India, with which the US seeks a close alliance, is calling for an investigation after the US Navy opened fire Monday on a fishing boat in the Gulf. One Indian man was killed and three others wounded in the incident off the coast of the UAE. US Navy officials say the vessel ignored warnings, but that is being disputed.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … CRISES CHAOTIC AND BUBBLING: THE GULF AND THE SOUTH CHINA SEA and MITT WHITMAN = MEG ROMNEY.
** QUICK HITS. Governor Jerry Brown signs historic legislation authorizing the beginning of construction of California’s high-speed rail system at 10 AM Wednesday morning at LA’s Union Station and at 2 PM that afternoon at the future site of the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. … Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke said today that the US economy will slip back into recession if Congress does not take action.
** NEW SURVEY: A DIP FOR UNEMPLOYMENT? A new Gallup Poll survey indicates that unemployment has dipped slightly, just below 8% and nearly a point better than a year ago.
Underemployment shows a slight dip as well.
That’s better, but obviously not good enough.
Yet the direction is key in a presidential race, especially with President Barack Obama effectively positioning conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s economic background as that of a financial manipulator.
U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, was 7.9% in mid-July, down 0.1 percentage points from June and May. Gallup’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate also declined 0.1 points, to 7.7% in mid-July. …
On both an unadjusted and an adjusted basis, the mid-July unemployment readings, if sustained the rest of the month, would be the lowest monthly rates since Gallup began tracking unemployment daily in January 2010. Gallup’s adjusted unemployment rate incorporates the downward seasonal adjustment of 0.2 points the BLS applied in July 2011. Gallup’s unadjusted unemployment rate for July 2011 was 8.8% and the adjusted rate was 8.6% — both substantially higher than they are now. …
Campaigning this morning in San Antonio, Texas, President Barack Obama said GOP challenger Mitt Romney wanted to let the auto industry go broke, rather than provide a bailout.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … CRISES CHAOTIC AND BUBBLING: FROM THE GULF TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA and MITT WHITMAN = MEG ROMNEY.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Texas.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then went to Joint Base Andrews, where he boarded Air Force One and flew to San Antonio, Texas.
There he delivered remarks at a campaign event at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio.
Following that, he delivered remarks at a campaign event at a private residence in San Antonio.
At 12:50 PM Pacific, Obama departs San Antonio, Texas on Air Force One en route Austin, Texas.
At 1:25 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Austin.
At 2:50 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Austin Music Hall in Austin
At 4:55 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at a private residence in Austin.
At 6:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Austin, Texas on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 10:05 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 10:20 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
There was a bad incident on Monday in the Gulf that is looking worse today.
The USNS Rappahannock, a Navy refueling ship, was approached at high speed by a boat off the coast of Dubai. After giving warning, the ship’s security team, fearing a USS Cole-like attack, lit up the boat with .50 caliber machine gun fire, leaving one local dead and three wounded.
Today is appears that the locals were not hostiles. And that, as is often the case in the Gulf, the locals were fishermen from another country, in this case, India.
Which of course the US is courting heavily as part of its geopolitical pivot.
I’m not there, so I don’t know what happened, but this is the kind of incident that a high-tension situation can give rise to.
Meanwhile, China has retrieved its Navy frigate, which embarrassingly ran aground of the coast of the Philippines on a shoal of the Spratly Islands.
But it is doubling down on its claims to virtually the entirety of the South China Sea.
First, it dispatched a fishing fleet to the Spratlys.
Then today it created a “city” government for hundreds of islands within the the South China Sea, encompassing all three of the large island chains, all of which are closer to other nations than to China.
The South China Sea crisis is bubbling up.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, AfPak, and the South China Sea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time. The time in Manila, on the South China Sea, is fifteen 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 will sign the legislation authorizing the start of construction of California’s high-speed rail system at Wednesday events in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
** 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $89 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $53 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 $27 per barrel 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.
The dispatch of small drone submarines to deal with a threatened Iranian blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to global oil supply, is part of a US naval build-up in the Gulf.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … MITT WHITMAN = MEG ROMNEY and CRISES CHAOTIC AND SIMMERING: FROM THE GULF TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA.
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Virginia.
For Saturday, Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then went to Joint Base Andrews, where he boarded Air Force One and flew to Richmond, Virginia.
At 10 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Walkerton Tavern & Gardens in Glen Allen, Virginia.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama departs Richmond, Virginia on Air Force en route Sterling, Virginia.
At 12:25 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Sterling, Virginia, landing at Dulles International Airport.
At 1:15 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Centreville High School in Clifton, Virginia.
At 2:40 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
For Sunday, Obama has no scheduled public events.
Conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tried a full-court press Friday night with five TV news interviews to push-back on the Obama campaign’s charge that he misled people about his relationship with Bain Capital.
Romney’s problem? Plenty of documents for the three years after he says he left Bain with him as the company’s CEO and action officer on deals.
Did it work for Romney? That would be, no.
Obama is in pretty good shape in this race.
Better shape than the state of peace in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, where Iran talks tough as sanctions bite and talks flounder. Or perhaps even the South China Sea. A Chinese Navy frigate ran aground Thursday on a shoal off an island near the Philippines that the PRC claims as its own.
China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, through which one-third of the world’s shipping passes, to the dismay of its neighbors. (China’s ally Cambodia, hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit attended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, blocked the summit’s closing communique — first time in 45 years that has happened — because it called for multilateral talks on the South China Sea.) There are also vast oil, natural gas, and mineral deposits beneath the South China Sea, though how vast is a matter of some dispute. And seafood, a staple of regional diets, is ample in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, the Chinese frigate is still stuck there. Wouldn’t want to be the skipper of that ship when he gets back to China.
What will the US do now that China has spurned requests that it negotiate with its neighbors as a group, rather than individually?
