The Afghan Taliban officially announced that they will open a “foreign office” in Qatar to interact with international powers. Which may also be a way to avoid dealing with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
** QUICK HITS. As I wrote last week, the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses are a “chaotic jumble.” With nearly all precincts reporting, we have, essentially, a tie at the top, with Rick Santorum edging Mitt Romney by a handful of votes. Each has less than 25% of the vote. … Which means that, for all his machinations and massive spending, Romney failed to increase his share of the Iowa vote beyond what he got four years ago, or has shown in polls for months. … Ron Paul is close behind, with just over 21%, but has seen his high-water mark. He beat Romney four to one among independents taking part in the GOP contest, but this was his best shot. … Newt Gingrich is a respectable fourth, with 13.3%, his meltdown having been arrested. If he had campaigned there seriously, and fought back sooner against the deceptive attacks from Romney’s super PAC, he might have held on to his lead. … It’s curtains for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who trailed with 10% and 5% each. Unlike all the candidates other than Romney and Paul, Perry spent megabucks in Iowa but has little to show for it. He will “reassess” his candidacy back in Austin. … While these shenanigans played out, the US Navy announced that it will not be chased out of the Arabian Gulf by Iran. A top Iranian commander today warned the US not to return any aircraft carrier to the Gulf, where the 5th Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. … For some unadulterated good news, Mad Men has a return date. The new season will at last premiere on March 16th.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.
** NEW SURVEY: ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE IMPROVES AGAIN IN DECEMBER, AT HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE JUNE, BUT LESS THAN A YEAR EARLIER. A new Gallup Poll survey contained more moderately good news with heavy caveats on the economy.
Economic confidence continued to climb since it cratered in August with the bizarre spectacle of Washington nearly melting down over the federal debt ceiling. But that has proved to be a deeply scarring experience.
And big investors continue to stay largely on the sidelines, years after the financial sector was bailed out by the federal government, continuing the dampening effect on the economic recovery. Which also increases the dampening effect on economic confidence.
Americans’ economic confidence continued to improve in December with Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index reaching -38 as consumers expressed more optimism than at any time since June. However, consumers remain less confident than they were earlier in 2011 and in December of the prior two years. …
U.S. economic confidence plummeted in August as Washington battled over extension of the federal debt ceiling with Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index reaching -52. At that point, consumer confidence was at its worst since February 2009. Since then, the Index has improved steadily but has not recovered to earlier 2011 levels.
Weekly economic confidence improved throughout December, reaching -34 during the week ending Jan. 1, 2012. This is its best weekly level since the week ending July 10. Still, economic confidence remains worse than the -26 of that same week one year ago. …
This morning in Iowa, Mitt Romney hit President Barack Obama on the economy.
TUESDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
It’s I-Day in American politics. The strange reality show-turned-road picture that is the Republican presidential race faces its first big real test today in the Iowa caucuses, in a campaign that played out in bizarre and distracted fashion over the holidays, including the six college football bowl games played the day before the vote.
Polling, as I discussed here on NWN over the weekend, indicates major uncertainty and significant volatility, with the results in Saturday night’s Des Moines Register poll altering as the survey played out over four days.
Three candidates seem in position to finish first in Iowa: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. It all depends on how the dynamic of the race has played out in potential voters minds over the long New Year’s weekend, which of course is a factor in turnout.
With all the twists and turns in the race, Romney has been stalled forever in polls in Iowa and elsewhere with a fifth to a quarter of the vote. He never has bursts of enthusiasm, unlike true frontrunners in previous races, and never gains when a rival rises and then falls.
Romney is relying on secretly-funded unlimited spending by a so-called super PAC run by his 2008 presidential campaign aides to knock down opponents and leave him free from the blame. That’s what happened to Newt Gingrich’s big lead in Iowa. Which the news media has allowed to happen and his inept opponents have had little of any effect to say about it.
If Romney gets through the early contests relatively unscathed, his evident plan is win by attrition if not technical knockout, then pivot to face President Barack Obama as a champion of revitalizing the economy.
That he would do so as a champion of policies deeply associated with the great global recession, and as a very rich man who made his fortune in the corporate takeover game, is, shall we say, quite problematic.
