Less than two years after Wall Street nearly melted down, with the rest of the U.S. economy along with it, President Barack Obama this morning signed into law the most sweeping reforms of financial regulations since the Great Depression.
** QUICK HITS. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, having moved on from Afghanistan to South Korea, was announcing new sanctions against North Korea for the torpedoing of a South Korean Navy ship, the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battle group arrived in the port of Pusan, South Korea. The Washington battle group will engage in naval exercises off the Korean peninsula with the South Korean Navy through July 25th. … Meanwhile, in Afghanistan American units moved to secure some towns outside Kandahar City in advance of the delayed anti-Taliban offensive there. The offensive was to have started at the beginning of June.
** ARNOLD UNPLUGGED. Governor Arnold Schwarzengger, addressing state utility commissioners from around the country late this morning in their summer meeting at the Sacramento Convention Center, extolled efforts to expand renewable energy, promoted California’s landmark climate change program, and ripped into oil companies and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Schwarzenegger, who pledged to move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when he first ran for governor in the 2003 recall election, ripped the forces trying to roll back the state’s program with their Proposition 23 initiative on the November ballot.
“These are greedy oil companies from Texas,” he declared. “They want to come in here and tell us in California what to do, so they can sell their oil and they can continue polluting the world, they can create all of the health hazards, and send the kids to the hospitals, and have them use, you know, inhalers and all of those kinds of things. They want to continue on with that.”
“But we’re not going to go for that,” he vowed.
“If the special interests push me around,” he said, “I will push back. I will push back all the way.”
On a lighter, if no less pointed note, Schwarzenegger took a hard shot at right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has criticized Schwarzenegger throughout his governorship for being insufficiently doctrinaire.
Schwarzenegger noted that he’s lifting weights, which comes as a surprise to virtually no one. And that he recently lifted 375 pounds.
“I lifted Rush Limbaugh out of the chair,” he cracked.
And he had a pointed gibe for a fellow Hollywood action hero.
“Recently,” he said, “there has been good news and bad news.” The good news is the BP oil spill has been contained. The bad news? “Mel Gibson, no one knows how to contain.”
“Everyone turn off your cellphones. We’re expecting a call from him,” the governor said to widespread laughter from the standing room crowd.
Gibson, as you may know, has had a series of ranting phone calls to his former girlfriend, Russian singer Oksana Grigorieva, released to massive amazement.
** INTERESTING LOOK AT WHERE AND IN WHICH SECTORS JOBS ARE BEING CREATED. A new Gallup Poll survey provides an interesting picture of the job market. California, of course, continues to lag.
More than half of the 10 best job markets in 2010 are energy- and commodity-producing states, indicating how valuable these natural resource-based industries are to the U.S. economy at this time. …
Gallup’s Job Creation Index shows that the energy-producing states of North Dakota, Louisiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas are in the top 10 state job markets for the first half of 2010, as they were in 2008 and 2009. They are joined by Alaska, another energy state; the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, all of which benefit from the presence of federal government hiring; several farm states — Arkansas, Iowa, and South Dakota — that benefit from ethanol and a strong commodities market; and Pennsylvania — possibly reflecting the steady improvement in manufacturing.
Despite an overall improvement in job market conditions, 5 states in the bottom 10 during the first half of 2010 were also on the list in 2008 and 2009: Nevada, Connecticut, Rhode Island, California, and Michigan. Additional financial-crisis states in the Northeast, including New Jersey, Maine, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire, are some of the worst job markets. Other Western states in the bottom 10 include Idaho and Wyoming. Although Michigan’s job market has improved substantially from 2009, it remains in the 2010 bottom 10. …
State job market conditions for the first half of 2010 are similar to those of the recession years of 2008 and 2009: energy and commodity states, as well as those dominated by the federal government, continue to see their job markets do comparatively well, while job market conditions in housing-crash and financial industry states continue to fare comparatively poorly.
The relative improvement in the U.S. manufacturing sector is not fully reflected in these six-month measurements. However, Pennsylvania’s entry into the top 10 list and Michigan’s near-exit from the bottom 10 may illustrate the manufacturing recovery.
The key factors that drive comparative job market conditions across the nation may be changing. For example, although China continues to enjoy robust economic growth, that growth seems to be slowing somewhat. In turn, the demand for energy and commodities could moderate. At the same time, the oil spill in the Gulf and U.S. efforts to limit carbon emissions could also have a negative effect on the traditional energy sector. As a result, the energy-producing states may not continue to dominate the top 10 job markets by 2011.
Similarly, the expected economic slowdown in Europe and China could lead to a renewed slowdown in the U.S. manufacturing sector. It won’t take much in many long-depressed areas to send those areas back to the bottom 10. And the continuing housing difficulties suggest job market conditions in the West may keep several states in this region at the bottom of the list.
Still, Gallup’s Job Creation Index results suggest that job market conditions improved during the first half of 2010, and are now better than they were in 2009 — and not just in the federal government’s District of Columbia hiring area. More companies are hiring and fewer are letting people go right now, although overall new job growth remains relatively anemic.
President Barack Obama and new British Prime Minister David Cameron met at length yesterday at the White House. In this press conference, the British future in Afghanistan (limited), joint efforts on Iran and trade, and allegations in the British media that BP pushed for the release of the Lockerbie airline bomber to facilitate an oil deal with Libya were all addressed.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama then received the daily economic briefing in the Oval Office while Biden hosted a breakfast meeting with Senator John Kerry at the Naval Observatory.
Obama then met with Biden in the Oval Office.
At 8:30 AM Pacific, Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the Ronald Reagan Building. Biden and a host of officials and consumers also attend.
This is another big legislative win for Obama. The choice of the Reagan Building — Reagan championed financial deregulation — as the venue for the signing event is hardly a coincidence.
At 9:45 AM Pacific Obama and Biden have lunch with House members in the Roosevelt Room.
At 11:30 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama receives a briefing on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Situation Room.
For his part, Biden, in addition to his breakfast meeting with Kerry at the Naval Observatory, holds a Recovery Act Implementation Cabinet meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Bldg, and meets with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of the Republic of Kosovo in the EEOB.
In the evening, Biden and Dr. Jill Biden host a barbeque for Cabinet members at the Naval Observatory.
Following Senate passage yesterday of the big extension of unemployment insurance, on a vote of 60 to 40, the House is expected to vote today, giving Obama another victory.
The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved Obama’s appointment of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court on a vote of 13 to 6. Kagan received one Republican vote, that of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the John McCain pal who has become a situational ally of Obama.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Afghanistan yesterday. She took part in a major international conference in Kabul — along with top officials from 60 other nations and the heads of NATO and the United Nations — on the course ahead in Afghanistan. Thing are not going very well.
But the conference agreed to transfer security throughout the country to President Hamid Karzai’s administration in 2014. Meanwhile, some are looking to move toward the exits sooner than that. British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday in Washington that the UK, which has the second largest contingent of foreign troops, will begin withdrawing sometime next year.
Clinton moved on to day to South Korea, where she announced new sanctions against North Korea in the wake of its spring sinking of a South Korean Navy ship and continued expressions of belligerence.
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.
He also addresses the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners annual summer meeting at 11 AM at the Sacramento Convention Center.
Last night, word emerged that Schwarzenegger would today today appoint state Appellate Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye to be the new chief justice of the California Supreme Court.
Schwarzenegger appointed Cantil-Sakauye, a 50-year old Sacramento native, to the state court of appeals in late 2004.
“Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye has a distinguished history of public service and understands that the role of a justice is not to create law, but to independently and fairly interpret and administer the law,” said Schwarzenegger in a statement this morning. “She is a living example of the American Dream and when she is confirmed by the voters in November, Judge Cantil-Sakauye will become California’s first Filipina chief justice; adding to our High Court’s already rich diversity.”
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 That panel is composed 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.
Since 2005, Cantil-Sakauye, regarded as a moderate Republican, has served as an associate justice for the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento. Previously, she was a superior court judge for the Sacramento County Superior Court from 1997 to 2004 and a municipal court judge for the Sacramento County Municipal Court from 1990 to 1997. Cantil-Sakauye worked for the Office of Governor George Deukmejian as a deputy legislative secretary from 1989 to 1990 and as a deputy legal affairs secretary from 1988 to 1989. She was a deputy district attorney for the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office from 1984 to 1988.
“It is a privilege and a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to serve as chief justice of the California Supreme Court,” said Cantil-Sakauye. “I have had the distinct pleasure of being a municipal court judge, a superior court judge and an appellate court justice. Being nominated to serve on the highest court in California is a dream come true. I deeply respect the inspirational and visionary work of Chief Justice Ronald George and hope to build upon it. As a jurist, woman and a Filipina, I am extremely grateful for the trust Governor Schwarzenegger has placed in me. I hope to show young people what they can achieve if they follow their dreams and reach for their full potential.”
Cantil-Sakauye earned a J.D. degree from the University of California at Davis School of Law and a B.A. degree also from UC Davis. She helped finance her way through school by working as a blackjack dealer at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe.
