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.
Meanwhile, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll indicates that most voters favor higher taxes to pay for public education.
More to follow on that.
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.
** RECALLING JOE FRAZIER: AN APPRECIATION, AND A NOTE OF HORROR. … From my November 10th essay.
** OCUPADO. … From my November 4th essay.
** HIGH-SPEED RAIL: JERRY BROWN’S BIG MOVE TO THE FUTURE. … From my November 2nd essay.
** “OUT OF CONTEXT”: HILLARY’S P.R. OFFENSIVE. … From my October 29th column.
** STEVE JOBS: HARDLY A PERFECT PERSON, PERHAPS A PERFECT ICON. … From my October 26th essay.
** SIGNS: JERRY BROWN AFTER A DISAPPOINTING LEGISLATIVE YEAR. … From my October 20th essay.
** AFGHAN WAR AT 10, 9/11 AT 10+: DID OSAMA BIN LADEN WIN AFTER ALL? … From my October 7th essay.
** FROM GOVERNATOR TO MOONBEAM. … From my January 3rd, 2011 feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM 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.
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| Comments (145) |
Good weekend address by President Obama on international trade.
Good news video on China’s new troubles in the Asia Pacific.
Good good news news video on the capture of Gaddafi’s famous son.
Barack is getting really good at staying on the economy message.
Jonas Blane says:
November 19, 2011 at 10:58 am
Good weekend address by President Obama on international trade.
Barack is out-flanking China and they are getting it…
Jonas Blane says:
November 19, 2011 at 11:00 am
Good news video on China’s new troubles in the Asia Pacific.
Seif Gaddafi’s trial could be really interesting, if he gets one.
Hahah!!
BB: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.
The Egypt revolution is losing.
Video of Egypt today?
They never really did win their revolution in Egypt…
Good bad news news video of Egypt.
For shame, the University of California. Words fail.
Your politicians fail again.
What new video today?
Super-committee failure, new violence in Tahrir Square, and the incident at UC Davis.
>Jonas Blane says:
November 18, 2011 at 1:19 pm (Edit)
If our physics are wrong, what is right?
Jack Aubrey says:
November 18, 2011 at 2:52 pm (Edit)
Star Wars?
Unsurprisingly enough.
>sergei says:
November 21, 2011 at 5:19 am (Edit)
Your politicians fail again.
Indeed.
>marcos leon says:
November 20, 2011 at 8:27 pm (Edit)
For shame, the University of California. Words fail.
The revolution is incomplete.
>Capitol Boy says:
November 20, 2011 at 11:10 am (Edit)
They never really did win their revolution in Egypt…
At the moment, yes.
>sergei says:
November 20, 2011 at 6:00 am (Edit)
The Egypt revolution is losing.
Especially so, given what he has in mind.
>Capitol Boy says:
November 19, 2011 at 12:26 pm (Edit)
Hahah!!
BB: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.
VERY interesting …
>Capitol Boy says:
November 19, 2011 at 12:23 pm (Edit)
Seif Gaddafi’s trial could be really interesting, if he gets one.
And not a moment too soon …
>Capitol Boy says:
November 19, 2011 at 12:17 pm (Edit)
Barack is getting really good at staying on the economy message.
Jonas Blane says:
November 19, 2011 at 10:58 am
Good weekend address by President Obama on international trade.
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