New West Notes

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s day in the dock was alleviated somewhat by a fool who rushed him with a shaving cream pie.

NOTE: I’m traveling, so publishing is somewhat delayed.

** QUICK HITS. Amid reports that the Libyan rebels have re-taken the strategic oil port of Brega, Libya’s foreign minister will meet with the Russian foreign minister Wednesday in Moscow for talks requested by the Gaddafi regime. … With the Murdochs testifying today that they had no knowledge of the extent of phone hacking in their British newspaper group or of millions in payments and had trusted in underlings, attention will turn tomorrow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short a foreign tour to face questioning of his own over the scandal.

** JERRY-RIGGING: BACK IN THE WHEELHOUSE. Governor Jerry Brown is signaling that he is back in the center of something he pioneered the first time he was governor of California. That’s the big push for renewable energy.

I reported here this morning that Brown will speak at the National Clean Energy Forum at the end of August in Las Vegas.

But before that, he has a big conference of his own in LA.

Brown, who is off on a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown, announced through his office at lunch time today that he is hosting a major conference on renewable energy next week at UCLA.

The Governor’s Conference on Local Renewable Energy Resources will explore and flesh out his plan to have California produce 20,000 new megawatts of renewable electric power by the end of 2020. While much of it, some 8,000 megawatts worth, is to come from centralized power stations, which is why he’s been pushing for the past few years, along with former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for new transmission facilities and clearing of regulatory underbrush, the bulk of it is to come localized sources. As Brown puts it in his release, from “onsite or small systems located close to where energy is consumed that can be constructed quickly, without new transmission lines, and typically without any environmental impact.”

Brown is hosting the conference how to get those 12,000 megawatts of local renewable power on July 25th and 26th in partnership with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Bank of America.

He will take part in a panel at 9:30 AM on Monday, July 25th that will be netcast live. Steve Clemons, Washington editor-at-large for The Atlantic, will moderate the panel, which will also include NRG Energy CEO David Crane, SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, and Google Director of Green Business Operations Rick Needham.

Brown blazed the original path on renewable energy and energy efficiency during his first two terms as governor of California in the 1970s and 1980s. The path then lay relatively fallow, especially with regard to renewables, until his former chief of staff Gray Davis became governor at the end of the ’90s. Davis refurbished the path, then Schwarzenegger turned it into a highway.

** NEW POLL: NOT SURPRISINGLY, STRONG SUPPORT FOR COMPROMISE ON FEDERAL DEFICIT/DEBT CEILING, INCLUDING REPUBLICANS. A new Gallup Poll tells you what is logical, that most Americans favor compromise on the present impasse over the record federal budget deficit and looming federal debt ceiling.

This, despite the screaming from self-styled representatives of each party’s bases, especially the cultish hyper-partisan Republicans of the far right.

While most Republicans agree, support for compromise is far stronger among Democrats, and higher still among independents, who held the key to President Barack Obama’s sweeping election victory in 2008. 72% of independents wants a compromise solution.

By a 20-point margin, voters want major cuts in future spending.

Two-thirds of Americans would like government officials to agree to a compromise plan on the debt and budget deficit negotiations now underway. Fewer than 3 in 10 want lawmakers who share their views on the debt and budget deficit to hold out for their desired plan. A majority of Republicans, independents, and Democrats favor reaching a compromise. …

Americans continue to express a strong desire that any agreement that is reached include plans for major cuts in future spending. Americans now by a 20-point margin — 55% vs. 35% — say they worry more that the government would raise the debt ceiling without plans for major spending cuts, than that the government would not raise the ceiling and an economic crisis would ensue. …

At 10:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. The event is 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 netcasts 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.

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch, testifying today before the House of Commons in London, called it “the most humble day of my life” and claimed that News Corp did not hack the phones of 9/11 victims in the US.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

At 9:30 AM Pacific, Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.

The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.

(UPDATE: Carney’s briefing has been pushed back an hour to 10:30 AM Pacific.)

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are set to pass their “Cut, Cap, and Balance” Tea Party budget plan today. It’s dead on arrival after that symbolic vote.

Meanwhile, talks continue on a compromise involving some budget cuts, commissions on the deficit and tax reform, and the all-important raising of the debt ceiling.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in India for most of the week, taking part in the US-India Strategic Dialogue. Relations with India are key on AfPak. Today deals in part with pacts to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gases.

Atlantis has left the International Space Station for the last time, and for the last time in the space shuttle program. Atlantis returns to the Kennedy Space Center early on Thursday morning, in an event which will be netcast live here on New West Notes.

US and Gaddafi regime officials have acknowledged discussion over the weekend, apparently in Tunisia. But the State Department says that it was a one-shot negotiation, more a delivery of terms for change in Libya.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Brown will speak at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on August 30th.

Unless he speaks elsewhere first, this will be his first speech as California’s new/renewed governor outside California.

The event, founded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, takes place at Aria on the Vegas Strip.

Attorney General Kamala Harris sent out a press release late yesterday which, in a decidedly undescriptive way, approve Amazon’s proposed referendum to strike down the state’s new sales tax law on online sales for petition circulation.

The release had no statement from her, and a casual reader would have been unaware what it was all about.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? … From my July 13th column.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** 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.

The last space shuttle has left the International Space Station for the last time.

** 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 $97 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $63 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 today appointed former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

** QUICK HITS. The former News of the World reporter who blew the whistle on wide-spread phone hacking in the UK turned up dead today at his home outside London on the eve of global media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s testimony before the House of Commons. Sean Hoare’s death was described as “not suspicious” by police. The UK is increasingly in the midst of what plays as a real-life version of a classic Brit miniseries like State of Play or House of Cards. … Congressional conservatives plan to bring a stringent spending limits/balanced budget amendment to the House floor tomorrow. But even if it passes there, it goes no further, not even to Obama’s promised veto. … As expected, California redevelopment interests filed suit today against Governor Jerry Brown’s successful plan to redirect revenues from pricey redevelopment projects to basic services. The suit seeks to have the state Supreme Court block the plan from going into effect. … The final Harry Potter film shattered The Dark Knight‘s opening weekend domestic box office record with $169.2 million. It also crushed the five-day opening record at the global box office with $481.5 million.

** NEW POLL: MOST REPUBLICANS CAN’T NAME A PRESIDENTIAL FAVORITE. A new Gallup Poll indicates that their presidential candidates haven’t really penetrated the consciousness of most Republican voters. Most can’t name their favored candidate to go up against President Barack Obama without being prompted by a list of names.

Putative frontrunner Mitt Romney, the best-known name in the field, leads in this measurement, but with only 13%. No one else is in double digits.

That includes such widely hyped personalities as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

Ironically, Texas Governor Rick Perry, now portraying Hamlet as he contemplates his not unlikely bid for the nomination, finishes third in this sounding. But with only 4%.

More than half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 58%, do not express a preference when asked in an open-ended format — with no candidates’ names read — whom they are most likely to support for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination. Those who do have a preference most often mention Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. …

Gallup typically reads a list of candidate names when gauging nomination preferences. In the most recent update using this closed-ended approach, Romney was the leading candidate. But even with this method, Gallup finds a fairly high degree of uncertainty, with roughly one in five Republicans not having a preference even after being read a list of the likely candidates. That is a higher percentage of “no opinion” responses than Gallup has found at comparable points in prior GOP nomination contests. …

General David Petraeus turned over command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan today to Marine General John Allen. After transitional leave, Petraeus takes over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in September.

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.

Another big week in presidential politics on tap, and a quiet one in California politics, with Governor Jerry Brown hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the state legislature on summer recess.

President Barack Obama moves toward the end game on the present federal budget and debt ceiling impasse. There will be much posturing this week, with House Republicans going through an exercise voting for a measure to dramatically cut the federal government while extending tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations. But the real action will be behind the scenes.

As I wrote last week, Obama has succeeded in seizing the center on these issues, and this week’s partisan posturing will likely make that clearer. Meanwhile, other efforts are underway to grant Obama the ability to raise the federal debt ceiling, widely recognized by experts as necessary to avert a major economic crisis here and around the world.

Options include lesser cuts in the federal deficit and commissions on cuts and tax reforms.

Here’s what Obama’s week looks like. As usual, he has considerable flexibility built into it, but even more than is customary.

On Monday, Obama appoints the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and will meet with members of the Giving Pledge including co-founders Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and others who have taken the Giving Pledge. The President will receive an update on the Giving Pledge, which invites the wealthiest individuals and families to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Later on Monday, Obama will host an education roundtable with business leaders, Secretary Duncan, Melody Barnes, and America’s Promise Alliance Chair Alma Powell and Founding Chair General Colin Powell to discuss workforce challenges.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House. And on Friday, Obama will welcome Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand to the White House.

Obama has decided not to name Harvard professor and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Opposition from the financial industry and Republicans raised the prospect of an impenetrable Senate filibuster, so Obama has picked former Ohio Attorney General Richard Kordray, who currently is in charge of enforcement at the new agency.

Faced with heavy opposition last year, Obama made Warren assistant to the president and special advisor to the treasury secretary so she could set up the agency. She won’t continue in those posts, and may well run for the Senate in Massachusetts against Scott Brown, where she would likely be the leading prospect.

Atlantis will touch down on Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center to end the 30-year space shuttle program. In fact, the crew has already left the confines of the International Space Station and loaded up for the return trip, which will begin tomorrow. The shuttle was originally scheduled to return on July 20th, 42nd anniversary of the first Moon landing, but will come back a day later, its mission extended even though the craft did little this time other than resupply the ISS until commercial resupply missions, like those of California’s SpaceX, are up and running.

The real effect of “extending the mission” was to avoid the obvious contrast between the end of manned US spaceflight in the foreseeable future with the history-making first landing on the Moon. American astronauts will rely on Russian spacecraft for future missions to the space station. The next major US excursion in space, the beginning of true deep space missions, won’t come until a voyage to the Asteroid Belt in 2025.

In Afghanistan, General David Petraeus today handed over command to Marine General John Allen. Petraeus will return to the States for leave and transition before taking over the CIA in September. Despite a lot of rhetoric, things are not going well in Afghanistan. Not at all.

On Sunday, there was another major assassination, this time in Kabul, of a top advisor to President Hamid Karzai. A week earlier, Karzai’s power broker brother was assassinated in his high-security compound in Kandahar.

In Bahrain, the main opposition party has pulled out of “national dialogue” talks with the monarchy, saying they were leading nowhere with regard to greater rights for the Shiite majority of the island nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

In the Libyan War, rebel forces are beginning to advance again against Gaddafi regime forces on several fronts. Libyan rebels pushed yesterday into the strategic oil port of Brega, the control of which has seesawed back and forth several times.

NATO air strikes hit several targets in and around Tripoli hard the past two nights.

