, an outside group backing President Bush’s reelection.
American Crossroads has an affiliated group called American Crossroads GPS. It’s a little more limited in what it can do, but also doesn’t have to report its donors at all. That group took in over $5 million in June alone.
** DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON?Does Inception salvage what’s been a decidedly subpar summer movie season? That’s a big load for any movie to carry, even one as smart as Inception, especially one as seemingly obscurantist as Inception.
Incidentally, I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, though, having said that, it occurs to me that the trick about Inception, which so many seek to understand, may just be that there is no trick at all. Which would be quite the trick for this mind-bender movie about purposeful invaders of the unconscious who use a mysterious biotechnology to hack into one’s mind in order to extract and implant very consequential information. It’s a spy flick, it’s a heist flick, it’s an action flick, it’s a scifi flick, it’s a love story, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma… Wait, no, that last is what Churchill said about Russia. …
President Barack Obama yesterday signed a bill to promote efficiency in government.
** 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 9:05 AM Pacific, Obama delivers a statement to the press on the economy in the Roosevelt Room.
Obama will talk about the unemployment insurance extension bill which passed the House yesterday and which he signed late yesterday, as well as various economic numbers.
It’s also a way to get back on his message after the recent distraction of the manufactured media firestorm caused by a doctored video released by far right web impresario Andrew Breitbart of Los Angeles. (See yesterday’s edition for explanation.)
Vice President Joe Biden is in South Carolina, where he appears at a congressional fundraiser and participates in the dedication ceremony for the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library at the University of South Carolina, delivering the keynote address for his former Senate colleague.
After great progress lately, there is a setback in the BP Gulf oil disaster. A brewing tropical storm is forcing recovery workers to evacuate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This will lead to a delay of approximately two weeks in the drilling of the relief wells that are the ultimate solution to stop the undersea flow, which is currently capped.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet last week, but that has been postponed for an indefinite period.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway.
Biden called leading Iraqi politicians yesterday and urged them to form a coalition government.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He will hold private talks, much of them around the chronic state budget crisis.
Yesterday in the Capitol Rotunda, Schwarzenegger presented his pick to be the new chief justice of the California Supreme Court, state Appellate Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. They were joined by outgoing Chief Justice Ronald George.
It was a high-energy, packed crowd, a festive occasion, filled with her large extended family and many excited about the firsts that her appointment brings. Cantil-Sakauye, 50, turns out to be a very mediagenic and engaging personality with a great personal story.
She would be, if confirmed by a judicial body, the first Asian American to head a state’s judiciary and would give the state Supreme Court its first female majority. The panel which must approve her consists of current Chief Justice Ronald George, Apppeals Court Justice Joan Dempsey-Klein, and Attorney General Jerry Brown.
I expect her to be confirmed unanimously.
She then faces a November confirmation vote on the statewide ballot. It’s hard to see an opposition mobilizing against her.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER.Just over 35 years ago, 4th of July weekend moviegoers across America thrilled to the tale of how a huge shark cleared 4th of July weekend beaches faster than a huge oil spill. What they didn’t know then is that a movie that would fill a generation with an unrealistic fear of sharks was also changing the culture of movies, less than a decade after they had shifted in a dramatic new direction.
Another film which had its 35th anniversary earlier this year, Shampoo, captured much of what was best about the so-called New Hollywood movement, more realistic, youth-oriented, and anti-establishment. Sexy, funny, candid, incisive, and satirical, Warren Beatty’s Shampoo, released in February, was a big hit, too, the fourth biggest of 1975. But nowhere near the scale of Jaws.
Jaws, directed by a 27-year old Steven Spielberg, marked a pronounced shift change in the culture of movies, from New Hollywood to high-concept blockbuster. Considering that the New Hollywood era had dawned just eight years earlier, with Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde, and that the blockbuster era is still very much with us, it was in hindsight a sudden and dramatic shift. … From my July 9th essay.
** THE AFGHAN WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF JEFFERSON. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Today he is best known as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and in particular for that starburst of Enlightenment thought you see just above. It’s because of the famed document that he largely wrote in June, adopted with a few edits by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, that we celebrate the 4th of July. But Thomas Jefferson wasn’t just a writer, intellectual, and political theorist, he was a politician and a president.
And a rather cagey one at that, for all his famed idealism and lofty intellectualism.
After serving as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson was America’s first secretary of state, appointed by George Washington, and our third president.
One of the amusing intellectual parlor games of recent times is contemplating what some great historical figure might do. “What would Jesus do?” Or, more recently: “What would Don Draper do?”
So on this 4th of July weekend, with General David Petraeus taking command of U.S. and NATO forces there, what would Thomas Jefferson do in Afghanistan? …From my July 3rd 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.
Mad Men season 4 premieres on Sunday night. My reviews will continue on the Huffington Post.
** 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 $45 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.
President Barack Obama called to apologize to a U.S. Department of Agriculture staffer wrongfully fired in the wake of a wildly distorted video about her which became a cable “news” and Internet firestorm.
** QUICK HITS. The House of Representatives passed and President Barack Obama quickly signed tje bill extending unemployment benefits to some 2.5 million jobless Americans whose benefits had run out. The vote was 272 to 152. Some Republicans voted for the bill. … The U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, told Obama today that the withdrawal of combat troops, slated to be complete on August 31st, is ahead of schedule. But the country’s governance remains unresolved. … Billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican trying to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor, launched yet another TV attack ad today. Her positive ads aren’t working. This one, like the last, is heavily distorted, purporting to show that Brown has no plan while she supposedly does by taking a comment he made about his last presidential campaign and pretending it applied to his governorship. Is Andrew Breitbart doing these ads?
** THE LATEST AMAZING ANDREW BREITBART DISTORTION. I have a confession to make. I don’t watch cable news anymore. At least, not U.S. cable news. Before news became available online, it was great, or at least, it seemed great, as a way to get real information fast. CNN was especially good for international news, which I’ve always followed.
Now none of that is true. American cable news is an ongoing journalistic gong show, an unending blizzard of hysteria-driven infotainment and generally shoddy thinking. So I didn’t pick up right away on its latest teapot tempest; namely, that a USDA employee named Shirley Sherrod had supposedly given a speech in which she confessed that she didn’t want to help white people.
This faux “news” was courtesy of Andrew Breitbart, a Los Angeles-based web impresario of the far right who’s long worked closely with Matt Drudge and has his own fairly deranged sites called BigGovernment.com and BigHollywood.com. Last year, Breitbart used the his sites and the far right media network of Fox News and other outlets to push out sensational videotapes which seemed to show a pattern of ACORN staffers helping a purported pimp and his prostitute to brainstorm how to expand their business.
Later, an investigation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who obtained the unedited videotapes, revealed that the tapes were substantially edited to change most of their meaning. But in the meantime, the media firestorm had claimed its victims.
This time around, Breitbart pushed out video of Department of Ag employee Sherrod seeming to say that she hated white people and consciously avoided helping them. The unedited video of her speech actually demonstrates the opposite, and the white farmer she referred to in the Breitbart-produced snippet of her comments came forward to praise her for going out of her way to help his family.
But before that happened, the Obama White House — which evidently learned nothing from Breitbart’s previous malicious antics — pushed for Sherrod’s firing.
Today Obama called her to apologize, and she is evidently getting a new and improved post.
But why did anyone take Breitbart’s report at face value in the first place? In my view, he is not only dishonest, he is deranged.
At the end of last year, I remember reading a piece by L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight on Andy Warhol, and the preposterousness of some far right allegations that use of Warhol’s iconic “Mao” portraits as imagery on a White House Christmas ornament was evidence of Communist leanings.
Breitbart responded with a long, frankly frothing comment which was not only essentially incoherent but also revealed his utter ignorance of Warhol’s art and its method. Which for a guy who grew up in very affluent surroundings in Brentwood would seem nearly impossible. Yet there it was.
** BIG STORM CLOUDS ON THE RIGHT FOR BILLIONAIRE MEG WHITMAN. As the California Republican gubernatorial wannabe keeps flip-flopping on the issues — pretending she didn’t really say what she said, er, last month — and most of what remains of the much diminished state press corps fails to take note, quite a few other folks are noticing.
Folks in Whitman’s own party.
Right-wing radio talkers John and Ken, whose KFI LA-based John & Ken Show has a million listeners, are on a tear against Whitman. Why? Because, in her zeal to tell Latino voters what they want to hear she’s pretending she didn’t tell white Republican voters what they wanted to hear.
The pair, who in many respects are the backbone of the conservative movement in Southern California, have been hammering Whitman on the air this week. They also ripped her on their new regular gig on an LA TV station.
Call Meg Whitman and tell her not to take your vote for granted and to stop pandering to the open borders crowd!
Meg’s Secret War Room Number: 408-799-9851
Contact the campaign!
Meg Whitman for Governor
20813 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 150
Cupertino, CA 95104
Phone: (408) 400-3887
-For press and media inquiries, please email Communications@MegWhitman.com.
-For all event and scheduling requests, please email Scheduling@MegWhitman.com.
-For general campaign related inquiries, please email Support@MegWhitman.com.
-If you have a question for Meg to answer, please email AskMeg@MegWhitman.com.
Leave comments here: www.TalkToMeg.com
Bombard her Facebook page! We are catching wind that they are removing any and all criticisms of her immigration pandering. Click here!
Whitman backs off on immigration inspections
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is backing away from a key immigration proposal she advanced in this spring’s competitive GOP primary after farmers and other business interests expressed displeasure with her idea.
As she campaigned this spring, Whitman said she would send state and local officials into California businesses to look for illegal immigrants – her own version of federal immigration workplace inspections.
But her campaign now says she would wait to act until the federal government institutes a “fail-safe” way for employers to verify workers’ status – an effort that has been more than a decade in the making…
The California Republican Party, which cleverly has two conventions per year, in contrast to the Democrats’ annual confab, hold their next convention in a month in San Diego.
This spells trouble for Whitman, who has been very tepidly received in her only three appearances at state Republican conventions.
Now that she’s reneging on some of the key policy positions that won last month’s primary for her, look for a potential mess.
After Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger moved back to the center for his 2006 re-election campaign after the defeat of his 2005 “Year of Reform” initiatives, he faced a potential debacle at the state Republican convention in San Jose. So he brandished archconservative icon Tom McClintock, then running for lieutenant governor, as his running mate.
Which was about the last time we saw them together, come to think of it.
McClintock, now a congressman, did very effective TV ads for Whitman’s primary rival, Steve Poizner. I doubt he will serve as Whitman’s bodyguard next month.
President Barack Obama signs into law the most sweeping reforms of our financial system since the Great Depression and the strongest consumer protections in history in a ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.
** 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 8:25 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks and signs the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act in the State Dining Room. This is designed to improve efficiencies in governmet spending.
At 10:30 AM Pacific, Obama meets with the U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno and Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill in the Oval Office.
The U.S. is withdrawing combat troops from Iraq even as the governance situation there remains unresolved four-and-a-half months after national parliamentary elections.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama meets with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden is on a swing through the South, hitting Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
With the Senate having passed the extension of unemployment insurance, preserving benefits for 2.5 million people, the House will take up the legislation and pass it today, sending it to Obama’s desk for his signature.
But there is a setback in the BP Gulf oil disaster. A brewing tropical storm is forcing recovery workers to evacuate the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This will lead to a delay in the drilling of the relief wells that are the ultimate solution to stop the undersea flow, which is currently capped.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who participated in the big international conference in Kabul on the future of Afghanistan before moving on to South Korea yesterday, is in Vietnam today. She’s taking part in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) conference there, among other things further normalizing trade relations with the Vietnamese government.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet last week, but that has been postponed for an indefinite period.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, over four months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
He will hold private talks, much of them around the chronic state budget crisis.
At 11 AM in the Capitol Rotunda, Schwarzenegger presents his pick to be the new chief justice of the California Supreme Court, state Appellate Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. They will be joined by outgoing Chief Justice Ronald George.
She would be, if confirmed by a judicial body, the first Asian American to head a state’s judiciary and would give the state Supreme Court its first female majority. The panel which must approve her consists of current Chief Justice Ronald George, Apppeals Court Justice Joan Dempsey-Klein, and Attorney General Jerry Brown.
She then faces a November confirmation vote on the statewide ballot.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG WHITMAN: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.Anyone wondering what oligarch-style politics would look like in America need only check out Meg Whitman’s machinations. The billionaire Republican wannabe governor of California’s technique was in sharp display over the past week. Its focus? Using very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and taking advantage of what she clearly sees as the emerging post-press era to engage in the most blatant rewriting of her own history, including her most recent history. …From my July 17th feature.
** SHIFT CHANGE: THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF JAWS AND SHAMPOO MARKS THE TRANSITION FROM NEW HOLLYWOOD TO BLOCKBUSTER.Just over 35 years ago, 4th of July weekend moviegoers across America thrilled to the tale of how a huge shark cleared 4th of July weekend beaches faster than a huge oil spill. What they didn’t know then is that a movie that would fill a generation with an unrealistic fear of sharks was also changing the culture of movies, less than a decade after they had shifted in a dramatic new direction.
Another film which had its 35th anniversary earlier this year, Shampoo, captured much of what was best about the so-called New Hollywood movement, more realistic, youth-oriented, and anti-establishment. Sexy, funny, candid, incisive, and satirical, Warren Beatty’s Shampoo, released in February, was a big hit, too, the fourth biggest of 1975. But nowhere near the scale of Jaws.
Jaws, directed by a 27-year old Steven Spielberg, marked a pronounced shift change in the culture of movies, from New Hollywood to high-concept blockbuster. Considering that the New Hollywood era had dawned just eight years earlier, with Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde, and that the blockbuster era is still very much with us, it was in hindsight a sudden and dramatic shift. … From my July 9th essay.
** THE AFGHAN WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF JEFFERSON. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Today he is best known as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and in particular for that starburst of Enlightenment thought you see just above. It’s because of the famed document that he largely wrote in June, adopted with a few edits by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, that we celebrate the 4th of July. But Thomas Jefferson wasn’t just a writer, intellectual, and political theorist, he was a politician and a president.
And a rather cagey one at that, for all his famed idealism and lofty intellectualism.
After serving as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson was America’s first secretary of state, appointed by George Washington, and our third president.
One of the amusing intellectual parlor games of recent times is contemplating what some great historical figure might do. “What would Jesus do?” Or, more recently: “What would Don Draper do?”
So on this 4th of July weekend, with General David Petraeus taking command of U.S. and NATO forces there, what would Thomas Jefferson do in Afghanistan? …From my July 3rd 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.
At the Los Angeles premiere for the fourth season of Mad Men, which begins this coming Sunday night, the cast of the show talk about their fans who include President Obama, Paul McCartney, Sting, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. My reviews on the Huffington Post will return.
** 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 $45 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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