Mitt Romney, the putative longtime Republican presidential frontrunner, ran into rough waters last night on Fox News. During a rare one-on-one interview, the former Massachusetts governor encountered major difficulty reconciling his past and present views on immigration, among other issues.
** QUICK HITS. A preliminaryvote count for the first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections has the Muslim Brotherhood way out in front, with a staunch Islamist party running second, and a centrist party a distant third. The liberals who prompted the protests in Tahrir Square don’t appear to figure much in the mix. … Finally dropping the pose that he is in a general election campaign against President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney today claimed that he is more conservative than Newt Gingrich. It all depends on which version of himself he is referring to. … Herman Cain hasn’t dropped out yet, but he says he’ll reassess his candidacy with his family. He’s run out of runway on his relaunch. … Two more tax initiatives emerged today as prospects for the November 2012 California ballot, joining last week’s “Think Long” proposal to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and expand sales taxes to all manner of services. I’ll get into all that, with a pithy take on their prospects (or lack of same) in a Jerry-Rigging piece for tomorrow, which will include his two appointees to the critical California State Teachers Retirement System board.
** NEW POLL: GINGRICH TOPS IN POSITIVE INTENSITY AS ROMNEY HITS HIS LOW POINT. A new Gallup Poll shows former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with a big edge on the rest of the Republican presidential field in positive intensity. That’s the differential between very favorable and very unfavorable ratings.
Gingrich is at plus 20 now, while his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, is at his lowest measure with a score of 9.
Romney’s score is tied with the slumping Herman Cain, and only two points ahead of Rick Santorum.
Ron Paul follows at plus 2, tied with Michele Bachmann.
Rick Perry, who once led on this measure, now has a score of 0. He is trailed only by Jon Huntsman, at -2.
The trajectory of Gingrich’s Positive Intensity Score has shown a substantial drop and then an equally substantial rise over the course of the year. Gingrich’s score was 19 in March, but by summer it had plummeted to 1. The former speaker’s score then began an upward track, and has now reached 20 for two weeks in a row. This is Gingrich’s highest score of the year, is currently higher than the score of any other candidate by an 11-point margin, and leaves Gingrich as the only candidate with a double-digit score.
Still, for the first time since early May, the highest Positive Intensity Score over the last three weeks has been 20. This suggests that Gingrich leads in an environment in which Republicans are relatively unenthusiastic about any of the candidates running for their party’s nomination.
Three Republican candidates — Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain — have led or been tied for the lead in the Positive Intensity Score rankings at times this year, with scores well into the 20-point range. All have now dropped back into the single digits.
The first to fall from Republicans’ grace was Bachmann, who reached her high of 24 in June. Her scores dropped from that point, and in August they began a more pronounced slide, reaching a nadir of 1 in November, with a score of 2 for the Nov. 14-27 time period.
Perry had a Positive Intensity Score of 21 when Gallup began to track him in July; he reached his personal high point of 25 in August and in early September. Perry began to slide after that, and his current Positive Intensity Score of 0 has been his score in two out of the last three weeks.
Cain, along with Perry, has seen the largest drop in his Positive Intensity Score of any candidate this year, from his high of 34 in late September and early October to his current score of 9, a drop of 25 points. Cain’s fall has accelerated in recent weeks, dropping from 25 in the two-week period ending Nov. 6 — coinciding with allegations of sexual harassment when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C. …
** NEW CALIFORNIA POLL: ROMNEY AND GINGRICH IN STATISTICAL DEAD HEAT, AS UNDECIDED RANKS GROW. California’s Republican presidential primary isn’t until next June, at which point it is probably irrelevant. The Golden State has seen little active campaigning aside from brief fundraising forays.
Yet we have some numbers, and they are not entirely out of line with national results, aside from showing Mitt Romney with a continuing slight edge over the surging Newt Gingrich.
Herman Cain, now melting down, is a distant third at 9%.
While former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, at 26%, continues to hold the top spot in voter preferences among California Republicans in the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has moved up to a strong second position, with 23% of the vote.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, who was competitive with Romney in California as recently as two
months ago, has fallen back, and now only obtains 3% of voter preferences. Each of the five other GOP contenders also poll in the single digits.
An increasing proportion of California Republicans (26%) are undecided. In addition, nearly eight in ten (77%) of the Republicans voters who express a preference for one of the candidates say that it is still early and admit they have not made a final decision about whom they will support in next June’s California presidential primary election
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 11:45 AM Pacific, President Barack Obama speaks at Scranton High School in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live 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.
The Pakistani military today released video of what they say is the aftermath of Saturday’s deadly US air strikes on two Pakistani Army outposts on the border with Afghanistan. If the video is accurate, it’s not easy to see how US and NATO forces could have been fooled by the Taliban into attacking the outposts, which in this footage have been reduced to rubble. Aside from a general apology and promised investigations, the US has offered no official explanation.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 9:40 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Air Force One.
At 9:55 AM Pacific, Obama departs Joint Base Andrews en route Scranton, Pennsylvania.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama arrives Scranton, Pennsylvania.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama meets with a Scranton family in a private residence.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at Scranton High School.
This event will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
At 1:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Scranton, Pennsylvania on Air Force One en route New York City.
At 1:55 PM Pacific, Obama arrives New York City.
At 3:05 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser in a private residence in New York City.
At 4:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Gotham Bar and Grille.
Pooled Press
At 6:05 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel.
Late in the day on Tuesday, Congressional Republicans, previously stand-offish at best, began throwing their support behind President Barack Obama’s bid to renew the payroll tax cut. That might help blunt the charge next year that their priority is only tax cuts for the wealthy. It may also be a good bolster for a sputtering economy.
The Senate is to vote this week.
One-time Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain appears to be teetering in the wake of an Atlanta woman’s charge that he carried on a 13-year affair with her. He denies it, but it doesn’t look good for him. Nor for Mitt Romney, who needs the anti-Romney right vote to have somewhere to go besides Newt Gingrich.
Something else that doesn’t look good for Romney, long touted as the most polished of presidential candidates, is the reality of his performance in press events.
Mitt Romney has received his share of grief for ducking reporters, with fellow Republican opponent Jon Huntsman releasing a “Scared Mittless” web ad that poked fun at the candidate’s penchant for avoiding the news media.
Tonight, Fox News’ Bret Baier showed why Romney doesn’t do too many interviews. It took a good amount of digging for Baier to show that Romney really has no plan to deal with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. Romney doesn’t want them hunted down. But he doesn’t want them to stay. He wants them to apply for citizenship and go home. Which they won’t do because they’re here illegally.
This Mitt Romney wasn’t the calm Mitt Romney of the debates.
At times during the interview, Romney was icily peevish. He laughed mirthlessly, or denied video evidence showed him shifting his positions or suggested he was espousing clear positions – which nevertheless required clarification. When pushed, he told Baier at one point that people should read his book.
Just what everyone wants: A candidate whose positions require homework, if not a concordance.
Baier noted a few of Romney’s flip flops: climate change, abortion, immigration, gay rights.
Romney: “Your list is just not accurate. We’re going to have to be better informed about my views on issues.”
Romney has been almost completely absent from the chat show circuit, and has held only a half-dozen brief press avails in the past few months.
Is it any surprise? He’s done well in most of the Republican debates. But that’s in comparison to a field full of dunces, in events which because of their size are really more joint appearances than debates. And these debates have been curiously conducted by media organizations which give Romney a pass, never boring in on him as they have on other candidates.
In the latest sign of the unrest that accompanies austerity economics, today in the UK there is mass strike with over 2 million public sector workers out in protest over pay and pensions.
It’s the biggest such strike in over 80 years.
But in good news for the sputtering global economy, a half-dozen central banks intervened today to provide more liquidity to the global financial system.
The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan, and Switzerland agreed to lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines, jargon for reducing the cost of temporary dollar loans, to banks by 0.5%.
The British today also ordered the closing of Iran’s embassy in London in retaliation for the near sacking of their embassy in Tehran.
In Pakistan, protests continue over Saturday’s deadly air strikes against two Pakistani Army outposts on the Afghan border. Pakistani authorities also released video of the attack sites, which indicate that the outposts were situated in very clearly visible areas without foliage or geographic factors that could contribute to confusion.
Pakistan is continuing to block US/NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, with materiel piling up behind two great bottlenecks, making it prone to terrorist attack. The CIA has less than two weeks remaining to shut down drone operations at Shamsi Air Base.
And Pakistan is proving to be adamant in its decision not to take part in next week’s international summit on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany.
Without Pakistan’s assistance, there is no viable strategy for the Afghan War.
Meanwhile, in Egypt’s complicated parliamentary elections, the first round of which concluded on Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood is claiming to have won upwards of 40% of the vote in a multi-party field. There are no official results as of yet.
Despite all the violence and tumult of recent days, the elections went off peacefully and with evident large turnouts in Cairo and Alexandria and elsewhere.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
More than 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday, moving protesters from a park around City Hall and arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
At 11 AM, he attends the funeral service for Vallejo Police Department Officer Jim Capoot at Corbus Field next to Vallejo High School.
Capoot, a former Marine, was shot to death earlier this month while pursuing bank robbers on foot after successfully ramming their vehicle during a high-speed chase.
In Los Angeles, not long after midnight, 1400 LAPD officers moved in on remaining Occupy LA protesters at the encampment outside City Hall, peacefully removing the demonstrators and taking down the camp.
A little under 300 Occupy protesters were arrested.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s performance on this compares very favorably with that of the heralded New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the hapless Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.
The Villaraigosa Administration and the LAPD liaised with the Occupy protesters throughout, developing and maintaining a decent sense of rapport.
Unsurprising, in that Villaraigosa, the former California Assembly speaker, is himself a former union organizer and ex-head of the LA chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The situation was also aided by virtue of the fact that the protesters were resolutely peaceful. Unlike in Oakland, where a substantial anarchist faction was out for trouble from the beginning, and a certain woolly-headedness among many protesters blocked the group from denouncing vandalism and violence on the basis of supporting “diversity of tactics.”
** A SUBLIME AND RIDICULOUS DAY: MARS MISSION AND AFPAK DEBACLE.This Thanksgiving weekend saw the greatness of America and the failings of America both on dramatic display. On Saturday we simultaneously reached for the heavens and got further stuck in the mud.
First, very early in the day in the nebulous Afghan-Pakistan border region, NATO air strikes hit two Pakistani Army outposts, creating a severe crisis in the ill-fated Afghan War. Later on, halfway round the world on a bright Florida morning, the most ambitious mission yet to explore another planet lifted off on a nine-month flight to Mars. …
Two major events, both quite possibly historic, on the same day. Which direction will be the more powerful? … From my November 28th essay.
** SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING “SUPER-COMMITTEE” FLOP.
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
** 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 AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $66 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down $14 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Amidst a wave of protests across the country following deadly NATO air strikes against its border outposts and in the wake of its shut down of US/NATO supply lines and eviction of the CIA from a drone base, Pakistan is pulling out of next week’s big international conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan.
** QUICK HITS. One-time Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain appears to be teetering in the wake of an Atlanta woman’s charge that he carried on a 13-year affair with her. He denies it, but it doesn’t look good for him. Nor for Mitt Romney, who needs the anti-Romney right vote to have somewhere to go besides Newt Gingrich. … Late in the day, Congressional Republicans, previously stand-offish at best, began throwing their support behind President Barack Obama’s bid to renew the payroll tax cut. That might help blunt the charge next year that their priority is only tax cuts for the wealthy. It may also be a good bolster for a sputtering economy. … Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom announced several meetings in Washington tomorrow to push his California economic development theme. He’s meeting with the Brazilian ambassador and the chief lobbyist for the Hollywood studios. And with Secretary of Commerce John Bryson, “to make the case for California as the right place for innovation, new growth and job creation.” Bryson, of course, is a Californian, who served as head of the California Public Utilities Commission at the appointment of Governor Jerry Brown, during Brown’s first time around as governor. He was more recently the longtime head of Southern California Edison, so I’m fairly positive he is up to speed on the importance of California.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** NEW SURVEY: BLACK FRIDAY SPENDING UP AMIDST CONTINUED PESSIMISM. A new Gallup Poll survey shows that so-called “Black Friday” post-Thanksgiving weekend shopping spending is up from a year ago and the highest it’s been since 2008.
But economic confidence remains lower than it was at this time in 2009 and 2010.
Nevertheless, the spending is a needed boost in an economy which is heavily reliant on consumer spending. Now if those with capital get off the sidelines, the sputtering recovery might click into gear.
Assuming that the Eurozone crisis doesn’t deliver a bone-shattering global blow.
Remember the old saying, “All politics is local?”
All politics is global.
Self-reported daily consumer spending in stores, restaurants, gas stations, and online averaged $98 per day for the three-day period ending Nov. 27. This is up from $92 a year ago and exceeds the Black Friday spending of each of the past three years. …
Gallup’s findings are consistent with the 6.6% increase reported by ShopperTrak. Consumer spending was higher in the days leading up to Thanksgiving this year than at any time since 2008. Average spending for the Black Friday week ending Nov. 27, 2011, was $83 and exceeds the weekly comparables for 2009 ($69) and 2010 ($79). …
Even as consumers are spending more during Black Friday week, Americans remain substantially more pessimistic about the future course of the U.S. economy than they were at this time in 2009 and 2010. More than one-third of consumers said the economy was “getting better” during Black Friday week in 2009 and 2010. Now, less than one in four Americans say the economy is improving — not much better than the less than one in five who said this during this same week in 2008. …
** NEW CALIFORNIA POLL: OCCUPY WALL STREET SENTIMENT WIDELY SUPPORTED BUT A SPLIT ON OCCUPY ITSELF. CONGRESS? WHO CARES? A new Field Poll of California voters on the Occupy Wall Street movement finds widespread support for its core critique of an unfair economic system. But it also finds voters split on the movement itself.
And when it comes to which party’s victory in next year’s Congressional races will be best, the winner, by plurality, is none of the above.
It’s pretty obvious, as things have played out the past several weeks, the the Occupy folks have a politically wise fundamental message, and a foolish way of presenting it.
That is, if they hope to gather the support of “the 99%” and not just become a very different sort of “1%.”
In reacting to the Occupy movement that has erupted across California and in other parts of the
country, voters here are about equally divided in their identification with the protest movement. A total of 46% of the voting public say they identify a lot or some with it, while 49% declare not much identification with the movement.
These two groups hold very different views about who is responsible for the nation’s economic
problems and which political party has a better chance of solving them. For example . . .
• By a greater than two to margin (52% to 24%) Occupy movement identifiers blame financial
institutions and Wall Street more than the federal government for the country’s current
economic problems. By contrast, more than three times as many voters who do not identify
with the movement (64% to 20%) think federal government rather than financial institutions
and Wall Street is more to blame for the nation’s current economic woes.
• More than three in four voters who identify with the Occupy movement (77%) believe that
the previous administration of George W. Bush holds more responsibility for today’s poor
economic conditions, while just 12% blame the current Obama administration more. This
contrasts with the views of voters who do not sympathize with the movement who blame the
Obama administration more than the Bush administration 47% to 37%.
While voters are closely divided in their identification with the Occupy movement, a 58% to 32%
majority say they agree with the underlying reason for the protests. …
At 11 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing. The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live 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.
