The last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq — 4th Stryker Brigade of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division — made its way early this morning out of Iraq across the border into Kuwait.
** QUICK HITS. August silly season, post-press era media coverage continues, in both presidential politics and California politics. More tomorrow. Yawn …
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE REJECTED” IS A ROUTINE EPISODE, BUT BETTY DRAPER HAS JOINED THE X-MEN!This was the most routine of the episodes so far this season. But afterwards, I learned where Betty Draper has gotten herself to. She’s joined The X-Men!
If only. Though her home in Westchester County is certainly close enough to Dr. Xavier’s school for those specially gifted children. Actually, of course, it’s Emmy-nominated January Jones who’s now a star of the upcoming X-Men: First Class movie, playing Emma Frost, a powerful, and powerfully hot, telepath. Jones has certainly gotten enough practice trying to read Don Draper’s mind over the past few years. …
While this episode was pretty routine, it doesn’t mean it was bad. Mad Men is most appropriately seen as a novel for television, and that means characters can disappear for stretches of time, as in life, and time must be spent setting up emerging scenarios. …
From my new review.
** NEW POLL: THE “GROUND ZERO MOSQUE” DUST-UP. That goofy debate over whether or not there should be a mosque at the site of the late World Trade Center — a total canard, as the mosque would actually be a few blocks away, and in any event, Islam did not attack on 9/11, Al Qaeda did — has transfixed cable news chatterers and much of the yaposphere.
So, naturally, there is a new one-night Gallup Poll on it. Which shows that a plurality has no opinion on the matter, and that of those who do, there are more who are against the notion — which, mind you, is based on a false premise — than are for it.
Of course, if we weren’t already far down the road into the Post-Press Era, this sort of idiocy wouldn’t be occurring.
More Americans disapprove than approve of President Barack Obama’s recent comments concerning the planned construction of a mosque near where the Sept. 11 terror attacks occurred in New York City, but 4 in 10 do not have an opinion on the matter. The vast majority of those with an opinion hold it strongly.
The results are based on a one-night Gallup reaction poll conducted Tuesday, Aug. 17. Four days earlier, President Obama, at a White House dinner celebrating the beginning of the Ramadan holiday, remarked that those planning to build a Muslim center and mosque two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City had a legal right to do so. Obama later attempted to clarify that those comments were meant to endorse only the legality of building the mosque at that location, not the wisdom of doing so. Opponents of the project believe placing an Islamic center or mosque close to ground zero is insensitive to the victims of the terror attacks and their families.
Two in three Americans say they are paying a great deal (34%) or fair amount (32%) of attention to the issue, suggesting Obama’s remarks may be playing a part in the recent dip in his approval rating. The latest Gallup Daily three-day rolling average, based on Aug. 15-17 polling, shows Obama with a 41% approval rating, the lowest of his presidency.
Republicans (44%) are more likely than Democrats (31%) or independents (29%) to be paying a great deal of attention to the story about the planned ground zero mosque. Republicans overwhelmingly disapprove of Obama’s remarks on the matter, including 63% who do so strongly. Democrats generally approve of Obama’s remarks, while independents tilt toward disapproval, but close to half of each group does not have an opinion (compared with 26% of Republicans).
Together, the data show that those who generally support Obama or are perhaps more neutral toward him are not highly engaged in the controversy over his remarks about the planned New York City mosque. At the same time, his opponents are engaged, leading to the more negative than positive evaluation of his statements.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Massachusetts.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 9:35 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 9:50 AM Pacific, Obama departs Andrews Air Force Base on Air Force One en route to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
At 11 AM Pacific, Obama arrives at Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, where he boards another of the U.S. Marine Corps helicopters now designated as Marine One.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama lands on Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the coast of Massachusetts where he and his family will vacation for the next 10 days.
Obama got a taste of bad news today with unemployment claims edging up to a high for the year.
But he got very good news with the last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq pulling out across the border into Kuwait during the hours near dawn.
Obama’s deadline for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces is August 31st, so the program is nearly two weeks ahead of schedule.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Concerns are mounting about Pakistan’s ability to recover from devastating flooding that has left as many as 20 million people homeless.
The withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, to be formally completed at the end of this month, is essentially completed.
Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden yesterday welcomed home a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, one of the last U.S. combat units in Iraq, in a ceremony at Fort Drum, New York.
However, plenty of U.S. combat power will remain behind. Some 50,000 personnel will remain through the end of 2011, and that includes some re-classified units which are highly operational. They simply won’t be out on patrol.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s governance remains unsettled more than five months after national parliamentary elections.
And Iraq’s foreign minister complained today that the U.S. is “abandoning” Iraq, leaving it open for foreign intrigue.
Well, that was the problem inherent with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a decision that this country will take a very long time to recover from.
With Obama on vacation, though obviously monitoring events on a regular basis, Vice President Joe Biden will be holding down the fort in Washington.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
He will hold private talks.
California’s chronic budget crisis drags on with no discernible movement i the Legislature after months of internal talks.
It’s not even clear, after all this time, that the Democrats have a unified negotiating posture.
The first day of Schwarzenegger’s renewed unpaid Friday furloughs of state employees is Friday. The furloughs will halt when a state budget emerges, or if the California Supreme Court ends them.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE C.E.O. MYTH.Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman, still trying to gain traction in her bid to beat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor despite already having smashed all non-presidential campaign spending records in American history, rests her campaign on her reputation as a corporate CEO. Since she didn’t bother to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding to start as governor of a state she moved to in the late ’90s, it’s all she has. Absent that, she is nothing more than an assertion of ambition and creation of paid advertising.
Californians have been inundated with ads since last fall extolling Whitman’s purported expertise as the former CEO of eBay, the online auction company, and other business credentials. With her negative ads coming up short against Brown, Whitman relaunched her imagineering efforts anew … with a TV ad telling us she did a great job at eBay.
But did she, really? Or did she actually do what she claims politicians do, i.e., disastrously expand into areas she knew nothing about, jack up overhead, take far more in personal pay and perks, and repeatedly hike fees (read: taxes) on eBay sellers? … From my August 17th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad. … From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration. …
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $40 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
President Barack Obama talked up clean energy manufacturing on his cross-country tour.
** QUICK HITS.The August follies continue, with chattering heads chattering away about the “Ground Zero Mosque” at the site of the late World Trade Center. Which would not actually exist. And in any event, Islam did not attack us on 9/11, the radical jihadists of Al Qaeda did. Killing Muslims in the process, as jihadists do every day. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes Americans look like dangerous bumpkins to many around the world, but passes for political “discourse” in our toxic and dysfunctional media culture. … Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pleased today that the California Supreme Court is allowing him to again use the furlough policy with regard to state employees while the chronic budget crisis drags on, as it takes up his appeal from an appelate court ruling. The Legislature is doing absolutely nothing on the budget, as has been the case virtually all year long. … Republicans are also celebrating a special election victory last night in Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado’s old state Senate district. In this sprawling Central Coast district, we got to learn who was less electable in a lower special election turnout: An ultra-conservative former executive for Exxon, or a gay socialist ex-mayor of Santa Cruz. I figured it was the latter, which accounts for my nearly ignoring the race, and that turned out to be the case.
