In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama says that Congress needs to act to to help more in reviving the housing market and aiding homeowners.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … RECALLING TOTAL RECALL (THE BOOK, NOT THE MOVIE).
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Nevada.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
On Saturday, he has no scheduled public events
On Sunday, he travels to Nevada.
He is in the midst of debate prep in advance of the first debate with conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney on October 3rd in Denver, Colorado.
At 8:15 AM Pacific on Sunday, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 8:30 AM Pacific, Obama departs Joint Base Andrews on Air Force One en route Las Vegas, Nevada.
At 12:55 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Las Vegas, Nevada.
At 6:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like. He spends most of it in the West, in swing states Nevada and Colorado, before heading to swing states Ohio and Virginia.
Obama leads Romney in Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia.
There’s not as much time as usual built into the schedule for crisis monitoring and management, but as I wrote in yesterday’s essay, Obama has just successfully navigated the minefield of UN Week and the anti-American demonstrations in the Islamic world have died down.
Though an X factor can always emerge.
On Monday and Tuesday, Obama will remain in Henderson, Nevada, which near Las Vegas.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel from Henderson, Nevada to Denver, Colorado where he will participate in the first Presidential Debate at the University of Denver. First Lady Michelle Obama will also attend. The Obamas will remain overnight in Denver.
On Thursday morning, Obama will deliver remarks at a campaign event in Denver, Colorado. In the afternoon, he will travel from Denver to Columbus, Ohio where he will deliver remarks at a campaign event. Obama will return to the White House in the evening.
On Friday morning, Obama will deliver remarks at a campaign event in Vienna, Virginia. In the afternoon, Obama will travel to Cleveland, Ohio where he will deliver remarks at a campaign event before returning 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 Persian/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.
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session with the Sunday night deadline for decision fast approaching.
On Friday, Brown signed bills prohibiting the open carry of unloaded rifles, limiting Public Utilities Commission regulation of voice over internet calls, and allowing participation in a portable retirement plan. >He also vetoed legislation to raise penalties for texting while driving.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
Brown is getting ready to spin up the public portion of the campaign, which is leading by 15 to 23 points in three polls released in the past few days.
Prop 30 is down 10 points in the USC/LAT poll, as the press release notes, since last March.
But the relevant point is where it is compared to other recent measurements. And in that regard, it’s actually up a few points from its standing in the latest Field Poll.
All polls in recent months have shown Prop 30 to be in the 50s, from the low 50s, as in the Field Poll and the Public Policy Institute of California polls, to the high 50s, as in the California Business Roundtable poll.
The latest USC/LAT poll is in the middle of that range.
Heiress Molly Munger’s attempt at a rival initiative trails in all polls despite her spending over $20 million already, spending heavily on advertising.
The public pension reform bill Brown got through the legislature gets relatively high marks in the USC/LAT poll, with USC poll director Dan Schnur, who earlier predicted that if Brown signed the high-speed rail bill the initiative would go down, now saying that what legislation Brown was able to get through on public pension reform will suffice to satisfy voter concerns on the issue, at least for now.
Meanwhile, the USC/LAT poll is the latest to show Prop 34, repeal of the death penalty, and Prop 32, the latest effort to prohibit payroll deduction of public employee funds for campaigns, both trailing and going down to likely defeat.
In his forthcoming 60 Minutes interview, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger admits some very big mistakes.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking about some big mistakes, appears on the CBS News program 60 Minutes Sunday night in a preview of his Total Recall autobiography, released on October 1st.
Schwarzenegger speaks and writes candidly of his failings in his relationship with former First Lady Maria Shriver.
The book, as it happens, is an adventure story, as one might expect when considering Schwarzenegger’s very unusual life. And it is a love story.
Much more to follow.
** OBAMA PASSES THROUGH THE MINEFIELD OF U.N. WEEK (BUT SETS UP A POTENTIAL EXPLOSION NEXT YEAR). … From my September 28th 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 closed on Friday at $92.19 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 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 $22 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 aircraft carrier USS Enterprise has taken part in the largest anti-mine naval exercise ever staged, aimed at Iran’s repeated threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
** QUICK HITS. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking about some big mistakes, appears on 60 Minutes Sunday night in a preview of his Total Recall autobiography. More to follow. … Governor Jerry Brown, getting ready to spin up the public portion of the campaign for his Prop 30 revenue initiative, leading by 15 to 23 points in three polls this week, is busy going through legislative bills as the decision deadline looms. … Brown has signed bills prohibiting the open carry of unloaded rifles, limiting Public Utilities Commission regulation of voice over internet calls, and allowing participation in a portable retirement plan. He also vetoed legislation to raise penalties for texting while driving.
** OBAMA PASSES THROUGH THE MINEFIELD OF U.N. WEEK (BUT SETS UP A POTENTIAL EXPLOSION NEXT YEAR).Like a ship navigating through a strait filled with mines, President Barack Obama succeeded in getting through this year’s United Nations week gathering of heads of government in New York without damage to his re-election. But he also set up a potentially explosive confrontation during his second term over Iran’s nuclear program.
It was a week of adjustments and avoidance for Obama.
And a week of notable speeches and moves by several figures, highly relevant to Obama’s hopes, at one end of America’s tricky geopolitical pivot from over-engagement with the Islamic world of the Middle East and Central Asia to enhanced engagement with the ascending nations of Asia and the Pacific. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a USC alumnus, all made significant moves.
Obama’s address to the United Nations may not have been as important a speech as his Cairo address in 2009, when he laid out an expansive program of positively engaging the Islamic world, but it was at least a significant strategic adjustment. The Arab Awakening which Obama saw would come some day arrived, to the surprise of most, in January 2011, and has provided a roller coaster ride ever since.
Now the tangled US involvement in the Islamic world, especially the Middle East, of which the Arab Awakening is such a dramatic part, stands as a potential X factor in the presidential race, the sort of geopolitical upset I’ve long thought might be the only thing to deny Obama a second term.
Obama vowed that he would not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, which is different from Netanyahu’s insistence on denying it the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Obama refused to lay out the “red lines” of development of nuclear weapons potential repeatedly demanded by Netanyahu which would trigger military action. But he pledged that Iran would not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, which may set up a massive confrontation in his second term. Obama also denounced the anti-Islam video which prodded widespread anti-American demonstrations while at the same time upholding the American value of free speech.
And his administration this week acknowledged the obvious, that the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, including Ambassador Chris Smith, on the anniversary of 9/11 were the result of a terrorist attack.
All this comes as new Gallup Poll surveys indicate that the the waves of anti-government rhetoric of recent years in the US may be receding.
One survey shows that trust in the ability of the federal government to handle problems at both the international level and the domestic level is up substantially, to the highest level since the invasion of Iraq. This is good news for Democrats, bad news for the anti-government lobby that has held such sway in Republican ranks in recent years.
There is one big caveat, however.
The polls were taken before the wave of violent unrest in the Islamic world following the hate-Islam video Innocence of Muslims, before the attacks on American missions, the burnings of American flags, the murders of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The only good news is that the the protests weren’t all that large and have not been sustained.
Following the old dictum that the best spin consists of telling the truth slowly, the administration this week finally acknowledged the obvious, that Stevens and the others were killed in a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. The early spin that the killings happened only when the protesters got out of hand and started firing their rocket launchers and machine guns is now out the window.
The jury is still not in on how all these things play out.
The greatest overt conflict was between Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Israel’s Netanyahu. …
** NEW SURVEY: SUPREME COURT JOB APPROVAL ON LOW END OF HISTORIC SCALE, BEST AMONG DEMOCRATS THOUGH IT’S A REPUBLICAN COURT. A new Gallup Poll survey, out prior to the beginning of the new US Supreme Court session on October 1st, has some interesting numbers.
The Court’s surprise decision upholding President Barack Obama’s controversial national health care law seems to be at the center of public attitudes.
A big majority of Democrats approves of the Court, which is actually quite conservative for the most part.
But little more than a third of Republicans approves of the Court’s performance.
As the Supreme Court returns to work on Oct. 1, sharp partisan divisions in its job approval rating — which initially emerged after the court upheld the 2010 healthcare law — remain. Currently, 57% of Democrats approve, while a similar percentage of Republicans, 56%, disapprove.
Overall, 49% of Americans approve of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job and 40% disapprove. That approval rating is slightly more positive than in Gallup’s last update in July, but remains on the lower end of what Gallup has measured since 2000, the first time it asked about Supreme Court approval. Since that time, the court’s approval rating has averaged 54%. …
Campaigning today in Pennsylvania, where he trails President Barack Obama by a wide margin but is trying to get some traction after losing ground in swing states, conservative Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA PASSES THROUGH THE MINEFIELD OF U.N. WEEK (BUT SETS UP A POTENTIAL EXPLOSION NEXT YEAR).
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 1:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Capital Hilton
At 3:05 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at fundraiser at a private residence in Washington.
At 5:25 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at another fundraiser at the Capital Hilton.
The realization that Obama’s lead is real is setting in among Mitt Romney’s cheerleaders in the media and elsewhere, with Romney’s old friend Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu praising Obama yesterday in his much anticipated UN address and appearing to concede that there will be no Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program before the election or, seemingly, before next spring at the earliest.
Of course, if I were planning a daring and risky military attack, I would do something to bring back the element of surprise, which Netanyahu’s endless saber rattling had certainly removed.
Now Romney boosters are looking for a breakthrough in the first presidential debate, set for October 3rd in Denver. Having watched Romney in 20 Republican debates last year and earlier this year, I would suggest that that is a thin reed of hope.
There is some concern today with the Syrian military moving chemical weapons as rebels make significant gains in the embattled country, where the Assad regime has tried for more than a year to forcibly put down a pro-democracy movement which has now taken up arms.
The potential of these weapons getting into the wind has long been feared.
“There has been some intelligence that with regards to some of these sites that there has been some movement in order for the Syrians to better secure … the chemicals,” Panetta said Friday morning during a press conference at the Pentagon. “So while there’s been some limited movement, again the major sites still remain in place, still remain secure.”
Syria is believed to have stockpiles of nerve and mustard gas. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad admitted earlier this year it has unspecified chemical weapons, though it later back-tracked on those remarks.
The regime’s war with the Syrian rebels has stoked fears that the weapons could fall into other hands.
Panetta’s remarks come as Western and allied nations meet in New York, looking to unite the fractured rebel forces.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hosting talks among the Friends of Syria — a coalition which includes the United States, the European Union and the Arab League — on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, seeking to encourage better co-operation among the rebel groups.
The UN Security Council remains deadlocked on on efforts to halt the 18-month long civil war, which activists say has led to more than 30,000 deaths.
The talks do not include Syrian allies Russia, China or Iran. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed resolutions aimed at pressuring Assad to enter negotiations on a political transition, paralyzing the UN’s most powerful body and denting chances of any progress during the General Assembly.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said it is “shocking” that the Security Council had been unable to act, while British Prime Minister David Cameron denounced the deaths of Syrian children as “a stain on those who have failed to stand up to these atrocities,” a reference to Russia and China.