As we await results from the parliamentary elections in Egypt, expected on Wednesday, many wonder if a potential Muslim Brotherhood victory will make Egypt much more favorable to the Palestinians.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 11 AM Pacific, White House 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.
At 11:30 AM Pacific, Obama has a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands in the Oval Office.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
In what may be a boost for Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain is reportedly “reassesing his candidacy” in the wake of yesterday’s claim by another woman not his wife of a 13-year affair. If Cain drops out, it’s not easy to see most of his support going to Mitt Romney.
While two investigations are underway, one by US Central Command and one by the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, there is an emerging US storyline around the air strikes on two Pakistani border outposts which killed some 25 Pakistani troops early Saturday. It’s all a case of mistaken identity by US forces, who thought the Pakistani Army outposts were Taliban emplacements. Pakistani officials preempted this explanation over the weekend, saying their outposts on the border with Afghanistan clearly display their national flag. Meanwhile, China is seizing the opportunity to side with Pakistan, as you might suppose.
And another shoe of consequence dropped today. Pakistan pulled out of next week’s big international summit on Afghanistan set for Bonn, Germany.
It’s hard to see what strategy there is for the Afghan War, as currently imagined, without Pakistan.
Vice President Joe Biden is on a surprise visit today to Iraq, meeting with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to discuss relations going forward and with US troops in the midst of the big withdrawal.
All significant US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of December.
In Iran, echoing the 1979 takeover of the US embassy there, student mobs repeatedly assaulted the British Embassy in Tehran today, successfully entering it and taking art works and documents from the premises. The UK has formally protested to Iran that it is in violation of the Vienna convention on guaranteeing safety of diplomatic territory and personnel.
The protesters have been removed and British personnel are safe.
But legislation was approved on Monday to expel the British ambassador from Iran over the UK’s increased sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program.
The attack on the British embassy came less than a day after another large explosion at an Iranian missile base, this one in Isfahan, also of mysterious origins.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve 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 has ordered the state’s commission on law enforcement standards to review use of force protocols in protest situations to ensure that there can be no repeat of the now infamous pepper spray incident at UC Davis.
LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s strategy of benign attrition in dealing with the Occupy LA camp outside LA City Hall seems to be kicking in. With his midnight deadline well in the rear view mirror, the campers are fading away. But some will remain to be arrested, whenever that determination is made.
At last, a California Republican is running against U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein next year. Someone named Elizabeth Emken, an autism activist who made an unsuccessful run for a GOP congressional nomination last year. I’ve never heard of her, either.
The University of California Board of Regents’ bid to dilute protests by holding a teleconferenced meeting from four locations appears to have been largely successful. Let it not be said that California is no longer a leader in innovation.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered the keynote speech on November 21st at the Zero emissions conference in Oslo, Norway. The conference is one of the world’s biggest climate solution conferences, and is hosted by the Zero Emissions Resource Organization (ZERO).
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Jerry Brown’s predecessor, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, free from the woes of California’s chronic budget crisis, delivered the keynote address at last week’s big climate change conference in Oslo, Norway, as seen above.
Schwarzenegger was joined there by several other leaders, including European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegard.
On December 5th, he’ll receive the Renewable Energy Leader of the Decade award from the American Council on Renewable Energy at their 10th anniversary celebration at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.
Colorado Senator Mark Udall will also receive an award for his role in providing Congressional leadership on renewables. Besides being Colorado’s senior senator, Udall is the son of the legendary Mo Udall, the longtime congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate, and nephew of Stewart Udall, who was secretary of the interior throughout the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
** A SUBLIME AND RIDICULOUS DAY: MARS MISSION AND AFPAK DEBACLE.This Thanksgiving weekend saw the greatness of America and the failings of America both on dramatic display. On Saturday we simultaneously reached for the heavens and got further stuck in the mud.
First, very early in the day in the nebulous Afghan-Pakistan border region, NATO air strikes hit two Pakistani Army outposts, creating a severe crisis in the ill-fated Afghan War. Later on, halfway round the world on a bright Florida morning, the most ambitious mission yet to explore another planet lifted off on a nine-month flight to Mars. …
Two major events, both quite possibly historic, on the same day. Which direction will be the more powerful? … From my November 28th essay.
** SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING “SUPER-COMMITTEE” FLOP.
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
** 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 AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $66 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down $14 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Despite serious tensions, unprecedented numbers showed up to cast their ballots in Egypt, many for the first time.
** QUICK HITS.After more than two days, there is an emerging US storyline around the air strikes on two Pakistani border outposts which killed some 25 Pakistani troops early Saturday. It’s all a case of mistaken identity by US forces, who thought the Pakistani Army outposts were Taliban emplacements. Pakistani officials preempted this explanation over the weekend, saying their outposts on the border with Afghanistan clearly display their national flag. Meanwhile, China is seizing the opportunity to side with Pakistan, as you might suppose. … LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s strategy of benign attrition in dealing with the Occupy LA camp outside LA City Hall seems to be kicking in. With his midnight deadline well in the rear view mirror, the campers are fading away. But some will remain to be arrested, whenever that determination is made. … At last, a California Republican is running against U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein next year. Someone named Elizabeth Emken, an autism activist who made an unsuccessful run for a GOP congressional nomination last year. I’ve never heard of her, either. … The University of California Board of Regents’ bid to dilute protests by holding a teleconferenced meeting from four locations appears to have been largely successful. Let it not be said that California is no longer a leader in innovation.
** A SUBLIME AND RIDICULOUS DAY: MARS MISSION AND AFPAK DEBACLE.This Thanksgiving weekend saw the greatness of America and the failings of America both on dramatic display. On Saturday we simultaneously reached for the heavens and got further stuck in the mud.
First, very early in the day in the nebulous Afghan-Pakistan border region, NATO air strikes hit two Pakistani Army outposts, creating a severe crisis in the ill-fated Afghan War. Later on, halfway round the world on a bright Florida morning, the most ambitious mission yet to explore another planet lifted off on a nine-month flight to Mars. …
Two major events, both quite possibly historic, on the same day. Which direction will be the more powerful? …
** NEW SURVEY: AS EGYPTIANS VOTE, MOST OPPOSE ONGOING PROTESTS BUT AGREE WITH MUCH OF THEIR SUBSTANCE. Turnout in today’s parliamentary elections in Egypt is high. Of course, it’s against the law not to vote there, so make of that what you will. (Egypt’s compulsory voting law is little enforced.)
Perhaps the better point is that there has been little disruption so far in this epicenter of the Arab Spring, with many polling places remaining open past their closing times due to long lines. And some delays in opening in the first place.
The liberal reformers who spurred much of the protest that so dramatically brought down Hosni Mubarak in February — and ushered in a “temporary” ruling military council — may end up squeezed between the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand and a variety of other Islamist and old guard parties on the other.
A new Gallup Poll survey indicates that most Egyptians grasp this, and sympathize with many of the goals of the renewed protests in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the country.
But they probably think that the continued protests are bad for the country.
I say probably, because the Gallup numbers are at least two months old. And polling in Egypt is not the simplest thing to do in the first place.
In case you didn’t think that we’re feeling our way forward in a darkened room when it comes to the new dynamics of the Arab world.
The recent resurgence of protests in Egypt leading up to Monday’s elections is likely not something most Egyptians want to see, even though they may share overall frustrations with the pace of change in their country. In September, 84% of Egyptians said continued protests were a bad thing for the country, echoing the clear majority sentiment Gallup has measured since June. …
The high level of negativity toward continued protests contrasts the high level of support for the initial protests in January that led to the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. In September, 75% of Egyptians said they supported protesters who called for Mubarak’s resignation, down slightly from 83% who said so in March, but still a significant majority. …
While Egyptians did not see the benefit of continued protests when polled in September, they still wanted Mubarak held accountable for corruption despite the current focus on the Tahrir protesters and their rejection of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Seventy-five percent of Egyptians believed Mubarak should be put on trial for corruption, compared with 81% in August and 76% in June. …
Until the most recent wave of violence between security forces and protesters in Tahrir, Egyptians saw a path to stability for the country. Initial accounts suggest a sizable turnout for parliamentary elections currently underway, which the vast majority of Egyptians expected to be fair and honest. Yet despite passion at the ballot box, fewer Egyptians see their lives as improving in post-Mubarak Egypt. Egyptians still face many challenges such as education, jobs, the cost of food, and others as they chart a course for progress. With the failure of the first interim government and the future of a newly appointed one unclear, many are watching as events unfold.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the first international monetary think-tank to declare the Eurozone has already tipped into recession.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A very big week in presidential politics on tap, and a developmental week in California politics.
Just over five weeks remain until the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses, and the Hawkeye State is up for grabs, as is the nomination. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leads in most national polls over long putative frontrunner Mitt Romney, who never moves beyond a fifth to a quarter of the vote and has been caught and passed by a few other flavors of the week/month.
What’s clear is that, no matter how much the established media and political communities want to call Romney an unassailable frontrunner — despite his numbers being far lower than those of real dominant frontrunners of the past, such as Hillary Clinton and Walter Mondale — most of the party is looking for someone else. At times, anyone else, be it Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, or Herman Cain, each of whom was lacking intellectual plausibility.
Gingrich is different. Unlike the others, he was well known from the start, having led the Republicans to victory in the 1990s, and then to disaster. He’s melted down in this race, and slowly built back up.
Unlike the other top contenders — and sadly I can’t include Jon Huntsman in this, as his brand of moderate conservatism has found no traction in a radicalized Obama Era party — Gingrich sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. In fact, he frequently does, whether one agrees with his conclusions or not. At the turn of the millennium, he was a useful member of the Clinton-created U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, a comprehensive review of geostrategy and national security co-chaired by my old friend and boss former Senator Gary Hart, which warned of major terrorist attacks inside the US.
Not that Gingrich has the infrastructure that Romney has. But Romney is less well-funded this time than he was last time, and much of what is done in politics is irrelevant or at least not determinative, despite what the consultant/vendors say. The trick is knowing what is critical.
It will be a fascinating five weeks.
Gingrich on Sunday won the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union-Leader, formerly Manchester Union-Leader, the state’s biggest newspaper and a longtime bellwether of conservative politics.
This is a blow to neighbor Mitt Romney, who has courted the paper assiduously both this time and in 2008, when he lost the endorsement to John McCain, who went on to win the primary. New Hampshire has always been the bulwark of Romney’s candidacy. If he loses there, or is even seriously challenged, his remaining aura of frontrunnership goes into eclipse.
Unlike most newspapers, the Union-Leader, as the saying goes, endorses every day, turning its pages into a campaign.
The Union-Leader endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, Pete du Pont in 1988, Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, Steve Forbes in 2000 and John McCain 2008. (Years not mentioned featured incumbent Republican presidents.) All those candidates either won the New Hampshire Republican primary or finished a strong second.
Meanwhile, Obama is moving forward, already working to define Romney around his fundamental problem, that of perpetual flip-floppery, and his glaring problem, that of being a leveraged buyout artist seeking to win the presidency in a bad environment for mega-rich money maven candidates.
He also has some big issues to deal with which are far more consequential than the usual ping-pong that gets so much attention.
For one, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a leading European institution, says that the Eurozone is already in recession. A mild recession, but recession nonetheless. One which could become far worse, and with global implications, with any more financial missteps.
That’s a big reason why Obama is holding a mini-summit today at the White House with European Union leaders. And a major reason he’s pushing the Senate this week to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut to keep our tenuous recovery going.
For another, he has major ongoing geopolitical crises to try to manage.
A huge AfPak crisis emerged over the weekend, Syria is in increasing chaos, and Egypt is holding parliamentary elections today after more than a week of big protests over the supposedly interim ruling military council’s grip on the country.
Also this week the UN global climate change summit kicks off for two weeks in Durban, South Africa.Not much progress is expected there, despite ample signs of increasing climate change and extreme weather events, not to mention ominously melting ice packs. But something will get cobbled together to at least keep the Kyoto process alive until more steps are taken in a wiser political moment.
Obama is dealing with the very intense fall-out to the attack by NATO forces on two Pakistani border outposts along the northwest border with Afghanistan early Saturday morning.
Some 25 Pakistani troops were killed in the incident and more than two days later, still no clear explanation has been offered.
Late on Saturday night, the State Department and the Department of Defense put out this joint statement which notably provided neither explanation nor justification.
This is an event that is a full-fledged AfPak disaster.
First, Pakistan halted all transport of supplies and fuel for US and NATO forces moving through its territory. As much as half of the materiel for the landlocked Afghan War flows through Pakistan.
Then, later on Saturday, Pakistan ordered the US out of Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan. This is where much of the US drone strike operation is serviced and coordinated.
While US and NATO forces have ample supplies for now, if the breach continues things could become problematic. After earlier stoppages of shipments through Pakistan (through which 80% of supplies once passed), the US prevailed upon Russia to open up Central Asian lines of supply.
But US relations with Russia have taken a frosty turn, with Moscow very upset about heightened moves to create a missile shield, ostensibly to guard against Iran, but not to include Russia as a partner.
Egypt is holding parliamentary elections today. Things have quieted there since the lethal tumult of last week. But no one really knows what will happen. The ballot is said to be confusing for money, and the reformers who started the anti-Mubarak revolution are less organized electorally than the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ruling military council appointed a Mubarak regime retread as the new prime minister following the resignation of the entire cabinet, and earlier apologized for the deaths of 40 demonstrators, but vowed to make no more concessions after agreeing to move up the presidential election from 2013 to the middle of next year.
The Arab League voted overwhelmingly over the weekend for sanctions against Syria. The vote was 19 to 1, with Iraq and Lebanon, both influenced by Syrian ally Iran, abstaining. Iraq, of course, went against US policy on this.
Syria was a key founder of the Arab League, which has now struck at the one-time capital of pan-Arab sentiment Damascus with sanctions including an end to transactions with Syria’s central bank, an end to new investments, a freeze on assets, and a travel ban on Syrian officials.
The Obama Administration eschews military intervention, unlike the case with Libya. But France and Turkey are talking about establishing “humanitarian corridors” with military power.
Here’s what Obama’s week looks like.
On Monday, Obama will welcome the leaders of the European Union to a summit at the White House. On Tuesday, he will host will host Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, America’s ninth largest export market and third largest source of foreign direct investment.
On Wednesday, Obama is back on the road to a key swing state. He will travel to Scranton, Pennsylvania where he will deliver remarks urging Congress to act to extend and expand the payroll tax cut. That evening, Obama will travel to New York City for fundraisers. On Thursday, the Obama family will attend the National Christmas Tree Lighting on the Ellipse. And on Friday, Obama will host the White House Tribal Nations Conference at the Department of the Interior and deliver remarks.
Back in the not so Golden State, Governor Jerry Brown is back from his vacation in the proverbial undisclosed location.
The stealthy governor has chronic state budget woes to deal with, including the looming prospect of triggered budget cuts, the public pension reform issue, a climate change conference in mid-December to prep for, and 2012 initiatives to sort out.
In that regard, last week’s long awaited and much touted Think Long Committee reform proposal, fatally flawed by what turns out to be its centerpiece, a tax plan featuring the lowering of tax rates for the wealthy and large corporations — never a clever idea for an election campaign, and especially not in this environment — could be problematic for Brown and Democrats.
Not because it’s not denounced by the Republican Party as a $10 billion tax hike on most Californians through expanding sales taxes to services, which it is, but by indirection.