It looks like the US is back in the Asia Pacific business, in a big way, as I’ve been writing right along.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like. It has lots of farflung campaign travel, with plenty of flexibility built in for crisis management and response to events.
On Monday, Obama will travel to Cincinnati, Ohio for a campaign event.
On Tuesday, Obama will travel to San Antonio and Austin, Texas for campaign events.
On Wednesday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama urges Congress to pass the middle-class tax cut extension.
On Thursday, Obama will travel to Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, Florida for campaign events. He will remain overnight in Manalapan, Florida.
On Friday, Obama will travel to Fort Myers and Orlando, Florida for campaign events. He will return to the White House in the evening.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, AfPak, and the South China Sea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time. The time in Manila, on the South China Sea, is fifteen 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.
** 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 Dark Knight Rises, end to the Christopher Nolan trilogy of Batman films and sequel to The Dark Knight, one of the most popular films of all time, launches on July 20th. This 13-minute documentary discusses the finale. You’ll notice how prevalent the British influence is.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $87.10 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $53 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 $27 per barrel 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 regional summit in Asia, attended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has ended in serious discord. Several countries have competing claims over parts of the South China Sea. But it is the Philippines and China who are in a tense standoff over the Scarborough Shoal. The Philippines says that the area is within 200 nautical miles from its coast, and therefore part of its exclusive economic zone, under UN maritime laws. China, which has asserted claims over most of the South China Sea, says it has a historic claim to the territory.
** QUICK HITS. Conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tried a full-court press with five TV news interviews to push-back on the Obama campaign’s charge that he misled people about his relationship with Bain Capital. Romney’s problem? Plenty of documents for the three years after he says he left Bain with him as the company’s CEO and action officer on deals. … Obama is in pretty good shape in this race. … Better shape than the state of peace in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Or perhaps even the South China Sea. A Chinese Navy frigate ran aground Thursday on a shoal off an island near the Philippines that the PRC claims as its own. (China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, through which one-third of the world’s shipping passes, to the dismay of its neighbors.) The ship is still stuck there. … What will the US do now that China has spurned requests that it negotiate with its neighbors as a group, rather than individually? … It looks like the US is back in the Asia Pacific business, in a big way.
** WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN: UNCERTAINTY AS HILLARY PUSHES THE BIG GEOPOLITICAL PIVOT.There has been a recurrent buzz about the Clintons, or at least some of their notable minions, being not all that keen on Barack Obama’s re-election. Bill Clinton himself added to it greatly when he lauded Mitt Romney as a great businessman and defended Bain Capital, Romney’s leveraged buyout and private equity shop. Early this week, their longtime fundraiser, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign chair Terry McAuliffe, kicked up some concern when he made some comments on a cable chat show with Haley Barbour lauding the low regulation/low-tax style of Mississippi, and by extension Romneynomics, as a good thing.
I don’t buy it. I think Hillary Clinton is by far best served by an Obama re-elect. Otherwise, her legacy is at best an incomplete, as her and Obama’s plans are in mid-course. And Bill’s foundation wouldn’t be helped by a Romney presidency. Especially if President Romney, an infelicitous and unlikely phrase to be sure, is looking at a Hillary candidacy in 2016.
So how to explain this week’s McAuliffe comments, and the Bill Clinton comments before? (Keeping in mind that the former president has campaigned with Obama.) It feels to me like the result of a lot of proximity to very big money on their parts.
After all, Clinton has switched from his ostentatiously populist Timex of his presidential days to collecting ultra-luxe watches that cost more than most BMWs. (Let’s credit Joe Biden for not pretending with a Timex and keeping it real with an Omega Seamaster, a luxury watch that costs less than a used Vespa.) Clinton has dabbled in and made a fortune from the private equity investing game. He hangs with billionaires. The attitudes rub off.
McAuliffe, well, he’s a career fundraiser. Moving on.
Meanwhile, Hillary, who has said repeatedly she will step down as secretary of state after Obama’s first term, a long tenure at Foggy Bottom, is on her own Pacific pivot tour, following Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s Pacific pivot tour of late May and early June.
This is part of the Pacific pivot I’ve been following closely with several pieces here on the Huffington Post, as the U.S. slowly shifts from over-engagement with the Islamic world of the Middle East and Central Asia to enhanced engagement with the vast Asia Pacific region, marking the rise of China. (The move was officially called the “Pacific pivot” until Europeanists objected, so it’s now dubbed the “rebalancing.”)
It’s a big geopolitical pivot which, one way or another, is inevitable. Because we can’t keep on in the Islamic world as we have with the misadventures of the Iraq and Afghan Wars and the geopolitical and economic weight of the world is shifting toward Asia. Though so long as we’re addicted to oil we will be engaged with the Islamic world, where we’ve been for the past decade is out of all proportion. Had we not invaded Iraq, I think we would already have executed the pivot to the Pacific.
Of course, pivoting away from our fateful engagements in the Islamic world is at least as tricky as pivoting to the Asia Pacific. The Clintons’ potential political interests come into play in both halves of that.
If Hillary Clinton is to have the option of running for president in 2016, she needs a strong legacy as secretary of state, by far the most important post she’s ever held. She can’t run on her time as first lady, in which she presided over the disaster of national health care, which resulted briefly in a Republican House (just as the victory of national health care did), or on her time as a Senator from New York, most of which was devoted to running for president.
What she and Obama have done with American geopolitics is very much in flux. And while a President Romney would also end up pivoting to the Asia Pacific region — he says, for example, he doesn’t want to withdraw from Afghanistan, but with the endless embarrassments there, and allies heading to the exits, we may not have much choice about that — he wouldn’t follow the Obama/Clinton script.
