The Solar Impulse, an aircraft completely powered by solar energy, had its first big public demonstration flight yesterday at the Paris Air Show, perhaps the leading global aviation expo.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … X MARKS THE SUPER SPOT? SCIFI VISIONS ANCHORED IN THE PAST.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Good news for Obama, and Michele Bachmann. The far right Minnesota congresswoman is tied for first in today’s Des Moines Register poll for the first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential caucuses.
Putative frontrunner Mitt Romney is at 23% and Bachmann at 22%. Former pizza mogul Herman Cain is a distant third with 10%.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is tied for fourth with Texas Congressman Ron Paul, with each at 7%.
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who’s spent the most time campaigning in Iowa, has only 6% to show for it.
Far right former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is back at 4% with former Utah Governor/Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who won’t contest Iowa, at 2%.
That leaves a good 19% undecided, with plenty of room for Bachmann to expand on her first place tie among the state’s conservative and evangelical Republican voters.
Bachmann, who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, formally kicks off her campaign Monday with a rally there followed by a tour of early contest states. She already announced, of course, during her well-received performance a few weeks ago at the New Hampshire debate.
Obama is also monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Libya is nine hours ahead of Pacific time, Iraq and Yemen are ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is continuing work on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration in the wake of his historic veto of the state budget.
In his weekend video/radio address, filmed yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama discusses the importance of advanced manufacturing and promotes university/private sector collaboration to make it happen.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Oil prices are still down to almost $90 per barrel, which is good for the economy, to the extent that they translate into lower retail energy prices, which for the most part they have not since the death of Osama bin Laden.
Crude oil has dropped 20% since bin Laden’s death. But gasoline prices are down only 7.5%, with most of that only recently.
Obama spurred a big release of strategic oil reserves into the market to make up for strapped supply with Libya largely offline for the foreseeable future.
In the Afghan War, a Taliban suicide bomber leveled a maternity ward outside Kabul today, killing nearly 30 women and children. Aside from making the people fearful of seeking government medical attention, it’s hard to see how this act helps win hearts and minds for the Taliban, who are no more popular than the Americans at this point, if at all.
Top Libyan football (soccer) stars, long nurtured by the Gaddafi regime and the dictator, who loves celebrities, today defected to the rebels.
Meanwhile, new NATO air strikes today targeted the strategic oil port of Brega. Recent Libya rebel advances appear to have slowed, if not been halted altogether. But they have succeeded in further cutting supplies to Gaddafi forces and to Tripoli, which will have a significant effect.
Yesterday’s highly political moves against Obama in the House of Representatives on Libya resulted in a wash.
The House did not provide its imprimatur for the US mission in Libya. With left-liberal Democrats upset and right-wing Republicans looking for a way to slap the president, legislation to authorize the mission for the next year was overwhelmingly defeated.
But anti-war forces failed to pass a bill to cut funding for the Libyan mission. That’s the real question.
Of course, even if they had, they would have to get the Senate to go along with them, and that would not happen.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who backs the Libyan mission, says he has the votes to pass a bill by Senators John Kerry and John McCain authorizing US involvement in Libya for another year.
Obama is also monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Libya is nine hours ahead of Pacific time, Iraq and Yemen are ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Late Friday night, the New York State Senate narrowly passed same sex marriage and Governor Andrew Cuomo — who pushed hard for the right — promptly signed the bill into law. The vote was 33-29, with four Republicans voting yes.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is continuing work on California’s chronic budget crisis and his nascent administration in the wake of his historic veto of the state budget.
Brown is still talking with individual Republican legislators, even as Republican Senate leaders claim to be for his special election, just not for tax extensions. Which would mean they are tax hikes, a very different matter, as they know.
He also met privately yesterday with Democratic legislative leaders, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez, to discuss a potential majority vote budget that he can sign.
Meanwhile, California now trails New York on same sex marriage. The erstwhile Empire State, with Governor Andrew Cuomo pushing hard all the way, adopted the right on Friday night.
After a relatively easy passage in the state Assembly, the bill was seemingly stalled in the Republican majority state Senate. But after some hard bargaining to prevent certain religious groups from being forced to perform same sex marriage rites, four Republican senators broke ranks with their party and voted for it, with the bill passing late last night, 33 to 29.
California, of course, had same sex marriage for several months in 2008 after a state Supreme Court ruling, but lost it thanks to campaign errors in the notorious Proposition 8 initiative that November.
Then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Attorney General Jerry Brown promptly decided not to defend Prop 8 against legal challenges, and a federal court declared the initiative illegal. But the matter is still working its way through the appeals process.
** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). Barack Obama has plenty of problems with the Republican Party. But his biggest problem is the least obvious of them: the Republicans are turning anti-war. And as they do so, any popular base of support for the Afghan War disappears.