Its most important practical political effect could be to fuzz up the tax issue for other initiatives contemplated by Brown and others, making it impossible to pass anything.
Brown still has had nothing to say about the controversial Occupy protests, and the at times still more controversial police over-reaction to them.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa late on Friday gave Occupy LA protesters until just after midnight on Monday morning to withdraw from the encampment outside LA City Hall. But the deadline has come and gone and many are still there.
Villaraigosa praised the Occupy Wall Street movement for rekindling a sense of social justice and focusing on wealth inequality and problems with the financial system, but said the encampment is in danger of killing the trees and grass of the City Hall grounds, and of concentrating on a piece of ground in a place which has nothing to do with Wall Street.
In San Francisco, Occupy protesters tried to disrupt the annual Christmas Tree lighting in the city’s iconic Union Square, loudly criticizing Black Friday shoppers for consuming and briefly causing a huge traffic tie-up — in an already highly congested scene — by “occupying” a key intersection before being arrested.
Can you say “Counter-productive?”
More protests are on tap this week, as the LA scenario plays out, what’s left of Occupy Oakland looks at re-taking the City Hall plaza, and the University of California Board of Regents, which canceled its meeting the week before last, citing supposedly likely disruptive protest, regroups by teleconference from four separate UC locations.
How will students react to this, and to the ongoing fall-out from the brutal pepper spray incident at the otherwise mellow UC Davis?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 8:45 AM Pacific, Obama hosts a summit meeting with the leaders of the European Union in the Roosevelt Room.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama hosts an EU summit lunch in the Cabinet Room.
At 10:40 AM Pacific, Obama, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso deliver statements in the Roosevelt Room.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Many Occupy LA demonstrators remained at the encampment outside Los Angeles City Hall, hours past Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s midnight deadline to evacuate.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown have returned from an out of state vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
** SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING “SUPER-COMMITTEE” FLOP.
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
** DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.Things are getting very Darwinian in presidential politics. It’s a matter of competition, a matter of evolution — as in who gets the future and who does not — and a matter of the little city of Darwin, Australia. Ironic, in that most of the Republican presidential field rejects Darwin’s evolution science. …
Obama is rolling out the major beginnings of a post-Iraq geopolitical posture for the US and a revamped political, economic, and security architecture in the Pacific Basin, in large part to counter the rise of China. Which has been undercutting US industries and making new aggressive moves over the past year in the South China Sea — most of which it claims, to the consternation of its neighboring countries — and some threatening moves, as always, towards Taiwan. …
Obama recognizes that the distinction between local and global politics is becoming evanescent. … As for the rest of Obama’s strategy in what he calls the Asia Pacific, much of it hinges on Darwin, Australia.
This lovely tropical city of 125,000 at the northern edge of Oz, which I’ve visited, is about to loom very large on America’s geopolitical map. Though the numbers are small — only a company of Marines at first, ultimately a brigade — Obama has decided to flow US military forces in such a way that the Australian base there will become a de facto joint base with the United States. … From my November 21st essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity is continuing on its way to its rendezvous next summer with the Red Planet following Saturday’s successful launch. The Mars mission, like all unmanned deep space explorations, is run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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, and down $16 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Pakistan has retaliated for the deadly air strikes against its border posts on Saturday by shutting off supply and fuel shipments for the Afghan War and closing down a CIA drone base.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama has no scheduled public events.
He is prepping for a summit that he is hosting with leaders of the European Union on Monday at the White House.
He is also dealing with the very intense fall-out to the attack by NATO forces on two Pakistani border outposts along the northwest border with Afghanistan.
Some 25 Pakistani troops were killed in the incident and, more than a day later, no clear explanation has been offered.
Late on Saturday night, the State Department and the Department of Defense put out this joint statement:
Secretaries Clinton and Panetta have been closely monitoring reports of the cross-border incident in Pakistan today. Both offer their deepest condolences for the loss of life and support fully NATO’s intention to investigate immediately.
Secretary Clinton, Gen. Dempsey and Gen. Allen each called their Pakistani counterparts as well. Ambassador Munter also met with Pakistani government officials in Islamabad. In their contacts, these US diplomatic and military leaders each stressed — in addition to their sympathies and a commitment to review the circumstances of the incident — the importance of the US-Pakistani partnership, which serves the mutual interests of our people.
All these leaders pledged to remain in close contact with their Pakistani counterparts going forward as we work through this challenging time.
As you can tell, there is neither explanation nor justification in that statement.
This is an event that may be a full-fledged AfPak disaster.
First, Pakistan halted all transport of supplies and fuel for US and NATO forces moving through its territory. As much as half of the materiel for the landlocked Afghan War flows through Pakistan.
Then, later on Saturday, Pakistan ordered the US out of Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan. This is where much of the US drone strike operation is serviced and coordinated.
While US and NATO forces have ample supplies for now, if the breach continues things could become problematic. After earlier stoppages of shipments through Pakistan (through which 80% of supplies once passed), the US prevailed upon Russia to open up Central Asian lines of supply.
But US relations with Russia have taken a frosty turn, with Moscow very upset about heightened moves to create a missile shield, ostensibly to guard against Iran, but not to include Russia as a partner.
Egypt, which holds parliamentary elections on Monday, is quieter today. But no one really knows what will happen tomorrow. The ballot is said to be confusing for money, and the reformers who started the anti-Mubarak revolution are less organized electorally than the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Arab League voted overwhelmingly today for sanctions against Syria. The vote was 19 to 1, with Iraq and Lebanon, both influenced by Syrian ally Iran, abstaining. Iraq, of course, went against US policy on this.
Syria was a key founder of the Arab League, which has now struck at the one-time capital of pan-Arab sentiment Damascus with sanctions including an end to transactions with Syria’s central bank, an end to new investments, a freeze on assets, and a travel ban on Syrian officials.
Meanwhile, in the topsy-turvy Republican presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich today won the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union-Leader, formerly Manchester Union-Leader, the state’s biggest newspaper and a longtime bellwether of conservative politics.
This is a blow to neighbor Mitt Romney, who has courted the paper assiduously both this time and in 2008, when he lost the endorsement to John McCain, who went on to win the primary. New Hampshire has always been the bulwark of Romney’s candidacy. If he loses there, or is even seriously challenged, his remaining aura of frontrunner-dom goes into eclipse.
Unlike most newspapers, the Union-Leader, as the saying goes, endorses every day, turning its pages into a campaign.
The Union-Leader endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, Pete du Pont in 1988, Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, Steve Forbes in 2000 and John McCain 2008. (Years not mentioned featured incumbent Republican presidents.) All those candidates either won the New Hampshire Republican primary or finished a strong second.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown have returned from an out of state vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
The world’s biggest extraterrestrial explorer is on its way to Mars. NASA on Saturday launched the six-wheeled, one-armed robotic roving science lab Curiosity, largely developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (See article below.)
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Maryland.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama will host a summit with leaders of the European Union on Monday at the White House. Prior to that, he has no scheduled public events.
But he and First Lady Michelle Obama, joined by daughters Malia and Sasha, venture to Towson University outside Baltimore to attend the Oregon State vs. Towson basketball game. Oregon State is coached by Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year and later Ivy League Coach of the Year.
Things are much less pleasant in Pakistan today following an event that may be a full-fledged AfPak disaster.
In a lethal incident today along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, two Pakistani Army border outposts were hit by fire from NATO helicopter, with at least 25 Pakistani soldiers killed. This occurred on the northwest border, not far from the storied Khyber Pass.
US officials are scrambling to explain why the Pakistani outposts were attacked. Were the Pakistani troops in some way aiding Taliban incursions into Afghanistan? Were they firing on US special forces and Afghan troops operating in the area? If so, the US had better get that established.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari denounced NATO and the US for the air strikes and deaths of Pakistani troops.
And so did Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In response to the air strikes on its border posts, Pakistan has halted all convoys through its territory carrying supplies and fuel to US and NATO forces. One-third to one-half of the fuel and supplies used in the Afghan War come through Pakistan.
Another protester was killed today in Egypt, run over by a police truck, increasing the likelihood of more unrest in the run-up to Monday’s parliamentary elections.
The ruling military council appointed a Mubarak regime retread as the new prime minister following the resignation of the entire cabinet, and earlier apologized for the deaths of 40 demonstrators, but vowed to make no more concessions after agreeing to move up the presidential election from 2013 to the middle of next year.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa late on Friday gave Occupy LA protesters until just after midnight on Monday morning to withdraw from the encampment outside LA City Hall.
Villaraigosa praised the Occupy Wall Street movement for rekindling a sense of social justice and focusing on wealth inequality and problems with the financial system, but said the encampment is in danger of killing the trees and grass of the City Hall grounds.
In San Francisco, Occupy protesters tried to disrupt the annual Christmas Tree lighting in the city’s iconic Union Square, loudly criticizing Black Friday shoppers for consuming and briefly causing a huge traffic tie-up — in an already highly congested scene — by “occupying” a key intersection before being arrested.
At 7:02 AM Pacific on Saturday, NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The event is netcast live here on New West Notes.
** LIVE FROM CAPE CANAVERAL: THE NEW MARS MISSION. NASA’s largest and most expansive mission to Mars so far is ready to launch on its nine-month journey.
The event is netcast live here on New West Notes on Saturday morning, with the launch scheduled for 7:02 AM Pacific.
The new Mars rover, now the Mars Science Laboratory dubbed Curiosity, has a specific mission: To search for clues as to whether Mars has had, or still has, environments favorable for life.
This rover, far larger than previous Mars rovers which have puttered cutely about the surface of the Red Planet, is the size of a compact car at some 2,000-pounds (900-kilograms).
The spacecraft is due to lift off Saturday from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket at 7:02 AM Pacific on its nearly 500 million kilometer flight to Mars. If there is any delay, NASA has a launch window until December 18th.
When Curiosity arrives on Mars next summer, it will be lowered to the surface of the planet by robotic machinery dubbed a sky crane. The previous rovers Spirit and Opportunity, much smaller, were released to the surface in airbags.
The sky crane is to detach from the larger spacecraft after it enters Mars atmosphere about a mile from the planet’s surface, firing retrorockets to bring the rover to a gentle landing. Unlike the small earlier Mars rovers, Curiosity is not solar-powered. Because it is so much larger and more complex, it has a small plutonium-fueled radioisotope power plant in which the heat from radioactive decay is converted to electricity.
The rover will need the added power for its planned mission of two years duration, the equivalent of one Mars year, in which the rover will range up and down slopes, performing exploration and experimentation, including some shallow drilling into the Martian surface, and use onboard instrumentation to examine the take.
Curiosity’s scientific payload is called SAM for Sample Analysis at Mars. SAM includes a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, and a laser spectrometer. These will be used to look for elements associated with life as we know it, such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and organic compounds containing carbon.
The mobile Mars Science Laboratory, which includes other instruments such as a neutron spectrometer and a telescope to look for signs of ice and water, also has its own weather station and a radiation assessment detector to aid in future planning for human exploration.
Curiosity is launching not quite three weeks since the fourth consecutive failure of a Russian Mars mission.
China is in the midst of getting into space in a big way, with it own space station in the works for the next decade. But the US, which already shares the International Space Station with Russian, European, and Japanese partners, is moving in the post-space shuttle era toward a manned mission to the asteroid belt followed by a manned mission to Mars.
As engaging and intriguing as the previous Mars rover missions have been, Curiosity is by far the biggest yet, and carries the prospect of telling us a great deal about not only Mars, but the possibilities of life in the universe.
Egypt’s new prime minister, recycled from the Mubarak regime of the ’90s by the ruling military council, may say he has more power than his predecessor, but protesters still massing in Cairo’s Tahrir Square don’t like his appointment. And they got backing Friday from the Obama Administration.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** OBAMA TODAY – FRIDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events today.
Obama will host a summit with leaders of the European Union on Monday at the White House. Prior to that, he has no scheduled public events.
It’s another day of protest and anger across the Middle East.
After a day of relative quiet on Thursday, Egypt is heating up again in the wake of the selection of a Mubarak regime retread as the country’s new prime minister.
Kamal el-Ganzouri served as Egypt’s prime minister between 1996 and 1999 and was deputy prime minister and planning minister before that.
The previous prime minister and the entire cabinet resigned earlier this week after a bloody crackdown by the ruling military council installed on an interim basis after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February.
The ruling military council earlier apologized for the deaths of 40 demonstrators, but vowed to make no more concessions after agreeing to move up the presidential election from 2013 to the middle of next year.
The Obama Administration, however, differs with the current Egyptian leaders. Here’s a statement released this morning by White House press secretary Jay Carney:
Since the start of the Arab Spring, the United States has spoken out for a set of core principles that have guided our response to events, including opposition to the use of violence and repression, defense of universal rights including the freedom of peaceful assembly, and support for political and economic reform that meets the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.
In Egypt over the past several days, we have seen protesters demand the realization of these principles. We have condemned the excessive use of force against them and called for restraint on all sides. We deeply regret the loss of life, and urge the Egyptian authorities to implement an independent investigation into the circumstances of those deaths. But the situation Egypt faces requires a more fundamental solution, devised by Egyptians, which is consistent with universal principles.
The United States strongly believes that the new Egyptian government must be empowered with real authority immediately. We believe that Egypt’s transition to democracy must continue, with elections proceeding expeditiously, and all necessary measures taken to ensure security and prevent intimidation. Most importantly, we believe that the full transfer of power to a civilian government must take place in a just and inclusive manner that responds to the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people, as soon as possible.
Parliamentary elections are still scheduled for Monday. We’ll see how those go.
In Syria, protests continue, as does some fighting involving breakaway military forces against Assad regime forces. Some 26 protesters have reportedly been killed today.
The Assad regime had until today to respond to Arab League demands that it stop its bloody crackdown, as promised, and allow an observer mission in the country. But the deadline has come and gone, with no response from the Syrian government.
Is a military intervention in Syria in the cards? The US is unenthusiastic. But France has begun talking about establishing “humanitarian corridors” to bring relief to Syrians. These would be secured by “international military observers.”
And Turkish leaders are openly saying that the Assad regime’s time has passed.
In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has already signed an agreement in Riyadh to give up power. But demonstrations continue, spurred especially by the immunity inherent in the agreement brokered by the Saudis and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – FRIDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
In his Thanksgiving weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses the holiday, community, and service to country.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALTERNEWT.
** OBAMA TODAY – THURSDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events today
Obama will host a summit with leaders of the European Union on Monday at the White House. Prior to that, he has no scheduled public events.
Egypt is quieter today after five days of bloody protests, and mediation by clerics. The ruling military council apologized for the deaths of 40 demonstrators, but vowed to make no more concessions after agreeing to move up the presidential election from 2013 to the middle of next year.
Parliamentary elections are still scheduled for Monday.
In Bahrain, a special commission established by the ruling monarchy to examine the protests that rocked the island Gulf Arab state earlier this year found widespread wrongdoing by the government and its security forces.It also found no significant Iranian involvement in the protests, despite that being the regime’s rationale for its actions.
In Iran, the Tehran regime says that it has arrested another 12 CIA operatives, as part of a general roll-up of US intelligence networks in the Islamic republic and among its Hezbollah annex in Lebanon.Former US officials are cited in the Guardian as saying that the operatives were not Americans.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – THURSDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown issued this proclamation for Thanksgiving Day:
The first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a celebration of the harvest that brought together the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation and the Native Americans who helped them adapt to their new environment. Over the years Thanksgiving became an American tradition and one of the first holidays we celebrated as a free and independent nation. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving observance in the newly formed United States of America, writing that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.”
