Hundreds of Occupy movement protesters were arrested late Saturday and early Sunday morning in Oakland, after attempting to take over the city’s vacant convention center and breaking into the YMCA and Oakland City Hall.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama delivered remarks last night at the 99th Annual Alfalfa Club Dinner at the Capitol Hilton. As legend has it, the club is so named because the alfalfa plant spreads its roots wide in order to get a drink.
The event, a gathering of various Beltway political and media insiders, was off the record but Obama was reportedly humorous, as is the custom at these affairs. I think Obama skipped the first one of his presidency, which was not appreciated by the denizens of the capital.
Mitt Romney continues to lead Newt Gingrich heading into Tuesday’s Florida primary.
Gingrich has made quite a few mistakes, and Romney has benefited from a coordinated counter-attack on the former House speaker from many elements of the political and media establishments, conservative and otherwise.
As was the case with Romney’s first TV ad of the campaign, built around a false attack on Obama, much of what Romney and company are doing is distorted.
Romney and Gingrich’s negatives with independents have skyrocketed in the course of the campaign, as each has struggled to define himself as a true conservative.
Meanwhile, there is heavy fighting in the suburbs of Damascus as Syrian regime forces battle insurgent Free Syrian Army forces.
Russia says it will not support a UN Security Council move on Monday to impose further sanctions on the Assad regime as the Arab League, having withdrawn its monitors following ongoing regime crackdowns on protesters, again denounced the regime’s behavior.
Iran, the Assad regime’s last ally in the Middle East, focused today not so much on the woes of its friend but on the ongoing stand-off with the US over its nuclear weapons program, demanding that the US release an Iranian semiconductor scientist apparently being held in a federal facility in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Dublin for violating US export laws.
It also sent mixed signals today over an earlier threat to swiftly stop oil sales to European nations in advance of the European Union embargo going into effect.
And outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, one of the principal targets of Arab Spring protests, arrived in New York on Saturday, ostensibly for medical treatment, the transition to a new government underway.
How long will he be in the US? Who knows?
Obama is monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, Iraq, Iran and Israel.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf 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.
He has no scheduled public events.
The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to flail in counter-productive ways, the latest evidence coming yesterday afternoon and late Saturday in Oakland.
Nearly 400 protesters were arrested during a wild sequence of events that began with a march outside Oakland City Hall to the closed Henry Kaiser Convention Center, where protest leaders directed that fences be torn down and the now vacant facility, established in 1914, be occupied as a new headquarters for Occupy Oakland.
Police blocked the move to take over the old convention center, prompting a fallback to Plan B of a building takeover, a march to the YMCA, where hundreds of protesters burst in on exercising members before being forced out of the building.
Later, Occupy Oakland protesters broke in to Oakland City Hall. While there, they vandalized the lobby and burned an American flag.
Protesters are threatening to shut down the Port of Oakland (which they have done very briefly on occasion) and Oakland International Airport. Which seems a brilliant way to alienate much of the 99% while doing very little to harm the 1%.
This is all quite stupid, reflective of a mindset that thought it clever to try to disrupt the annual Christmas Tree lighting in San Francisco’s Union Square.
As I mentioned in my “Ocupado” essay at the beginning of November, there is a large reserve force of fringe lefties in the Bay Area. Put that together with a major anarchist presence and a movement that essentially excuses such tactics on the cop-out rationale of “diversity of tactics” and you get dunderheaded thinking and bad results.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discusses the blueprint he put forward this week in the State of the Union Address, decries a Republican senator who vows to slow and delay all appointments unless Obama fires the new consumer finance protection chief, and calls for campaign finance and lobbying reforms.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 4:15 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at the 99th Annual Alfalfa Club Dinner at the Capitol Hilton.
This is a gathering of various Beltway insiders and elites. The speeches are supposed to be humorous.
Obama has no scheduled public events on Sunday at this point.
And his public schedule for the week ahead looks pretty light at this point. Though he will spend much of Monday with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
Which will not please Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who prosecuted a successful war against Georgia in 2008.