… 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 this coming Sunday. 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 $43 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The Obama Administration’s point man on the BP Gulf oil disaster, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, says the leaking well appears stable, so he’s extended testing of the experimental cap by another day, which means the oil will remain shut in. The cap is buying time until a permanent solution is provided by relief wells still being drilled.
** QUICK HITS.The U.S. Senate, bolstered by its newest member, voted 60 to 40 today to break a Republican filibuster and extend unemployment benefits. New interim West Virginia Senator Carte Goodwin, replacing his old boss Robert Byrd, provided the necessary vote. Only the two Maine moderates broke ranks with the rest of the Republicans to help 2.5 million Americans whose unemployment benefits have run out in this slow economic recovery. The GOP opposed the extension without commensurate cuts elsewhere, even as it insists on extending the Bush era tax cuts for high-income Americans without finding commensurate savings for those. … New British Prime Minister David Cameron, in the U.S. for a mini-summit with Obama, found himself facing press questions over allegations that have emerged in the British press that BP lobbied the government of Scotland to release the Lockerbie airline bomber to facilitate an oil deal with Libya. Cameron, who opposed the release, says his information is that did not happen.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME. While billionaire Meg Whitman continues her record-shattering spending — as much as $3 million per week now on TV ads — one of her minions demands to know about Attorney General Jerry Brown’s spending.
Spending as in state funds doing his job as California’s top prosecutor and gaining public attention in the process.
Opposition researcher Mark Bogetich field a freedom of information request yesterday with the attorney general’s office, requesting details on salary, travel, etc.
I don’t recall him filing a freedom of information request with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office in 2006, when the governator repeatedly rolled out popular policy proposals.
Actually, this is an old, and quite hackneyed, political tactic.
What did Brown say in response to the very same charge more than 36 years ago? Naturally, he describes it as “nonsense,” noting that the alternative would be that he stop doing the job to which he was elected and resign.
The footage, incidentally, comes from the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive at San Francisco State, which I discovered a while back. It’s interesting, but a little disquieting in how disjointedly the clips have been put together.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON?
** NEW NATIONAL POLL: DEMOCRATS REGAIN LEAD IN GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL PREFERENCE. A new Gallup Poll, conducted in the wake of the passage in the Senate of President Barack Obama’s Wall Street reform bill — over near unanimous opposition from Republicans — shows Democrats regaining the edge on a generic Congressional ballot.
It’s the first time that Democrats have had a significant lead in this poll in months.
In the same week the U.S. Senate passed a major financial reform bill touted as reining in Wall Street, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters’ generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.
The Democrats’ six-point advantage in Gallup Daily interviewing from July 12-18 represents the first statistically significant lead for that party’s candidates since Gallup began weekly tracking of this measure in March.
“The 51% of Republicans saying they are “very enthusiastic” about voting this fall is up from 40% the week prior, and is the highest since early April — shortly after passage of healthcare reform.”
Whether the Democrats’ edge is sustainable remains to be seen. Republicans held a four-point or better lead over Democrats in three Gallup weekly averages thus far this year, but in each case, the gap narrowed or collapsed to a tie the following week. …
Most of the change is due to independent voters gravitating back toward the Democrats.
And the connection in this poll with the Wall Street reform bill may account for Obama focusing on repeatedly challenging Republicans to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits, which he knows that all but a few never will.
With Republicans’ and Democrats’ support for their own party’s candidates holding steady in the low 90s this past week, independents are primarily responsible for Democrats’ improved positioning. Thirty-nine percent of independents favor the Democratic candidate in their district, up from 34% — although slightly more, 43%, still favor the Republican.
New British Prime Minister David Cameron summits today in Washington with President Barack Obama. High on the agenda are talks about the BP Gulf oil disaster and the future course in Afghanistan, where the UK has the second largest foreign military presence.
** 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 AM Pacific, he holds a bilateral meeting with new British Prime Minister David Cameron in the Oval Office.
High on the agenda: The situation with BP (formerly known as British Petroleum), Afghanistan, Iran, and trade issues.
The two young leaders also need to get to know one another. Cameron took power — with his Conservatives in coalition with the Liberal Democrats — a few months ago after the long-ruling Labour Party under Gordon Brown at last came to the end of the line.
The Obama-Cameron relationship is critical, as Britain remains America’s closest and most reliable ally.
At 9:20 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden host a working lunch with Cameron in the State Dining Room.
At 11 AM Pacific, Obama holds a joint press conference with Cameron in the East Room.
For his part, Biden swears in Carte Goodwin as a U.S. senator from West Virginia this afternoon. Goodwin, who replaces the late dean of the Senate, Robert Byrd, is expected to provide the 60th vote needed today to end the Republican filibuster on the extension of unemployment benefits.
In past economic crises, both parties have joined together to extend unemployment benefits. Not this time. Only Maine moderates Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are expected to vote for it.
Goodwin, incidentally, is Byrd’s former chief counsel. He is an interim appointee of West Virginia’s popular Democratic Governor Joe Manchin, who will run for the seat himself.
In other action, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote today on Obama’s appointment of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. She will be approved. The only question is if she gets a Republican vote or two.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Afghanistan today. She is participating in a major international conference in Kabul — along with top officials from 60 other nations and the heads of NATO and the United Nations — on the course ahead in Afghanistan. Thing are not going very well.
For one thing, the arriving UN secretary general’s plane was diverted from Kabul International Airport to the U.S. base at Bagram (constructed by the late Soviet Union during its Afghan disaster) after the airport came under rocket attack.
For another, well, if you’ve been reading my pieces, you already know.
The conference is coming up with a plan to turn over security across the country to Afghan forces in 2014. But it’s unclear what that really means. Security in Kabul was turned over to Afghan forces in 2008, but NATO troops still patrol the streets of the capital.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid out a few markers today at the international conference on the future of Afghanistan in Kabul, where President Hamid Karzai said Afghan forces will be ready to take over security operations in 2014.
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.
Schwarzenegger yesterday signed legislation designating February 6th as Ronald Reagan Day in California. Reagan, of course, served two terms as a rather pragmatic governor of California, from 1967 to 1975, before his very consequential two terms as president of the United States.
Schwarzenegger also signed legislation designating January 23rd as Ed Roberts Day in California, honoring the early leader of the movement for rights for the disabled. Roberts was the first quadriplegic to attend and graduate from UC Berkeley, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He served as director of the state Department of Vocational Rehabilitation during Jerry Brown’s first tenure as governor.
Reagan and Roberts join gay rights icon Harvey Milk, pioneering conservationist John Muir, and Latino leader Cesar Chavez as those honored with state days. Only Chavez’s day is an official state holiday.
I spoke yesterday with a lot of folks in the state capital on other matters. There is very little of substance going on, mainly tactical maneuvering around the elections.
… 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.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $43 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The Obama Administration has allowed BP to keep the cap shut tight on its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well for another day despite something seeping along the sea floor.
** QUICK HITS. The big international conference on Afghanistan starts tomorrow in Kabul, with 60 nations, NATO, and the UN taking part. Word is that the emerging plan for Afghanistan, where things are not going well, is for all security to be turned over to the Afghan government in 2014. … Billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican trying to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, continued her pattern of ignoring her previous statements today with a new TV ad for Latino voters in which she contradicts her primary positions on education. … Jerry Brown joined with a group of 100 economists extolling the state’s landmark climate change program, which Whitman wants to end, as a means to create green industry and jobs.
** NEW ESSAY COMING UP … DOES INCEPTION SALVAGE THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON?
** NEW SURVEY: UNDEREMPLOYMENT HOLDS IN MID-JULY AT LOWEST LEVEL OF THE YEAR. A new national survey by the Gallup Poll shows underemployment in mid-July to be at the same level as it was in June, again marking the lowest level of the year.
But not showing continued improvement.
Underemployment, as measured by Gallup, is 18.3% in mid-July, unchanged from the end of June and remaining at its lowest level of the year. …
Gallup’s underemployment measure includes Americans who are unemployed and those working part time but wanting full-time work. It is based on more than 20,000 phone interviews with U.S. adults aged 18 and older in the workforce, collected over a 30-day period and reported daily and weekly. Gallup’s results are not seasonally adjusted and tend to be a precursor of government reports by approximately two weeks.
The unemployment rate component of Gallup’s underemployment measure increased marginally to 9.3% in mid-July. This marginal increase was offset by an equally modest decline to 9.0% in the number of employees working part time but wanting full-time work — leaving underemployment unchanged in mid-July. …
A greater percentage of women than of men are underemployed. Americans 18 to 29 have the highest underemployment level by age, at 29.6%; the highest unemployment rate, at 13.3%; and the highest percentage of those employed part time wanting full-time work, at 16.3%.
Workers without any college education have the highest underemployment by education, the highest unemployment rate, and the highest percentage of those working part time but wanting full-time work.