Clinton has decried al-Assad’s “murdering of his own people,” while Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — who will address the General Assembly on Friday — has accused the U.S. and other countries of encouraging terrorism in their stance on Syria.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says intelligence suggests the Syrian government has moved some of its chemical weapons, but the U.S. believes that the main sites still remain secure. The veteran California political figure spoke out as the Syrian rebels made significant gains in their battle with the Assad regime.
Might the Assad regime use these weapons against the rebels in a last gasp attempt to remain in power?
That’s a question that Panetta did not address today.
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 Persian/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 is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
Brown signed legislation yesterday enabling Californians to keep their social media passwords private from prying superiors and bureaucrats, and to require transparency and notice on college fee increases and provide free digital textbooks to college students.
He also signed 19 bills promoting renewable energy, including legislation strengthening a partnership between the State of California and the Department of Defense to develop renewables.
And he also signed legislation authorizing the placement of a privately-funded statue of Ronald Reagan in the State Capitol, noting that Californians will be interested to learn of the two-term president and governor’s pragmatism and courage in supporting tax hikes when they were needed. Giving the obvious needle to the right-wing Republicans who pushed the bill forward.
Brown learned of polls today showing his Prop 30 initiative still ahead by wide margins.
Prop 30 is down 10 points in the USC/LAT poll, as the press release notes, since last March.
But the relevant point is where it is compared to other recent measurements. And in that regard, it’s actually up a few points from its standing in the latest Field Poll.
The public pension reform bill Brown got through the legislature gets relatively high marks in the USC/LAT poll.
** 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 $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 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 $22 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.
Flashing a diagram showing the progress Iran’s nuclear program has made, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly it is getting “late, very late” to stop Iran. He says that Iran can move on to “the final stage” of preparing a nuclear bomb by next summer at the latest.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA’S POLICY GETS REWORKED IN U.N. WEEK.
** QUICK HITS.The realization that President Barack Obama’s lead is real is setting in among Mitt Romney’s cheerleaders in the media and elsewhere, with Romney’s old friend Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu praising Obama today in his much anticipated UN address and appearing to concede that there will be no Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program before the election and seemingly before next spring at the earliest. … Of course, if I were planning a daring and risky military attack, I would do something to bring back the element of surprise, which Netanyahu’s endless saber rattling had certainly removed. … Now Romney boosters are looking for a breakthrough in the first presidential debate, set for October 3rd in Denver. Having watched Romney in 20 Republican debates last year and earlier this, I would suggest that that is a thin reed of hope. … Still going through the fruits, as it were, of California’s recently concluded state legislative session, Governor Jerry Brown today signed legislation enabling Californians to keep their social media passwords private from prying superiors and bureaucrats, and to require transparency and notice on college fee increases and provide free digital textbooks to college students.
** NEW SURVEY: SHIFT TOWARD PREFERENCE FOR ONE-PARTY GOVERNMENT. A new Gallup Poll survey shows a record plurality of voters now favoring one party controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress. And a record low number opposing that result.
This is a shift from the frequent preference for divided government, and a dramatic shift from views held just a year ago.
If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan continue on their course, this renewed preference for one-party government may be met.
A record-high 38% of Americans prefer that the same party control the presidency and Congress, while a record-low 23% say it would be better if the president and Congress were from different parties and 33% say it doesn’t make any difference. While Americans tend to lean toward one-party government over divided government in presidential election years, this year finds the biggest gap in preferences for the former over the latter and is a major shift in views from one year ago. …
Americans are more supportive of one-party government now than previously, including presidential election years. This is mainly due to a surge in Democrats’ preference for unified party control of government, as President Obama seeks a second term after dealing with a Republican-controlled House the last two years. Republicans also prefer unified government rather than divided government this year.
As the 2012 election approaches, these findings suggest that Americans may be somewhat less open to ballot splitting than in prior years. At the same time, support for one-party government typically increases in presidential election years, and the surge in Democrats’ preferences may reflect their growing enthusiasm about the election more broadly.
On the day after Yom Kippur, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu arrived this morning in New York City to address the United Nations, where he is expected by many to lay out definitive “red lines” which should trigger a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA’S POLICY GETS REWORKED IN U.N. WEEK.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Virginia.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then flew on Air Force One to Virginia Beach, Virginia.
He then delivered remarks at a campaign event at Farm Bureau Live in Virginia Beach.
At 10:15 AM Pacific, Obama departs Virginia Beach on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 11 AM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama has the lead in swing state Virginia, which he is attempting to lock down in his column.
His conservative Republican presidential opponent, Mitt Romney, is also campaigning today in Virginia.
Obama got some good news on the economy this morning, with new unemployment filings dropping. But he remains vulnerable on geopolitical wild cards.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday became the highest ranking administration official to talk about an Al Qaeda tie in the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the killing of three other Americans in Benghazi.
On the anniversary of 9/11? Who could have guessed?
Back at the big United Nations week in New York — where Obama scored with a well-received address Tuesday while dodging Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who persists in trying to rope the US into his very aggressive agenda against Iran even as much of the Israeli security establishment turns away — the bete noire of the blue-and-white, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delivered his last address to the UN General Assembly.
He denounced the UN Security Council and called for “a new world order” free from “the hegemony of arrogance.”
Speaking on Yom Kippur, Israel’s Day of Atonement and the highest holy day in the Jewish faith, Ahmadinejad, who on Monday called Israel “a fake regime” with no history in the region, referred to Israel as a collection of “uncivilized Zionists.”
I suspect that Netanyahu will fire back in kind when he addresses the UN today.
In fact, he is expected to delineate what he thinks should be the “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program.
But as he does so, his own foreign ministry has just released a report saying that international sanctions have had massive impacts on Iran, calling for another round of sanctions.
Netanyahu, whose talk of military strikes against Iran had already been publicly opposed by various notable figures from the Israeli military, intelligence, and security establishments, seems to be at the head of a divided government.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN this morning and announced that he will push for formal observer state status in the UN after the November election in the US.
He pushed for full member nation status last year only to find it blocked by the US. But observer state status does not require approval of the UN Security Council, only the support of the UN General Assembly.
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 Persian/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 is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
Climate change is costing millions of lives and billions of dollars according to a new study, commissioned by 20 countries. And it is especially affecting Pacific island nations, such as Nauru, whose president is calling for more help from the United Nations.
** 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 $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 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 $22 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.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, campaigning recently on Meet the Press for immediate “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program, is apt to provide a fiery rebuttal tomorrow at the UN to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address today on Yom Kippur and anti-Israeli sniping of the week.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … OBAMA’S POLICY GETS RETOOLED FOR U.N. WEEK.
** QUICK HITS. With swing state polls looking strong and good reactions from crowds, President Barack Obama today hit conservative Republican challenger as a johnny come lately in his concern with China trade practices, characterizing Romney has having “newfound outrage” and noting his role in outsourcing jobs to the PRC. … Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today became the highest ranking administration official to talk about an Al Qaeda tie in the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the killing of three other Americans in Benghazi. … On the anniversary of 9/11? Who could have guessed? … Governor Jerry Brown signed a lot of bills today, some of them having to do with animals and schools. He did veto a bill which, for some odd reason, would have prohibited homeowners from trapping bats in their homes. … Perhaps it was the product of an author with bats in his belfry, as it were. …
** IS POST-PARTISANSHIP PASSE? SCHWARZENEGGER AND COMPANY (AND BILL CLINTON) SAY NO.Is post-partisanship passe? It’s certainly been shredded in the last few years.
The idea that the way to move forward is to move beyond reflexive partisanship, roundly denounced in a media culture which increasingly rewards hard-edged partisanship, has been stomped all over throughout most of Barack Obama’s first term as president.
Obama himself was trashed, practically from the beginning, for trying to work with congressional Republicans, who were themselves quite intractable to begin with before becoming essentially impossible for him to deal with after the Tea Party-inflected takeover of the House in November 2010.
And just look at all that’s been accomplished since. (That’s a little joke.) Then he was trashed for failing to change the culture of Washington.
So who would want to raise the banner of post-partisanship now?
Well, Arnold Schwarzenegger for one. The former two-term governor of California told me over the summer that he still believes that most things get done through “action in the center” away from the extremes.
I quipped that he might want to re-brand post-partisanship as, say, “post post-partisanship.” He did not.
Schwarzenegger raised the banner he had hoisted through much of his governorship, following a very partisan detour, albeit on matters of legitimate concern, in 2005, when he hosted a one-day introductory symposium for his new USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy on Monday at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The institute was announced last month and the event featured Schwarzenegger in familiar thematic territory.
He led a morning discussion on post-partisanship with U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New Mexico Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, and former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Later, there was a luncheon program on climate change with Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Dr. Ravendra Pachauri, followed by an afternoon discussion on media innovation featuring Schwarzenegger and top Hollywood execs.
Ironically, most of the post-partisan panel participants have been decidedly singed, if not torched, by their moves away from partisan orthodoxy. More about that in a moment. But they weren’t backing away on Monday at least.
“It’s much easier to be an ideologue than it is to be someone who drives compromise,” said Ridge, a finalist to be McCain’s running mate in 2008 only to lose out to Sarah Palin, whose selection ironically elevated her to be one of the biggest drivers of the hyper-partisan wave in American politics. “The easiest vote in Washington is ‘no.’”
McCain himself shifted focus a bit to the massive unrestricted spending we’re seeing as a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. “The history of this country has been corruption, reform, corruption, reform,” he noted. “There are going to be major scandals because too many millions of dollars are washing around in political campaigns.”
Daschle agreed, adding that the astonishing sums make it easier for ideologues to drive divisive agendas.
McCain was a great advocate of campaign finance reform, one of the reasons we featured him at the Shadow Conventions in 2000 which I helped Arianna Huffington to stage. Political history has moved in a very different direction since the passage of the McCain-Feingold bill which many thought would clean up political finance.
Schwarzenegger, who had some very notable post-partisan successes as California’s governor — albeit not infrequently involving him as the Republican working on and working with Democrats — noted that there was significant partisan blowback for those who reached across the aisle.
“Whenever you worked with Democrats, the Republicans hated you, and whenever you worked with the Republicans, the Democrats hated you,” Schwarzenegger said.
But Richardson observed that state governments often do better than the federal government these days.
Crist said he was hammered by fellow Republicans after he hugged Obama on the president’s first visit to the Sunshine State after he was elected. But he didn’t regret it.
In 2008, McCain, running as a moderate conservative who was able to work with Democrats won the Republican presidential nomination, defeating Mitt Romney, the former moderate Massachusetts governor who was running as the hard right candidate, and Mike Huckabee, the evangelical candidate. McCain clinched the nomination with victories in the California and Florida primaries, benefiting from the backing of Schwarzenegger and Crist.
I revealed, on my New West Notes blog, that Schwarzenegger would endorse McCain, which he did in an event focused on climate change and renewable energy, an event that would have been unthinkable in the Republican primaries this year.