Jan Mohammed Khan, a senior advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former provincial governor, was assassinated yesterday in Kabul.

Now that the more than 30 European, Arab, and North American nations comprising the International Contact Group on Libya have formally recognized the Libyan rebels, billions of dollars in seized and sequestered regime funds will become available to them.

The phone hacking and corruption scandal that threatens to engulf Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire has had a series of major twists.

Just resigned News International CEO Rebekah Brooks was arrested Sunday morning in London when she visited a police station on appointment to answer some questions. As he left the annual media moguls confab in Sun Valley just over a week ago, Murdoch said that one of his top priorities was maintaining Brooks, whom he’s called a surrogate daughter, in her post as head of News Corp’s British newspaper group.

Brooks was forced to resign on Friday. Now she’s been arrested, the 10th arrestee so far in the burgeoning scandal.

The arrest on a weekend, by appointment, though her PR person says she didn’t know she would be arrested when she showed up, seems a bit odd unless there was some fear that she would flee the country. It will definitely be odd if it in any way interferes with her scheduled testimony before Parliament on Tuesday. She agreed from the beginning to testify; Rupert and James Murdoch’s testimony had to be compelled.

This presents another problem for British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose rise was boosted tremendously by the Murdoch group and whose recent communications director, Andy Coulsen, arrested earlier this month in the scandal, was editor of News of the World. Brooks is a close friend and neighbor of Cameron. She’s the only person who has twice been a guest at Chequers, the British prime minister’s traditional country residence, and had dinner with Cameron over the Christmas holidays.

Now the top two leaders of London’s Metropolitian Police have resigned due to their ties to News Corp.

Murdoch seems now to be trying to erect a firewall at the Atlantic. His political power in Britain, once immense, is shattered. He will probably have to sell the the newspapers, which consist of the Sun, the Times of London, and the Sunday Times. He will never gain the prize he seemed about to grasp, the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation.

He and his shareholders are most concerned about preserving the core of his empire, which is mostly here in the US. In addition to Fox News, News Corp owns the Fox TV network, associated local TV stations, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, Fox TV productions, the tabloid New York Post, Dow Jones news service, and the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch’s close lieutenant of more than a half-century, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, resigned late on Friday. He was head of News Corp’s British newspaper group when the phone hacking is reported to have begun early in the last decade. Having headed Murdoch’s North American publishing and Fox TV operations during earlier stints in the US, Hinton was shifted back to News Corp’s global headquarters in New York for the takeover of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

But Hinton can be tied to the British phone hacking. And many suspect that News Corp phone hacking took place in the US as well. The New York Post has a reckless tabloid reputation in keeping with the Murdoch properties in the UK. Even if US-based media outlets did not engage in phone hacking, there are already allegations that News Corp operatives indulged for the UK newspapers.

British movie star Jude Law is now suing News Corp for allegedly hacking his phone while he was in New York. And the FBI was already investigating News Corp for allegedly hacking the phone of 9/11 victims and for bribing foreign officials. If these charges are true, they are all very serious violations of federal law.

While Governor Jerry Brown hikes in the Sierras with First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown, and state legislators do whatever they’re doing for the next month, a few things are happening in California politics.

A number of local government groups, notably the California Redevelopment Association and the League of Cities, will likely sue this week to try to overturn Brown’s successful move to redirect tax revenues flowing to redevelopment projects into basic services.

And the Citizens Redistricting Commission continues working toward a July 28th deadline for new state legislative and congressional districts.

Conservative Republicans, who were granted safe gerrymandered districts in which their hyperpartisanship flourished last time around, are threatening lawsuits, and Latino groups are pushing for more representation.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARRY POTTER: A CONFESSION.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

He has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

He then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

Following that, Obama met with members of the Giving Pledge including co-founders Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and others who have taken the Giving Pledge in the State Dining Room.

At 10:15 AM Pacific, Obama makes a personnel announcement in the Rose Garden, naming the director of the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, discussed above.

At 10:40 AM Pacific, Obama hosts an education roundtable with business leaders, Education Secretary Arne Secretary Duncan, White House domestic policy director Melody Barnes, and America’s Promise Alliance Chair Alma Powell and Founding Chair General Colin Powell in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama and senior administration officials meet with heads of financial regulatory agencies to receive an update on implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the Roosevelt Room.

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.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is very pleased that LA’s much feared “Carmageddon” never really materialized.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Brown’s hiking trip means he wasn’t around for LA’s much ballyhooed “Carmageddon” this past weekend, discussed here on Saturday.

It’s all gone off without a hitch.

To the evident surprise of many observers, Angelenos are quite capable of avoiding driving heedlessly hither and yon on a weekend.

In fact, the needed repairs were completed nearly 17 hours earlier than scheduled, at noontime on Sunday.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? … From my July 13th column.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** 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 is trading around $95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $61 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.

Just resigned News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, was arrested Sunday in London. One of global media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s most favored executives, Brooks headed his News Corp’s British newspaper group, now engulfed in a phone hacking and police corruption scandal.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARRY POTTER: A CONFESSION.

UPDATE: LONDON’S METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER RESIGNS IN MURDOCH PHONE HACKING SCANDAL.

** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

He has received his daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

Obama has no scheduled public events.

He is working behind the scenes on the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling impasse, and may meet privately with congressional leaders on the crisis.

Meanwhile, Obama dispatched a US delegation to attend the women’s World Cup football (soccer) final today in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Jill Biden leads the delegation, which includes Chelsea Clinton, to boost the American team in its world championship match with Japan and promote women’s sport.

USA vs. Japan for the World Cup airs at 11:45 AM Pacific on ESPN.

In rather less ennobling activity, the phone hacking and corruption scandal that threatens to engulf Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire has some major new twists today, only one week after Murdoch hoped to shut the whole thing down by closing the News of the World tabloid newspaper initially at its core.

News International CEO Rebekah Brooks was arrested this morning in London when she visited a police station on appointment to answer some questions. As he left the annual media moguls confab in Sun Valley last weekend, Murdoch said that one of his top priorities was maintaining Brooks, whom he’s called a surrogate daughter, in her post as head of News Corp’s British newspaper group.

Brooks was forced to resign on Friday. Now she’s been arrested, the 10th arrestee so far in the burgeoning scandal.

The arrest on a weekend, by appointment, though her PR person says she didn’t know she would be arrested when she showed up, seems a bit odd unless there was some fear that she would flee the country. It will definitely be odd if it in any way interferes with her scheduled testimony before Parliament on Tuesday. She agreed from the beginning to testify; Rupert and James Murdoch’s testimony had to be compelled.

This presents another problem for British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose rise was boosted tremendously by the Murdoch group and whose recent communications director, Andy Coulsen, arrested earlier this month in the scandal, was editor of News of the World.

Brooks is a close friend and neighbor of Cameron. She’s the only person who has twice been a guest at Chequers, the British prime minister’s traditional country residence, and had dinner with Cameron over the Christmas holidays.

Cameron is under tremendous pressure from Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, whose misfiring Opposition leadership has newfound purpose in driving the agenda on Murdoch. Miliband over the weekend called for the breakup of the Murdoch group in the UK.

Murdoch seems now to be trying to erect a firewall at the Atlantic. His political power in Britain, once immense, is shattered. He will probably have to sell the the newspapers, which consist of the Sun, the Times of London, and the Sunday Times. He will never gain the prize he seemed about to grasp, the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation.

He and his shareholders are most concerned about preserving the core of his empire, which is mostly here in the US. In addition to Fox News, News Corp owns the Fox TV network, associated local TV stations, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, Fox TV productions, the tabloid New York Post, Dow Jones news service, and the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch’s close lieutenant of more than a half-century, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, resigned late on Friday. He was head of News Corp’s British newspaper group when the phone hacking is reported to have begun early in the last decade. Having headed Murdoch’s North American publishing and Fox TV operations during earlier stints in the US, Hinton was shifted back to News Corp’s global headquarters in New York for the takeover of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

But Hinton can be tied to the British phone hacking. And many suspect that News Corp phone hacking took place in the US as well. The New York Post has a reckless tabloid reputation in keeping with the Murdoch properties in the UK.

Even if US-based media outlets did not engage in phone hacking, there are already allegations that News Corp operatives indulged for the UK newspapers.

British movie star Jude Law is now suing News Corp for allegedly hacking his phone while he was in New York. And the FBI was already investigating News Corp for allegedly hacking the phone of 9/11 victims and for bribing foreign officials. If these charges are true, they are all very serious violations of federal law.

In the Libyan War, rebel forces are beginning to advance again against Gaddafi regime forces on several fronts. Libyan rebels pushed today into the strategic oil port of Brega, the control of which has seesawed back and forth several times.

NATO air strikes hit several targets in and around Tripoli hard last night.

Now that the more than 30 European, Arab, and North American nations comprising the International Contact Group on Libya have formally recognized the Libyan rebels, billions of dollars in seized and sequestered regime funds will become available to them.

Gaddafi vows to fight on, even as members of his regime seek talks with the alliance opposing him. There are many reports of safe havens being sought for Gaddafi, who insists he would not leave Libya. Saudi Arabia insists that it will not take Gaddafi, not surprising given the antipathy of Gulf Arabs toward Gaddafi. But another option is Equatorial Guinea, which does not recognize the International Criminal Court.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Brown’s hiking trip means he isn’t around for LA’s much ballyhooed “Carmageddon” this weekend, discussed here on Saturday.

It’s all gone off without a hitch.

To the evident surprise of many observers, Angelenos are quite capable of avoiding driving heedlessly hither and yon on a weekend.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses federal fiscal impasse and economic recovery.

** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama has received his daily intelligence and economics briefing in the Oval Office.

He then met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Map Room.

Obama has appointed Dr. Jill Biden to lead the US delegation to Sunday’s Women’s World Cup final in football (soccer) in Frankfurt, Germany. He also appointed Chelsea Clinton, whose only other recent political activity was campaigning against him on behalf of her mother, a member of the World Cup delegation.

The US women’s team plays Japan on Sunday for the world championship.

While Obama continues to push his “grand bargain” on the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling impasse, comprising big budget cuts, big tax hikes, and expansion of the debt ceiling, events are drifting to a much smaller conclusion to ensure expansion of the debt ceiling.

Still, private negotiations on larger solutions are reportedly taking place with Republicans even as the most conservative push for symbolic votes.

The International Contact Group met yesterday in Istanbul and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the US now formally recognizes the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council as the legitimate representative of Libya.

Indeed, the more than 30 nations making up the Contact Group all announced that they recognize the Libyan rebels, rather than the Gaddafi regime. This will help free up large sums of money to fund the rebels, with the ability to use sequestered funds of the Libyan government and wealthy officials.

The Libyan rebels, stalled after recent advances against Gaddafi forces, have begun a renewed offensive, battling again for the strategic oil port of Brega.