Despite all of the recent negative economic news concerning jobs and the economy, 43% of underemployed Americans are “hopeful” that they will be able to find a job in the next four weeks — tied with the 2010 high. Perhaps these job seekers recognize that companies continue to hire — even in a so-called jobless recovery. …
Gallup’s underemployment findings suggest that little has changed in mid-July compared with the end of June. As a result, Gallup expects the government to report no change in the July unemployment rate on the first Friday of August.
Still, the current jobs picture, as a whole, is difficult to assess with any precision. The government hired and then let go hundreds of thousands of census workers. And General Motors is not instituting its usual summer plant shutdowns this year — something that may have played a part in the sharp drop in jobless claims reported last Thursday. The combination of these and other circumstances makes it particularly challenging to determine and apply seasonal factors in today’s economic environment.
Further, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently noted that the economy seemed to hit an invisible wall in June. The Federal Open Market Committee’s June minutes show that the Fed reduced its growth forecast for the U.S. economy; and retail sales fell for the second month in a row in June. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey and the Philadelphia Fed survey reports were disappointing as well. Add in the lingering financial difficulties in Europe, and it is not hard to see how potential employers might be holding back before committing to an expansion of their workforces. …
I’m still absorbing it, and there’s much I didn’t know even though I follow the field, but the bottom line is that even people in power who should know do not know.
“Top Secret America” is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked – with the result an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it. It is, as Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have found, ubiquitous, often inefficient and mostly invisible to the people it is meant to protect and who fund it.
The articles in this series and an online database at topsecretamerica.com depict the scope and complexity of the government’s national security program through interactive maps and other graphics. Every data point on the Web site is substantiated by at least two public records.
President Barack Obama this morning called on Republicans to stop blocking the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of jobless Americans.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
It’s another big week in presidential politics, with President Barack Obama back from his first family outing (this time in Maine) not interrupted by crisis. In California politics, the chronic state budget crisis drags on and the races for governor and U.S. senator continue. We’re nearly halfway from the primary to Labor Day weekend, when Jerry Brown’s campaign is expected to go full bore, and billionaire Republican Meg Whitman, despite continued massive spending, has failed to regain the slight lead she had last March.
Here’s what Obama’s week looks like from a scheduling standpoint. On Monday, the President Obama will welcome the WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury to the White House to honor the team’s 2009 championship season.
On Tuesday, the President will hold a mini-summit with new British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will sign the Wall Street reform bill at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.
On Thursday and Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
As usual, the White House is leaving the latter part of the week relatively open to deal with emerging events.
Obama has three huge issues on tap which aren’t reflected yet on his public schedule: Afghanistan, unemployment insurance, and the Gulf oil disaster.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, having spent two days meeting with Pakistani leaders and announcing new civilian development projects for that front line state in the struggle against jihadism, is in Afghanistan Monday through Wednesday. A major international conference on Afghanistan’s future begins on Tuesday in Kabul. Clinton is representing the U.S. there, joining with top officials from 60 nations and the heads of NATO and the United Nations.
Obama is looking for a vote in the Senate this week on the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of jobless Americans. Popular West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is expected to run in the special election this fall, has appointed Carte Goodwin to fill the late Senator Robert Byrd’s seat on an interim basis. Goodwin, Byrd’s former chief counsel, may provide the margin of victory Obama needs on the unemployment insurance issue.
Obama is monitoring the situation in the BP Gulf oil disaster. The new cap has stopped the flow of oil from the ruptured well a mile beneath the surface of the sea. But tests are still ongoing to determine if it might rupture elsewhere. If so, oil would have to be pumped to the surface again to relieve pressure, which would lead to a few days of oil discharge into the water.
As the week begins in California politics, there seems little prospect of movement on the state’s chronic budget deficit any time soon. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is spending time in Sacramento as well as LA, but most state legislators are off on summer vacation, though they are supposed to be able to come to the Capitol relatively quickly if there is a breakthrough between Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders.
In the governor’s race, as I said at the top, we’re nearly halfway through the period between the primary and Labor Day weekend, after which Jerry Brown is expected to start spending heavily from the warchest he’s been sitting on for months. And Republican Meg Whitman still has not regained the slight lead she had in the spring, much less opened the 10 to 15 point lead that was in her battle plan.
Independent expenditure efforts by the labor-backed California Working Families and Working Californians groups, as well as publicity efforts by the California Nurses Association and the California Labor Federation, are helping the Brown campaign prevent Whitman from making a breakout. But she’s continuing to spend heavily — even as she avoids public appearances and interviews — trying again to make a breakthrough with Latino voters with vastly different positions than she espoused just last month.
The Senate race between Senator Barbara Boxer and the Republican challenger, ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is also relatively close, due to the unpopularity of Congress. But Boxer, as I reported last week, has a big financial edge over Fiorina.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
At 7:30 AM Pacific, Obama delivered a statement to the press about the economy in the Rose Garden.
He called on the Senate to pass the extension of unemployment benefits. Republicans have been blocking the move.
Obama then received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10:40 AM Pacific, Obama welcomes the WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury basketball team to the White House, where he honors the women’s champions in the State Dining Room.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama meets with former Senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, to discuss the future of the space program.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend the White House Music Series Event in the East Room, where Obama delivers remarks.
This event features major Broadway artists and new talent who will perform selections from American musicals that reflect the spirit, energy and ambition of America. Participants include Nathan Lane, Audra McDonald (with whom I worked on the NBC series Mister Sterling), Elaine Stritch, and Marvin Hamlisch.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden attends an event for congressional candidate Bryan Lentz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will also be featured at the event.
In the afternoon, Biden meets with senior advisors.
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Biden will attend an event for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a colleague of mine in Gary Hart’s presidential campaign, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Afghanistan today. On Tuesday, she’ll participate in a major international conference in Kabul on the course ahead in Afghanistan. Thing are not going very well.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
In the wake of North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean Navy ship this past spring, Obama is sending the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battle group to South Korea this week. It arrives on Wednesday.
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.
… 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.
Inception opened big over the weekend with $62.8 million at the domestic box office, higher than most estimates.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $43 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The Gulf oil spill is at last plugged, but for how long? BP wants to keep it plugged by the new cap until it is permanently plugged by two relief wells. Testing is continuing.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Maine and Washington, D.C. today.
Obama received his daily intelligence and economic briefings on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park.
He has no scheduled public events.
Appearing this morning on ABC’s This Week, Vice President Joe Biden predicted Democratic victories in November’s national elections, with the party holding on to both the Senate and the House. “I think we’re going to shock the heck out of people,” he declared.
Biden also offered to bet anyone that embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wins in Nevada. Reid, who has trailed for over a year, recently took a seven-point lead over Tea Party darling Sharron Angle, a former Nevada state assemblywoman. Frankly, it’s a measure of Reid’s unpopularity that he’s only up by seven points. Angle should be beaten by at least 20, even in Nevada. Of course, that may yet happen.
For her part, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Islamabad today, meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. She will meet tomorrow with Pakistani military, national security, and civilian development officials.
Clinton is working on shoring up relations with Pakistan in advance of the big international conference on Afghanistan which opens on Tuesday in Kabul.
Clinton is representing the U.S. at the Afghanistan conference, which will be attended by senior officials from 60 nations as well as the heads of NATO and the United Nations.
** 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, with corporate earnings up significantly, blasts Republicans in the Senate who he says are blocking unemployment insurance and small business tax breaks to create jobs, even as they push for permanent, massive tax cuts for the richest Americans.
** 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. …
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Maine today.
He and First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Mali are having a family weekend in the very picturesque Acadia National Park.
Obama has no scheduled public events.
The new cap over BP’s ruptured oil well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico appears to be holding.
That is welcome news, obviously.
Next Wednesday, Obama will preside over a major signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building for the new Wall Street reform bill.
Any irony is, I’m sure, unintended.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is off to Afghanistan today. On Tuesday, she’ll participate in a major international conference in Kabul on the course ahead in Afghanistan. Thing are not going very well.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet this 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 – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He will hold private talks.
Schwarzenegger flew over to Columbus, Ohio later in the day on Friday to appear at an event for his After School All-Stars charity, attend a board meeting for the annual Arnold Sports Festival, and appear at a fundraiser for former Congressman John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor. Kasich is a friend of Schwarzenegger’s longtime friend and partner in the Arnold Sports Festival, formerly the Arnold Classic, Jim Lorimer.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
Five minutes of clips from Inception, the mindbender scifi action thriller from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, opening this weekend around North America.
** 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 $76.01 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $42 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 flew of oil from a ruptured well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico has stopped for the first time since the explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform, which killed 11 men.