Thanksgiving has continued to be one of our most cherished observances, a day to join with family and friends and feast on traditional delicacies from roasted turkey to pumpkin pie, foods that commemorate the joining of the Old World and the New that brought about that First Thanksgiving long ago.
It is most fitting that we set aside a special day for gratitude. As Americans, we have every reason to give thanks for the wonderful bounty of our land, the strength of our fellow citizens and our system of government that protects our basic freedoms.
The Republican presidential field debated on Tuesday night in Washington, mostly demonstrating a very hawkish set of stances on Iran and Pakistan.
** OBAMA TODAY – WEDNESDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
At 7:30 AM Pacific, Obama pardoned the National Thanksgiving Turkey on the North Portico.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, the Obama family participates in a service event in the Washington area.
The Republicans who hope to take on Obama next November debated last night in Washington. It was the first debate since Newt Gingrich emerged as the new frontrunner, and he came off as quite thoughtful and presidential. Which doesn’t imply that I agree with him, but I’m sure you get the gist.
Gingrich simply knows more about most presidential issues than the rest of the field, including Mitt Romney, and it shows.
While striking a hawkish and pro-oil development stance destined to win widespread favor in conservative circles, Gingrich also, however, came out against mass deportations of illegal immigrants, raising the specter of splitting up families who have been in the US for 25 years. He did not call for a blanket amnesty for all illegal immigrants. But now he is in the situation of having to articulate where he would draw the line.
While he comes off as moderate for swing voters, whom he’s clearly looking towards in a general election scenario, he makes himself vulnerable to the absolutist, if incredibly absurd, right-wing position.
Naturally, Mitt Romney, who has had several positions on immigration, and Michele Bachmann attacked him.
Early this morning, I watched live while Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to at last step down from power.
After months of bloody protests, Saleh is the fourth autocrat to be swept from power in this year’s Arab Awakening.
Saleh signed the agreement in the presence of Saudi King Abdullah, in a deal brokered by the Saudis and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the increasingly assertive federation of Gulf Arab states.
Saleh is to step down in 30 days, turning power over to his vice president, with elections in three months. He is to be guaranteed freedom from prosecution, something which won’t make the protesters happy. But he is to be gone, after three times earlier tentatively agreeing to such a deal before reneging.
In fact, Saleh is now coming to the US, to New York City, to seek medical treatment. He was seriously injured in an assassination attempt which killed 11 members of his circle in June, though he looked healthy enough as he talked about what a great regime he’s been running in Yemen.
Protests continue in Egypt, where the ruling military council has now agreed to hold the presidential election in the middle of next year, earlier than they had said before. But it’s not enough for demonstrators in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, who remain in a stand-off with elements of the military.
Parliamentary elections are still set for Monday.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said today in Moscow that his country is very unhappy about seemingly accelerating moves by the US to create a missile shield in Central Europe. Though it’s ostensibly to guard against Iran, Russia has been turned down in its offer to join in the project.
Medvedev said that if the project continues to progress that Russia may well position its missiles to destroy it, and that Russia is seriously considering withdrawing from the historic nuclear arms reduction pact with the US which has served as the cornerstone of the “re-set” in relations between the two nations.
This is a big deal.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – WEDNESDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
University of California President Mark Yudof has appointed former Los Angeles Police Chief and New York Police Commissioner William Bratton to lead an investigation of the recent police pepper spraying of protesters at UC Davis and use of batons against protesters at UC Berkeley.
He has also named UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. to lead a system-wide review of police practices.
Brown has had no public comment on these matters, though it would be unwise to bet that he’s been inactive behind the scenes.
In response, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, billing himself as California Acting Governor Gavin Newsom, put out a statement denouncing the police actions as “senseless violence” and praising Yudof’s moves.
“President Mark Yudof and his staff have kept my office appraised on the events of the last week and I made it clear that the University has a profound obligation to its staff and student body – not to mention its worldwide reputation – to better balance protecting the public safety with protecting the constitutional right to free speech and political expression.
“After contact with William Bratton earlier this week,” Newsom, who serves as acting governor while Brown is out of state, said, “I am pleased that the University of California has retained the former Los Angeles Police Chief to lead an independent investigation of the pepper spray incident on the campus of UC Davis last Friday. I have every confidence that Chief Bratton will be thorough and frank in its findings.”
What Newsom probably meant in that last sentence is that he is confident that Bratton’s report will be good.
The “California Acting Governor” title is getting a bit of comment. I recall the 2009 California Democratic Party convention, at which Newsom was trying to run against Jerry Brown, and one of his top aides showed off a special lapel pin which he said was very cool because it was “like a Secret Service pin.” Whereupon I showed him the watch I was wearing, the same type of watch presented to President Obama by his Secret Service detail.
** SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING “SUPER-COMMITTEE” FLOP.
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Macbeth – Act V, Scene V
Was there anything in politics more predictable than the failure of the so-called Congressional “super-committee” on the budget?
As we’ve seen in California over the past several years, you simply can’t get any sizable number of Republican politicians to go along with tax hikes and/or corporate loophole closures. In California, liberals and moderates have struggled to put together fiscal plans combining big cuts and some taxes only to find them spurned by all but a very few Republicans cowering in a party overtaken by the anti-government gang.
It’s what that party is all about — or, at least, what the once GOP has come to be about — that and some other stuff we know about fear of the other and insecurity about the American identity.
And what happens now that nothing has happened with the laughably titled “super-committee?”
Not much.
That’s right. As I pointed out over the summer, in a piece about President Barack Obama and budget kabuki, the automatic cuts don’t kick in till 2013, and later. Which means the real deadline for action is sometime not long before then. As in the end of not this year, but next year.
Or not.
Because the Bush tax cuts end at the end of next year, unless they are extended. Which, not incidentally, solves a huge chunk of several problems.
I think Obama knows this, and, while he may gnash his teeth and get some laughs out of the endless sturm und drang about what he is supposedly doing or not doing, recognizes that it is mostly just the sound and fury that passes for political debate these days.
Of course, Congress may attempt to use this as an excuse to avoid acting on extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. But that would simply be par for the course for this Congress, well on its way to being the most unpopular in history.
And ratings agencies might take the opportunity for another downgrade, but if they didn’t factor the failure of the super-committee into their forecasts, they are decidedly in the wrong line of work.
The two parties are simply too far apart, the appointees themselves too entrenched, with party discipline built in to prevent agreement, especially on the Republican side. …
At 9:15 AM Pacific, President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy in Manchester, New Hampshire. The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the sound by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live 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.
Huge crowds of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo today to demand an end to military rule.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING “SUPER-COMMITTEE” FLOP.
** OBAMA TODAY – TUESDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
He then flew up to Manchester, New Hampshire on Air Force One.
At 9:15 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on the American Jobs Act at Manchester High School Central.
The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the sound by clicking on the pause button.
At 10:20 AM Pacific, Obama departs Manchester, New Hampshire en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 11:40 AM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 11:55 AM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
With the complete failure of the Congressional super-committee on the budget, Obama is pushing to preserve the existing payroll tax cut, which is very important to many Americans but runs out at the end of the year absent congressional action.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates hold another national security and foreign police debate tonight in Washington at 5 PM Pacific on CNN.
Speaking of which, a new CNN poll has former House Speaker Newt Gingrich out front for the first time in its soundings.
Last month, CNN had Gingrich down at 8%.
Now Gingrich leads with 24%, followed by Mitt Romney 20%, Herman Cain 17%, Rick Perry 11%, Ron Paul 9%, Michele Bachmann 5%, Jon Huntsman 3%, and Rick Santorum 3%.
Gingrich is judged best qualified to be president.
A new Quinnipiac poll also shows Gingrich in the lead over Romney, 26% to 22%, with Cain at 14% and the other following.
In a head-to-head match-up, Gingrich bests Romney by 10 points, 49% to 39%.
And yet Romney continues to act like he’s a big frontrunner, putting up a TV ad today in New Hampshire attacking Obama.
The ad shows Mr. Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
But the line, which is perhaps the spot’s most devastating moment, is also the one that seems to be the most taken out of context. In fact, at the time, Mr. Obama was referring to something that an aide to his then opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, had said in reference to the McCain campaign — not Mr. Obama, then or now.
In a 2008 interview with The New York Daily News, an aide to Mr. McCain warned, “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose,” and Mr. Obama picked up the comment and began using it to mock Mr. McCain on the campaign trail.
As soon as the ad was broadcast on Mr. Hannity’s show, the Romney campaign sent out an e-mail defending its use of Mr. Obama’s quote. (The e-mail also included Mr. Obama’s full quote: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”)
“Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent’s campaign for saying ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,’” said Gail Gitcho, Mr. Romney’s communications director, in an e-mail statement. “Now, President Obama’s campaign is desperate not to talk about the economy.”
Actually, Obama is talking constantly about the economy, as the video clips run here regularly demonstrate very convincingly.
Romney’s not going to have much of a leg to stand on when he starts complaining about the coming attacks on him. Assuming that that potential blizzard ever actually takes place.
President Barack Obama turned the White House into a country music hall on Monday, with an array of country stars performing in the East Room. Performers included Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, The Band, Perry, and Dierks Bentley. Say, when did James Taylor become a country artist?
In Egypt, pro-democracy demonstrators aren’t backing down, despite a bloody crackdown that began on Friday.
As conflict between demonstrators and Egypt’s ruling military council intensifies, the Egyptian cabinet, which reports to the military council, resigned yesterday. There is word that the ruling military council may give way on a plan to postpone any presidential election until 2013 and to push a constitution giving it a virtual veto power over key decisions.
The interim Egyptian military government has been in the midst of a bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square. It’s the sort of crackdown that did not happen in February’s revolution against Hosni Mubarak.
That may be because the “revolution,” in reality, merely transferred power from Mubarak to a “temporary” ruling military council.
The US, UK, and Canada moved yesterday to impose various sanctions against Iran’s petrochemical industry, oil and gas business, and banks. But Iran has reportedly rolled up a network of CIA intelligence assets within the ranks of its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon and at home.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – TUESDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues to work on his initiative plans for November 2012, while a long ballyhooed plan from the Think Long Committee of very well-heeled business folks and several high-profile former officeholders is running into a buzzsaw of opposition, as anticipated here yesterday and over the weekend.
I never think that an initiative that lowers tax rates for the wealthy and large corporations is going to fare well at the polls. And I don’t think, let me put it diplomatically, that it flies especially better in the current environment.
In related action, the USC Dornsife/LA Times poll indicates that teachers are popular with California voters, and that most believe they are underpaid, but more voters want teachers judged and paid more on merit than seniority.
Teachers unions are still favored by a plurality of voters, but voters are more prone to believe that the unions look out more for their own interests rather than a broader public interest.
A majority of California voters — 53 percent — said public school teachers in California are underpaid, but voters also decisively rejected the current standards by which teacher salaries are determined. Just 11 percent favored using seniority as the primary factor to determine teacher pay, and 13 percent favored using the education or advanced training the teacher has received as the main factor.
While only 10 percent of voters favored using student standardized test scores alone to determine teacher pay, a majority of California voters — 53 percent — support using standardized test scores as part of the method by which teacher pay is determined, in conjunction with other measures including classroom observation and parent feedback. An even larger percentage — 69 percent — said making teachers overall performance assessments publicly available would improve the quality of California’s public schools. …
“Californians clearly believe that public school teachers should make more money, but they strongly reject the current system for setting teacher salaries,” said Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll and director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “Rather than paying teachers based on how many years they’ve been in the classroom, California voters want to reward teachers for what their students learn.” …
Overall, 77 percent of voters hold a favorable view of California’s public school teachers, and 14 percent have an unfavorable view. Fifty-three percent of voters said public school teachers in California are underpaid, 31 percent said teachers are paid “just right,” and 6 percent of voters said teachers are overpaid.
Among voters surveyed, 48 percent had a favorable view of teachers unions and 35 percent had an unfavorable view. Voters were split about the role of teachers unions in improving public schools, with 44 percent agreeing that teachers unions work to improve schools and 43 percent disagreeing. Forty-five percent of voters agreed that teachers unions help teachers succeed a very tough profession, and 40 percent disagreed.
But by a margin of 36 percentage points, voters were much more likely to say teachers unions look out for the interests of teachers than the interests of students. Seventy-one percent of voters said teachers unions look out for the interests of teachers, compared to 35 percent that said teachers unions look out for the interests of students.
Meanwhile, billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, who along with former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz co-chaired the winning campaign last year against Prop 23, the initiative to do away with California’s landmark climate change/renewable energy program, is joining with environmentalists and some Silicon Valley folks to promote an initiative to close a $1.1 billion annual corporate tax loophole and redirect half of it to energy efficiency and green jobs training, the other half to the state’s general fund.
After five years, all the money would go to the general fund.
** DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.Things are getting very Darwinian in presidential politics. It’s a matter of competition, a matter of evolution — as in who gets the future and who does not — and a matter of the little city of Darwin, Australia. Ironic, in that most of the Republican presidential field rejects Darwin’s evolution science.
“In the Asia Pacific of the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.” So said President Barack Obama in his address to the Australian Parliament as he unveiled an upgraded security alliance with Australia, an historic ally from World War II days.
Obama is rolling out the major beginnings of a post-Iraq geopolitical posture for the US and a revamped political, economic, and security architecture in the Pacific Basin, in large part to counter the rise of China. Which has been undercutting US industries and making new aggressive moves over the past year in the South China Sea — most of which it claims, to the consternation of its neighboring countries — and some threatening moves, as always, towards Taiwan.
Tensions over China’s yuan currency and very expansive claims of sovereignty over its neighbors in the South China Sea dominated the East Asia Summit in Indonesia, where President Barack Obama lived as a boy.
Obama recognizes that the distinction between local and global politics is becoming evanescent. At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii, he pushed a Trans Pacific Partnership on economic issues which China is encouraged to join. If, that is, it stops depressing the yuan, much more stringently protects intellectual property rights, and sharply cuts state subsidies to its corporations. Which of course would disrupt China’s strategy.
As for the rest of Obama’s strategy in what he calls the Asia Pacific, much of it hinges on Darwin, Australia.
This lovely tropical city of 125,000 at the northern edge of Oz, which I’ve visited, is about to loom very large on America’s geopolitical map. Though the numbers are small — only a company of Marines at first, ultimately a brigade — Obama has decided to flow US military forces in such a way that the Australian base there will become a de facto joint base with the United States. … From my November 21st essay.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left. … From my November 16th essay.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured. … From my November 12th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
President-elect John F. Kennedy arrived and delivered his victory speech, after prevailing in a nail-biter the night before, at the Hyannis Armory in Massachusetts on November 9th, 1960. Kennedy was assassinated 48 years ago today in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $96.77 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, and down $17 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich, campaigning today at the University of New Hampshire, said he would not compromise on taxes if he were a member of the Congressional super-committee on the budget, arguing that taxes spoil job creation. He described the super-committee as “hopeless” from the beginning.
