The Eurozone debt crisis is worsening the outlook for major developed world economies according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
** SELECTED EXCERPTS, BARACK OBAMA DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS:
“But when all is said and done – when you pick up that ballot to vote – you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation. Over the next few years, big decisions will be made in Washington, on jobs and the economy; taxes and deficits; energy and education; war and peace – decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and our children’s lives for decades to come.
“On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties.
“It will be a choice between two different paths for America.
“A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.
“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one. And by the way – those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.
“But know this, America: Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future. I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country – goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security, and the deficit; a real, achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation. That’s what we can do in the next four years, and that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States.”
** WHILE ONE CLINTON WOWS AT THE OBAMARAMA, ANOTHER PIVOTS TO THE LONG GAME. Separated by some 10,000 miles, Bill and Hillary Clinton are both having an interesting time of it positioning for the future. The former president, of course, just did his level best, and then some, in a tour de force of a speech re-nominating Barack Obama for president, confounding the conventionally minded who thought it was to the Clintons’ long-term advantage for Obama to lose.
The secretary of state is off on her latest geopolitical “Pivot” tour in the Asia Pacific region, laying more groundwork for America’s move from over-engagement with the Islamic world of the Middle East and Central Asia to increased engagement with Asia and the Pacific. With her policies still building toward fruition, her legacy, and foundation for a potential future presidency at stake, the possibility of the bumbling Mitt Romney threatens it all.
Assuming that Hillary Clinton still wants to be president, after a breather from years of frenetic activity, first as a presidential candidate and then secretary of state — and that is my assumption after talking with friends of the Clintons and thinking about their histories — she is playing a long game. And the geopolitical pivot to the Asia Pacific is a central part of it. (You can see my articles relating to the Pivot here.)
Secretary of state is easily the most important office Hillary Clinton has ever held and the big moves she is at the center of will still be in flux as she leaves office at the end of the year. Even though there is much history to suggest that the pivot to the Asia Pacific — especially with the rise of Asian economies and the emergence of China as an increasingly aggressive would-be superpower — is the natural course of American geopolitics and the past decade of invasions in the Islamic world is the oddity, Romney could easily screw everything up. He certainly showed no facility for geopolitics or even the simplest diplomacy on what should have been an easy trip last month to the UK, Israel, and Poland, which he managed to turn into a sort of rolling thunder tour of buffoonery.
Of course, Clinton, who backed the Iraq War, has to take care herself to promote an assertive geopolitics rather than a reckless geopolitics.
I explained here in July why the Clintons’ increasingly likely future moves are tied to Obama’s fate, in “Why the Clintons Need Obama to Win: Uncertainty as Hillary Pushes the Big Geopolitical Pivot.” And lo and behold, last night came the former president to deliver one of the best speeches in recent memory to push Obama toward victory.
Simply put, Bill Clinton did the best job of advancing the argument for Obama (much better than the president himself and his narratively-challenged colleagues have done), the best job of rebutting all Republican attacks on Obama, and the best job of defining the Romney/Ryan ticket as a “double down on the trickle down,” the policies that got America in trouble in the first place. …
** NEW SURVEY: UNEMPLOYMENT TREND APPEARS TO BE FLAT. President Barack Obama got some good news early this morning with word that unemployment filings were down over the past week.
But the news is more mixed in a new Gallup Poll survey.
As Obama prepares to accept re-nomination from the Democratic Party for a second term as president, Gallup’s findings indicate that the nation is in a third straight month of little change in unadjusted unemployment, though the unadjusted number is down very slightly.
U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 8.1% for the month of August, down slightly from 8.3% measured in mid-August and 8.2% for the month of July. Gallup’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August is also 8.1%, a slight uptick from 8.0% at the end of July. …
These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews, conducted by landline and cell phone, with more than 30,000 Americans throughout the month. Gallup calculates a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate by applying the adjustment factor the government used for the same month in the previous year. The government adjusted its July numbers downward last year, but made no adjustment in August, which accounts for the increase in seasonally adjusted unemployment despite the decline in the unadjusted number.
U.S. unemployment declined significantly during the first part of the year, but August marks the third straight month with little change in the unadjusted number. Gallup’s estimate of adjusted unemployment has increased by 0.3 percentage points since June. Despite the lackluster jobs growth, August’s 2012 unadjusted and adjusted unemployment are each more than a full point lower than they were in August 2011. …
President Barack Obama inherited a wreck of an economy, “put a floor under the crash” and laid the foundation for millions of good new jobs, former President Bill Clinton declared Wednesday night in a barn-burning Democratic National Convention address re-nominating his wife’s former opponent for his second term as president. The entire speech plays here below.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … WHILE ONE CLINTON WOWS AT THE OBAMARAMA, ANOTHER PIVOTS TO THE LONG GAME and CONSIDERING THE SEMI-BONDIAN DARK KNIGHT RISES (WHICH JUST ROSE TO $1 BILLION).