** AMERICA IS SPLIT ON GULF OIL DRILLING. With the disastrous BP Gulf oil spill finally plugged, albeit not yet on a permanent basis, a new Gallup Poll shows the country to be divided on the future of offshore oil drilling the Gulf of Mexico.
The country is also split on President Barack Obama’s performance, but not disastrously so, as so many chatting heads had it in comparison to President George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina.
With the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico seemingly capped, Americans are split down the middle over whether the federal government should maintain a moratorium on most offshore oil drilling in the Gulf, or lift it and allow drilling to resume before November.
The Obama administration first issued the six-month moratorium in May to allow for the implementation of new deepwater drilling safety measures. Opponents of the moratorium argue that it could drive oil rigs overseas and do permanent damage to Louisiana’s oil industry.
More than half of men (54%) favor lifting the moratorium, compared with 41% of women — a significant gender gap consistent with women’s generally more pro-environmental views. Also, two-thirds of Republicans (66%) would lift the ban, while nearly as many Democrats are opposed to doing so (64%).
Americans as a whole are also divided over whether BP should be allowed to drill for oil in the same area again in the future. The gender and partisan differences on this question are similar to those seen for lifting the Gulf oil drilling moratorium.
Despite Americans’ divergent views about future oil drilling in the Gulf, they share a common reaction to BP’s handling of the 2010 oil spill — one that is overwhelmingly negative. While more Americans approve of BP’s handling of the situation than did so in June, 64% still disapprove.
Over the same two-month period, there has been no change in Americans’ reactions to the way President Barack Obama has handled the situation. Close to half disapprove (48%), while slightly fewer (44%) approve.
In early August, just as BP was stopping the oil spill with a “static kill” procedure and successfully sealing the well with cement, the Obama administration issued reports saying that most of the leaked oil in the Gulf has been captured, dispersed, or evaporated. However, this upbeat assessment has recently been challenged by teams of independent scientists.
Americans’ own views of the damage are more negative than upbeat. Forty-four percent say the extent of damage caused by the oil spill is worse than they thought it would be, twice the number who say it is not as bad as they expected.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Ohio, Florida, and Washington, DC today.
Obama received his daily intelligence and economic briefings, then met early this morning with a family in Columbus, Ohio. Following that, he held a discussion on the economy.
At 10:20 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a reception for Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.
At 11:25 AM Pacific, Obama departs Columbus, Ohio on Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Miami.
At 3:10 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a reception for the Florida Democratic Party.
At 4:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Miami on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 6:45 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 7 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Concerns are mounting about Pakistan’s ability to recover from devastating flooding that has left as many as 20 million people homeless.
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, much criticized at home for his absence, met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Medvedev is moving Russia into a more active role in AfPak, offering military equipment — notably helicopters, where Russian product is superior to the American versions, at least with regard to Afghan conditions — and other assistance. Medvedev pledged Russian aid for the Pakistani flood disaster.
Things were not nearly so harmonious in Baghdad, where at least 60 Iraqi Army recruits were killed in a suicide bombing.
Nevertheless, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, to be formally completed at the end of this month, is more than on track. Some say, actually, that it is essentially completed.
At least 60 Iraqi Army recruits were killed in a suicide bombing in Baghdad.
However, plenty of U.S. combat power will remain behind. Some 50,000 personnel will remain through the end of 2011, and that includes some re-classified units which are highly operational. They simply won’t be out on patrol.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles, San Diego, the Mexican border area, and Sacramento today.
At 10 AM, Schwarzenegger will receive a briefing from the California National Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on the status of the mission on the California-Mexico border. Over 200 National Guard personnel who have completed their training go operational in the field today. After the briefing, Schwarzenegger — who met yesterday with the leadership of the National Guard and went over mission parameters — will tour the border and hold a press conference.
This deployment is part of President Barack Obama’s program to deploy 1200 National Guard personnel along the border in support of border security and counter-narcotics and counter-terrorist operations.
Schwarzenegger will also hold private talks on California’s chronic budget crisis.
He was pleased to see former Governor Gray Davis praise and endorse his efforts on a wide range of issues — including budget and pension reform — in an interview which ran yesterday on the Reuters news wire.
Davis, who was defeated by Schwarzenegger in the dramatic 2003 recall election, says much the same thing in my piece linked just below from March of this year.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE C.E.O. MYTH.Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman, still trying to gain traction in her bid to beat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor despite already having smashed all non-presidential campaign spending records in American history, rests her campaign on her reputation as a corporate CEO. Since she didn’t bother to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding to start as governor of a state she moved to in the late ’90s, it’s all she has. Absent that, she is nothing more than an assertion of ambition and creation of paid advertising.
Californians have been inundated with ads since last fall extolling Whitman’s purported expertise as the former CEO of eBay, the online auction company, and other business credentials. With her negative ads coming up short against Brown, Whitman relaunched her imagineering efforts anew … with a TV ad telling us she did a great job at eBay.
But did she, really? Or did she actually do what she claims politicians do, i.e., disastrously expand into areas she knew nothing about, jack up overhead, take far more in personal pay and perks, and repeatedly hike fees (read: taxes) on eBay sellers? … From my August 17th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad. … From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** 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.
As he hits five states in three days before departing for a family vacation, President Barack Obama hopes that images of hard-won success in finally stopping the worst oil disaster in American history are the ones that linger.
On the one hand, there is no sign of a double dip recession. On the other hand, things have not improved, albeit in a usually slow time of year.
It’s noteworthy that confidence among the underemployed in gaining fuller employment has gone up.
Underemployment, as measured by Gallup, is 18.3% in mid-August, essentially unchanged since the end of June. Underemployment peaked at 20.4% in April but has not been able to break below its current level this year.
Gallup’s underemployment measure estimates the percentages of American workers who are either unemployed or working part time but wanting full-time work. It is based on more than 15,000 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 percentage of employees working part time but wanting full-time work declined slightly in mid-August to 9.2% from 9.5% at the end of July — returning to its late June and mid-July level. This drop was largely offset by a slight uptick to 9.1% in the unemployment rate component of Gallup’s underemployment measure.
Among subgroups in the U.S. workforce, Gallup finds:
*
A higher percentage of women than of men are underemployed.
*
Americans aged 18 to 29 continue to have the highest underemployment rate of any age group, at 27.6% in mid-August, including 11.9% unemployed and 15.7% employed part time but wanting full-time work.
*
Workers without any college education remain more likely to be underemployed than do those with higher education levels.
Forty-five percent of underemployed Americans are “hopeful” in mid-August that they will be able to find a job in the next four weeks — the highest level of 2010.
It is encouraging that more of the underemployed are “hopeful” of finding a job now than has been true at any other time this year — and something job hunters should keep in mind in this difficult job market. Additionally, Gallup’s Job Creation Index shows that some employers are continuing to hire, although their hiring appears to be having little impact on overall underemployment this summer.
** HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE C.E.O. MYTH.Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman, still trying to gain traction in her bid to beat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor despite already having smashed all non-presidential campaign spending records in American history, rests her campaign on her reputation as a corporate CEO. Since she didn’t bother to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding to start as governor of a state she moved to in the late ’90s, it’s all she has. Absent that, she is nothing more than an assertion of ambition and creation of paid advertising.
Californians have been inundated with ads since last fall extolling Whitman’s purported expertise as the former CEO of eBay, the online auction company, and other business credentials. With her negative ads coming up short against Brown, Whitman relaunched her imagineering efforts anew … with a TV ad telling us she did a great job at eBay.
But did she, really? Or did she actually do what she claims politicians do, i.e., disastrously expand into areas she knew nothing about, jack up overhead, take far more in personal pay and perks, and repeatedly hike fees (read: taxes) on eBay sellers? …
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in California, Washingon state, and Ohio today.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama departs Los Angeles on Air Force One en route to Seattle, Washington.
At his fundraiser last night with Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the home of former West Wing and ER producer John Wells, Obama raised over $1 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
A host of members of Congress and high-powered Hollywood types — including Steven Spielberg and Star Trek director and Lost creator J.J. Abrams — were on hand.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama lands in Seattle.
At 11:40 AM Pacific, Obama holds a roundtable discussion with small business owners.
At 12:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on the economy to the press.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser for Senator Patty Murray at the Westin Seattle.
At 2:35 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a private finance event.
At 3:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Seattle on Air Force One en route to Columbus, Ohio.
At 7:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Columbus, Ohio.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Massive flooding in Pakistan, predicted for sometime in the future by climate change models, may lead to further instability in this frontline state in the war against jihadism.
Concerns are mounting about Pakistan’s ability to recover from devastating flooding that has left as many as 20 million people homeless.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
At 12 noon, he speaks at the UC Cancer Center in Sacramento to launch the California Telehealth Center.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** 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.
President Barack Obama hosted an Iftar dinner in honor of Ramadan Friday night in the State Dining Room, welcoming Muslim Americans to the White House. He signaled his support of New York officials in their decision to allow a mosque to be built near the site of the late World Trade Center, which many conservatives vow to make an issue in the mid-term elections.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE MYTH OF THE C.E.O.
** NEW NATIONAL POLL PROVIDES FRESH EVIDENCE OF THE EMERGING POST-PRESS ERA. Readers know that I’ve posited the emergence of a Post-Press Era, marked by the rise of hype, sensation, propaganda, and infotainment and the decay and decline of the news media.
A new Gallup Poll shows record low confidence in the conventional news media, principally daily newspapers and television news.
Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news — with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007.
The findings are from Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions survey, which found the military faring best and Congress faring worst of 16 institutions tested. Americans’ confidence in newspapers and television news is on par with Americans’ lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of Health Management Organizations and big business.
The decline in trust since 2003 is also evident in a 2009 Gallup poll that asked about confidence and trust in the “mass media” more broadly. While perceptions of media bias present a viable hypothesis, Americans have not over the same period grown any more likely to say the news media are too conservative or too liberal.
No matter the cause, it is clear the media as a whole are not gaining new fans as they struggle to serve and compete with growing demand for online news, social media, and mobile platforms. The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual report on the State of the News Media, released in March, found for a third straight year, only digital and cable news sources growing in popularity, while network news, local news, and newspaper audiences shrink. These findings align with a similar 2008 Gallup poll that found cable and Internet news sources growing in popularity while all others held steady or declined.
While it is unclear how much respondents factored in the online and cable offshoots of “newspapers” and “television news” when assessing their confidence in these institutions, their responses do not provide much encouragement for the media more broadly. Confidence is hard to find, even among Democrats and liberals, who have historically been the most trusting of the news media. While 18- to 29-year-olds express more trust in newspapers than most older Americans, Gallup polling has found they read national newspapers the least. Younger Americans also expressed more confidence than older Americans in several other institutions tested, including Congress, the medical system, and the criminal justice system, suggesting younger Americans are more confident in institutions in general.
With nearly all news organizations struggling to keep up with the up-to-the-minute news cycle and to remain profitable in the process, Americans’ low trust in newspapers and television news presents a critical barrier to success. The Pew report asserts that 80% of new media links are to legacy newspapers and broadcast networks, making clear that traditional news sources remain the backbone of the media. But so long as roughly three in four Americans remain distrustful, it will be difficult to attract the large and loyal audiences necessary to boost revenues.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
This is a short week in presidential politics, as the Obamas depart for summer vacation on Thursday. But before that, the president hits five states to talk about what he’s done, and to bolster Democratic campaign efforts.
Meanwhile, in California politics, billionaire Meg Whitman keeps adding to her record-shattering spending in her bid to beat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. But not without another attempt to play hide the ball in campaign spending. The state’s budget crisis drags on, as usual. But not as usual, same sex marriage may start up again.
On Monday, Obama will travel to Menominee Falls, Wisconsin, where he will tour ZBB Energy, Inc. and deliver remarks to workers. He will also visit Milwaukee where he will headline events for Mayor Tom Barrett and the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Later in the day, will travel to Los Angeles to headline events for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
On Tuesday, Obama will travel to Seattle, Washington to talk up economic recovery efforts. While in Seattle, he will also headline events for Senator Patty Murray.
On Wednesday, Obama will discuss the economy in the Columbus, Ohio area. While there, he will also headline events for Governor Ted Strickland and the Ohio Democratic Party. Later on Wednesday, Obama will travel to Florida to headline an event for the Florida Democratic Party.
On Thursday, the Obama family will travel to Martha’s Vineyard, the old school New England resort island off the coast of Massachusetts. They will be there until August 29th.
As he travels around the country, and prepares for a well deserved vacation, Obama is in the midst of a new controversy, this over his support for the mosque backed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg near the site of the late World Trade Center. Conservative Republicans say they will make this an issue in the mid-term elections.
As if the U.S. is at war with an entire religion.
Speaking of the ongoing echoes of 9/11, Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is giving private security contractors four months to get out of Afghanistan. As in Iraq, they have become highly controversial there.
And speaking of Iraq, In Iraq, the armed forces chief of staff said last week that a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed through 2020 to maintain security.
But Iraq’s defense minister says that the U.S. troop level there is already down to the 50,000 level slated for the end of August, and that the chief of staff misspoke.
U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of August. But the governance situation there remains unresolved, five full months after national parliamentary elections.
Back in California politics, billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor, gave her campaign another $13 million late Friday, hoping to avoid publicity.
This brings Whitman’s official personal contribution level to $104 million. But the true level is higher than that.
As readers are well aware, Whitman has indulged in major unreported spending on her campaign, over $2 million that we know of in consulting fees, research, travel, and a huge payment to chief strategist Mike Murphy for his credit-less Hollywood production company right after he exited her Republican primary rival’s campaign.