While the Republicans’ long-entrenched hawk faction favors a less aggressive withdrawal from Afghanistan than Obama outlined in his Wednesday night address, or none at all, growing numbers of Republicans in Congress, many new Tea Party types, want the war to simply end. And because they are backed up by polling numbers showing a sharp decline in support for the war among Republican voters, the party’s presidential candidates have responded with much less resolute rhetoric than in the past. …
It’s one of the great ironies of contemporary politics that this Republican evaporation should be taking place. After all, it’s the Republicans, and especially their then-dominant neoconservative faction, that steered America into Iraq — one of the great non sequitur moves in history — in the wake of 9/11. And it’s the Republicans who made the test of patriotism, and international friendship, whether “you’re for us or against us.”
That’s why it was necessary for national Democrats, i.e., those who intend to actually win elections by appealing to enough voters to do so, to make Afghanistan the good war and Iraq the bad war. But Obama, who correctly identified Iraq as a “stupid war,” thus transcending notions of “good” or “bad,” in 2002, took the whole thing way too far in late 2009 when he fatefully decided to do a big “surge” of his own in Afghanistan. … From my June 23rd column.
** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. The dust is still settling in the wake of Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of the California state budget. That budget, designed by Democratic legislative leaders and their backers, had good things in it, and also some highly questionable elements, i.e., gimmicks, some of which may be replaceable in another iteration.
Can Brown get his better budget, the sensible compromise mostly blocked by Republican intransigence? That question probably becomes moot on June 30th. Why? It’s simple enough. That’s the point at which his proposed tax extensions become tax increases. …
After months of negotiations, Brown has come up against the same intractable dynamics that bedeviled Arnold Schwarzenegger in his last years as governor. … From my June 17th column.
** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.
** JERRY BROWN’S NEW PROBLEM. … From my June 3rd column.
** HARSH REALITIES IMPINGE ON OBAMA’S EMERGING DOCTRINE. … From my June 1st essay.
** JERRY BROWN RETURNS (AGAIN!) ONLY TO DROP BACK INTO STEALTH MODE. … From my May 25th feature.
** FROM GOVERNATOR TO MOONBEAM. … From my January 3rd, 2011 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 closed on Friday at $91.16 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $57 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.
Crude oil is down 20% since the death of Osama bin Laden. But gasoline is only down 7.5%.
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| Comments (15) |
Good weekend address by President Obama.
Good news video on gay marriage passing in New York.
Barack is on message…
Jonas Blane says:
June 25, 2011 at 10:31 am
Good weekend address by President Obama.
California needs to get that back!!
Jonas Blane says:
June 25, 2011 at 10:34 am
Good news video on gay marriage passing in New York.
Great HuffPo front pager!!
** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). Barack Obama has plenty of problems with the Republican Party. But his biggest problem is the least obvious of them: the Republicans are turning anti-war. And as they do so, any popular base of support for the Afghan War disappears.
While the Republicans’ long-entrenched hawk faction favors a less aggressive withdrawal from Afghanistan than Obama outlined in his Wednesday night address, or none at all, growing numbers of Republicans in Congress, many new Tea Party types, want the war to simply end. And because they are backed up by polling numbers showing a sharp decline in support for the war among Republican voters, the party’s presidential candidates have responded with much less resolute rhetoric than in the past. …
It’s one of the great ironies of contemporary politics that this Republican evaporation should be taking place. After all, it’s the Republicans, and especially their then-dominant neoconservative faction, that steered America into Iraq — one of the great non sequitur moves in history — in the wake of 9/11. And it’s the Republicans who made the test of patriotism, and international friendship, whether “you’re for us or against us.”
A great day for New Yorkers.
Great RT news video of the solar plane.
Cool, great news on a nice weekend…
It’s quite heartening, and quite nice.
Indeed.
> Jonas Blane says:
June 26, 2011 at 2:40 pm (Edit)
Great RT news video of the solar plane.
Andrew Cuomo did a great job on that.
> Pat Skipper says:
June 25, 2011 at 12:58 pm (Edit)
A great day for New Yorkers.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
> Capitol Boy says:
June 25, 2011 at 11:07 am (Edit)
Great HuffPo front pager!!
** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). Barack Obama has plenty of problems with the Republican Party. But his biggest problem is the least obvious of them: the Republicans are turning anti-war. And as they do so, any popular base of support for the Afghan War disappears.
It will happen.
> Capitol Boy says:
June 25, 2011 at 10:48 am (Edit)
California needs to get that back!!
Jonas Blane says:
June 25, 2011 at 10:34 am
Good news video on gay marriage passing in New York.
What new video today?
Bachmann turns on the overdrive, Gaddafi wanted at The Hague, and the wonders of high-speech rail.