But like his protege Meg Whitman, whose California gubernatorial campaign was Romney’s brainchild, as I reported and discussed at length in March 2010, he doesn’t seem to grasp these deeper dynamics. Or perhaps he thinks that with attitude, avoidance and big money, he can deny them.
That certainly didn’t work for Whitman, who outspent the then soon-to-be-once again Governor Jerry Brown by an amazing amount. Which will not be the case for any Republican running against Obama, even though it is likely we will see truly astounding “independent” spending from big corporations and very rich individuals in the general election campaign.
I’ll have a lot more on this, of course.
Meanwhile, Obama is back in Washington from his truncated holiday family vacation in home state Hawaii.
He has some big items on his plate this week.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is to unveil plans for cutting the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years.
The veteran California political figure, lately the director of the CIA, has become protective of DOD turf since taking over the Pentagon. But his charge in a budget marked by massive overages is to pare back the non-essential in a military establishment that dwarfs that of the rest of the world. And as the former federal budget director, he has a lot of knowledge of where the bodies are buried.
Obama also has the bubbling crisis in the Strait of Hormuz to contend with.
Faced with increased sanctions in retaliation for its continued nuclear weapons program, and with existing sanctions beginning to seriously bite, Iran keeps ratcheting up the threat factor.
Today Iran threatened the US Navy, warning that the USS John Stennis aircraft carrier group should not return to the Arabian Gulf, which Iran and many others still call the Persian Gulf. Stennis left the Gulf on December 27th.
Iran continued playing into the sense of crisis on Monday by going ahead with more missile tests, both long-range and medium-range.
Iran wrapped up its planned 10-day series of naval exercises in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important choke point for oil shipments, which Iran threatens to shut down if new sanctions continue to be imposed against its nuclear weapons program.
Tensions continue to rise in the Arabian Gulf after Iran once again tested long-range missiles and a top military commander warned the US to keep its aircraft carriers out of the region.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak added to the brinksmanship, saying that sanctions should be strengthened even further.
Israel’s longtime ally Egypt has its third and final round of parliamentary elections today. Islamist parties have won about 65% of the vote in the first two rounds of the voting with 40% or so going to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has moderated its image in recent years, and the rest of the Islamist vote going to the radical fundamentalist Salafists.
Despite its greater moderation, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership said late last week that it wants to revisit Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.
An angry mob sacked Israel’s embassy in Cairo late last year, driving all Israeli embassy personnel out of the country, with a handful who’d been trapped in the embassy saved only by the intervention of Obama. Israel has no plan to return its ambassador.
Back in California politics, Governor Jerry Brown keeps working on his state budget proposal, set for January 10th, and contemplating his State of the State address.
With the state legislature back in action, as it were, on Wednesday, Brown is also working on clearing the path for his revenue plans, which he needs to balance another round of major budget cuts. The legislature will undoubtedly monkey around with redevelopment agencies, which, as discussed here last week, were effectively eliminated in a state Supreme Court decision backing Brown’s play to redirect the revenues which have been flowing to frequently gold-plated development projects instead to basic services.
Brown raised $1.2 million for his proposed tax initiative for the November 2012 ballot in the last two weeks of December.
He also has millions left over from his 2010 landslide win over billionaire Meg Whitman’s biggest-spending non-presidential campaign in American history, but I believe he will want to keep that in his re-election kitty.
Am I saying that I think he intends to run for re-election?
What do you think?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Flying in on Air Force One from Honolulu, the Obama family arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at 4:45 AM Pacific.
They then traveled to the White House on Marine One.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden receive the daily intelligence and economic briefings and meet with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet for lunch in the Private Dining Room.
At 1:45 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
At 5:15 PM Pacific, Obama participates in a video teleconference with Iowa Caucus attendees from the Capital Hilton.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Times: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
Brown was inaugurated for his historic third term as governor one year ago today.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
** IOWA THEN AND NOW. The chaotic jumble of holding the Iowa presidential caucuses on January 3rd is now fully apparent. With rampant confusion about who will actually participate, and yoyo-ing swings in support — all playing out against a bizarre backdrop of the holidays, millions in disembodied attack ads, and Barack Obama pondering a US-Iran showdown in the Strait of Hormuz — the folly of the accelerated nomination calendar is clear.