In Syria, Friday saw the most massive demonstrations yet around the country, again met with brutal crackdowns from the Assad regime. Security forces opened fire on protesters, reportedly killing more than 20 people.

Hundreds of Syrian opposition leaders are meeting today in Turkey for a “National Salvation Conference, calling for a civil disobedience campaign to destabilize the Assad regime.

In the UK’s phone hacking scandal, News Corp chieftain Rupert Murdoch continues to face metastasizing problems.

Yesterday morning long favored executive Rebekah Brooks, head of his UK newspaper operations, resigned. Late yesterday, Murdoch’s associate of more than 50 years, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, also resigned.

This came after US Attorney General Eric Holder announced an investigation into News Corp’s operations in America. This came after Senators Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, and Frank Lautenberg, and New York Congressman Peter King, a Republican, called for a US probe of News Corp, owner of Fox News, for possible phone hacking of 9/11 victims.

Now Murdoch has placed big apology ads in every newspaper in Britain. On Tuesday, he, Brooks, and son James Murdoch, his heir apparent, testify before a parliamentary committee. The Murdochs’ testimony had to be compelled.

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.

The incredibly hyped “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles is going very well as of Saturday morning.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Brown’s departure means he isn’t around for LA’s much ballyhooed “Carmageddon” this weekend. That’s the 53-hour closing of the 405 Freeway from the 10 Freeway to the Sepulveda Pass, from midnight Friday night till 5 AM on Monday morning.

Cal Trans and local agencies closed a 10-mile stretch of the San Diego Freeway (405) from the Santa Monica Freeway (10) to the Sepulveda Pass leading into the San Fernando Valley to make infrastructure improvements and widen lanes.

Despite all the hype, or perhaps because of it, it’s a non-event so far.

A far right Christian conservative group called the Capitol Resource Institute announced late on Friday that it will attempt to mount a referendum campaign to overturn Brown’s signature of landmark legislation to require that contributions made by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people be included in social studies curricula.

The group will attempt to get some 434,000 valid signatures, which means they need more than 700,000 be sure, to place the referendum on next year’s statewide ballot.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? … From my July 13th column.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** 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.

The final Harry Potter film is breaking box office records around the world. On Friday it shattered the single-day North American box office record with an astounding $92.1 million haul. The Dark Knight‘s three-day opening weekend box office record of $158.4 million — once seemingly unassailable — is likely to fall.

** 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 at $97.24 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.

This is up about $63 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 discussed the present impasse on the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling in a White House press conference this morning, calling for slightly higher costs on high-income Medicare recipients as he continued to push, at least publicly, for his “grand bargain” solution.

** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama made more headway today in his bid to use the federal deficit/debt ceiling crisis as a way to position himself in the political center. But the situation is not yet resolved, though its direction seems clear. No big tax hikes, no reductions in core entitlements, perhaps some more limited budget cuts, agreement that the debt ceiling will be raised. (Republican leaders schooled their Tea Party frosh today on some economic facts.) … A very quiet day in California politics, with the state legislature on its month-long summer recess, predictable sniping at the Citizens Redistricting Commission, and Governor Jerry Brown and Special Counsel/First Lady Anne Gust Brown hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Brown’s office announced his veto of a bill dealing with astro-turf and homeownerszzz …

** FORGET “CARMAGEDDON,” HERE’S A REAL ARMAGEDDON. OR PERHAPS GOTTERDAMMERUNG. Pity poor Angelenos, or at least their hype-prone local media, quaking (so to speak) over the weekend shutdown of a few miles of freeway. The real Armageddon is taking place at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

It was just a week ago that Andy Coulsen, the recent communications director to British Prime Minister David Cameron, was arrested for his role in phone hacking as the former editor of the famed London tabloid News of the World. And just five days ago that News of the World breathed its last.

And just the day before yesterday that Murdoch pulled the plug on what was to have been the biggest deal of his career, the long greased takeover of BSkyB, the vast satellite broadcasting operation. And late yesterday that confirmation came of an FBI investigation into possible News Corp phone hacking of 9/11 victims.

This morning, longtime Murdoch favorite Rebekah Brooks, head of News International, resigned. And this afternoon it was Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, Murdoch’s veteran consigliere, who has been working with Murdoch since becoming a copy boy and cub reporter at a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia (where Murdoch was a young publisher) a half-century ago.

Hinton, who was also the CEO of Dow Jones and Co., headed Murdoch’s UK newspaper operation through much of the last decade. Prior to that he was head of Murdoch’s American publishing operations and the Fox TV network.

When people like Hinton and Brooks are gone, you know things are very serious indeed. Brooks was reportedly something of a surrogate daughter, who otherwise would have been fired nearly immediately. Hinton, of course, is the link between Murdoch’s now horribly tainted British newspaper operation and his American publishing and broadcasting properties. And if it comes out that News Corp operatives hacked phones in the US, especially those of 9/11 victims, you can kiss Fox News and all the rest goodbye.

** NEW POLL: RECESSION ON NEEDS PERSISTS IN RECOVERY. Despite the fact that the recession is over, by its strictly economic measurement, its ill affects are lingering heavily long after.

A new Gallup Poll shows that more are struggling to achieve basic necessities now than before the great global recession began.

In fact, the only improvement is on access to fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, ironically, Americans are exercising less than they did before the advent of the recession.

More Americans continue to struggle to access basic necessities than before the 2008 economic crisis. The U.S. earned a Basic Access Index score of 82.0 in June — about on par with the low point of 81.5 recorded in February and March of 2009 — and down compared with 83.6 measured in June 2008. …

Americans’ access to health insurance declined the most among the items included in the Basic Access Index. In June 2011, 82.1% reported having health insurance, continuing a steady decline from 85.4% in June 2008. Fewer Americans also report having a personal doctor and visiting the dentist at least once in the last 12 months. “Enough money to buy food at all times in the last 12 months” is also trending lower compared to 2008 and 2009. …

US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the FBI will investigate Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for possible phone hacking of 9/11 victims. The Australian government also announced an investigation of the native Australian Murdoch and his operations there.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HARRY POTTER: A CONFESSION.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama has received his daily intelligence and economics briefing in the Oval Office.

At 8 AM Pacific, he held a news conference in the James S. Brady Briefing Room, netcast live here on New West Notes, on the present impasse on the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling.

While Obama continues to push his grand compromise, comprising big budget cuts, big tax hikes, and expansion of the debt ceiling, events are drifting to a much smaller conclusion to ensure expansion of the debt ceiling.

At 9:29 AM Pacific, Obama calls the crews of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station from the Oval Office.

Atlantis will return to the Kennedy Space Center on July 21st. It had previously been scheduled to return on July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of the first landing on the Moon. But since it’s unclear precisely when the US will have another manned mission which does not involve riding on a Russian rocket, that might have cast an unfortunate light on things.

Obama has rejected President George W. Bush’s plan to return to the Moon in favor of moving NASA into deep space missions, first a visit to an asteroid, then an expedition to Mars. But those are many years away.

The Atlantis crew was awakened in the middle of the night by an alarm. One of the shuttle’s five onboard general purpose computers had failed. It’s the second time this has happened on the mission.

The crew was able to repair the problem quickly. These computers, incidentally, are wildly out of date. The laptop computer I’m writing this on is vastly more powerful.

Why does the shuttle program use such clunky computers? Because they are set up to handle the strictly mathematical tasks involved, and changing them out would require massive rewrites in software code.

At 10:30 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Ruby Bridges and representatives of the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Oval Office and views Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With.”

Bridges was the little girl who participated in a 1960 school desegregation move in New Orleans. The Rockwell painting depicted her in a crowd of white men on her first day at school.

The International Contact Group is meeting today in Istanbul and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the US now formally recognizes the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council as the legitimate representative of Libya.

In fact, the more than 30 nations making up the Contact Group all announced that they recognize the Libyan rebels, rather than the Gaddafi regime. This will help free up large sums of money to fund the rebels, with the ability to use sequestered funds of the Libyan government and wealthy officials.

Clinton and other international leaders say they are entertaining various efforts by interlocutors, including the African Union, Russia, and Turkey, to engage with the Gaddafi regime for its transition away from power. But though there are now multiple contacts from Gaddafi emissaries, they’re not sure how much weight to attach to them.

Meanwhile, the Libyan rebels, stalled after recent advances against Gaddafi forces, are preparing for a renewed offensive.

Incidentally, Clinton said again that she will retire from politics when she leaves the post of secretary of state, which she now says will be after Obama’s first term ends.

In Syria today, more massive demonstrations around the country, again met with brutal crackdowns from the Assad regime. Security forces opened fire on protesters, killing at least 14.

In the UK’s phone hacking scandal, News Corp chieftain Rupert Murdoch faces metastasizing problems.

His favored executive, News International chief Rebekkah Brooks, resigned today. She was head of Murdoch’s UK newspaper operations and edited the now late News of the World early in the decade when its phone hacking operations apparently began.

Late yesterday, Murdoch and son James Murdoch, his heir apparent, reversed their earlier refusal to testify next week at a British parliamentary hearing after being hit with official summonses.

This came after Murdoch very reluctantly pulled out of what was to have been the biggest deal of his career, the jewel in the crown of a vast media empire, the takeover of the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation. But Murdoch was about to lose a parliamentary vote, with his allies the Conservatives joining Labour and the Tories’ still coalition partner Liberal Democrats in a vote of opposition to the deal.

Now US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced an investigation into News Corp’s operations in America. This came after Senators Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, and Frank Lautenberg, and New York Congressman Peter King, a Republican, called for a US probe of News Corp, owner of Fox News, for possible phone hacking of 9/11 victims.

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.

It’s “Carmageddon” this weekend in Los Angeles. Or is it?

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Brown and First Lady Anne Gust Brown left Sacramento yesterday for a hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

They’ll be there for about a week.

Brown is very fond of the Sierras. As a child, he spent a fair amount of time there, including regular family vacations at Yosemite.

When he was pondering running for governor, he told me that he could either be governor again, with all its attendant headaches, or continue as California’s attorney general and go hiking in the Sierras with Anne.

Now he has the opportunity for the latter, at least for a time.

Brown’s departure means he won’t be around for LA’s much ballyhooed “Carmageddon” this weekend. That’s the 53-hour closing of the 405 Freeway from the 10 Freeway to the Sepulveda Pass, from midnight Friday night till 5 AM on Monday morning.

Cal Trans and local agencies are closing a 10-mile stretch of the San Diego Freeway (405) from the Santa Monica Freeway (10) to the Sepulveda Pass leading into the San Fernando Valley to make infrastructure improvements and widen lanes.

Will LA be paralyzed? Or will it be a rather peaceful non-event like the 1984 LA Olympics?

I expect more the latter.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? … From my July 13th column.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** 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.