** QUICK HITS. The US, UK, and Canada moved today to impose various sanctions against Iran’s petrochemical industry, oil and gas business, and banks. But Iran has reportedly rolled up a network of CIA intelligence assets within the ranks of its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon and at home. … As conflict between demonstrators and Egypt’s ruling military council intensifies, the Egyptian cabinet, which reports to the military council, resigned today. Protests continue for another night in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square. … Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is getting a new chief of staff. A former chief of staff to then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Anne Campbell Washington was Brown’s chief of staff in 2003 and 2004. She’s also directed foundations in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Quan’s operation is reeling under the impact of the Occupy Oakland demonstrations and high-level departures.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … SOUND AND FURY: THE UTTERLY UNSURPRISING SUPER-COMMITTEE FLOP.
** NEW POLL: GINGRICH AND ROMNEY TOP THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PACK. Yet another poll confirms Newt Gingrich’s national ascendance in the Republican presidential race.
Ron Paul and Rick Perry trail at 9% and 8%, respectively.
Michele Bachmann is further back at 4%, with Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum bringing up the rear at 1% apiece.
Gingrich has been resurrected from the political dead, having melted down to 3% months ago.
While Romney should have every advantage given the craziness of this race, he remains mired with the same fifth to a quarter of the vote he’s had all along.
If he is a frontrunner, he’s the weakest one I’ve seen in a long time.
Most of the candidates, including Romney, receive roughly equal support from conservative and moderate or liberal Republicans. Cain and, in particular, Gingrich, have greater appeal to conservative Republicans.
Overall, Gingrich has a slight edge over Romney and Cain among conservatives, while Romney has a wider margin over the others among moderates and liberals. …
Conservatives outnumber moderates and liberals by better than 2-to-1 in the Republican rank-and-file.
Gingrich and Cain appear to have benefited most from the decline in Perry’s support. In Gallup’s August update, when Perry was the overall leader, 33% of conservative Republicans favored him, making him the clear leader in that subgroup. At that time, 16% of conservative Republicans supported Romney, 5% Cain, and 4% Gingrich.
Republican presidential nominee preferences vary significantly by age. If the nomination were contested solely among senior citizens, it would be a two-man race between Gingrich (34%) and Romney (28%), with 6 in 10 Republicans aged 65 or older supporting one of those two candidates, and no other candidate above 8% in that age group.
In fact, Gingrich’s support is heavily concentrated among Republicans who are at least 50, while his support is 4% among Republicans younger than 30. This pattern may reflect the fact that he has been out of public office for more than a decade, and thus a less familiar figure to younger Republicans.
Cain and Ron Paul do much better among younger than among older Republicans, a consistent finding for Paul throughout the campaign. And while Romney is competitive with the leaders in every age group, his support tends to be greater among older Republicans. …
With the first official nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, now just six weeks away, there is no clear national front-runner for the Republican nomination. Romney remains at the top of the list, along with Gingrich, whose campaign has mounted a comeback in recent weeks, and Cain. Gingrich’s rise coincides with the recent declines of Perry and, to a lesser extent, Cain,
Typically, well before the Iowa caucuses, Republicans have anointed a dominant front-runner who wound up being the nominee. The major exception was in the last campaign, when Rudy Giuliani led national polls by a healthy margin for much of 2007 but was largely uncompetitive in the 2008 primaries and caucuses.
Thus, the current contest stands to be the most competitive and perhaps most unpredictable for the Republican nomination since 1972, when the parties shifted the power to choose their presidential nominees away from party leaders at the national convention to the rank-and-file voters in state primaries and caucuses.
** DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.Things are getting very Darwinian in presidential politics. It’s a matter of competition, a matter of evolution — as in who gets the future and who does not — and a matter of the little city of Darwin, Australia. Ironic, in that most of the Republican presidential field rejects Darwin’s evolution science.
“In the Asia Pacific of the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.” So said President Barack Obama in his address to the Australian Parliament as he unveiled an upgraded security alliance with Australia, an historic ally from World War II days.
Obama is rolling out the major beginnings of a post-Iraq geopolitical posture for the US and a revamped political, economic, and security architecture in the Pacific Basin, in large part to counter the rise of China. Which has been undercutting US industries and making new aggressive moves over the past year in the South China Sea — most of which it claims, to the consternation of its neighboring countries — and some threatening moves, as always, towards Taiwan.
Tensions over China’s yuan currency and very expansive claims of sovereignty over its neighbors in the South China Sea dominated the East Asia Summit in Indonesia, where President Barack Obama lived as a boy.
Obama recognizes that the distinction between local and global politics is becoming evanescent. At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii, he pushed a Trans Pacific Partnership on economic issues which China is encouraged to join. If, that is, it stops depressing the yuan, much more stringently protects intellectual property rights, and sharply cuts state subsidies to its corporations. Which of course would disrupt China’s strategy.
As for the rest of Obama’s strategy in what he calls the Asia Pacific, much of it hinges on Darwin, Australia.
This lovely tropical city of 125,000 at the northern edge of Oz, which I’ve visited, is about to loom very large on America’s geopolitical map. Though the numbers are small — only a company of Marines at first, ultimately a brigade — Obama has decided to flow US military forces in such a way that the Australian base there will become a de facto joint base with the United States. …
The Congressional “super-committee” on the budget has failed.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A short week on tap in presidential politics and California politics.
President Barack Obama is back from his very significant nine-day marathon tour of the Asia Pacific region to get the unsurprising word that the Congressional “super-committee” on the budget has gone nowhere before spending a day on the campaign trail, then pardoning some turkeys. (Thanksgiving turkeys, not politicians.)
Governor Jerry Brown is already off on a little vacation, to the proverbial undisclosed out of state locale, letting some word out about his tax initiative plans for next year even as the Think Long Committee releases its own, very different, plan.
The Congressional “super-committee” on the budget is nowhere near an agreement with its deadline looming on Wednesday. (With any agreement supposed to be in print sometime on Monday.) As readers know, I have always had extremely low expectations about anything happening with this group.
And what happens if nothing happens?
Nothing much. (Unless there’s another downgrade, which there should not be, given how predictable this is.)
That’s right. As I pointed out at the time, in a piece about Obama and budget kabuki, the automatic cuts don’t kick in till 2013. Which means the real deadline for action is sometime not long before then. As in a year from now.
Or not.
Because the Bush tax cuts end at the end of next year, unless they are extended. Which, not incidentally, solves a huge chunk of several problems, to the tune of some $4 billion in revenue.
I think Obama knows this, and while he may gnash his teeth and get some laughs out of the endless sturm und drang about what he is supposedly doing or not doing, recognizes that it is mostly just the sound and fury that passes for political debate these days.
The two parties are simply too far apart, the appointees themselves too entrenched, with party discipline built in to prevent agreement.
Of course, Congress may use this as an excuse to avoid acting on extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. But that would simply be par for the course for this Congress, well on its way to being the most unpopular in history.
Meanwhile, a new poll in New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney has long held a massive lead, finds Newt Gingrich moving into a dead heat with the former Massachusetts Governor.
But Gingrich is now coming under heavy scrutiny for the many millions of dollars that big interests have doled out to his think tanks and for his highly lucrative Washington consulting arrangements.
Egypt’s very incomplete revolution may be back on. Egyptian soldiers and police set fire to tents in the middle of Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square and fired tear gas and rubber bullets in major assaults on Sunday and Monday to drive out thousands of protesters after three days of clashes over the ruling military council’s preferred new constitution, which leaves them in charge till 2013, and perhaps beyond.
Here’s what Obama’s week looks like.
On Monday, the Obamas welcome country music legends and contemporary major artists to the White House for a celebration of country music as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series. On Tuesday, Obama will travel to Manchester, New Hampshire where he will discuss the American Jobs Act.
Then on Wednesday, Obama will pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey in a ceremony in the Rose Garden. This is the 64th anniversary of the National Thanksgiving Turkey presentation. On Thursday, the Obamas will celebrate Thanksgiving at the White House. There are no public events scheduled. And on Friday, Obama has no public events scheduled.
Remember the Think Long Committee, that group of super-rich business types and high-profile former officeholders working on a reform agenda for California, all on nomadic billionaire Nicolas Berggruen’s ample dime?
As I wrote last spring, they were slated to come up with a multi-faceted plan in September. But the month came and went.
Here’s what the group had on tap last spring:
Among the group’s priority items, which Berggruen and Gardels announced in an op-ed piece right before Brown’s inauguration in January: Realigning many core services from the state to the local level, already a Brown priority on which he’s made major progress. Initiative reform that will curb budgeting by the ballot box. Modification of term limits to enhance the accountability, decisiveness and quality of the Legislature, as well as a look at a non-partisan unicameral legislature as a logical step after open primaries and redistricting. Modernizing the revenue system by making it less reliant on the volatility of high incomes and various fiscal reforms including a rainy day fund, which Schwarzenegger and the Legislature passed last year for a future ballot.
Now, aided by their Sacramento consultants, they are rolling out a plan in a conventional way through a few newspapers that is focused on reforming the state’s tax structure. And not on the broader systemic reforms discussed earlier in the year, though the plan does call for realignment to return control and responsibility for some services, such as public safety, to the local level. And it would create a “Citizens Council for Government Accountability,” a sort of watchdog super-committee to act as a check on the elected government, with the power to place initiatives directly on to the ballot.
Brown, as I’ve mentioned on occasion, is already doing realignment. And there are certain issues that one can imagine with regard to having an unelected counter to an elected government.
How would the plan, which is supposed to take initiative form for next November, impact people at various income levels? That’s not yet revealed.
What we do know is that it would lower income and sales tax rates, eliminate various deductions and credits, expand the sales tax to include various services, and cut the corporate tax rate.
These are not unfamiliar ideas, actually.
The California Republican Party has already denounced it as “a $10 billion tax increase.” I have a feeling that organized labor, which has its own ideas on taxes, won’t be too supportive, either.
Unlike the Think Long plan, which cuts taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, Brown’s emerging plan would raise taxes on the wealthy, and sales taxes for all, for perhaps as much as five years.
Meanwhile, Brown’s predecessor, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Norway.
Today he keynoted the ZERO (Zero Emission Resource Organization) Emission Conference in Oslo, the major annual event aimed at zero greenhouse gas emissions for Scandinavia. Schwarzenegger was joined there by several other leaders, including European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard.
Though he suffered a mishap last week while performing a stunt on the set of his new movie, The Last Stand, in New Mexico, Schwarzenegger’s break in filming for the Oslo address, and Thanksgiving, has been planned for months.
More than 30 people have been killed after a third of day of protest in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square, overshadowing parliamentary elections set for a week from today. Demonstrators are unhappy about the “temporary” ruling military council’s plan to remain in power until 2013.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefing in the Oval Office.
Obama then delivered remarks and signed legislation into law that will provide tax credits to help put veterans back to work, in the South Court Auditorium.
At 1:25 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are expected to announce today new financial sanctions on Iran for continuing to pursue a nuclear weapons development program.
At 4:15 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama welcome music legends and contemporary major artists to the White House for a celebration of country music as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series in the East Room.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was very cagey over the weekend about a possible Israeli military strike against Iran, which the UN watchdog agency says is moving forward on nuclear weapons development.
The interim Egyptian military government is in the midst of a bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square.
It’s the sort of crackdown that did not happen in February’s revolution against Hosni Mubarak.
That may be because the “revolution” merely transferred power from Mubarak to a ruling military council.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
The police pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters at the mellow University of California at Davis on Friday has reverberated around the globe, as seen in this report on British television.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is out of state.
Brown is on vacation in an undisclosed location.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Events late Friday at the University of California at Davis, where peacefully protesting Occupy demonstrators were pepper-sprayed by campus police, caused a big reaction over the weekend. This is not only a national story, but an international story.
Having seen the footage, the pepper-spraying of the students, who were peacefully sitting in a quad, is simply bizarre.
Especially coming as it does on the heels of the inappropriately violent use of police batons during a peaceful rally at UC Berkeley.
After stumbling at first in response, University of California leaders have moved to crack down. On the police over-reaction.
UC President Mark Yudoff is rather belatedly convening a conference, largely by phone, with chancellors of all the university campuses, to affirm the tradition of peaceful protest and make sure that these incidents don’t happen again.
And UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has caused two officers involved in Friday’s shocking incident to be placed on leave, and has placed the campus police chief — who ludicrously claimed that officers were under threat of physical harm — on suspension.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left. … From my November 16th essay.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured. … From my November 12th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 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, and down $16 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Egypt’s very incomplete revolution may be back on. Egyptian soldiers and police set fire to tents in the middle of Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square and fired tear gas and rubber bullets in a major assault on Sunday to drive out thousands of protesters after two days of clashes over the ruling military council’s preferred new constitution.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama is back from a marathon tour of the Asia Pacific region, which proved very eventful.
Obama is in the midst of shifting US geopolitical priorities away from the Middle East and South Asia, bidding to unite other Asia Pacific nations as a counter to the rising power of China.
It looks like he made some significant progress, aided in no small measure by past Chinese behavior.
Back at home, the Congressional super-committee on the budget continues to make no progress toward its Wednesday deadline.
As readers know, I’ve never believed that this group would do anything. And it has not.
In fact, reports are that an announcement of failure will be made on Monday.
The two parties are simply too far apart, the appointees themselves too entrenched, with party discipline built in to prevent agreement.
Obama has a fairly light Thanksgiving week ahead, though he will undoubtedly weigh in on this, as well as make a trip to New Hampshire to talk up his American Jobs Act, blocked at virtually every turn by conservative Republicans.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown has left the state.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Events late Friday at the University of California at Davis, where peacefully protesting Occupy demonstrators were pepper-sprayed by campus police, caused a big reaction yesterday.
This is not only a national story, but an international story.
Having seen the footage, the pepper-spraying of the students, who were peacefully sitting in a quad, is simply bizarre.
Especially coming as it does on the heels of the inappropriately violent use of police batons during a peaceful rally at UC Berkeley.
Remember the Think Long Committee, that group of super-rich business types and high-profile former officeholders working on a reform agenda for California, all on nomadic billionaire Nicolas Berggruen’s ample dime?
As I wrote last spring, they were slated to come up with a multi-faceted plan in September. But the month came and went.
Here’s what the group had on tap last spring:
Among the group’s priority items, which Berggruen and Gardels announced in an op-ed piece right before Brown’s inauguration in January: Realigning many core services from the state to the local level, already a Brown priority on which he’s made major progress. Initiative reform that will curb budgeting by the ballot box. Modification of term limits to enhance the accountability, decisiveness and quality of the Legislature, as well as a look at a non-partisan unicameral legislature as a logical step after open primaries and redistricting. Modernizing the revenue system by making it less reliant on the volatility of high incomes and various fiscal reforms including a rainy day fund, which Schwarzenegger and the Legislature passed last year for a future ballot.
Now, aided by their Sacramento consultants, they are rolling out a plan in a conventional way through a few newspapers that is focused on reforming the state’s tax structure.
Brown has talked with the group, but is noncommittal.
How would the plan, which is supposed to take initiative form for next November, impact people at various income levels? That’s not yet revealed.
What we do know is that it would lower income and sales tax rates, eliminate various deductions and credits, expand the sales tax to include various services, and cut the corporate tax rate.
These are not unfamiliar ideas, actually.
The California Republican Party has already denounced it as “a $10 billion tax increase.”
I have a feeling that organized labor, which has its own ideas on taxes, won’t be too supportive, either.