Hillary Clinton has an investment in her policies with Obama being seen as successful.
And most of that is in flux.
The pivot to the Pacific, for example, is just underway now. And the pivot away from over-engagement with the Islamic world of the Middle East and Central Asia is very tricky.
In the Asia Pacific region, we have an imperial overhang to live down, dating much farther back than the Vietnam fiasco, though few Americans know the history. Much of it, perhaps fittingly, is wrapped up with the last two presidents to come from New York, the cousins Roosevelt. …
** NEW POLL: CONGRESS STILL AT HISTORICALLY LOW LEVEL OF APPROVAL. A new Gallup Poll holds no good news for those who hoped that a new conservative Congress would meet with popular approval.
Actually, no Congress has ever rated lower in the history of the Gallup Poll.
Even Republicans don’t like this Congress. But it’s not clear that most Republicans like anything having to do with government, even what they control.
Until just over seven years ago, approval of Congress normally ranged around two-and-a-half times higher.
Americans’ view of the job Congress is doing is holding at roughly the same level Gallup has found since April, with 16% approving and 78% disapproving. This is slightly improved from the record low of 10% seen in February and similar to the ratings in mid-2011, but below where it stood at the start of that year. …
Congressional approval by party is also largely unchanged, with Democrats (18%) slightly more likely to approve than Republicans (14%) and independents (13%), as was the case in June. For most of the past year, however, Republicans’ and Democrats’ approval of Congress has been similar, with independents’ approval tending to be slightly lower. …
With only four months remaining until the November elections, it bears repeating that Congress approval remains on the extreme low end of the historical range Gallup has recorded since 1974.
From 1974 through 2004, Congress’ job approval averaged just over 40%, with most of the readings falling within 10 percentage points of that average, and only two readings below 20% — one in 1979 and the other in 1992. Then, in February 2005, approval fell below 40% and has not since returned to that level in any of Gallup’s monthly readings. …
Campaigning today in swing state Virginia, where he has the lead, President Barack Obama called on Republicans to extend tax cuts for all Americans earning up to $250,000 a year. The Republican position is that the wealthy should get the Bush/Cheney tax cuts continued for all their income.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN: UNCERTAINTY AS HILLARY PUSHES THE BIG GEOPOLITICAL PIVOT.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Virginia today.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then flew on Air Force One to Virginia Beach, where he made campaign remarks at the airport.
Following that, he continued on to Norfolk, Virginia, where he made campaign remarks at Green Run High School.
Then Obama went on to Hampton, Virginia, where he delivered campaign remarks at Phoebus High School
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Obama flies from Hampton to Roanoke, Virginia.
At 3:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Roanoke.
At 4:25 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Roanoke Fire Station #1.
At 5:50 PM Pacific, Obama departs Roanoke, Virginia on Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews.
At 6:40 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 6:55 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
The Drudge Report is insisting that Stanford Professor and former Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Condi Rice is the frontrunner to be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate. That’s not going to happen.
Rice, who ended as a confidante of the Bushes, was on the advisory board of Senator Gary Hart’s Center for A New Democracy in the ’80s. I was in the meeting of three people when she agreed to serve.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, AfPak, and the South China Sea.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time. The time in Manila, on the South China Sea, is fifteen 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 conservative Republican interests that spent millions via the state party to try to block California’s new citizen-drawn state Senate districts via referendum formally threw in the towel yesterday, admitting they will not campaign for their referendum on the November ballot.
The California Supreme Court previously blocked their implicit move to have the Senate districts thrown out for this election, and declared the districts constitutional.
Why go to all that trouble in the first place?
Because the right fears that the un-gerrymandered districts will give Democrats a two-thirds majority.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger got a rousing reception yesterday at the annual Comic Con pop culture convention at the San Diego Convention Center. Introduced by co-star Sylvester Stallone after receiving the IGN Action Hall of Fame award, Schwarzenegger was greeted by a crowd of 6000 as he and other performers in The Expendables 2 promoted the movie. Incidentally, that venue is where Schwarzenegger began his statewide bus tour during his first campaign for governor in 2003.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was featured yesterday at the annual Comic Con pop culture convention at the San Diego Convention Center.
He was be there with Sylvester Stallone and other stars of The Expendables 2, which opens on August 17th.
Schwarzenegger got a strong reaction from the crowd of 6000 in the convention center’s Hall H.
His duties as governor of California left him with a brief though memorable cameo on The Expendables, a 2010 action movie hit. He played a mercenary leader rival, one Trench Mauser (last name same as the famous German gun manufacturer) to Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross character.
This time he has a bigger role, as does Bruce Willis, who played the shadowy CIA officer Mr. Church who set the main events in motion in the first film in his and Schwarzenegger’s scene with Stallone.
Yesterday brought word that there is likely to be a third film in the series.
This is the first of three movies that Schwarzenegger has shot so far to make it to the screen.
The Last Stand will bow next January, with The Tomb set for later in 2013.
More to follow, of course.
** A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD ON A HISTORIC (AND BUMPY) TRACK IN CALIFORNIA. … From my July 11th feature.
** DARK KNIGHTS, AVENGERS, BONDING RETRO ACTION HEROES: HOW LONG WILL THE SUPERHERO PHENOMENON LAST? … From my July 7th essay.
** FOUNDED IN ENLIGHTENMENT, AMERICA FACES IGNORANCE AND CONFUSION AS THE CHALLENGES GROW EVER MORE COMPLEX. … From my July 2nd essay.
** THE “MOMENTARY MEDIA” STRIKES: EPIC FAILS BY CNN AND FOX NEWS HIGHLIGHT DYSFUNCTIONALITY. … From my June 28th column.
** 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $87 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $53 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 $27 per barrel 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.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is getting some push-back after she warned the People’s Republic of China of “conflict” if it does not agree to a maritime code of conduct in the South China Sea. Clinton is following Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on a geopolitical pivot tour of the Asia Pacific region.
** QUICK HITS. The Drudge Report is insisting that Stanford Professor and former Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Condi Rice is the frontrunner to be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate. That’s not going to happen. Rice, who ended as a confidante of the Bushes, was on the advisory board of Senator Gary Hart’s Center for A New Democracy in the ’80s. I was in the meeting when she agreed to serve. … The conservative Republican interests that spent millions via the state party to try to block California’s new citizen-drawn state Senate districts via referendum formally threw in the towel today, admitting they will not campaign for their referendum on the November ballot. The California Supreme Court previously blocked their implicit move to have the Senate districts thrown out for this election, and declared the districts constitutional. Why go to all that trouble in the first place? Because the right fears that the un-gerrymandered districts will give Democrats a two-thirds majority.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN: UNCERTAINTY AS HILLARY PUSHES THE BIG GEOPOLITICAL PIVOT.
** NEW POLL: ROMNEY APPARENTLY HURT BY GREAT WEALTH. A new Gallup Poll survey indicates that conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s super-rich status may be a drag on his popular appeal.
Who would ever have imagined that?
20% say Romney’s great wealth makes it less likely that they will vote for him.
Only 4% say it makes it more likely that they will vote for him.
That last surprises me a bit, because I thought there were more idolators of wealth than that in America.
The bad news for Romney is not that it’s a problem with a lot of Democrats, that’s a given. The bad news is that it is a problem with a lot of independents.
Of course, Romney’s penchant for trying to make $10,000 bets in the middle of presidential debates, intoning that “Corporations are people,” and claiming that any criticism of Wall Street ways is un-American hasn’t helped.
Three-quarters of registered voters say the fact that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is worth more than $200 million makes no difference to their likelihood of voting for him. However, 20% of voters, mostly Democrats and independents, say Romney’s wealth makes them less likely to vote for him, while 4% say it makes them more likely. …
The Obama campaign has targeted Romney’s wealth in recent weeks, stressing his net worth and how he earned it as head of Bain Capital, where he has invested it, and the fact that he has not released all of his tax returns from the last decade. Obama’s campaign is apparently using Romney’s wealth in its efforts to convince voters that Romney is not as well-equipped as Obama to understand the problems and needs of middle- and lower-class Americans. The Romney campaign has pushed back, stressing that voters are more interested in fixing the economy than in the candidates’ personal financial situations. …
Vice President Joe Biden delivered a strong rebuttal to Mitt Romney this morning at the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN: HILLARY PUSHES THE BIG GEOPOLITICAL PIVOT.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and today.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events today.
Obama got a nice boost this morning from a new jobs report showing that unemployment claims unexpectedly dropped to the lowest level since March 2008.
Vice President Joe Biden addresses the national NAACP convention today in Houston, Texas.
Conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney spoke there yesterday, and was booed when he called for the repeal of the national health care law modeled on his own program as governor of Massachusetts.
Far right radio talker Rush Limbaugh told his dittoheads afterward that Mitt Romney was booed at the NAACP convention this morning in Houston because he is white.
Come to think of it, I do think that Romney wanted to get booed, even as he appeared to reach out to a different constituency. It’s multiplex messaging for him.
Meanwhile, in somewhat more consequential news, the US Navy is moving many Sea Fox underwater drones to the Gulf to find and destroy mines in case Iran makes good on its recently repeated threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical choke point in terms of oil supply.
This is part of a build-up of naval, air, and ground forces in the region as nuclear negotiations flounder and the Iran crisis continues.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, and AfPak.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD ON A HISTORIC (AND BUMPY) TRACK IN CALIFORNIA.Last Friday’s narrow passage of legislation authorizing the beginning of construction of the first high-speed rail system in America was a dramatic moment many years in the making. And while it was undertaken entirely by Democrats at the end, some famous Republican politicians made it happen along the way. In fact, it would never have happened without them.
Which makes the current version of the once Grand Old Party and its knee-jerk opposition to the project all the more ironic.
It’s Governor Jerry Brown who gets the credit — and takes the heat from conservatives, sizable elements of the media, and the old energy economy interests whose die-hard opposition naturally underlies the opposition — for pushing the project over the political goal line. But had former Governor Pete Wilson (ironically, a longtime Brown bete noire) not gotten the ball rolling in 1996 with the creation of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, it might not have happened.
And had Brown’s far more friendly predecessor, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, not supported the empowering initiative and pushed for ever more funding even as the economy sank into the great global recession, promoting high-speed rail through the very end of his term in January 2011, it would not have happened at all.
Brown joined U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Monday at the Port of Oakland to announce a $15 million grant to expand its rail yard and especially to discuss the legislature’s decision to begin construction of the high-speed rail project.
The plan is to begin construction in the winter, now that the release of funding — a combination of already approved state bond funds and federal grants — has been approved for that purpose.
LaHood hailed the decision as a landmark in U.S. transportation policy.
Brown, who loves the story, cited the example of Abraham Lincoln building the transcontinental railroad during the Civil War to make light of objections raised against the new project. (More about that later.)
Right-wing opponents of transit and advocates of the old energy economy have succeeded in blocking the Obama administration’s plans to begin high-speed rail elsewhere in America. Only California, with first Schwarzenegger and then Brown in staunch and steely support for the past few years of a shaky economy, remained. Would America join most of the rest of the advanced industrial world in developing high-speed rail? Or would it stay stuck in the old energy economy model?
After taking office a year and a half ago, Brown retooled the state’s troubled high-speed rail agency and had its business plan overhauled, then pushed it through the state legislature. …
The opponents of high-speed rail, dominated by the Republican Party, deliberately conflate the facts about the funding for this project as part of their agenda to further wreak havoc on the state budget and block Brown’s November revenue initiative.
The funds in question do not come from California’s general fund, aside from some interest payments down the line which are minor. They come instead from proceeds of already approved bonds backed by Schwarzenegger and many others in 2008 and from federal funds, which Schwarzenegger played the lead role in securing, especially from some states whose conservative Republican governors spurned funding in 2009 and 2010.
But the anti-bullet train PR, aided by reporting that in some cases deliberately distorts and in others glides over the facts, was much more effective than the pro-side, which made only a minimal effort.
Distortion and poor reporting led to a false meme, based on a Field Poll, that getting high-speed rail going would kill Brown’s initiative. …
The poll — the release of which was geared directly to the legislative vote — did not present voters with the facts about where the money comes from, either.
Ironically, the people who were pushing this meme — concern trolling all the way — are opponents not only of high-speed rail, but of raising taxes on the rich. They include LA Times columnist George Skelton, who has devoted several columns to his opposition to raising taxes on the rich as well as the bullet train itself, and Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, who has been attacking Brown for about 40 years now. Skelton likes to praise Brown’s liberal father, but Walters built his career attacking Brown, during his first governorship, and Democratic liberals, for the far right Sacramento Union, which was owned by Eastern billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the principal funders of far right think tank and media efforts around the country. The paper was also owned at one point by an agent of the apartheid government of South Africa. The ostensibly liberal Bee hired Walters as part of its effort to kill the Union, which finally closed in 1994.
There has been a very sophisticated and persistent PR campaign against high-speed rail in California, because this is where the hope can be snuffed out in America. And the anti-side’s PR has definitely gotten the best of things.
But the pro-bullet train’s side has notably lacked a powerful and persistent communications operation of its own.
This video was part of a paltry PR effort for high-speed rail in California.
There are many statements and articles attacking the project that could be readily pushed back. But no one has been doing it on anything like a regular basis. As a result, high-speed rail opponents have largely enjoyed free rein with their PR and attendant media coverage.
Opposition hinges on the silly notion that right-wing control of Congress, a key funding source, is assured in perpetuity. And on conflation of funding sources. Aside from some interest payments, which amount to budget dust, none of the authorized project will be financed out of the state’s general fund. The start-up phase will be financed by federal grants and already authorized bonds.
Because Brown and other proponents have pointed to real history in discussing this project and likening its opponents to the naysayers who attended similar great ventures, a beat reporter and would-be pundit described the debate as “History vs. Math.” Better to describe it as history vs. pottery shards realism.
Because the “math” is a myth that depends on the most fragmentary understanding of politics. The project, which is very long-range, a couple of decades, actually, until ultimate fruition, is only short of federal funds if one assumes that right-wing Republicans will control the House of Representatives in perpetuity.
They just won it for the first time since the ’90s in the last election! And polls show it to be the most unpopular Congress in history, because it is so extreme.
Does that mean that Democrats will win it back in November? Not at all. But they will win it back. To imagine that reactionary politics is the unbroken wave of the future in the 21st century is to have the most blindered view of history imaginable. And if that were, by some bizarre stroke of fate, to turn out to be reality, we would have vastly deeper problems than an unfinished rail system.
Meanwhile, the federal funding needed, along with the authorized bond money, to complete the first phase of the project, which runs through the remainder of this Brown term as governor and virtually all of the next term, is already in hand, finally secured by the legislature’s vote to begin construction.
Much time is also taken up with something easily answered. Why run it down the Central Valley instead of the Pacific Coast? …
While it is true that the project began under one Republican governor, Pete Wilson, and sprung into life under another, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the deeper metaphor for this controversial undertaking goes back much farther.
Brown likes the story of Abraham Lincoln pushing the transcontinental railroad amidst the incredible turbulence of the Civil War. It’s a stunning story, one which captures the imagination.
It certainly captured the imagination of state Senator Michael Rubio, a Central Valley Democrat who got off the fence last Friday and delivered a floor speech citing Lincoln’s example as he explained his yes vote.
But the truth is that, as rugged as some of the orchestrated criticism that Brown has received has been, and as difficult as California’s challenges still are, Lincoln built a transcontinental railroad while fighting the Civil War, so all this is more than a bit on the light side.
I love the Lincoln story, too, because it so audacious. Far more audacious that Brown damning the torpedoes and ordering full speed ahead, declaring this an ultimate priority and ramming this bill through the legislature, far more audacious than Schwarzenegger ignoring the naysayers pushing for more federal funding and promoting high-speed rail till the last day of his governorship.
Lincoln, as the head of the “modernizers” of the Republican Party, pushed through his plan for the transcontinental railroad in 1862. Which was not only in the midst of the Civil War, but the Civil War that he was actually losing at the time! (Of course, the fact that removing the old Confederate States of America from U.S. politics would immediately delete the base of the current anti-Enlightenment version of the Republican Party takes us into another article entirely.)
Lincoln was still working his way through a succession of losing generals, and the Battle of Gettysburg, at which the Confederacy finally lost the initiative, was still a year away, and it was nearly two more years before Lincoln placed Ulysses S. Grant in command.
Lincoln was on the verge of losing a country when he decided to seize the future, healing a nation riven north to south by binding it together from east to west. What California is going through now is as nothing compared to that. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Yesterday he joined Attorney General Kamala Harris to sign the California Homeowner Bill of Rights (AB 278 and SB 900) at ceremonies in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be featured today at the annual Comic Con pop culture convention at the San Diego Convention Center.
He will be there with Sylvester Stallone and other stars of The Expendables 2, which opens on August 17th.
The Obama Administration is pressing Beijing to accept a code of conduct for resolving territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, a difficult mediation effort that has faced resistance from the Communist government which has made extraordinarily expansive territorial claims, leading to frequent naval confrontations with its neighbors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered the message today at a meeting in Cambodia.
** 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $86 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $52 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 $28 per barrel 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.
House Republicans voted today to repeal President Barack Obama’s national health care program, upheld just last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure goes nowhere in the Senate, of course.
** QUICK HITS. The US Navy is moving many Sea Fox underwater drones to the Gulf to find and destroy mines in case Iran makes good on its recently repeated threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical choke point in terms of oil supply. This is part of a build-up of naval, air, and ground forces in the region as nuclear negotiations flounder and the Iran crisis continues. … Far right radio talker Rush Limbaugh told his dittoheads today that Mitt Romney was booed at the NAACP convention this morning in Houston because he is white. I do think that Romney wanted to get booed. … Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be featured on Thursday at the annual Comic Con pop culture convention at the San Diego Convention Center. He will be there with Sylvester Stallone and other stars of The Expendables 2, which opens on August 17th.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD ON AN HISTORIC (AND BUMPY) TRACK IN CALIFORNIA and WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN.
** JERRY-RIGGING: HOMEOWNERS BILL OF RIGHTS AND FURLOUGHS FOR ALL STATE WORKERS. Governor Jerry Brown today ranged up the length of the state with state Attorney General Kamala Harris, lauding and signing into law her legislation to give homeowners new rights in dealing with mortgage lenders.
The new law will help homeowners avert foreclosure by stopping “dual track” foreclosures in which a lender continues foreclosure while reviewing application for loan modification; creates one point of contact for a homeowner pursuing modification; expands required notice to borrowers; allows injunctions against foreclosures and permits civil penalties.
“Californians should not have to suffer the abusive tactics of those who would push foreclosure behind the back of an unsuspecting homeowner,” said Brown. “These new rules make the foreclosure process more transparent so that loan servicers cannot promise one thing while doing the exact opposite.”
For her part, Harris said that “The California Homeowner Bill of Rights will give struggling homeowners a fighting shot to keep their home.” According to her, the new rules, which go in effect next January, “will make the mortgage and foreclosure process more fair and transparent, which will benefit homeowners, their community, and the housing market as a whole.”
Brown also made a big move on another, unrelated front, dealing with a couple of public employee unions which had dragged their heels on joining others in agreement with his request for furloughs.
Today he furloughed all state workers whose unions had not previously agreed to the move to achieve his promised 5% pay cuts. Which will certainly aid the credibility of his November revenue initiative.
Ironically, many Democrats had hated the furlough approach, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger employed.
But when the unions balked at a four-day work week, the only other alternative, as Brown informed them, was lay-offs.
So we are back to furloughs.
** NEW SURVEY: AMERICANS’ LIFE RATINGS LEVEL OFF, BECAUSE REPUBLICANS EXPECTATIONS ARE DOWN. A new Gallup Poll survey, which is rather psychological in nature, has Americans rating how their lives are going.
The trend line had been up for the past three months.
But it leveled off in the latest survey, because Republican ratings of their lives have suddenly gone down markedly.
Meanwhile, Democratic life ratings continued to improve.
Which is all a little odd, since Republicans tend to be more affluent than Democrats.
If Republicans really expect Mitt Romney to be the next president, wouldn’t they be feeling better about life?
Or are they remembering that they have to be unhappier while Barack Obama is still president.
Or … is this just another pollster psycho-babble category?
Americans’ life ratings leveled off in June, after inching up for three consecutive months. The U.S. Life Evaluation Index score edged down to 50.3 in June, similar to the 50.5 in May. …
Americans’ life ratings, which Gallup and Healthways began tracking daily in January 2008, started steadily improving in March, at about the same time that Americans’ economic confidence and satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. began to improve. But, Americans’ economic confidence retreated in June from May’s improved level and U.S. satisfaction dropped slightly, as life ratings leveled off.
The most significant changes in the index since Gallup began tracking in 2008 were the severe drop in 2008 leading to the all-time low of 37.3 in February 2009, and the drop early last fall, coinciding with the looming debt ceiling deadline that was settled at the last minute.
The Life Evaluation Index, part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, classifies Americans as “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering” according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10 based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. The overall Life Evaluation Index score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of suffering Americans from the percentage of thriving Americans.
The gap between Democrats’ and Republicans’ life ratings has widened considerably since Democrats’ life ratings began surpassing Republicans’ in February 2012. Democrats’ Life Evaluation Index score was 55.7 in June, higher than Republicans’ 49.5, and independents’ 46.9. …
Seeking to reach out beyond his base, conservative Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, speaking at the NAACP national convention this morning in Houston, was roundly booed when he discussed his plan to repeal President Barack Obama’s national health care program. The law was modeled on the Massachusetts program pushed by, of course, Romney during a different guise of his career.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD (ON A BUMPY TRACK) IN CALIFORNIA and WHY THE CLINTONS NEED OBAMA TO WIN.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama meets with Congressional Democratic leaders in the Oval Office.
Speaking yesterday in Hanoi as part of her own “Pacific Pivot” tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alternated between lauding improvements and prospects in US-Vietnam trade and investment and chastising the Communist regime to democratize and respect human rights.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Vietnam last month, touring the former US Navy base at Cam Ranh Bay. After capturing it from us in the Vietnam War, Hanoi is now allowing US ships to dock there.
Currently, those Navy vessels are non-combatant ships. The US is negotiating for the right to berth combat ships at Cam Ranh Bay. The Vietnamese appear at least somewhat amenable. Looks for an arms and technology deal.
The veteran California political figure Panetta was the first US defense secretary to visit Vietnam since the US defeat in 1975.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, and AfPak.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Los Angeles and San Francisco today.