The final Harry Potter film is opening throughout North America today. It’s already broken box office records in several international markets.

** 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 $97 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $63 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.

At 8 AM Pacific on Friday, President Barack Obama holds a White House news conference focused on the present federal budget deficit and debt ceiling impasse. The event is 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 netcasts 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.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, appearing with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, said today that “a small group of ideologues” are blocking needed extension of the federal debt ceiling.

** QUICK HITS. No puff of white smoke over the White House today heralding a deal on the federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse after discussions between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders. Obama will hold a press conference tomorrow at 8 AM Pacific, which will be netcast live on NWN. … Heeding calls from Senator Barbara Boxer and other congressional figures, the FBI is investigating whether operatives of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp hacked the phones of 9/11 victims and survivors. … Murdoch and his son James, after refusing this morning to testify next week before the British Parliament on the UK phone hacking scandal, reversed field late today after being threatened with contempt charges and will now appear. … The California Legislature moved bills permitting private financial aid to illegal immigrants attending college and moving the state’s presidential primary from March to June as a cost-saving measure.

UPDATE: After sending out the barebones release seen below, Governor Jerry Brown sent out this additional statement on his signing of historic legislation on LGBT contributions being reflected in textbooks:

“History should be honest. This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Senator Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation.”

** JERRY-RIGGING: A HISTORY-MAKING PIECE OF LEGISLATION, AND A VERY PREDICTABLE CONSERVATIVE THREAT. In a uniquely understated way, Governor Jerry Brown made history this morning. As expected, he signed a bill by San Francisco state Senator Mark Leno to make California the first state to require that the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people be included in social studies curricula.

The new law also requires inclusion of the contributions of Pacific Islanders and people with disabilities.

Here is Brown’s history-making announcement: Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. announced today that he has signed the following bill:

SB 48 by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) – Pupil instruction: prohibition of discriminatory content.

Leno was a bit more effusive, releasing this statement: Governor Jerry Brown today signed the FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno. The bill ensures that the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and disabled individuals are accurately and fairly portrayed in instructional materials by adding these groups to the existing list of under-represented cultural and ethnic groups already included in the state’s inclusionary education requirements.

“Today we are making history in California by ensuring that our textbooks and instructional materials no longer exclude the contributions of LGBT Americans,” said Senator Leno (D-San Francisco). “Denying LGBT people their rightful place in history gives our young people an inaccurate and incomplete view of the world around them. I am pleased Governor Brown signed the FAIR Education Act and I thank him for recognizing that the LGBT community, its accomplishments and its ongoing efforts for first-class citizenship are important components of California’s history.”

Brown would not say publicly in advance whether or not he would sign the bill, but as I mentioned before I would have been shocked had he not.

Meanwhile, as the citizens redistricting commission continues its work, bumping up against internal deadlines, California Republican Party chairman Tom Del Beccaro — whose prior claim to fame was his laughable 2006 lawsuit to have Brown disqualified from serving as California’s attorney general — opined today over on the far right Flash Report that the new districts may have to be the subject of a referendum to block them.

Why? Because he fears that Republicans won’t do as well in the new districts as they have in the existing districts.

Well, they won’t. The Republicans benefited from the very partisan gerrymander executed 10 years ago, garnering safe districts for increasingly conservative politicians.

Meanwhile, the state has changed.

I haven’t studied the potential new legislative districts, which won’t be finalized and in public until next month. But I’ve always expected an increasingly right-wing Republican Party here to scream bloody murder about them. And right on cue comes Mr. Del Beccaro, writing: “It is also time for Californians to consider saving themselves from the Commission they created, even if that means by referendum.”

** NEW POLL: “SATISFACTION” REACHES TWO-YEAR LOW. “I can’t get no satisfaction …” Is the old Rolling Stones tune the theme song for the times?

A new Gallup Poll indicates that Americans’ already low level of satisfaction with how things are is nearly as low as it was the month after President Barack Obama became president.

The “satisfaction” level dropped by 20% last month. Which is more impressive than it sounds, since satisfaction was only at 20% before the drop.

Virtually all of the drop came from Democrats.

But Democrats still staunchly back Obama. Especially considering the alternatives.

Satisfaction levels had gone up the previous month, following the take-down of Osama bin Laden. But while bin Laden is still dead, the economic recovery is also still sputtering.

Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the country fell to 16% in July, the lowest in more than two years. Satisfaction approached this level in December 2010, when it descended to 17%, but it has not registered as low as 16% since February 2009 — President Barack Obama’s first full month in office — when it was 15%. …

Satisfaction fell four percentage points just in the last month, from 20% in June. Among party groups, Democrats’ satisfaction has dropped the most, from 35% to 25%. Independents’ satisfaction in June and July was fairly steady at 17% and 14%, respectively, and Republicans’ was unchanged at 9%. …

>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST

At 10 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. 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 netcasts 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.

At a contentious White House meeting late yesterday, President Barack Obama told Republican congressional leaders, “Don’t call my bluff” on the federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

At 10 AM Pacific, Press Secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.

The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes.

You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.

At 11 AM Pacific, Obama participates in regional interviews on the economy, deficit reduction, and the debt ceiling in the Map Room.

At 12:05 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.

They will review the state of play with financial markets growing very restive over the continuing impasse on the federal debt ceiling.

At 1:15 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Congressional Leadership in the Cabinet Room.

The topic? Can you guess?

Top Democrats in Congress are zeroing in on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for his supposed immaturity and inflexibility in budget negotiations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said this morning that Cantor is the only one in the room who takes a totally inflexible attitude, calling him “childish.”

Three terrorist bomb blasts hit India’s commercial capital of Mumbai yesterday. It’s still unclear who was responsible. Mumbai was the target of the Thanksgiving 2008 jihadist siege, much of it staged out of Pakistan.

Now that the US has suspended aid to Pakistan, more high-level discussions are taking place once again. Pakistan’s intelligence chief, ISI director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, arrived in Washington yesterday and is still there today for meetings, while Marine General James Mattis, head of US Central Command, is in Pakistan for meetings with the country’s military leadership.

The International Contact Group on Libya meets today and Friday in Istanbul.

Reports are that the Libyan rebels, stalling after recent advances against Gaddafi forces, are preparing for a renewed offensive.

In the UK’s phone hacking scandal, News Corp chieftain Rupert Murdoch, who has swiftly become a sort of real life Lord Voldemort in British life, acceded to the obvious yesterday and pulled his bid to take over BSkyB, the vast British Sky Broadcasting satellite operation.

This was to have been the biggest deal of Murdoch’s career, the jewel in the crown of a vast media empire. But Murdoch was about to lose a parliamentary vote, with his allies the Conservatives joining Labour and the Tories’ still coalition partner Liberal Democrats in a vote of opposition to the deal.

He and his son and heir apparent, James, are refusing to testify before a UK parliamentary committee, despite being formally summoned. That’s the British equivalent of a subpoena. Failure to appear is likely to result in contempt charges.

Now Murdoch, whose News Corp notable US news media properties Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, as well as the Fox TV network and stations in media markets, could have a direct problem here.

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch and son James Murdoch, overseer of News Corp’s British newspaper operations, have refused to appear before a committee of the British Parliament next week. They face likely contempt charges.

Senators Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, and Frank Lautenberg are urging a US probe of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owner of Fox News, for possible phone hacking of 9/11 victims.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? … From my July 13th column.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** 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.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II opens tomorrow around the world.

** 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 $98 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.

A series of terrorist bombings struck Mumbai today. The Indian commercial capital, known from the British colonial days as Bombay, was the site of a major terrorist siege by jihadists in November 2008.

** QUICK HITS. At least 21 people were killed and 150 wounded in three coordinated terrorist bombings today in Mumbai. The death toll is far less than the 166 killed in the jihadist terror siege in November 2008. This time the attacks, carried out by planted explosives rather than roving raiders, hit targets unfamiliar to those outside India. No group has reportedly claimed responsibility. … Afghan President Hamid Karzai attended his assassinated brother’s funeral today in Karz, the family’s ancestral home in the south. Kandahar kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai will likely be replaced by a former warlord and tribal rival. While traveling to the funeral, another provincial governor escaped a bomb attack. … Reports are that President Barack Obama walked out of a contentious White House meeting with congressional leaders on the federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse. I wonder if he has theme music for that. … California’s Department of Finance has issued an assessment of June revenues, finding them $200+ million below projections in the recently adopted state budget. Using a different accounting procedure, the department came up with less than the $350 million shortfall found by the Legislative Analyst Office. Triggered budget cuts are in store if revenues come up short at the end of the year.

** NEWS CORP SCANDAL: BARBARA BOXER JOINS TWO OTHER SENATORS IN CALL FOR FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a frequent target of Fox News during her landslide-winning re-election campaign last year in California, today joined West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg in urging federal probes of reports that Rupert Murdoch’s mothership media parent News Corp extended its UK phone hacking scandal to the US.

Murdoch newspapers are reported to have tried to hack the phones of 9/11 victims and their families. In addition, the senators asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate News Corp for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids the bribery of foreign officials.

The Murdoch newspapers at the center of the UK phone hacking scandal are controlled by News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of the parent News Corp, a U.S.-based transnational corporation. Murdoch, a native Australian, became an American citizen in order to pursue his dream of a global media empire. It was necessary for him to establish the Fox TV network.

In addition to the Fox TV network and affiliated local TV stations, the Murdoch-controlled News Corp owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio, Fox TV productions, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

** NEW POLL: MOST STILL OPPOSED TO RAISING FEDERAL DEBT CEILING. Though it’s been raised as a matter of routine in the past, and every serious expert believes it must be raised again to avert economic disaster, a plurality of Americans opposes raising the federal debt ceiling in a new Gallup Poll.

And you are not surprised.

Despite agreement among leaders of both sides of the political aisle in Washington that raising the U.S. debt ceiling is necessary, more Americans want their member of Congress to vote against such a bill than for it, 42% vs. 22%, while one-third are unsure. This 20-percentage-point edge in opposition to raising the debt ceiling in Gallup’s July 7-10 poll is slightly less than the 28-point lead (47% vs. 19%) seen in May. …

Republicans are far more unified in their opposition to raising the debt ceiling (60% opposed, 11% in favor) than Democrats are in their support of it (39% in favor, 21% opposed). Independents tilt heavily against raising the debt ceiling, 46% to 18%, although 36% have no opinion. …

** OBAMA KABUKI: THE BUDGET AND THE POLITICS OF POSITIONING. What’s President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

But why worry? …

From my new column.

>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST

At 9:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. 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 netcasts 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.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owner of Fox News, suffered a huge blow today in the UK in the midst of its phone hacking scandal when it withdrew its bid to take over the vast BSkyB satellite operation prior to a parliamentay vote against the deal. British Prime Minister David Cameron, a longtime Murdoch ally whose former communications director was arrested in the phone hacking scandal, lambasted the corporation.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA KABUKI.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

Obama then met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office.

