Pentagon officials today said that other nations need to step up with arms and training for the rag-tag Libyan rebels.
** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama will come to California for fundraisers in Los Angeles and San Francisco April 20th and 21st as part of his national re-election campaign announcement swing. Planning has been underway for the Obama re-elect for months. Meanwhile, no Republican has formally announced. … Late this afternoon, Governor Jerry Brown released a 12-point public pension reform plan, which he says is what he had proposed to Republican legislators. Will this help re-ignite California budget crisis negotiation, especially in light of the awful prospect of an all-cuts budget? … Brown also declared today to be Cesar Chavez Day in California. If that’s a little confusing, since the official state holiday was Monday, today is actually Chavez’s birthday.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … MAD ABOUT MAD MEN.
** CALIFORNIA 2011: A QUIET DAY IN THE DYSFUNCTIONAL CAPITOL. With Governor Jerry Brown having pulled the plug Tuesday on negotiations with Republican legislators, it’s a mostly quiet day in the California budget crisis scene. Brown has gained the decided upper hand in the image wars, especially after state Senate Republican leaders obligingly released their remarkable Christmas wish list of supposed final negotiating points.
Then state Senate Republican leaders Bob Dutton and Bob Huff — I appeared on Which Way LA? with Huff several weeks ago — held a press conference.
Dutton complained that special counsel Anne Gust Brown, also known as California’s first lady, “yelled” at him in a meeting last week. And he didn’t come up with the infamous list of 53 items until late last Friday because nobody asked him.
Actually, Brown was publicly pushing for weeks for a list of final negotiating points, as was widely reported.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, continuing to press on Libya, is the most popular official in the Obama Administration.
** NEW POLL: THE MOST POPULAR OFFICIAL IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS NAMED … CLINTON.A new Gallup Poll shows that the most popular official in the Clinton Administration is actually the one who lost to President Barack Obama in 2008.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, relentlessly in the spotlight after some early missteps on the Arab uprising, is easily the most popular official in the Obama Administration. In fact, she’s near her all-time high, which was achieved at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal when the then first lady benefited from a wave of public sympathy.
Clinton has a whopping 66% favorable rating.
Obama himself is next with a 54% favorable rating. He’s followed by Defense Secretary Bob Gates with a 52% favorable rating, and Vice President Joe Biden with a 46% favorable rating.
What’s the key to Clinton’s success? Having a high profile … and not much criticism.
She’s more popular than the Libyan policy which has thrust her into the center of the spotlight.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating from Americans is now 66%, up from 61% in July 2010 and her highest rating to date while serving in the Obama administration. The current rating is just one percentage point below her all-time high rating of 67%, from December 1998. …
Clinton’s record-high rating came shortly after the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury related to the Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones investigations, matters that engendered Americans’ sympathy for the first lady. However, her subsequent entry into electoral politics — first as a U.S. senator from New York, and later as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination — made her a more polarizing figure, and her favorable rating descended at times into the 40s.
Since Gallup began measuring Clinton’s favorable rating in 1993, there have been several instances when Americans viewed her more unfavorably than favorably — one as recently as February 2008. However, more than 60% of Americans viewed her favorably in all three measures Gallup has taken since she assumed her State Department job, and she scored 65% in January 2009 just prior to President Barack Obama being sworn in.
The latest results are from a March 25-27 Gallup poll conducted while the United States was actively involved in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, a policy Clinton reportedly advocated. The same poll finds Clinton rated more positively than other top administration officials. Obama receives a 54% favorable rating, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, 52%, and Vice President Joe Biden, 46%. …
Clinton enjoys extraordinary popularity among women, and particularly women 50 and older. She also receives support from a solid majority of independents and 40% of Republicans.
Underscoring that views of Clinton and Obama are not one and the same, Clinton is seen in a favorable light by 45% of those who separately say they disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president. Naturally, she is also viewed favorably by 89% of those who approve of Obama’s job performance. …
Clinton is largely following in the footsteps of two well-liked female secretaries of state who came before her — Condoleezza Rice, who served former President George W. Bush during his second term; and Madeleine Albright, who served during former President Clinton’s second term. Rice’s favorable ratings ranged from 59% to 63% (according to Gallup measurements conducted in 2005 and 2006) and Albright’s from 61% to 69% (between 1998 and 2000).
However, Clinton’s popularity does not approach that of Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state in George W. Bush’s first term. Powell’s favorable ratings were consistently above 80%, ranging from 83% to 88%.
Bottom Line
With a 66% favorable rating from Americans, Secretary of State Clinton is more popular than the president, more popular than the vice president, and more popular than she, herself, has been for much of her time in the national spotlight since 1993.
Clinton’s popularity may be partly due to the nature of the secretary of state position, which is somewhat above the fray of partisan politics and focused on defending U.S. interests globally.
Clinton recently ruled out serving another term as secretary of state in a possible Obama second term and has squelched speculation that she might replace Biden as vice president. This has only fueled speculation about what her presidential ambitions might be for 2016. While Clinton’s broad appeal would seem an auspicious foundation for seeking the White House, the presidential track record of secretaries of state is not — the last time a former secretary of state won the presidency was James Buchanan in 1856. Perhaps that is one reason Clinton is looking to end her service on a high note, and in plenty of time to add another presidential-worthy credential to her resume, should the presidency be her goal.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 10 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
UPDATE: White House press secretary Jay Carney’s briefing, scheduled for 9:30 AM Pacific on the first schedule I got, then changed to 10 AM, is now scheduled for 10:30 AM Pacific.
** 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.
President Barack Obama, shifting the focus from Libya back to green tech and the innovation economy, spoke about energy security yesterday at Georgetown University.
** 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.
At 10 AM Pacific, Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 12 noon Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 7:30 PM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Obama is working on the top geopolitical crises, as well as the federal budget impasse. Vice President Joe Biden has Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on the same page around a $33 billion budget cut. Which is far less than the $61 billion that Tea Party types are demanding.
In Libya, the Gaddafi offensive continues, but alliance air strikes have stabilized the situation that Libyan rebels could not.
British and US leaders hint that they may arm the rebels, but NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister, says that the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the military intervention does not allow for that, as it includes an arms embargo on Libya.
Meanwhile, not surprisingly, it turns out that Obama dispatched CIA operatives to Libya weeks ago to scope out the situation on the ground. And British MI-6 agents and SAS commandos are there providing guidance for the air strikes.
The defection of Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, who flew yesterday from Tunisia to London, is a major development, as he is the former Libyan intelligence director and one of Gaddafi’s closest henchmen. His defection has reportedly been followed by those of the country’s oil minister and current intelligence director.
Meanwhile, NATO formally took over leadership of all military operations early this morning. It will be interesting to see if there is any change in the expansive rules of engagement that have applied so far.
In Japan, the slow-motion nuclear disaster continues, with widespread acknowledgment nuclear reactor meltdowns and core breeches. The extent of all that is what is still unclear.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab uprising, AfPak, and Iraq.
While the Libyan rebels fall back, and controversy grows over President Barack Obama’s previously secret dispatch of CIA agents, Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, the regime’s longtime spymaster, has defected to Britain.
** LIBYAN WAR: NEW INTERNATIONAL “CONTACT GROUP” OFF TO A RUGGED START. It certainly wasn’t the most auspicious way for a potential new international order to begin. There were the live reports from London, where dozens of nations came together to hail a humanitarian intervention in Libya and plan for a post-Gaddafi future. Then there was the live Al Jazeera feed from Libya, where rebel forces were doing their best Road Warrior impressions, in this case of high-speed retreat.
The rebels, frankly, looked like rabble, in sharp contrast to the sharply-dressed diplomats gathered in London to discuss Libya’s bright pro-Western future.
After alliance air strikes emboldened them over the weekend, the rebels had taken town after town, advancing to the outskirts of Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. There they encountered a fierce counter-attack that, by the end of Wednesday, had erased nearly all the rebel gains, taking back key oil ports in the process, leaving the civilians of Ajdabiya, just freed from Gaddafi’s guns, in fear once again.
It’s a rugged start for the new international “contact group” on Libya, a newfound forum that, only a few days ago looked like a sure winner, not to mention a potential precedent in international relations. Western leaders, with some Arab leaders involved as well, had cobbled together a new adhocracy to counter, if not remove, a notorious monster attacking his people and threatening to send the “Arab spring” back into bloody winter.
If one ruthless dictator could be stopped, others might be dissuaded. Or at least think twice. …
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went for a bike ride yesterday with London Mayor Boris Johnson before meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, addressing Conservative members of Parliament on Libya, and attending the 80th birthday gala for Mikhail Gorbachev at the Royal Albert Hall.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had quite a day yesterday in London.
While his successor strugglesd with the same intractable Sacramento factors he did, Schwarzenegger put his jet to good use and had a much more enjoyable time.
Schwarzenegger was in the UK capital for Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday gala last night at the Royal Albert Hall. But first he met with London Mayor Boris Johnson, and the two men rode “Boris bikes” for a horde of photographers to promote the plan to reduce cars in the center city.
Then Schwarzenegger met with Prime Minister David Cameron prior to giving a talk to Conservative members of Parliament on the Libyan War. The ex-governor extolled the UK’s involvement in the struggle against Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
Then Schwarzenegger, along with a host of notables, attended the gala celebration of Gorbachev’s 80th birthday.
As part of his opening up of Soviet society in the late 1980s, Gorbachev allowed Schwarzenegger to shoot part of his film Red Heat in Moscow’s Red Square. It was the first Western film to shoot there.
Schwarzenegger has said many times that he considers Gorbachev, with whom he met privately last October in Moscow on his final international trip as governor, to be one of his greatest heroes.
Gorbachev is controversial in Russia for his central role in ending the Soviet Union. But he is lionized in the West for his historic reformer’s role in ending the Cold War.
** CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT? Between its strange state convention last weekend and the ongoing state budget impasse, California’s party of no has seemingly taken center stage in the not so Golden State. But is that really so? And is it a good thing for Republicans if it is? … From my March 26th feature.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end? …
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st 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 three wars in the region, and the Arab uprising underway, 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 $106 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $72 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
President Barack Obama talked energy security and renewable energy today in a speech at Georgetown University.
** QUICK HITS. As Libyan rebels retreated further in the midst of a Gaddafi counter-offensive, Libyan Foreign Minister and ex-spymaster Moussa Koussa defected to the UK, arriving in London late today. … Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was already there for the Gorbachev 80th Birthday Gala. Before that, he joined British Prime Minister David Cameron in an appearance to “pump up” Conservative members of parliament, some of whom have doubts about the Libya War. … Schwarzenegger, incidentally, gave the scoop on that international TV series I’ve mentioned he’s unveiling next week to Entertainment Weekly. In the issue hitting the stands on Friday, April 1st, he will be featured as a cartoon character called “The Governator.”
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … LIBYAN WAR: NEW INTERNATIONAL “CONTACT GROUP” IS OFF TO A RUGGED START.
** CALIFORNIA STILL HAS A BUDGET CRISIS, BUT THE DROUGHT IS OVER. In a blow to future prospects for the already delayed $11 billion water deal painstakingly worked out last year by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders — yes, bipartisanship! — Governor Jerry Brown, as expected, today declared the drought in California to be at an end.
Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought, and a state of emergency, in 2008.
Though rainfall at lower elevations has been nothing special, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at near record levels. And it’s the run-off from the mountains into the state’s rivers and water systems that is determinative.
Still, Brown urged Californians to continue to watch their water use.
“While this season’s storms have lifted us out of the drought, it’s critical that Californians continue to watch their water use,” Brown said in a statement. “Drought or no drought, demand for water in California always outstrips supply. Continued conservation is key.”
For most Californians, who never had to worry about rationing, the drought had long seemed more conceptual than real.
Today’s announcement followed the fourth snow survey of the season — conducted by the state Department of Water Resources (DWR) — which found water content in California’s mountain snowpack to be 165% of the season average for the beginning of April. Most state reservoirs are also above normal storage levels.
According to Brown, DWR estimates it will be able to deliver 70% of requested State Water Project water this year, which may well be adjusted upward.
What does this mean for Schwarzenegger’s water program, which still needs voter approval for its bonds? Not much good. It was held off the 2010 ballot due to the usual left-right fights on water and widespread concern about adding on more bonding costs. Now, with the drought over, and the budget still in crisis, it’s not clear when it will ever get to the ballot.
** NEW POLL: OBAMA’S RATING AS STRONG LEADER IS DOWN, REMAINS STRONG IN OTHER AREAS.A new Gallup Poll shows that President Barack Obama’s rating as a strong leader is down 21 points in the past two years. But he’s still viewed as a strong leader by just over half the country. The poll was taken before his Monday night address on the Libyan War.
Obama’s ratings have remained around the same in other key areas.
And in new measurements, he scores high in honesty and trustworthiness, and relatively low in having a clear plan.
Americans have grown increasingly less likely to view President Obama as a strong and decisive leader since he took office. Roughly half now believe this aptly describes, him compared with 60% a year ago and 73% in April 2009. …
These results are based on a March 25-27 Gallup poll, conducted just before Obama’s widely covered speech on U.S. military action in Libya on Monday night.
The decline in Obama’s leadership rating stands in contrast to the stability in the trend for two other personal dimensions. Fifty-seven percent of Americans believe the president understand the problems Americans face in their daily lives, essentially unchanged from 56% in March 2010. And 51% of respondents believe Obama shares their values, similar to 48% last year. Both ratings are down from early 2009. …
Altogether, Obama’s ratings on being a strong and decisive leader are down a total of 21 percentage points since taking office, compared with a 15-point decline on understanding Americans’ daily problems and a 9-point decline in sharing their values. Obama’s overall job approval rating declined 16 points over the same time period.
The March 25-27 poll also asked Americans to rate Obama on two other dimensions not yet tested since he took office. Sixty-one percent believe Obama is honest and trustworthy, while 36% say he has a clear plan for solving the country’s problems — marking the high and low scores of the five characteristics tested in the poll. …
At 10 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. The event will be webcast live 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.
Despite alliance air strikes against the Gaddafi regime, Libyan rebels have been driven back, losing most of their gains since the weekend.
** 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.
At 8:20 AM Pacific, Obama delivers a speech on his plan for America’s energy security at Georgetown University.
Obama is focusing on green tech and clean energy, which look even better to the public in the wake of Arab revolt-inspired oil price hikes and the Japanese nuclear power debacle.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet for lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 10 AM Pacific, Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room
The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 1:25 PM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Incidentally, the Reagan Library announced early this morning that it is postponing the kick-off Republican presidential debate from this spring to this fall.
The first debate was scheduled for May 2nd at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, outside of Los Angeles. It’s been rescheduled to September 14th.
Why the delay? Because no one had confirmed their participation. Despite the chaotic national and global scene, and the controversy around Obama, Republican presidential campaigns are remarkably slow to get underway.
In comparison, when the Reagan Library held the kick-off debate of the last Republican presidential campaign on May 3rd, 2007, 10 declared and likely candidates took part.
Yesterday at the London Conference on Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined the foreign ministers from some 40 other nations and international organizations. The focus was on forming a contact group to oversee the international military operation and plan for the post-Gaddafi forces.
But in Libya, while they met and discussed the post-Gaddafi era, rebel forces were repulsed by Gaddafi forces defending the dictator’s hometown of Sirte, which some rebels on Sunday night claimed to have taken.
In fact, the rebels have been pushed out of the town of Bin Jawad, which they captured Sunday, and now out of Ras Lanuf, the strategic oil port they recaptured over the weekend.
In Japan, the government admits that it is nowhere near being able to secure the crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The head of the utility company, who had virtually disappeared, is now hospitalized in Tokyo. And officials admit that partial reactor meltdowns and core breeches have occurred.
In Syria, longtime President Bashar Assad delivered a long-awaited national address in which he was expected to lift the country’s state of emergency and announce further reforms. He sacked the entire Cabinet at the beginning of the week.
Instead, Assad announced no reforms and blamed protests sweeping across the country on “conspirators” inspired by Israel and “satellite news channels,” referring to Al Jazeera.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab revolt, AfPak, and Iraq.
Governor Jerry Brown explains why he broke off discussions with Republican legislators on California’s chronic budget crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Late yesterday, Brown called a halt to the interminable negotiations with some Republican legislators on California’s chronic budget crisis.
What’s next is unclear.
But it occurs to me that, with the help of the Republicans, who’ve paradoxically obliged by blocking the people’s right to vote, Brown’s campaign promise not to raise taxes without a public vote is discharged and he can now set about passing a tax extension without an election that the Republican Party won’t allow to take place.
Of course, he still needs to get votes for that.
Which may be easier to do once it’s clear what an all-cuts budget looks like.
Brown, somewhat surprisingly, has been focused almost entirely on an inside game in Sacramento, doing precious few public events in the first three months of his governorship. It certainly hasn’t helped his standing in the polls, as I’ve mentioned a few times. And it has not yielded the dividends for which he’d hoped in terms of solving the budget crisis.
Perhaps it will as he moves to the next phase.
Brown is expected today to declare that the state’s drought is over. With near record levels of snowpack in the High Sierras, it’s clear that any immediate danger to California’s water supply is past.
California’s drought was officially declared by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dealt with a wise-ass Brazilian TV personality last week at the 2nd International Forum on Sustainability in Manaus, Brazil.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in London.
The time in the UK is eight hours later than Pacific time.
While his successor struggles with the same intractable Sacramento factors he did, Schwarzenegger is putting his jet to good use.
Last week, he was in Brazil with director James Cameron for an international forum on sustainable development and a tour of the Amazon region. From there, he went to Lagos, Nigeria, where he joined former President Bill Clinton in presenting awards for civic leadership from ThisDay newspaper group.
Tonight, Schwarzenegger is taking part in the gala celebration of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall.
As part of his opening up of Soviet society in the late 1980s, Gorbachev allowed Schwarzenegger to shoot part of his film Red Heat in Moscow’s Red Square. It was the first Western film to shoot there.
Schwarzenegger has said many times that he considers Gorbachev, with whom he met privately last October in Moscow on his final international trip as governor, to be one of his greatest heroes.
Gorbachev is controversial in Russia for his central role in ending the Soviet Union. But he is lionized in the West for his historic reformer’s role.
Tonight’s event centers on a concert featuring Paul McCartney, Bono, Bryan Ferry, Shirley Bassey, the Scorpions, the London Symphony Orchestra, Jose Carreras, Dmitry Khvorostovsky, and dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet. The proceeds, expected to top $5 million, will go to fight leukemia, the disease which took the life of Raisa Gorbachev.
The event will be emceed by Sharon Stone, Schwarzenegger’s co-star in Total Recall, and Kevin Spacey.
Former British and French Prime Ministers John Major and Michel Rocard, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Israeli President Shimon Peres, and Mayor of London Boris Johnson will join Schwarzenegger in honoring Gorbachev, whose actual birthday was March 2nd.
Next week, Schwarzenegger is in France to unveil an international TV series he’s involved in.
** CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT? Between its strange state convention last weekend and the ongoing state budget impasse, California’s party of no has seemingly taken center stage in the not so Golden State. But is that really so? And is it a good thing for Republicans if it is? … From my March 26th feature.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end? …
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st 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 $104 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $70 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.
Today’s London summit on Libya drew leaders from 40 nations and several international agencies.
** QUICK HITS. Late this afternoon, Governor Jerry Brown officially called off negotiations with Republican state legislators on California’s chronic budget crisis, complaining about a kaleidoscopic list of collateral demands (which was helpfully provided to the press by state Senate Republican leaders late last Friday). What’s next? Stay tuned. … While top officials of 40 nations and several international agencies discussed the post-Gaddafi future of Libya today in London, Gaddafi forces routed Libyan rebels in another counter-offensive, threatening their just renewed hold on the strategic oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Brega. … A newly formed Libya contact group, overseeing the intervention, will meet in two weeks in Doha, Qatar, home of Al Jazeera.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DOES LIBYA POINT THE WAY TO A NEW INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION?
** JERRY BROWN ISSUES STATEMENT HALTING CALIFORNIA BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS. A little after 4 PM, Governor Jerry Brown issued the following statement calling a halt to negotiations on California’s chronic budget crisis. Of course, this takes the issue out of the weeds and throws it into the laps of Republican legislators.
“Yesterday, I stopped the discussions that I had been conducting with various members of the Republican party regarding our state’s massive deficit.
The budget plan that I put forth is balanced between deep cuts and extensions of currently existing taxes and I believe it is in the best interest of California. Under our constitution, however, two Republicans from the Assembly and two from the Senate must agree before this matter can be put to the people.
Each and every Republican legislator I’ve spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote unless I agree to an ever changing list of collateral demands.
Let me be clear: I support pension reform, regulatory reform and a spending cap and offered specific and detailed proposals for each of these during our discussions. While we made significant progress on these reform issues, the Republicans continued to insist on including demands that would materially undermine any semblance of a balanced budget. In fact, they sought to worsen the state’s problem by creating a $4 billion hole in the budget.
One glaring example is the taxation of multinational corporations. My budget plan requires that gigantic corporations be treated the same as individual taxpayers and not be allowed to choose their preferred tax rate.
This is the so-called single sales factor. The Republicans demand that out-of-state corporations that keep jobs out of California be given a billion dollar tax break that will come from our schoolchildren, public safety and our universities. This I am not willing to do.
Much is at stake, and in the coming weeks I will focus my efforts on speaking directly to Californians and coming up with honest and real solutions to our budget crisis.
** FAR RIGHT NATIONAL GROUP RUNS RADIO ADS AGAINST REPUBLICAN SENATORS IN CALIFORNIA BUDGET CRISIS. In a sign of deep concern for the reflexive anti-government lobby, Americans for Prosperity, the national right-wing group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, just started running a 60-second radio ad targeting two Central Valley legislators who are negotiating with Governor Jerry Brown.
The ad urges state Senators Sal Canella or Ceres and Tom Berryhill of Modesto to vote against any budget compromise allowing a special election to extend temporary tax hikes.