McCain staggered Romney with a win in Florida with help from Crist, then knocked him out the following week on Super Tuesday with wins in California and elsewhere.
Of course, moderate Republican Crist went through some big changes after that. Starting out as a big favorite to take a U.S. Senate seat in Florida, Crist was savaged by the hard right and found himself losing the Republican primary to Marco Rubio. He then became an independent, but still lost the election.
Earlier this month, he endorsed Obama for president and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
Schwarzenegger also had big problems with hyper-partisans of both parties, but especially in the Republican Party, which became ever more conservative as his governorship went on, despite his success in appealing to the electoral center in his two landslide victories.
As I recounted here in March, the ever rightward skid of California Republicans — which presaged the same development at the national level — was a well-established arc years ago. Schwarzenegger himself was so alarmed that he delivered an address five years ago to the state Republican convention outside Palm Springs — which I previewed beforehand on New West Notes — specifically urging his party’s delegates and activists to move back toward the center. Here’s the complete text of his speech.
Since then, California Republicans have only moved farther to the right, which was obvious to me when I stayed to watch Texas Governor Rick Perry, who followed Schwarzenegger on the convention program, refute pretty much everything that Schwarzenegger had just said seeing. Republican registration and electoral clout continued their decline. Three years later, Governor Jerry Brown swept to a landslide win over Romney protege Meg Whitman, despite her biggest-spending non-presidential campaign in American history, leading a Democratic sweep of all statewide offices two months before Schwarzenegger’s term ended.
Which is not to say that Democrats weren’t a problem, too. Increasingly influenced by and dependent upon public employee unions, too often transfixed by statist ideology, the Democrats were more rational as a matter of degree.
So post-partisanship is a dead letter, right?
Well, no. Post-partisanship is not about a state of kumbaya. It is about being intelligent and imaginative enough to push your values and to know when to seek common ground.
Brown, for example, never a fan of orthodox thinking, has sought to work with Republicans. He’s told me repeatedly that he intends to keep on trying. Sometimes he even finds a few who want to cooperate. Of course, when there is no cooperation, he’s not averse to knocking some heads.
There simply has to be a place for post-partisanship, for creative centrism, based on the Enlightenment values at the core of the Republic, in American political life if the country is to move forward. Otherwise American politics will be like the Middle East peace process. …
** NEW SURVEYS: TRUST IN GOVERNMENT ON THE RISE AT FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL LEVELS. Two new Gallup Poll surveys indicate that the the waves of anti-government rhetoric of recent years may have had their day.
Americans’ trust in Washington, D.C., to handle international problems is up sharply compared with this time last year, and is now the highest in Gallup trends since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Two-thirds of Americans say they have a “great deal” (18%) or “fair amount” (48%) of trust in the federal government when it comes to handling international problems, vs. 57% last September, whereas a third have “not very much” trust or “none at all.” …
Americans are feeling more confident about the federal government’s ability to handle both international and domestic problems than they have in several years.
Trust in government on international problems is particularly high, resulting from increased confidence among Democrats and Republicans alike over the past year. This may reflect the compound effect of the United States’ operation against Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and aid to anti-Gadhafi forces in Libya in the fall of 2011, as well as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq at the end of 2011. Whether Americans’ trust will continue at this level amid recent anti-American uprisings in the Mideast remains to be seen, but if it does, it suggests President Barack Obama may benefit from his “commander in chief” role as he asks Americans to give him a second term.
But the West lags the rest of the country in this regard, though numbers are up here, too.
Americans’ trust in their state and local governments has increased this year, with 74% expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust in local government and 65% in state government. Trust in state government has now essentially returned to levels seen before the financial crisis, after falling to as low as 51% in 2009.
What does it mean?
Well, it’s probably good news for Democrats.
It’s definitely bad news for the anti-government lobby that has held such sway in Republican ranks in recent years.
There is one caveat, however.
The polls were taken before the wave of unrest in the Islamic world following the hate-Islam video Innocence of Muslims, before the attacks on American missions, the burnings of American flags, the murders of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
The jury is still not in on how that all plays out.
Speaking this morning in swing state Ohio, where he has a big lead over conservative Republican Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama said that the “top-down economics” of the rich getting richer doesn’t equate to widespread prosperity.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … IS POST-PARTISANSHIP PASSE? SCHWARZENEGGER AND COMPANY (AND BILL CLINTON) SAY NO and OBAMA’S POLICY RETOOLED FOR U.N. WEEK.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Ohio.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama then flew on Air Force One to Bowling Green, Ohio.
There he addressed a rally at Bowling Green State University.
Following that, he flew on Air Force One to Kent, Ohio.
At 12:15 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Kent, Ohio.
At 2:40 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a rally at Kent State University.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama departs Kent, Ohio on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 5:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 5:25 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Conservative Republican challenger Mitt Romney is also campaigning in Ohio today, accompanied at some stops by retired golfer Jack Nicklaus.
At a forum early this morning in Westerville, Ohio, Romney called Nicklaus “the greatest athlete of the 20th century.”
Well, folks, as someone who took part in a half-dozen sports in high school and college, it would never occur to me to say something like that.
As I’ve mentioned, Obama has a big lead in swing state Ohio.
No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.
Back at the big United Nations week in New York — where Obama scored with a well-received address yesterday while dodging Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who persists in trying to rope the US into his very aggressive agenda against Iran even as much of the Israeli security establishment turns away — the bete noire of the blue-and-white, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delivered his last address to the UN General Assembly.
The former mayor of Tehran, who has previously denied the Holocaust and postured as a 9/11 Truther, is term limited from office last June.
But that didn’t stop him from delivering another of his trademark semi-deranged addresses, though this one was rather more restrained than in the past.
Though not all that restrained.
He denounced the UN Security Council and called for “a new world order” free from “the hegemony of arrogance.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations today in New York that he has a vision of a new world order that would be absent of the “hegemony of arrogance.”
Speaking on Yom Kippur, Israel’s Day of Atonement and the highest holy day in the Jewish faith, Ahmadinejad, who on Monday called Israel “a fake regime” with no history in the region, today referred to Israel as a collection of “uncivilized Zionists.”
I suspect that Netanyahu will fire back in kind when he addresses the UN.
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 Persian/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 was at Google yesterday in Silicon Valley, where he signed legislation authorizing road testing of self-driving cars, with the motor vehicles dept. to adopt regulations by the beginning of 2015.
Brown, who took a ride for the cameras in a robot-controlled Prius, called it “science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality.”
Brown also signed legislation granting a two-year reprieve on the closing of 70 state parks, now unnecessary, at least for now, after the discovery that the state parks department had been sitting for many years on tens of millions in unspent funds generated by user fees.
A Field Poll shows a California death penalty repeal initiative trailing, 42-45.
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
** 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 $90 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $56 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 $24 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 today at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, President Barack Obama announced a new plan to combat human trafficking.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … IS POST-PARTISANSHIP PASSE? (SCHWARZENEGGER AND COMPANY SAY NO) and OBAMA’S POLICY RETOOLED FOR U.N. WEEK.
** QUICK HITS. Governor Jerry Brown today at Google signed legislation authorizing road testing of self-driving cars, with the motor vehicles dept. to adopt regulations by the beginning of 2015. Brown, who took a ride for the cameras in a robot-controlled Prius, called it “science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality.” … Brown also signed legislation granting a two-year reprieve on the closing of 70 state parks, now unnecessary, at least for now, after the discovery that the state parks department had been sitting for many years on tens of millions in unspent funds generated by user fees. … A new Field Poll shows a California death penalty repeal initiative trailing, 42-45.
** NEW SURVEY: CONFIDENCE (ECONOMIC AND OTHERWISE) SOARS AMONG DEMOCRATS. A new Gallup Poll survey shows confidence about the economy and the state of the country among Democrats is soaring.
This is building on a trend that became very apparent with the Democratic National Convention early this month.
Meanwhile, economic confidence among Republicans is still heading down, and is now at the lowest it’s been in nearly a year.
Independents? Their confidence went up with the Democratic National Convention, too, but dipped a few points since.
Of the two measures that make up the Gallup Economic Confidence Index, Americans’ economic outlook has shown more improvement than their perceptions of current economic conditions.
Net perceptions of current economic conditions — that is, the percentage rating the economy “excellent” or “good” minus the percentage calling it “poor” — are now -25, on par with where they have been since the week ending Sept. 9, but still slightly better than the -30 at the start of the month.
Americans’ net economic optimism — that is, the percentage saying the economy is getting better minus the percentage saying it is getting worse — improved to -10 last week, up slightly from -12 in the prior week. Americans’ net economic optimism thus remains sharply higher now than its -28 reading in the week ending Sept. 2.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly this morning in New York, President Barack Obama challenged the international community to confront the root causes of turmoil in the Middle East, saying the world faces “a choice between the forces that would drive us apart and the hopes we hold in common.” He also said he would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … IS POST-PARTISANSHIP PASSE?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and New York City.
Obama, accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, addressed the UN General Assembly early this morning at the United Nations Building in New York City.
He then delivered remarks a mile away at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting at the Sheraton New York.
Following that, he flew on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, where he boarded Marine One and flew to the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama has no more scheduled public events for the day.
Obama shored up his lead in Wisconsin, which had shown signs of being in play due to the presence of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan on the Mitt Romney ticket, on the weekend.
On Wednesday, he will do the same in swing state Ohio. No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Obama, who is clearly dodging Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who is clearly for Romney) and his insistence on a “red line” for military action against Iran’s nuclear program, eschewed all private meetings with heads of government this year at the UN.
That’s quite unusual.
But he obviously doesn’t want to lend any more oxygen to Netanyahu, who is himself sharply opposed by much if not most of the Israeli military, intelligence, and security establishment in his Iran moves.
Netanyahu has raised no objection I’m aware of to a right-wing super PAC airing footage of him criticizing the Obama Administration on Iran in a TV ad in Florida.
Naturally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is stirring things up further, declaring yesterday in New York that Israel, which he refuses to name, referring only to “the Zionists,” has no historic presence in the Middle East and making reference to Israel being a problem that will be solved.
For his part, Obama declared today that the US will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. The big difference between Obama on the one hand and Netanyahu and Romney on the other is that the latter want to eliminate a nuclear weapons capability, something which is several steps removed from having an actual deliverable weapon.
Obama, reportedly invoking the memory of slain Ambassador Chris Stevens, challenged the UN to get at the roots of irrational rage in the Islamic world. He denounced the hate-Islam video which prompted widespread, though not all that large protests, but made it clear that free speech is a key American value.
Romney spoke this morning at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, where he advocated that foreign aid be made contingent on what he calls “prosperity pacts.”
I’m not sure how those would work. He makes it sound like workfare vs. welfare.
But foreign aid isn’t welfare.
Still, it’s something that base voters, who hate foreign aid, will like.
Speaking this morning at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that foreign aid should be conditioned on something he calls “prosperity pacts.”
Meanwhile, there have been no significant anti-American demonstrations in the past few days.
I’ll have a piece about all this after the UN meetings play out.