Lavrov held extensive talks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who also took part in the meeting with Obama, on Monday regarding the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Obama would like to forestall a likely UN General Assembly vote to recognize Palestine in September.

At 8 AM Pacific, Obama meets with members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in the Roosevelt Room.

At 9:05 AM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

At 9:30 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 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet for lunch in the Private Dining Room.

At 1 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Congressional Leadership in the Cabinet Room.

The topic? Need you ask? The present impasse on the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling.

For his part, Biden separately hosts a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss efforts to address sexual assault and dating violence and meets with General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters Harold Schaitberger.

Obama’s re-election campaign had some good news to announce late last night. Obama raised $86 million in the last quarter for his own campaign and for Democratic National Committee efforts to promote him and the unified campaign. This far more than all his Republican opponents combined.

Three apparent terrorist bomb blasts hit India’s commercial capital of Mumbai today. Reports are still emerging. Mumbai was the target of the Thanksgiving 2008 jihadist siege, much of it staged out of Pakistan.

Now that the US has suspended aid to Pakistan, more high-level discussions are taking place once again. Pakistan’s intelligence chief, ISI director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, is in Washington today for meetings, while Marine General James Mattis, head of US Central Command, is in Pakistan for meetings with the country’s military leadership.

The International Contact Group on Libya is preparing to meet on Thursday and Friday in Istanbul.

The Libyan War remains murky. While there are some signs that the long stalemate is turning in the rebels’ direction — there have been a number of advances toward Tripoli, fuel and other staples are becoming scarce for the regime and the population still under its control, and there are multiple reports of contacts by purported Gaddafi regime emissaries seeking a negotiated solution — nothing has broken yet.

In the UK’s phone hacking scandal, News Corp chieftain Rupert Murdoch, the Voldemort of the piece, acceded to the obvious today and pulled his bid to take over BSkyB, the vast British Sky Broadcasting satellite operation.

This was to have been the biggest deal of Murdoch’s career, the jewel in the crown of a vast media empire. But Murdoch was about to lose a parliamentary vote, with his allies the Conservatives joining Labour and the Tories’ still coalition partner Liberal Democrats in a vote of opposition to the deal.

The once closely allied government of Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday joined the Labour Party’s move to block Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB, and has called on Murdoch to withdraw.

Now Murdoch, whose News Corp notable US news media properties Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, as well as the Fox TV network and stations in media markets, could have a direct problem here.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, wants an inquiry into reports that News Corp operatives tried to hack the phones of 9/11 victims and their families.

Murdoch’s big debacle came after a cascade of reports, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown bitter attack on the Murdoch organization late Monday for reportedly having several of its newspapers, including the venerable Times of London, illegally obtain all sorts of private information about him and his family.

President Barack Obama presented the Medal of Honor yesterday to Army Ranger Sergeant First Class Leroy Petry for his courage in the Afghan War. Petry is only the second living recipient of the award since the Vietnam War.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Yesterday was the run-off special election Brown scheduled for Jane Harman’s old coastal LA congressional district. As expected, LA City Councilwoman Janice Hahn won a hard-fought, low-turnout race against self-funding Tea Party type Craig Huey.

Hahn won handily, 55% to 45%.

Brown did not campaign with Hahn, despite the fact that one of his media consultants in the governor’s race, Joe Trippi, is a consultant to Hahn.

Brown, and predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger, received good news late yesterday in the form of a new report from the Brookings Institution noting that California leads the nation in clean energy jobs.

Eleven metropolitan areas in California are among the top 100 in the country: #2 Los Angeles, #6 San Francisco, #12 Sacramento, #21 San Diego, #23 Riverside, #26 San Jose, ; #57 Fresno, #81 Oxnard, #82 Stockton, #89 Bakersfield, and #93 Modesto.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of “Long War” after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan, as I discussed last month on the Huffington Post. But Republican pols are driving their voters against the Libyan War, even though the cost and exposure are minuscule in comparison.

The net effect for Barack Obama is real trouble, as he finds popular support for both the Afghan War and the Libyan War has plummeted. Even though most Democratic voters still support his far more limited mission working with European and Arab allies in Libya, it’s the newfound opposition from Republicans that accounts for his Libya operation now being opposed by a national plurality. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.

** 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.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II, final film in the series, opens on Friday. Is Snape a villain, or not?

** 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 $98 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.

The final space walk of the space shuttle era took place this morning 250 miles above the Earth.

** QUICK HITS. Republicans are starting to catch on to President Barack Obama’s successful bid to position himself for re-election on fiscal issues at their expense, tossing out half-baked ideas and barbs today as the two parties fail again to agree. … Texas Congressman Ron Paul, once again running a libertarian campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, said today that he will retire from Congress after this term, and 24 years. His son Rand is a Republican senator from Kentucky. … Ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who lost in a landslide last November to Senator Barbara Boxer, was named today by Texas Senator Jon Cornyn as vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign committee. …

** JERRY-RIGGING: NEW APPOINTEES, NEW HELP, SAME ATTITUDE. Governor Jerry Brown, who not surprisingly will not be in attendance at next weekend’s National Governors Association conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, made a couple of high-level appointments today, offered help in cleaning Montana’s oil-polluted Yellowstone River, and sent a letter to the chairman of the board of the California State University system.

Brown picked a new secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency and a new director of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). But he didn’t wander very far afield in doing so.

The new chief of CAL FIRE is its acting director since last year, Ken Pimlott, a professional forester and veteran firefighter who’s been with the department since 1993. He’s a registered independent.

The new head of Cal EPA will be Matt Rodriguez. You could say that Brown knows him rather well. He is currently California’s chief deputy attorney general. He’s been with the AG’s office since 1987, and has extensive experience with resource and environmental issues.

But his connection to former AG Brown goes back farther than that. Rodriguez, a Democrat, worked as a young program analyst in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research during Brown’s second term as governor in the early 1980s.

After making those appointments, Brown announced that he has dispatched a team of five experts to help clean up the oil spill in the Yellowstone River. An ExxonMobil pipeline discharged some 1000 barrels of oil into the river. California’s Office of Spill Response and Prevention has a lot of experience. Among other things, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dispatched a team of 70 to help with the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year in the Gulf of Mexico. Montana will reimburse California for its assistance.

On a less uplifting note, Brown dispatched a letter this morning to Cal State Trustees chairman Herbert Carter to protest the board’s decision to increase the pay for university campus presidents. Like the University of California, the Cal State system is hit hard by budget cuts. But they don’t seem to affect the top brass.

So Brown wrote “to express my concern about the ever-escalating pay packages awarded to your top administrators.

“I fear your approach to compensation is setting a pattern for public service that we cannot afford.

“I have reviewed the Mercer compensation study and have reflected on its market premises, which provide the justification for your proposed salary boost of more than $100,000. (Brown is referring to the new head of San Diego State.) The assumption is that you cannot find a qualified man or woman to lead the university unless paid twice that of the Chief Justice of the United States. I reject this notion.

“At a time when the state is closing its courts, laying off public school teachers and shutting senior centers, it is not right to be raising the salaries of leaders who–of necessity–must demand sacrifice from everyone else.”

But the board seems to be ignoring Brown’s concerns.

** NEW POLL: ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE REMAINS FLAT. A new Gallup Poll survey indicates that economic confidence in the US has remained essentially flat for the past month.

And that it was at a rather low ebb to begin with.

And, further, that it has not improved from a year ago.

This is an odd economic recovery, hamstrung earlier in the year by rising oil prices, with recent savings largely not passed on. And throughout it all, it’s a recovery in which capital is largely staying on the sidelines, not engaging in major employment pick-ups, with growing rewards increasingly skewed to the high end.

So the findings below are not surprising.

Americans’ economic confidence remains near its 2011 low, averaging -34 in the week ending July 10. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index has not shown any improvement in the last five weeks after a decline in early June. Last year at this time, the Index was -36, suggesting there has been no year-over-year improvement. …

Regardless, the current low level of economic confidence suggests something positive needs to happen if the economy is going to recover in the second half. Another decline in confidence from these levels might lead to just the opposite, creating a “soft patch” that may not be transitory.

>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST

At 11:15 AM Pacific, President Barack Obama awards the Medal of Honor to Army Ranger Sergeant First Class Leroy Petry in the East Room. Petry, who earned the award in the Afghan War, is only the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. 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 netcasts 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.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s powerful brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was assassinated this morning in his Kandahar home by a close associate.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA KABUKI.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.

Obama then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama awards the Medal of Honor to Army Ranger Sergeant First Class Leroy Arthur Petry in the East Room. Biden will also be in attendance.

This event will be netcast live here on New West Notes.

You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.

Petry earned the nation’s highest decoration for valor during a May 2008 Afghan War firefight in which he was twice wounded, the second time losing his hand as a result of retrieving and throwing a hand grenade back at Taliban forces.

Petry is only the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. The first is a paratrooper sergeant awarded by Obama for his courage in the Afghan War, Sal Giunta, last September.

By an odd coincidence, both Giunta and Petry are from swing states in the 2012 presidential election, with Giunta hailing from Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Petry from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

At 12:15 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Congressional Leadership in the Cabinet Room.

The topic? The impasse over the federal budget deficit and debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, First Lady Michelle Obama is in California for the Palm Desert funeral services for former First Lady Betty Ford.

Also on hand will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, former President George W. Bush, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Members of the Atlantis crew perform the last spacewalk of the space shuttle era today. They will go outside the International Space Station to retrieve and stanch a broken ammonia pump, which will be returned to Earth on Atlantis.

The space shuttle is still scheduled to return to the Kennedy Space Center on July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of the first landing on the Moon.

Before flying out to California for Betty Ford’s funeral, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a working dinner with top representatives of the Mideast Quartet to figure out how to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. However, her discussion with UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Quartet special envoy, yielded no common approach.

The Palestinians intend to make their case for independence at the UN General Assembly meeting in September in New York, and will almost certainly win the vote. But they won’t be recognized as an independent nation unless the UN Security Council, and America’s not unlikely veto, okays it.

Not long after this played out, masked gunmen blew up the Egyptian natural gas pipeline into Israel during the pre-dawn hours.

Masked gunmen blew up the natural gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel in Tuesday’s pre-dawn hours.

In Afghanistan this morning, Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s powerful brother, was murdered in his high-security Kandahar home by a close associate. The Taliban claimed credit, though it’s unclear how valid that is.

The younger Karzai, who once ran a restaurant in Chicago near Wrigley Field, was reputedly the most powerful man in Southern Afghanistan, with ties to the drug trade, a host of warlords, and the CIA, which employed him as an informant and go-between.