In his weekly video/radio address, from Indonesia, President Barack Obama talks about working to open up markets and double American exports by 2014.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Indonesia and en route to Washington.
The time in Bali, Indonesia, where Obama is the first US president to have taken part in the East Asia Summit, is 16 hours ahead of Pacific time.
Obama’s flight home will take about 25 hours, including stops for refueling in Guam and Hawaii.
All of today’s events in Indonesia have already occurred.
Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, a meeting which was not on his original schedule for the day.
Obama has been encircling China over the past week with military, economic, and political moves.
In another very concrete sign of his strategy, the US will transfer 24 F-16 fighters to the Indonesian Air Force.
Obama then took part in an Embassy and U.S. Mission Meet & Greet and held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra of Thailand.
All these meetings took place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Bali.
Obama then took part in the East Asia Summit Plenary Session, the East Asia Summit Lunch, the East Asia Summit Group Photo, and the East Asia Summit Retreat.
All these events took place at the Bali International Convention Center.
Obama then departed Bali, Indonesia on Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews. AF1 will make pit stops in Guam and Hawaii in the course of its very long journey.
The end of the road for Seif al Islam Gaddafi, the favored son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, came earlier today in the desert of southern Libya, where he was captured by the new Libyan forces.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib, who has a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, officially announced the capture of Moammar Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, calling it the “crowning” of the uprising’s efforts.
Gaddafi had sought a way out of the country, hoping to negotiate his surrender to officials of another nation for transport to the International Criminal Court, which indicted him for crimes against humanity. But the new leaders of Libya made it plain that they wanted him to put on trial — the erstwhile trial of his father having been made a botch of by virtue of the fact that the eager rebels murdered him — and I doubt they will turn him over to the Hague.
But he may have a great deal to say in any trial, be it in Tripoli or anywhere else. Gaddafi’s favored son, a graduate of the London School of Economics, was his father’s favored interlocutor with the West and probably has quite a few beans to spill.
Spain is gearing up for national elections on Sunday, and all signs point to a big victory for the center-right. The Socialist left is viewed as having failed during seven years in power in the world’s 12th largest economy, which has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union.
Back at home, the Congressional super-committee on the budget continues to make no progress toward its Wednesday deadline.
Obama will undoubtedly weigh in on this, which I’m sure he anticipated, before Thanksgiving comes. He also has a jaunt to New Hampshire, which he won in 2008 but where he currently has major problems.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential field gathers tonight in Iowa for a dinner honoring Iowa Governor Terry Branstad for his birthday and a fundraiser for Iowa Republicans.
It also gathers earlier in the day for a family values forum in Iowa.
Actually, that would be the Republican presidential field minus Mitt Romney. And, of course, Jon Huntsman, who was never competing in Iowa.
Where’s Romney, who is in a four-way tie for first in the first in the nation Iowa Republican presidential caucuses in a recent poll?
He’s in New Hampshire, his longtime stronghold amongst the early contests. Where he is now in a statistical dead heat with the fast-rising Newt Gingrich.
Rick Perry, trying to re-start his campaign after several major stumbles, is launching a big ad blitz featuring himself as an “outsider” battling establishment interests.
Those establishment interests, incidentally, would presumably not be those he works with as the three-term governor of Texas, or as one of the country’s biggest advocates of the untrammeled oil industry.
Tensions over China’s yuan currency and wildly expansive claims of sovereignty over its neighbors in the South China Sea have dominated the East Asia Summit in Indonesia.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Some of the Occupy folks have decided to demonstrate today outside his Sacramento residence, which is a loft apartment a few blocks from the Capitol.
Why is Jerry Brown, who doesn’t raise money from Wall Street — and I literally don’t recall the last time he was actually in New York City, though I’m sure he has been there more recently than 1992, when he was there for the Democratic National Convention — a target of the loose-knit Occupy Wall Street movement?
Well, say the Occupy Sacramento branch folks, he hasn’t done enough to raise taxes on the rich.
Not that … oh, whatever.
In any event, Brown and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown are frequently not there on the weekend, especially with the legislature long gone.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left. … From my November 16th essay.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured. … From my November 12th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $97.67 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $64 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down $16 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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 second set of experiments by European scientists has accelerated neutrinos faster than the speed of light, apparently disproving Einstein’s theory. The speed of light has long been held to be the ultimate speed limit in the universe, and is central to his theory of relativity, the basis of our physics. Which is to say that our fundamental understanding of the universe is probably wrong. But you knew that.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** QUICK HITS. The US House of Representatives failed to pass a balanced budget amendment today, with several Republicans — including House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier of California — joining with Democrats to keep the measure well short of the needed two-thirds. … That University of California Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco that was canceled this week due to fear of disruption has been re-scheduled for November 28th. Where is it, you ask? That’s where things get interesting. It will be held by teleconference, with regents participating from five locations: UC San Francisco, UC Davis, UC Merced, UCLA, and, er, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Each site is accessible to the public. But where do the protesters go? … Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope, who served for nearly two decades as the San Francisco-based organization’s executive director before then Rainforest Action Network director Michael Brune took on the post at the beginning of 2010, is stepping away. He will continue as a senior advisor to the Sierra Club, with which he has worked since the ’70s, but will focus mainly on partnerships to foster green growth, including manufacturing in the US. … Steve Jobs was finally replaced earlier this week as chairman of Apple. The new chairman of Apple’s board, who has served on that board as a Jobs pick since 2000, is Genentech chairman Arthur Levinson, the biotech pioneer’s former CEO. Disney CEO Bob Iger is joining the Apple board, which has been short a member since Jobs’s death last month. Jobs was the single largest shareholder of Disney following its acquisition of Pixar. … Nevada has declared a state of emergency over a wildfire outside Reno that has already forced the evacuation of 10,000 people, and Governor Jerry Brown has dispatched 15 fire engines and their crews to assist.
** JERRY-RIGGING: THE ONGOING DROP IN CALIFORNIA’S UNEMPLOYMENT, AND THAT CONTROVERSIAL STATE UNIVERSITY FEE HIKE. More on the drop in California’s unemployment rate.
The state’s unemployment rate, which had recently edged at last below 12%, dipped again in October to 11.7% from September’s 11.9%, according to the California Employment Development Department. A year ago, the state’s unemployment rate was nearly a point higher, at 12.5%.
In October, the state added 26,000 jobs, one-third that of the nationwide gain of 80,000 jobs.
Job growth is mostly in various services, business, professional, health, and education.
In addition, there was an upward revision in September’s jobs data, meaning that 86,000 jobs have been created in the past three months.
Things would be even better if state and local government weren’t so constricted, by revenue loss and unsustainable commitments. It may be that forced cutback in non-federal governments is the single greatest impediment for the still stumbling economic recovery.
But California still has the nation’s second highest unemployment rate, behind only neighboring Nevada — the Silver State long touted as a successful job stealer from the Golden State — nearly a point higher at 13.4%.
And these numbers are still quite anemic. Some 1.4 million jobs were lost in California between 2008 and 2010, and the population continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the effects of cutbacks, which have led to angry student demonstrations around the state, continue to reverberate in the aftermath of Wednesday’s controversial vote by the California State University Board of Trustees to again raise student fees at its meeting in Long Beach. Faced with a disruptive demonstration, the board repaired behind closed doors, where they voted to impose the fee hike.
The trouble is, members of the general public weren’t around, nor, evidently, was anyone from the press.
This has Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom pushing for another vote on the matter, at the next board meeting on December 5th.
Says Newsom in his letter to the system’s chancellor and board chairman: “While I understand the CSU leadership’s concerns regarding public safety, the spirit of open deliberations has been marred by the events of November 16, 2011. This issue is simply too important to not allow for a full and thorough discussion. Otherwise, we contribute to the perception that this process is anything less than open and transparent.”
Newsom opposes the fee hike. But he’s not saying in his statements what his alternative is.
** NEW SURVEY: U.S. FAVORED OVER CHINA BY WIDE MARGIN IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION. With President Barack Obama on the final leg of his marathon trip to the Asia Pacific region, Chinese leaders are coming to understand that his new policies are largely targeted at them.
China has been much more assertive and aggressive with its neighbors lately, claiming nearly all the South China Sea despite the fact that many nations share it, and pushing forward with plans to create its own aircraft carrier battle groups and develop various advanced weapons systems that no other Asian nation, with the possible exception of Japan, could hope to counter.
So how do folks in the region feel about their would-be ally, the United States?
Across the vast region, 44% approve of the US as a globally leading nation, while only 30% accord China the same sort of regard.
US standing has actually gone up since 2010, from 41%.
Only in Vietnam, where of course the US fought a long, bloody, and disastrous war, and Malaysia are the US and China viewed with equal approval. China is not a favorite in any nation.
There is one big caveat, and that is a very big one, and it’s India. The US is favored over China there, too, but by on 16% to 10%.
The US has to do a lot more to gain approval in India.
Which may be why Obama’s first state dinner as president honored Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Say, you don’t think that Obama had a strategy from the beginning, do you?
With U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announcing that the U.S. will expand its military presence in Asia by deploying 2,500 Marines to Australia, Gallup surveys showcase the wide range of opinions of U.S. leadership in the region. A median of 44% approve of U.S. leadership in nine countries that are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the East Asia Summit (EAS) group. As many as 68% approve in Cambodia, but as few as 16% approve in India, with sizable minorities in all countries not offering an opinion either way. …
The U.S. continues to have a relatively strong influence in these countries despite the global economic slowdown and the rise of China’s power. The 2011 median of 44% is comparable with the 41% measured in 2010.
Obama takes part in the EAS on Saturday, capping off more than a week of meetings with key partners in Asia, where the president has emphasized that “no region will do more to shape our economic future than the Asian-Pacific nations.” The expansion of military ties and the increase in the number of U.S. troops stationed in Australia further strengthen the strong bond between the U.S. and Australia, but spark a negative reaction from China.
Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea all have historical ties to the U.S. government and the military and are all among the countries where a majority or more approve of U.S. leadership. It should be noted that the two countries with the lowest approval ratings of U.S. leadership, India and Vietnam, also have the highest percentage of those saying they do not have an opinion of U.S. leadership. …
China has voiced its concerns over a US military deployment in Australia, the first long-term expansion of the American military presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War, as seen in this report from China Central Television, the major state broadcaster of mainland China.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Indonesia.
The time in Bali, Indonesia, where Obama is the first president to take part in the East Asia Summit, is 16 hours ahead of Pacific time.
Obama held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia at the Grand Hyatt in Bali, Indonesia.
He then took part in a US-ASEAN meeting at the Nusa Dua Convention Center in Bali.
ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes our one-time foe (and ally, as the country is no unified under Communist Party rule) Vietnam.
Obama then held a bilateral meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of host country Indonesia at the Nusa Dua Convention Center in Bali.
Following that, Obama joined leaders at the East Asia Summit gala dinner at the Nusa Dua Convention Center in Bali.
In what may be another signal to China, the US Army on Thursday conducted its first flight test of a new weapon capable of traveling five times the speed of sound.
The Advanced Hypersonic Weapon was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai in Hawaii early yesterday morning. It reached Kwajalein Atoll, over 2300 miles away, in less than half an hour.
After some problems earlier, this test was evidently a success. This is part of a Pentagon program to develop “global strike” weapons which can reach targets across the globe in a fraction of the time currently needed without use of a ballistic missile. This craft has a very different profile allowing it to “glide” after reaching very high velocity and making it easier to maneuver and harder to detect than a traditional missile.
Speaking of weapons, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) or UN atomic watchdog, meeting today in Vienna, voted 32 to 2 (with Cuba and Ecuador supporting Iran) to censure Iran for taking steps that are preparatory for a nuclear weapons program. But, reflecting China and Russia’s misgivings, and their strong economic ties with Iran, it took no concrete action against Iran.
In Egypt, large protests are ramping up again over the proposed new constitution, which critics say would further enshrine military power over the government. The military is essentially running the country now with an interim ruling council.
Egyptian parliamentary elections are set for 10 days from now.
Italy today saw a full parliamentary vote of confidence in the new government of Prime Minister Mario Monti, the former European Commissioner technocrat who replaced long-running Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media magnate.
The Congressional “super-committee” on the budget is nowhere near an agreement with its deadline looming next Wednesday. As readers know, I have always had extremely low expectations about anything happening with this group.
And what happens if nothing happens?
Nothing.
That’s right. As I pointed out at the time, in a piece about Obama and budget kabuku, the automatic cuts don’t kick in till 2013. Which means the real deadline for action is sometime not long before then. As in a year from now.
Or not.
Because the Bush tax cuts end at the end of next year, unless they are extended. Which, not incidentally, solves a huge chunk of several problems.
I think Obama knows this, and while he may gnash his teeth and get some laughs out of the endless sturm und drang about what he is supposedly doing or not doing, recognizes that it is mostly just the sound and fury that passes for political debate these days.
Meanwhile, a new poll in New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney has long held a massive lead, finds Newt Gingrich moving into a dead heat with the former Massachusetts Governor.
But Gingrich is now coming under heavy scrutiny for the many millions of dollars that big interests have doled out to his think tanks and for his highly lucrative Washington consulting arrangements.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective will speak to reporters Friday about the decision to take another look at Oscar-nominated actress Natalie Wood’s nighttime demise in the chilly waters off Southern California on November 29, 1981. It’s not widely known in the current political scene but Wood was a former girlfriend of Governor Jerry Brown.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown got some good news today.
California’s unemployment rate has dipped to 11.7%, down from 11.9% the previous month.
A year ago unemployment was nearly a point higher, at 12.5%.
As I expected, Brown did attend last night’s screening of California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown at the San Francisco Film Society. It’s a documentary about his late father, former Governor Pat Brown, and Jerry did several interviews for it with his nieces, film director Sascha Rice and executive producer Hilary Armstrong.
He liked the documentary.
In other action, Brown’s predecessor, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, suffered an on-set mishap yesterday while performing a stunt in New Mexico for his new movie, The Last Stand.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left. … From my November 16th essay.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured. … From my November 12th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
Chinese officials on Friday said that the nation’s just concluded docking mission with the Shenzhou 8 capsule is a major step toward its own independent space station.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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, and down $16 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Occupy Wall Street protesters, deprived of their camp at Zuccotti Park, tried to shut down the New York Stock Exchange today but didn’t come anywhere near doing that.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
** UNOCCUPIED II. Is Occupy Wall Street turning into a major missed opportunity for the left?
Concerns I expressed two weeks ago in the “Ocupado” piece, linked below, are being borne out. Which doesn’t exactly make me clairvoyant, since it’s perfectly obvious.
A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows opinion flipping from positive to negative over the past month. The Tea Party, which is no serious person’s idea of a majoritarian movement, is now viewed more favorably than Occupy Wall Street.
Are today’s events going to flip opinion back? Or accentuate the decline?
Today’s big protests in New York and elsewhere around the country don’t look all that big. And they aren’t succeeding in doing much of anything. Well, several hundred people in Manhattan did succeed in getting arrested, so that’s something.
As one would suppose, Occupy Wall Street came nowhere near actually shutting down Wall Street. But they did inconvenience quite a few people, many if not most of whom have nothing to do with Wall Street.
In Los Angeles, protesters, many of whom are still camped out outside LA City Hall, and who have not indulged in the sort of vandalism and confrontations with police that we have seen with elements associated with Occupy Oakland — which in its consensus process refuses to coherently denounce such behavior due to tolerance of “diversity of tactics” — blocked some streets today in the downtown area and tied up some freeway traffic.