A major US Navy exercise in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, aimed at practicing keeping the Strait of Hormuz and other strategic waters clear of mines, got underway Thursday and is in full bore now. 24 other nations have joined the US in participating. It’s a 12-day long exercise.
Iran is not attempting to counter so far, at least on the water. At least not so far.
But Iran has fired off some tests of anti-ship missiles, making a point, I suppose. Though I believe that the Navy can service those targets.
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 Persian/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.
At 1 PM in Mountain View, he will be joined by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and local elected officials at Google Headquarters, where he will give remarks and sign legislation authorizing a pilot program of robotic cars.
** DETHRONED: MAD MEN‘S DOWN SEASON OPENED THE DOOR FOR A SUPERLATIVE HOMELAND.All good things, and all that.
Last night, Mad Men was dethroned as best drama on television at the annual Emmy Awards by the gripping new series Homeland. In fact, Mad Men was shut out entirely, with none of its 17 nominations resulting in an award.
The record of four straight wins for best dramatic series, held by The West Wing and Hill Street Blues, which Mad Men tied last year, remains. Frankly, as I made clear from the beginning during the past season, and even more so at the end, I thought that Season 5 was a down year for the show. Much as I like it, I don’t feel it deserved to break that record.
The season past was too gimmicky, the show’s once clockwork, character-driven plotting too often lurching from one “water cooler/Twitter-worthy” stunt to another. But Mad Men can win a record fifth Emmy as best dramatic series — LA Law is the only other series to win four, though it did not do so consecutively — sometime in its final two seasons with a return to form.
Incidentally, you can see my archive of several years of pieces on the series by clicking here on The Mad Men File.
Even though Season 5 was a down year for Mad Men, it was still clearly one of the best shows on television. It took something very special to best it. Which brings us to Homeland. I’m pleased that Homeland won for best drama.
As usual, there are some spoilers ahead.
Claire Danes won the best dramatic actress last night for her great turn as a brilliant and troubled CIA officer who is convinced to the point of obsession that a popular Iraq War hero is actually an operative for Al Qaeda. The win by Danes, who has shined in material from intimate dramas to the Arnold Schwarzenegger scifi action epic Terminator 3, was widely expected. Not at all widely expected was that Damian Lewis would win for his portrayal of the former Marine POW who now turns to Mecca. Lewis was fabulous a decade ago in the classic miniseries Band of Brothers as a noble and heroic World War II paratroop officer. He is every bit as effective in this far more ambiguous role, for which he was very cleverly cast.
As an old X-Files fan, I was happy to see two writer/producers from the ’90s Chris Carter classic — Howard Gordon (who also ran a little show called 24) and Alex Gansa — join with writer Gideon Raff, whose Israeli series inspired Homeland, to win the best writing award for the show’s scintillating pilot.
But as terrific as Homeland is, I’m not sure how they will draw it out for more than a few seasons. It’s not a stable milieu for the leading characters. How long can a CIA officer who’s subjected to electroshock therapy persist in her pursuit of a suspect? How long can a potential Manchurian candidate teeter between acting, not acting, and acting in different ways?
Mad Men is a great novel for television. In a sense, it’s foolhardy to judge it on a week to week episodic basis, just as it would be foolhardy to judge a novel based on one chapter. But that’s how we consume television. (At least, that’s how we traditionally consume television. If you watch a series on disc or as a season download, the experience is different.)
But even though creator Matthew Weiner has a less tumultuous setting for his show than Gordon, Gansa and company have with Homeland, Mad Men has a problem built into its structure, too.
Which is time moving on in its 1960s setting.
Mad Men was absolutely brilliant in its evocation of the early 1960s. But the early ’60s, the mid-’60s, and the late ’60s are quite distinct from each other. The first three seasons run from early 1960 to Christmas 1963. From the early days of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign (in the pilot we learn, in amusing fashion, that our Sterling Coo crew is on the Richard Nixon bandwagon) to the immediate aftermath of his assassination. And while the show is not at all “about” JFK, though he is a persistent presence, it very much stems from a lost period in post-World War II/pre-Vietnam War American history called Camelot, after his favorite musical. A lost paradise, if you will, which, as it happens, was not. It was more of a heyday. It was certainly the high water mark for New York City.
Depicting that period was a big part of the unique value-added of the show. What was old, and, unlike the late ’60s, not overexposed, became new again. It’s the early ’60s look and feel of Mad Men that made the series a fashion and design phenomenon.
Mad Men swept to the Best Drama Emmy in each of the three seasons set in the early ’60s. Season 4, in which the series began to get out of its period comfort zone, felt like a bit of a stretch, but the series was still worthy of the win, though the overall number of Emmys was down. (Just as happened with The West Wing in its fourth and final best drama victory.)
Now the show is heading to the late ’60s, one of the most over-exposed periods in American history, a time of multiple cliches. Mad Men has been good at avoiding cliche. That only gets harder as the decade goes on.
But I’m confident that Weiner and company, which includes a terrific cast playing characters that continue to intrigue, will find a way in Seasons 6 and 7 to conclude this journey in compelling fashion. I’ll be surprised if Mad Men doesn’t get that record fifth Emmy as best dramatic series. And at some point, Jon Hamm, who has created a multi-faceted portrayal, is going to have to win the best actor award for his simply iconic Don Draper.
** 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 $91 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $57 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 $23 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 U.S. Navy is hosting forces from more than 20 nations in the largest naval exercise ever held in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The 12-day event is focused on contingency plans to deal with the prospect of Iran attempting to block the Strait of Hormuz.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … IS POST-PARTISANSHIP PASSE?
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Wisconsin.
On Saturday …
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama attends a campaign event at the Milwaukee Theater in Milwaukee.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Milwaukee Theater.
Incidentally, the Milwaukee Theater, in which Obama is holding that pair of fundraisers, was the place in which Theodore Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt during his 1912 Progressive “Bull Moose” run for the presidency.
After interrogating his would-be assassin, who had shot him in the chest, the former president went on to speak for more than an hour. TR never did have the bullet — the force of which was blunted somewhat by papers and his glasses case — removed from his body.
At 2:40 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Henry Maier Festival Park in Milwaukee.
At 4:40 PM Pacific, Obama departs Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 7:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 7:35 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama has a significant lead in Wisconsin, despite the presence of homeboy Congressman Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate.
On Sunday …
Obama has no scheduled public events.
Here is what his week ahead looks like. You’ll note that it is especially flexible and rather truncated, to account for crisis management and emerging political moves.
The central events of the week are around the annual week of heads of government descending upon New York, a week that has special resonance with all the geopolitical turbulence and uncertainty in the world.
Obama will speak about the turmoil in the Islamic world during his address to the United Nations on Tuesday. This may be as important a speech as his Cairo address in 2009.
On Monday, Obama will travel to New York City to participate in the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. While in New York City, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will also tape an appearance on The View.
On Tuesday, Obama will deliver remarks to the UN General Assembly; the First Lady will attend the event. The President will then speak at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. The President will return to the White House in the evening.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel to Bowling Green and Kent, Ohio for campaign events.
No scheduling information beyond Wednesday for Obama has been released.
Libyan protesters forced an armed jihadist group out of its base in Benghazi.
Conservative Republican rival Mitt Romney has no public events Saturday. He campaigned yesterday in Las Vegas, Nevada, a key swing state where Obama continues to lead.
Congressman Dean Heller, running in a tight race for the U.S. Senate against Las Vegas Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, tellingly stayed away from his party’s standard-bearer in the Silver State. Heller, who represents most of rural Nevada, had no desire to get caught up in Romney’s comments about 47% of the country being deadbeats.
Meanwhile, Obama has plenty of crises to monitor and attempt to manage.
There were big violent demonstrations yesterday in Pakistan, where the government of our putative ally, key to the entire troubled AfPak strategy, called for a day of protest against the Innocence of Muslims movie. Presumably, at least in part, to channel and control sentiment.
If that was the intent, it doesn’t seem to have worked. There were big, violent demonstrations in Islamabad, Karachi, and elsewhere. As many as 20 protesters were killed in confrontations with police and security forces. That can’t have been part of the plan.
Anger was also further stirred up by the reckless French weekly which published highly derogatory satirical images of the Prophet Muhammad.
There were also big anti-American/anti-Western demonstrations Saturday in oil-rich Nigeria, which already boasted a jihadist insurgency.
But in Libya, there were major pro-American demonstrations, protests sparked by the assassination of popular Ambassador Chris Stevens. These demonstrations were much bigger than any of the anti-American protests so far.
In fact, the protesters chased an apparent Al Qaeda affiliated militia, the Ansar al-Sharia, out of its Benghazi headquarters.
A major US Navy exercise in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, aimed at practicing keeping the Strait of Hormuz and other strategic waters clear of mines, got underway Thursday. 24 other nations have joined the US in participating. It’s a 12-day long exercise.
Iran is not attempting to counter so far, at least on the water.
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 Persian/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.
** JERRY BROWN: GEARING UP A CAMPAIGN AT LAST?It’s been a fairly quiet campaign season so far in California with the exception of Proposition 32, the effort to rein in campaign spending by public employee unions by taking away their ability to have automatic paycheck deductions from union members. That effort, of course, is not led by workers upset about the deductions, but by union critics upset about union clout.
It’s a big spending campaign, mostly on the No side, and will likely result in another defeat for the initiative proponents, with a new Field Poll showing it losing as I’ve been suggesting on my New West Notes site.
Why has the campaign season been so quiet? Well, Governor Jerry Brown’s m.o. — a lot of what I’ve called “stealth mode,” not always to the governor’s great pleasure — has a lot to do with that. He is still going through the raft of legislation produced this year. And there are some deeper reasons, which I’ll get to in a few moments. …
Brown has rolled out the Proposition 30 revenue initiative, which raise income taxes on high-income folks and sales taxes (to the tune of a quarter cent) on all on a temporary basis, on several occasions now. Yet the campaign has never been especially sustained, either on the yes or no side.
Now, with just over six weeks to go, the rubber must meet the road at last.
There’s a new Field Poll showing Prop 30 holding a 15-point lead, 51-36. That’s down a few points, which is within the margin of error of the poll, which was taken over an inordinately long period of time, nearly two weeks. Which means the undecided has gone up slightly.
The result comes after a spate of bad publicity for the initiative highlighting the state parks controversy and the controversial high-speed rail program. Which, as readers know, has its sources of funding separate from the state budget, not that that gets properly reported or anything.
Despite the controversy, Brown’s job approval rating has actually improved slightly, back up to the high 40s, with a 47-38 edge over those disapproving.
Intriguingly, the initiative, which is backed by more independents than oppose it is more favored, is more favored by relatively well-off voters than by lower income voters. That’s because it has an Achilles heel, in the form of the slight rise in the sales tax.
Absent the sales tax hike, Prop 30 would sail through.
So Brown is going to have to convince people that a little bit of shared sacrifice is necessary to avert a bad result for all.
Will he get out of stealth mode to do that?