As I’ve said from the primary on, Whitman’s campaign has essentially stalled out, despite breaking all non-presidential campaign spending records in the history of the United States. This is now becoming the conventional wisdom. The previous CW was that Jerry Brown was being overwhelmed by Whitman’s mighty campaign.
Whitman forces, incidentally, are using the Small Business Action Committee, a lobbying group fronted by former Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association front man Joel Fox, to hide the true source of a $1.6 million TV attack ad buy against Brown.
Fox, as I reported several weeks ago, wrote a column with a highly fictitious take on Whitman chief strategist Mike Murphy’s big payday right after exiting the Steve Poizner campaign.
Gay marriage opponents have until Wednesday afternoon to get a higher court to block the resumption of same sex marriage in California. Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who threw out the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative the week before last, announced that the stay on his ruling expires then.
Schwarzenegger and Brown have filed legal motions urging the immediate resumption of same sex marriage, and Brown on Friday filed a motion against the Yes on 8 side’s legal appeal.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met yesterday with Gulf Coast residents about recovery efforts in the wake of the worst oil spill disaster in American history.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, DC, Wisconsin, and California today.
Obama has traveled on Air Force One, on which he received his daily intelligence and economic briefings, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
At 8:50 AM Pacific, he tours ZBB Corporation Manufacturing Facility
At 9:10 AM Pacific, he delivers remarks there.
At 11:25 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at an event for Mayor Tom Barrett at U.S. Cellular Arena in Milwaukee.
At 12:25 PM Pacific, Obama departs Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Air Force One en route to Los Angeles, California.
At 4:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Los Angeles, California.
At 7:05 PM Pacific, Obama joins House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and delivers remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Los Angeles.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone’s old school action flick, which features a juicy cameo by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, exploded at the North American box office in its opening weekend.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
At 12 noon, he joins Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell to discuss infrastructure investments at the BNSF Railways Mechanical Diesel Facility in the City of Commerce.
Schwarzenegger, Rendell, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are co-chairs of Building America’s Future, which promotes a national infrastructure investment program.
The BNSF facility in Commerce has received a grant from the national economic recovery act to retrofit locomotives with cleaner engines in a partnership with the California Air Resources Board.
Schwarzenegger will also hold private talks on California’s chronic budget crisis.
As mentioned above, The Expendables, directed by Schwarzenegger’s one-time rival-turned-friend Sylvester Stallone, exploded at the North American box office this weekend, grossing some $35 million to finish in a clearcut first place. The film, incidentally, is not to be taken entirely seriously.
The film features a much-talked about cameo with Schwarzenegger.
The governator plays a rival of Stallone’s mercenary team leader Barney Ross, somewhat inexplicably named Trent Mauser. (Mauser is a famous old German manufacturer of pistols and rifles.) The two team leaders are summoned to a meeting in a church with a shadowy CIA official — played in another cameo by Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger and Stallone’s old Planet Hollywood partner — who discusses a lucrative operation with them.
The scene causes some very hearty laughs, for reasons I won’t spoil yet. But we’ll get to that down the line.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** 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.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama criticizes moves to privatize Social Security.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Florida and Washington today.
Obama receives his daily intelligence briefing on Air Force One.
The Obamas depart Panama City, Florida at 9:40 AM Pacific on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 1:35 PM Pacific, the Obamas arrive at Andrews Air Force Base, where they board Marine One.
At 1:50 PM Pacific, the Obamas land on the South Lawn of the White House.
The Obamas continued their tour of the Gulf Coast this morning.
While the temporary cap placed last month on the underdersea spill has stopped the oil flow, BP must still complete the relief well process to ensure that the the spill remains plugged.
In Iraq, one of the two big Shiite parties remains opposed to a coalition government with the Sunnis, whose principal party finished first in the March national parliamentary election. Under Iraqi law, that entitles that party to form a national government.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, special envoy of the Mideast Quartet powers, is reportedly ready to announce direct negotiations between Isreal and the Palestinian National Authority.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
His friend Sylvester Stallone’s new film The Expendables — in which Schwarzenegger has a much noted cameo — opened number one at the domestic box office with an estimated $35 million.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Florida today.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then traveled with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha (Malia is in summer camp) to Florida, where they are trying to promote the resumption of tourism and inspecting the Gulf oil disaster.
He learned yesterday that what was supposed to be a temporary capping of the BP Gulf oil spill — which looked for a time like a permanent solution — has not in fact provided that permanent solution. Work on the relief wells continues.
Last evening, Obama hosted a dinner honoring Ramadan in the State Dining Room.
In his remarks, he endorsed the proposed building of a mosque near the former site of the late World Trade Center.
This has been highly controversial, of course, but officials in New York City, from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on down, are supportive.
Which will not stop those who want to demonize an entire religion for the acts of its most radical adherents.
I’ll have more about this.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
On Afghanistan, General David Petraeus hedged yesterday on the question of promised withdrawals next summer while taping a Sunday appearance on Meet The Press.
In Iraq, the armed forces chief of staff says that a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed through 2020 to maintain security.
But Iraq’s defense minister says that the U.S. troop level there is already down to the 50,000 level slated for the end of August.
U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of August. But the governance situation there remains unresolved, five full months after national parliamentary elections.
Sylvester Stallone discusses Bruce Willis and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with regard to his new old school action movie, TheExpendables, which has opened this weekend throughout North America. Early box office returns are promising. Schwarzenegger has a cameo role.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE – SATURDAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Schwarzenegger is appealing an appellate court ruling blocking his unpaid furlough of state employees as the state’ chronic budget crisis drags on. The ruling was odd in that there is already legal precedent established for the governor’s authority in this area.
Schwarzenegger has also urged that same sex marriage be immediately resumed in California following federal Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling declaring the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative to be unconstitutional.
Late yesterday, Attorney General Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee to succeed Schwarzenegger, filed a legal motion countering an appeal by Prop 8 proponents.
Also late yesterday, billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor, gave her campaign another $13 million.
This brings her official personal contribution level to $104 million. But the true level is higher than that.
As readers are well aware, Whitman has indulged in major unreported spending on her campaign, over $2 million that we know of in consulting fees, research, and a payment to chief strategist Mike Murphy for his credit-less Hollywood production company right after he exited her Republican primary rival’s campaign.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed on Friday at $75.27 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
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.
Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters this morning defended herself against charges that she improperly intervened on behalf of a bank whose board her husband once served on.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE C.E.O. MYTH.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: THE NEW C.W. As readers here and elsewhere know, I’ve been saying it since the June 8th primary. (And somewhat before.) Billionaire Meg Whitman, for all her national record-shattering spending for a non-presidential campaign, is stalling out in the California governor’s race.
And Democrat Jerry Brown, much derided by some in political consultant ranks and the media as supposedly being out of it, is in a very strong position.
I’ve noticed over the past week or so that this is now the new conventional wisdom.
So I’ll have to explain my new take, in which I will reveal long-held devastating secrets about Brown which will guarantee that he is not the once and future governor of California.
That’s a little joke …
More to follow. It’s what I’ve been calling “Zen rope-a-dope.” Or is it?