Aside from irritating people, it’s not clear what this is accomplishing.
Similar things have happened elsewhere.
If the Occupy movement is about people who don’t seem at all mainstream camping out and angrily protesting, it doesn’t work. To represent “the 99%,” you have to communicate to the 99%, or become just another sliver of the American scene.
** JERRY-RIGGING: GOOD OVERALL RESULTS IN NEW POLLING, TROUBLE ON HIGHER ED, AND THE BEAT GOES ON WITH THE GAY MARRIAGE FIGHT. Amidst all the chaos of the moment, which is an awfully long moment, Governor Jerry Brown is holding up well in the esteem of Californians.
A new Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll shows that Brown is still riding high with a 47% job approval rating. His disapproval rating is up to 38%, which means that folks who voted against him are deciding they were right to do so.
Brown defeated billionaire Meg Whitman’s highest-spending non-presidential campaign in American history last November in a 54-41 landslide.
Brown, who has adopted something of a stealth mode approach in public, as I may have mentioned on occasion, has consistently underperformed his vote. But this 47% job approval is at the high end of the range that PPIC has for him.
A new USC Dornsife/LA Times poll has similar results.
Where Brown is down is on higher education. Far fewer give him a good rating there.
Why? Well, let’s look at what PPIC found:
- About six in 10 Californians say the state’s higher education system is headed in the wrong direction.
- Three-fourths say there is not enough state funding for higher education.
- Most say college affordability and the potential of more cuts are big problems for higher education.
All true, as in all too true. But without the funds, Brown can’t fully fund higher education. That seems obvious enough.
Meanwhile, student protests are on the rise, and are apt to continue and get bigger.
In other action, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled this morning that the proponents of 2008′s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 have legal standing to take over its defense in court.
Then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Attorney General Jerry Brown refused to have the state defend the initiative from legal challenge, throwing its standing in limbo.
So the beat goes on with regard to the legal fight over same sex marriage in California. A federal court has ruled it unconstitutional, but the decision was stayed while appeals continue.
Prop 8 proponents have fared poorly in their other legal challenges, in trying to have the federal judge’s decision thrown out because he is gay and might want to get married himself at some point in the future, and in trying to keep contributions secret on grounds that donors might be harassed for their opposition to this aspect of gay and lesbian rights.
On a visit to Darwin, where some of the U.S. Marines bound for Australia will be based, President Barack Obama speaks to U.S. and Australian troops about a shared purpose of the preservation of peace and security.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Australia and Indonesia.
Australia is a very large country, a continent of its own, with four time zones. The time in Canberra, Australia, the nation’s capital, is 19 hours ahead of Pacific time.
The time in Darwin, Australia, where the US is about to have a joint military base with the Australians, is 17 hours ahead of Pacific time.
The time in Bali, Indonesia, where Obama is the first president to take part in the East Asia Summit, is 16 hours ahead of Pacific time.
President Barack Obama addressed the Australian Parliament on Thursday (Australian time) and vowed to expand U.S. influence in the Asia Pacific region even as he reduces defense spending and winds down two wars.
Following his address to the Australian Parliament, which definitely reverberated in Beijing, Obama flew to Darwin, Australia, site of the new joint basing arrangement between US and Australian forces.
Darwin is capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, and Obama is the first US president to visit the province. It’s vast, some 520,000 square miles, but with only 230,000 people, just over half of whom live in the capital city Darwin, a lovely little city which boasts tropical beach weather and hosts bases for the Royal Australian Army, Navy, and Air Force. While Darwin is in the tropical zone, much of the NT, as it’s called, is in desert terrain, such as the province’s second largest city, Alice Spring, a city of perhaps 30,000.
Darwin’s mayor is an environmentalist in the new media business. The Northern Territory’s governor is a member of Australia’s Labor Party, as is Prime Minister Gillard, who pushed through Australia’s new carbon tax law on big greenhouse gas emitters.
Darwin itself is the starting point for the annual World Solar Challenge, a race between solar-powered cars that runs 1900 miles across Australia to Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
There, more background on what will become in this decade a major hub of US geopolitics. Darwin is near the Indian Ocean, key to global trade, and the South China Sea. Other US basing arrangements are much more in the North Pacific, centering on Japan.
Following his arrival in Darwin, Obama then joined in a wreath laying ceremony with Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the USS Peary Memorial in the Port of Darwin.
The Peary is an American destroyer which was sunk in a Japanese attack during the early days of the Pacific War of the 1940s.
Obama and Prime Minister Gillard then delivered remarks to Australian troops and U.S. Marines at the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base in Darwin.
Following that, Obama left Darwin on Air Force One for Bali, Indonesia, where he arrived at 2:45 AM Pacific.
At 5:10 PM Pacific, Obama participates in an event to announce a commercial deal with representatives of Boeing and Lion Air at the Grand Hyatt in Bali.
At 5:30 PM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India at the Grand Hyatt in Bali.
At 7 PM Pacific, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines at the Grand Hyatt in Bali.
“In the Asia Pacific of the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.” So said Obama in his address to the Australian Parliament as he unveiled an upgraded security alliance with Australia as part of America’s post-Iraq moves to counter a rising and more aggressive China. “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with allies and friends,” he declared.
As Obama makes his way around the Asia Pacific region, so too does another high-ranking member of his administration, also carrying the message that the US is reasserting itself in response to the rise of China, whose growing assertiveness worries many nations.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario marked the 60th anniversary of the two countries’ defense treaty with the signing of “the Manila Declaration” yesterday aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald in Manila Bay.
The US again agreed to strongly assist the Philippines in its defense. There have been several near-clashes between Philippine and Chinese forces in the South China Sea, where China is asserting very expansive prerogatives.
The two sides also committed to continue their cooperation “in addressing regional and global challenges, including maritime security and threats to security such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and transnational crime. We are committed to continuing our close and effective cooperation to counter al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups in the southern Philippines.”
Obama’s moves are getting a big reaction in Beijing, as anticipated.
President Barack Obama, shown here addressing the Australian Parliament, has now moved on to the East Asia summit in Bali, Indonesia. That will be the final leg of what has been a marathon trip around the Asia Pacific, a region he says he wants America to focus on like never before.
National newspapers in China have launched furious attacks on US President Barack Obama’s announcement of closer military links with Australia.
Coverage can be found on newspapers ranging from the People’s Daily to the Global Times, with China Daily illustrating the story with a picture of Mr Obama kissing the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard as he arrives in Canberra.
The Chinese edition of Global Times described reactions from the Chinese and US authorities as “bickering”; a commentary piece in the overseas edition of People’s Daily appeals for calm.
In a separate Chinese editorial, Global Times appeals for China to “ignore” the Philippines diplomatically as a punishment for Manila’s attempt to seek US support on the South China Sea dispute.
“Let the Philippines pay the real price,” says the editorial, but it does not elaborate on how to carry out this policy.
Obama got some good news on the economy this morning, to the extent that he is perceiving a morning with his time zone sense completely disrupted by his trip to the land down under.
Unemployment claims dipped to a seven-month low.
The Congressional “super-committee” on the budget is nowhere near an agreement with its deadline less than a week away. I don’t say much about the super-committee because, to me, it looked doomed to failure from the beginning.
A new Fox News poll confirms former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s rise to the top of the heap in the Republican presidential race. It’s Gingrich 23%, Mitt Romney with a familiar 22%, Herman Cain 15%, Ron Paul 8%, Rick Perry 7%, Michelle Bachman 6%, Jon Huntsman 3%, and Rick Santorum 2%.
Occupy Wall Street’s call for a day of action, on the two-month mark of its existence as a movement, in New York to disrupt the financial industry appears to be falling rather flat. The crowds don’t look that large, perhaps in the low thousands, and police have easily kept protesters away from the famed stock exchange.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
An estimated 17 tons of marijuana were seized when authorities discovered a major cross-border drug tunnel between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has announced no scheduled public events as of this morning.
But I expect him to attend tonight’s screening of California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown. It’s a documentary about his late father, former Governor Pat Brown, and Jerry did several interviews for it with his nieces, film director Sascha Rice and executive producer Hilary Armstrong.
They will be on hand, along with their mother, former state Treasurer and 1994 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Kathleen Brown.
The event is at 7 PM at the San Francisco Film Society.
Brown, like the rest of us, awaits a decision today from the California Supreme Court on Proposition 8. Specifically, whether its proponents have standing to defend it in court.
As attorney general, Brown joined with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in removing the state from defending the anti-gay marriage initiative adopted in November 2008.
In a striking development, one of the biggest drug smuggling tunnels yet discovered has just been found on the Mexican border near San Diego. It’s a reminder of how large and powerful the drug cartels have become in Mexico.
The second Mexican interior minister in three years was killed over the weekend in an air crash outside Mexico City while on his way to meet with anti-drug police and prosecutors in a neighboring province.
Yesterday’s protests by college students and Occupy demonstrators are still reverberating, with many arrested after seizing a Bank of America branch in San Francisco’s financial district.
Meanwhile, the nascent Occupy Cal encampment in Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza was raided in the middle of last night and taken down, with little incident and only two arrests.
Today, incidentally, is the eighth anniversary of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spectacular inauguration as governor of California.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left. … From my November 16th essay.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured. … From my November 12th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $66 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down $14 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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 addressed the Australian Parliament on Thursday (Australian time) and vowed to expand U.S. influence in the Asia Pacific region even as he reduces defense spending and winds down two wars.
** QUICK HITS.“In the Asia Pacific of the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.” So said President Barack Obama in his address to the Australian Parliament as he unveiled an upgraded security alliance with Australia as part of America’s post-Iraq moves to counter a rising and more aggressive China. “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with allies and friends,” he declared. Obama is off to Darwin, Australia, where US forces will initiate joint basing arrangements. More to follow. … A new Fox News poll confirms former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s rise to the top of the heap in the Republican presidential race. It’s Gingrich 23%, Mitt Romney with a familiar 22%, Herman Cain 15%, Ron Paul 8%, Rick Perry 7%, Michelle Bachman 6%, Jon Huntsman 3%, and Rick Santorum 2%. … Their plans to attend the University of California Board of Regents meeting dashed by its cancellation, Occupy demonstrators and UC student protesters today took their activism to San Francisco’s financial district to target institutions linked to UC regents, taking over a Bank of America branch. …
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN: OBAMA GOES POST-IRAQ IN OZ, REPUBLICANS RACE TO THE PAST.
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 3:15 PM Pacific, President Barack Obama addresses the Australian Parliament in Canberra, Australia. This is a cornerstone speech on emerging political and security architectures in the Pacific Basin, a major post-Iraq move.
** 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.
** JERRY-RIGGING: TIMBER! One good reason why Governor Jerry Brown hasn’t been his usual effervescent self I’ve known over the decades is that he has inherited a big chronic budget crisis and a thoroughly dysfunctional political culture, all of it in the midst of an historic global economic crisis.
And it really is global, folks. These aren’t the olden days of sailing ships and pony express riders. What happens in Samarkand, somewhat figuratively speaking, does matter in Sacramento; too many folks just don’t know it.
Today’s assessment of the state’s fiscal situation by the California Legislative Analyst Office isn’t any real surprise, but it is sobering.
Rather than rewrite it in paraphrase form, the usual journalistic maneuver, I’ll show you the official summary statement:
We forecast that General Fund revenues and transfers in 2011-12 will be $3.7 billion below the level assumed in the June budget package. Such a shortfall could result in $2 billion of “trigger cuts” to various programs—including all of the “Tier 1” trigger cuts and three-fourths of the “Tier 2” cuts. (The Director of Finance will determine the actual amount of such cuts next month.) In 2011-12, we project that the state will have a $3 billion deficit, including the effects of these trigger cuts. In 2012-13, the state will face higher costs due to expiration of a number of temporary budget measures, an increase in Proposition 98 school costs under current law, the repayment of its Proposition 1A property tax loan, and other factors. We project a $10 billion operating shortfall (the difference between annual revenues and expenditures) in 2012-13. The $3 billion “carry-in” deficit from 2011-12 and the projected $10 billion operating shortfall mean that the Legislature and the Governor will need to address a $13 billion budget problem between now and the time that the state adopts a 2012-13 budget plan.
What does it mean? That trigger cuts are on the way, as I’ve been saying from the beginning, as the, er, optimistic revenue scenario which allowed prompt passage of the state budget in late June after Brown vetoed its meaningless version the first time are simply not materializing. And that revenues have not recovered at all, in spite of some signs of economic recovery.
Good thing that Brown didn’t follow majority Democrats in the state Assembly who wanted to rescind this year’s early cuts because things were supposedly getting so much better. As I wrote about in “Jerry Brown’s New Problem” on June 3rd. Republicans, as I believe I mentioned once or twice, refused any revenue solutions, including extending existing taxes and closing corporate loopholes.
You can tell this is a big deal because statements were very prompt in the aftermath of the report, which you can view here.
Brown’s office was first with a statement, from press secretary Gil Duran: “California’s budget gap is the result of a decade of poor fiscal choices and a global recession. This year, we cut the problem in half. Next year, we’ll continue to make the tough choices necessary until the problem is solved.”
Then came this statement from Brown’s state budget director, Ana Matosantos: “The LAO report acknowledges the tough work that has been done to cut the state’s deficit in half, but that there is more tough work ahead. The budget the Governor signed recognized that economic uncertainty could force the trigger cuts to take effect. Some level of trigger cuts will likely occur, but the exact amount will be known in December.”
Finally, state Controller John Chiang, who has been properly issuing warnings since well before the budget was passed, weighed in: “Today’s news is no surprise. Our economy’s sluggish growth means a tax windfall is unlikely, and not a penny of the estimated $4 billion has been collected to date. The Governor and lawmakers were smart to backstop their hopeful budget projections with mid-year cuts, but they may not have gone far enough. Today’s report tracks with the troublesome pattern we have seen in the State’s receipts and spending, which could mean a cash-flow problem in California’s near future.”
What’s in the hopper for mid-year cuts? Well, we’ve gone over it before. Another $100 million each for the University of California and California State University systems, along with deep cuts in in-home care and developmental disability programs as well as child care and library programs.
And some very big cuts in K-12 education, quite possibly shortening the school year, and in community colleges.
And you think students are upset now?
Speaking of which, the California State University board of trustees meeting was disrupted today, with broken glass, four people arrested, one police officer to the hospital, and the board finishing up its work in private. They passed another fee hike on students, a whopping 9%.
Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich in an archived interview with Ali G. Not for the easily offended.
** NEW POLL: NEWT GINGRICH NOW TOPS REPUBLICAN FIELD IN POSITIVE INTENSITY. Well, his many twists and turns, not to mention his prickly persona, may well trip him up, but former House Speaker Newt Gignrich is not only at or near the top of every Republican presidential poll, he’s also at the top of the heap in intensity of support.
A new Gallup Poll survey now has Gingrich tied with Herman Cain, who has been for months head and shoulders above the rest of the field in this measure.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who was at 25 in this score — which measures the difference between those who have strongly favorable views and strongly negative views of a candidate — in September, now finds his score at 0.
That is 0 as in “zero.”
Only Jon Huntsman, with -3, has a lower positive intensity score in the Republican field.
Herman Cain’s Positive Intensity Score is 17, down from 29 immediately before news broke in late October about past sexual harassment allegations against him. Newt Gingrich, who has made a dramatic turnaround since the summer, saw his score improve further this week, and he now ties Cain for the highest score among the eight major GOP presidential candidates. …
The current ratings are based on Nov. 1-13 Gallup polling, covering a fairly newsworthy time in the GOP campaign. Cain continued to be dogged by allegations that he sexually harassed women while he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s. Also, the eight major candidates met for two debates, the first of which will be remembered for Rick Perry’s memory lapse while he was trying to list the names of federal cabinet departments he would shut down if elected.
Perry’s Positive Intensity Score, which had been in the low single digits in recent weeks, fell further to a new low of 0, meaning as many Republicans familiar with him have a strongly unfavorable opinion of him as a strongly favorable one. That compares with his score of 25 in late August/early September. …
By this point in the campaign, most of the candidates are fairly well-known, with at least 8 in 10 Republicans familiar with each except Santorum and Huntsman. That higher degree of familiarity may explain why most Republican candidates’ Positive Intensity Scores are at their low points for the campaign, with many candidates seeing declines in their scores this year as they became more widely known.
In addition to Perry, Jon Huntsman (-3), Michele Bachmann (1), Rick Santorum (5), and Mitt Romney (10) all tied or set new low scores this week. Ron Paul, currently at 4, is just two points above his low mark, and Cain is just three points above his low score of 14. …
President Barack Obama has announced a new security agreement with Australia that will strengthen military ties, updating a 60-year old security alliance with the country, heralding a permanent US military presence in Australia, with joint basing to be in what’s now the little known city of Darwin.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … DARWINIAN.
** ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.Monday’s Philadelphia funeral for former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier brought some old but still very salient issues back to the fore. Frazier’s sudden death from liver cancer has reminded many of some uncomfortable truths.
One of the great figures of the “Golden Age” of boxing in the ’60s and ’70s, Frazier ended up very much slighted and neglected, unfairly so, chewed up and spit out by a celebrity culture that opts for popular myths. And he was whipsawed by ruthless racial politics, from right and left.
As I wrote last week here on the Huffington Post, I met Joe Frazier years ago in Vegas. He was very lively, a joshing sort who was quick to utter what turned out to be his latter-day catchphrase, “Joe Frazier, sharp as a razor.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but of course was his way of comparing himself to his nemesis, Muhammad Ali, so far removed now from his once dazzling persona.
Ali was the most famous athlete of the 20th century, an icon of social change, in his and Frazier’s heyday the most famous person on the planet. He rejected his “slave name,” embraced Islam, refused induction into the military, opposed the Vietnam War, promoted black power but ultimately reached out to whites.
He also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, even some who would have otherwise have been admiring, as recounted in last season’s key episode, The Suitcase, of that great meditation on a slice of the ’60s, Mad Men. There’s an archive of my writings on that here.
A rifle bullet reportedly hit the White House last Friday. President Barack Obama had already embarked on his Pacific Basin tour.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Australia.
Australia is a very large country, a continent of its own, with four time zones. The time in Canberra, Australia, the nation’s capital, is 19 hours ahead of Pacific time.
The time in Darwin, Australia, where Obama goes this evening and where the US is about to have a joint military base with the Australians, is 17 hours ahead of Pacific time.
Obama participated in an official arrival ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia.
He then took part in a bilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard at Parliament House in Canberra.
Following that, he attended a dinner with the Australian Parliament at Parliament House in Canberra.
Then he went to sleep.
At 11:05 AM Pacific, Obama holds a joint news conference with Prime Minister Gillard at Parliament House in Canberra.
At 2:05 PM Pacific, Obama participates in a wreath laying ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
At 2:45 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott at Parliament House.
At 3:15 PM Pacific, Obama addresses the Australian Parliament at Parliament House in Canberra.
This will be Obama’s major address of the trip, marking the first big post-Iraq move on security and political arrangements.
The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
At 4:25 PM Pacific, Obama visits a local school with Prime Minister Gillard in Canberra.
At 5 PM Pacific, Obama holds a U.S. Embassy meet and greet at the US Embassy in Canberra.
At 5:15 PM Pacific, Obama participates in a tree dedication ceremony at the US Embassy in Canberra.
At 5:55 PM Pacific, Obama departs Canberra on Air Force One en route Darwin, Australia.
Obama is rolling out the major beginnings of a post-Iraq geopolitical posture for the US and a revamped political and security architecture in the Pacific Basin, in part to counter the rise of China, which has been making new aggressive moves over the past year in the South China Sea and some threatening moves, as always, towards Taiwan.
Obama at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii pushed a Trans Pacific Partnership on economic issues which China is encouraged to join. If it stops depressing the yuan, much more stringently protects intellectual property rights, and sharply cuts state subsidies to its corporations. Which of course would disrupt China’s strategy.
Darwin, Australia, as I’ve written a couple of times this week, will be a new hub for the US in the Pacific. A contingent of US Marines, starting out at first in company size but soon growing to brigade size, will share an Australian military base in what was a key strongpoint for both countries in the Pacific War of the 1940s.
I’ll have much more on this.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said today at his loya jirga meeting with 2000 elders supporting his regime that the US can have an ongoing military deployment in the future only if it stops all night raids.
The raids, which have not infrequently backfired in attempts to root out the Taliban, have become very unpopular with Afghans.
Closer to home, Occupy Wall Street is scrambling for a new base of operations after being evicted from Zuccotti Park. Movement organizers failed in their legal move to continue the encampment.
Romney is about to make his fourth visit of the year to the first-in-the-nation contest state.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
Tuesday saw a general strike and “teach-out” at UC Berkeley.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
The California Legislative Analyst Office will issue an assessment of the state’s fiscal situation today.
It won’t be good.
The state Department of Finance will issues its own assessment next month.
A few campus protests took place yesterday, with more on tap for today, which coincides with the California State University board of trustees meeting which will take up a proposal for an additional 9% fee hike to nearly $6,000 per term.
Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom announced late yesterday that he will vote no. He did not say how he would make up the difference.
The University of California Board of Regents, as previously reported, took the very unusual step of canceling its meeting, citing threats of very disruptive protests. It hasn’t been at all specific about those threats.
UC Berkeley yesterday saw a general strike which shut down many, though not all, classes. Estimates are that 5000 to 10,000 students rallied in Sproul Plaza in support of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland and against sharp cutbacks to and fee hikes in the university system.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured.
After two big wars in 10 years, the country is fractured and fatigued, the economy sputtering after a near depression, with few Americans having any real experience or familiarity with the military.
And the veterans we celebrate, more dutifully it seems to me than not, all too often come back fractured in mind and body, as my father did. … From my November 12th essay.
** RECALLING JOE FRAZIER: AN APPRECIATION, AND A NOTE OF HORROR.The surprise death of former world heavyweight champ Joe Frazier reminds of the man’s elemental greatness, and of the deep pitfalls of high-contact sport.
Frazier, who died unexpectedly of liver cancer on Monday, just two days after his illness was publicly revealed, was an ill-remembered legend. One of the most famous men on the planet in the ’60s and ’70s, he was one of the great figures of the so-called Golden Age of boxing, fighting epic battles with Muhammad Ali while faring much less well against George Foreman.
Today, boxing is a sport in decline, in no small measure because many of us can no longer enjoy it. But in Frazier’s heyday, which coincided with that of the iconic Ali, it captivated people around the globe. … From my November 10th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American docked today at the International Space Station. It is the first Russian manned mission in five months following an unmanned rocket failure a few months ago.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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 $101 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down $13 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Former pizza mogul Herman Cain, one of the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination, appeared utterly lost yesterday when he attempted to discuss the little-known issue of Libya.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ALI, FRAZIER, JACKSON, STALLONE: OF IMAGE, RACE, POLITICS, AND MYTH.
** QUICK HITS. After getting a temporary restraining order seemingly allowing them to continue camping in Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street suffered a legal defeat later in the day denying that. They can continue to protest, but not take over the park. … A few campus protests took place today, with more on tap for Wednesday, which coincides with the California State University board of trustees meeting which will take up a proposal for an additional 9% fee hike to nearly $6,000 per term. … Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom just announced that he will vote no. He did not say how he would make up the difference. … The University of California Board of Regents, as previously reported, took the very unusual step of canceling its meeting, citing threats of very disruptive protests. It hasn’t been at all specific about those threats.
** UNOCCUPIED. What next for Occupy Wall Street now that it’s not, well, occupying Wall Street?
To ask the question is to get at the fundamental problem. For Occupy Wall Street never occupied Wall Street. Nor was it going to in what we call the foreseeable future.
What it did, as I discussed in the “Ocupado” essay linked below, is create a new intellectual space.
The linkage to the physical space that was occupied was essentially symbolic.
But the Occupy movement, or at least that portion of it that spent its time in the camps, became too focused on the literal and not focused enough on the symbolic.
This phase of the movement became more about doggedly holding on in the rain than figuring out how to develop and communicate a message through the new intellectual space that was created in many minds and in the media flow.
And in some places, notably Occupy Oakland, a refusal to denounce more violent tactics swiftly turned a supportive city into an increasingly antagonistic one. The refusal, in some cases it’s an inability, to recognize fringe thinking as dangerous nonsense, an affliction on both the left and the right, led to some predictable results. And their opponents were only too happy to capitalize on these obvious errors.
Now, without the space they had occupied, they have the intellectual space in which to think about how to project beyond their own echo chamber.
** NEW SURVEY: CONSUMER INTENTIONS FOR CHRISTMAS PERK UP A BIT. There’s always that Christmas spirit.
Dismal though things look to most, a new Gallup Poll survey indicates that consumer spending for Christmas is looking at least a little bit up.
In fact, up to the highest level since 2007, which was before people realized that the US was into recession. And significantly higher than projected a month ago.
But it’s a fragile sort of thing.
Americans currently estimate they will spend an average of $764 on Christmas gifts this year — $50 more than the $714 they estimated at this time last year, and more than $100 above the depressed levels they forecast in November 2008 and 2009. …
The new estimate is based on a Gallup survey conducted Nov. 3-6, 2011. A month ago, Gallup found Americans saying they would spend an average of $712 on gifts this season.
Holiday Spending Intentions Relate to Retail Sales
The 7% increase in Americans’ 2011 November Christmas spending forecast compared with last year’s — from $714 to $764 — points to a modest increase in 2011 holiday retail sales, perhaps on the order of 3% to 4%.
The historical relationship between Gallup’s Christmas spending estimate and actual holiday retail sales (as calculated by the National Retail Federation) is not precise. Still, over the past decade, annual changes in Gallup’s November forecast have largely paralleled changes in holiday sales. …
Americans have marginally greater Christmas gift-buying intentions today than they did a month ago and a year ago, with the November 2011 figure pointing to a 3% to 4% increase in holiday retail sales over last year. The caveat accompanying this projection is that consumers’ psychology — as is evident in Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index — is extremely fragile, making their willingness to spend partially susceptible to unemployment reports, gyrations on Wall Street, and news about the government’s fiscal health. Economic confidence has improved slightly over the past few months, averaging -43 in the past week, versus -54 in late August. However, it remains much worse than a year ago, when it averaged -26.
In a raid undertaken in the middle of the night, New York police cleared the few hundred protesters staying in the Occupy Wall Street encampment in lower Manhattan.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Hawaii and en route to Australia.
The time in Hawaii is two hours earlier than Pacific time.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings.
At 10:30 AM Pacific, Obama departs Hickam Air Force Base, devastated nearly 70 years ago in the Pearl Harbor attack, in Honolulu, Hawaii on Air Force One en route Canberra, Australia.
Obama has a full agenda on the Australia portion of his trip, outlined here on Monday, including a major address laying out his approach to the Pacific Basin region. But the most intriguing part, to me, will come when he ventures to farflung Darwin, Australia at the northern edge of the sprawling country.
This city of 125,000 is about to loom very large on America’s geopolitical map. For Obama has decided to flow US military forces in such a way that the Australian base there will quickly become a de facto joint base with the United States.
All the better to project power on the periphery of the South China Sea, which China is very aggressive in claiming over its neighbors, and the Indian Ocean, with India about to become a much bigger part of the picture.
Discovered and founded in the 1830s by the crew of the legendary British explorer ship HMS Beagle, Darwin is named for, you guessed it, Charles Darwin, the father of the science of evolution. Darwin had been aboard Beagle for its previous voyage of discovery, and the young naturalist evidently made quite an impression on his shipmates.
Early in World War II, Darwin was the site of a major Japanese attack, the Australian equivalent of Pearl Harbor, though on February 19th, 1942 rather than December 7th, 1941. It was to become an important staging area for US forces during the Pacific War.
Now it is to become an important geopolitical focal point and staging area as US forces redeploy in the post-Iraq era.
As you have undoubtedly already heard, the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park was cleared last night by New York police. There were only a few hundred people camping there and there was apparently no violence on either side.
A new Iowa poll for Bloomberg by the same firm which does the Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register reveals a four-way tie in the first-in-the-nation Republican presidential contest.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that Occupy Wall Street protesters can demonstrate in Zuccotti Park but not camp there.
Intriguingly, only 41% of Romney’s supporters in Iowa were for him four years ago, highlighting a remarkable phenomenon; he simply doesn’t have much enthusiastic support for having been running for president non-stop for six or seven years.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Iraq is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve 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.
The shutdown of the Occupy Oakland encampment outside Oakland City Hall is going smoothly 24 hours on.
Meanwhile, the University of California Board of Regents canceled its meeting this week in San Francisco, citing fear of disruptive protests. Many students are upset about program cuts and fee hikes, and some are targeting regents with ties to the financial industry.
There are already-scheduled campus protests on tap today in much of the state. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
** VETERANS DAY IN A FRACTURED AMERICA.Credit Barack Obama with some brilliant Veterans Day moves. In addition to the customary Arlington solemnities, he presided over the opening of the college basketball season on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which conducted the funeral of Osama bin Laden.
Obama ESPN hoopster, check. Obama bagging Osama, check. Obama buds with the troops, check.
It’s all a very nice kick-off to Obama’s nine days of Asia Pacific summitry, a neat contrast to the reality show clownfest that is the Republican presidential race.
But the stagecraft obscures basic realities that plague the country, which this Veterans Day found ever more fractured.
After two big wars in 10 years, the country is fractured and fatigued, the economy sputtering after a near depression, with few Americans having any real experience or familiarity with the military.
And the veterans we celebrate, more dutifully it seems to me than not, all too often come back fractured in mind and body, as my father did. … From my November 12th essay.
** RECALLING JOE FRAZIER: AN APPRECIATION, AND A NOTE OF HORROR.The surprise death of former world heavyweight champ Joe Frazier reminds of the man’s elemental greatness, and of the deep pitfalls of high-contact sport.
Frazier, who died unexpectedly of liver cancer on Monday, just two days after his illness was publicly revealed, was an ill-remembered legend. One of the most famous men on the planet in the ’60s and ’70s, he was one of the great figures of the so-called Golden Age of boxing, fighting epic battles with Muhammad Ali while faring much less well against George Foreman.
Today, boxing is a sport in decline, in no small measure because many of us can no longer enjoy it. But in Frazier’s heyday, which coincided with that of the iconic Ali, it captivated people around the globe. … From my November 10th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening 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.
** 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.
** 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, and down $16 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
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