In Syria, clean-up crews are taking care of the mess from yesterday’s mob action at the US embassy in Damascus. Some 300 thugs attacked the embassy before being driven off by the Marine guards, using non-lethal force. Clinton harshly rebuked the Assad regime for not reacting to the attack, saying that the dictator, whose family has run Syria for over 40 years before running up against huge Arab awakening demonstrations, is not “indispensable.”

In the UK’s phone hacking scandal, News Corp chieftain Rupert Murdoch — increasingly cast as the Voldemort of the piece — received very bad news today. The once closely allied government of Prime Minister David Cameron now backs the Labour Party’s move to block Murdoch’s takeover of the massive BSkyB satellite broadcaster, and has called on Murdoch to withdraw.

The British Parliament is now set to vote Wednesday on Murdoch’s big for BSkyB, a bid he thought he had salvaged yesterday through a clever bureaucratic maneuver. (Murdoch declined to sell off News Corp’s stake in Sky Television, a requirement for the takeover, thus throwing the deal under the long-term review of a media competition commission rather than a media fitness commission, the latter of which might well have rejected the bid out of hand given the current unethical circumstances.)

Murdoch’s big debacle came after former Prime Minister Gordon Brown bitterly attacked the Murdoch organization late yesterday for reportedly having several of its newspapers, including the venerable and prestigious Times of London, illegally obtain all sorts of private information about him and his family.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Today is the run-off special election Brown scheduled for Jane Harman’s old coastal LA congressional district. LA City Councilwoman Janice Hahn should win a hard-fought, low-turnout race against self-funding Tea Party type Craig Huey.

Brown has not campaigned with Hahn, despite the fact that one of his media consultants in the governor’s race, Joe Trippi, is a consultant to Hahn.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will make his return to the movies this fall, when he begins filming a movie called The Last Stand.

Widely described by most media outlets as a “Western,” that is only true in the sense that the story is set in the West. (The picture, which has a contemporary setting, will also shoot in New Mexico.)

Schwarzenegger will play an aging border town sheriff searching for redemption, who is called on to stop a drug kingpin from escaping across the border into Mexico.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of “Long War” after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan, as I discussed last month on the Huffington Post. But Republican pols are driving their voters against the Libyan War, even though the cost and exposure are minuscule in comparison.

The net effect for Barack Obama is real trouble, as he finds popular support for both the Afghan War and the Libyan War has plummeted. Even though most Democratic voters still support his far more limited mission working with European and Arab allies in Libya, it’s the newfound opposition from Republicans that accounts for his Libya operation now being opposed by a national plurality. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.

** 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.

The final Harry Potter film unspools across North American screens this Friday.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in 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 $95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $61 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 said at a press conference this morning that he will not sign a short-term deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, insisting that a larger agreement must be reached. He says that leaders of both parties agree that the debt ceiling must be raised.

** QUICK HITS. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire has even bigger problems today in its UK phone hacking scandal, with reports that further illegal invasions of privacy were conducted by newspapers other than the suddenly defunct News of the World, including the prestigious Times of London, with one target former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the medical records of his ailing young son. Opinions there are running heavily against the News Corp operation, which in the US includes Fox News, the Fox TV network and stations, and the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. … Amazon is seeking to overturn the State of California’s move to impose sales tax on its operations by filing to try to force a referendum on the June 2012 ballot. Several states, including New York, have imposed sales tax on the online retailer after competing in-state retailers complained. … California’s state revenues are running ahead of earlier forecasts, but behind the projections contained in the just enacted state budget. If they’re still behind at the end of 2011, phased budget cuts come into play. …

** CALIFORNIA 2011: JANICE HAHN’S MOTHER PASSES AWAY ON ELECTION EVE. In what may well turn out to be the biggest California election of 2011, now that Republicans have blocked Governor Jerry Brown’s special election on the budget and related matters, Democratic congressional candidate Janice Hahn’s mother has passed away on the day before her daughter is likely to win a hotly contested election.

Ramona Hahn was 86.

The Hahns have been one of the more notable political dynasties around. Janice Hahn is a member of the Los Angeles City Council. Her brother, Jimmy Hahn, was mayor of Los Angeles. Before that, he was elected city controller of Los Angeles and then city attorney of Los Angeles. In 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him a superior court judge.

But it all stems from Ramona Hahn’s late husband, Kenny Hahn, who was a truly extraordinary politician, not the least of it because he did it by establishing a major, long-term power base in local government.

After five years on the LA City Council, Kenny Hahn won a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1952 and served there for the next 40 years. His brother, Gordon Hahn, who was a state legislator, took over Kenny’s seat on the LA City Council and held it until 1962.

As one of “the five kings,” as the LA county supervisors were known, Kenny Hahn represented South LA and its heavily black constituency. He was the only white politician to meet Martin Luther King when he visited LA in the early ’60s. Hahn delivered big time for his district, with jobs and public works programs. He even designed the seal of the County of Los Angeles, changed only slightly now to remove the cross he placed on it.

Hahn, who passed away in 1997, also played a major role in making the Brooklyn Dodgers the Los Angeles Dodgers, a critical event which helped mark the coming ascendancy of California. As did the transformation of the New York Giants into the San Francisco Giants, which also occurred in 1957 and 1958.

He had a great instinctual feel for issues, as I learned first hand as kid energy commissioner a few decades ago. I was most interested in solar energy, of course, but I came up with a great issue on bus ridership. Which, after, oh, about a day, Kenny Hahn swooped in and made his own.

He made the Hahn name golden in LA County, just as Pat Brown made the Brown name golden in California as a whole.

I met his wife, but didn’t really know her. Just as I don’t really know Janice Hahn, but do know the former mayor fairly well.

Ramona Hahn, of course, made all this possible, in that unsung way of political wives of that era. It’s a terrible irony that, with her daughter poised on the verge of her election to Congress — something which would have been unthinkable for her mother at the same age — she is suddenly unable to experience something which undoubtedly would have been very gratifying to her.

** NEW POLL: BACHMANN TAKES THE LEAD IN IOWA. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has taken the lead in a new poll of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican presidential caucuses. Last month she was tied for the first with former Governor Mitt Romney.

Bachmann, incidentally, opposes raising the federal debt ceiling, scoffing at what all the experts say would be its impact on the global economic recovery.

A new survey for The Iowa Republican by pollster Jan von Lohuizen, who’s conducted many polls in California for the teachers union and former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and was President George W. Bush’s pollster, shows Bachmann edging Romney now, 25% to 21%.

Ex-Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is running advertising in Iowa in a bid to raise his standing in the state in which he’s spent the most time, has risen into a tie for third with former pizza mogul Herman Cain, each with 9%.

Texas Congressman and libertarian hero Ron Paul trails with 6%, followed by Newt Gingrich with 4%, Rick Santorum with 2%, and Jon Huntsman with 1%.

Intriguingly, Romney does about equally well with people regardless of where they principally get their information. With one exception: Those who rely on radio. With that media constituency, he’s down at 9%.

Bachmann’s campaign has taken off like a rocket since participating and announcing her presidential intentions during the CNN debate in New Hampshire last month. Here in Iowa, Bachmann has been playing up her Iowa roots. She officially announced her candidacy in Waterloo, the town in which she was born and spent her formative years. The night before she made her announcement, Bachmann’s campaign hosted a rally for 500 locals who came to welcome her home.

With Romney not participating in the straw poll, Bachmann’s lead over the rest of the field is substantial as she is ahead of Pawlenty and Cain by 16 points. She has also raised her expectations by embracing her Iowa roots. Not only is Bachmann the Iowa frontrunner, but she has constantly reminded Iowans that she’s one of them at every campaign stop. While it didn’t take her long to shoot to the top of the polls, winning in Ames and later in the caucuses themselves requires a massive ground game. If she has one area of weakness, that would be it.

New Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made a surprise visit to Afghanistan over the weekend. The veteran California political figure went on to Iraq, to meet with top Iraqi leaders today.

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.

A big week on tap in presidential politics, with the federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse at the fore and major geopolitical events swirling. And not a so big week in California politics, though there is a congressional special election in Southern California.

A meeting late Sunday at the White House between President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and the Republican and Democratic congressional leadership yielded no breakthrough on the federal fiscal impasse.

Obama probably realizes that he is free to posture in favor of big deficit reductions, and placing major entitlement cuts on the table, because the Republicans will never go for it, even though they say those are top priorities. Why won’t they? Because they, thanks to their ideology, and their extremely insistent hyper-partisan base, can’t countenance the accompanying loophole closures and tax hikes for the rich. Even though the cuts in Obama’s proposal dwarf the revenues. And even though the tax hikes would not be “recovery killers” occurring this year or next year.

House Speaker John Boehner, whose golf summit with Obama a few weeks ago provoked much comment, announced over the weekend that the big global deal he and Obama and others have been working on won’t work because it includes substantial tax hikes. So he is looking at a smaller, more short-term deal.

But Obama says he isn’t. He wants the big deal. What he especially wants is for fickle independent voters, who say they want budget cuts and economic stimulus, to view him as their champion and the Republican right — which calls the shots in the GOP in a way that the Democratic left does not in their party — as their anathema.

Discussions will continue today, and onward. The federal budget deficit has always been a less pressing issue than a state budget deficit — with conservatives blithely pursuing unfunded wars and tax cuts and liberals expanding social programs — because the feds are allowed to print money and run deficits and state governments are not. If Arnold Schwarzenegger could print money, he’d be the most popular governor in the history of the world, rather than merely the most famous.

New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta continues his previously unannounced tour of hot spots, touching down Sunday in Baghdad.

On Saturday in Afghanistan, Panetta met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and pledged continuing support as the US military drawdown gets underway. The veteran California politician, who oversaw the mission to take down Osama bin Laden, stressed that America’s priority is to pursue and defeat Al Qaeda (which is barely in evidence in Afghanistan) and expressed confidence that the strategic defeat of Al Qaeda is not far off.

Panetta will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi leaders, as well as the US commanders. He will press the Iraqi leadership to be more proactive in dealing with chronic terrorist attacks, and urge the Iraqis to make a decision one way or another on whether they will request a substantial US military presence beyond the December 31st deadline for withdrawal.

While en route to Afghanistan on his E-4 command post aircraft, Panetta conducted a press availability. He announced that the continued pursuit of Al Qaeda is his top priority, and that he has instituted daily staff meetings at the Pentagon to make sure everyone is on the same page, something predecessor Bob Gates did not do.

But it is something that Panetta did regularly when he was federal budget director and White House chief of staff, he said, without addressing whether he did it at the CIA.

By staff meetings, he means something different from what is usually meant. In this case, the “staff” consists of the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the various undersecretaries of defense.