** NEW NATIONAL POLL: LABOR UNIONS NEAR RECORD LOW APPROVAL, BUT STILL MAJORITY APPROVAL. A new Gallup Poll finds approval of labor unions near a record low. That record low was reached, oddly, last year, when national approval of labor unions dropped to 48%.
Now it’s 52%.
Approval of labor was much higher during the Great Depression, and hit record highs during the supposedly conservative Eisenhower years of the 1950s.
In recent years, until last year, it had been around 60%.
40% now say that labor has too much influence. 29% say it should have more influence, while 27% say it has enough.
That’s 56% to 40% who say that labor’s influence is appropriate or should be greater.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 8 AM Pacific, he signs the Southwest Border Security Act in the Rose Garden.
This legislation will provide $600 million to add further security against illegal immigrants, including beefed-up Border Patrol and National Guard presences.
It will also add new communications gear and aerial surveillance drones.
In the evening, Obama hosts a dinner honoring Ramadan in the State Dining Room.
He may learn today whether or not what was supposed to be a temporary capping of the BP Gulf oil spill has in fact provided a permanent solution.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
On Afghanistan, General David Petraeus hedged on the question of promised withdrawals next summer while taping a Sunday appearance on Meet The Press.
In Iraq, the armed forces chief of staff says that a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed through 2020 to maintain security.
But Iraq’s defense minister says that the U.S. troop level there is already down to the 50,000 level slated for the end of August.
U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of August. But the governance situation there remains unresolved, five full months after national parliamentary elections.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined his old friend Sylvester Stallone in Las Vegas Wednesday night to help promote Stallone’s new film, The Expendables. The movie, in which Schwarzenegger makes a cameo appearance, opens throughout North America today.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles today.
At 12:30 PM, he will address the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce convention at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, focusing principally on California’s chronic budget crisis.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** 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.
President Barack Obama signed the Manufacturing Enhancement Act yesterday at the White House.
** GAY MARRIAGE: FEDERAL JUDGE ALLOWS SAME SEX MARRIAGE IN CALIFORNIA TO RESUME ON AUGUST 18TH. Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, in a much anticipated ruling during the noon hour in San Francisco, lifted his temporary stay on his decision of last week to invalidate the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative.
He ruled today that same sex marriages in California — which took place for five months in 2008 following their legalization by the California Supreme Court — may resume on August 18th.
He thus gave gay marriage opponents less than a week to get a higher court to issue a stay of his anti-Prop 8 ruling while the case is on appeal.
It’s a clever move on the judge’s part, in that it spreads responsibility for the resumption of same sex marriage in California to the legal system, rather than simply himself. If gay marriage opponents are unable to get an emergency stay elsewhere, Walker’s position gains in legitimacy.
Governor Arnold Schwarznegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown had both filed legal motions urging that same sex marriage resume in California following the judge’s decision. They are the only officials with automatic standing to appeal the ruling.
Following today’s move, Schwarzenegger issued this statement: “I am pleased to see Judge Walker lift his stay and provide all Californians the liberties I believe everyone deserves. Today’s ruling continues to place California at the forefront in providing freedom and equality for all people.”
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: MEG WHITMAN AND THE C.E.O. MYTH.
** NEW POLL: AMERICAN WELL-BEING SLIPS IN JULY, AFTER A RECENT HIGH IN JUNE.A new survey by the Gallup Poll indicates that Americans’ overall sense of well-being slipped back in July, after reaching a recessionary era high in June.
Despite the decline, the well-being index was much higher in July than it was a year ago.
Fewer Americans rated their lives positively in July than did so in any other month so far in 2010, resulting in the Gallup-Healthways Life Evaluation Index score dropping to 49.6, after reaching a record high of 50.8 in June.
Despite the recent decline, the July Life Evaluation Index score remains higher than the 46.7 found in the same month a year ago and the 40.6 found in July 2008. The findings suggest Americans are still feeling better about their lives now than they were during the depths of the recession.
The Life Evaluation Index, part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, classifies Americans as either “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. The overall Life Evaluation Index score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of thriving Americans from the percentage of suffering Americans.
The Gallup-Healthways overall Well-Being Index score for the nation also dropped slightly from 67.3 in June to 67.1 in July. This is the second month in a row that the score decreased, following three consecutive months of gains. The Well-Being Index score reached an all-time high of 67.4 in May of this year. Gallup and Healthways began tracking the Well-Being Index, which is composed of six sub-indexes including life evaluation, in January 2008.
In addition to life evaluation, each of the wellbeing sub-index scores declined in July, with the exception of the Physical Health and Healthy Behavior indexes. Both indexes’ scores typically trend up in the spring and summer as a result of seasonal factors, including better eating, increased physical activity, and far fewer incidences of colds and flu.
Overall, all of the sub-indexes’ scores are higher when compared with the scores for the same period one and two years ago, with the exception of the Work Environment Index. Americans’ perceptions of their work environment started to steadily worsen in November 2008, with the Work Environment Index score dropping below 50 for the first time in January 2009. Since then, scores for the index have for the most part hovered below 50, making Work Environment Index scores the only scores that have yet to recover to pre-economic crisis levels.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
In Afghanistan, the scheduled June offensive in Kandahar Province has again been pushed back to “later in the year.”
In Pakistan, recovery efforts are underway following massive flooding that claimed well over a thousand lives in hotbeds of jihadist activity. Some 14 million Pakistanis have been displaced by the flooding.
Many have been settling in flood plains, a very unwise practice given climate change and its predicted effects on Pakistan, which are now being borne out.
In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s spokesman says he wants direct talks with the U.S. American officials say they are interested, especially if Iran shows signs of pulling back on its rogue nuclear program.
In Iraq, the armed forces chief of staff said yesterday that a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed through 2020 to maintain security.
But Iraq’s defense minister said today that only 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and that all combat troops have been withdrawn ahead of the August 31st schedule.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a cameo role, which he filmed in a few hours last year, in The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone’s new film opening tomorrow. The film, which features a cast chock full of action stars, will draw protests from state workers at a few theaters.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned to California after a brief trip out of state.
He tours the California Construction Expo this morning in Pasadena.
That’s one of five collaboration conferences he established by executive order to connect small business with contracting opportunities and certification information. This event features dozens of city, state and federal agencies seeking contractors, suppliers and consultants for bid opportunities.
Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week ruled that the Proposition 8 ban on same sex marriages in California is unconstitutional, will decide this morning in San Francisco whether or not to allow same sex marriages to again take place while opponents pursue appeals.
Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown both filed legal motions urging the judge to lift the temporary stay on his ruling and allow the marriages to take place.
With regard to the state’s chronic budget crisis, the Legislative Analyst Office late yesterday said that a complicated tax swap proposed by Democratic legislative leaders, which they say would not lead to overall tax increases, would actually increase taxes for most Californians.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $44 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Prior to its passage late yesterday by the House, President Barack Obama talked up the need for the $26 billion mini-stimulus bill, which among other things gives a needed boost to California.
** CALIFORNIA 2010: THE STALLED WHITMAN CAMPAIGN TRIES TO SPIN DOWN ITS RECORD-SHATTERING SPENDING AND SPIN UP BELL. Billionaire Meg Whitman is in real trouble in the California governor’s race. As I’ve been writing and saying since the June 8th primary, she is gaining remarkably little traction for all her massive campaign spending, now well north of $110 million, making hers the biggest spending non-presidential campaign in American history.
Her plan was to be as much as 15 points ahead of Jerry Brown by this point, hopefully far enough ahead to prevent Brown from mounting a post-Labor Day comeback. Whitman has been spending a few million per week on advertising, while Brown has spent nothing.
But Whitman hasn’t gotten that huge lead she and her strategists believed she needed, and would get during this period between the primary and the start of Labor Day weekend. In fact, she has no lead at all. In fact, she is very slightly behind Brown.
So late last week, she tried to reboot her image by running a positive TV ad telling people she was the great CEO of eBay. Is that really true? A matter for another time. In any event, it’s an old message. She’s already runs countless ads around the state telling people this. Everyone she knows she was at eBay, which, after all, is not a company that cured cancer, invented the Internet, or won a war. But I did get a very nice second-hand jacket on it, as well as some long-sought CDs.
Besides trying to restart her advertising campaign, Whitman’s troops are trying to downplay her incredible spending, most of it from her stock market-derived personal fortune. They’re saying it makes her independent, while Brown will be totally beholden to unions providing the bulk of funds for independent expenditure (IE) outfits like California Working Families and Working Californians.
Which the on the one hand/on the other hand drones of Post-Press Era journalism dutifully report.
The reality, however, is that Whitman is heavily outspending these operations. And when Brown himself goes on the air, he will outspend their efforts as well.
So while the IE efforts are helpful to Brown, they will end up as the minority of spending on his behalf.
Indeed, what is actually quite striking about this is that, while the IEs were dark for a few weeks on English-language television, Whitman’s unfavorables continued to rise. This was noted in both Democratic and Republican private polling, with a prominent GOP consultant marveling to me this week about how Whitman is suffering under the weight of her own efforts.
The other area where Whitman seeks to turn a negative into a plus is in the matter of the wildly overcompensated local elected officials of the tiny LA area city of Bell.
With the story broken by the LA Times, Brown has been all over it as California’s attorney general, earning publicity in the process that Whitman can only dream of.
So he campaign has taken to the false charge of claiming that Brown presided over a Bell of his own in Oakland. In reality, a number of firefighters became highly-paid during his tenure there. There is nothing on the scale of Bell, as Whitman undoubtedly knows.
Worse for Whitman, Brown yesterday trumped her criticism of him by forming a joint investigation of Bell with LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley.
Cooley is not only a Republican; he’s the Republican nominee for state attorney general. The fact that a member of Whitman’s supposed ticket is working closely with Brown on the issue will make it very hard for her to criticize the wily Brown, who has very good relationships with most of the state’s prosecutors and law enforcement officials.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARSH REALM: THE MYTH OF MEG WHITMAN’S C.E.O. LEADERSHIP.
** NEW POLL: CONGRESS STILL NEAR HISTORIC LOWS IN APPROVAL.According to the new Gallup Poll, Congress remains near historic lows in job approval.
Even Democrats are not enthusiastic, with only 38% approving. Republicans are at a record low level of approval: A minuscule 5%.
Congress’ job rating from the American people in August remains near the historical lows seen in recent months. Nineteen percent of Americans now approve of the overall job Congress is doing, while 75% disapprove.
Congress’ average approval rating thus far in 2010 is 20% — down from 30% in 2009, the first year of the 111th Congress. This year’s average easily trails the 36% average approval Gallup has recorded for Congress since the measure was established in 1974, and is the lowest seen in any midterm congressional election year since then. The record-low single rating for the measure is 14% in July 2008.
With just three months remaining before the congressional midterm elections, public opinion of Congress may be growing slightly more polarized. Democrats’ approval of Congress now stands at 38%, a bit higher than its June and July levels. In contrast, approval among Republicans, as well as independents, is down from where it has been since June.
The 5% of Republicans who currently approve of Congress is also the absolute lowest approval rating from members of either party that Gallup has found since at least 1993.
The persistently low approval of Congress this year is a strong signal of public discontent with the legislative branch. While it is understandable that Republicans would be unhappy with a Congress that has passed some major legislation initiated by the Democratic Obama administration, it is noteworthy that approval is also low among Democrats. A year ago at this time, 55% of Democrats approved of the job Congress was doing.
Low congressional job approval is generally associated with large seat losses by the majority party in midterm elections, a sign of potential trouble for the Democrats in 2010.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 8 AM Pacific, he began his meeting with the national security team on Iraq in the Situation Room.
U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of August. But the governance situation there remains unresolved, five full months after national parliamentary elections.
At 9:45 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 11:50 AM Pacific, Obama signs the Manufacturing Enhancement Act in the Rose Garden.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, the former governor of Mississippi and one of his earliest backers, in the Oval Office.
Mabus is in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Iran is feeling pressured by new sanctions and a frayed relationship with Russia and with the Arab world, and is reaching out on its rogue nuclear program.
The House yesterday adopted legislation passed last week in the Senate to provide $26 billion in a mini-stimulus to help state and local governments, in part by saving some 160,000 teaching jobs.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
In the Korean crisis, hard feelings remain following the weekend seizure by North Korea of a South Korean fishing boat.
In Afghanistan, German troops are gearing up to take part in an offensive.
In Pakistan, recovery efforts are underway following massive flooding that claimed well over a thousand lives in hotbeds of jihadist activity.
In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s spokesman says he wants direct talks with the U.S.
In Iraq, the armed forces chief of staff says that a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed through 2020 to maintain security.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appears in The Expendables, opening this Friday around North America, had a brief cameo in last year’s Terminator Salvation.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
He will have private talks, mostly centered on the chronic California budget crisis.
Schwarzenegger and the state received a big needed boost yesterday when the House, as expected, followed suit on the U.S. Senate’s vote of last week in adopting a $26 billion mini-stimulus to help state and local governments.
Among other things, the legislation, which will be signed shortly by President Barack Obama, saves the jobs of 160,000 teachers nationwide.
California will get a tenth of the funding, funding which Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders lobbied for heavily earlier this year.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …From my August 9th review.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $44 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday at the University of Texas at Austin, discussed the linkage between higher education and economic prosperity.
** CLIMATE CHANGE: TROUBLE FOR YES ON 23 BACKERS. With 2010 already shaping up as the hottest year on record, fresh trouble brewed up today for the backers of Proposition 23, the initiative to do away with California’s landmark climate change/renewable energy program.
Opponents today released a report detailing repeated environmental violations committed by the the initiative’s two big Texas oil company backers.
Oil companies have provided well over 90% of the funding for the initiative, and one of the Texas Twosome just put another $3 million into the Yes on 23 campaign coffers.
The Ella Baker Center and the California Environmental Justice Alliance today released a study that reveals that Valero and Tesoro, the two Texas oil companies bankrolling Proposition 23 to repeal California’s clean air and energy standards, have been repeatedly cited for producing toxic chemicals at their refineries in violation of the law.
The report was released at a San Francisco press conference featuring No on 23 co-chair Tom Steyer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and a host of environmental and health leaders.
The study, available at http://ellabakercenter.org, found that not only does the two Texas-based companies’ oil refineries in the Bay Area and Los Angeles regions “annually produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, but also “the people who bear the biggest health burdens from these facilities are disproportionately people of color.”
Some 44 violation notices within a three-year period have been settled between Tesoro and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. This January, “Valero disclosed that it had 29 outstanding Violation Notices from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and is pursuing a settlement,” according to the report.
“This study reveals what Prop 23 is really all about,” said Newsom, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. “Prop 23 is a deceptive ballot measure that will harm the emerging clean energy industry, negatively impact the health of Californians, and discourage innovation.”
** NEW SURVEY: AFGHANS AND PAKISTANIS DOUBT THEIR GOVERNMENTS’ EFFORTS ON TERRORISM. Even before the Wikileaks info-dump of classified documents throwing the efficacy of anti-jihadist efforts into serious question, large majorities of Afghans and Pakistanis had serious doubts about anti-terrorist efforts, according to a new Gallup Poll survey.
After last month’s leak of U.S. intelligence documents related to the war in Afghanistan suggested Pakistani collusion with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized the West, as well as Pakistan, for not doing enough to counter cross-border terrorist threats from within Pakistan. Gallup surveys conducted before the leak found 78% of Afghans would agree Pakistan’s efforts fall short.
A majority of Afghans (59%) also feel this way about their own country’s efforts to control cross-border terrorism. Understandably, those closest to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are the most critical of each country’s efforts. More than 90% of Afghans living in the East say both countries are not doing enough.
Across the border in Pakistan, 44% of adults say Afghanistan isn’t doing enough to control cross-border terrorism. A similar percentage of Pakistanis (41%) say their own country’s efforts fall short.
Pakistanis, even those living closer to the border regions, are less decided than Afghans on this issue. Nearly 3 in 10 Pakistani adults (29%) volunteer they “don’t know” whether Afghanistan’s cross-border anti-terrorism efforts are sufficient.
About half Pakistanis living in Baluchistan (47%), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North West Frontier Province; 46%), which border the volatile tribal regions, and Punjab (52%), which borders the Kashmir region, say their country isn’t doing enough. More than 4 in 10 in these three provinces also say the same about Afghanistan’s efforts. …
Even before the recent intelligence leaks, Gallup surveys showed neither Afghans nor Pakistanis placed much faith in each other’s efforts to control cross-border terrorism nor their own respective country’s efforts. The situation is likely even more fragile now, but leaders may do better to focus on improving perceptions of their own country’s efforts before pointing a finger at the other.
None of this should be much of a surprise by now …
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington today.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 8:40 AM Pacific, Obama makes remarks on retaining public school teachers in the Rose Garden.
The House is taking up legislation passed last week in the Senate to provide $26 billion in a mini-stimulus to help state and local governments, in part by saving some 160,000 teaching jobs
At 10:50 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama participates in the formal credentialing of ambassadors to the U.S. in the East Room.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates in the Oval Office.
Gates yesterday outlined cost-saving initiatives for the Pentagon, including the elimination of the Joint Forces Command and cutbacks in outside contracting.
Joint Forces Command is one of 10 combatant commands around the world, either theater or mission specific. This command’s charge is to further joint service operations, through doctrine, training, and equipment interoperability.
It has only some 5000 employees and a roughly $200 million budget per se, and has been headed by a four-star, currently Marine General James Mattis, who is up for the head of Central Command to replace General David Petraeus.
But its real load on the budget is through outside contracting.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a prominent cameo role in Sylvester Stallone’s new movie, The Expendables, opening this Friday throughout North America.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Southern California and Northern California today.
At 9:45 AM, Schwarzenegger will participate in a budget discussion with members of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.
At 4:30 PM, Schwarzenegger will welcome home some 100 California National Guard soldiers from the Guard’s 49th Military Police Brigade as they return from their one-year deployment in Iraq.
Schwarzenegger, who first visited U.S. troops in Iraq not long after the 2003 invasion — calling me upon his return, only to be told that it gets even hotter in Sacramento — visited California National Guard troops in Iraq last November.
Schwarzenegger received a setback yesterday when a local judge blocked his move to furlough state workers a few days a month until the state budget is finally enacted. Which was odd, as courts have previously established the governor’s authority to do so.
But in good news for the governor, Proposition 18, the $11 billion water bond and comprehensive water policy measure — the first such measure passed by the Legislature in decades — was pulled from the November ballot and moved to the November 2012 ballot.
Despite leading in early polling, it had little realistic chance of passage in this year. In two years, perhaps with some tweaking by the new governor, it may have much brighter prospects.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — with regard to this show. …
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the presidency in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. … From my August 3rd review.
** 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 $47 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.Even bef
President Barack Obama this morning welcomed the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints to the White House, commending them for their role in helping New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “THE GOOD NEWS” IS SAD YET VERY GOOD.After a fairly uneven second episode, Mad Men is back on track with “The Good News.” More’s the pity it has to be so sad.
There be spoilers ahead, of course.
Remember, do not engage in over-analysis — perhaps a euphemism for projection — of this show. …
** NEW SURVEY: BIG GAP BETWEEN CONGRESSIONAL LOSSES FOR PRESIDENTS ABOVE AND BELOW 50% JOB APPROVAL. According to a new Gallup Poll survey, there is a big gap between losses in mid-term House elections for parties whose presidents are either above or below 50% job approval at the time of election.
Those over 50% experience only a loss of 14 seats on average.
Those under 50% experience a loss of 36 seats on average.
That would put Republicans within striking distance of taking the majority in the House.
President Barack Obama is presently on the cusp of these two zones of approval, near 50% job approval but still beneath it.
Incidentally, I had a ranking Republican friend — who, sadly for him, believes that a Republican will defeat the president in 2012 — recently tell me that Obama is ‘”Jimmy Carter on steroids.”
On a historical basis, the Democrats under Jimmy Carter suffered the slimmest seat loss of a party whose president was below 50% approval, losing 11 seats in the 1978 midterms. More recently, Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006 saw their parties lose enough seats in the House to turn party control over to the opposition party when they had less than majority approval.
The president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterm elections, regardless of how well the president is rated by the public. Since World War II, only Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2002 saw their parties gain seats in a midterm. Both men had approval ratings above 60% at the time of those elections. However, the parties of the other three presidents with ratings above 60% (Eisenhower in 1954, Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in 1986) lost seats.
In general, though, the more popular a president is, the fewer seats his party loses, as presidents with approval ratings above 60% have averaged just a three-seat loss.
With the Democratic Party in control of the White House and Congress, and key predictors of midterm seat change — including presidential approval, congressional approval, and national satisfaction — below average historically, the Democrats are clearly fighting an uphill battle this midterm election year.
In its latest weekly update on midterm voting preferences, Gallup found more registered voters saying they would vote for the Republican candidate in their district than for the Democrat, though Democrats had better showings the prior two weeks.
As the midterm campaign kicks off in earnest after Labor Day, the Democratic Party will do its best to convince voters to keep it in the majority. It is unclear to what extent they will employ the president to help them make that case, though his ability to make a positive impact could be limited if his approval ratings continue to register below 50%.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A quieter week in presidential politics, and a consequential week in California politics, with billionaire Republican Meg Whitman attempting to reboot her message in her spending record-shattering campaign effort to beat Jerry Brown and succeed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
On Monday, Obama welcomes the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints to the White House to honor their 2009 season. He then travels to Texas. In Austin, he headlines a Democratic National Committee fundraiser and delivers an address on education and the economy at the University of Texas at Austin. He then travels to Dallas for a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance event.
On Tuesday, he will attend meetings at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will meet with his national security team on Iraq.
On Thursday and Friday, he will hold meetings at the White House.
As you can see, Obama’s schedule late in the week is, as usual fairly flexible in order to deal with emerging events.
He certainly has a lot to talk about behind the scenes, such as the stalled anti-Taliban offensive in Afghanistan.
A team of 10 civilian medics, most of them American, was massacred on Saturday in rural Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Then there is Iraq. U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn by the end of the month, only three weeks away. But there is much that is very unsettled there.
The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet in mid-July, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet last week. But that meeting was canceled as well, indefinitely.
The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, nearly five months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.
In California politics, the state’s chronic budget crisis drags on, with few expecting resolution this week. Legislative Democrats barely pulled together a unified negotiating position last week, after many weeks of talks.
We may learn this week if federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week dramatically threw out the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative, will immediately reinstate the same sex marriage right granted by the California Supreme Court in 2008, as Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown have urged him to do.
Meanwhile, Brown’s Republican challenger, billionaire Meg Whitman, continues her record-shattering spending against him but still can’t take a lead of any sort, much less the 12 to 15-point lead her campaign plan required by now to stop him from mounting a comeback in the fall.
Curiously, she began running a new TV ad at the end of last week in which she essentially reintroduces herself to voters as — and stop me if you’ve heard this before — the former CEO of eBay. I think we knew that.
Brown’s independent expenditure allies, mostly off the air for three weeks, went back up in a big way on Thursday and promise to remain there through the start of Labor Day weekend.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Texas today.
Obama received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then welcomed the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints to the White House with a ceremony in the East Room.
Following that, he left for Texas, where he will deliver a speech on higher education and the economy and appear at fundraisers for the Democratic Party.
At 10:05 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Austin, Texas.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a Democratic National Committee finance event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on higher education and economy at the University of Texas at Austin.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama departs Austin on Air Force One en route to Dallas, Texas.
At 2:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Dallas, Texas.
At 3:25 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event at a private residence in Dallas.
At 4:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Dallas on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 7:15 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 7:30 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.
FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Los Angeles and Sacramento today.
Schwarzenegger has no scheduled public events.
He will hold private talks, mostly around California’s chronic budget crisis.
… THE CALIFORNIA AS FIRST “FAILED STATE” DEBATE: SCHWARZENEGGER, DAVIS, WHITMAN, AND JERRY BROWN. … From my March 2nd column.
** HARSH REALM: THE LEGACY THAT MEG WHITMAN INVOKES.As she shatters all spending records in her attempt to defeat Jerry Brown and succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, a campaign which is way off plan, billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has a role model in mind.
He was “the greatest governor in the history of California.” So says Whitman, the political novice who seldom bothered to vote and was never involved in public affairs before deciding, one fine day, that she really should start at the top.
He’s her campaign chairman. And, as fate would have it, he is responsible for California’s structural budget deficit, the disastrous electric power deregulation scheme that enriched Enron and turned out California’s lights, and the hypocritical nastiness of the debate over illegal immigration.
Who is he? He is former Governor Pete Wilson. And the legacy that his acolyte Whitman invokes demonstrates that Whitman’s future, a harsh realm indeed, began arriving before Whitman ever got around to settling in the state in which she has already spent a national record amount of money to seize the reins of power. (“Harsh Realm” being inspired, of course, by Whitman’s married name of Mrs. Harsh and her constant depiction by the California Nurses Association as Queen Meg, as well as the short-lived series from X-Files creator Chris Carter.)
Now, to be fair, had Jerry Brown not run for the president in 1980, the only one of his three presidential campaigns that really didn’t make a lick of sense, most likely would never have heard of Wilson, then the mayor of San Diego. He had tried to run against Brown for governor in 1978, when Governor “Moonbeam” won a 20-point landslide re-election. Wilson couldn’t get out of the Republican primary, finishing a badly beaten fourth. …From my August 7th feature.
** MAD MEN REVIEW: “CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR,” EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE WISE GUYS. It’s true that Christmas, at least officially, comes but once a year. So why did I see Christmas store displays in July?
On the latest Mad Men, it’s December 1964, the days in which Christmas advertising and store displays didn’t start until Thanksgiving. There be some spoilers ahead.
This was a good episode, but not one of the classics, and a step back from the season premiere. Think of it as a bridging episode, in which some consequential characters make their return and some key themes get highlighted.
** HARSH REALM: THE POST-PRESS ERA AND MEG WHITMAN. Few if any campaigns have been so geared to the ongoing decline of journalism as that of billionaire Meg Whitman, the Republican trying to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. In her race against Jerry Brown, Whitman, who let the cat out of the bag last year when she wondered why she needed to talk with reporters since their newspapers were going out of business anyway, uses very big money to bend people to her will, individually and collectively, and takes advantage of the emerging post-press era to say whatever she wants, without regard to accuracy or consistency.
By the post-press era, I mean the era in which we are living, in which journalism is rapidly hollowing out and the media is devolving into competing clashes of opinion and propaganda atop a pervasive brew of hype, sensation, and infotainment.
California, with its much diminished state press corps, had seemed to be on the leading edge of the post-press era, just as Whitman calculated for her campaign. I used to read more than a dozen somewhat different versions of the same article; now I see only a few.
The national media, which anachronistically still means East Coast-based, at least to the East Coast-based version of it — which fails to grasp that the Internet has created a post-geographic world even as the old national media retreats from international coverage and analysis — had seemed to be holding on to higher volume and quality. But that illusion surely came crashing down last week, when far right Internet huckster Andrew Breitbart conned the hysterical cable news culture and, stunningly, the Obama Administration, into buying into his latest doctored video. (That would be the Obama crew which in the 2008 campaign rightly disdained the perpetual motion machine cable culture.) … From my July 30th feature.
** MAD MEN RETURNS WITH “PUBLIC RELATIONS,” IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE: WHO IS DON DRAPER … From my July 26th essay.
Over the weekend, Inception passed The Bourne Ultimatum as the highest grossing espionage film in domestic box office history.
** 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 $47 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
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