** QUICK HITS.While the new cap over the ruptured well in the BP Gulf oil disaster is holding the oil, the pressure level isn’t as high as the crisis managers want, indicating that there may be leakage somewhere. … Another flip-flop by billionaire Meg Whitman emerged today in the California governor’s race. Yesterday, she told a Bakersfield radio station that she doesn’t favor furloughs of state workers. But last month, while she hammered Steve Poizner repeatedly in the Republican primary for failing to furlough “a single worker” as state insurance commissioner, she was for it. As I wrote a few months ago, she is an inveterate flip-flopper, evidently bent on besting Jerry Brown’s career record in the field in the course of her lone campaign for public office. … A local judge denied Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request for an immediate injunction ordering state Controller John Chiang to issue minimum wage checks to state workers (to be reimbursed) till the state’s very late budget is adopted. He affirmed Schwarzenegger’s authority, however, and set a hearing on Chiang’s claim that he can’t program computers to issue the checks.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … THE MACHINATIONS OF MEG: MURPHY’S MILLION (PLUS) AND MORE.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: I.E.S EXPEND, NURSES DON’T NURTURE, AND STILL MORE FLIP-FLOPS. Another day, another flip-flop by billionaire Meg Whitman.
Remember way back in the spring, when when Whitman was spending a record-shattering $90 million to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the lowest turnout primary election in California history? Sure you do. Steve Poizner threw a big scare into the billionaire for quite a while, so much so that she dropped her carefully concocted pose of brushing aside her record of not hiring Latino executives and portraying herself as friend to the Latino vote, er, community. She had been for comprehensive immigration reform. Now she was against it. She had said she was against denying basic services for illegal immigrants as in the draconian Prop 187 championed by her campaign chairman, ex-Governor Pete Wilson. Now she said for denying services.
But earlier this week, she claimed in an op-ed piece published under her name in some East LA newspapers that she and Jerry Brown have the same views on illegal immigration. Oh, really? Brown is for comprehensive immigration, which Whitman said she was against in the primary. That’s not the only difference, just the most obvious.
Now Whitman says she’s against having state officials inspect workplaces for evidence of employing illegal immigrants. But she was for that in the primary.
Just add it to the long list of Whitman flip flops, from offshore oil drilling, greenhouse gases, and so on.
Meanwhile, as Whitman continues her record-shattering spending, her opponents aren’t just sitting around. Brown is not in full campaign mode yet, holding fire on his carefully husbanded warchest, but he’s out doing interviews, as you may have noticed.
And Brown allies are very active.
While Whitman, as always, outspends her opposition, the California Working Families independent expenditure committee is continuing to run TV ads in much of the state.
The group, a coalition of 17 labor unions and some other interested organizations and individuals has raised some $18 million in cash and commitments. Which is not the same as having $18.5 million in the bank. The money comes in when it’s time to air another flight of ads.
So far, it looks like they’ll be able to make it at least to Labor Day, countering Whitman’s effort. And despite all of Whitman’s spending, Brown still has a slight edge.
I can tell you that the plan for the Whitman folks was to have rolled up a 10 to 15-point lead over Brown to make it hard for him to come back in the fall. That plan has been confounded.
In addition to California Working Families’ efforts, the Working Californians group is spending over a million dollars on radio ads promoting Brown’s record around the state.
There were many meetings this week, especially among labor folks, on the campaign. The California Labor Federation is gearing up a big voter mobilization campaign. Other major unions have additional plans, some of which I’m aware of.
Then there is the California Nurses Association.
Whitman, dogged by the “Queen Meg” theatrical troupe at her infrequent public appearances, and mad about it, has had her campaign attack the nurses union in a variety of ways. So the nurses upped the ante further yesterday, mobilizing more than a thousand nurses to rally outside Whitman’s leafy Atherton estate. Along with the “Queen Meg” troupe.
Whitman wasn’t there, of course, as she was at a flashlight company touting her reworked jobs agenda. You know, create jobs by eliminating the capital gains tax, cut taxes for wealth investors and corporations, and roll back regulations.
As I said, it’s thinly reworked.
What do you think got more attention?
Actually, it might be best for Brown if Whitman’s ballyhooed agenda got a lot more attention. Because it really does not add up.
** THE BIG HMMM … WEST WING CREATOR TO DIRECT JOHN EDWARDS SCANDAL FILM. West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin will write and direct a film based on The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down, a notorious non-fiction best-seller by former Edwards aide Andrew Young.
Young, as you may recall, was a senior aide to Edwards who helped the former senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee with his big mistress problem by claiming that he had fathered the child of Rielle Hunter. Later, he threatened to release a sex tape of Edwards with Hunter.
“This is a first-hand account of an extraordinary story filled with motivations, decisions and consequences that would have lit Shakespeare up,” Sorkin, a first-time director, told Variety. “There’s much more to Andrew’s book than what has been reported, and I’m grateful that he’s trusting me with it.”
I’m a big Sorkin fan. In addition to creating, producing, and writing most of The West Wing, before leaving the series in its late stages, he wrote the hit films A Few Good Men, The American President, and Charlie Wilson’s War. He also wrote the forthcoming The Social Network about Facebook.
But a movie about John Edwards and the massive scandal that enveloped him after his second presidential campaign sputtered to its predictable conclusion? I don’t know about that.
Edwards, a one-term senator from North Carolina after a fabulously succesful career as a trial lawyer, finished second in the 2004 Democratic presidential race before John Kerry picked him as his running mate. They came close, but didn’t succeed in knocking off George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama taking up most of the oxygen in the 2008 Democratic presidential race, Edwards, once a center/left Southern Democrat, emerged as the darling of the lefty “Netroots” but not much more.
I liked him, but it was clear to me he wasn’t going anywhere and that Obama was the coming figure. It was also clear, after watching a video documentary on Edwards produced by Hunter — who’d been hired as a videographer — that the former senator and the former Manhattan party girl were engaged in a very unwise liaison.
Edwards soon exited the race, but not before his continuing presence in it after losing his stronghold Iowa to Obama probably cost Obama the New Hampshire primary, and an immediate victory over Clinton.
Edwards later tried to become Obama’s running mate, which always seemed unlikely to me since it was Obama associates who tipped the Huffington Post to Edwards’ affair with Hunter.
You know the rest of the story.
And now it’s going to be a movie …
President Barack Obama says BP’s apparently successful capping of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is “good news.” But he says testing continues to determine whether the temporary cap can stay in place and be used to permanently stop the flow of oil.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Maine today.
Obama received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then made a statement outside the White House on the apparently successful fitting of a new cap over BP’s ruptured oil well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Mali are en route to Bal Harbour, Maine on Air Force One.
At 8:45 AM Pacific, the Obamas arrive in Bar Harbor, Maine.
The plan is for them to have a three-day family weekend in the very picturesque Acadia National Forest.
I say it’s the plan because all of Obama’s previous family trips in the nearly 18 months of his presidency to date have been interrupted by crises.
Obama has no scheduled public events for the rest of the weekend.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden travels to Nashville, Tennessee, where he visits the Grand Ole Opry, the famed country music shrine, to survey flood recovery and restoration efforts.
In the evening, Biden delivers keynote remarks at the Tennessee Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Nashville.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet this 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 today.
He will hold private talks.
Meanwhile, the latest court ruling in the legal fight between Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang over the governor’s authority to temporarily reduce state workers to minimum wage until the very late state budget is adopted (workers would retroactively receive full pay) may come today.
Chiang has consistently lost all these legal fights. And he claims that he is unable to program computers to issue minimum wage checks, an argument that is best made before a small group of people.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
Inception, the new film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens today throughout North America. This trailer presents the characters in the mystery.
** 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 $42 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 says the groundbreaking for an electric vehicle battery plant in the state of Michigan has more to do with building a better economic future for the U.S. than putting up another factory.
** QUICK HITS. The U.S. Senate today passed the Wall Street reform bill on a vote of 60 to 39, which President Obama hailed in an afternoon appearance. This is a big win for Obama. Expect a bells and whistles signing ceremony. … Goldman Sachs, charged with massive fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission, will settle for a $550 million fine. … Ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the California Republican candidate against Senator Barbara Boxer, had reported only $620,000 cash on hand earlier today. That total has now been corrected to $950,000. Boxer still has over 11 times as much on hand, and raised twice as much from donors in the second quarter as Fiorina did during her primary campaign battle for the GOP nomination. …
** BOXER’S BIG FINANCIAL EDGE OVER FIORINA, SO FAR … Speaking of counter-intuitive, Senator Barbara Boxer has a big financial edge over her Republican challenger, ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Boxer reports $11.3 million cash on hand as of June 30th. Fiorina had only $600,000.
Boxer raised nearly as much in the second quarter of 2010, $4.6 million, as Fiorina has from donors other than herself in the entire campaign, $5.1 million.
Fiorina has also loaned her campaign $5.5 million, none of which, of course, she’ll ever see back in her personal coffers unless she wins the Senate seat. That money was essentially all spent in the primary.
Fiorina’s campaign says she has put no more of her money into the campaign since smashing former frontrunner Tom Campbell in the primary, by the stunning margin of 57% to 21%. (NWN was the only outlet that pegged Fiorina as the real favorite in the Republican primary after backers of Meg Whitman helped persuade Campbell to drop out of the governor’s race and run again for senator instead.)
Boxer has a slight edge in the polls, and her funding will help her in her bid to knock Fiorina down as too conservative for California.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA STORY.