America’s touchy relationship with Pakistan continues, with the latest wrinkle being a US decision this weekend to withhold $800 million in allocated aid. That’s a third of what was budget for the year. The reason? Pakistan’s expulsion of some Special Forces trainers. All of this is taking place in the wake of the Navy SEAL takedown of Osama bin Laden in his lair less than a mile from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.

White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan, the former deputy director of the CIA, surfaced in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend. He met at length with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is recuperating from serious wounds suffered in an assassination attempt that killed a dozen of his bodyguards and severely wounded much of his governmental leadership after months of his bloody suppression of constant demonstrations.

Brennan’s mission, of course, is to make sure that Saleh does not return to Yemen, assuming that the Saudis would allow that, and to help ease a transition to a stable government in a near failed state that has become a home to a very active Al Qaeda operation.

Suddenly embattled global media magnate Rupert Murdoch arrived in London Sunday after spending nearly a week incommunicado at the annual media moguls confab in Sun Valley while the phone hacking scandal engulfed his UK newspaper operations.

The News of the World tabloid at the center of it all shut down on Sunday, part of a Murdoch bid to try to salvage what had been his impending takeover of the vast BSkyB satellite broadcaster.

As he left Sun Valley, Murdoch told an overawed interviewer that he has full confidence in his UK newspaper chief Rebekkah Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, and that the scandal is the result of some people who “let us down.”

But Brooks may be arrested. Another former top Murdoch editor, Andy Coulson, who was until recently Cameron’s communications director, was arrested on Friday.

Murdoch’s bid to take over the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation was on a fast track with the Cameron administration before this. Now it is very much on hold, and some says it is moribund.

Rupert Murdoch, dealing with a distinctly overawed interviewer as he left the annual Sun Valley media moguls confab for London, said of the UK phone hacking scandal: “We’ve been let down by people we trusted.” Actually, his News Corp has tried to sweep the problem under the rug for years.

Labour Party leader Ed Milliband has launched a crusade against it. And Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, whose Liberal Democrats formed the coalition with the Conservatives that allowed Cameron to be prime minister, wants Murdoch to drop BSkyB.

In the Libyan War, rebel forces are continuing their slow advance in the west as NATO air strikes took out rocket launchers, including some that have been used to attack civilians in formerly besieged Misurata. France is calling for negotiations with Gaddafi to facilitate his stepping down from power.

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked on Sunday for the last time with the International Space Station. The crew of four will work with the six-person space station crew for the next week unloading a year’s worth of supplies and setting up a few science experiments before beginning the last trip back to Earth of the 30-year space shuttle program. Supply missions will be taken over in the future by commercial space contracts such as California’s Space X, headed by Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk.

Atlantis is scheduled to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center on July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of the first Apollo landing on the Moon.

In California politics, the special election run-off between Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn and self-funding Tea Party champion Craig Huey, a purveyor of various potions and get-rich-quick schemes, is on Tuesday. Hahn has ignited little enthusiasm, and some Democrats are worried, but she should hold Jane Harman’s old seat.

The Citizens Redistricting Commission’s previously scheduled release of the second draft of new legislative and congressional district maps was called off over the weekend. The commission, created by a Schwarzenegger-backed initiative in November 2008, had to deal with an enormous amount of comment and commentary after its first draft maps were released. They need to complete work on the districts by the end of the month before moving for adoption in mid-August.

Former First Lady Betty Ford, who kicked off the era of rehab culture with her influential Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage and passed away at the end of last week in Palm Springs, will be honored with a funeral service on Tuesday in Palm Desert.

With most, though hardly all, of California’s chronic budget crisis taken care, Governor Jerry Brown surfaced on Friday to welcome Wills and Kate to the Golden State. The royal relatively newlyweds created a stir, but nothing like when Prince William’s mother Diana came to California. Or even the advent of Posh and Becks — known to some as David and Victoria Beckham — a few years ago. The England football legend and the former Spice Girl created a major stir by moving, sort of, to Los Angeles.

The new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were merely here for a weekend.

** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

At 8 AM Pacific, Obama held a news conference on the status of efforts to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

At 9 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden receive the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.

At 11 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with the Congressional leadership in the Cabinet Room.

The topic? The federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse.

For her part, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing some long-range engagement of the Middle East peace process.

The United Nations General Assembly meets in New York in September, with Palestinians pushing for UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

So Clinton meets privately with Mideast special envoy Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who represents the Quartet powers (US, UN, EU, and Russia).

Then she has a dinner meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, EU High Representative Ashton, and Blair, at the Department of State.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. … From my July 8th feature.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of “Long War” after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan, as I discussed last month on the Huffington Post. But Republican pols are driving their voters against the Libyan War, even though the cost and exposure are minuscule in comparison.

The net effect for Barack Obama is real trouble, as he finds popular support for both the Afghan War and the Libyan War has plummeted. Even though most Democratic voters still support his far more limited mission working with European and Arab allies in Libya, it’s the newfound opposition from Republicans that accounts for his Libya operation now being opposed by a national plurality. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.

** 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.

The last Harry Potter film launches this week in the US and around the world. Here’s a retrospective of the first seven films.

** 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 $94 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $60 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.

Atlantis docked with the International Space Station at 8:07 AM Pacific on Sunday morning. This is the last ever space station docking of the space shuttle program.

** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Maryland and Washington.

Obama has received his daily intelligence and economic briefing at the Camp David presidential retreat.

At 12 noon Pacific, Obama, returning from Camp David on Marine One, lands on the South Lawn of the White House.

At 3 PM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with the Congressional leadership of both parties in the Cabinet Room.

This is the second White House summit in the past few days on the present federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse.

House Speaker John Boehner, whose golf summit with Obama a few weeks ago provoked much comment, announced late yesterday that big global deal he and Obama and others have been working on won’t work because it includes substantial tax hikes.

So he is looking at a smaller, more short-term deal.

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked this morning for the last time with the International Space Station. The crew of four will work with the six-person space station crew for the next week unloading a year’s worth of supplies and setting up a few science experiments before beginning the last trip back to Earth of the 30-year space shuttle program. Supply missions will be taken over in the future by commercial space contracts such as California’s Space X, headed by Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk.

Atlantis is scheduled to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center on July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of the first Apollo landing on the Moon.

New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta continues his previously unscheduled tour of hot spots, touching down Sunday in Baghdad.

On Saturday in Afghanistan, Panetta met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and pledged continuing support as the US military drawdown gets underway. The veteran California politician, who oversaw the mission to take down Osama bin Laden, stressed that America’s priority is to pursue and defeat Al Qaeda (which is barely in evidence in Afghanistan) and expressed confidence that the strategic defeat of Al Qaeda is not far off.

Panetta will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday. He will press the Iraqi leadership to be more proactive in dealing with chronic terrorist attacks, and urge the Iraqis to make a decision one way or another on whether they will request a substantial US military presence beyond the December 31st deadline for withdrawal.

America’s touchy relationship with Pakistan continues, with the latest wrinkle being a US decision this weekend to withhold $800 million in allocated aid. The reason? Pakistan’s expulsion of some Special Forces trainers. All of this is taking place in the wake of the Navy SEAL takedown of Osama bin Laden in his lair less than a mile from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.

White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan, the former deputy director of the CIA, surfaced in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend. He met at length with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is recuperating from serious wounds suffered in an assassination attempt that killed a dozen of his bodyguards and severely wounded much of his governmental leadership after months of his bloody suppression of constant demonstrations.

Brennan’s mission, of course, is to make sure that Saleh does not return to Yemen, assuming that the Saudis would allow that, and to help ease a transition to a stable government in a near failed state that has become a home to a very active Al Qaeda operation.

Suddenly embattled global media magnate Rupert Murdoch arrived in London Sunday after spending nearly a week incommunicado at the annual media moguls confab in Sun Valley while the phone hacking scandal engulfed his UK newspaper operations.

The News of the World tabloid at the center of it all shut down on Sunday, part of a Murdoch bid to try to salvage what had been his impending takeover of the vast BSkyB satellite broadcaster.

As he left Sun Valley, Murdoch told an overawed interviewer — in footage that I’ll play here on Monday — that he has full confidence in his UK newspaper chief Rebekkah Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, and that the scandal is the result of some people who “let us down.”

But Brooks may be about to be arrested. Another former top Murdoch editor, Andy Coulson, who was until recently Cameron’s communications director, was arrested on Friday.

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.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses the need to address the federal deficit and debt ceiling while continuing to revive the economy.

** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Maryland.

Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.

He then traveled on Marine One to the presidential retreat at Camp David.

Obama has no scheduled public events.

But he’ll be back. On Sunday, in fact, for his next White House summit with congressional leaders on the federal deficit and debt ceiling impasse.

Space shuttle Atlantis’s last ever mission of the space shuttle program is proceeding apace, following Friday’s near on-time launch from the Kennedy Space Center. The crew has inspected the spacecraft for any potential damage incurred in the launch and orbital insertion sequences and found none.

Atlantis will dock with the International Space Station on Sunday, and is scheduled to return to Earth on July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 11′s landing on the Moon.

First Lady Betty Ford passed away on Friday in Palm Spring, California, where she and her late husband, former President Gerald Ford, retired following his brief presidency in the 1970s.

Gerald Ford, the veteran House Republican leader who became Richard Nixon’s vice president following the resignation of Spiro Agnew, in turn became president after Nixon was forced from office in the Watergate scandal. He is credited with restoring a sense of stability to the nation in Nixon’s wake, but lost narrowly to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

As first lady, Betty Ford impressed, but it was her subsequent career that was most important. She acknowledged her dependency on alcohol and prescription drugs in the late ’70s.

After her rehabilitation and recovery, in 1982 she established the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California for the treatment of such dependencies. It has literally been a life-saver for many people, including some of the most famous actors and artists of recent decades.

New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan this weekend. The veteran California political figure, who just turned over the CIA to temporary management until General David Petraeus arrives in September, has been swiftly getting himself up to speed in his new post at the Pentagon.

While en route to Afghanistan earlier today on his E-4 command post aircraft, Panetta conducted a press availability. He announced that the continued pursuit of Al Qaeda is his top priority, and that he has instituted daily staff meetings at the Pentagon to make sure everyone is on the same page, something predecessor Bob Gates did not do.

But it is something that Panetta did regularly when he was federal budget director and White House chief of staff, he said, without addressing whether he did it at the CIA.

By staff meetings, he means something different from what is usually meant. In this case, the “staff” consists of the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the various undersecretaries of defense.

The world has a new nation today. South Sudan celebrated its first official day of independence, having broken away earlier from Sudan. The US and UK have recognized South Sudan, which is expected to be admitted as the 193rd member nation of the United Nations next week.

Southern Sudanese have been trying to break away from Sudan for 50 years. The oil-rich new nation, now run from Juba rather than the Sudanese capital Khartoum, is expected to relate more with sub-Saharan Africa, probably shipping its oil through Kenya rather than Sudan.