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in North Carolina.
At 7:10 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at the Democratic National Convention in the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina. The First Family and Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden attend.
This is Obama’s acceptance speech for his second Democratic nomination to be president of the United States.
Biden speaks earlier.
Obama will remain overnight in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Not a great moment for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa yesterday in Charlotte, where he chaired the Democratic National Convention and called for a voice vote on last minute amendments to return mention of God and support for the hotly disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel to the party platform. Actually, he called three voice votes, none of which seemed to meet the requirement of a two-thirds super-majority to carry, before declaring that the amendments had passed. Thus getting booed in the process.
The language was in the 2008 platform, came out through some mysterious process in the platform, and was reinserted at the insistence of the White House, after coming under attack from Republicans and lobbying from backers of Israel.
It was not always de rigeur to declare Jerusalem Israel’s capital, though in fact it is. Tel Aviv, where Israeli independence was declared, is recognized by most nations as the capital. The U.S. Embassy in Israel is in Tel Aviv. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have regularly blocked implementation of legislation calling for moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
However, all that was essentially washed away by former President Bill Clinton’s speech re-nominating Obama for his second term as president.
The speech is excerpted in the video playing above.
The entire Clinton speech plays below.
Simply put, Clinton did the best job of advancing the argument for Obama, the best job of rebutting all Republican attacks on Obama, and the best job of defining the Romney/Ryan ticket as doubling down on the policies that got America in trouble in the first place.
Clinton ad libbed extensively and went far beyond the time allotted, but the networks all stayed with him into their previously scheduled local news programming in the later time zones.
Which I suspect was also to Clinton’s design.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest big geopolitical “Pivot” tour took her from her two-day stay in Beijing to East Timor. She’s the first secretary of state to visit that nation, and it was there that she watched her husband’s address over an Internet hook-up.
Clinton moves on to Brunei, then finally to the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in Vladivostok, Russia’s great Pacific port.
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 working on the many bills sent on to him by the legislature, which ended its session for the year last Friday night.
He’s also working on his November revenue initiative.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who in his inimitable fashion blasted Brown last week for being “an old retread” who unaccountably crushed Christie’s candidate, billionaire Meg Whitman, in 2010, finally replied yesterday to Brown’s challenge to a fitness contest.
He said he didn’t have time because he is so busy working for the people of New Jersey.
After his unimpressive keynote address last week, I think we’ll be hearing substantially less hype about Christie, who benefited disproportionately from his state being next to the endlessly self-referential New York media market.
Former President Bill Clinton’s Democratic National Convention speech, in its entirety, nominating President Barack Obama for his second term. Obama joins Clinton on stage around the 49-minute mark.
** SO WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED WITH CLINT EASTWOOD? (AND THE PERILS OF ARGUING WITH IMAGINARY OBAMAS). … From my September 4th essay.
** AFTER THE ROMNEYRAMA, AND MORE SERIOUS MATTERS. … From my August 30th essay.
** SPACE, JERRY BROWN’S PLACE, AND A RACE. … From my August 27th essay.
** AN INSULAR ROMNEY STRUGGLES WITH HIS SURPRISINGLY HEARTFELT VEEP PICK AFTER STRIKING OUT INTERNATIONALLY. … From my August 23rd essay.
** RECALLING TOTAL RECALL: INTRIGUE, ULTRA-VIOLENCE, HUMOR AND WHAT ELSE THAT IS MISSING FROM THE SCHWARZENEGGER REMAKES. … From my August 17th essay.
** LONDON’S GRAND OLYMPICS, ON AND OFF THE TRACK. … From my August 13th essay.
** FROM GOVERNATOR TO MOONBEAM. … From my January 3rd, 2011 feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in 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 $97 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $63 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 $17 per barrel from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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| Comments (34) |
Bill Clinton’s speech is so good to see here.
Good news video of President Clinton’s speech.
Awesome!!
Jonas says:
September 6, 2012 at 10:52 am
Bill Clinton’s speech is so good to see here.
That is a good highlight reel…
Jonas says:
September 6, 2012 at 10:58 am
Good news video of President Clinton’s speech.
Hahahah, I love it!!
BB:New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who in his inimitable fashion blasted Brown last week for being “an old retread” who unaccountably crushed Christie’s candidate, billionaire Meg Whitman, in 2010, finally replied yesterday to Brown’s challenge to a fitness contest.
He said he didn’t have time because he is so busy working for the people of New Jersey.
After his unimpressive keynote address last week, I think we’ll be hearing substantially less hype about Christie, who benefited disproportionately from his state being next to the endlessly self-referential New York media market.
That must have been cool. It’s a new world!