** A PARADOX FOR THE OVERSTRETCHED U.S. MILITARY: WELL-BEING IS HIGHER THAN AMONG CIVILIANS. Despite the stress of large and repeated deployments to two overseas wars over the past decade, a new Gallup survey finds that U.S. military personnel have a greater sense of well-being than do their civilian counterparts.
And substantially more Armed Forces members report themselves as “thriving” in the Gallup Poll.
Active duty military personnel who have ever been deployed to a foreign war have strikingly similar wellbeing levels as active duty personnel who have never been deployed. In both cases, these levels exceed the wellbeing scores found among U.S. workers in general.
Active duty military personnel who have been deployed are also as likely to rate their lives well enough to be considered “thriving” as those who have not been deployed. Both groups are significantly more likely to be thriving than are American workers overall.
These findings are based on 86,262 interviews with employed Americans aged 18 to 64, from Aug. 1, 2009-June 15, 2010, which were conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Of these completed surveys, 1,451 were with active duty military personnel between the ages of 18-64 who were residing in the United States at the time they were interviewed, 1,004 of which that had previously been deployed to a foreign war. (Actual combat experience is not determined.) …
Young military personnel who have been deployed, however, suffer from a slight drop in wellbeing scores compared with their counterparts who have never been deployed, but they still maintain higher wellbeing scores than U.S. workers in general. Those deployed older than 30, who ordinarily would experience a decline in life evaluation as a result of advancing age, instead demonstrate resilience on this metric not found among U.S. workers in general and match their younger counterparts’ scores. …
This would seem counter-intuitive, especially to those with no military experience. Which in present-day American society, is a large and growing majority.
But it actually makes perfect sense.
For one thing, America has been in a domestic down cycle for years, heightened by the near meltdown of the global economy in 2008 and 2009.
For another, the military provides many things which civilian life does not. There is a sense of order, standards, continual motivational efforts to develop a sense of esprit de corps.
Physical fitness efforts are a must, health care and basic creature comforts are provided. There are ongoing educational efforts at all levels, from vocational to skills to the highest post-graduate education. (The U.S. officer corps today is generally better educated and has broader experience than its civilian professional counterpart.)
This comes as a surprise to many civilians who have pitying and/or condescending views of the military dating back to the Vietnam War era.
Heavily Catholic Argentina today became the first country in Latin America to legalize same sex marriage.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Michigan today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then left for Grand Rapids, Michigan on Air Force One.
At 9:35 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
At 10:30 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at the groundbreaking of the new Compact Power plant in Holland, Michigan.
Compact Power is a major recipient of recovery act funds. It is developing and manufacturing batteries for new vehicles.
At 12:15 PM Pacific, Obama departs Grand Rapids, Michigan on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
For his part, back in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden meets with Senator Lindsey Graham at the White House, then chairs a regular meeting of senior national security and diplomatic officials to assess the state of affairs in Iraq. He then holds a conference call with mayors from across the country to discuss implementation of the economic recovery act.
Obama held key meetings yesterday with two people who were not on his public schedule at the beginning of the day: former President Bill Clinton and mega-investor Warren Buffett. The stuttering economic recovery was a big part of each meeting.
Clinton will campaign extensively this fall for Democratic candidates around the country.
Yet another delay in the BP Gulf oil disaster. Although testing was again supposedly about to begin last night on the new cap has been placed over the ruptured undersea well, it was delayed again due to a new leak. But that leak has supposedly been repaired, and testing is to begin “soon.”
This is very frustrating to follow, as the information is frequently conflicting and generally opaque.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet this 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.
A group that bedeviled Schwarzenegger during his unsuccessful 2005 “Year of Reform” special election initiatives campaign, the California Nurses Association, today confronts the Republican who is trying to succeed him, billionaire Meg Whitman.
The nurses union has dogged Whitman with a traveling “Queen Meg” roadshow outside her increasingly infrequent public appearances. She has tried to up the ante with mass mailings to registered nurses attacking the union.
So today more than a thousand nurses will rally near Whitman’s estate in Atherton. They are expected to unveil a new attack ad against Whitman focusing on her very expensive physical altercation with an eBay employee.
The theme? “Nurses Won’t Be Pushed Around.”
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
After a string of mostly disappointing non-family summer movies, Inception, the new film by Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, opens tomorrow throughout North America.
** 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 $42 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 failed Times Square car bomber says, in this video obtained by Al Arabiya, that he planned a “revenge attack” to touch the hearts of Muslims.
** QUICK HITS.Testing of the new cap on the BP Gulf oil spill resumed late today. … Former Vice President Dick Cheney is recovering from his latest heart surgery late last week, during which he had a pump implanted to deal with encroaching congestive heart failure.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA STORY.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: BUSY BROWN, SCHWARZENEGGER’S JOB APPROVAL, A NEW CHIEF JUSTICE, AND WHITMAN’S FLIP-FLOPPING STANCE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. A fairly interesting day in gubernatorial politics.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, who some knock for not doing much publicly — actually, he’s made three times as many public appearances in his current rope-a-dope mode as billionaire Meg Whitman has since the primary (of course, she’s trying to hide out behind a cloud of paid advertising and consultants and avoid questions about her behavior and policies) — was in San Diego, where he appeared with the Republican mayor and announced that he is suing the Federal Housing Finance Agency and home financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking the residential Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing (PACE) programs. These programs help Californians invest in energy efficiency, so naturally Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his support for Brown’s lawsuit.
On a day in which the Field Poll, continuing to dole out its numbers ever so slowly, announced that Schwarzenegger has tied the record low job approval rating of 22% achieved by the governor he replaced, Gray Davis, in the month in which Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on The Tonight Show, August 2003, Brown did not return the favor.
Though he likes Schwarzenegger and works with him on renewable energy, climate change, and other issues, Brown made the obvious move this morning on a San Diego TV show, comparing Schwarzenegger with billionaire Meg Whitman.
“He went into Sacramento naive and he failed,” Brown said. “And that’s the same thing that would happen with Whitman.”
And he noted that Whitman is surrounded by the most of the old crew from the first Schwarzenegger term, which began with sky-high approval and nearly crashed and burned two years later.
“All her consultants are the same old consultants that were around Schwarzenegger,” he said.
Whitman’s campaign chairman is former Governor Pete Wilson, whose gubernatorial staffers dominated most of the first Schwarzenegger term. Her chief political strategist is Mike Murphy, who was Schwarzenegger’s chief political strategist. And so on.
The reality is that Schwarzenegger has a very intriguing legacy which includes some major accomplishments in a very complex, grinding situation. But that’s hardly a campaign message for a Democrat running against a semi-reclusive super-rich novice who seems bent on recycling all the old Schwarzenegger consultants’ old slogans.
With regard to his legacy, Schwarzenegger — who made a more low-key visit to a State Fair today which boiled over with enthusiasm for him when he was there seven years ago during the 2003 recall campaign which he won in a landslide — was handed another major appointment today.
Chief Justice Ron George of the California Supreme Court announced that he is retiring. He decided not to have his name on the ballot for a yes/no vote on another 12-year term. George was appointed by Wilson in 1996.
Schwarzenegger has until September 16th to appoint a his replacement. A chief justice plays a very major role in the life of the state, needless to say. George is a moderate Republican who frequently sided with business but was not anti-environment. He was the deciding force on the Court when it legalized same sex marriage in 2008, only to see if overturned at the ballot box that November.
Schwarzenegger previously succeeded in his appointment of Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado after John Garamendi stepped away for a seat in Congress. Maldonado is the first Latino Republican to hold statewide office in over a century.
As significant as that is, Schwarzenegger’s next big appointment will hold far more import.
Meanwhile, Whitman, while avoiding interviews and debates, did have an op-ed piece published in some LA newspapers today under her name in which she tried to claim that she and Brown have the same position on illegal immigration. Which ignores what she said in the primary.
Under heavy pressure from Steve Poizner, Whitman came out against comprehensive immigration reform and in her advertising, featuring Latino bete noire Pete Wilson, said she was against benefits for illegals. Now she’s trying to claim that’s not what she meant.
It’s just the latest episode for a candidate who, let’s be frank, can’t get her story straight.
** VICE PRESIDENTIAL RATINGS: GORE SLUMPS, BIDEN AND CHENEY FLAT. A new Gallup Poll shows that former Vice President Al Gore’s popularity has dropped significantly since it was last measured in October 2007, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.
He’s now net negative, though substantially higher than former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is also net negative.
Only Vice President Joe Biden, in this comparative veepstakes, has a net positive image score.
Americans’ current views of former Vice President Al Gore have become significantly more negative compared with three years ago, and are among the worst for him in more than a decade. …
The July 8-11 Gallup poll, finding 44% of Americans viewing Gore favorably and 49% unfavorably, was conducted after the announcement that he and his wife were separating, and amid a police investigation into allegations that he committed sexual assault in 2006. Gallup last measured Gore’s image in October 2007, after he was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, when 58% of Americans had a favorable view of him. All three party groups are less favorable toward Gore now compared with 2007, though his rating has declined more among Republicans (from 32% to 16%) and independents (from 57% to 43%) than among Democrats (from 79% to 72%).
The only other time Americans were significantly more negative than positive toward Gore was in early December 2000, as he was disputing the election result in Florida that would make him or George W. Bush president, though he also had sub-50% favorable ratings from 2002-2006.
Gore’s vice presidential successors are not viewed very positively, either. Current Vice President Joe Biden’s 43% favorable and 41% unfavorable ratings are the best on a relative basis, and Dick Cheney’s 36% favorable/52% unfavorable score is the worst.
Biden’s ratings are essentially the same as they were last fall, but not as positive as they were during 2008 and most of 2009, spanning the presidential election campaign and the beginning of the Obama administration. …
Cheney is up six points since his low points in 2007 and right after leaving office last year, but the same as it was in May 2009. His favorable rating equates to the base conservative vote.
Work on capping the Gulf oil spill has been suspended, as has work on the relief wells.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden have lunch with senators in the Roosevelt Room.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama briefly attends a meeting to discuss the administration’s increased cybersecurity efforts at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 2:40 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with House Democratic leadership in the Oval Office.
Here are the other participants: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Majority Leader; Representative James Clyburn (D-SC), Majority Whip; Representative John Larson (D-CT), Democratic Caucus Chairman; Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman; Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Assistant to the Speaker and Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Representative George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the Democratic Policy Committee; and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chair of the Democratic Steering Committee.
On his own, Biden holds an economic recovery act event in the morning and in the evening hosts a reception with leaders of labor organizations at the Naval Observatory.
In the BP Gulf oil disaster, there is another apparent setback. Although the new cap has been placed over the ruptured undersea well, further work is on hold. A test is to be conducted, but it’s unclear when.
This is very frustrating to follow, as the information is frequently conflicting and generally opaque.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet this 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. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his more religious Shiite followers and allies have been trying to hold on to power ever since.
Now other Arab governments, notably the Saudis, are getting involved, urging the Iraqi parties to form a coalition government. 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.
At 2 PM, Schwarzenegger will tour the California State Fair on its opening day at Sacramento’s CalExpo.
Late yesterday, Schwarzenegger issued the following statement regarding the death of state Senator Dave Cox, who had long suffered from prostate cancer:
“Senator Cox was a committed public servant and loyal husband, father and grandfather. He was a great leader whose accomplishments helped shape the way we live and do business in this state. Always serving the legislature with pride, he worked each and every day to improve the lives of his constituents. I got to know Dave in 2002, when he was the first Republican leader to support my after-school initiative, Proposition 49, which provided funds for after-school programs. He fought passionately to convince legislators that California needed Proposition 49 for the children of this state, and together we succeeded. This is a sad day for all Californians. Maria and I send our thoughts and prayers to his family, friends and colleagues as they mourn his loss.”
I knew Cox, who had served as Assembly Republican Leader (and was a director of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District prior to that) before his election to the Senate. I liked him.
He was an amiable, if sometimes gruff, fellow, a reasonable conservative who spearheaded corruption investigations into Democratic and Republican officeholders.
He will be missed.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea.” Inception, the new film by Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, opens on Friday.
** 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.
A missing Iranian nuclear scientist, who has sought refuge at a Pakistani embassy office in Washington and who Iran claims was abducted, is free to return to his homeland, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today.
** QUICK HITS. In another confusing spy story, an Iranian nuclear scientist who somehow came to be in the U.S. is headed back to Iran. I don’t have a strong read on this yet. … BP is testing its new cap on the ruptured oil well far beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. We’ll know tomorrow or the day after how well it works. … More national polls are showing, not surprisingly, that most want a focus on employment and economic stimulus rather than deficit reduction. …
** CALIFORNIA 2010: OBAMA IN THE GOLDEN STATE, AND THE IDEAL CANDIDATE. The Field Poll continues to come out in dribs and drabs. Today’s version tells us what other polls have done as well, that President Barack Obama is still quite popular in California.
Obama has a 54% job approval rating in this poll, a tad lower than in other polls I’ve seen. Much of the Field survey was conducted over the long 4th of July national holiday weekend. 39% disapprove of Obama’s performance as president.
In 2008, Obama carried California over John McCain, 61% to 38%. So the opposition to Obama here is no greater than it was when he was first elected president. But support, at least in terms of job approval, is down some since the election, having gone to undecided rather than opposition. However, since the last poll in March, Obama’s job approval has ticked up two points.
In national polling, Obama’s job approval is generally a little higher than his disapproval, so these have to be viewed as continued good numbers for him.
Democrats and Republicans are about equally polarized in their views of Obama, while independents view him in much the same favorable light as the overall numbers.
But California voters have become more pessimistic about the country’s direction, as the nascent economic recovery continues in a lower gear. Only 33% think America is headed in the right direction, while 53% think it’s headed in the wrong direction.
Obama’s job approval in California goes up sharply with higher education, with 63% of those with post-grad work approving of his presidency. He’s also still very popular with younger voters — he has at least plurality support in all age groups — and with people of color. With whites, it’s a 47-47 split.
The release over the weekend studied desirable and undesirable candidate attributes, which was actually quite interesting.
The attributes viewed most positively were, in rank order, experience working with legislative leaders, experience in the business world, progressive views on the issues, moderate views on the issues, pro-choice on abortion, and many years experience in politics. Those attributes ranged from plus-32 to plus-10.
The attributes viewed most negatively were, in rank order, hasn’t voted in many elections, does not have experience working with legislative leaders, is over age 70, is an incumbent running for re-election, has never held political office before, is wealthy, opposes President Obama and his policies, and is a Republican. Those attributes ranged from negative-50 to negative-10.
As you can figure out for yourself, while some of those positive and negative attributes benefit the Republican candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, billionaire Meg Whitman and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, most do not.
For example, 72-year old Jerry Brown will have to demonstrate his vitality and energy, but Whitman can never change the fact that she hasn’t voted and has no experience working with legislative leaders.
And Fiorina, in addition to Whitman’s problems, has a serious problem with her staunch opposition to abortion.
The poll, incidentally, did not ask about environmental policy, despite the presence on the ballot of the major initiative to gut the state’s landmark climate change program, nor the impact of spending great wealth to saturate the air waves.
** BOXER AND FIORINA A TOSS-UP? Is the California Senate race between Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican challenger Carly Fiorina, the ex-Hewlett Packard CEO, a toss-up? That’s what realclearpolitics.com, says.
In a 2003 profile in the far right Human Events, the site’s founders say its purpose is to counter “anti-conservative” and “anti-Christian” tendencies in the mainstream media. Various conservative luminaries laud RealClearPolitics as a must read.
The site is owned by Forbes Media, as in Steve Forbes, the former ultraconservative Republican presidential candidate.
I’ve had some of my pieces featured on the site, and it is definitely right of center.
The reality of what RealClearPolitics is doesn’t mean that Fiorina can’t win, though I rather doubt it …
** PAGING MR. ORWELL: AMAZING REPORTING ON MURPHY’S MILLION FROM MEG. And the decline of California’s remaining political media continues. This time it’s folks who should know better (and in fact must know better), not inexperienced new folks increasingly taking the remaining slots in the conventional media.
You remember yesterday’s New York Times story about billionaire Meg Whitman, who has no involvement in Hollywood, giving consultant/lobbyist Mike Murphy $1 million in late 2008 for his credit-less Hollywood production company right after he cut ties with Steve Poizner, the California Republican gubernatorial candidate he had been advising.
Well, today, there is an article in a daily newspaper and a blog posting suggesting that there was nothing wrong with this. That even though Murphy soon emerged as Whitman’s chief political strategist, and has only one Hollywood credit to his name in the six years since he announced that he was getting out of politics — which he never did — to work full-time in show biz, the million dollar payment to him is not an unreported Whitman campaign expense.
In it, Marinucci seriously distorts what Murphy has done, to wit:
But Murphy, who drove Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s disastrous special election efforts in 2005, the governor’s successful re-election campaign in 2006 and advised Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, “was always ‘retiring from politics’ and then he’s back in,” the consultant added.
In reality, Murphy did not “drive” Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign, nor did he advise the McCain campaign in 2008.
The irony is that Marinucci herself reported the hiring of Steve Schmidt as Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager in January 2006, right after I did. Murphy was already out.
And as she must know, Murphy tried to get into the McCain campaign but was very publicly unsuccessful.
Perhaps she just forgot.
The other pro-Murphy pushback on behalf of his million dollar pay-off from Whitman to quit the Poizner campaign
came in the form of this posting on the Fox and Hounds site by its founder, conservative business lobbyist Joel Fox.
This sort of distortion is more to be expected, since Fox is a Whitman backer who worked with Murphy in Arnold Inc. back in the day.
Still, it goes far beyond garden variety deceptive spin to be simply, flat-out false.
I happen to know Murphy is serious about making a go in the movie business. He talked about it with Arnold-the-actor right before he was sworn in as Arnold-the- governor back in 2003 and soon after Murphy declared he was staying in California, taking a break from politics and setting up shop in Hollywood. Murphy is not the first person to come back to his roots while trying a new venture.
As Fox undoubtedly knows better, since he worked with him, Murphy did not “take a break from politics” after the 2003 recall campaign to work in Hollywood.
What he actually did is set up his lobbying/consulting firm in Sacramento and become Schwarzenegger’s chief political strategist.
Murphy blatantly solicited all kinds of corporate business as well, embarrassing the governor in the process, then ran the losing “Year of Reform” special election initiative campaigns in 2005.
He was then replaced as Schwarzenegger’s chief political strategist when the governor ran for re-election in 2006.
There’s a word for this sort of reporting and commentary: Orwellian.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA STORY.
In the BP Gulf oil disaster, the new cap has been installed over the ruptured undersea well. Tests are underway to see how well it is holding.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obamaand Vice President Joe Biden, who had just had breakfast with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 8 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden met with the Senate Democratic Leadership Team in the Roosevelt Room.
The other participants include Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Majority Leader; Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), President pro tempore; Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Majority Whip; Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Vice Chairman of the Conference; Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Secretary of the Conference; Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Outreach Committee; Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chief Deputy Whip; Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), Deputy Whip; Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman of the Policy Committee; Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), Deputy Whip; Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Chair of Rural Outreach; Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Campaign Committee, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), Deputy Whip; Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), Vice Chairman of Committee Outreach; and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chair of Steering and Outreach Committee.
Their discussion centers on prospects for energy reform and climate legislation, economic stimulus, deficit matters, appointments, and other topics.
Two Republicans came on board the Wall Street reform bill yesterday, giving it a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe of Maine joined fellow New Englander Susan Collins of Maine as the only three Republican supporters. Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold is the only Democratic opponent.
At 9:20 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden have lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates in the Oval Office.
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on the National HIV/AIDS Strategy in the East Room.
Obama announced the appointment of Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Jacob Lew as the replacement for departing Budget Director Peter Orszag. Lew was federal budget director during Bill Clinton’s second term.
In the BP Gulf oil disaster, the new cap has been placed over the ruptured undersea well and appears to be holding all the oil. We’ll know for sure in 48 hours. The ultimate solution, two relief wells, is to be completed in August.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet this 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. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his more religious Shiite followers and allies have been trying to hold on to power ever since.
Now other Arab governments, notably the Saudis, are getting involved, urging the Iraqi parties to form a coalition government.
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 has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger will hold private talks.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
Inception, the new film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, is viewed as the best hope to salvage the summer from a string of mostly disappointing movies. It opens on Friday.
** 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.
President Barack Obama previewed what looks to be his fall campaign message in this speech Friday morning at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
** QUICK HITS. Having picked up a couple of Republican votes today, President Barack Obama’s Wall Street reform bill now has 60 votes in the Senate, making it filibuster-proof despite the vacancy caused by the death of the Senate’s 92-yeard old dean, Robert Byrd. … The new cap on the BP Gulf oil disaster’s undersea gusher is nearly in place and is now expected to be functioning on Tuesday.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: AN INTERESTING JUXTAPOSITION. Not long after the New York Times published an article on billionaire Meg Whitman’s late 2008 investment of $1 million in consultant/lobbyist Mike Murphy’s Hollywood production company with no credits just as he stepped away from an informal advisory role with Steve Poizner, the Whitman campaign showed its thin skin again by launching a TV attack ad against an independent expenditure campaign against her.
Whitman uses the latest ad to, naturally, attack Brown again. With vague charges this time, not so childishly simple to point out as lies, though stating that Brown is a big tax raiser is a big lie. And imprecations against evil unions opposing her.
One wonders what the viewer thinks of all this in the middle of summer, especially coming from a candidate who began running negative ads on her primary opponent before he ever went on the air, and whose only positive TV ad of the general election fell flat on its face.
“Clearly our messages are resonating with voters; otherwise Whitman wouldn’t respond by trying to bully the messenger.” said California Working Families spokesman Roger Salazar. “It’s also clear with this new ad Meg Whitman wants to once again buy her way out of trouble.”
Salazar added, “From allegedly paying off employees for physical abuse and age discrimination, to raising fees on eBay’s small business customers to cover high overhead costs (including her jet travel and personal vacations), to trying to buy her way into office, billionaire Meg Whitman’s solution to everything is to throw money at the problem. Well, she can’t bully us and I don’t think another deceptive attack ad is going to buy her any more credibility with the average California voter.”
In the latest New York Times article on Whitman, the paper notes that the billionaire ex-eBay CEO and national co-chair of the McCain/Palin campaign, who has had no other involvement with Hollywood, gave Mike Murphy a million dollars for his Hollywood production company.
Now here’s the interesting thing about Whitman’s $1 million investment. Murphy announced to the Los Angeles Times back in 2004 that he was leaving politics for a full-time career in Hollywood. I remember it well, because at the time I was on location in San Diego co-producing a cable movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger in which Murphy was a character. But in the six years since then, Murphy’s Hollywood career has never actually happened.
Aside from being a consulting producer on Dennis Miller’s cable TV chat show — Murphy produced the show’s first guest, his then client Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — he has no other Hollywood credits.
As someone who’s dabbled in show biz, and is decidedly not a Hollywood person but has a lot more than one credit, it occurs to me that that is not easy to pull off.
In any event, the following year Murphy went to work formally for Whitman, and is making at least $90,000 a month. He may be making more than that through media deals, but I haven’t looked into it. All that is on top of the $1 million he got from Whitman to be a Hollywood producer even though he’s really her chief political strategist.
Of course, it’s actually been around for many years. In the early part of the 20th century, a Progressive with a capitl “P” was what many today would call an independent, albeit one with an actual agenda. President Teddy Roosevelt became a Progressive; Governor Hiram Johnson was a Progressive. They were politicians who fought against large concentrations of financial and political power, looking to the popular vote to out-flank political party organizations taken over by one or another special interest. But they were also committed to the capitalist system, notwithstanding the excesses they sought to rein in.
Then a few decades ago, progressive with a small “p” began being used to describe a left/liberal, often socialist point of view.
Now it’s fairly vague.
Gallup polling reveals widespread public uncertainty about the “progressive” political label — a label recently embraced by no less than Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. While Kagan described her political views as “generally progressive” during her Senate confirmation hearings, fewer than half of Americans can say whether “progressive” does (12%) or does not (31%) describe their own views. The majority (54%) are unsure. …
This measure of the progressive label was included in a June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll, which also assessed Americans’ political ideology using Gallup’s standard liberal-moderate-conservative scale.
Large segments of all three ideological groups are unsure what “progressive” means, though liberals are more likely to embrace than reject the label (26% vs. 17%), while conservatives are more likely to reject than embrace it (48% vs. 7%). Democrats are evenly divided on whether the term applies to their views, while Republicans overwhelmingly reject it.
Today’s findings are consistent with those from a Gallup Panel poll conducted four years ago in which Americans rated their familiarity with “progressive” and five other political terms. At that time, 22% said they were very familiar with the progressive label and another 37% were somewhat familiar, while 40% were not too or not at all familiar — much higher than the levels not familiar with “conservative” (8%) and “liberal” (10%).
Close to half of Americans (45%) who identify with the progressive label separately describe their political views as either very liberal or liberal. At the same time, a third of progressives call themselves moderate and nearly a quarter, conservative — indicating that Americans’ definitions of the term may vary widely or perhaps that Americans lack clarity about its current meaning in U.S. politics.
Notably, the 22% of progressives calling themselves “very liberal” is much higher than the 7% of all Americans who do so. …
The progressive label seems to be gaining popularity in American politics, with numerous high-profile political players and groups using it either as a substitute for “liberal” or as a nuanced alternative to it. Given the high degree of public uncertainty about what the term means — as well as the lack of opposition to it from the political center — that could be a successful strategy, at least if the goal is to avoid being pigeonholed.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
In presidential politics, this looks like one of the lighter weeks, at least in terms of President Barack Obama’s schedule. Yet the BP Gulf oil spill may at last be contained.
In California politics, the state’s chronic budget crisis drags on, as usual. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is around the state, even if the Legislature is on some sort of summer recess, though they’re not calling it that. The race for governor, U.S. senator and other statewide offices and initiatives continue, with the only major development this week being the Swiss denial of extradition for director Roman Polanski to Los Angeles, a blow to Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who was looking for a boost to his Republican campaign for state attorney general.
In Obama’s seeming light schedule, he meets today with President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, he has meetings in the White House.
On Thursday, he heads to Michigan to once again talk about the economy.
Then on Friday, the Obamas head up to Maine for the weekend.
Meanwhile, clean-up efforts in the BP Gulf oil disaster continue and may be at a very positive turning point. There’s been a break in the bad weather, anticipated now to last for seven to 10 days. So they are putting a new cap on the undersea oil flow. The cap, once in place, should capture all the oil flow, siphoning it to the surface.
The cap may be in place and functioning by the end of the day. First Lady Michelle Obama will be in Florida later today, by an odd coincidence.
The ultimate solution, of course, is the drilling of relief wells to stop the flow altogether. And that is on schedule.
The news from Iraq is not as good. The new national parliament was scheduled to meet this week, but that has been postponed for an indefinite period.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his more religious Shiite followers and allies have been trying to hold on to power ever since.
Vice President Joe Biden was in Iraq over the 4th of July weekend and tried to move a hoped-for coalition government into existence. U.S. combat troops are scheduled to be withdrawn in August, and Biden publicly insisted last weekend that the withdrawal will take place on schedule.
In fact, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq is underway.
On the political front, the White House operation is gearing up further.
Last Friday, at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Obama delivered something of a test market speech for the fall campaign. He discussed the economy and the Republican opposition, framing the 2010 general elections as a choice between policies that massively failed over the eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration and policies he says are beginning to succeed.
“The last thing we should do,” he said, “is go back to the very ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. That’s the choice you are going to face in November. . . . A choice between falling backward or moving forward.
“They spent nearly a decade driving the country into a ditch and now they are asking for the car keys back. They can’t have ‘em back. They don’t know how to drive.
“We already know how this story ends. We don’t have to guess how the other party will govern.”
I think Obama’s speech played well.
Still on presidential politics, at the end of the week, the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee will set the dates for the early primaries and caucuses in 2012.
Iowa will leads off again, this time pushed back to February 6th from 2008′s insane January 3rd. New Hampshire will go on February 14th, because what says “Valentine’s Day” more than a presidential primary? Nevada will go Feb. 18th and South Carolina will go on February 26th. No other state would be allowed to hold its contest before March 6th.
Will the Republicans, where the actual action will be, follow suit? It’s likely, since states don’t like to hold multiple primaries.
In California politics, Jerry Brown and Senator Barbara Boxer continue to hold the edge for governor and U.S. Senate, however narrow it may according to the vagaries of various polls, over their ex-CEO Republican opponents, billionaire Meg Whitman and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
The initiatives are shaping up as anticipated, with the oil company/conservative coalition seeking to overturn the state’s landmark climate change program facing a steep uphill climb, proponents of legalized marijuana starting out even or a little worse, and the move to change the state budget to a majority vote proposition beginning with a big edge.
In the race for lieutenant governor, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is personally unpopular but has the advantage of Democratic registration and Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado’s lower name ID.
The race for the powerful post of attorney general, being vacated by Jerry Brown as he moves forward with his third Democratic nomination for governor, is close, with both candidates having problems.
LA DA Steve Cooley had hoped to gain an edge over his Democratic rival, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, with a publicity bonanza gained from the extradition of director Roman Polanski, who fled to Europe over 30 years ago after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor.
But the Swiss, having shocked the world by arresting Polanski last September, shocked it again this morning when they denied his extradition.
American authorities, they say, failed to provide confidential materials around his sentencing in Los Angeles.
So what looked like a bonanza for Cooley may turn into a debacle.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 11:10 AM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic in the Oval Office.
At 11:40 AM Pacific, Obama holds a joint press availability with President Fernandez in the Oval Office.
For his part, Biden hosts a lunch meeting with President of the Council on Foreign Relations Dr. Richard Haass. He then meets with former Senator Chuck Hagel, co-chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Following that, Biden meets with Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa.
First Lady Michelle Obama addresses NAACP’s convention combating childhood obesity and then heads to the Gulf to inspect the oil spill.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Predators, a late-blooming sequel to Arnold’s Schwarzenegger cult classic scifi action hit Predator, opened well this past weekend despite having no big stars in the picture.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger will hold private talks.
State Controller John Chiang, having lost repeatedly in court trying to block Schwarzenegger’s move to temporarily reduce state workers to minimum wage in order to move the chronic state budget crisis toward some resolution, is nonetheless filing a counter-claim and … it all gets very snoozey.
A governor has the legal authority to do this. Chiang’s only real recourse is what he has resorted to in the past; namely, that he can’t program computers to issue checks in that amount. Which few will believe.
Meanwhile, Predators, a late-blooming sequel to Schwarzenegger’s 1987 hit Predator, opened well over the weekend, taking in $25.3 million at the box office despite having no big stars in the cast.
Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, who won for Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama The Pianist, bulked up to play the lead, a mercenary who finds himself on another planet with a group of killers. But they are there as prey.
There was a serious part for Schwarzenegger in an earlier version of the screenplay, which actually goes back to the ’90s. But he had no time for it, given his duties as governor.
In the original, as you see in the trailer above, Schwarzenegger leads a Delta Force rescue team into a Central American jungle. But he’s been tricked by the CIA into another sort of mission. And everyone finds out that they are in the middle of something far different than anyone had imagined.
Schwarzenegger did not appear in the 1990 sequel, Predator 2, instead working on one of his key movies, Total Recall.
After that, there were two other movies, as the franchise devolved into fights between the Predator creatures and the Alien creatures, which Schwarzenegger had nothing to do with.
In the dramatic 2003 California recall campaign, the Predator theme was revived for Schwarzenegger’s statewide bus tour.
Schwarzenegger’s lead bus was dubbed The Running Man.
The bus for VIPs was called Total Recall.
And the four press buses were Predator 1, Predator 2, Predator 3, and Predator 4.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
** 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 $41 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.
Government scientists participated in a marine mammal/sea turtle survey Saturday as they flew over the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana’s Chandeleur Islands. Oil from the BP offshore drilling disaster is again spewing unhindered into the Gulf as a new contraption is put in place to capture all of it.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
He has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama has no scheduled public events.
White House senior advisor David Axelrod said today on one of the morning chat shows that major progress is being made in the BP Gulf oil disaster, with a large cap almost ready to go in place. This cap would channel oil escaping from the blown well into containment chambers on the surface.
The ultimate solution is the drilling of relief wells, which are on schedule for operation in August.
Israeli Prime MInister Bibi Netanyahu insisted today on another morning chat show that Israel wants face-to-face negotiations with Palestinian leaders. But the Palestinians say there will be no negotiation until Israel agrees to a freeze on its controversial settlements in the West Bank.
All this is very predictable.
NATO spokespeople today in Kabul denied that the Taliban are gaining steam in the wake of increased attacks against U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces and increased coalition casualties.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
** 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. …
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama announces that the Department of Veterans Affairs, led by Secretary and retired General Eric Shinseki, will begin making it easier for veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to receive the benefits and treatment they need.
** 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 today.
Yesterday, at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Obama delivered something of a test market speech for the fall campaign. He discussed the economy and the Republican opposition, framing the 2010 general elections as a choice between policies that massively failed over the eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration and policies he says are beginning to succeed.
“The last thing we should do,” he said, “is go back to the very ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. That’s the choice you are going to face in November. . . . A choice between falling backward or moving forward.
“They spent nearly a decade driving the country into a ditch and now they are asking for the car keys back. They can’t have ‘em back. They don’t know how to drive.
“We already know how this story ends. We don’t have to guess how the other party will govern.”
Early reviews of Obama’s speech are good.
Meanwhile, clean-up efforts in the BP Gulf oil disaster continue and may be at a very positive turning point.
There’s been a break in the bad weather, anticipated now to last for seven to 10 days. So they are putting a new cap on the undersea oil flow.
The bad news is that the oil will flow unimpeded into the Gulf for up to two days. The good news is that the cap, once in place, should capture all the oil flow, siphoning it to the surface.
The ultimate solution, of course, is the drilling of relief wells to stop the flow altogether. And that is on schedule.
The governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, four months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his more religious Shiite followers and allies have been trying to hold on to power ever since.
Vice President Joe Biden was in Iraq over the 4th of July weekend and tried to move a hoped-for coalition government into existence. U.S. combat troops are scheduled to be withdrawn in August, and Biden publicly insisted last weekend that the withdrawal will take place on schedule.
Indeed, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq is underway.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
In what is a new trend of remakes or sequels to some of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic action movies, Predators appears to be opening strong this weekend. Oscar-winner Adrien Brody plays the lead. There was a significant part for Schwarzenegger, who starred in 1987′s iconic Predator, in the script, but he’s pretty busy with the governor thing.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger was to have gone to Boston for the National Governors Association meeting, where he would speak this weekend on energy and the environment.
It would have been Schwarzenegger’s last National Governors Association meeting.
However, he canceled out do to the state’s chronic, and chronically unresolved, budget crisis.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** 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.
** MEG WHITMAN SPINS AND SPENDS: MRS. HARSH FACES A HARSH REALITY. With campaigning disappearing and becoming irrelevant as we head into the 4th of July weekend, something remarkable has taken place in the race to replace term-limited Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor.
We’re now essentially one-fifth of the way through the general election. Billionaire Republican wannabe governor Meg Whitman has spent a record-shattering $100 million. Jerry Brown has spent virtually nothing. Yet Whitman’s campaign has failed to change anything in the overall dynamic of the race.
Nearly a month ago, Whitman, who has contributed at least $93 million to her own campaign, more than any state-level candidate in American history, prevailed in the lowest turnout primary election in the history of California. Since then, she’s kept spending and spending. But she’s gaining no traction. …From my July 1st feature.
** 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 at $76.09 per barrel on Friday. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $42 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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