** NO MAD MEN TILL 2012. Oh, well. It’s not a surprise, and it certainly frees up a lot of my writing time.
Mad Men won’t be back this year. The three-time Emmy winner for best drama has fallen prey to tortured negotiations between the network, the studio, and creator Matthew Weiner.
Meanwhile, the Season 4 DVD/Blu-ray release went live today.
What’s the big dispute? I don’t know all of it, but there were reportedly demands for more product placement, a two-minute cut in time per episode, and the elimination of two major characters.
Which, incidentally, are not resolved.
Something not unlike this happened with The Sopranos, which, after increasingly long gaps, went nearly two years between Seasons 5 and 6.
Only 10% favor the classic American exceptionalism argument pushed by many on the right, for the U.S. to take the lead role. Most (nearly two-thirds) think that American should have a major role or a minor role — however those might be defined, of course. And 22% take the classic isolationist or far left view and think the U.S. should not be involved at all.
Naturally, we hear most from the extremes who represent less than a third of the country.
Prior to President Barack Obama’s speech to the U.S. on Libya Monday night, 10% of Americans said the U.S. should take the lead role in the multi-national military campaign in Libya and 29% said it should have a major role. The plurality, 36%, favors a minor role for the U.S., while 22% think the country should withdraw entirely. …
These results come from a March 25-27 USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted as the Obama administration was negotiating with the United States’ Western allies to turn command for the Libya campaign over to NATO.
That agreement, announced Monday, is likely to be welcomed by Americans, relatively few of whom want the U.S. to play either the leading role or withdraw altogether. Republicans are slightly more in favor of a major role for the U.S., while independents and Democrats lean more toward a minor role. …
The formal goal of the NATO Libya mission is expressly humanitarian — attempting, via a no-fly zone, to prevent Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from carrying out his threats to kill civilians associated with rebel forces. However, Western leaders, including Obama, have made various statements along the lines of “Gadhafi must go” that have raised questions about what the ultimate scope of the mission will be.
The American public is closely divided on this question: 45% say the goal of military actions being conducted in Libya should be limited to maintaining a no-fly zone and weakening that government’s military; 44% say the mission should be expanded to removing Gadhafi from power.
Republicans and Democrats are slightly more likely to favor expanding the mission to remove Gadhafi while independents lean toward the narrower goal of enforcing a no-fly zone. The slight majority of conservatives favor toppling Gadhafi while moderates and liberals tend to favor enforcing the no-fly zone. …
Roughly 7 in 10 Americans report they are following the news about Libya very or somewhat closely — on par with public attention to the recent uprising in Egypt, and fairly high relative to interest in other news events Gallup has polled on over the past decade. …
President Barack Obama spoke Monday at the National Defense University in Washington on the military intervention in Libya.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and New York.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 10:15 AM Pacific, Obama departs Andrews Air Force Base on Air Force One en route to New York City.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama arrives in New York.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at the dedication of the Ronald H. Brown United States Mission to the United Nations Building at the USUN Building in New York.
A5 4 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a DNC event at the Red Rooster Restaurant.
At 6:05 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a DNC event at the The Studio Museum.
At 7:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs New York on Air Force One en route to Andrews Air Force Base.
At 8 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Marine One.
At 8:15 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
While in New York, Obama will do one-on-one interviews with the news anchors for NBC, ABC, and CBS, following on his address last evening on the Libya War.
The response to his address was generally favorable, but broke mostly along now very predictable political lines.
Obama is monitoring today’s London Conference on Libya, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has joined the foreign ministers from some 40 other nations and international organizations.
The focus was on forming a contact group to oversee the international military operation and plan for the post-Gaddafi forces.
But in Libya, rebel forces were repulsed by Gaddafi forces defending the dictator’s hometown of Sirte, which some rebels on Sunday night claimed to have taken. In fact, the rebels have been pushed out of the town of Bin Jawad, which they captured yesterday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking during today’s London Conference on Libya, called for the world “to speak with a single voice” to longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi forces are now shelling the strategic oil port of Ras Lanuf, which the rebels recaptured over the weekend.
In Japan, the government admits that it is nowhere near being able to secure the crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Plutonium has now leaked out of the facility, where partial reactor meltdowns and reactor core breeches have occurred.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the government is on “maximum alert” on the nuclear power crisis.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab revolt, AfPak, and Iraq.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
His negotiations with Republican legislators continued yesterday and will continue today.
** CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT? Between its strange state convention last weekend and the ongoing state budget impasse, California’s party of no has seemingly taken center stage in the not so Golden State. But is that really so? And is it a good thing for Republicans if it is?
Surely the spectacle of the Republicans’ state convention in Sacramento did nothing more than further cement the party’s reputation as an increasingly narrow club of ideologues. And during the week, most Republican legislators mirrored just that, though some continue to negotiate with Governor Jerry Brown. But it remains to be seen how serious they are, and if their ultimate goal is to shoot the moon and try to look good.
After nearly three months of talks, Brown has been asking Republicans for a “term sheet” of what it will take to close the deal. Finally, late on Friday, Republicans released it. What it is, is a Christmas wish list, filled with items unrelated to the budget crisis, including moving the state’s primary election. Of course, that list was put out by Republican leaders in the Legislature, not most of the legislators who’ve been negotiating with Brown. … From my March 26th feature.
After being repulsed by Gaddafi forces defending the dictator’s hometown of Sirte, Libyan rebels were pushed back further, forced to abandon the town of Bin Jawad they had captured the day before.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st 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.
U.S. F-16 fighter jets and A-10 attack planes took off from and landed this morning at Aviano Air Base in Italy.
** 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 $105 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $71 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.
Defending the first war launched on his watch, President Barack Obama declared tonight that the U.S. intervened in Libya to prevent a slaughter of civilians. Obama said the move stopped most of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s attacks.
** QUICK HITS. While Gaddafi forces are trying to make a stand at Moamma Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa has reportedly traveled out of the country to Tunisia on “private business.” Is the regime starting to splinter? … As expected on this Cesar Chavez Day state holiday, a quiet day in California’s chronic budget crisis.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DOES LIBYA POINT THE WAY TO A NEW INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION?
** FROM THE OBAMA ADDRESS ON LIBYA.
“To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians.”
“When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That is what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.”
“So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.”
“If we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq.”
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 4:30 PM Pacific, President Barack Obama speaks about the Libyan War at the National Defense University in Washington. His address will be netcast live 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: WATER AND AIR POLLUTION TOP ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS. A Gallup Poll from early March shows that Americans are most concerned about water and air pollution, and not so focused on longer range concerns such as climate change and sprawl development.
In an era of economic tough times, even with recovery happening, people tend to focus more on the immediate. That seems to be the case with this latest Gallup Poll. There’s widespread concern about potential water pollution, which I hadn’t realized was a big issue, and lessened concern about climate change, which is actually already underway, with 2010 one of the hottest years on record.
With Earth Day about a month away, Americans tell Gallup they worry the most about several water-related risks and issues among nine major environmental issues. They worry least about global warming and loss of open spaces. …
At least three in four Americans surveyed in Gallup’s 2011 Environment poll say they worry a great deal or a fair amount about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, pollution of drinking water, and the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water for household needs.
Air pollution is nearly as high a concern for Americans, with 72% worried a great deal or a fair amount about it.
A little more than 6 in 10 worry about the related problems of extinction of plant and animal species and the loss of tropical rain forests. Slightly fewer worry about urban sprawl and loss of open spaces, while barely half, 51%, worry about global warming.
The poll was conducted March 3-6, prior to the emergence of an earthquake- and tsunami-generated nuclear crisis in Japan that has raised Americans’ own concerns about nuclear power.
The current levels of public concern about various environmental problems are essentially unchanged from 2010. However, Americans are less worried today than they were 10 years ago about all eight issues Gallup measured in 2001. The decline over the past decade spans a period when the public often expressed surging concern about terrorism, the Iraq war, gas prices, and the economy. …
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a slightly steeper drop-off in concern about several issues that aren’t directly related to daily survival, such as the loss of tropical rain forests and urban sprawl. …
Following major gains as a result of alliance air strikes, Libyan rebels have advanced to the outskirts of Sirte, longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s hometown.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A very big week ahead in presidential politics, and in California politics.
In presidential politics, President Barack Obama deals with the Libyan War, Japan’s humanitarian and nuclear crises, the spreading Arab revolt, and an impasse over the federal budget.
In California politics, Governor Jerry Brown keeps pushing for his state budget compromise, with more Republican legislators acknowledging they will allow a tax extension vote. Now if only they can drop the amateurish, possibly grandstanding stance of negotiating via Christmas wish list. One way or the other, Brown will soon re-emerge publicly after this long and uncharacteristic stretch of private maneuvering.
Obama delivers a major address Monday evening on America’s leading role in the international military intervention in Libya. His address will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
Yesterday he dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to the Sunday chat shows where they emphasized the multilateral nature of the intervention and discussed the imminent threat that the Gaddafi regime had posed to civilians in Benghazi and elsewhere.
In Brussels, NATO leaders reached agreement on plans to add the more expansive “all means necessary” to protect civilians portion of the United Nations resolution to the no-fly zone and naval blockade that NATO has already agreed to take on.
Meanwhile, alliance air strikes by French, British, and American forces have paved the way for Libyan rebels to regain the offensive against Gaddafi’s much better armed troops.
The recapture of Ajdabiya has been followed in close succession by the recapture of the strategic oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf. This removes much of the country’s oil export capacity from Gaddafi’s hands.
Now Libyan rebels are driving on Sirte, further down the coast toward Tripoli. Sirte is Gaddafi’s hometown.
But alliance air power has not yet broken Gaddafi’s siege of Misurata, the western Libyan city taken early on by protesters. Gates talked yesterday, as he has in recent days, of the prospect of changing out some of the current air assets, replacing fast attack jets with “low and slow” propeller-driven aircraft which can linger over an area and deliver sustained firepower. These craft, of course, are also more prone to being shot down by shoulder-fired rockets.
To date, there have been no casualties sustained by alliance forces.
Clinton will now travel to London for a critically important meeting on Tuesday with European, North American, Arab, and African foreign ministers and other senior officials. The purpose of the meeting is to establish an international “contact group” to oversee the intervention in Libya. This has fascinating new implications for geopolitics, and I’ll be writing about them.
Elsewhere in the Arab revolt, more protesters were killed in Syria after demonstrations spread across the country on Friday. But the nation’s longtime president is signaling that he will lift a decades-long state of emergency and will address the nation this week.
Protests have cropped up in Jordan. And they continue in Yemen, where an exit strategy is reportedly underway for that country’s longtime pro-American leader. But it hasn’t happened yet.
In Japan, government officials are acknowledging that a nuclear reactor core breech has almost certainly taken place. Actually, three reactor cores appear to have been breeched. As usual, information is spotty and at times contradictory, but radiation levels have risen both within the stricken nuclear plant and around it, both on land and sea.
The government acknowledges that it has hundred of millions of gallons of radioactive water on its hands inside the plant. It’s now pointing fingers at the power company for all the bad information.
Obama sent the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Japan to help with the effort, and fresh water is now being used to cool the broken reactors courtesy of the Navy.
Japan’s nuclear power crisis has just had a big political impact in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel — who had reversed a previous government’s plan to phase out nuclear power — had already executed a dramatic switch back by temporarily closing seven aging nuclear plants.
On Sunday, Merkel’s Christian Democrats lost the election in the state of Baden-Württemberg, one of its longtime strongholds. Conservatives had held power in the state since 1953. Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats was beaten by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
In fact, there is a good chance that a Green will become the governor of Baden-Württemberg. This is no hippie enclave on the Pacific Coast. It’s an industrial powerhouse, home to Daimler and Porsche, a state of some 11 million people with its capital in Stuttgart.
In California politics, negotiations on the chronic California budget crisis have both intensified and soured.
Republican legislators, challenged by Brown to present final negotiating points — what he calls a “term sheet” — have instead come up with a frankly preposterous list of 53 items, many of them having nothing to do with solutions to the chronic budget crisis.
Brown does not want to discuss in the media precisely what he thinks of this, for obvious reasons.
What do I think?
It may be a sign of bad faith.
It may be a signal/sop to the conservative base.
It may be irrelevant.
After all, this list was released by politicians who have not been doing most of the negotiating directly with Brown.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 7:30 AM Pacific, he took part in an education town hall hosted by Univision at Bell Multicultural High School.
At 4:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers an address on Libya at the National Defense University.
His speech will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
Obama is spending the day behind closed doors prepping for the speech and dealing with a variety of crises, mostly geopolitical.
Today is Cesar Chavez Day in California. Martin Sheen and Edward James Olmos talk about the importance of their friend’s contributions to our heritage.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Today is Cesar Chavez Day, so don’t expect any action out of the Legislature or elsewhere on a state holiday.
Jerry Brown, of course, was a friend and ally of Cesar Chavez. He served as a pallbearer at Chavez’s funeral in Delano on April 30, 1993, which I also attended.
** CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT? Between its strange state convention last weekend and the ongoing state budget impasse, California’s party of no has seemingly taken center stage in the not so Golden State. But is that really so? And is it a good thing for Republicans if it is?
Surely the spectacle of the Republicans’ state convention in Sacramento did nothing more than further cement the party’s reputation as an increasingly narrow club of ideologues. And during the week, most Republican legislators mirrored just that, though some continue to negotiate with Governor Jerry Brown. But it remains to be seen how serious they are, and if their ultimate goal is to shoot the moon and try to look good.
After nearly three months of talks, Brown has been asking Republicans for a “term sheet” of what it will take to close the deal. Finally, late on Friday, Republicans released it. What it is, is a Christmas wish list, filled with items unrelated to the budget crisis, including moving the state’s primary election. Of course, that list was put out by Republican leaders in the Legislature, not most of the legislators who’ve been negotiating with Brown. … From my March 26th feature.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st 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 $105 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $71 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.
With the regime’s resistance increasingly shattered by air strikes, Libyan rebels are on the offensive.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DOES LIBYA POINT THE WAY TO A NEW INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION?
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama is preparing a major address Monday evening on America’s leading role in the international military intervention in Libya.
Today he dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to the Sunday chat shows, where they discussed the imminent threat that the Gaddafi regime had posed to civilians in Benghazi little more than a week ago after weeks of killing protesters and emphasized the multilateral nature of the intervention.
In Brussels, NATO military leaders reached agreement on plans to add the more expansive “all means necessary” to protect civilians portion of the United Nations resolution to the no-fly zone and naval blockade that NATO has already agreed to take on. But NATO ambassadors are still discussing the matter.
Meanwhile, alliance air strikes by French, British, and American forces have paved the way for Libyan rebels to regain the offensive against Gaddafi’s much better armed troops.
The recapture of Ajdabiya has been followed in close succession by the recapture of the strategic oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf. This removes much of the country’s oil export capacity from Gaddafi’s hands.
Now Libyan rebels are driving on Sirte, further down the coast toward Tripoli. Sirte is Gaddafi’s hometown.
But alliance air power has not yet broken Gaddafi’s siege of Misurata, the western Libyan city taken early on by protesters. Gates talked today, as he has in recent days, of the prospect of changing out some of the current air assets, replacing fast attack jets with “low and slow” propeller-driven aircraft which can linger over an area and deliver sustained firepower. These craft, of course, are also more prone to being shot down by shoulder-fired rockets.
To date, there have been no casualties sustained by alliance forces.
Clinton will now travel to London for a critically important meeting on Tuesday with European, North American, Arab, and African foreign ministers and other senior officials. The purpose of the meeting is to establish an international “contact group” to oversee the intervention in Libya.
This has fascinating new implications for geopolitics, and I’ll be writing about them.
Elsewhere in the Arab revolt, several more protesters were killed in Syria after demonstrations spread across the country on Friday. But the nation’s longtime president is signaling that he will lift a decades-long state of emergency and will address the nation tonight.
In Japan, government officials are acknowledging that a nuclear reactor core breech has almost certainly taken place. As usual, information is spotty and at times contradictory, but radiation levels have risen both within the stricken nuclear plant and around it, both on land and sea.
Late Saturday the government reported that radiation inside the facility had reached 10 million times normal. Now the government says that is false, that the worker who took that reading didn’t take a second to verify it. No kidding. But the government can’t say what the radiation level is.
It does acknowledge that it has hundred of millions of gallons of radioactive water on its hand inside the plant.
Japan’s nuclear power crisis has just had a big political impact in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel — who had reversed a previous government’s plan to phase out nuclear power — had already executed a dramatic switch back by temporarily closing seven aging nuclear plants.
Today Merkel’s Christian Democrats lost the election in the state of Baden-Württemberg, one of its longtime strongholds. Conservatives had held power in the state since 1953.
Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats was beaten by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
In fact, there is a good chance that a Green will become the governor of Baden-Württemberg. This is no hippie enclave on the Pacific Coast. It’s an industrial powerhouse, home to Daimler and Porsche, a state of some 11 million people with its capital in Stuttgart.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama delivers a report on the new Libyan War.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama will deliver a major address on US involvement in the international military intervention in Libya on Monday. The address is scheduled for 4:30 PM Pacific from the National Defense University in at Fort McNair in Washington.
His speech will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
Needless to say, he’s prepping this weekend for the speech.
After returning from Latin America, Obama has spoken extensively with congressional leaders about his moves on Libya, and congressional leaders are increasingly supporting him after some early coverage was dominated by complaints by Dennis Kucinich and the like. (A nice man whom I’ve known for a long time, but …)
But very serious questions remain about how this plays out, and what implications it holds for the future.
After appearing on the Sunday chat shows with Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes to London for meetings on Tuesday with European, North American, Arab, and African leaders on the formation of an international “contact group” to oversee the intervention in Libya.
Fighter jets from Qatar have begun flying missions over Libya and more fighter jets are on their way from the United Arab Emirates.
NATO is still working out how to take over all of the mission from the US. It has already taken responsibility for the no-fly zone and the naval blockade. But the “all necessary means” portion of the UN resolution, intended to directly or indirectly protect civilians, gives alliance forces a hunting license to use against Gaddafi regime forces besieging or potentially besieging populated areas.
Canada’s Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard will be the NATO commander for the unified mission. But there is a catch, because, as you may know, NATO itself always has a US officer as its supreme military commander. That is U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who has been negotiating with Turkey, the stumbling block on the more expansive part of the mission, on how to go about this.
And General Bouchard will work out of the NATO command center in Naples, Italy, where he will be supervised by U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear, a long-ago associate of mine, who is the commander of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command, as well as commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa.
Locklear is also the operational commander of what’s been happening so far. He has been directing Operation Odyssey Dawn from USS Mount Whitney in the Mediterranean. The Mount Whitney, named after the California peak that is the tallest mountain in the Lower 48 States — which many of us have climbed, as it’s really more of a very stiff hike to its 14,500 foot peak — is a highly sophisticated command and control ship that serves as the regular flagship of the Navy’s 6th Fleet.
While Locklear is the operation commander of the Libyan War effort, the overall commander is U.S. Army General Carter Ham. He is the commander of America’s Africa Command, the newest unified theater command in the Armed Forces. And Libya is technically in Africa. But Africa Command is more of an operational concept than a reality, with only 3600 personnel and a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
Locklear’s Naples headquarters and command ship in the Med is far closer to the action, and he has most of the U.S. forces in play under his direct command, so he is the mission commander. Until the Canadian general takes over. But he will report to, yes, Locklear, who out-ranks him (four stars to three), supersedes him in the NATO command structure, and is in charge of the base that Bouchard will be working from.
I hope that’s clear enough.
Meanwhile, after intense air strikes Friday night and early Saturday morning against Gaddafi regime armor and artillery around Ajdabiya, Libyan rebels have recaptured the city. They then pressed forward to the strategic oil port of Brega and, according to several reports, have already recaptured it.
British, French, and American air strikes destroyed Gaddafi regime tanks and artillery and enabled Libyan rebels to recapture the key city of Ajdabiyah after a battle consuming all of Friday night into the dawn hours of Saturday.
While this plays out, massive protests have erupted in Syria, where that country’s anti-American leadership reacted by shooting up the crowds, killing a few dozen demonstrators.
Protests have cropped up again in Jordan, where two demonstrators were reportedly killed.
And they continue in Yemen, where an exit strategy is reportedly underway for that country’s longtime pro-American leader. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Then there is Japan. What to say about Japan? What an incredible, multi-layered set of disasters in one of the most advanced nations in the world.
The embattled Japanese government, elected as reformers only to see one prime minister forced to resign and another, current PM Naoto Kan, with an approval rating under 20% BEFORE the earthquake, is now blaming the power company for the endless problems and confusing messages in the ongoing nuclear power crisis.
Most believe that a reactor core breech has occurred, which accounts for high levels of radioactivity in the ocean near the plant.
U.S. officials have insisted that Japan start using fresh water rather than sea water — which is very corrosive — to try to cool the reactors. The Navy is sending barges carrying a half-million gallons of fresh water to the Fukushima area.
Many nations are now banning the importation of a variety of Japanese foods.
Radiation levels have spiked in the sea near Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant.
On another somber note, former Congresswoman and Ambassador Geraldine Ferraro died today of cancer. Ferraro was a three-term congresswoman from New York when former Vice President Walter Mondale picked her as his running mate in 1984. The Mondale-Ferraro ticket, running against President Ronald Reagan on a platform of raising taxes, lost in a landslide.
Ferraro went on to lose two races for the U.S. Senate before President Bill Clinton appointed her as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission. She later appeared as a cable news commentator and co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, then in 2008, as a Hillary Clinton backer, insisted that Barack Obama would not be a serious presidential candidate if he were not black.
Ferraro was never my favorite politician, but she was a very articulate and spirited person and an important trailblazer and I was pleased to vote for her nomination for the vice presidency at the Democratic national convention in San Francisco.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
** CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT? Between its strange state convention last weekend and the ongoing state budget impasse, California’s party of no has seemingly taken center stage in the not so Golden State. But is that really so? And is it a good thing for Republicans if it is?
Surely the spectacle of the Republicans’ state convention in Sacramento did nothing more than further cement the party’s reputation as an increasingly narrow club of ideologues. And during the week, most Republican legislators mirrored just that, though some continue to negotiate with Governor Jerry Brown. But it remains to be seen how serious they are, and if their ultimate goal is to shoot the moon and try to look good.
After nearly three months of talks, Brown has been asking Republicans for a “term sheet” of what it will take to close the deal. Finally, late on Friday, Republicans released it. What it is, is a Christmas wish list, filled with items unrelated to the budget crisis, including moving the state’s primary election. Of course, that list was put out by Republican leaders in the Legislature, not most of the legislators who’ve been negotiating with Brown. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
As of this morning, he has no scheduled public events.
Negotiations on the chronic California budget crisis have both intensified and soured.
Republican legislators, challenged by Brown to present final negotiating points — what he calls a “term sheet” — have instead come up with a frankly preposterous list of 53 items, many of them having nothing to do with solutions to the chronic budget crisis.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st feature.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET). … From my March 15th 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.
Former Congresswoman and Ambassador Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for vice president on a major party ticket, died today of cancer.
** 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 $105.40 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $71 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The turmoil in Libya has created a humanitarian crisis.
** QUICK HITS. Negotiations all over the place. … NATO is getting closer to taking over not just the no-fly zone and naval blockade in the Libyan conflict but also the direct suppression of Gaddafi regime ground forces now being carried out by French, British, and US forces. But Turkey has not quite signed off on the deal yet. … A Canadian general, Lt. Gen Charles Bouchard, former deputy commander of the the North American Air Defense Command, will be the NATO mission commander for Libya. Under the supervision of an American admiral currently running things. (I’ll get into this tomorrow.) … Meanwhile, Canada’s moderate conservative government lost a no-confidence vote, over tax cuts and the purchase of stealth fighters, and will face voters shortly in an election it’s favored to win. … Yemen’s longtime leader is negotiating an exit strategy, with the fate of family and followers key. … Protests in Syria spread across the country today, with the regime killing dozens in a crackdown. … Japan’s nuclear power crisis is no closer to resolution, with new information hard to get. … And in some unadulterated good news, California’s unemployment rate at last started going down, to 12.2%, with nearly 100,000 new jobs added last month. That’s the biggest one-month gain in over 20 years.
** CALIFORNIA’S EVER EXCITING BUDGET CRISIS. So what’s new today? Well, legislative Republicans have come up with a “term sheet,” as Governor Jerry Brown called it the other day. Or “wish list” as some others might describe it.
Will Democratic interest groups buy it, or some version thereof? That’s a little bit unclear, since it’s supposed to be “secret.”
You know, after years of this with Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m not finding it much more fascinating with Jerry Brown. In fact, as I’ve mentioned to both the current and former governor, I’m basically waiting for resolution.
But the talks continue. On a variety of levels. And at some point, reality will dawn for all involved.
Or will it?
Incidentally, California government is about to enter a holiday weekend, with Cesar Chavez Day coming up on Monday.
So we get at least a few more days to hang in suspense. Though I’m finding the state of the command structure for the Libyan War to hold a bit more intrigue.
** NEW POLL SHOWS HUCKABEE THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL FRONTRUNNER, BY A LITTLE.A new Gallup Poll in the slow-starting Republican presidential race gives Mike Huckabee a slight edge over Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, with Newt Gingrich the only other candidate in double digits.
The Reagan Library in Simi Valley outside Los Angeles will host the first Republican presidential debate on May 2nd.
Huckabee has shown by far the most movement in the crowded GOP field, moving from 12% last September to 19% today.
In the same period, Romney, who most insiders had expected to be the clear frontrunner by this point, has dropped from 19% to 15%.
Palin also has dropped, from 16% to 12%.
Gingrich has stayed about the same, at 10%.
One factor behind Palin’s drop is probably the emergence of Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who sounds more and more like a presidential candidate. She wasn’t measured in September, but now has 5% in the Gallup Poll, just behind Ron Paul’s steady 6%.
Indiana Governor and former Bush budget director Mitch Daniels has 4%, and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (who just announced a formal exploratory committee and was finalist to be John McCain’s running mate) has 3%.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a former Reagan White House political director-turned-super lobbyist who headlined last weekend’s California Republican Party convention, has 2%, along with former Utah Governor and Obama Administration Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.
If Huckabee doesn’t run, Romney and Palin essentially tie for the lead, with Gingrich a close third.
If Palin doesn’t run, Huckabee’s edge over Romney expands, to 23-16.
If Huckabee and Palin both don’t run, Romney has a 22-16 edge over Gingrich.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 10 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. The event will be netcast live 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.
A nuclear reactor core breech may have occurred at Japan’s crippled and leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10 AM Pacific, Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 1:35 PM Pacific, Obama hosts a reception for Greek Independence Day in the East Room.
Japanese officials, who have dribbled out information on the nuclear situation, much of it contradictory, now say that they suspect a reactor core breech has occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Two workers wading in a pool of radioactive water were hospitalized with severe burns.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan described the situation as “grave and serious.” He went on to say, in understated but ominous fashion: “We are not in a position where we can be optimistic.”
Many nations are now banning the importation of a variety of Japanese foods.
In the Libyan War, air strikes continue, and NATO will take over management of the no-fly zone tomorrow. It may also take over the strikes against dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s forces, now being carried out by French, British, and US forces. But that has not been worked out yet.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes to London on Tuesday for meetings with European, North American, Arab, and African leaders on the formation of an international “contact group” to oversee the intervention in Libya.
She and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, now in Israel where yet another crisis brews in the wake of several terrorist murders of Israelis, will appear on the Sunday chat shows to discuss the Libyan War.
Gaddafi received another setback today when African Union Commission Chairman Jean Ping called for free elections in Libya. Gaddafi seized power in a military coup 42 years ago and has ruled ever since.
African Union leaders are meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with Libyan representatives to try to broker a ceasefire.
The African Union has been mostly silent about the Libyan uprising and has opposed the current military intervention. Rebuffed as too much of a weirdo and wild card by Arab League powers, Gaddafi was a prime mover in the African Union’s formation, served as its chairman, and has spread a lot of oil money around the organization and its members. So this move against him is a significant sign of slippage for him.
Protests continued today in Yemen and Syria, and started up again in Bahrain.
In Yemen, embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh clung to power as his supporters organized a large rally lauding his rule. Saleh, a key ally in the US struggle against Al Qaeda, offered up yet another of his inventive rationales, this time saying that he would like to step down but there is no one who can replace him.
In Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, a planned “Day of Rage” was squelched when security forces immediately cracked down on the relatively small crowds who turned out.
Ever since Saudi forces rolled across the King Fahd Causeway and regime forces destroyed the iconic sculpture in Pearl Square, center of the protest, the truly massive protests in Bahrain have been effectively shut down. For now, at least.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
While his successor struggled on Wednesday with the same dysfunctional Sacramento factors he had, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger landed on the Xingu River in Brazil. With his old friend, director James Cameron, he visited indigenous people threatened by a massive dam project that Cameron is crusading against.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Brazil and Nigeria.
Accompanied by his old friend, filmmaker James Cameron, Schwarzenegger toured the Amazon region on Wednesday by seaplane. There they met with indigenous people threatened by a massive dam project — slated to be the third largest in the world — which Cameron has been crusading against.
On Thursday, Schwarzenegger and Cameron spoke at the 2nd International Forum on Sustainability in Manaus, Brazil, confluence of two great rivers and capital of the nation’s Amazonas province.
They presided over a session on “Public Policies That Favor Sustainability” which included Brazil’s Minister of the Environment Izabella Teixeira, Amazonas Governor Omar Aziz, Senator Eduardo Braga; Manaus Mayor Amazonino Mendes and Joao Doria Jr.
Former President Bill Clinton, also now a Schwarzenegger friend, appears later at the forum.
Did Schwarzenegger miss not being at last weekend’s California Republican Party convention in Sacramento? Schwarzenegger gave a prescient speech to the Republicans at their fall 2007 convention outside Palm Springs warning them of impending marginalization in statewide elections if they continued their drift ever rightward. In the last few years of his administration, Schwarzenegger usually didn’t bother to come up with excuses for not attending.
Did he miss the now highly predictable budget moves by Sacramento’s entrenched lobbies and ideologues with which successor Jerry Brown is now painfully contending?
Let me see if I can recall if any of that came up when we talked.
Incidentally, I believe the music heard at the tail end of the video is from the Basil Poledouris score to Lonesome Dove. Poledouris, as you may know, composed the score to Conan the Barbarian.
Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation authorizing billions in budget cuts yesterday at the California state Capitol.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
As of this morning, he has no scheduled public events.
Negotiations on the chronic California budget crisis have again intensified.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st feature.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET). … From my March 15th 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 is trading around $105 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $71 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
In some very good news for the Obama Administration, Turkey has agreed to allow NATO to take over command and control of the no-fly zone over Libya, as well as the naval blockade. But operations to suppress Gaddafi’s ground forces continue to be in the hands of France, Britain, and the US.
** QUICK HITS. After days of debate, NATO is taking over the no-fly zone over Libya, along with the naval blockade, which it had already done. France, Britain, and the US will continue to hit Gaddafi ground forces potentially threatening Libyan civilians, as allowed by the UN Security Council. NATO may take over that role in the future. … Reps from the Gaddafi regime and Libyan rebels will meet with African Union leaders and UN officials tomorrow in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to discuss a potential ceasefire.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT?
** CALIFORNIA 2011: JERRY BROWN SIGNS BIG BUDGET CUTS, KEEPS PUSHING FOR “THE OTHER HALF OF THE SOLUTION.” Governor Jerry Brown today signed big budget cuts and fund transfers to take care of half of the state’s $26.6 billion deficit. But he acknowledged he still doesn’t have a deal with enough Republican legislators to satisfy California’s unusual two-thirds vote requirement on tax measures to place the other half of his solution — extending temporary tax hikes from 2009 — on a June special election ballot.
He also did not rule out placing the tax extensions on the ballot through a majority vote procedure which many lawyers say will technically work, but won’t provide a bipartisan patina to the package. Nor did he rule out a November ballot measure drive. In fact, he didn’t rule out any number of scenarios.
Meanwhile, this morning Brown won the backing of the California State Association of Counties for his plan to “realign” public services, placing more responsibility back at the local level. The CSAC endorsement is tied to the revenue extensions going on the ballot.
State Republicans continue to balk at okaying a special election, even though some recent polls indicate that the tax extensions are a tough sell.
Why don’t they go ahead and let the voters reject taxes? From the ones I’ve talked to, for a very simple reason. They are still afraid they would lose the election. Because the campaign would expose the even more draconian cuts that would be the alternative.
This is why Republicans continue to absolutely refuse to present any alternative budget, a practice they first rolled out a few years ago, to then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s grave displeasure.
Brown was joined at his budget cuts bill signing by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and the chairmen of the Senate and Assembly budget committees, Mark Leno and Bob Blumenfield. His operation continues to have a notably low-budget look; there still is no new gubernatorial seal.
The new/renewed governor said that there are some legislative Republicans who seem to want to get the budget plan on the ballot, and are insisting not only on solving the present budget crisis but also other problems relating to over-promises on public pensions, limiting state spending, and making some regulations easier to deal with.
Brown noted that it’s hard to solve all problems at once. But he’s also signaling his labor allies that some reforms look politically necessary.
In answer to a question, he gave some short shrift to the idea that the budget plan needs some associated reforms to make it more palatable to voters. If that’s what he thinks, he’s probably wrong about that.
When will this deal get done?
The answer to that, in Brown’s phrasing, lies in the hands of the Lord.
But a June 7th special election has now gone by the boards.
** NEW SURVEY: U.S. STILL PREFERRED OVER OTHER GLOBAL POWERS, IN CONTRAST TO BUSH/CHENEY YEARS.A new Gallup Poll survey, released as the US looks to hand off leadership of the UN intervention in Libya, finds that the US is still widely preferred over other nations when it comes to global leadership.
This stands in stark contrast to the situation during the Bush/Cheney Administration.
But America’s standing dipped last year as its intervention in Afghanistan expanded and intensified.
Yet America continues to be by far the biggest magnet for migration in the world.
The United States continues to achieve higher global approval ratings than China, Russia, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Gallup’s worldwide surveys document a noticeable change in the U.S. global leadership position from 2007 and 2008, when the U.S. trailed other major powers. The increases the U.S. saw in 2009 did not necessarily carry over into 2010, and approval suffered double-digit declines in 14 countries, including Egypt, Japan, and the United Kingdom. …
Gallup asks respondents in more than 100 countries each year whether they approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States and the same question about the leadership of six other major countries. In many cases, high percentages of respondents say they don’t know enough to rate the leadership of the country, meaning that low approval does not necessarily signal high disapproval. …
China’s 31% median leadership approval rating in 2010 is easily lower than the United States’ 47% rating. In contrast, approval of China’s leadership was similar to that for the U.S. in 2007 and 2008. Worldwide, opinion of China’s leadership in 2010 is mixed, and a median of 33% don’t have an opinion. Like most countries, China’s highest approval ratings come from Africa, but some of its lowest approval ratings come from Europe and India.
World citizens tend to give Russia the lowest approval ratings of the seven countries that Gallup measures. A median of 27% approve, while 31% disapprove and 33% don’t have an opinion. Russia’s approval ratings have been relatively flat over the past several years. Russia is viewed favorably by its neighbors, with high approval ratings in Mongolia, Ukraine, and most Commonwealth of Independent States countries.
The image of the leadership of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom has not changed much in the past several years. France, Germany, and the U.K. have similar global ratings ranging from the mid-30s to the low 40s. Approval of Japan’s leadership in 2007 was among the highest; however, its approval ratings have slightly declined, placing it on par with ratings for France, Germany, and the U.K. in 2010. Despite Japan’s changing leadership over that period, the percentage worldwide who do not have an opinion hovered around 37% each year.
Alliance air strikes in Libya last night smashed a major military base of the Gaddafi regime.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 9:45 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have a working lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
For his part, Biden meets with Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman at the Naval Observatory.
Obama is back from his Latin American trip, cutting it short by several hours. He probably hoped that the hand-off of command for the Libya mission would have been accomplished before he returned to the White House.
But no such luck.
Turkey is proving to be a stumbling block for NATO playing a lead role in the effort, even under the adhocracy of having it in tactical command under the strategic supervision of an international “contact” group of European, North American, Arab, and African leaders. There is a meeting in London next Tuesday to try to set up that body.
Turkey wants far less aggressive action against Gaddafi’s military forces, even though the UN Security Council resolution was deliberately broad, allowing “all necessary means” to protect civilians. Turkey’s foot-dragging does not affect the NATO naval blockade, now underway under the leadership of an Italian admiral.
NATO’s military commander, U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, is in Turkey now meeting with the country’s leadership.
Why does NATO need to be involved, and why can’t the political adhocracy emerging around this intervention extend to the military realm as well?
Establishing and properly coordinating such a complex mission requires a sophisticated command and control system. The US has that. NATO does, too. It’s not clear that anyone else does, outside of Russia, which is not participating.
It’s much more involved than setting up a political campaign headquarters.
Both the French and the British may well think they are capable of it, but they probably are not.
As for civilian casualties, they are very numerous. In cities still under siege by Gaddafi forces.
The Libyan regime has claimed dozens of civilians killed by alliance air strikes — and it stands to reason that there must be at least a few victims of the Orwellian “collateral damage” — but the Gaddafi regime has yet to provide any evidence to the international media.
Meanwhile, the seismic crisis in Japan keeps rolling, with the Fukushima nuclear power plant still unsecured, growing numbers of nations banning growing numbers of food imports from Japan, and frantic residents of Tokyo — one of the world’s most modern cities — buying up basic supplies and, especially, bottled water in the face of the radiation threat.
In Yemen, embattled Presdent Ali Abdullah Saleh is barely clinging to power after still more defections from his regime. But the parliament has approved a temporary state of emergency, giving a shred of legitimacy to his efforts to remain in power.
In Syria, the longtime anti-American regime is again rocked by large demonstrations, with a major crackdown underway against protesters.
In Israel, the cycle of violence is again ramping up. The recent murder of a sleeping Israeli settler family, including three children, all knifed to death, was matched yesterday by a suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. One Israeli was killed, one Briton was killed, and 30 more people were wounded. That led to retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
At 1 PM today, Brown signs major budget-cutting legislation at the Capitol.
This legislation solves $14 billion of the state’s deficit crisis.
He will also speak with members of the California State Association of Counties at their Sacramento headquarters in the morning.
Brown still does not have a deal in place with Republican legislators to put the other part of his budget plan, the revenue extensions, on the June ballot.
While a Field Poll taken at the same time as the PPIC poll — the first two weeks of March — but released last week shows 58% for the combination of budget cuts and tax hike extensions, the PPIC poll shows only 46%.
This is only a little bit lower than private polling I’ve seen on the question.
On a very related question, however, PPIC shows that those who favor budget cuts/tax extensions, when combined with the small number who favor only tax hikes, amounts to 52%, with only 40% favoring an all-cuts budget.
And that’s before people know what an all-cuts budget means.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Brazil for the Second International Forum on Sustainability. Schwarzenegger has visited Brazil in the past, finding a rather different form of sustainability.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Brazil.
All kidding aside …
Accompanied by his old friend, filmmaker James Cameron, Schwarzenegger toured the Amazon region yesterday by seaplane.
Today he and Cameron speak at the 2nd International Forum on Sustainability in Manaus, Brazil, confluence of two great rivers and capital of the nation’s Amazonas province.
They will preside over a session on “Public Policies That Favor Sustainability” which includes Brazil’s Minister of the Environment Izabella Teixeira, Amazonas Governor Omar Aziz, Senator Eduardo Braga; Manaus Mayor Amazonino Mendes and Joao Doria Jr.
Former President Bill Clinton appears tomorrow at the forum.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st feature.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET). … From my March 15th 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 is trading around $106 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $72 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
The U.S. intends to transfer command of the international operation in Libya this coming weekend, though there is still disagreement over the particulars. Meanwhile, the Libyan Air Force is said to be mostly destroyed and alliance air strikes are going after Gaddafi ground forces.
** QUICK HITS. A quieter day in the Libyan War, with alliance air forces, having achieved air supremacy, turning more of their attention to protecting civilians in cities still besieged by Gaddafi forces. And an international naval blockade is now in place. But squabbling in NATO — Turkey wants a more passive approach to engaging Gaddafi ground forces, among other problems — is complicating the hand-off of operation command from the U.S. A big pow-wow is set for London next Tuesday, with European, North American, Arab, and African leaders invited to participate in what is being called a “contact group” providing strategic guidance to the military operation. Let’s see, what could go wrong with that? The reality is that it’s much simpler for America to do it. But that’s not good politics. … Also in a state of un-clarity, if you will, is the chronic California budget crisis. Governor Jerry Brown has been negotiating extensively for months, but a compromise has not yet quite emerged. There are all sorts of scenarios floating about, some of which are actually in play. Stay tuned …
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT?
** NEW POLL: OBAMA IN EQUIVALENT OR BETTER RE-ELECT POSITION COMPARED TO CLINTON AND BUSH II. A new Pew Research poll shows President Barack Obama to be in strong position for re-election next year.
Obama has a 10-point edge, 47-37, against a generic Republican. And there is no strong Republican candidate.
Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin are all bunched together in the low to mid teens in preference polling for the Republican presidential nomination.
In addition, Obama is in stronger shape than either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton were at the same point in their first terms. Each, of course, won re-election. Bush rather narrowly over John Kerry, Clinton easily over Bob Dole.
Bush at this point in his first term was buoyed by the seemingly great success of the Iraq War, which he had just launched and which was very popular. Which I continue to notice a lot of people on the left “forgetting.”
Barack Obama currently fares as well against a generic opponent in the upcoming presidential election as George W. Bush did in April 2003, a time when Bush’s job approval rating was much higher than Obama’s is today. He also tests considerably better than Bill Clinton did in March 1995. …
The race for the Republican nomination has gotten off to a much slower start than the presidential race four years ago. The Pew Research Center’s news interest surveys have found that the campaign is drawing far less coverage and public interest than the previous presidential campaign at this stage. During the 2008 campaign, there were nomination races in both parties.
Through the first 10 weeks of 2007, coverage of the campaign accounted for about 7% of all news coverage on average, according to an analysis of coverage by Pew Research’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Through the first 10 weeks of this year – a period that has seen a series of major international stories – coverage of the 2012 campaign has accounted for only about 1% of the newshole.
The survey finds that Barack Obama’s personal favorability remains fairly strong: 58% of the public say they have a favorable opinion of him while 39% view him unfavorably. Michelle Obama’s favorable ratings continue to be higher than her husband’s. Currently, 69% say they have a favorable opinion of Michelle Obama, compared with 21% who have an unfavorable opinion of her. …
Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi made his first public appearance since alliance air strikes drove his forces back from Benghazi and other opposition positions, speaking for an unusually brief three minutes in Tripoli, vowing to win.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Chile and Washington, DC.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama attends a U.S. Embassy meet and greet at the Residence of the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador in San Salvador.
At 10:05 AM Pacific, the Obama family departs El Salvador on Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, formerly known as Andrews Air Force Base.
At 1:55 PM Pacific, the Obamas arrive at Joint Base Andrews, where they board Marine One.
At 2:10 PM Pacific, the Obamas land on the South Lawn of the White House.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden is in Florida today, where he makes several appearances on behalf of Senator Bill Nelson.
Obama’s big trip to Latin America played as a rather curious sideshow with the advent of the Libyan War — with his major address on relations with Latin America all but ignored — and Obama has cut short his trip by several hours. He was spending much of his time on crisis management as it was.
Western air strikes against the Gaddafi regime in Libya — which is nine hours ahead of Pacific time — continue for a fifth straight night.
With the US determined to pass off leadership of the effort, political wrangling continued but seemed to be settling into a new adhocracy. In this set-up, the NATO command infrastructure will run a limited air war and naval blockade, with a new steering committee of Western and Arab foreign ministers making decisions at the political level.
Already, NATO is instituting a naval blockade of Libya, with Islamic member Turkey joining US, British, French, Romanian, and Canadian ships in the effort.
Top officials from Western, Arab, and African countries are now set to meet next Tuesday in London.
Gaddafi remains defiant, of course, but alliance air strikes forced his forces out of embattled Misrata, the westernmost city that had been captured by the rebels, then all but retaken by Gaddafi.
Libyan rebels in now safe Benghazi named Mahmoud Jibril, who has represented the rebels in meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to head an interim government. Jibril is a former Libyan minister of national planning who has a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.
In Japan, the crisis continues, with radiation now in many parts of the food chain as well as the Tokyo water supply, causing advisories to avoid drinking tap water. Certain Japanese foodstuffs are now being banned for importation by the US and other nations.
Another setback at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, with black smoke appearing overhead and workers struggling to end a catastrophic threat having to evacuate. Meanwhile, the tap water in distant Tokyo is the latest to be affected by spreading radiation.
The nuclear plant crisis continues after some progress was undone by new setbacks.
In Yemen, embattled Presdent Ali Abdullah Saleh is barely clinging to power after still more defections from his regime.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown, of course, is working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Brown appointed veteran international banker Mark Ferron to the California Public Utilities Commission, his third appointment to the five member commission. Ferron, a major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, was chief operating officer of Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets Division in London before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009.
Brown did not replace PUC President Michael Peevey, first appointed by Governor Gray Davis and re-appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There had been talk as the Brown Administration began that he would appoint former Energy Commissioner John Geesman, a green power advocate who helped spearhead the winning campaign against PG&E megabucks initiative campaign to block local governments from developing renewable energy resources, to the PUC and make him the agency’s head. But that, in the end, did not happen.
Brown also appointed former legislator Anna Caballero as head of the state’s consumer agency.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st feature.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET). … From my March 15th 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.
Oscar-winning Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor passed away today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after many illnesses, succumbing at last to congestive heart failure.
** 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 $106 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $72 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.
Speaking today in San Salvador, capital of El Salvador, President Barack Obama said that the U.S. will soon hand off leadership of the alliance effort in Libya to a new group.
** QUICK HITS. While touring Latin America today, President Barack Obama has been in the midst of complex negotiations with international leaders about the shape of the leadership in the new Libyan War. He doesn’t want the US in the lead, and several leaders do not want NATO in the lead. The emerging solution? A steering committee of Western and Arab foreign ministers guiding a NATO operational infrastructure. … Just as the shape of the things to come in the Libyan War has been in play today, so too has been the shape of things to come in California’s chronic budget crisis. One way or the other, Governor Jerry Brown is determined that there will be a public vote this year on revenues to balance the big budget cuts he’s already pushed through the Legislature. Brown is pushing hard, playing with a number of scenarios and interrelated factors. It’s premature to say right now which will emerge. But something will.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT?
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 1:55 PM Pacific, President Barack Obama appears in a joint news conference with Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes at the National Palace in San Salvador, El Salvador. The event will be netcast live 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.
Japanese officials late Tuesday finally got power lines attached to all six reactors at a badly damaged nuclear power plant. Now they have to get them to work in order to stave off more damage.
** NEW POLL: NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM AT 1 — IT’S A WASH. Was it worth all that time and effort to pass the national health care reform law? I’m no expert on the policy, but from a political standpoint, it doesn’t look like it. At least, not yet. Still.
A new Gallup Poll on the first anniversary of the big program’s enactment yields a muddle.
The good news for President Barack Obama is … it’s not a real negative.
Gee, that’s great.
One year after President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, Americans are divided on its passage, with 46% saying it was a good thing and 44% saying it was a bad thing. Most Americans are skeptical that the law will improve medical care in the U.S. or their own personal medical care. …
The current level of support for the bill, based on a Gallup poll conducted March 18-19, generally mirrors what Gallup found in polling conducted a year ago, just before President Obama signed the bill into law. At that point, in response to a slightly different question, 49% said the law was a good thing, while 40% said it was a bad thing. Other updates asked over the last year show a similar divide.
More Americans See the Law Making Things “Worse” Rather Than “Better”
Well less than half of Americans believe the law will make medical care better either for the United States as a whole, or for them personally. In both regards, more believe the law will make things worse rather than better.
Opinions on the impact of the healthcare law on medical care in the U.S. are divided in similar fashion to Americans’ overall reactions to the bill: 39% say it will improve medical care in the United States, while 44% say it will make it worse. Small percentages say the law won’t change anything or offer no opinion. These responses are roughly similar to attitudes seen in July 2009, as the outlines of the law were just coming into place. …
Politics Shapes Views of Healthcare Law
Democrats and Republicans have totally different views of the healthcare law, as has consistently been the case since Gallup began measuring attitudes toward it. The law was proposed by a Democratic president, and passed by a Democratic-controlled House and Senate over the vehement objections of most Republicans in Congress. Republicans have also continued to criticize the bill since its passage, and Republican leaders in Congress are now pursuing efforts to prevent many of the bill’s provisions from taking effect.
Almost 8 in 10 Democrats say the law’s passage was a good thing, while more than 7 in 10 Republicans say its passage was a bad thing. Independents tilt toward saying passage was a bad thing. Reactions to the impact of the law on medical care in the U.S. are similarly divided. …
** NEW CALIFORNIA POLL: JERRY BROWN APPROVED BY MORE THAN 2 TO 1. Governor Jerry Brown has a good poll today in the form of the venerable Field Poll.
Brown’s job approval is at 48%, with disapproval only 21%. Leaving a whopping 31% unsure.
These numbers are better than earlier numbers from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
Betters news comes for Brown in the fact that his ratings are signficantly higher among voters 50 and up, the most likely voters in any election, and especially in a special election.
Voters hold a very favorable view of how Jerry Brown is performing as governor. A Field Poll
survey completed last week shows by a greater than two to one margin (48% to 21%) voters
approve of Brown’s performance as governor. Another 31% have no opinion.
By contrast, just 16% of voters approve of the job that the state legislature is doing, while 70%
disapprove.
Brown, who was been in office just two months but is beginning what is now his third term, has
struck an initially positive chord with voters.
About half of the statewide electorate (48%) approve of the job that Brown is doing since he took
office in early January. Fewer than half this proportion (21%) disapprove, while about one in three
(31%) have not yet formed an opinion.
Democratic voters hold Brown in very high regard, approving of his performance by a 67% to 10%
margin. Republicans are more negative than positive (25% approve and 35% disapprove) in their
evaluations of Brown. A relatively large proportion (40%) do not offer an opinion at this time.
Non-partisans divide two to one on the favorable side (45% to 23%), with 32% having no opinion.
While Brown is positively regarded across all age groups, voters age 50 or older, many of whom
were of voting age during Brown a favorable assessment. …
The fighting continues in Libya.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Chile and El Salvador.
At 5 AM Pacific, the Obama family departed Santiago, Chile on Air Force One en route to San Salvador, El Salvador.
The time in El Salvador is one hour ahead of Pacific time.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, the Obamas arrive in San Salvador, El Salvador.
El Salvador is an important symbolic stop on the Obamas’ trip to Latin America. This small country in Central America was the site of a major flash point of the Cold War, with the US backing a right-wing regime in a nasty guerilla war against Marxist rebels. It’s a lovely little country. I recommend the Camino Real in San Salvador.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama participate in an arrival ceremony at the National Palace in San Salvador.
At 12:50 PM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes in the National Palace.
At 1:20 PM Pacific, Obama holds an expanded bilateral meeting with President Funes in the National Palace.
At 1:55 PM Pacific, Obama and President Funes hold a joint press conference in the National Palace.
This event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 7:10 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend an official dinner hosted by President Funes at the National Palace.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden is holding down the fort in Washington, where he held a breakfast meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Naval Observatory.
Obama’s big trip to Latin America is playing as a rather curious sideshow with the advent of the Libyan War.
His major definitional speech yesterday in Santiago, Chile on relations with Latin America, was all but ignored. In fact, I couldn’t find video footage of it on the White House site to present to you, so it’s not clear how seriously it’s taken by the White House itself.
Meanwhile, the fighting in Libya, which is nine hours ahead of Pacific time, continues. There was a third night of targeted cruise missile strikes and aircraft sorties by alliance forces.
A U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter went down over Libya, reportedly due to mechanical failure. Both aviators ejected and were rescued, one by Libyan rebels, the other by the U.S. Navy.
On the ground there appears to be a stalemate between Gaddafi forces and the rebels. Gaddafi forces are shelling several rebel positions.
Will alliance air power take out the artillery? That seems unclear.
Also unclear is the ongoing structure of alliance forces. The Obama Administration is anxious to hand off leadership of the mission to others. The early phases were necessarily reliant on US expertise in disrupting and destroying the Libyan government’s fairly sophisticated command and control and anti-air systems.
Now that task is essentially accomplished. But the leadership structure going forward is unsettled.
Turkey is blocking the consensus needed to make this a NATO mission, and the Arab states aren’t all that thrilled to be participating under the NATO flag.
But key European countries like Italy balk at the other obvious alternative, moving forward under some sort of joint French and British command.
Four New York Times journalists held captive for six days in Libya by Gaddafi forces have been released after the intercession of Turkey.
It may be that most of the countries in the alliance would prefer American leadership to the alternatives.
Meanwhile, the government of longtime US ally President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen continues to teeter with more key defections from his longstanding rule. He promised today to step down at the end ofe year. But that is unlikely to satisfy the opposition.
In Japan, officials have finally managed to get new power lines hooked up to six heavily damaged and some cases partially melted down nuclear reactors. Now if only they can the power lines to work.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown, of course, is working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
Last night, he addressed the dinner at the Sheraton Grand Hotel of the annual labor legislative conference of the California Labor Federation and the State Building Trades Council. Before he spoke, state Labor Fed chief Art Pulaski and others handed out awards to the most effective local labor councils in last year’s elections.
Following Pulaski’s introduction of him as “the most honest and straightforward politician” he’s known, Brown was in strong form.
He promised not to attack legislative Republicans, with whom he’s still negotiating, but got a few zingers in nonetheless, getting the crowd of 800 roaring in the process.
“If you’re not going to vote to extend taxes, you’re not going to vote to cut, you’re not going to vote to do anything to redevelopment, so, what the hell are you going to do?” he said. “By the way, if you’re not going to do anything, why do you take a pay check?”
I told Brown last year that he was likely to find Republican legislators just as recalcitrant as Arnold Schwarzenegger did, and that the only advantage he had — in addition to his sparkling personality, of course — is that the situation is even more glaringly obvious now than it was in the past.
I’ll have a lot more on all this in the upcoming feature.
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world.…
Is oil a fundamental factor here? Of course. Though much more for Europe, which is pretty reliant on Libyan oil, than for America, which is not.
But oil is a global market, and the chaos in Libya affects the price, which in turn affects the economic recovery, especially if the geopolitical risk premium continues.
Of course, there would also not be an intervention if Gaddafi weren’t gunning down his people in very large numbers.
They’ve risen up against him, just as they’ve risen up against other despots across the Arab world.
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …From my March 21st feature.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET). … From my March 15th 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 is trading around $104 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $70 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.
Speaking today in Santiago, Chile, President Barack Obama said the purpose of the international military intervention in Libya is not to oust longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi but to protect civilians from Gaddafi’s troops and mercenaries and prevent a humanitarian disaster.
** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama’s policy in the Libyan War remains a bit unclear. On the one hand, the US and its Western and Arab allies have saved Benghazi and launched a devastating air assault against the Gaddafi military apparatus. But regime change is not the aim of the military operation. Regime change is the aim of the diplomatic operation. Okay then … As negotiations continue on California’s chronic budget crisis, Governor Jerry Brown will speak tonight about the situation at Labor’s 2011 Joint Legislative Conference at 7:15 PM at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S PARTY OF NO TAKES CENTER STAGE, OR DOES IT?
** OBAMA’S DIFFIDENT WAY OF WAR.Barack Obama has suddenly sidled his way into a third war in the Muslim world, his first on his own. How has he gone about it? Why Libya and not somewhere else? And how does it end?
How has Obama gone about it? In a remarkably diffident manner. Never before has an American president embarked on a war with such reserve. And I can’t recall one who went to war while on tour in an entirely different part of the world. …
Is oil a fundamental factor here? Of course. Though much more for Europe, which is pretty reliant on Libyan oil, than for America, which is not.
But oil is a global market, and the chaos in Libya affects the price, which in turn affects the economic recovery, especially if the geopolitical risk premium continues.
Of course, there would also not be an intervention if Gaddafi weren’t gunning down his people in very large numbers.
They’ve risen up against him, just as they’ve risen up against other despots across the Arab world.
The Arab revolt is in the post-romance phase, and had been heading into the bummer phase. That is to say, after the early phase in which we believe that revolutions are effected simply by virtue of people rising up through the magic of social media. …
** NEW SURVEY: YOUNG LIBYANS WERE MORE DOWNTRODDEN THAN THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN OTHER ARAB COUNTRIES PRIOR TO THE UPRISING. A new Gallup Poll survey of polling in 2010 shows that Libyan youth were significantly less believing in their ability to help their country make positive change in the future.
Majorities of both young Libyan men and young Libyan women believed it was possible, but their numbers were far below average in the Arab world.
Ahead of the uprising in Libya, majorities of young Libyans believed young men and young women could help the country make substantial progress in the next decade. Sixty-six percent of 15- to 29-year-olds surveyed in the areas of Tripoli, Benghazi, and Al Kufrah in 2010 said young men could further the country’s advancement and 55% said this about young women. …
However, compared with other young people living in Arab middle-income countries where GDP per capita ranges from $2,600 to less than $23,000, young Libyans were the least likely to say young men and women could help the country make substantial progress. Percentages were well above a majority in most middle-income countries: A median of 94% of young Arabs said young men could help, while the median who said this about young women was 79%. …
The situation in Libya is changing by the hour as the allied military intervention continues, but the country’s progress in the long term depends on its young people. Engaging young Libyans who were already feeling uncertain about their role in the country’s future will be crucial in the days ahead and the next decade. …
Benghazi residents celebrated after Western alliance air strikes destroyed Libyan regime forces threatening the city as the weekend began.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
What a difference a week makes. America is at war, again, in a third Muslim country, as President Barack Obama ordered US naval and air forces into action on Saturday alongside the French and British against longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi, whose forces were attacking the protesters stronghold Benghazi. While the bombs and missiles fall, Obama continues his long-scheduled Latin American tour of Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador. Today he delivers a major address in Santiago on relations with Latin America.
Meanwhile, in California politics Governor Jerry Brown continues pushing for a deal on his state budget proposal. The state’s Republicans just held a bizarre spectacle of a convention, dominated as usual by the party’s right-wing activists, all opponents of any compromise. This was a good excuse for Republican legislators to hold off on a vote for tax extensions rather than find themselves hung in effigy. Now that excuse is eliminated, and the ticking clock on a special election is getting notably louder.
The UN Security Council-approved intervention in Libya was just in time to save Benghazi, mostly through French air strikes, from the massacre Gaddafi promised on international television. Over the weekend, mostly US strikes succeeded in eliminating the Libyan regime’s significant air defense and establishing a no-fly zone.
So far, so good, but what’s next? The US doesn’t want to play the lead role much longer — Obama is predictably being ripped by far right and ultra-left alike, just as he would be had he allowed Gaddafi to massacre Benghazi — and the structure of the alliance going forward beyond Franco-British leadership or NATO leadership is still unclear. As is the nature of Arab involvement.
Then there is the question of the end game, which is still very unclear, as Gaddafi clearly has no intention of going away.
The situation in Japan continues to be perilous, with the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami looking like 20,000-plus and the cost of rebuilding about a quarter of a trillion dollars. And that’s assuming that the ongoing nuclear power crisis does not become a catastrophe. Japanese authorities continue to issue clear-as-mud pronouncements.
Incidentally, the epic disaster of Japan shows that we certainly don’t learn too well from history. Here my old friend Gary Hart, then chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation, discusses things in this appearance on Face the Nation during the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979. It sounds very familiar.
America’s key ally Yemen, a flash point in the struggle against Al Qaeda, is in even greater turmoil today with much of the military defecting from the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. This comes after Saleh’s own tribe turned against him. His days look decidedly numbered.
The Arab revolt has come to Syria, where big demonstrations are taking place in Damascus, this time targeting a dictator who is no friend of the US.
In better news, Egypt held a referendum on Saturday on proposed reforms, which passed with a whopping 77% of the vote. The measures will limit the presidency to two four-year terms and open up the process to many more candidates. But opponents say that the entire constitution needs to be re-written, in part to buy time for youth groups and other reformers who are relatively unorganized. They say that the current reforms will aid established factions and the Muslim Brotherhood.
America’s longtime ally Yemen sees more chaos today with much of the military splitting from the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the wake of a massacre of protesters on Friday in the capital city Sanaa.
Obama is on his first extended visit to Latin America as president, and will tour Brazil, El Salvador, and Chile. Of course, he is monitoring multiple crises even as he lets Secretary of State Hillary Clinton play the lead public role on Libya.
Back to California politics.
It’s now just about time for Brown and the Legislature to come up with a budget deal.
The focus shifted, as I predicted, to the state Republican convention across the street from the Capitol at the Sacramento Convention Center and the Hyatt Regency at Capitol Park, which was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s part-time abode during his governorship. There was all sorts of hyper-partisan posturing and infighting going on there, as the far right tried to place its imprimatur on the Republican brand in the new open primary era — first by having small groups of activists endorse, finally by having the party run its own self-funded primary before the primary election! — and brand as traitors any politician who seeks real world solutions with Brown.
The party also elected a new state chairman, a far right blogger whose previous claim to fame was his 2006 lawsuit to disqualify Brown from being state attorney general! I’ll have a full report on these doings, which seem like sophomoric hijinks with a new war now underway.
Brown and the Legislature last week succeeded in passing half of his program — the big budget cuts part of it — and now need to put the revenue extensions on a June special election ballot.
Sadly, Republicans were not very helpful even in passing the budget cuts they say they want, much less extend revenues to avert even more draconian cuts. That was especially so in the Assembly. Why? Most didn’t want to take the rap on the cuts. Virtually all continued to embrace pot-of-gold redevelopment agencies, which their developer fundraisers like, in lieu of shifting those taxpayer funds to basic public services.
And, while a number continue to negotiate with Brown, none have publicly come out for revenue extensions.
Jerry Brown deserves an enormous amount of credit for spending countless hours in negotiations with Republicans and Democrats alike. In the process, he’s practically disappeared from public view, which I think is a mistake.
He’s also won widespread plaudits for his endless accessibility to legislators, especially in contrast to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But it’s still unclear that he can make the breakthrough that Schwarzenegger did not with regard to the entrenched interests on both sides of the partisan gap in ever dysfunctional Sacramento.
It should happen. After all, Schwarzenegger was in pretty good shape in late 2008, despite the chronic budget crisis that the state’s had since the dot-com bust. Until the Great Global Recession dumped the revenue floor.
But with the crisis even clearer now than it was in 2009, agreement should not be so elusive. And yet it has been. Maybe Schwarzenegger simply avoided wasting a lot of his time in endless meetings with pols.
Workers were again evacuated this morning from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant after smoke poured from the facility.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Brazil and Chile.
The First Family traveled from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Santiago, Chile. Obama received his daily intelligence briefing on Air Force One.
At 9:50 AM Pacific, the Obamas participate in an arrival ceremony at La Moneda Palace in Santiago.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama and President Sebastian Piñera of Chile take the official photo at La Moneda Palace.
At 10:05 AM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Piñera at La Moneda Palace.
At 10:25 AM Pacific, holds an expanded bilateral meeting with President Piñera.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama and President Piñera hold a joint press conference at La Moneda Palace.
At 12:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers a speech at Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda in Santiago.
This will be Obama’s definitional speech on relations with Latin America.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, the Obamas attend a U.S. Embassy meet and greet at the Sheraton Cristobal Hotel in Santiago.
At 4:25 PM Pacific, the Obamas attend an official dinner hosted by President Piñera at La Moneda Palace.
For his part, Vice President Joe Biden is in Boston helping ramp up the re-election campaign’s fundraising machine.
Obama is also monitoring a host of other geopolitical crises, almost all of them related to the Arab revolt or AfPak and Iraq.
Governor Jerry Brown, in his first video address as governor, taped in his Capitol office on Sunday, talks about the need for politicians to act as “Californians first” in dealing with the state’s chronic budget crisis.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown, of course, is working on the state’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration.
** IS LIBYA A TURNING POINT ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONISM?Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s bloodcurdling speech yesterday promising an imminent massacre of his opponents in rebel-held Benghazi may prove to be one of the classic political backfires. After he made it, the UN Security Council narrowly approved an unprecedented multilateral military intervention in Libya, what may turn out to be a landmark decision.
In Kosovo, NATO, without the support of the UN Security Council as Russia and China were in staunch opposition, intervened with air power to try to block Serbian “ethnic cleansing” efforts. Before that, in the Gulf War, US and allied forces acted with UN backing to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Now the UN has approved a military intervention against a government trying to suppress an internal uprising against it, setting what may become an important new precedent in the process. And it might not have happened had Gaddafi not delivered his fateful speech as the Security Council was preparing to vote.
I listened to Gaddafi’s speech live on Al Jazeera. It was almost as though he was daring Western military intervention. … From my March 18th essay.
** ONE WORD: OBAMA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO, AND WHY IT HASN’T HAPPENED (YET).Poor Barack Obama. If it weren’t for all these geopolitical crises, he’d have some fairly decent-sounding news to spin. … From my March 15th essay.
** WILL JERRY BROWN PULL IT OFF?Will Jerry Brown pull it off? While most eyes focused on governors are zeroing in on the Wisconsin union-busting scheme, Brown is on a full-court press to balance the biggest state budget shortfall in the country. … From my March 7th essay.
** 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.
** 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 $102 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $68 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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