BB: She’s the first secretary of state to visit that nation, and it was there that she watched her husband’s address over an Internet hook-up.
You have been saying he “wowed” the convention all week, before it happened…
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … WHILE ONE CLINTON WOWS AT THE OBAMARAMA
Bill Clinton’s speech should be studied forever for tips on how to be a very impactful elder statesman. Sheerly masterful in performance.
I look forward to your article on the Long Game of the Clintons.
Crisis video today?
There is only one BC, that is for sure…
The Eurozone doesn’t sound so hot, again.
That Eastwood essay on the HuffPoster is damn good. Has Clint or any of his people had anything more to add since it all went down last week??
Good bad news news video on the eurozone effect on the economy.
Barack’s speech will rock the house!!
** SELECTED EXCERPTS, BARACK OBAMA DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS:
We’ll be okay enough…
Jonas says:
September 6, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Good bad news news video on the eurozone effect on the economy.
I never believed I would like Bill Clinton as much as I do now. Its wondrous to see his speech here again, entirely whole. He showed the President how best to tell our story for the future of this country.
There is no way Obama is going to top Clinton and Biden’s speeches…I hope he summons his spirit from 2004 because this could be a downer…
Disappointing…’meh’ speech/uninspiring jobs report=Romney definitely in play. How did it get to this point?
Iran- Israel crisis video today?
Barack gave a very good speech and had a great convention.
916Arsenal says:
September 7, 2012 at 9:37 am
Disappointing…’meh’ speech/uninspiring jobs report=Romney definitely in play. How did it get to this point?
Incidentally, NWN passed 124,000 comments sometime in the past several weeks.
The convention went quite well, for the most part.
> Capitol Boy says:
September 7, 2012 at 10:43 am (Edit)
Barack gave a very good speech and had a great convention.
916Arsenal says:
September 7, 2012 at 9:37 am
Disappointing…’meh’ speech/uninspiring jobs report=Romney definitely in play. How did it get to this point?
I’d like to, but I don’t see anything good.
> Jonas says:
September 7, 2012 at 10:19 am (Edit)
Iran- Israel crisis video today?
How did it get to the point of Obama’s job approval being the highest it’s been since bin Laden?
>
916Arsenal says:
September 7, 2012 at 9:37 am (Edit)
Disappointing…’meh’ speech/uninspiring jobs report=Romney definitely in play. How did it get to this point?
You defined your own downer there, rather neatly, I think.
> 916Arsenal says:
September 6, 2012 at 7:06 pm (Edit)
There is no way Obama is going to top Clinton and Biden’s speeches…I hope he summons his spirit from 2004 because this could be a downer…
It’s ironic, because Clinton used to ramble so much that his failures at narrative drove me nuts.
> marcos leon says:
September 6, 2012 at 5:40 pm (Edit)
I never believed I would like Bill Clinton as much as I do now. Its wondrous to see his speech here again, entirely whole. He showed the President how best to tell our story for the future of this country.
A slogan for our time.
> Capitol Boy says:
September 6, 2012 at 5:13 pm (Edit)
We’ll be okay enough…
Jonas says:
September 6, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Good bad news news video on the eurozone effect on the economy.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Clint’s Carmel Pine Cone interview ran today.
> Jack Aubrey says:
September 6, 2012 at 3:21 pm (Edit)
That Eastwood essay on the HuffPoster is damn good. Has Clint or any of his people had anything more to add since it all went down last week??
Yes, thank God.
> Jack Aubrey says:
September 6, 2012 at 2:59 pm (Edit)
There is only one BC, that is for sure…
Thanks, I appreciate it. Your wish has been granted …
> Requiem says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:44 am (Edit)
Bill Clinton’s speech should be studied forever for tips on how to be a very impactful elder statesman. Sheerly masterful in performance.
I look forward to your article on the Long Game of the Clintons.
Sometimes I see the future …
> Capitol Boy says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:20 am (Edit)
You have been saying he “wowed” the convention all week, before it happened…
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … WHILE ONE CLINTON WOWS AT THE OBAMARAMA
She has a real sense of humor.
> Capitol Boy says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:20 am (Edit)
That must have been cool. It’s a new world!
BB: She’s the first secretary of state to visit that nation, and it was there that she watched her husband’s address over an Internet hook-up.
Shocking, positively shocking.
> Capitol Boy says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:18 am (Edit)
Hahahah, I love it!!
BB:New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who in his inimitable fashion blasted Brown last week for being “an old retread” who unaccountably crushed Christie’s candidate, billionaire Meg Whitman, in 2010, finally replied yesterday to Brown’s challenge to a fitness contest.
He said he didn’t have time because he is so busy working for the people of New Jersey.
After his unimpressive keynote address last week, I think we’ll be hearing substantially less hype about Christie, who benefited disproportionately from his state being next to the endlessly self-referential New York media market.
Thanks!
> