Reports from London say that the US and UK are preparing for possible military action against the regime of longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
** QUICK HITS.With dictator Moammar Gaddafi summoning Western reporters to a seaside Tripoli restaurant to declare “My people love me” and neither his nor rebel forces making any apparent headway today, the Libyan civil war seems for the moment to be in a stand-off. In Geneva today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed a possible no-fly zone over the country, which would take his air force off the gameboard. Back in Washington, her spokesman P.J. Crowley said that it could be done under UN or NATO auspices, the latter easier to pull off in timely fashion. … Meanwhile, anti-regime protests continued today in Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen, all key US allies. Yemen’s President Saleh proposed a coalition government and promised to step down in 2013. The proposal was rejected. … The last surviving soldier of World War I, the War To End All Wars, died Sunday in West Virginia. Frank Buckles was 110.He lied about his age and joined the Army at age 16. As a civilian shipping executive for the White Star Line, he was captured by the Japanese and held as a POW for over three years during World War II. The last European veterans of World War II died in 2008 and 2009. Buckles will be buried at Arlington.
** FROM SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON’S REMARKS TODAY IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND.
Today the world’s eyes are fixed on Libya. We have seen Colonel Qadhafi’s security forces open fire on peaceful protestors again and again. They have used heavy weapons on unarmed civilians. Mercenaries and thugs have been turned loose to attack demonstrators. There are reports of soldiers executed for refusing to turn their guns on their fellow citizens, of indiscriminate killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture.
Colonel Qadhafi and those around him must be held accountable for these acts, which violate international legal obligations and common decency. Through their actions, they have lost the legitimacy to govern. And the people of Libya have made themselves clear: It is time for Qadhafi to go – now, without further violence or delay.
The international community is speaking with one voice and our message is unmistakable. These violations of universal rights are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
** A WELCOME BLAST FROM THE NEW DOCTOR WHO.Fans of the great British cult scifi series Doctor Who — and if you aren’t, you ought to be — got two big treats in February. First, a “double-album” soundtrack CD and online release of selections from the terrific musical scores for last season. Then the charming Christmas special on DVD and Blu-Ray.
It’s all a wonderful bit of cheer in the midst of a rugged political season from a venerable series (debuting the day after JFK’s assassination in 1963) that sputtered to a halt late in the last century only to be re-booted to spectacular effect by producer Russell T. Davies, then best known for Queer As Folk, in 2005. And it augurs well for the upcoming season of the show this spring. …
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED At 12 noon Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney, joined by UN Ambassador Susan Rice, delivers a briefing on the geopolitical situation and other matters. You can watch it live here on New West Notes. If you want to mute the audio, click on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
More Libyan towns fell over the weekend to the forces opposed to longtime dictator Col. Moammar Gaddafi.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A big week ahead in presidential politics, and in California politics.
President Barack Obama grapples with a multiplicity of geopolitical crises in the Arab world, on top of the perpetual problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arab revolt, which began only last month, is now seriously affecting global oil markets with the uprising and civil war in Libya, and may impinge even more deeply with events accelerating in the strategically hyper-important Persian Gulf.
Obama also has the ongoing labor drama in Wisconsin, where a new Republican governor — amusingly punked last week by a web site editor pretending to be far right billionaire David Koch — is trying to bust the public employee unions while dealing with a not especially daunting state budget crisis. Obama has been mostly mum about this, but organized labor has mobilized support demonstrations across the country, and more than 100,000 came out yesterday in Wisconsin’s state capital. My take, as readers have mostly gathered, is that my friends in labor have developed a bad habit of over-reaching, but the right to a strong union is paramount, especially in this economy.
He’s also dealing with a threatened federal governmental shutdown by conservative Congressional Republicans, but that will probably be averted, at least in the short term.
This week will also see some of Obama’s prospective Republican opponents further gearing up, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reportedly set to announce next week and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour making more national appearances, including a headline shot at next month’s California Republican Party convention.
In California, Governor Jerry Brown is now 10 days away from his own rough deadline for a completed state budget deal. He’s made record progress on his budget, which has an unprecedented mix of very rugged cuts and big tax extensions, but it’s unclear if he has any Republican votes yet. Under California’s unusual set-up, a two-thirds legislative vote is needed on taxes, though not on tax cuts, which is one big reason the state is in chronically dire straits as Democrats pushed unsustainable spending programs and Republicans pushed unsustainable tax cuts during the dot-com boom. Then, after lots of haggling and hassling between Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators of both parties, came the global recession, and the collapse of state revenues dependent on wealthy taxpayers who suddenly didn’t have as much wealth.
Will Brown get some Republican votes? Most have turned out to be head-in-the-sand Dr. Nos, incapable of any sustained discussion of any intellectual consequence on the topic. That doesn’t mean that Brown, who’s been working this for months since his landslide over billionaire Meg Whitman, won’t get some.
His unprecedented appearance last week before the Legislature’s budget conference committee gave him the opportunity to skillfully engage the arguments he’s been hearing in private in public. Brown came off by several orders of magnitude the winner in the encounter, yet he did it in such a way that granted a modicum of respect to opinions that are frankly laughable.
Does he need Republican votes? An interesting question, given an inventive strategy. Let’s put it this way. He wants them. And if they’re at all serious figures, he’ll get them. Over the decades, I’ve learned that Brown, while he can be wildly wrong, is usually right.
Meanwhile, Brown’s predecessor, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, surfaces again this week to deliver the keynote on Tuesday at the U.S. Department of Energy’s energy innovation summit outside Washington in National Harbor, Maryland.
As usual, Brown’s week ahead is in stealth mode. Not so Obama.
On Monday, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will host a meeting with a bipartisan group of governors at the White House. Later on Monday, the President will meet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the White House and will discuss the humanitarian, diplomatic, legal and other actions needed to put a stop to violence against civilians and to ensure that UN agencies and UN members mobilize to provide humanitarian assistance to Libya’s people.
On Tuesday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will award the 2010 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House.
On Thursday, Obama will meet with his national security team for his monthly meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Later he will welcome President Calderón of Mexico to the White House to discuss the important bilateral relationship and key global issues.
On Friday, Obama will travel to Miami, Florida to discuss his plan for developing the innovation economy. While in Miami, he will also attend a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser.
As you see, there’s plenty of flexibility built into Obama’s schedule for public doings on the geopolitical crisis fronts.
The fighting continues in Libya, whose oil is now essentially off the market. The regime of Col. Moammar Gaddafi is holding on, though it’s lost control of much of the country as the uprising has turned into civil war.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is presiding over a meeting of foreign ministers in Switzerland today to seek solutions to the crisis.
With most foreigners finally out of Libya, many in hair-raising circumstances, Obama and the international community have more freedom to take aggressive steps against the Gaddafi regime. But the threat remains that he could destroy much of Libya’s oil.
Libya has already impacted global oil markets, but major protests are also spreading into the Persian Gulf, including Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, guarantor of the oil flow, and Oman, on the other side of the chokepoint Strait of Hormuz from decidedly unfriendly Iran.
The massive unrest continues elsewhere as well, including in Yemen, now allied with the US in the fight against Al Qaeda, which has chosen the most poverty-stricken nation in the Arab world as a new base, and in places where many think revolutions have already succeeded, i.e. Egypt and Tunisia.
The reality is that those revolutions are still in early stages, with the ouster of the longtime dictator one of the easiest, if most dramatic, of tasks.
Then there is Iraq, where unrest is growing after protests that left 14 dead. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced early provincial elections today.
President Barack Obama welcomed most of the nation’s governors to the White House last night.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama and Biden then met with a group of governors from both parties in the State Dining Room.
At 11:10 AM Pacific, Obama meets with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the Oval Office.
At 12 noon Pacific, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
That will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
If you wish to mute the sound, click on the pause button.
In addition, Obama is monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, most dealing with Arab revolt and with the struggle against jihadists.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
** IF OBAMA LOSES, IT WON’T BE BECAUSE “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.” President Barack Obama’s failure to ever get around to pivoting to the economy last year was one of the major reasons why Democrats didn’t do well in the mid-term elections. But if he loses next year, and I expect him to win, it probably won’t be because of the domestic economy. It will be because of what he’s spent so much of time on that is not the domestic economy, namely geopolitics. …From my February 24th feature.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
The King’s Speech bested the much less pleasant The Social Network for Best Picture at last night’s Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, though West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin won the Best Adapted Screenplay prize for the latter. Natalie Portman bested my old friend Annette Bening for Best Actress.
** 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 $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
It’s also up one-sixth in a week as a result of the chaos in Libya.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
With uprisings sweeping much of the Arab world, Chinese authorities are working to tamp down protests inspired by the unrest of the so-called Jasmine Revolutions. Internet censorship, including blocking the name of the U.S. ambassador, is now matched by street tactics.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
He has received his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
At 4:10 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host the 2011 Governors’ Dinner in the State Dining Room.
Many of the nation’s governors are in Washington for the annual meeting of the National Governor Association.
Governor Jerry Brown is not. He’s in California working on the state’s chronic budget crisis.
Obama is monitoring multiple geopolitical crises, notably the Libyan uprising and civil war, and nationwide protests yesterday against a union-busting law on tap in Wisconsin.
On Saturday, with most foreigners finally out of Libya, the UN Security Council finally took a strong stand against Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s regime, including asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargo.
Obama also issued a specific call for Gaddafi’s departure, and today dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Switzerland, where she will meet with foreign ministers of various leading powers to discuss the next steps on Libya.
While Gaddafi has lost control of much of the country, his forces are counter-attacking against rebel forces in several areas.
Meanwhile, oil production is grinding to a halt. Libyan oil is already off the market, with pipelines closed and tankers not loading.
In Yemen, a critical ally in the US struggle against jihadists, President Saleh is facing growing demonstrations again, and the defection of a key tribal leader previously allied with him. Al Qaeda, which has a very active haven in Yemen, is again calling for his ouster.
In Tunisia, where all this began just last month, the prime minister has resigned amid large protests, with many unhappy at the pace of change of what they had thought was a successful revolution. Many of deposed President Ben Ali’s key associates remain in power.
In Bahrain, there are big protests again today. King Hamad, who sharply cut rents, has replaced four ministers, but not his uncle the prime minister, who’s held the office since 1970. And protesters are noticing that, while there have been many calls for dialogue, there’s been no dialogue yet.
Protests also picked up today in Oman, where two demonstrators were killed. The sultan last week sacked six cabinet ministers and raised the minimum wage by 40%.
Oman lies across the Strait of Hormuz — choke point for nearly half the world’s oil supply — from Iran.
Meanwhile, Obama is staying mum on the rallies yesterday around the country in support of public employee unions engaged in a struggle against new Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. He, of course, wants to end collective bargaining on benefits and working conditions.
Labor sees this as a union-busting move, so sponsored big rallies around the country. The biggest was in Madison, Wisconsin, where more than 100,000 came to hear fiery speeches from labor leaders and West Wing star Brad Whitford, a Madison native.
Polls are against the move, but it’s very popular with Republicans.
In addition, Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama, trying to re-focus off the chaos sweeping the Arab world, talks about his efforts to promote the innovation economy and avert a federal government shutdown.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
The fighting continues in Libya, whose oil is now essentially off the market. The regime of Col. Moammar Gaddafi is holding on, though it’s lost control of much of the country as the uprising has turned into civil war.
With American citizens finally out of the country, Obama promptly shut down the US embassy in Tripoli, froze all Libyan assets in the US, and backed UN investigations of the regime for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will preside over a meeting of foreign ministers in Switzerland on Monday to seek solutions to the crisis.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is meeting today in New York to finally consider sanctions, including an arms embargo and the freezing of Libyan assets worldwide.
Clearly the preferred solution for international leaders — except for Latin American leftists such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — is for Gaddafi to lose his civil war. But that may not happen.
While Libya dominates the media attention, protests are actually growing in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. According to the New York Times and other outlets, over 200,000 people protested yesterday in the capital city Manama.
But it’s impossible to find video clips of this except from Iranian state television, which clearly has its own agenda to incite the majority Shiites now governed by a Sunni monarchy and a rigged parliamentary system.
It’s understandable why US and other mainstream Western TV outfits would be distracted elsewhere. They have short attention spans and lessened resources.
But Al Jazeera’s relative paucity of coverage is striking. Until you consider that the the pan-Arab satellite network that has emerged as such a star in the Arab revolt is based in and funded by Qatar, a brethren Persian Gulf kingdom to Bahrain. In fact, it’s next door to Bahrain, across a swath of the Gulf.
Protests continued today, with tens of thousands of marchers streaming past the government offices, calling for the resignation of the prime minister, the king’s uncle who has been in office for 40 years.
Also today, a key opposition figure, who had been scheduled to return a few days ago, finally made it back from London. The leader of the Haq movement, Hassan Mushaima, is more hardline than his fellow Shiites who served in parliament until they resigned after last week’s bloody crackdown.
This liberalization is being promoted by Obama, who directly interceded with King Hamad eight days ago. He’s gambling that even a Shiite takeover wouldn’t lead to the ouster of the US Navy, which is the guarantor of the oil flow out of the Gulf and the principal counterweight to Iran in the region.
But the real problem may be emerging in Iraq, where Friday’s “Day of Rage” protests nationwide left 14 protesters dead. And today, two oil refineries were sabotaged, one, the nation’s largest, by a group of armed men who blew it up.
With the focus switched to Libya, protests in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, are not only continuing, but growing. On Friday, according to Western newspapers, over 200,000 people protested demanding reforms. That’s over a quarter of the island nation’s population. But video clips are unavailable except from Iranian television.
This will further exacerbate the country’s deep electric power crisis. One of the reasons why Iraqis aren’t happy is that, nearly eight years after the US invasion, most Iraqis only get a few hours of electric power a day.
Paging George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld.
In addition, Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iran, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Los Angeles today.
He has no scheduled public events.
Brown yesterday garnered the endorsements of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association for his state budget plan, had several private meetings, and stayed overnight at the home of longtime senior advisor Tom Quinn, who was his first campaign manager at the beginning of his career.
Today he’s going to a wedding and holding various private discussions around the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
** IF OBAMA LOSES, IT WON’T BE BECAUSE “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.”President Barack Obama’s failure to ever get around to pivoting to the economy last year was one of the major reasons why Democrats didn’t do well in the mid-term elections. But if he loses next year, and I expect him to win, it probably won’t be because of the domestic economy. It will be because of what he’s spent so much of time on that is not the domestic economy, namely geopolitics. …From my February 24th feature.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed on Friday at $97.88 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
It’s also up one-sixth in a week as a result of the chaos in Libya.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
With most Americans finally leaving Libya, the Obama Administration is taking unilateral actions against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.
** QUICK HITS. Governor Jerry Brown won the backing of two big Southern California business groups today for his austerity-with-revenues budget, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association. It’s a good sign for Brown, but not a big surprise. The L.A. Chamber is one of the most centrist-oriented of chambers around the state, and was a regular component of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s coalition. … Many seasick Americans arrived late today in Malta by ferry from Libya. High seas had held up the trip, and the Obama Administration’s moves against the Gaddafi regime. … Another huge demonstration today against the monarchy in Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, with some 200,000 demanding changes. The king fired three cabinet ministers, but not yet his uncle the prime minister. But Bahrain, under Obama’s prodding, is moving incrementally to meet demands.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … JERRY BROWN 2.0: EIGHT WEEKS IN.
** NEW SURVEY: WHICH STATES ARE MOST CONSERVATIVE, WHICH ARE MOST LIBERAL? A new Gallup Poll survey shows, not surprisingly, that Mississippi is the most conservative state in America.
Which makes the California Republican Party’s choice of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to headline its convention in Sacramento next month quite intriguing.
Barbour, of course, is a former Republican national chairman, top Reagan aide, and Washington super-lobbyist who is the pick of many Republican insiders for president.
I think that doesn’t work, at all, in a race against Barack Obama, yet I digress.
A word to the wise for California liberal friends. California is NOT one of the 10 most liberal states in America. And the number of self-described liberals in California has declined since 2008, from 26.5% to 24.1%. What California is is a strong Democratic state.
Mississippi is home to the largest percentage of conservatives among U.S. states, with a slim majority identifying their political views as conservative. Several other states, including Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, and Utah approach 50% conservative identification. Vermont, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia have the greatest percentages of self-identified liberals. …
Mississippi is the first state to exceed 50% conservative identifiers in the three years Gallup has compiled ideological identification at the state level.
The top 10 rankings make clear that conservative identification is much more common than liberal identification, with each of the top 10 conservative states at or above 45% identification and only the District of Columbia exceeding 31% liberal identification. In the nation as a whole, Americans are about twice as likely to identify as conservative as they are to identify as liberal, a pattern that has persisted for many years. Americans are also more likely to say they are conservative than moderate.
Not surprisingly, then, conservatives outnumber liberals in every U.S. state. Only in the District of Columbia do liberal identifiers exceed conservative identifiers (41% to 18%). Vermont (30.7% conservative to 30.5% liberal), Rhode Island (29.9% to 29.3%), and Massachusetts (29.9% to 28.0%) have the closest state-level division between conservatives and liberals.
The most conservative states are typically in the South and West. The least conservative states are in the Eastern part of the country and on the West Coast. …
Implications
The conservative political label continues to prevail by a significant margin in most of the U.S. states. Additionally, ideological identification has been largely stable in recent years even though there has been greater change in party affiliation at the state level. The 2010 elections brought more politicians who are conservative into office at the state level, and some of the results are evident in the approaches state governments are taking to deal with their biggest challenges, such as attempts to cut pay or benefits of unionized state workers to address revenue shortfalls and budget deficits.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST At 11 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. You can watch it live here on New West Notes. If you want to mute the audio, click on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
A Saudi college student living in Texas reportedly planned to carry out terrorist bombings in California, Colorado, and Texas.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama and Biden then met with Democratic Governors in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Room 430.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet for lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 11 AM Pacific, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
That event will be carried live on New West Notes.
If you want to turn off the audio, click on the pause button.
As you can see, it’s largely a behind-the-scenes day for Obama as crises, mostly geopolitical, continue to rage. Obama is keeping mostly quiet about anti-union legislation pushed by Republicans in a few states such as Wisconsin.
The U.S. has managed to get some more of its citizens out of war-torn Libya, with a ferry delayed by high seas finally away. The U.S. will land a charter plane at a location outside Tripoli, where it’s been denied access to the airport, to evacuate more Americans.
The fighting continues in Libya, with Colonel Gaddafi’s troops reportedly firing on protesters in the capital city Tripoli who’d emerged from their mosques. While much of the country has been lost to them, Gaddafi’s forces still hold the upper hand over at least half of Libya’s population.
Gaddafi, as I’ve mentioned, was once a radical chic darling of the far left. In that regard, it’s interesting to note that several famous Latin American leftists are backing the dictator even now.
Earlier in the week, Fidel Castro speculated in his Cuban newspaper column that the Libyan uprising is a plot of the U.S. and NATO, which plan to use it as an excuse to invade Libya and seize its oil fields.
Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez is a boon companion of Gaddafi’s, so much so that Gaddafi was forced to deny having fled to Venezuela a few days ago. Venezuela’s foreign minister said this week that Gaddafi is a victim of a plot and that no one should believe the “imperial news agencies” reporting on the events in Libya.
Finally, there is Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the Sandinistas, who also backs Gaddafi.
In Iraq today there were demonstrations around the country against the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. At least six protesters were killed in confrontations with police.
Iraqis are angry about poor economic conditions and a ridiculous infrastructure that, nearly eight years after the U.S. invasion, still can’t guarantee electric power for more than a few hours a day.
Protesters demanded and got the resignation of the governor of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and its principal port.
Seeing the wave of protest sweeping the Arab world, Maliki had already pledged not to run for re-election and to cut his salary in half.
Over 100,000 protesters massed again today in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, complaining that promises of political reforms by Egypt’s new military government are coming far too slowly. Some strikes are continuing as well.
Saudi Arabia increased its new supplements for students and the poor from $11 billion to nearly $40 billion. But Saudi dissidents are still planning protests in two weeks.
Meanwhile, Obama must deal once again with jihadism here at home, this time in the form of a Saudi college student arrested yesterday in Texas by the FBI who allegedly planned multiple acts of terrorism in Texas, Colorado, and California.
Leftist Latin American leaders, such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, back Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
It’s a central contradiction that confronts Obama, as it has all American leaders since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The US is dependent on Saudi oil, the Saudi monarchy is profoundly conservative and at the same time open to the West, yet its branch of Islam is deeply fundamentalist and a major wellspring for jihadism. Much of it financed by Saudi oil wealth.
In addition, Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Pakistan, Bahrain, Somalia, Yemen, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** IF OBAMA LOSES, IT WON’T BE BECAUSE “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.”President Barack Obama’s failure to ever get around to pivoting to the economy last year was one of the major reasons why Democrats didn’t do well in the mid-term elections. But if he loses next year, and I expect him to win, it probably won’t be because of the domestic economy. It will be because of what he’s spent so much of time on that is not the domestic economy, namely geopolitics. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento and Los Angeles today.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
At 12:15 PM, Brown meets with the executive committee of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce in downtown LA.
He’ll hold a press availability afterward in the lobby.
Meanwhile, the Legislature’s budget conference committee continues meeting today on Brown’s budget proposal. This is the soonest by far that this committee has ever functioned.
Brown made an unprecedented hour-long appearance before the committee yesterday, winning widespread plaudits for his performance and pointing up the deep inconsistencies in the opposition of most Republicans to his austerity-with-revenues budget.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $98 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
It’s also up one-sixth in a week as a result of the chaos in Libya.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Space Shuttle Discovery launched this afternoon on its final mission.
** QUICK HITS. Governor Jerry Brown made a bravura appearance today on California’s chronic budget crisis, spending an hour testifying in unprecedented fashion before the legislative budget conference committee in the Capitol. Showing his trademark sense of humor and supple grasp of the facts, Brown pushed hard for his plan of big budget cuts and tax extensions, saying that the “moment of reckoning has come” and that if he doesn’t get the combination approach he will have to go for an all-cuts budget, of $25 billion or more in cuts. Pressed by a far right legislator saying she wanted pension and regulatory reforms before going for his approach, Brown offered to negotiate just that, prompting her to skitter away from what she’d just said. I’ll have more on all this. … In the latest twist on jihadism, Saudi chemistry student Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari was arrested today in Texas for planning to blow up facilities in Colorado and California. His plan reportedly was to assemble explosive devices and use them against reservoirs, power plants, and the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. The 20-year old Aldawsari is here on a student visa after winning scholarships from Saudi authorities. … Speaking of which, Saudi Arabia helped calm oil markets today with promises to fill the gap should it occur from Libya or other suppliers. … Saudi King Abdullah is pumping $37 billion from the kingdom’s petrodollar reserves into trying to calm the waters of dissent at home in advance of planned demonstrations next month.
** NEW POLL: THREE-WAY TIE FOR THE LEAD IN THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE. A new Gallup Poll shows a three-way tie at the top between former governors — Arkansan Mike Huckabee, Alaskan Sarah Palin, and Massachusettsan Mitt Romney.
But they’re all pretty far down in the polls, with Huckabee at 18& and Palin and Romney at 16%.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is fourth, at 9%.
Of course, Huckabee and Palin may not run, instead opting for lucrative media commentator careers.
So Gingrich, who engineered the last GOP-led federal shutdown in 1995, may be running second in the race.
This is the first time in decades that Republicans have no clear front-runner or pair of front-runners at this stage of the race.
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have no clear favorite for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee at this point, with Mike Huckabee (18%), Mitt Romney (16%), and Sarah Palin (16%) in a statistical tie for the lead. They are the only candidates in the crowded field of potential candidates who register double-digit support. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and former Utah Gov. and current Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman were included for the first time and received 4% and 1%, respectively. …
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who maintains he does not plan to run for president, is still volunteered by 1% of respondents, as is Indiana Congressman Mike Pence. Pence’s name was included as an explicit option in previous Gallup surveys but he recently announced he would not be a candidate for president in 2012. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who announced on Tuesday he would not enter the race, also gets 1% of the vote. …
As is usually the case in early nomination polls, the top candidates tend to be the best known. Huckabee, Romney, and Ron Paul all sought the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Palin was the party’s vice presidential nominee that year, and Gingrich was the speaker of the House from 1995-1999. So far, none of the lesser-known candidates, including some current and former state governors, has broken out of the low single digits.
There aren’t wide differences among the top competitors among different subgroups of Republicans, though Huckabee fares slightly better among core Republican identifiers than among Republican-leaning independents, among conservatives than among liberals or moderates, and among frequent than among less frequent churchgoers, and among Southerners.
Palin has greater appeal to college nongraduates than college graduates and to lower- and middle-income Republicans than upper-income Republicans. To date, there is not a pronounced gender gap in Palin’s support.
Older Republicans are significantly more likely than younger Republicans to support Romney. …
Gallup’s polling on Republicans’ preferences for their party’s 2012 presidential nominee clearly underscores that there is no early front-runner. This is a departure from what Gallup has found for the GOP nomination since 1972, when state primaries became the main way of selecting the nominee. Previously, a particular candidate held a strong lead at the outset of the Gallup’s Republican nomination polling, and that candidate usually led for most of the nominating campaign and eventually won the nomination. The only exception to that general pattern was in 2008. Rudy Giuliani led in early preference polls that year, but his lead began to dwindle in late 2007 and he performed poorly in the initial primaries and caucuses. The current wide-open nature of the 2012 GOP race to date suggests a competitive and perhaps dynamic race ahead.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED At 10 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a media briefing, which can be viewed live here on New West Notes. If you want to mute the sound, click on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
Americans and other foreign nationals are having trouble getting out of Libya, with a major bottleneck being the international airport in Tripoli. This is blocking concerted action to solve the Libyan crisis, which has seen oil prices shoot up by 17% in the past week.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10 AM Pacific, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a media briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
The event will be streamed live here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama holds a meeting with the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 4:15 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host music legends and contemporary major artists for “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House” in the East Room.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden, with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, met this morning with President of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka and presidents of AFL-CIO labor organizations.
At 1 PM Pacific, Biden delivers remarks at an event honoring the life and legacy of the late California Congressman Tom Lantos at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Biden and Dr. Jill Biden also attend the Motown Tribute event tonight at the White House.
The Space Shuttle Discovery, which first flew in 1984 and is human history’s most traveled manned spacecraft, is set to take its final flight today, lifting off from Kennedy Space Center at 1:50 PM Pacific.
Discovery is taking six astronauts and the first humanoid robot in space — no, it’s not former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — to the International Space Station.
There’s only one more shuttle flight scheduled after this, then the U.S. manned space program is dependent on Russia for trips to the ISS.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange got bad news this morning in a London court. He is to be extradited to Sweden to face sex charges which emerged after he dumped many thousands of classified documents onto the Internet.
Assange’s supporters believe that he is more likely to be extradited to the U.S., where the Justice Dept. has been laboring on espionage charges for months, from Sweden.
The crisis in Libya, first major oil producing nation hit by the Arab revolt, continues with longtime dictator Col. Gaddafi holding on to power in the capital Tripoli and other parts of the country while much of it has apparently fallen to protesters and defecting government forces.
The response by the Obama Administration and European leaders, while somewhat harsh rhetorically — US officials still haven’t condemned Gaddafi by name — has been muted. Probably for two reasons.
First, it’s proving hard to get people out of Libya. For example, US charter flights have been barred by Libyan authorities, and a ferry chartered to evacuate US citizens has been held up by high seas.
Second, a major source of oil is under threat. While Libya accounts for less than 1% of US oil consumption, it’s a big supplier to Europe. And oil prices are global, not regional, in nature.
Oil has shot up by one-sixth in the past week with the emergence of the Libyan crisis.
One or two more such upsets and the global economic recovery is under real threat.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join other foreign ministers next Monday in Geneva to discuss options on the Libyan crisis. By then, of course, they hope they’ve got their citizens out. And perhaps Gaddafi will be gone, or on his last legs and amenable to a retirement package.
Crises continue elsewhere, of course.
Egypt, which just allowed Iranian warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since Islamic fundamentalists took power in the Iranian Revolution, hasn’t moved much closer to democracy. But it is providing scapegoats to give the public the illusion of more reform.
A dozen ranking Mubarak regime figures, including a former Egyptian prime minister, have been charged with corruption. But, conveniently, none of the major recent major power figures.
With protests continuing in Bahrain, King Hamad released not two dozen political prisoners, as yesterday morning’s report had it, but 300 prisoners.
Early this morning in London, a British judge ruled that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden for sex crimes charges.
This is one area where Obama has been able to cool things out. At least for now.
Meanwhile, the Bahraini monarch confers in Riyadh with Saudi King Abdullah, recently returned from a 3-month sojourn for his health to New York and Morocco. The Sunni Saudi regime, whose eastern oil region, dominated by Shiites, lies across the 15-mile King Fahd Causeway from Bahrain, is deeply concerned about containing the Arab revolt. That’s why it’s granting more payments to students and the unemployed.
In addition, Obama is monitoring geopolitical crises in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
At 11 AM, Brown addresses the Legislature’s budget conference committee, now working on his crash program to produce a state budget proposal by March 10th in order to place tax extensions on a June special election ballot.
This is the soonest by far that this committee has ever functioned.
He’ll probably have something to say about the silly caucus formed yesterday by most Republican legislators vowing opposition to tax extensions being placed on the ballot unless they are accompanied by tax cuts, which of course would make the budget crisis far worse.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned yesterday that “the Middle East may shatter into pieces” with terrorist groups grabbing the reins of power.
The final launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery is set for 1:50 PM Pacific at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $99 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $65 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
It’s also up one-sixth in a week as a result of the chaos in Libya.
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, reacting very cautiously to the revolt and emerging civil war in Libya, is dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva, Switzerland for an international conference next week.
** QUICK HITS. In an appearance by President Barack Obama and a White House press briefing, the administration today managed to say remarkably little about the Libyan crisis. From a story standpoint, it’s bad, but it makes sense in that there a lot of Americans still in Libya and the country’s teetering dictator is quite capable of disrupting/destroying one of the world’s major oil supplies. … Obama is sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva next Monday to confer with other foreign ministers. Next Monday? Clearly, the US and other governments hope the situation resolves in the intervening five days. … In a deeply silly move, California Republican legislators are forming a caucus to oppose any tax extensions to resolve the state’s budget crisis, unless a tax cut measure is placed on the ballot, too. Since that would make the budget crisis worse rather than better, that’s, oh, I’m trying to think of something diplomatic here. … I know, let’s put a measure on the ballot to increase spending on popular programs. That makes exactly the same amount of sense. Which is to say, none at all. … Brown, incidentally, is not going to the Democratic Governors Association meeting in Washington this weekend, and will not be at the governors’ gala at the White House. He’s a little busy for that.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED In a rather hastily scheduled move, President Barack Obama will address the crisis in Libya at 2:15 PM Pacific. You can watch it live here on New West Notes. If you wish to mute the audio, click on the pause button.UPDATE: Obama will now speak at 2 PM Pacific.
** OBAMA’S DECIDEDLY MEASURED REMARKS ON LIBYA.Good afternoon, everybody. Secretary Clinton and I just concluded a meeting that focused on the ongoing situation in Libya. Over the last few days, my national security team has been working around the clock to monitor the situation there and to coordinate with our international partners about a way forward.
First, we are doing everything we can to protect American citizens. That is my highest priority. In Libya, we’ve urged our people to leave the country and the State Department is assisting those in need of support. Meanwhile, I think all Americans should give thanks to the heroic work that’s being done by our foreign service officers and the men and women serving in our embassies and consulates around the world. They represent the very best of our country and its values.
Now, throughout this period of unrest and upheaval across the region the United States has maintained a set of core principles which guide our approach. These principles apply to the situation in Libya. As I said last week, we strongly condemn the use of violence in Libya.
The American people extend our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of all who’ve been killed and injured. The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous and it is unacceptable. So are threats and orders to shoot peaceful protesters and further punish the people of Libya. These actions violate international norms and every standard of common decency. This violence must stop.
The United States also strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people. That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. They are not negotiable. They must be respected in every country. And they cannot be denied through violence or suppression.
In a volatile situation like this one, it is imperative that the nations and peoples of the world speak with one voice, and that has been our focus. Yesterday a unanimous U.N. Security Council sent a clear message that it condemns the violence in Libya, supports accountability for the perpetrators, and stands with the Libyan people.
This same message, by the way, has been delivered by the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and many individual nations. North and south, east and west, voices are being raised together to oppose suppression and support the rights of the Libyan people.
I’ve also asked my administration to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis. This includes those actions we may take and those we will coordinate with our allies and partners, or those that we’ll carry out through multilateral institutions.
Like all governments, the Libyan government has a responsibility to refrain from violence, to allow humanitarian assistance to reach those in need, and to respect the rights of its people. It must be held accountable for its failure to meet those responsibilities, and face the cost of continued violations of human rights.
This is not simply a concern of the United States. The entire world is watching, and we will coordinate our assistance and accountability measures with the international community. To that end, Secretary Clinton and I have asked Bill Burns, our Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, to make several stops in Europe and the region to intensify our consultations with allies and partners about the situation in Libya.
I’ve also asked Secretary Clinton to travel to Geneva on Monday, where a number of foreign ministers will convene for a session of the Human Rights Council. There she’ll hold consultations with her counterparts on events throughout the region and continue to ensure that we join with the international community to speak with one voice to the government and the people of Libya.
And even as we are focused on the urgent situation in Libya, let me just say that our efforts continue to address the events taking place elsewhere, including how the international community can most effectively support the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.
So let me be clear. The change that is taking place across the region is being driven by the people of the region. This change doesn’t represent the work of the United States or any foreign power. It represents the aspirations of people who are seeking a better life.
As one Libyan said, “We just want to be able to live like human beings.” We just want to be able to live like human beings. It is the most basic of aspirations that is driving this change. And throughout this time of transition, the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people.
Thank you very much.
The Obama Administration has decided to drop legal defense of the anti-gay marriage Defense of Marriage Act.
** NEW POLL: AMERICA IS CALIFORNIA. The pattern all too familiar to those of us in California with regard to state budget woes is now apparent on a national basis.
That’s what a new Gallup Poll shows.
People don’t really want to choose any of the bad options before them.
But they want the problem solved, somehow.
Notably, Americans are very opposed to taking away collective bargaining rights from public employees, as is the hotly controversial proposal on the table in Wisconsin and is sometimes talked about in California.
As Wisconsin and numerous other states struggle to reduce untenable budget deficits, a new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that not one of three major fiscal strategies available to state lawmakers is very popular. The least objectionable to Americans is “reducing or eliminating certain state programs,” with about equal numbers in favor as opposed. A slight majority, 53%, opposes reducing pay and benefits for state workers, and a larger majority, 71%, opposes raising state taxes. …
Americans’ general opposition to these options comes despite the widespread belief that states are in fiscal trouble. About two-thirds of Americans (64%) perceive their own state is facing a budget crisis based on what they have read or heard, though 31% are unsure. Five percent say their state is not in crisis.
Additionally, the new poll finds Americans opposed to their own state adopting a deficit-reduction proposal, like the one that has triggered a legislative standoff in Wisconsin, that eliminates some of the collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the teachers’ union. One-third of Americans say they would favor such a bill in their own state, while 61% would oppose it. …
As state budgets are hammered out across the country, leaders may find it more difficult to find solutions that are acceptable to rank-and-file Democrats than to Republicans. That’s because majorities of Democrats (approximately 6 in 10) oppose each of the three main strategies tested for reducing deficits. By contrast, more than three-fourths of Republicans (78%) oppose raising taxes, but majorities favor eliminating or reducing certain state programs (65%) and reducing worker pay and benefits (51%).
Independents show solid opposition to tax increases, but are about evenly divided in their reactions to reductions in state programs and worker pay. …
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing at 9:30 AM Pacific, live here on New West Notes. You can mute the sound by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
Crude oil prices are skyrocketing amidst the emerging civil war in Libya and reports that longtime dictator Colonel Gaddafi may sabotage the nation’s oil fields and pipelines.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Maryland.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a media briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
This event will be streamed live here on New West Notes.
You can mute the sound by clicking on the pause button.
At 10:15 AM Pacific, Obama visits the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesday, Maryland.
Obama will visit privately with troops wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden attends a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York City and a fundraiser for New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.
In other action, former White House of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel won a landslide election last night as mayor of Chicago. Emanuel won 55% of the vote in a multi-candidate field in which the runner-up garnered 20% of the vote.
A key question: Will the hilarious and sometimes obscene fake Rahm Emanuel Twitter feed continue? http://twitter.com/mayoremanuel
The legendarily profane operative-turned-mayor has offered a $5000 reward for the identity of the tweeter, who evidently knows a fair amount about him and his movements.
Now, back to far less amusing matters.
After taking his “Win the Future” theme of developing the innovation economy to the heartland yesterday in Ohio, Obama is keeping things under wraps today in and around the White House.
Former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, known as Rahmbo in Democratic political circles, last night won a landslide election as mayor of Chicago.
He’s clearly occupied by major geopolitical crises, notably the wave of revolt sweeping the Arab world.
The protests against a very defiant and bloodily retaliatory Libyan ruler Colonel Moammar Gaddafi have turned into a civil war. Hundreds are reportedly dead and it’s hard to follow the dynamics there.
Gaddafi is inveighing against the West and contradictorily claiming that Al Jazeera is behind all the unrest, which he alternates between saying it is largely illusory and fomented by Islamic fundamentalists.
Libya is the first major oil producer to be affected by the Arab revolt against long-time autocracies, and world oil prices have shot upwards to a two-year high.
Obama’s response to the Libyan crisis has been very muted. There are hundreds of Americans still in the country and they are having trouble getting out.
And of course there is the oil factor. Disruption of the Libyan oil supply would have an even bigger impact on oil prices than the unrest has already had. Destruction of oil facilities and supply, as Gaddafi has reportedly threatened, could drive oil prices through the roof, severely threatening the fragile economic recovery taking place around the world.
Libya supplies 10% of Europe’s oil, and a much smaller fraction of America’s But oil is a global market, and prices are not regionally based.
Saudi Arabia says it can pick up the slack even if Libya’s production is taken entirely off the market. But at what price?
Speaking of price, Saudi Arabia is the jackpot state in the wave of Arab revolt. It is completely undemocratic. Except a little at the very top, as an old joke goes.
Its eastern oil region, which is heavily Shiite, sits 15 miles away from protest-wracked Bahrain across the King Fahd Causeway.
Bahrain’s King Hamad, who backed off his crackdown after the personal intervention of Obama, has just released two dozen political prisoners in another gesture of good faith to protesters.
He’s in Riyadh today to, among other things, meet with Saudi King Abdullah, who has just returned from three months abroad tending to his bad back and other ailments.
Abdullah arrived in New York City on November 22nd for two complex back surgeries. The 85-year old monarch then recuperated into the new year at his Manhattan residence, then decamped for Morocco.
This is his first time back in the Kingdom since the Arab revolt began.
He decided to issue a decree increasing support for students, the unemployed, and others, to the tune of some $11 billion. Since Saudi Arabia is sitting on about a half trillion petrodollars, it can afford it. But he did not accede to demands for municipal elections.
Will this reform be enough to stave off real protest in Saudi Arabia?
If Saudi Arabia were to fall, the world as we know it would change very dramatically.
In addition, Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
His plan received a boost last Friday when budget committees in both the state Senate and Assembly approved his budget proposal, with a few changes.
Now the Legislature’s budget conference committee is beginning work today on working out differences between the budget proposals.
I believe this is the earliest date in California history that the conference committee has begun to function.
Of course, it has to be, as Brown has set an only slightly flexible deadline of March 10th for legislative action to close on a budget deal and place tax extensions on a June special election ballot.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned yesterday that “the Middle East may shatter into pieces” with terrorist groups grabbing the reins of power.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $98 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $64 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.
Four American hostages were killed by Somali pirates today on a yacht sailing around the world from Los Angeles. These are the first Americans killed as a result of a hijacking.
** QUICK HITS.The chaos in Libya, one of the major oil producing nations, intensified late today when longtime ruler Col. Moammar Gaddafi gave a long a fiery televised address urging his followers to attack protesters against his 42-year old regime, claiming that the unrest is caused by Islamic fundamentalists. The mercurial Gaddafi was a fiery pro-Marxist agitator after he seized power in a military coup, financing terrorist groups around the world and undermining the multinational oil companies. But he normalized relations with the Bush/Cheney Administration in the last decade and many now say he’s an American stooge. Be that as it may, he made his address today from the ruins of his home destroyed by a Reagan-ordered air strike in 1986, with a statue of a fist crushing an American fighter as a backdrop. … Oil shot up to over $95 per barrel on the New York futures market. … More protests are expected tomorrow in Bahrain, home of the U.S. 5th Fleet. Over one-seventh of the country’s population, more than 100,000 people, joined protests today in the island kingdom. … President Barack Obama, after another foray to publicize his promotion of the innovation economy, has no public events scheduled for tomorrow.
** JERRY BROWN APPOINTS! WITH A FOCUS ON THE POLITICAL WATCHDOG AGENCY. Issuing the first set of new appointments he’s made in the past few weeks as he focuses on California’s chronic budget crisis, Governor Jerry Brown today appointed eight people to various state boards and commissions. All but one were Democrats. I believe Brown has appointed two Republicans so far, former Arnold Schwarzenegger financial spokesman H.D. Palmer, who plays the same role in the Brown Administration, and new Fair Political Practices Commissioner Sean Eskovitz, a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles and former assistant U.S. attorney in New York.
He will be joined on the Fair Political Practices Commssion, which oversees the state’s elections and lobbying practices and was created by the Brown co-authored Political Reform Act of 1974, by new FPPC Chair Ann Ravel. She is the deputy assistant U.S. attorney general for consumer litigation and former Santa Clara county counsel.
She replaces Republican Dan Schnur, the director of USC’s Unruh Institute of Politcs, who took a leave from his academic position last year to take over the FPPC at Schwarzenegger’s behest. Schnur, notwithstanding his past reputation as a staunch partisan as communications director for Senator John McCain and Governor Pete Wilson, undertook a number of notable reforms, which I will will delve into in depth in a forthcoming piece on political reform, creating much greater transparency in the process.
In other action, Brown re-appointed Agricultural Labor Relations Board member Genevieve Shiroma and named stalwart Orange County Democratic attorney Wylie Aitken to the California Arts Council.
He also named Robert Dresser, former general counsel of the state Labor Agency, as the new chairman of the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, indicating that Brown does not intend to do away with the agency.
** NEW SURVEY: NUMBER OF SOLID DEMOCRATIC STATES DECLINES. The latest Gallup Poll survey indicates a significant decline in the number of solid Democratic states from 2008 to 2010
This is not a surprise given the 2010 results, but here we go anyway. It’s significant to note that there has not been a commensurate rise in solid Republican states. What’s happened is the creation of more toss-up states.
The poll, incidentally, indicates about a five point drop in Democratic identification in California. Barack Obama carried California in 2008 with a crushing 61% to 38% victory over John McCain.
But despite the supposed slide in Democratic ID, Jerry Brown trounced billionaire Meg Whitman’s biggest spending non-presidential campaign in American history, 54% to 41%, and the supposedly very vulnerable Barbara Boxer easily defeated ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, 52% to 42% in another landslide.
Gallup’s analysis of party affiliation in the U.S. states shows a marked decline in the number of solidly Democratic states from 2008 (30) to 2010 (14). The number of politically competitive states increased over the same period, from 10 to 18, with more limited growth in the number of leaning or solidly Republican states. …
Looking more closely at the changes in state party affiliation since 2008, only one state moved from a Democratic positioning to a Republican positioning — New Hampshire, which was solidly Democratic in 2008 but now is considered leaning Republican. Alabama, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota moved from a competitive designation to solidly or leaning Republican status. A total of 12 states — Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin — shifted from solidly or leaning Democratic to competitive. No states have moved in a more Democratic direction since 2008. (A listing of each state’s classification for 2008, 2009, and 2010 is available on page 2 of this report.)
Gallup has documented the decline in Democratic Party affiliation at the national level from its recent peak in 2008 and early 2009. After several years of increasing Democratic affiliation beginning in late 2005, the current political situation is similar to what it was in the mid-2000s, when the parties were more or less even. …
Implications
The United States, both nationally and in every state, has moved in a more Republican direction during the last two years. Though the losses are not welcome news for the Democratic Party, the decline since 2008 is from a high point in the party’s support, the highest in at least two decades. Thus, while the losses have clearly hurt the party’s positioning compared with what it was as President Barack Obama was taking office, its strength is generally back to where it was in the mid-2000s, before a series of events including the Iraq war, high gas prices, and the recession eroded public confidence in George W. Bush and the Republican Party.
At the same time, the Democratic losses have not led to major gains in Republican affiliation. Rather, Gallup finds greater increases in the number of competitive states than in solid or leaning Republican states.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED President Barack Obama speaks at 10:55 AM Pacific at the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business at Cleveland State University. The event will be streamed live here on New West Notes. You can mute the sound by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
Two Iranian naval vessels transited the Suez Canal today. The new Egyptian government allowed the passage, the first by Iranian vessels since the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979. Israeli officials expressed grave displeasure in advance.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Ohio.
Obama takes his “Win the Future” theme of developing the innovation economy to the heartland today, with appearances in Cleveland, Ohio.
He also monitors and deals with the continuing upheaval in the Arab world.
Obama flew to Cleveland early this morning, where he delivered remarks at the opening session of the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business at Cleveland State University.
At 9:05 AM Pacific, Obama attends breakout sessions of the conference at Cleveland State University.
At 10:55 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at the closing session of the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business at Cleveland State University.
At 12:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Cleveland on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 1:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 1:35 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates in the Oval Office.
While Obama is very far from being out of the woods with regard to the multiple crises he must address in the Arab and Muslim worlds, he has some continuing good news today.
His call late Friday to Bahrain’s King Hamad resulted in a pullback of governmental military and security forces which had brutally cracked down two days running on peaceful protesters.
The peace is holding in Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, despite the arrival today of an exiled opposition leader and a demonstration by over 100,000 anti-government protesters, over one-seventh the island nation’s population.
That may be the extent of his good news, though, as four American tourists on a continuing round-the-world voyage from Los Angeles were killed by Somali pirates off the coast of East Africa, major oil producer Libya is exploding in violence, Yemen’s pro-American leader is hanging on, and the highly complex situation in Pakistan just got a whole lot more complicated. Obama is also gauging the fall-out from the US veto late Friday of a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel for continuing settlements in hotly disputed former Palestinian territories.
Obama is monitoring the now tragic conclusion to the the hijacking of an American yacht, and kidnapping of four Americans, by Somali pirates in retaliation for the conviction of one of their colleagues last week in a New York court.
Scott and Jean Adams of Los Angeles were sailing their yacht, the Quest out of Marina del Rey, with Seattle’s Phyllis Macay and Robert Riggle when it was hijacked by Somali pirates. The vessel has been shadowed for the last few days by U.S. Navy vessels, with negotiations throughout.
It’s unclear what happened, but both couples were shot just prior to Navy Seals boarding the yacht. At least two of the American civilians were alive when forces arrived on board, but died of their wounds. Two pirates were already dead when the yacht was boarded, two were killed in the encounter, and 15 were captured.
There’s far worse violence in Libya, with hundreds reported dead in the uprising which has seen eastern cities fall away from the 42-year regime of Colonel Moammar Gaddafi. The one-time radical chic revolutionary figure, now an entrenched despot, made a long defiant speech today insisting that he will remain in power and that radical Islamists are behind the uprising against his regime.
Meanwhile, there have been multiple defections from the Libyan diplomatic corps, some defections from the armed forces, and some signs of incipient civil war. Most of the armed forces seem loyal to Gaddafi, and the air force has been used to attack several targets, including some civilians.
Libya is the first major oil producing nation to be wracked by the turmoil sweeping the Arab world. The North African nation is one of the leading suppliers to Europe.
Then there is Pakistan.
You recall the tense high-level stand-off there about the status of Raymond Davis, a seemingly junior level US consular staffer who shot two Pakistanis dead in Lahore. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top US officials have been demanding his release on grounds of diplomatic immunity. Pakistan has refused. And an AfPak summit in Washington set for this week was canceled.
Well, not surprisingly, it turns out that Davis is really a CIA contract agent. And that, following a lengthy stint as a Green Beret, he worked for a time for Blackwater, the notorious security firm which is particularly anathema in Pakistan.
What was he doing? The situation is still very cloudy, but the story now is that his job was to provide security for other CIA agents.
In addition, Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
His plan received a boost Friday when budget committees in both the state Senate and Assembly approved his budget proposal, with a few changes.
Now the Legislature is set today to vote on the beginning of the budget conference committee on Wednesday.
Brown is still working on getting a few Republican votes to place tax extensions on a June special election ballot, something he wants to be able to do on or around March 10th.
He is also still dealing with local officials who support the continuing of the redevelopment agency pot of gold. They have a complex counter-proposal and will be presenting it to him this week.
Their problem, of course, as always, is that while financing shopping malls and stadiums is cool and arguably economically beneficial, it doesn’t compare to the provision of basic services.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
Composer David Arnold, best known for the last five James Bond film scores, was named over the weekend as the musical director for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Here in Madrid he conducts part of the score to Casino Royale.
** 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 $57 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.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a longtime American ally, resisted repeated calls for his resignation today in his impoverished Arab county, a lynchpin of the struggle against jihadist forces.
** OBAMA TODAY – MONDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama has received his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
Following Obama’s direct intervention late Friday, the situation in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, has grown notably more peaceful. But that’s a relative term, so the biggest event of the year in Bahrain, the Formula One season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, scheduled for March 13th, has been canceled. The race, for which Bahrain spent billions in developing the track and associated facilities, is to be rescheduled later in the season, which will now begin on March 27th with the Australian Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, a leading opposition figure is due to return from exile tomorrow, with more protests on tap.
The relative calm in Bahrain is hardly matched in Libya or Yemen. Protesters may have snatched away control in LIbya’s second city of Benghazi. Libya’s capital is Tripoli, immortalized in the Marine Corps Anthem. Despite his historic role as bete noire to the West, longtime dictator Col. Gadaffi and his North African state have emerged as one of the principal suppliers of oil to Europe.
But with Gaddafi’s son promising “rivers of blood” to regime opponents, global oil companies are now reportedly evacuating their personnel from Libya. Internet access has been cut in Libya, and Al Jazeera says the regime is interfering with its satellite.
In Yemen, wily President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key American ally, is holding on to power and promising dialogue, while cracking down on protesters in a relatively measured way. Relatively measured meaning firing at their legs rather than their heads.
As a result, casualties in Yemen are reportedly fewer than in Bahrain, and far fewer than in Egypt or Libya.
While all this unfolds, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is in the midst of a visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Djibouti, and Kuwait.
If there is one place that is taking all this very much to heart, it’s Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, whose country is just 15 miles away from Bahrain across the Gulf causeway.
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no political parties and no elections, has long been the world’s biggest oil producer, though it may have been surpassed by Russia.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – MONDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Protests in Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, continued on Sunday free from any government crackdown following the late Friday intervention of President Barack Obama.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
He has received the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama has no scheduled public events.
The scene in Bahrain, which is 11 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time, has been peaceful today.
Not so with regard to Libya, which is interfering with Al Jazeera’s satellite signal and is responsible, reportedly, for the deaths of several hundred protesters at the hand of security forces loyal to its longtime ruler, Colonel Gadaffi. (He’s been in power so long that, when I went into the Navy in the ’70s I visualized commanding a patrol boat sweeping his forces with machine gun fire.)
Protesters may be turning the tide in Bengazhi, Libya’s second most important city, where they have taken control of many military vehicles.
The longtime ruler of Yemen, President Saleh, America’s ally in the struggle against jihadists now attempting to use his country as a base, is doing somewhat better than Gadaffi.
But not all that much better.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Following a late Friday call from President Barack Obama to Bahrain’s King Hamad, the king designated his son, Crown Prince Salman, as the regime’s point man. The American-educated Salman On Saturday ordered the military and security forces off the street, allowed protesters to gather again at Manama’s Pearl Square, and called for dialogue with the opposition.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
While Obama is very far from being out of the woods with regard to the multiple crises he must address in the Arab and Muslim worlds, he has some good news today.
His call late Friday to Bahrain’s King Hamad resulted in a pullback of governmental military and security forces which had brutally cracked down two days running on peaceful protesters. As a result of the regime’s response, the protesters’ demands, which at the beginning of the week, centered on various reforms, hardened by the end of the week into a demand for regime change.
The king designated his son, 41-year old Crown Prince Salman, to countermand his uncle the prime minister (who’s been in office for 40 years) and issue the order pulling security forces off the streets. Salman gave a nationally televised address calling for dialogue with protesters and opposition leaders.
This was at first rejected by leaders of the parliamentary minority until there was evidence that security forces really were pulled back.
That evidence was forthcoming and protesters, in a rather festive atmosphere, now again occupy Pearl Square in the capital city Manama, just a few miles from the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, guarantor of the oil flow from the Persian Gulf.
Salman is a graduate of the American University in Washington, DC, with a master’s degree from Cambridge University in England.
It was he who pushed for and negotiated the contract with Formula One racing that brought the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. This race is now in grave jeopardy, but is still officially scheduled to take place on March 13th. Teams have already shipped some of their equipment to the Gulf from Barcelona, where they’ve been practicing in the run-up to the globe-spanning, eight month-long season.
The F1 race is the biggest event of the year in Bahrain, a key element in its emerging prestige, and the kingdom has spent billions developing facilities to support it. As you might suppose, F1 racing is not Nascar. It’s very high tech, very cosmopolitan, very big business and big glamour, and very big around the world.
If the race is canceled, there are other venues around the world chomping at the bit to take Bahrain’s place.
Will the peace hold in Bahrain?
It’s essential to the US that it does. It’s telling that it took Obama’s personal intercession to call a halt to the regime violence. Leaders ignored Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has spent a fair amount of time there and just this last December praised the regime for its supposed many reforms, including a recently held election in which the Shiite party managed to lose, allegedly, despite having by far the most voters.
Meanwhile, protests continued against the pro-US regime in Yemen, critical flashpoint in the anti-jihadist fight, and the longtime US bete noire of Libya.
Some have been killed in Yemen, but apparently many more in Libya, which is hard even for Al Jazeera to get reports from. Early this morning, the Libyan regime long headed by Col. Gadaffi cut off the Internet.
Obama is also gauging the fall-out from the US veto late yesterday of a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel for continuing settlements in hotly disputed former Palestinian territories.
He is also monitoring the hijacking of an American yacht, and kidnapping of four Americans, by Somali pirates in retaliation for the conviction of one of their colleagues in a New York court.
Oh, and he has to deal with the Republican House, which has adopted a variety of pro-resource extraction business, social conservative, and major budget cutting measures, leading to the threat of a government shutdown next month.
In his weekend video/radio address from the Intel campus in Oregon, President Barack Obama pushes his “Win the Future” agenda for developing the innovation economy.
Meanwhile, Obama is marshaling the support of top leaders of the innovation economy for his agenda, as discussed here yesterday.
In addition, Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
His plan received a boost yesterday when budget committees in both the state Senate and Assembly approved his budget proposal, with a few changes.
Those changes will go to inter-house conference next week.
Legislative Democrats in committee have approved bigger budget cuts than those adopted under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and far faster than before.
In fact, committees regularly rejected Schwarzenegger budgets out of hand. The cuts came later as part of the Big 5 process with legislative leaders and the governor.
Brown has chosen instead to engage the Legislature as a whole, taking on an endless round of discussions, getting to know individual members.
But since he is doing this on his own — and I do mean, on his own — in a myriad of talks, it’s impossible to monitor precisely what is happening unless one were to shadow the governor 18 hours a day.
Which, A, is not going to happen for a variety of reasons.
And, B, would alter the process due to the observer factor.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
The Bahrain Grand Prix is scheduled to kick-off the globe-spanning Formula One racing season next month, as it did last year. But now this event of the year in Bahrain is, not surprisingly, on the verge of cancellation. Here’s the preview of last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix and F1 season.
** 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 $86.20 per barrel. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $52 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.
Following morning memorial services for those killed in Thursday’s pre-dawn raid on pro-democracy protesters in Manama’s Pearl Square, a few miles from U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters, thousands marched on the site only to be turned back by Bahraini security forces firing into the crowds. Mass protests continued against the U.S. ally in Yemen and against longtime U.S. bete noire Col. Gadaffi in Libya. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands in Cairo celebrated the one-week anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
** QUICK HITS. Congressional Republicans moved today, through votes in the House, to try to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases (carried by a Texan from an oil district), promote offshore oil drilling, block federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and block funding to implement to the national health care law. … In California, Governor Jerry Brown eliminated all government “swag” (what, no Cal Trans cuff links?!), saving about $7 million highly symbolic dollars, and told reporters at a hastily called lunchtime press availability inside the Governor’s Office that he sees March 10th as something of a deadline for getting his revenue plan approved for the ballot and is within “striking distance” of getting his budget deal, which requires a few Republican votes. … Meanwhile, legislative Democrats in their committees have mostly adopted the massive budget cuts to social programs that Brown has called for.
** OBAMA’S ARC OF CRISIS GETS MORE CHAOTIC. If anything, President Barack Obama’s geopolitical situation became more complicated today.
If only today, he may well have mused, had gone as smoothly as his dinner last night with California tech titans. But it didn’t.
Oh, his follow-on event at Intel in Oregon, where he showcased the significance of education and technology in driving the innovation economy, went well enough. But he couldn’t linger to take questions from the press because of how chaotic the world scene has become for him.
Bahrain’s royal family ignored the entreaties from his secretary of state and secretary of defense and again today cracked down violently against peaceful protesters in the capital city Manama, not far from where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is headquartered. There are many casualties, though it’s unclear how many protesters were killed.
Experts on Al Jazeera today speculated that there is a split in the Bahraini royal family, with the longtime prime minister overriding his nephew the king. And there may be pressure from Saudi Arabia — just 15 miles from Bahrain across the causeway — to crack down and avoid transmuting the virus of cultural liberalism which exists in Bahrain, something of a playground, as you might suppose from the presence of the Navy, into the virus of democracy.
Protests continued today against the pro-U.S. leader of Yemen, who has actually been more measured in his response. But it’s unclear if he can survive.
Hundreds of thousands gathered both in Cairo and Alexandria to celebrate the fall of Hosni Mubarak, greeted by smiling troops. But after the demonstrations, Egypt’s new military government said it won’t allow any more strikes.
Obama formally appointed the late Richard Holbrooke’s successor as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. After a number of people turned down the AfPak portfolio, the lucky winner is former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman, an LA native and graduate of UC Santa Barbara.
Grossman, until recently a partner in former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen’s consulting firm, inherits a deteriorating situation in U.S.-Pakistani relations, with authorities refusing to release U.S. consular staffer Raymond Davis, an ex-Green Beret who killed two Pakistanis who were evidently stalking him in Lahore last month.Senator John Kerry’s mission to Pakistan this week to get Davis released ended in failure. An AfPak summit scheduled for next week in Washington was canceled by the U.S. After Pakistani officials indicated they were unlikely to attend.
Then there’s the intractable Israeli-Palestinian situation.
With revolt sweeping the Arab Street, this is probably the worst time for it to be reminded that the U.S., which has historically been on the side of the autocracies, is also on the side of Israel. But Obama’s great friend Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas insisted on pushing forward a UN Security Council resolution denouncing Israel for its continued settlements in the disputed West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Of course, it’s also not a great time for Israel to be pursuing its settlements policies. But if Israel’s governmentreally cared what the rest of the world thinks of it, it wouldn’t have Avigdor Lieberman as its foreign minister.
The Obama Administration is against those, too, but is loathe to sign on to the usual UN criticisms of its troubled ally. Abbas didn’t listen to Obama’s repeated entreaties of the last few days, perhaps because internal evidence of his relative moderation in dealing with Israel had been revealed on Al Jazeera.
So the US ended up today on the losing end of a 14 to 1 UN Security Council resolution today, with even Britain’s Conservative governement joining the international chorus of criticism of Israel. While America’s permament member veto blocks the resolution, thus defeating it, it’s an empty victory at best.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED You can watch live as President Barack Obama speaks at Intel’s start-of-the-art plant in Oregon at 11:35 AM Pacific here on New West Notes.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
** NEW POLL: WHO IS AMERICA’S GREATEST ENEMY? A new Gallup Poll finds, not surprisingly, that Iran is most frequently mentioned when respondents are asked who is America’s greatest enemy.
North Korea and China tie for second.
No other country is in double digits for this, er, honor.
Other than None, which is not a nation.
25% name Iran, while 16% apiece name North Korea and China.
10% say None or no opinion.
Americans’ perceptions of the United States’ greatest enemy are generally responsive to international events. For example, this year marks a sharp decline to 7% in the percentage of Americans who believe Iraq is the greatest U.S. enemy, down from at least 21% in each measurement from 2005-2008, and 38% in 2001 before the Iraq war began. The decline this year likely coincides with the reduction of U.S. military forces in Iraq.
As Americans became less likely to view Iraq as the United States’ greatest enemy after the beginning of the Iraq war, they became more likely to see Iran and North Korea that way.
Now, with military operations in Afghanistan the largest U.S. engagement, the percentage of Americans naming that country as the United States’ greatest enemy has reached a new high of 9%.
Perceptions of Greatest Enemy Vary by Age, Ideology
Americans of most key demographic groups rate Iran as the United States’ greatest enemy, though there are notable exceptions among certain age and ideological groups.
Younger Americans are much less likely than older Americans to regard Iran as the United States’ greatest enemy and more likely to view North Korea this way. …
As a result, North Korea leads Iran as the greatest enemy in the 18- to 29-year-old age group. Americans aged 30 to 49 are about equally likely to mention North Korea, Iran, and China as the greatest U.S. enemy. China generally rates behind Iran and ahead of North Korea as the greatest enemy in the eyes of Americans aged 50 and older.
Political conservatives are twice as likely to name Iran as any other country as the greatest enemy of the United States. Liberals are about evenly divided as to whether Iran or North Korea is the greatest U.S. enemy. And moderates are equally likely to assign China, Iran, and North Korea this status. …
These differences are not apparent by political party, though, as Iran is perceived to be the top U.S. enemy by Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
Enemies, Least Favorite Countries Not Always the Same
In addition to naming Iran as the greatest U.S. enemy, Americans also rate it last in Gallup’s country favorability data. North Korea gets low favorable ratings similar to Iran’s, but Americans are less likely to regard that country as the United States’ greatest enemy, perhaps because they view Iran as more threatening now or because Americans remember the Iranian hostage crisis from 1979-1981.
Americans’ favorability ratings of China are much more positive than those for Iran and North Korea, but a significant proportion of Americans regard China as the United States’ greatest enemy. That likely is a result of the economic threat China poses to the United States, as evidenced by Americans’ perceptions that China is now the leading economic power in the world.
Implications
Americans have become consistent in naming Iran as the greatest U.S. enemy since the Iraq war began. The trend in Americans’ perceptions of the greatest U.S. enemy has been responsive to international events, and given this history, these perceptions are likely to change in the future. This is particularly true as the focus of U.S. foreign and military policy changes over time, as old regimes around the world are replaced with new ones (as in Iraq), and as international threats such as terrorism and nuclear power rise and recede in importance.
Thousands of mourners attended funerals today for protesters killed early Thursday morning in Bahrain.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in California, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.
At 8:30 AM Pacific, Obama departs San Francisco on Air Force One en route to Portland, Oregon.
At 10:05 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in Portland, Oregon.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama tours a semiconductor manufacturing facility at Intel Corp. in Hillsboro, Oregon, a plant dubbed the world’s most advanced.
Obama just named Intel CEO Paul Otellini to his national commission on competitiveness.
At 11:25 AM Pacific, Obama views student demonstrations by Intel Science Talent Search finalists in Hillsboro.
At 11:35 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on the importance of out-educating our competitors.
This will stream live here on NWN. If you wish to mute the video, click on the pause button.
At 1 PM Pacific, Obama departs Portland, Oregon on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 5:30 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 5:45 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
The day is an attempt to begin to put in demonstration Obama’s emerging theme of fostering the innovation economy to “Win the future.”
Last night, at a two hour-plus private dinner at the home of John and Ann Doerr in Woodside south of San Francisco, Obama met with a dozen famous tech execs to discuss just that. Over a meal which reportedly included a nice white fish and salad with shrimp, the president engaged in a free-flowing discussion of how to build the innovation economy, sustain and reform education, grow jobs in the process, and out-compete emerging powers such as China.
The event was not a fundraiser. At a fundraising dinner, the big ticket folks generally get about 10 minutes of the president at their table before he moves on to the next.
This was one table, two hours of the president.
As you can tell from the list below, all boldface names, as the saying goes, there were some major egos and brilliant personalities involved. I have a feeling that Obama held his own.
Here’s who participated: John Doerr, Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Carol Bartz, President and CEO of Yahoo; John Chambers, CEO and Chairman of Cisco Systems; Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter; Larry Ellison, Co-Founder and CEO of Oracle; Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix; John Hennessy, President of Stanford University; Steve Jobs, Chairman, Co-Founder, and CEO of Apple; Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech; Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google; Steve Westly, Managing Partner of The Westly Group and former State Controller of California; and Mark Zuckerberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Facebook.
The president sat between Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs.
In many respects, this is a golden opportunity for Democrats to align themselves permanently with an already emerged yet still emerging sector of the economy that can be even more important in the future.
President Barack Obama had a private dinner meeting last night in Silicon Valley with a dozen famous tech execs. In the official White House photo above, the only one released, Obama speaks with Mark Zuckerberg as Genentech chairman Art Levinson and venture capitalist and former California state Controller Steve Westly look on, with an out-of-focus Google chairman Eric Schmidt to the right.
Meanwhile, things are not going very well in the arc of crisis across the Arab world.
In Bahrain, thousands mourned for protesters killed in a pre-dawn raid by regime security forces in the capital city Manama, a few miles from the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
The memorials reportedly went without much incident. But as protesters took to the streets late today — the time in Bahrain is 11 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time — Bahraini government forces attacked.
There are reportedly many new casualties.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bahrain’s foreign minister yesterday to deplore the violence.
We’ll see what the Obama Administration comes up with now that the violence is continuing.
Protests continue also in Yemen and Libya.
And in Egypt, where hundreds of thousands rallied in Cairo on the one-week anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
It was a festive atmosphere, with troops passing out Egyptian flags to happy demonstrators as they entered Tahrir Square.
But the banks and stock markets remain closed, and protesters want to see some palpable change, including the sacking of Mubarak and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman’s hand-picked new prime minister and the end to the state of emergency declared decades ago.
Meanwhile, the US is attempting to block a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its continued settlements in disputed areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem without resorting to its veto. It’s a tricky proposition, as the US also opposes the settlements.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Legislative hearings are taking place on various elements of Brown’s budget proposal.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $53 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.
While watching a live feed earlier today from Bahrain, I noticed that the country’s foreign minister said that protesters were “evacuated” from the capital city’s main square in a pre-dawn security exercise today. Here is the result of the “evacuation.” Don’t watch if you’re squeamish. Bahrain is headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
** QUICK HITS. The U.S. is moving carefully with regard to today’s bloody crackdown in Bahrain, especially compared to similar situations in Iran and Egypt. Criticism has increased, but remains much more measured. … Governor Jerry Brown today wrote to new House Speaker John Boehner asking him not to pursue cuts in family planning funding to groups that support abortion given the crisis in California health care funding. … Brown’s bare-bones inaugural last month, incidentally, turns out to have raised around $400,000. Don’t know how much was spent, though it’s certainly far less. … A group of California members of Congress, including George Miller and former Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, decried language in the House Republican spending package that they say would wreck efforts to manage the vast Sacramento River Delta and threaten the state’s water supply.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … IF OBAMA LOSES, IT WON’T BE BECAUSE “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.”
** OBAMA’S HIGH TECH DINNER TONIGHT. It’s at a private residence in Woodside, south of San Francisco, and here are the expected attendees:
John Doerr, Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Carol Bartz, President and CEO of Yahoo
John Chambers, CEO and Chairman of Cisco Systems
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter
Larry Ellison, Co-Founder and CEO of Oracle
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix
John Hennessy, President of Stanford University
Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO of Apple
Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google
Steve Westly, Managing Partner of The Westly Group and former State Controller of California
Mark Zuckerberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Facebook
It’s not a fundraiser, it’s a discussion.
I’ll have a report.
** NEW POLL: OBAMA TIED BY GENERIC REPUBLICAN.A new Gallup Poll shows President Barack Obama tied in a race for re-election with a generic Republican.
It’s Obama 45%, nameless Republican 45%.
Of course, that’s not at all how races are run.
U.S. registered voters are evenly split about whether they would back President Barack Obama for re-election in 2012 (45%) or “the Republican Party’s candidate” (45%). This is similar to the results for the same question when it was asked a year ago. …
Results from a parallel question Gallup asked during the presidencies of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush show both of those presidents performing better on this re-elect measure at comparable points in their third years in office than Obama does today.
In polling from October 2001 through January 2004, George W. Bush consistently led an unnamed Democratic opponent, although by a shrinking margin as his job approval rating descended from a post-9/11 reading of 87% to the 50s and 60s. In February 2003, the point in Bush’s presidency comparable to Obama’s presidency today, Bush beat a generic Democrat among registered voters by 47% to 39%.
Gallup trends during George H.W. Bush’s tenure were asked mostly during his third year in office, and show a similar descent in the elder Bush’s standing vis-à-vis an unnamed Democrat. However, Bush’s position switched from a strong lead — 54% to 33% — in February 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, to a slight deficit (39% to 43%) in early January 1992.
Most 2008 Demographic Support Patterns Carry Over to 2012
Women and nonwhites were important elements of Obama’s winning 2008 coalition. Today, a wide gulf in political preferences remains between whites and nonwhites, with the majority of the former favoring the Republican candidate and a larger majority of the latter favoring Obama. Women are five percentage points more likely to say they would vote for Obama than are men (47% vs. 42%), similar to the seven-point gender gap in support for Obama in Gallup’s final pre-election poll in 2008.
Younger voters are one element of Obama’s original coalition that may not be intact heading into 2012. Gallup’s 2008 pre-election poll found 63% of registered voters aged 18 to 34 choosing Obama, while 33% backed his Republican rival, John McCain. In addition, 53% of 35- to 54-year-old voters and 48% of those 55 and older supported Obama in that same poll. By contrast, today a bare majority of the 18- to 34-year-old group, 51%, and 43% of those 35 to 54 say they would vote to re-elect Obama.
Naturally, a large proportion of Democrats, 84%, support Obama for re-election, similar to the 88% of Republicans backing the Republican candidate.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a media briefing at 9:30 AM Pacific and Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the Cabinet meeting on the economic recovery act at 12 noon Pacific. You can watch both live here on New West Notes. If you wish to mute the audio, click on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
The crisis in Bahrain escalated today when security police mounted a pre-dawn raid of the protest encampment in capital city Manama’s Pearl Square. At least four people were killed. Martial law has been declared. Bahrain is headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, a cornerstone of U.S. strategy in the Middle East.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and California.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama then held a meeting on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the Roosevelt Room.
At 9:15 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with the House Democratic Leadership for lunch in the Oval Office.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers the media briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
This event will stream live here on NWN. You can mute the sound by pressing the pause button.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama signs the John M. Roll United States Courthouse Bill in the Oval Office.
The courthouse is being named in honor of the late Judge John Roll, Arizona’s presiding federal judge who was assassinated in January during the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route to Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Air Force One.
At 12:15 PM Pacific, Obama departs Andrews Air Force Base en route to San Francisco, California.
At 5:45 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in San Francisco.
At 6:45 PM Pacific, Obama meets with business leaders in technology and innovation for a private dinner in a private residence south of San Francisco.
The list of 10 people meeting with Obama is very closely held, as is the location of the event, and I won’t play guessing games around it, though Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has been repeatedly identified in the media as one of the participants.
I will report on the event itself and what it means.
Obama goes on to Oregon on Friday, continuing his theme of the innovation economy by touring an Intel plant there.
For his part, at 12 noon Pacific, Biden holds a Recovery Act Cabinet meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Bldg.
Biden’s remarks will stream as live video here on NWN. If you want to mute the audio, click on the pause button.
Meanwhile, things are not going very well in the arc of crisis across the Arab world.
In Egypt, protests continue for more rapid and specific change, especially in economic matters, despite hints from the ruling military government action may be taken against protesters.
There are widespread strikes and the banks and stock exchange are closed.
Protests in Libya have reportedly turned bloody, but it’s hard to get information out of there.
Protests in Yemen are also violent in spurts, and are continuing. These protests are taking place in cities around the deeply impoverished country.
Wily President Saleh’s pledge not to run for re-election in 2013, which briefly mollified protesters, and his longstanding ability to manipulate tribal leaders, is not sufficing to stanch a growing rebellion.
But the biggest news today is out of Bahrain, the Persian Gulf island kingdom of fewer than 800,000 which hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, the guarantor of much of the world’s oil flow.
Peaceful protesters camped in the capital city Manama’s Pearl Square, not far from the Navy base, were raided this morning by security police who brutally and indiscriminately beat and gassed them. At least four people were killed.
The country’s security forces are dominated by imports from South Asia and the Pacific Basin, many of whom do not even speak Arabic and have no ties to the people of Bahrain. This is quite unlike the situation in Egypt, where the army is a conscript force.
Martial law has been imposed and protests banned. But protest leaders pledge massive protests on Friday.
The population is 70% Shiite but the king and most of the parliament are Sunni. 18 members of the 40-member national parliament making up the opposition bloc withdrew after the attacks on the protesters.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bahrain’s foreign minister to deplore the violence.
In another reaction, Formula One racing, which longtime NWN readers know is one of my favorite sports, announced that it is reviewing the status of the Bahrain Grand Prix, currently scheduled for March 13th as the start of its globe-spanning season.
The Bahrain Grand Prix also kicked off the 2010 F1 season, when it was won by former F1 world champion driver Fernando Alonso of Spain, racing for Ferrari. The GP2 race kicking off F1′s feeder circuit, slated for this weekend in Bahrain, has been canceled.
The F1 race is the biggest event of the year in Bahrain, symbol of its modernization.
In Pakistan, Senator John Kerry seems to have failed in his mission to gain the release of U.S. consular employer Ray Davis, an ex-Green Beret who killed two Pakistanis who were stalking him in Lahore last month. A Pakistani judge ruled that the government gets another three weeks to determine if he has diplomatic immunity.
Meanwhile, the scheduled AfPak summit next week in Washington has been canceled as a result of the furor.
Protests against the U.S.-aligned government continued today in Yemen, a key flashpoint in the fight against jihadists.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Legislative hearings are taking place on various elements of Brown’s budget proposal, with pushback anticipated from Democrats as well as Republicans.
Republicans have not yet publicly articulated any alternatives to Brown’s budget or elements they want to see negotiated.
In fact, state Senate minority leader Bob Dutton told the Sacramento Bee yesterday that he doesn’t want to provide any votes for any revenue, doesn’t have negotiating points, and doesn’t care if there have to be over $26 billion in budget cuts.
Thought naturally he refuses to say what should be cut.
Of course, if Brown’s plan works, most of what you hear publicly will be negative. Until it is positive.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $51 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.
New White House press secretary Jay Carney, a former journalist, did his first media briefing today, carried live here on New West Notes. He did well, though he’s no C.J. Cregg. Obama White House events will be carried live here on NWN from now on. If you don’t want to hear the audio, simply click on the pause button.
** QUICK HITS. The Egyptian government is apparently not investigating the sexual assault and beating of CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan last Friday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. She was rescued from a gang of men by 20 Egyptian soldiers. Blatant harassment of women is commonplace in Egypt. … The California Supreme Court agreed today to take up the question of whether or not the proponents of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 have legal standing to defend the law in federal court. A federal judge threw out the initiative, passed in November 2008, and Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown have refused to defend it. The earliest hearing would be in the fall. … Governor Jerry Brown today asked the California State Auditor and the watchdog Little Hoover Commission to each come up with 10 ways to reduce government waste. … California state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, anticipating a supposedly impending Republican demand in negotiation over a solution to the chronic budget crisis, unveiled legislation to consolidate regulations and shorten their time period. Republican legislators have not yet made a substantive reply, or presented their own program. How real is the bill? I haven’t read it. … A coalition of groups launched a TV ad campaign against Brown’s proposed cuts to in-home health care services for senior citizens.
But Obama’s numbers on this score, after a somewhat erratic performance by his administration on Egypt, are down from what they were in past soundings.
Nevertheless, he is rated higher than Presidents Bush and Clinton were at this point in their presidencies.
Not surprisingly, the decline in Obama’s rating is due almost entirely to drops in Republican assessments of him. His support on this question by Democrats and independents remains steady.
Although a majority of Americans (52%) continue to say foreign leaders respect President Barack Obama, this is down from 2010 and 2009. However, Obama’s current position on this measure is more positive than was the case during most of the terms of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. …
In February 2009, shortly after Obama’s presidential inauguration, a soaring 67% of Americans perceived that the world’s leaders respected him. That dropped to 56% last February, and is slightly lower (52%) in this year’s Feb. 2-5 Gallup World Affairs survey.
Still, Obama’s readings on this measure remain historically high.
A few months after 9/11, Bush received 75% and 63% readings on this respect question — but all other readings during the Bush administration were below 50%. That includes the low point in February 2007, when 21% of Americans said world leaders respected Bush. Americans’ views of world leaders’ respect for Obama are also higher than two Gallup measures for Clinton, in 1994 (41%) and 2000 (44%).
Republicans Less Positive Than in 2009 About World Leaders’ Respect for Obama
Predictably, Democrats (76%) are far more likely than Republicans (24%) to say world leaders respect Obama. The decline in Obama’s overall ratings on this measure in the last three years is mainly the result of Republicans’ changing views, which are about half as positive now as they were in 2009. …
Half of Americans Say the World Views the U.S. Favorably
Americans remain slightly more positive than negative when asked their views of the image of the U.S. in the eyes of the world, with 50% holding the belief that the U.S. is seen favorably and 49% unfavorably. This is similar to last year, but more positive than in 2005-2009, when less than half of Americans thought the U.S. was seen favorably.
Prior to 2005, Americans were more positive. Almost three-quarters said the world viewed the U.S. favorably in 2000, and 79% said the same in February 2002. Positive views of the United States’ image drifted downward from that point. Much of the decline in Americans’ views of the U.S. image around the world coincided with international controversy over the Iraq war. …
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO FEED New White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers his first media briefing at 9:30 AM Pacific and President Barack Obama unveils his America’s Great Outdoors Initiative at 1:45 PM Pacific. You can watch both live here on New West Notes. If you wish to mute the audio, click on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events.
Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live webcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
A wave of anti-regime turmoil is sweeping the Arab world, and hitting Iran again as well, with Libya today joining the procession of protest.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, new White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers his first briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. Carney, who has just replaced Robert Gibbs, now a private political advisor to President Obama, was Biden’s communications director and before that a correspondent for Time magazine.
This event will stream live here on NWN. You can mute the sound by pressing the pause button.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
It’s important that the president and the secretary of state be on the same page, and know what that page is, as an historic wave of protest against entrenched regimes sweeps across the Muslim world.
At 11:20 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with the Senate Democratic Leadership in the Oval Office.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on the America’s Great Outdoors initiative in the East Room.
This event will stream live here on NWN. You can mute the sound by pressing the pause button.
On his own today, Biden meets with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of Macedonia in the Roosevelt Room during the afternoon, then in the evening he and Dr. Jill Biden host a dinner for new senators at the Naval Observatory.
The Obama Administration is struggling to understand and keep up with a pace of change in North Africa and the Middle East that threatens to overturn many arrangements beneficial to American interests.
While the wave of protest today hit Libya, which has not exactly been a friend of the U.S., it also continued to intensify in Yemen and Bahrain.
Yemen is a critical flashpoint in the struggle against jihadists who increasingly use the most impoverished nation in the Arab world as a base of operations. That’s not new, as the port of Aden was where the USS Cole was bombed by Al Qaeda in 2000. But it has intensified with the grave pressure against jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Yemen’s poverty is heightened by the fact that it may run out of oil in a decade and already is running out of water.
In Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, King Ahmad promised reforms in an unusual televised address after two protesters were killed by security police. But protesters in the Persian Gulf island nation occupy, Cairo-style, the central Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama not far from the Navy base, and say they aren’t going anywhere.
In the midst of all this, the Obama Administration is working to improve its erratic performance of the past few weeks around Egypt. That includes a rehabilitation of the most consistently erratic top official, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, who made notably off-base comments throughout the phase of the Egyptian crisis that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, delivered what her office billed as a major address yesterday at George Washington University.
In it, she sought to get ahead of the curve of change in the Arab and Muslim world by touting information technology as a tool of liberation. Her theme? “The freedom to connect.”
I’m sure the Wikileaks folks were thrilled.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke yesterday at George Washington University on the need for global Internet freedom as protests spread across the Muslim world.
Obama is also monitoring geopolitical crises in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the still unfolding Wikileaks crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
He’s working on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Legislative hearings are taking place on various elements of Brown’s budget proposal, with pushback anticipated from Democrats as well as Republicans.
Republicans may come up with responses beyond the usual blanket “No” and insistence that specifics aren’t their responsibility by presenting things they want in exchange for some support.
And Democrats may decide they want other cuts than those proposed by Brown.
Or they may not.
Brown got some good news late last night when his preferred candidate, former Assemblyman Ted Lieu, easily won a multi-candidate special election for a vacant LA area state Senate seat.
Brown campaigned with him last week and allowed his endorsement to be used for weeks prior in advertising. With 57% of the vote, Lieu easily avoided a run-off election two months from now, and provided the Democrats with a greatly needed vote now.
Former Assemblywoman Sharon Runner also easily won the special election to replace husband George in a staunchly Republican state Senate seat in the high country north of and above LA.
In other action, Special Counsel to the Governor Anne Gust Brown — also known as the first lady of California, or, as I like to think of it, FLOC — yesterday officially designated one Sutter Brown as the First Dog.
Sutter is the little Welsh Corgi that the governor’s sister, former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, had to leave behind in his, er, care when she moved to ultra-frigid Chicago.
Sutter takes the central role in the civic life of California that the late Dharma Brown, a truly great hound, would have had had death not come far too soon.
Of course, what California really needs is not a First Dog but a First Cat. And not just because I like cats.
Why? Because dogs come when you call them. Whereas cats do not. And the job of governor of California is much like herding cats.
** IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STILL WAY BEHIND THE CURVE ON EGYPT?President Barack Obama’s comeback since the November elections has been very impressive professionally, if not always politically. What has not been at all impressive is how far behind the curve his administration has been on Egypt, a distressing development over the past few weeks that reached a nadir of sorts on Thursday with an epic level of confusion.
There are clear limits to American power. The failure of neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make that obvious. But there should not be many limits to American knowledge. Especially given the limits to American power. …
The real power games have only just begun. And, this administration — stunningly, given Obama’s choice of Cairo for his great address to the Muslim world in 2009 — has been behind the curve repeatedly throughout the crisis thus far. …From my February 11th essay.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0: HOW’S IT GOING?So how’s Jerry Brown 2.0 going? The new/renewed governor of California won a landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman 90 days ago, took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger four weeks ago, and has worked on laying out an austerity-with-revenues budget plan and slowly building his administration ever since.
It’s going, well, well enough. Well enough to begin to straighten out the state’s chronic budget crisis in the first half of this year? We’ll see. … From my January 31st feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in two wars in the region, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
This is up about $51 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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