At 10 AM, he will be joined by Attorney General Kamala D. Harris to sign the California Homeowner Bill of Rights (AB 278 and SB 900) at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles.
At 2 PM, Brown and Harris will repeat that event at the State Building in downtown San Francisco.
While heiress Molly Munger decided not to use her father’s law firm to try to appeal Monday’s court decision rejecting her attempt to block Brown’s November revenue initiative from topping the ballot, her allies in the unsuccessful lawsuit at the right-wing Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are trying to get a state appellate court justice to overturn the ruling.
Russia, which has been joined by China in blocking aggressive UN Security Council on the Syrian crisis, says it has a new plan for transition. But has it changed its fundamental stance?
** 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $86 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $52 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 $28 per barrel 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.
Speaking in Mongolia as part of her own “Pacific Pivot” tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took aim Monday at China’s model of economic growth without democracy, arguing that it undermines long-term prospects. She urged other Asian countries to expand markets and political freedom at the same time.
** QUICK HITS. Governor Jerry Brown appears tomorrow with state Attorney General at events in Los Angeles and San Francisco to sign legislation she sponsored to help troubled home owners dubbed the Homeowner Bill of Rights. Brown says the legislation will help millions of Californians to recover from the mortgage crisis. … Speaking today in Hanoi as part of her own “Pacific Pivot” tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alternated between lauding improvements and prospects in US-Vietnam trade and investment and chastising the Communist regime to democratize and respect human rights. … Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Vietnam last month, touring the former US Navy base at Cam Ranh Bay. After capturing it from us in the Vietnam War, Hanoi is now allowing US ships to dock there. Panetta was the first US defense secretary to visit Vietnam since the US defeat in 1975.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD (ON A BUMPY TRACK) IN CALIFORNIA.
** NEW POLL: CONFIDENCE IN TELEVISION NEWS HITS NEW LOW. You know all that arguing and chatter on cable and other TV news shows? A new Gallup Poll shows that the vast majority of Americans consider it just so much noise.
In fact, confidence in TV news has dropped by more than half in just the past two decades.
And newspapers are not doing much better.
The drop is due to plummeting confidence among moderates and liberals.
Americans’ confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993. …
Among 16 U.S. institutions tested, television news ranks 11th, following newspapers in 10th place. The 25% of adults who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers is down slightly from 28% last year. Confidence in newspapers is now half of what it was at its peak of 51% in 1979.
This year’s updates mark a setback from last year for both television news and newspapers, when Americans appeared to be regaining some confidence in these institutions, though they are more in line with 2007-2010 readings. …
Conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney, on the defensive for refusing to disclose his finances and for Bain Capital’s lead role in off-shoring and out-sourcing jobs, tried today in Colorado to call President Barack Obama an “out-sourcer” himself, saying that Obama pursues “extreme liberal” policies.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … A TICKET TO RIDE: HIGH-SPEED RAIL MOVES FORWARD (ON A BUMPY TRACK) IN CALIFORNIA.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Iowa today.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
After arriving, he proceeded to a private residence in Cedar Rapids for a roundtable discussion with an Iowa family on economic matters.
He then delivered remarks on middle class tax relief at a campaign event at Kirkwood Recreation Center in Cedar Rapids.
At 1:40 PM Pacific, Obama departs Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews.
At 3:40 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 3:55 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
While Obama positions himself as a champion of middle-class concerns — he wants to extend the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for all up to the first $250,000 in income, but nothing more for the rich — his team is busily going after Romney as a secretive financial manipulator.
Romney, who has only released one full tax return, in sharp contrast to his father’s example of releasing 12, says that he is not evading anything by parking so much of his money in Swiss and Caribbean accounts. And that he doesn’t even know what he has invested, because it’s all in a blind trust.
Which, of course, doesn’t make sense. Because if he doesn’t know what he has, he can’t evaluate how it should be treated.
Nor does he explain why he needs to use accounts in domiciles that are routinely used as tax havens.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Hanoi today on an Asian tour that in some respects mirrors that of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who spent nine days earlier this year in the Asia Pacific region.
Clinton announced details of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she believes will be concluded at the end of the year.
This is part of the Pacific Pivot I’ve been following closely, as the US slowly shifts from over-engagement with the Islamic world to enhanced engagement with the Asia Pacific, marking the rise of China.
The new pact will lower trade barriers between Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Chile, and the US. US and Philippine trade relations have already proceeded on another track.
Of course, pivoting away from our fateful engagements in the Islamic world is at least as tricky as pivoting to the Pacific.
Meanwhile, secular liberal forces seem to be leading in the count from this past weekend’s national elections in Libya.
This sets the country recently freed from dictator Moammar Gaddafi by NATO air strikes and an internal uprising apart from earlier Arab Spring nations such as Egypt and Tunisia where Islamist parties turned out to be the beneficiaries.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Syria, Iraq, and AfPak.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is ten hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is eleven and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown joined US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday at the Port of Oakland to announce a $15 million grant and to discuss the legislature’s decision to begin construction of the high-speed rail project.
The plan is to begin construction in the winter, now that the release of funding — combination of already approved state bond funds and federal grants — has been approved for that purpose.
LaHood hailed the decision as a landmark in US transportation policy.
Brown cited the example of Abraham Lincoln building the transcontinental railroad during the Civil War to make light of objections raised against the new project.
Right-wing opponents of transit and advocates of the old energy economy had succeeded in blocking the Obama Administration’s plans to begin high-speed rail in other places in America. Only California, with first Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Brown in staunch support for the past few years of a shaky economy, remained.
Brown retooled the state’s troubled high-speed rail agency and had its business plan overhauled, then pushed it through the state legislature.
Brown also received very good news on another front on Monday.
Heiress Molly Munger, advocate of a very well-funded, as it is self-funded, zombie initiative to raise income taxes on all Californians for education, had joined forces with the right-wing Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to try to block Brown’s revenue initiative from the top spot on the November ballot.
A local judge had granted the Munger/Jarvis team a temporary restraining order stopping the ballot from moving forward while he studied the matter. But last week he blocked a Munger/Jarvis move to delay the matter till late July, and yesterday he dismissed their suit entirely.
Now the ballot is going forward, with Brown’s initiative at the top, designated as Proposition 30.
** DARK KNIGHTS, AVENGERS, BONDING RETRO ACTION HEROES: HOW LONG WILL THE SUPERHERO PHENOMENON LAST?America likes action, and so does the world, no question about that. And with a slew of big superhero movies and action hero movies this year, we’re getting plenty of it.
We’ve already had, and still have, The Avengers, that triumph of long-range marketing that works well as a movie. Though it still feels more like the set-up for, wait for it, another movie than any particularly culturally resonant event.
The past few days have seen the advent of a new Spider-Man and … A new Spider-Man? Yes, rebooting a franchise that began only 10 years ago, with each of the original three films big hits. (The third, no critical favorite, grossed nearly $900 million in global box office.) Another origin story, not so long at all after the first origin story (and suspiciously like the first one). This is strange. But it will take in a lot of money.
And in less than two weeks we have no less than Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. that very well-adjusted gentleman himself, the Batman. The Dark Knight, second in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, and a very culturally resonant event, was for the me the key film of 2008. (Just as Nolan’s unrelated Inception was the film of 2010.) The trilogy ends with The Dark Knight Rises, which strongly hints, through production secrecy, at being a deeper ending.
And there are other big action movies with heroes who don’t have superpowers. (Batman’s only superpower is his billionaire status, which gives him “those wonderful toys” for tools as Jack Nicholson’s Joker called them in the outstanding 1989 film. Aside from that, he’s just very smart and very athletic. It all adds up to the sort of edge that a regular action hero can’t have.)
Superheroes (almost) invariably prevail, when they do prevail, with unique powers. Whereas action heroes have to do it the old-fashioned way, through athleticism and strength.
Think of them as classic action heroes. Sounds better than retro, doesn’t it?
There’s the mash-up of ’80s and ’90s stars, some of them the biggest, in The Expendables 2, sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s 2010 summer hit. Arnold Schwarzenegger, still in the second term of his sidelight gig as governor of California, could only do a cameo, a memorably amusing scene with Stallone and Bruce Willis, who also did only a cameo. But Schwarzenegger, Stallone’s mercenary rival in the first picture (just as he had been his rival in movies), and Willis, a dodgy CIA type, are back for more action this time around.
There are several others, including the latest Bourne saga, albeit missing Jason Bourne this time around, and a reboot of Schwarzenegger’s 1990 scifi action classic Total Recall, with Colin Farrell taking on the real or reel/construction worker or superspy dilemma of Douglas Quaid.
And of course there is the new James Bond movie, at last, gods be praised, with all the corporate/financial troubles that led to a four-year delay since Daniel Craig’s second excellent outing as 007 finally sorted. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Bond film franchise. Which had a particular resonance with the close of the latest season of Mad Men, notably utilizing the perfect theme music of You Only Live Twice to make sense of the close of a chaotic season, bringing the central character back to his man of mystery persona, as I discussed here on the Huffington Post in “Looking Forward From Mad Men’s Meandering Season 5: You Only Live Twice (One Can Only Hope).” …
Next month sees a return to the old school of action heroes with The Expendables 2, starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s the sequel to 2010 summer hit, which was a lot of fun but got pretty generic toward the end.
In their movies of the past (though Hemsworth is a newbie), the stunts are real, the action is, er, real-enough. These are guys who, if they can’t do everything in their movies, they at least look as though they can.
I remember encountering Schwarzenegger in 2002 after I revealed, to his political consultants’ embarrassment, in this LA Weekly piece that his campaign for an after-school programs initiative had just polled on his potential as a write-in candidate for governor. (This was the year before the famous California recall election, then not a glimmer on the horizon.)
Schwarzenegger glowered and pointed at me: “You!,” he shouted. And though I figured that he found it (mostly) amusing, the thought crossed my mind that, if I weren’t agile, he could knock me through a nearby plate glass window.
Then there’s Stallone, quite convincing in his Rocky films (though it occurred to me, having done a little boxing in the Navy, that Mr. Balboa would probably have died about 17 times) and is maybe more convincing in the Rambo pictures (but for the part about being a soldier who doesn’t wear a shirt).
Both he and Schwarzenegger have had numerous surgeries from the wear and tear of performing their stunts and action scenes. Of course, there’s no need for that when the action is essentially added on a computer in post-production, as is the fashion with superhero films.
As his first movie to appear since the governorship (he’s shot three so far) comes out this summer, it’s also the anniversary of a couple of key Schwarzenegger action hits. The 30th anniversary of Conan the Barbarian, showing him in full primal mode. And the 25th anniversary of Predator, in which he is in primal and technological modes. …
The UN/Arab League’s joint envoy to Syria, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, says Iran can play a positive role resolving the crisis in Syria. Annan, whose carefully wrought ceasefire fell apart almost as quickly as it began, met Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, trying to build support for a new agreement with Syria’s President Bashar al Assad.
** LOOKING FORWARD FROM MAD MEN‘S MEANDERING SEASON 5: YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (ONE CAN ONLY HOPE) … From my June 13th essay.
** MIDWAY: 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF ONE OF HISTORY’S MOST PIVOTAL BATTLES CAME IN MIDST OF OBAMA’S BIG STRATEGIC PIVOT TO THE PACIFIC. … From my June 9th 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $84 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $50 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 $30 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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