Despite a subterranean $4 million from the Koch brothers interests, the Prop 32 initiative to remove public employee union ability to deduct political campaign funds from their members’ paychecks is trending rapidly down to defeat. This despite a cleverly constructed hook making the measure appear to be evenhanded in clamping down on corporate and labor spending, causing many observers to believe that the initiative would finally pass after two earlier failures. That means labor and the rest of the Democratic Party coalition can focus in on Brown’s temporary tax hike measure, Prop 30, which has been ahead all along.
But there is an intriguing wild card factor.
You already know about heiress Molly Munger’s role, spending mega-millions to promote her essentially stillborn Prop 38 initiative to impose an income tax hike on nearly all Californians to direct more funding to schools.
Now her brother, who is a physicist at Stanford — she’s a lawyer in LA — is in the game with a $4.1 million contribution at the beginning of the week to a shadowy outfit called the Small Business Action Committee (SBAC). Both Molly and Charlie, as he is known, are the children of billionaire investor Charles Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner.
True Cali political junkies know what the SBAC outfit is, but here it is for the rest. It’s a political action committee run by career anti-tax/small government activist Joel Fox, former director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. He runs a blog called Fox and Hounds, almost entirely written by conservatives to very conservative activists and lobbyists, and gets involved, usually on the far right side of things, in California campaigns.
In 2010, he used his Small Business Action Committee — of which I see no real evidence of small business involvement, aside from the committee itself — as a vehicle for nearly $2 million in attack ads against Brown. They were supposedly issue advocacy ads, so Fox refused to divulge the actual contributors.
But you can bet they weren’t small businesses. No one other than Fox himself is cited as a current member of the Small Business Action Committee on the entity’s web site.
No board of directors is cited, no board of advisors, well, you get the picture. I believe that James Lacey, a well-known hard right political lawyer, is the SBAC legal counsel. So that would make two members I know of.
In the first half of 2012, the Small Business Action Committee PAC raised about $60,000. Since then, it has raised about $4.75 million from three sources: Munger’s $4,091,499.84, (Interesting number, no?) $300,000 from Otter Capital, which is a private equity firm, and $350,000 from the New Majority PAC, a high-roller Republican fundraising group.
And not a small business among them.
Before his sister emerged from relative obscurity — I’d never heard of her before she surfaced as a big initiative proponent — Charlie Munger, as he is known, was the younger Munger of note in California political circles. I’ve met him a few times. He seems a nice guy.
His involvement in California politics has been decidedly on the mod Republican side till now. He only began in politics eight years ago as a volunteer in future former state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner’s 2004 Assembly race in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is before Poizner went hard right in his run for the 2010 gubernatorial nomination.
Munger then became a big backer of political reform measures, notably redistricting reform.
So what he is up to now?
That’s unclear.
Munger may have been motivated to try to clip the wings of public employee unions with Prop 32, which the SBAC, which is to say Joel Fox, is a longtime supporter of. But that is going to lose.
Fox, an amiable fellow I’ve known a long time, is one of the three co-chairs of the No on 30 campaign, along with the guy who replaced him as director of the Howard Jarvis group and another right-winger who has also made a career of opposing taxes. And that campaign has languished. The California Chamber of Commerce is formally neutral and Prop 30 has some major business support, as well as the staunch backing of labor and the Democratic Party.
Does Munger want his money to go to try to tip the balance on Prop 30? Does he want to change his image from amiable reformer to something else?
With Prop 32 now losing, the California Teachers Association has just given $3.5 million to Prop 30. That means its warchest is closing in on $20 million.
How would it look for a few really rich people to try to fund the case that voters should vote down a quarter cent sales tax hike when the great bulk of the tax hike is on rich people like themselves?
Some questions answer themselves.
Meanwhile, Brown has worked to demonstrate reform and increased governmental efficiency as he asks Californians to approve temporary tax hikes. …
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILES. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hosts a one-day introductory conference for his new USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy on Monday at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In the morning, following opening remarks by USC President President C. L. Max Nikias, Institute Global Director Bonnie Reiss, and Institute Academic Director Nancy Staudt, Schwarzenegger will lead a panel discussion of prominent U.S. senators and governors in a discussion of post-partisanship.
ABC News commentator Cokie Roberts will moderate the discussion between Schwarzenegger, U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New Mexico Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, and former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
The luncheon will feature Nobel Prize-winning Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Dr. Ravendra Pachauri in a discussion facilitated by LA broadcast journalist Conan Nolan with Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster on localizing approaches to global problems on climate, energy, and the environment.
In the afternoon, Schwarzenegger will lead another panel discussion, this one on the power of innovation from the standpoint of leaders in media and Hollywood. Moderated by BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, the discussion with Schwarzenegger will be joined by director James Cameron, Universal Studios president Ron Meyer, Lionsgate co-chairman Rob Friedman, Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine, and Imagine Entertainment chairman Brian Grazer.
** 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.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama criticizes the House of Representatives for leaving town without finishing important work on the economy. The House did have time to take a few dozen pointless votes to rescind the national health care law, however.
** 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 $92.89 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $59 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 $21 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.
Space Shuttle Endeavour landed safely this afternoon at Los Angeles International Airport after a whirlwind aerial tour around California landmarks. In a few weeks, after being prepped, it will move to its final home at the California Science Center.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … JERRY BROWN GEARS UP FOR A BIG ELECTION and PAST POST-PARTISANSHIP?
** QUICK HITS. A bad day for conservative Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, who gave fresh life to the ongoing questions about how he made his vast wealth by releasing 20 years of commentary about his taxes without releasing his taxes even as he fell behind in more key swing state polls. … Meanwhile, running mate Paul Ryan, an advocate of privatizing Medicare, was booed at the AARP conference. … Romney might be able to make some serious hay about the American deaths last week in Libya on the 9/11 anniversary, and the anti-US demonstrations sweeping our ally Pakistan today. If he hadn’t messed up so badly last week, that is. …. You know what I think about this race. I made it clear last January. … The idea that the defeat of Barack Obama by a corporate takeover artist was some sort of slam dunk was simply non-serious.
** JERRY-RIGGING: A $4 MILLION QUESTION. With the Prop 32 initiative to remove public employee union ability to deduct political campaign funds from their members’ paychecks trending rapidly down to defeat — despite a cleverly constructed hook making the measure appear to be evenhanded in clamping down on corporate and labor spending, causing many observers to believe that the initiative would finally pass after two earlier failures — labor and the rest of the Democratic Party coalition can focus in on passing Governor Jerry Brown’s temporary tax hike measure, Prop 30, which has been ahead all along.
But there is an intriguing wild card factor.
You already know about heiress Molly Munger’s role here, spending mega-millions to promote her essentially stillborn Prop 38 initiative to impose an income tax hike on nearly all Californians to direct more funding to schools.
Now her brother, who is a physicist at Stanford — she’s a lawyer — is in the game with a $4.1 million contribution at the beginning of the week to a shadowy outfit called the Small Business Action Committee (SBAC). Both Molly and Charlie, as he is known, are the children of billionaire investor Charles Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner.
True Cali junkies know what the SBAC outfit is, but here it is for the rest. It’s a political action committee run by career anti-tax/small government activist Joel Fox, former director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. He runs a blog called Fox and Hounds, almost entirely written by conservative to very conservative activists and lobbyists, and gets involved, usually on the far right side of things, in California campaigns.
In 2010, he used his Small Business Action Committee — of which I see no real evidence of small business involvement, aside from the committee itself — as a vehicle for nearly $2 million in attack ads against Brown. They were supposedly issue advocacy ads, so Fox refused to divulge the actual contributors.
But you can bet they weren’t small businesses. No one other than Fox himself is cited as a current member of the Small Business Action Committee on the entity’s web site.
No board of directors is cited, no board of advisors, well, you get the picture. I believe that James Lacey, a well-known hard right political lawyer, is the SBAC legal counsel. So that would make two members I know of.
In the first half of 2012, the Small Business Action Committee PAC raised about $60,000. Since then, it has raised about $4.75 million. From three sources: Munger’s $4,091,499.84. (Interesting number, no?) $300,000 from Otter Capital, which is a private equity firm. And $350,000 from the New Majority PAC, a high-roller Republican fundraising group.
And not a small business among them.
Before his sister emerged from relative obscurity — I’d never heard of her before she surfaced as a big initiative proponent — Charlie Munger, as he is known, was the younger Munger of note in California political circles. I’ve met him a few times. He seems a nice guy.
His involvement in California politics has been decidedly on the mod side till now. He was a volunteer in future former state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner’s 2004 Assembly race in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is before Poizner went hard right in his run for the 2010 gubernatorial nomination.
Munger then became a big backer of political reform measures, notably redistricting reform.
So what he is up to now?
That’s unclear.
Munger may have been motivated to try to clip the wings of public employee unions with Prop 32, which the SBAC, which is to say, Joel Fox, is a longtime supporter of. But Prop 32 is going to lose, dashing the expectations of many who thought its time had finally come.
Fox, an amiable fellow I’ve known a long time, is one of the three co-chairs of the No on 30 campaign, along with the guy who replaced him as director of the Howard Jarvis group and another right-winger. And that campaign has languished. The California Chamber of Commerce is formally neutral and Prop 30 has some major business support, as well as the staunch backing of labor and the Democratic Party.
Does Munger want his money to go to try to tip the balance on Prop 30? Does he want to change his image from amiable reformer to something else?
Stay tuned.
With Prop 32 now losing, the California Teachers Association has just given $3.5 million to Prop 30. That means the Yes on 30 war chest is closing in on $20 million.
How would it look for a few really rich people to try to fund the case that voters should vote down a quarter cent sales tax hike when the great bulk of the tax hike is on rich people like themselves?
Some questions answer themselves.
Erstwhile US ally Pakistan was awash today in violent protests against the infamous anti-Islam movie from America Innocence of Muslims and very derogatory images of the religion’s prophet in a French weekly. Nearly 20 protesters died.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Virginia.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then departed the White House on Marine One en route Woodbridge, Virginia.
After arriving, he delivered remarks via satellite at the AARP Life@50+ National Event & Expo from
Obama then delivered remarks at a campaign event at G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge, Virginia.
At 11:10 AM Pacific, Obama departs Woodbridge, Virginia.
At 11:30 AM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Conservative Republican rival Mitt Romney campaigns this afternoon in Las Vegas, Nevada, a key swing state where Obama continues to lead.
Obama has plenty of crises to monitor and attempt to manage.
There were big violent demonstrations today in Pakistan, where the government of our putative ally, key to the entire troubled AfPak strategy, called for a day of protest against the Innocence of Muslims movie. Presumably, at least in part, to channel and control sentiment.
If that was the intent, it doesn’t seem to have worked. There were big, violent demonstrations in Islamabad, Karachi, and elsewhere. As many as 20 protesters were killed in confrontations with police and security forces.
I doubt that was part of the plan.
Anger was also further stirred up by the reckless French weekly which published highly derogatory satirical images of the Prophet Muhammad.
And of course there is ample anger against the US already, for reasons often discussed here.
With increasing criticism around the murder of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday launched a task force to investigate the deadly 9/11 anniversary attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
Today she finally characterized it as a “terrorist attack.” For more than a week, the State Department position was that the deaths occurred as a result of protest that got out of control.
On the positive side of things, more than 30,000 people demonstrated today in Benghazi, Libya, against the jihadist militias and in favor of the US.
That’s a bigger demonstration than any against the US.
A major US Navy exercise in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, aimed at practicing keeping the Strait of Hormuz and other strategic waters clear of mines, got underway yesterday. 24 other nations have joined the US in participating, though the bulk of the forces, and all command and control, are USN.
Iran responded with some saber rattling about new anti-air systems, but Iranian forces have stayed away from the Navy task force.
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 Persian/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.
Thousands watched Friday morning from nearby rooftops and along a bridge as the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour, strapped to the back of a modified jumbo jet, circled Sacramento and San Francisco before heading to its final home in Los Angeles. Watch it soar over the State Capitol and the Golden Gate Bridge.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
In another sign that, as I’ve suggested, Prop 32, the latest bid to hamstring California’s public employee union spending on campaigns, is going down to defeat, the California Teachers Association yesterday gave $3.5 million to Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 revenue initiative.
And a new Field Poll has the initiative now losing, as I expected, 38-44.
A Field Poll yesterday has Brown’s Prop 30 still well ahead, 51-36. That’s down a few points since the last sounding in, I believe, July, with those points moving to undecided.
Brown had some serious bad press to deal with around the state parks controversy and the controversy over the high-speed rail program, but that has largely been weathered.
Brown’s job approval rating, intriguingly, actually went up during this period, with Brown’s job approval among California voters now at 47% and disapproval at 38%.
The California Secretary of State’s office announced that 43.3% of the state’s voters are Democrats, 30.1% are Republicans, and 21.3% are independents.
** 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 $93 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $59 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 $21 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.
President Barack Obama said conservative rival Mitt Romney hasn’t “gotten around a lot” if he believes that 47% of Americans consider themselves “victims” and entitled to being supported by the government.
** QUICK HITS. In another sign that, as I’ve suggested, Prop 32, the latest bid to hamstring California’s public employee union spending on campaigns, is going down to defeat, the California Teachers Association today gave $3.5 million to Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 revenue initiative. … In what may be his last trip to California before the election, President Barack Obama, who has a huge lead here, will attend fundraisers in LA and the SF Bay Area on October 7th and 8th. … With increasing criticism around the murder of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today launched a task force to investigate the deadly 9/11 anniversary attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … JERRY BROWN GEARS UP FOR A BIG ELECTION and PAST POST-PARTISANSHIP?
** JERRY-RIGGING: GETTING READY TO ROLL? It’s been a fairly quiet campaign season so far in California, with the exception of Proposition 32, the effort to rein in campaign spending by public employee unions by taking away their ability to have automatic paycheck deductions from union members. That effort, of course, is not led by workers upset about the deductions, but by union critics upset about union clout.
It’s a big spending campaign, mostly on the No side, and will likely result in another defeat for the initiative proponents.
Governor Jerry Brown is still going through the raft of legislation produced this year. He has rolled out the Proposition 30 revenue initiative, which raise income taxes on high-income folks and sales taxes on all on a temporary basis, on several occasions now. Yet the campaign has never been especially sustained, either on the yes or no side.
Now, with less than seven weeks to go, the rubber must meet the road at last.
As I mentioned this morning, in the daily “From the Jerry Files” item below, there’s a new Field Poll showing Prop 30 holding a 15-point lead, 51-36. That’s down a few points, which is within the margin of error of the poll, which was taken over an inordinately long period of time, nearly two weeks. Which means the undecided has gone up slightly.
The result comes after a spate of bad publicity for the initiative highlighting the state parks controversy and the controversial high-speed rail program. Which, as readers know, has its sources of funding separate from the state budget, not that that gets properly reported or anything.
Intriguingly, the initiative, which is backed by more independents than oppose it is more favored, is more favored by relatively well-off voters than by lower income voters. That’s because it has an achilles heel, in the form of the slight rise in the sales tax.
Absent the sales tax hike, Prop 30 would sail through.
So Brown is going to have to convince people that a little bit of shared sacrifice is necessary to avert a bad result for all.
Will he get out of stealth mode to do that?
I’ll have more, coming up soon.
** NEW SURVEY: DEMOCRATIC VOTER ENTHUSIASM INCREASING, NOW SURPASSING THAT OF REPUBLICANS. For much of the past two years, one of the dominant media themes has been that Democrats are demoralized and Republicans are energized. A new Gallup Poll survey reveals increasing Democratic voter enthusiasm, especially in swing state battlegrounds.
In fact, Democratic voters are now more enthusiastic than Republican voters.
So much for the media conventional wisdom.
Voters in the 12 states USA Today and Gallup consider the key swing states that could decide the 2012 presidential election are now significantly more enthusiastic about voting this fall than they were in June. Six in 10 (59%) are either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic, up from 46%. …
Voter enthusiasm in these states has grown among members of both political parties; however, Democrats’ level has increased more. Thus, whereas equal percentages of Democrats and Republicans were enthusiastic in June, Democrats are now significantly more enthusiastic than Republicans, 73% vs. 64%.
Independents’ enthusiasm also jumped substantially over this period — up 18 points, similar to the 20-point gain among Democrats; however, independents’ enthusiasm still lags behind that of both partisan groups. …
Gallup finds a similar pattern among voters nationwide. Overall, 55% of U.S. registered voters in the latest poll are either extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in this fall’s election, up from 43% in June. This includes a 19-percentage-point increase among Democrats and roughly 10-point increases among independents and Republicans. …
The rise in Democratic enthusiasm among swing-state voters is notable from the perspective that the party’s supporters are more energized after that party’s convention than before it, and that Democratic enthusiasm for voting now exceeds that of Republicans. …
There were several vehement anti-American protests today in Pakistan and Afghanistan, our putative allies, seizing on the infamous Innocence of Muslims video.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … JERRY BROWN GEARS UP FOR A BIG ELECTION and PAST POST-PARTISANSHIP?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Florida.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Miami, Florida.
At 11:20 AM Pacific, Obama participates in a town hall hosted by Univision at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
At 2:25 PM Pacific, Obama departs Miami on Air Force One en route Tampa, Florida.
At 3:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Tampa, Florida.
At 3:50 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a private fundraiser in Tampa.
At 6:05 PM Pacific, Obama departs Tampa on Air Force One en route to Washington.
At 8:10 PM Pacific, Obama lands at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 8:25 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
The Arctic Sea ice kept melting after my post-convention piece on the unmentioned elephant in the room of political/media culture. On Sunday it hit a low of only 24% coverage of the Arctic Sea, 20% less than the previous low reached in 2007.
More rumblings today and yesterday about Al Qaeda involvement in the attack on 9/11 anniversary attack on the US consulate. It centers especially on a Guantanom detainee released by the Bush/Cheney Administration in 2007 into the custody of the Gaddafi regime. Which released him on his honor.
Lucky for Obama that Mitt Romney, following his wildly off-base attack last week, is the boy who cried wolf.
But Congressional Republicans can make some hay out of obvious security lapses around the 9/11 anniversary.
A major US Navy exercise in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, aimed at practicing keeping the Strait of Hormuz and other strategic waters clear of mines, got underway this morning.
There were also relatively small but virulent anti-American demonstrations today in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with more expected tomorrow.
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 Persian/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.
The Space Shuttle Endeavour took off atop a modified transport plane from a Houston airport Thursday, beginning its journey to retirement in California, where it will be put on permanent display in a museum. It lands at the historic Edwards Air Force Base flight test center in the California high desert this afternoon and will do flybys across the Golden State on Friday, with Bay Area and Capitol flybys in the vicinity of 8:30 AM in the morning, before landing in Los Angeles where it will make its home in a few weeks at the California Science Center.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
A Field Poll yesterday had Obama moving from an 18-point lead in California to 24 points, 58-34 over Mitt Romney. Obama had a 24-point margin in the Golden State over John McCain in 2008, 61-37.
And a Field Poll today has Brown’s Prop 30 still well ahead, 51-36. That’s down a few points since the last sounding in, I believe, July, with those points moving to undecided.
As usual, the Field Poll was taken over nearly a two-week period of time, which is something I think makes the poll somewhat problematic.
Brown had some serious bad press to deal with around the state parks controversy and the controversy over the high-speed rail program, but that has largely been weathered.
Brown’s job approval rating, intriguingly, actually went up during this period, with Brown’s job approval among California voters now at 47% and disapproval at 38%.
** 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 $92 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $58 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 $22 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.
Palestinians reacted today with anger to Mitt Romney’s claim in a speech at a Florida fundraiser that they have no interest in peace with Israel.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … JERRY BROWN GEARS UP FOR A BIG ELECTION and PAST POST-PARTISANSHIP?
** QUICK HITS.The Arctic Sea ice kept melting after my post-convention piece on the unmentioned elephant in the room of political/media culture. On Sunday it hit a low of only 24% coverage of the Arctic Sea, 20% less than the previous low reached in 2007. … More rumblings today about Al Qaeda involvement in the attack on 9/11 anniversary attack on the US consulate. Lucky for President Barack Obama that Mitt Romney, following his wildly off-base attack last week, is the boy who cried wolf. … A new Field Poll has Obama moving from an 18-point lead in California to 24 points, 58-34. Obama had a 24-point margin in the Golden State over John McCain in 2008, 61-37.
** HOW ROMNEY SHOULD HAVE ATTACKED OBAMA: ANATOMY OF A GEOPOLITICAL CRISIS.Clearly, there is no shortage of Mitt Romney statements that should be, as the man himself put it in a scrambling press avail before an Orange County, California fundraiser Monday night, more “elegantly stated.” But the only Romney screw-up that particularly concerns me is the only one that will likely matter after the election.
Incidentally, amidst the disaster and tragedy of Benghazi, there is one very large silver lining to the tumult stirred up around the fringe right Christian fundamentalist “movie” attacking Islam: The demonstrations, while furious and widespread, haven’t been very big.
Romney missed a big opportunity last week when he so foolishly and shallowly attacked President Barack Obama after the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt. Because mistakes were made by the Obama Administration, mistakes that matter far beyond the usual vicious campaign ping pong, that call into question Obama’s strategy as he attempts to execute America’s geopolitical pivot from over-engagement with the Islamic world of the Middle East and Central Asia to increased engagement with Asia and the Pacific.
An archive of my pieces related to the Pivot is located here.
Instead of making a ludicrously slipshod attack on Obama for supposedly failing to uphold American values — presumably the value of idiotically attacking a religion and provoking an international crisis — and siding with the protesters who stormed the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the US embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Romney could have and should have stopped and thought for a moment. Then he should have attacked on a much more obviously relevant set of points.
Why was our consulate in Benghazi — and our popular ambassador to Libya, whose popularity threatened jihadist interests — so lightly guarded on the anniversary of 9/11?
Why hasn’t all of Obama’s vaunted public diplomacy in the Islamic world bought America enough credit to head off wild protests against a truly preposterous little movie?
And, this is related to the second question, what in heaven’s name does Obama think he is accomplishing in Afghanistan?
Admittedly, the third point is something of a reach for a guy like Romney, a reflexive super-hawk whose invariable answer to geopolitical crises is to “get tough,” not that he’s often, if ever, able to explain what that means or how it would work.
Let’s take these one at a time, then analyze where things were and are on the Innocence of Muslims crisis. …
** NEW SURVEY: 2 TO 1 NEGATIVE REACTION TO ROMNEY’S CHARACTERIZATION OF NEARLY HALF THE COUNTRY. A new Gallup Poll survey has bad news for Mitt Romney.
By nearly a 2 to 1 ratio, voters say that his now notorious comments denigrating 47% of Americans as irresponsible losers who will vote for President Barack Obama because they want the government to take care of them make it less likely that they will vote for Romney.
But the good news, as it were, for Romney is that a plurality says it will make no difference.
And you thought that people are a bit weary of the rhetoric.
Yet there is bad news again, for independents also disdain Romney’s attitude by a 2 to 1 ratio. But over half say it makes no difference.
Americans have a more negative than positive immediate reaction to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s comments, secretly caught on video, about the 47% of Americans whom he said are Obama supporters and dependent on the government. Thirty-six percent of voters say Romney’s comments make them less likely to vote for him, while 20% say the remarks make them more likely to vote for him, and 43% say the comments won’t make a difference. …
There are also differences by income in response to Romney’s comments. Those with annual household incomes of less than $24,000 are slightly more likely than average to say the comments make them less likely to vote for Romney (42%). Those making at least $90,000 a year are more evenly split, with 28% saying “less likely” and 24% “more likely.” …
The immediate impact of Romney’s comments appears to be more negative than positive, which suggests that the comments could hurt Romney’s ultimate chances of winning the election. Still, the long-term impact of any news event that flares up in the heat of a presidential campaign is difficult to determine. This is particularly true in today’s more polarized news environment in which audiences of conservative-oriented vs. liberal-oriented media outlets are likely to hear quite different interpretations of the flap, and from different commentators. Regardless, both campaigns will clearly be heavily spinning the story in the days ahead.
Veering off his campaign’s just announced plan to focus on the specifics of his economic policy, conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today doubled down on defending his attack on President Barack Obama for relying on the support of vast numbers of Americans who supposedly choose government dependency over taking responsibility for their lives.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … HOW ROMNEY SHOULD HAVE ATTACKED OBAMA: ANATOMY OF A GEOPOLITICAL CRISIS.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
Obama and Biden then met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
Obama then took part in an Ambassador Credentialing Ceremony in the Oval Office.
Following that, Obama and Biden met for lunch in the Private Dining Room.
Yes to the obvious, conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is continuing to struggle to deal with revelations of his various fundraiser remarks denouncing nearly half of all Americans as supposed free ride junkies who won’t take responsibility for their lives and blah blah which is why they are all voting for Barack Obama. Actually, they are not all voting for Obama, as Romney should know.
But if Romney apologized, he would be torn to shreds by far right media types, who were already lamenting that his campaign was nearly over.
Meanwhile, as his campaign moves to capitalize on Romney’s mistakes — and to defend against Romney’s desperate attempt to use a 14-year old tape in which then state Senator Obama says he favors making government more efficient to justify “redistributionist” policies, aka the progressive tax system — Obama has plenty of crises to monitor and manage.
The crisis over the anti-Islam movie evidently produced by still shadowy right-wing Christian fundamentalists is abating.
But another iteration may spin up anew, for a French weekly chose this moment to publish “satirical” images of a naked Prophet Muhammad.
France has just closed 20 of its embassies anticipating a wild reaction to the obvious provocation.
The US Navy is preparing for a major exercise in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, with a special emphasis on clearing mines. Iran, of course, has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz.
The exercise is set to begin on Thursday.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Beijing, where he met today with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who will become China’s new leader.
Xi had disappeared from public site for the past few weeks, including during Clinton’s Beijing visit earlier this month. A cottage industry of latter-day Kremlinologists has sprung up around the PRC’s largely opaque authoritarian government, attempting to divine meaning from things which may or may not hold meaning. These folks had a field day spinning up various theories about Xi’s disappearance. But now he is back.
Panetta is trying to spin up greater US/PRC military liaison even as the US moves to counter China as it becomes increasingly aggressive in claiming the South China Sea and faces off against Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Panetta is saying that the US is not trying to “contain” China but to “engage” it in new ways so that the two Pacific powers can work better together.
Nice.
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 Persian/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.
The retired Space Shuttle Endeavour is on its way from Cape Canaveral, Florida to its new home in California. It’s going to take its time, doing leisurely flybys along the way, starting with today over Houston, Texas. Endeavour will fly over the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento on Friday morning before making its way to Los Angeles. In a few weeks, it will be on display in the California Science Museum there.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
A good day yesterday for Governor Jerry Brown in populous Southern California. (Note to governor: The real dividing line between the northern half of the state in population and its southern half is Wilshire Blvd. in LA.) Brown, working hard to demonstrate reform as he asks Californians to approve temporary tax hikes, signed a major update to the workers compensation system at events in San Diego and LA, joined by business and labor leaders. (Left in the lurch in this bipartisan legislation biz/labor kumbaya are lawyers and doctors in the work comp system.)
Meanwhile, Brown’s would-be initiative rival, heiress Molly Munger, who wants to raise income taxes for virtually all to fund education, put another $5 million into her essentially self-funded initiative drive, bring the total to $47 million. (That’s a little joke. I don’t know off-hand how much she’s spent, and suspect it won’t particularly matter.)
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
** 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 $95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $61 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 $19 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 mostly Californian cast of Innocence of Muslims is beginning to speak out against the strange film’s even stranger producers for their betrayal and manipulation. The wild protests against the film and the US “role” in it have ramped down, though they broadened geographically over the weekend.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ANATOMY OF A CRISIS: WHAT ROMNEY SHOULD HAVE CRITICIZED OBAMA FOR.
** QUICK HITS.A good day for Governor Jerry Brown in populous Southern California. (Note to governor: The real dividing line between the northern half of the state in population and its southern half is Wilshire Blvd. in LA.) Brown, working hard to demonstrate reform as he asks Californians to approve temporary tax hikes, signed a major update to the workers compensation system at events in San Diego and LA, joined by business and labor leaders. (Left in the lurch in this bipartisan legislation biz/labor kumbaya are lawyers and doctors in the work comp system.) … Meanwhile, Brown’s would-be initiative rival, heiress Molly Munger, who wants to raise income taxes for virtually all to fund education, put another $5 million into her essentially self-funded initiative drive, bring the total to $47 million. (That’s a little joke. I don’t know off-hand how much she’s spent, and suspect it won’t particularly matter.) … And yes to the obvious, conservative Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Meg Whitman’s mentor, is continuing to struggle to deal with revelations of his various fundraiser remarks denouncing nearly half of all Americans as supposed free ride junkies who won’t take responsibility for their lives and blah blah which is why they are all voting for Barack Obama. … Actually, they are not all voting for Obama, as Romney should know.
** NEW SURVEY: UNEMPLOYMENT DIPS. A new Gallup Poll survey has some good news for the country, and for President Barack Obama, on the economy.
The unemployment rate appears to be heading down, somewhat, and is at a low in Gallup surveys since they began in January 2010.
The rate without seasonal adjustment is 7.9%, down from 8.1% in August, and down from 8.6% a year ago.
That’s a nice little improvement over the last year, but it is only a little improvement for a 12-month period, reminding again how tepid this economic recovery.
But it may well be that, to borrow an old Jerry Brown phrase, people’s expectations have been lowered, and that, to use a newer phrase, the tepid recovery is “baked in” to popular expectations with regard to the election. It’s all part of what I call “muddling through,” the new American economic aspiration.
It doesn’t hurt Obama that he is running against Mitt Romney, who advocates doubling down on the Bush/Cheney policies that most moderate voters identify as the cause of the ongoing economic malaise.
The percentage of Americans working part time but looking for full-time work is 8.6% in mid-September, as measured without seasonal adjustment, down from the 9.0% in August. This is also down from 9.7% a year ago and the lowest level for this measure since the 8.4% of November 2010. …
Gallup’s U.S. underemployment measure, which combines the unemployed with those working part time but looking for full-time work, is 16.6% in mid-September, down from 17.1% in August. The underemployment rate is also down substantially from 18.3% last September and is at its lowest level since January 2010. …
While unadjusted unemployment has improved so far in September, at least part of the improvement is likely due to a seasonal increase in hiring related to Halloween — which is now a major sales period for the nation’s retailers. In fact, the 0.2 seasonal adjustment that the government applied in September 2011 would suggest virtually all the improvement is seasonally related. Further, Gallup’s unadjusted unemployment rate has remained between 7.9% and 8.2% since May — implying a relatively flat job market. Still, the mid-September unadjusted unemployment rate, if maintained for the remainder of the month, is at a new low and is substantially below the 8.6% of a year ago.
It is also worth noting that the percentage of those working part-time but wanting full-time work is near the 8.4% low for this measure. As a result, the underemployment rate is at a new low. This is often seen as a good sign for the U. S. economy because it implies more part-time workers are getting full-time jobs.
Republican Mitt Romney, in a hastily called press conference late Monday prior to a fundraiser in Orange County, said a video clip in which he called nearly half of Americans self-anointed “victims” who “refuse to take responsibility for their lives” was “not elegantly stated” and was “spoken off the cuff.”
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … ANATOMY OF A CRISIS: WHAT ROMNEY SHOULD HAVE CRITICIZED OBAMA ON.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and New York City.
Obama has received the intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then welcomed the Women’s National Basketball Association Champion Minnesota Lynx to the White House
East Room.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama departs Joint Base Andrews on Air Force One en route to New York City.
At 12:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in New York City.
At 1:40 PM Pacific, Obama sits for an interview on The Late Show with David Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater.
At 4:40 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
At 6:45 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the 40/40 Club.
At 8:05 PM Pacific, Obama departs New York City on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 9:10 PM Pacific, Obama arrives at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 9:25 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Mitt Romney was largely off the campaign trail over the weekend.
It seems like he does best staying off the campaign trail, something he should be able to fully embrace in seven weeks.
Some particularly clueless, but not at all atypical remarks, of Romney’s at a Florida fundraiser hosted by a hedge fund billionaire in May are reverberating throughout the campaign.
In these remarks, Romney manages to insult nearly half of America, as well Latinos and Palestinians for good measure.
I’m not going to indulge in much on this, other than to say that it’s all of a piece with attitudes he has expressed before and doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax … My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Meanwhile, in matters that will matter after the election, the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate in spectacular fashion, with several spectacular Taliban attacks, including a continuation of “green on blue” violence leading to the US and NATO calling off joint operations with their Afghan colleagues.
But on the other hand, the wave of protests against the ludicrously anti-Islamic video Innocence of Muslims is abating.
A Taliban suicide bomber today killed more than a dozen people outside Kabul International Airport. It’s the latest in a wave of attacks, largely carried out by Afghan security personnel against Americans and other NATO troops.
Much more to follow.
On the other side of the world, tension between China and Japan is escalating with the 81st anniversary of the Japanese invasion of China and accelerating claims by both nations to a group of islands in the East China Sea.
This led over the weekend to waves of anti-Japanese demonstrations across China.
While this develops, nations on the South China Sea are meeting in Manila to discuss how to deal with China’s claim to virtually the entire body of water.
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 Persian/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 Southern California.
Brown signs his updating of workers compensation reform today at events in San Diego and Los Angeles.
He signed the bill at an event early this morning at Diego & Son Printing Inc. in San Diego.
At 2 PM, he repeats the event at the Walt Disney Studio Lot in Burbank.
In both events, he is joined by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Assembly Speaker John Perez, and business, labor, and community leaders including state Chamber of Commerce president Alan Zaremberg and state Federation of Labor chief Art Pulaski.
Brown is continuing to go through bills from the recently concluded legislative session.
And he is working on his Prop 30 revenue initiative.
“The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.”
Harvey Dent
The Dark Knight
Summer is nearly over and the summer movie season is winding down to its customary clunker of a conclusion. The two films expected to achieve popular dominance, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, both did. But tragedy intervened from the start to blunt the latter film’s commercial impact — it was on a near record opening weekend trajectory when madness struck (though having passed a billion dollars in global box office over Labor Day can hardly be a disappointment) — and blur its cultural impact.
There are, of course, major spoilers ahead, so please be aware.
Consideration of The Dark Knight Rises and the trilogy of films it completes, has been obscured by the horrific shootings at its midnight debut in Aurora, Colorado. Naturally, our culture worried and kvetched endlessly and, in the end (which always comes when a tragedy is milked to its limit), did nothing about the tragedy, as I suggested would be the case at the time in The Dark Knight Shootings: “All It Takes Is A Little Push.”
The Avengers is a fun and very entertaining film, a marketing triumph for Marvel’s audacious plan to launch multiple superhero franchises and grow them not only for their own sake but for the ultimate goal of launching a superhero super-group. While it’s amusing to spend time with the gang as they prepare to save New York from alien retribution/invasion, especially as they squabble like a ’60s or ’70s rock supergroup, the story is pretty lightweight. There are moments with this estimable cast, but anyone looking for much in the way of depth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to rely on the first Iron Man movie and last year’s Captain America.
In contrast to this, The Dark Knight Rises completes an epic journey into, yes, darkness, personal, social, and political. (With more than a dash of Bond in this 50th year of the film franchise, as it happens.) And in the end, it was darkest, as Harvey Dent proclaimed in The Dark Knight, just before the dawn. Just not for him.
The Dark Knight showed that a comic book movie could be not only big, but epic. That it could thoughtfully engage major themes and concerns in society while providing a thoroughly satisfying entertainment experience. (Though clearly no easy answers on the big questions.) And that it could be one of the most popular films ever while doing it.
The Dark Knight is one of my favorite films, arguably the key film of the past decade. The Dark Knight Rises, powered by Hans Zimmer’s massive score, is busier, juggling multiple threads, but ends as a very satisfying and provocative conclusion to the trilogy.
The Dark Knight Trilogy, which engages many aspects of contemporary culture, has one overarching storyline: Bruce Wayne’s efforts to prevent the destruction of New York City.
Each of the Nolan Batman films revolves around provocateurs and terrorists out to destroy Gotham, i.e., New York City, by bringing out its contradictions and, in the first and final films, finally wiping its people off the map. This is a New York far past the peak we see in the early ’60s heyday period of Mad Men.
New York has been deemed too corrupt and decadent to continue to exist by a highly sophisticated terrorist network. The League of Shadows is not Al Qaeda, but in its ascetic, bone-deep disdain for the lush life of Gotham — more clearly than ever an analogue for Manhattan with all the scenes filmed there — it has some similar concerns.
When we meet the League in Batman Begins, it’s based in a mountain fastness. Nepal in South Asia rather than Afghanistan in Central Asia. Islam is not a factor but some vague sort of Eastern spiritualism is in the wind. Seemingly wrecked by its defeat at Batman’s hands at the end of the first film, it is a factor in the second film only by virtue of having helped create the context for the Joker to flourish.
Yet he, too, wants to destroy Gotham. By manipulating it into destroying itself. (The films tell us nothing of the Joker’s background, as he turns its mystery into a running gag. “Wanna know how I got these scars?” Which does not rule out a League role in his creation.)
Bruce Wayne is one of the most famous of fictional super-rich guys. But Wayne sure doesn’t seem to like his class all that much. In The Dark Knight Rises, he excoriates a big society do he attends as he ends his tenure as a recluse and dashes out again investigating, saying that the money raised for charity is really just to fund self-aggrandizement. The people are “phonies,” the contributions a tax write-off to fuel partying, the events nothing more than celebrations of the ego rather than sincere efforts to help make a difference.
Wayne intrigues for many reasons, not the least of which that he employs his fortune to make a difference. There’s no poking around the edges of things, indulging in lightweight philanthropy, or simple indulgence while concentrating on racking up the profits.
In fact, Wayne only returned to Gotham, and his life as “billionaire Bruce Wayne,” in the first film as a means to an end. He’s very single-minded. There’s no poking around the edges of things, indulging in lightweight philanthropy, or simple indulgence while concentrating on racking up the profits.
Indeed, Wayne never appears in the trilogy as a figure particularly interested in his role as billionaire capitalist. After his seven-year sojourn away from Gotham, depicted in the first film, he returns to begin his fight to change Gotham by taking on its rampant crime and corruption.
He creates the public persona of Bruce Wayne in a calculated manner, just as he creates the Batman. The eccentric playboy billionaire is every bit the fictional creation that the caped crusader is. Perhaps more so, because Wayne seems much less interested in it.
After all, he relied on family butler/confidante Alfred for the concept of “Bruce Wayne.” He certainly didn’t turn to Alfred to come up with the Batman.
Notwithstanding its somewhat corrosive view of the very rich, the trilogy doesn’t see see liberalism, noblesse oblige variant or otherwise, as an effective answer, either. Nor does it embrace Occupy-style social revolt, viewing it rather sardonically as something prone to manipulation, as well as another form of self-aggrandizement. Which, given the evaporation of the Occupy movement, may lend it more weight than it deserves. But Nolan understands the power of the idea, if not its brief and shaky manifestation in the real world last year.
As for liberalism, the trilogy presents it as a failure, albeit one that was only incompletely tried. Bruce Wayne’s father was a sort of New Deal liberal, spending massively on anti-poverty projects and building an extensive cheap public transit system to link the city together before being murdered by a poor man turned to crime.
Wayne’s opponent for most of the The Dark Knight Rises, before his true enemy is revealed, Bane, manipulates populist sentiment to build his power as a warlord.
This is why Bane is able, utilizing Occupy rhetoric, to emerge so successfully as Gotham’s war lord with his coup.
But he is no liberator, he’s a destroyer.
While Bane undoubtedly despises the gullibility and greed of his new Gotham followers, though not his dedicated soldiers, he especially despises the capitalists of Gotham. Told during a daring raid that there is no money for him to steal in the stock exchange, he asks his yuppie interlocutor: “Then why are you here?” One especially unfortunate tycoon learns all too late that paying Bane and his mercenaries to aid in his bid to take over Wayne Enterprises leads only to disaster, as Bane asks him disdainfully if he really imagined that the money gave him power over Bane shortly before crushing his skull.
In addition to engaging, albeit in comic book style, questions of economic crisis and class central to the current American experience, the trilogy engages the changes wrought in the wake of 9/11.
The Dark Knight presents its own version of a “Total Information Awareness” system. Developed in secret by Bruce Wayne as a means of spying on anyone in Gotham, to the horror of Lucius Fox, it’s a thinly veiled metaphorical representation for the surveillance society envisioned by the Bush/Cheney Administration after 9/11.
Lucius Fox is appalled to see some of an earlier invention of his used for the purpose of spying on everyone in Gotham, insisting that is too much power to be concentrated in anyone’s hands. Wayne, insisting that it must be used to find the Joker, tells him that is why he has left the power in Fox’s hands. In the end, with the Joker found and stopped, Wayne allows Fox, who has vowed to resign in protest once the Joker is found, to destroy the system.
And there is the cynical deal to preserve a semblance of public idealism and pass convenient new anti-crime legislation.
The Joker succeeded in bringing Harvey Dent, Gotham’s “white knight” district attorney, down to his level, successfully driving him insane and turning him into a ruthless murderer. But Batman and Police Commissioner James Gordon contrive to sweep all that under the rug and place the blame for Dent’s actions on Batman.
Dent’s unblemished reputation is used to pass sweeping anti-crime legislation which, though the third film is vague about this, apparently does away with some criminal defenses previously in use. But the film makes the subversive point that, although the crime rate is substantially lowered, the corruption of Gotham continues and opportunity for all is not increased.
The trilogy showcases the danger, and at times the necessity, of elements of the surveillance state. But the films argue that it only can stand on a temporary basis. On any permanent basis, it breeds fascism.
As for the public myth, it turns out to be corrosive. Not only for Gordon — on whom it eats away, helping wreck his family — but for the city as well. The law that the myth enables makes it possible to crater the crime rate, but the city is nearly as corrupt and inequitable as before.
It’s certainly bad for Bruce Wayne/Batman as well. Saddened by the loss of childhood sweetheart/crusading prosecutor Rachel Dawes, whom he believes, in another myth, had chosen him over Dent, he becomes a recluse, paying little attention to his business or his life. This is especially so after his one stab at renewed world-changing, a cheap clean energy system from nuclear fusion, becomes untenable. His body significantly damaged from his nocturnal pursuits — remember, Batman has no superpowers, only the technological edge afforded him by great wealth, and can’t afford to lose even one fight — he is something of an emotional and physical wreck as The Dark Knight Rises begins.
And as always, he is a most problematic hero/anti-hero. He’s not a solution for society’s problems, he’s a last resort.
Bruce Wayne, after all, is a vigilante, in the checkered tradition of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, which emerged amidst the chaos of the California Gold Rush, and many others long before the term “vigilante” was used. And Wayne is a vigilante with a difference; he is a masked vigilante. Right up until the conclusion of the trilogy, he is a masked man in all aspects of his life.
Rachel Dawes, well-played by Katie Holmes in the first picture and also well-played by Maggie Gyllenhall in the second, tells him at the end of Batman Begins that her fundamental problem with him is “your mask.” Bruce protests that the Batman mask doesn’t represent who he is, but Rachel tells him his real mask is the face she’s looking at.
“The man I loved, the man who vanished – he never came back at all.”
By the final film, he seems all too aware of this. It’s part of his despair. …
** 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 $95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $61 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 $19 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.
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