The battle to see which Republican will face Obama rages on in Florida, where a combination of Newt Gingrich mistakes and an all-out assault by Mitt Romney and a procession of political and media allies has given Romney an edge in the weekend before the Tuesday primary.
Both Romney and Gingrich have seen their negatives skyrocket in recent weeks, as each has taken ever more extreme positions to bolster their standing with the Republicans’ conservative primary voting base.
While US politics play out, the situation in Syria is rapidly deteriorating.
The UN Security Council is discussing moves now in New York, with Russia still standing by its longtime ally in the Assad regime.
But it’s not clear how much control Assad has left. After repeatedly dunking agreements with the Arab League, and then railing against increased sanctions, Assad is faced with a country that is near civil war.
The Arab League said today that it is suspending its monitoring mission in Syria because of “the critical deterioration of the situation”. The pan-Arab bloc also says it is holding talks with Russia – one of the main opponents of the Arab League peace plan – ahead of a United Nations meeting in New York on Monday. The main Syrian opposition group says it will go to the UN to appeal for protection from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
More pockets of the country have fallen to the so-called Free Syrian Army, and some full-scale fighting is underway in a variety of places, though it is hard to be sure precisely what is happening since the Assad regime banned international news media nearly a year ago.
Meanwhile, France, in the wake of an incident in which four of its troops were killed by an Afghan solider under their training, has ended all front-line military activities in Afghanistan and will pull out a year earlier than previously scheduled, at the end of 2013.
Obama is monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, Iraq, Iran and Israel.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf 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.
Brown and Democrats won a big victory yesterday when the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of using the Citizens Redistricting Commission’s state Senate maps for the 2012 elections, despite a referendum against the plan that may yet qualify for the November ballot.
The Republican Party and its right-wing allies have spent millions to try to block the redistricting reform, which is eliminating the effects of the incumbent protection act of a decade ago.
Their strategy, one of the few keys left to them, has failed.
Yesterday morning, Brown appeared on KGO and KCBS radio in the San Francisco Bay Area to discuss his budget and public pension reform plans.
In the course of that, he strongly defended the state’s high-speed rail program, which his administration is revamping in the wake of various managerial issues and controversies, saying that he will not allow California to slip into “third world” status and that it must continue to be a leader inside the US, despite the budget problems he is working on.
Brown noted that 14 other advanced industrial nations have high-speed rail, but it has been consistently blocked in the US in favor of old energy economy approaches.
** NEWTONIAN MOTION: WILL GINGRICH BLOW IT (AGAIN)? Most in the media and political worlds are now adjusting to the reality that Mitt Romney is not “inevitable.” But that doesn’t mean that Newt Gingrich can’t blow it. Again.
After all, as I pointed out last week here on the Huffington Post, before Gingrich’s landslide win in South Carolina, the supposedly politically dead ex-House speaker has blown golden opportunities to put Romney away before.
Romney is a hollow man, whose only consistent ideology is radical capitalism, as he showed when he denounced any criticism of his financialized capitalism as tantamount to socialism, and notions of his own success. He’s been an accident waiting to happen for a long time, notwithstanding endless hype to the contrary.
But Gingrich is a political Bibendum, a Michelin Man, someone who, too frequently, becomes puffed up like an alarmingly over-inflated tire at high speeds.
Now he’s racing with Romney in Florida, having suddenly overcome the ex-leveraged buyout artist’s huge lead there despite weeks of massive advertising on Romney’s behalf.
Gingrich doesn’t have to win Florida, since this contest comes with an asterisk. There’s been a lot of early voting there by people who were hearing only the Romney message. And there is the massive spending for Romney, some $15.4 million, to $6 million or so on Gingrich’s behalf. …
What should he do? … From my January 26th essay.
** NEWTONIAN MOTION: UNDERLYING THE DECIDEDLY UNDEAD. Back from the dead. Again. Newt Gingrich. Amazing, isn’t it?
What’s actually amazing is that Gingrich was “dead” in the first place.
The fact is that the ex-House speaker had the Republican race in his hands last month and then proceeded to blow it.
And Mitt Romney is one of the most hollow, and hyped, political figures to come down the track in some time. He’s a consultant culture dream candidate: Big money and heavily into “messaging.” However, messaging, i.e., constantly repeating crafted talking points, is often not the same as having a message, which is why what he says is so malleable and chameleon-like. It’s obvious that there is very little that interests Romney besides success.
It’s a combination of unforced Gingrich errors, erroneous media coverage, and Romney’s nature peeking out all too often from behind the slick facade that has led to these seemingly shocking twists and turns. … From my January 20th column.
** STATING THE STATE: JERRY BROWN GETS DISCIPLINED AND LAYS IT OUT. … From my January 19th feature.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.” … From my January 15th essay.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.? … From my January 10th column.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1. … From my January 7th essay.
** IOWA THEN AND NOW. … From my December 30th 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 on Friday at $99.56 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
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 about $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.
Read 
| Comments (28) |
Great weekend address by Barack, he is doing a great job of staying on message!!
Syria looks very complicated and scarey…
Good weekend address by President Obama on economy and reform.
Good bad news Al Jazeera news video on Syria crisis.
Quieter weekend, knock wood.
Cain endorses Gingrich! LOL
Large protest against Prime Minister Putin today in Moscow.
500,000 + early votes in Florida. Romney leading in polls amongst early voters by double digits. Fait accompli.
Good RT news video of the Oakland protests.
Occupy Dunce Corner are idiots for trashing Oakland. JB must be furious with them!!!
Pat you are always pushing Romney and saying Gingrich is dead for like a year now…
Pat Skipper says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:33 am
500,000 + early votes in Florida. Romney leading in polls amongst early voters by double digits. Fait accompli.
I call em like I see em. But, as Oscar Wilde said, “the truth is seldom simple and never pure.” Truth is, the media would prefer a horse race. Just don’t see it.
Capitol Boy says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Pat you are always pushing Romney and saying Gingrich is dead for like a year now…
Pat Skipper says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:33 am
500,000 + early votes in Florida. Romney leading in polls amongst early voters by double digits. Fait accompli.
Gingrich was never dead that whole time!!
lol
I would suggest that he had the same chance that Tim Tebow had vs. the Patriots. Slim and none.
President Assad forces pushed out the rebels from Damascus suburbs.
Syria crisis video today?
Oh, yes.
Perhaps, though there seems to be continued fighting.
>sergei says:
January 30, 2012 at 3:10 am (Edit)
President Assad forces pushed out the rebels from Damascus suburbs.
I don’t think I have enough space to go into how this metaphor does not work.
Though I will note the obvious, that the South Carolina primary looked a great deal like Denver vs. New England …
>Pat Skipper says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:30 pm (Edit)
I would suggest that he had the same chance that Tim Tebow had vs. the Patriots. Slim and none.
No kidding.
>Capitol Boy says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:45 pm (Edit)
Gingrich was never dead that whole time!!
lol
Not an unwise bet to make.
>Capitol Boy says:
January 29, 2012 at 12:31 pm (Edit)
Occupy Dunce Corner are idiots for trashing Oakland. JB must be furious with them!!!
Thank you, Pat.
>Pat Skipper says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:33 am (Edit)
500,000 + early votes in Florida. Romney leading in polls amongst early voters by double digits. Fait accompli.
Actually, it’s not insignificant, especially with Santorum doing a big fade.
>Brasky says:
January 28, 2012 at 6:53 pm (Edit)
Cain endorses Gingrich! LOL
Well, maybe not so much …
>Len says:
January 28, 2012 at 6:10 pm (Edit)
Quieter weekend, knock wood.
Very.
>Capitol Boy says:
January 28, 2012 at 1:24 pm (Edit)
Syria looks very complicated and scarey…
Incidentally, NWN passed 119,000 comments sometime in the past few weeks.
You could certainly see your skills in the work you write. The sector hopes for more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to say how they believe. At all times follow your heart.
Just when I gave up on buying Twitter Followers…..
[...]Along comes this awesome site with service as good as the site design, and it’s beautiful[...]……