It didn’t used to be this way.
When I was Senator Gary Hart’s political director for the first-in-the-nation contest, the Iowa presidential caucuses were held on February 20th, 1984. There was plenty of time for those who voted in the caucuses to consider the candidates and in a great many cases to actually meet them.
Unlike the situation this year, when most have campaigned from TV studios, barely deigning to sweep through Iowa behind carefully controlled facades, the candidates then spent ample time in the state, with voters able to get a measure of them.
Then there were campaign spending limits which were largely adhered to. I say “largely” because campaigns found ways to scrimp and save by renting cars across the state line, a minor dodge which seems quite quaint in today’s post-Citizens United decision milieu of anything goes spending.
And there were no shadowy “independent” campaign groups spending megabucks on TV ads which those in the know understand are actually very much part of the campaign, but fool most voters, such as the Mitt Romney super PAC “Restore Our Future”run by Romney’s aides from his first presidential campaign and funded by Romney backers at his old leveraged buyout firm Bain Capital.
Let’s just say things have not improved.
In January 1984, I was fortunate enough to be on hand for Steve Jobs’s first public unveiling of the Macintosh at Apple’s annual meeting in Silicon Valley, just four weeks before Iowa, as guest of Silicon Valley’s marketing/PR guru Regis McKenna, a big Hart backer with whom I later worked.
From there, I went to the airport and flew to Des Moines for the four-week stretch run of Hart’s Iowa campaign, coming on as political director, joining a state coordinator, Keith Glaser, who had moved over from a choice spot on the Senate staff when the Iowa campaign imploded a few months earlier to inherit what looked like a moribund booby prize. We were in fifth place. … From my December 30th essay.
** IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD CAST IN THE GOP’S RACE TO CASA BLANCA. The Republican presidential race was a reality TV show. But now that the primaries and caucuses are coming right up, it’s a road picture. Here’s how each candidate, a distinct type, is doing right now.
The Legend in His Own Mind
There aren’t many historical figures that the ostentatiously intellectual Dr. Newton Leroy Gingrich hasn’t compared himself with lately, and always quite favorably. He even declared himself the nominee.
But he should have paid a little more attention to sports than that National Merit Scholarship, especially in a process that doesn’t value intellectual capability all that highly. Because there really aren’t many games that are over before half-time. … From my December 24th essay.
** KEYSTONE PIPELINE: SMALL PART OF A VERY BIG PICTURE. … From my December 21st essay.
** NEWTONIAN MOTION: THE BIG TALK CAMPAIGN. … From my December 17th column.
** JERRY BROWN PULLS A TRIGGER, INVOKES ROME, AND FOCUSES ON CLIMATE AND INITIATIVES. … From my December 14th feature.
** TOP DOG IN THE BIG DES MOINES DOGPILE? IT’S NEWT! … From my December 11th column.
** NEWTONIAN MOTION: ACTION BEGETS FLAWED REACTION. … From my December 10th column.
** NEWTONIAN MOTION: IN IOWA, A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN FOUR WEEKS. … From my December 6th column.
** JERRY BROWN AND THE 2012 INITIATIVE WARS. … From my December 3rd feature.
** FROM GOVERNATOR TO MOONBEAM. … From my January 3rd, 2011 feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
The top movie of the holiday season? That’s easy. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the fourth film in what many had thought was a tired out franchise, starring an actor who turns out, notwithstanding much commentary to the contrary, to still be one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
** 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 $103 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $69 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 about $11 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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[...] Brown celebrated, if that’s the word, the first anniversary of the inauguration of the first third term California governor in 60 years, and only the second in history, this week. By doing, well, not so much. Not a word from the Governor’s Office, and no mention elsewhere of the date itself, aside from my New West Notes blog. [...]
[...] Brown celebrated, if that’s the word, the first anniversary of the inauguration of the first third term California governor in 60 years, and only the second in history, this week. By doing, well, not so much. Not a word from the Governor’s Office, and no mention elsewhere of the date itself, aside from my New West Notes blog. [...]
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