In the Libyan War, rebel forces are continuing their slow advance in the west as NATO air strikes today took out rocket launchers, including some that have been used to attack civilians in formerly besieged Misurata.

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who avoided press questions this week while attending the annual media mogul confab in Sun Valley, is off to London this weekend to personally take charge of the still growing crisis surrounding his tabloid’s long practice of phone hacking.

News of the World closes on Sunday. Its former editor, Andy Coulson, was arrested on corruption charges on Friday, and was finally released on bail late in the day.

Coulson was a key figure in the Murdoch media empire before becoming British Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director, a post from which he resigned a few months back as the scandal was developing.

Murdoch’s bid to take over the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation was on a fast track with the Cameron administration before this. Now it is very much on hold.

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.

** WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL? It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

In any real biography of Jerry Brown, the farm workers are not only a big chapter, they are shot through the entire story. Yet, he vetoed the bill. …

From my July 8th feature.

Wills and Kate are in the Golden State.

** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Southern California and Northern California

He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.

On Friday, he and First Lady Anne Gust Brown met the arriving Royal Couple on the tarmac of Los Angeles International Airport.

Prince William and Catherine Middleton, Wills and Kate, more formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, arrived yesterday afternoon from Canada for a whirlwind weekend visit to Southern California, which will include a matchmaking dinner with rising British film talent and Hollywood power brokers, a Saturday polo match in Santa Barbara in which the young prince will compete (and which Jerry Brown will NOT attend), and a visit to LA’s Skid Row.

In the evening, Jerry and Anne attended a party in Wills and Kate’s honor at the Hancock Park home of the British consul general in Los Angeles, Dame Barbara Hay.

The first lady presented the arriving duchess with a bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers.

The Eagles, as longtime readers are all too well aware, were big backers of Brown’s presidential campaigns. The group initially formed after serving as Linda Ronstadt’s back-up band.

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of “Long War” after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan, as I discussed last month on the Huffington Post. But Republican pols are driving their voters against the Libyan War, even though the cost and exposure are minuscule in comparison.

The net effect for Barack Obama is real trouble, as he finds popular support for both the Afghan War and the Libyan War has plummeted. Even though most Democratic voters still support his far more limited mission working with European and Arab allies in Libya, it’s the newfound opposition from Republicans that accounts for his Libya operation now being opposed by a national plurality. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. The latest round of California’s chronic budget crisis is finally coming to an end. It’s a significantly better end than in the past. But it’s not an ending with finality. …

The reality is that Brown may be quite fortunate that he did not get his hoped-for special election this year. Because very little groundwork had been laid to properly frame the election from a conceptual standpoint, or to build a multifaceted organization to promote it. …

But California Republicans proved most obliging in blocking the public from having an opportunity to vote. …

One of the reasons why the legislature was able to move so swiftly on big budget cuts earlier this year is it had spent all of last year contemplating such cuts. But legislators refused to enact the big budget cuts proposed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.

** 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 $96.20 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.

This is up about $62 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.

Space shuttle Atlantis is safely away on its 12-day mission to the International Space Station, bringing tons of supplies needed till emerging commercial space haulers, including California’s Space X, can take over the supply mission.

** THE U.K. PHONE HACKING SCANDAL AND AMERICAN MEDIA. We may be at a watershed moment. Britain’s phone hacking scandal has gone nuclear.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s only recently former communications director, Andy Coulson, a former top editor in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire, was arrested today on charges of bribing police officers. Murdoch’s bid to win control of the vast BSkyB satellite broadcaster, touted by Cameron’s government, was placed on hold. Vast troves of News Corp e-mails are said to have been deleted.

Cameron, who must be wondering about his own survival at this point, himself said that mistakes were made in trying to gain support from Murdoch media outlets. Opposition Leader Ed Milliband lumped the voracious media into the same boat as villainous bankers.

All this after Murdoch’s desperate move yesterday to put a cork in the scandal by suddenly closing the offending News of the World tabloid.

A move which has obviously failed.

How will all this impact the perception of Murdoch’s equally aggressive media properties in the US and elsewhere, such as Fox News and the tabloid New York Post? Not very well.

Of course, Fox has developed a large cadre of true believer consumers who hear what they want to hear. But Murdoch, who I’ve met a few times, is smarter than that. He knows that real influence lies in not simply aggregating and motivating hard-core ideologues, but in having enough credibility and sophistication to move beyond an extreme, no matter how large and lucrative that extreme may be.

That’s why the egregious Glenn Beck had to go, no matter how big his audience was. He was simply too bizarre, too much of an embarrassment.

There are other ways to become too much of an embarrassment besides spouting pseudo-intellectual political gibberish.

It may also be a moment of pause for some in the media who are no part of the Murdoch empire. Milliband’s equation of a rapacious media with rapacious bankers strikes a nerve with all the vicious sensationalism to which we’ve been subjected of late.

** NEW POLL: CAIN, BACHMANN, HUNTSMAN, AND PAWLENTY GAIN MOST IN NAME I.D. A new Gallup Poll survey shows that, not surprisingly, the Republican presidential candidates who have gained most in name ID were among those who were not nearly as well known as Mitt Romney or many previous candidates.

But it’s clear that Rick Santorum, who once hoped to ignite the far right, is getting left behind at the train station. As is ex-New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, a libertarian hopeful eclipsed from the beginning by Ron Paul.

But name ID gains are not all good for all the gaining candidates — hello, Governor Huntsman — as the gains are coming principally from right-wing Republicans, who dominate the party and are the most engaged primary voters.

Michele Bachmann’s national name ID is now only 10 points lower than Romney’s, and there are signs elsewhere that she is surging in New Hampshire.

Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, and Tim Pawlenty have gained the most in name recognition so far this year of any of the Republican presidential candidates Gallup tracks. …

Conservative Republicans appear to be the most important to Santorum, as they are 24 percentage points more likely to recognize him than are moderate/liberal members of the party — the largest such margin for any candidate. At the other end of the spectrum is Johnson, who receives a one-point higher recognition level from conservatives than from moderates/liberals.

President Barack Obama, reacting this morning to a surprise disappointment on the unemployment rate, said that uncertainty around the needed raising of the federal debt ceiling is freezing decision-making in the private sector.

**  OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.

Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.

He then met with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office.

Following that, he delivered a statement on the surprisingly disappointing monthly jobs report in the Rose Garden.

At 8:30 AM Pacific, Obama participates in regional interviews on the economy and the importance of finding a balanced approach to deficit reduction from the Map Room.

Obama got bad, and unexpected, news this morning, accounting for his early morning appearance.

This came a day after unemployment claims hit a two-month low.

Obama is reportedly seeking a long-term deal on the federal deficit and debt ceiling, though many supposed details now seem to me to be spin.

Job creation clearly must again be a part of the mix.

Obama will host another White House summit with congressional leaders on Sunday.

While the economic news was disappointing, there was heartening news on another front. Despite inclement weather that had many predicting a scrubbed launch, space shuttle Atlantis lifted off this morning from the Kennedy Space Center just a few minutes past the scheduled 8:26 AM Pacific launch time.

This last ever mission of the 30-year old space shuttle program takes the US astronauts to the a Sunday rendezvous with the International Space Station, and a planned July 20th return to Cape Canaveral.

The July 20th touchdown will coincide with the 42nd anniversary of the first Apollo landing on the Moon.

In Britain, the phone hacking scandal surround Rupert Murdoch’s media empire worsened yet again today. Andy Coulson, until recently British Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director, was arrested today. Coulson was a top Murdoch editor, and had been editor of the News of the World tabloid, which Murdoch shut down suddenly as he scrambled to control the damage.

His takeover of the vast BSkyB satellite broadcasting operation, which was to have been finalized shortly by the Cameron Administration, hangs in the balance. But that decision was put off yesterday until the fall.

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.

The US Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off this morning from the Kennedy Space Center for the final mission of the space shuttle program.

** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … WHY DID JERRY BROWN VETO THE FARM WORKER BILL?

** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Southern California.

This afternoon, he and First Lady Anne Gust Brown meet the arriving Royal Couple on the tarmac of Los Angeles International Airport.

Prince William and Catherine Middleton, Wills and Kate, more formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, arrive this afternoon from Canada for a whirlwind weekend visit to Southern California, which will include a matchmaking dinner with rising British film talent and Hollywood power brokers, a polo match in Santa Barbara in which the young prince will compete, and a visit to LA’s Skid Row.

This evening, Jerry and Anne attend a party in their honor at the home of the British consul general in Los Angeles, Dame Barbara Hay.

Brown put out a press release late yesterday correcting his report on progress in disposing of state cars. While his administration has gotten ride of 3800 vehicles, many of those are not passenger cars. So he is one-third of the way toward his goal of reducing the state fleet of passenger cars, not 70%.

Incidentally, that brazen Picasso thief who snatched a drawing from the wall of an art gallery off Union Square in San Francisco and made an easy getaway in broad daylight on Tuesday has reportedly been caught.

He’s a wine steward from New York!

Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.

** A SHIFTING REPUBLICAN PARTY MAKES MISCHIEF FOR OBAMA ON LIBYA. The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of “Long War” after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan, as I discussed last month on the Huffington Post. But Republican pols are driving their voters against the Libyan War, even though the cost and exposure are minuscule in comparison.

The net effect for Barack Obama is real trouble, as he finds popular support for both the Afghan War and the Libyan War has plummeted. Even though most Democratic voters still support his far more limited mission working with European and Arab allies in Libya, it’s the newfound opposition from Republicans that accounts for his Libya operation now being opposed by a national plurality. … From my July 2nd essay.

** JERRY BROWN FINDS A CALIFORNIA BUDGET THAT FLIES, FOR NOW. The latest round of California’s chronic budget crisis is finally coming to an end. It’s a significantly better end than in the past. But it’s not an ending with finality.  …

The reality is that Brown may be quite fortunate that he did not get his hoped-for special election this year. Because very little groundwork had been laid to properly frame the election from a conceptual standpoint, or to build a multifaceted organization to promote it. …

But California Republicans proved most obliging in blocking the public from having an opportunity to vote. …

One of the reasons why the legislature was able to move so swiftly on big budget cuts earlier this year is it had spent all of last year contemplating such cuts. But legislators refused to enact the big budget cuts proposed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. … From my June 29th feature.

** OBAMA’S BIG REPUBLICAN PROBLEM (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK). …From my June 23rd column.

** JERRY BROWN’S BIG BUDGET VETO, AND WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE. … From my June 17th column.

** WEINERGATE’S LASTING IMPACT: THE FIRST BIG SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL SEX SCANDAL. … From my June 7th column.

** 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.

The premiere of the last Harry Potter film took place last night in London. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II will be released next week.

** 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 $96 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This is up about $62 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.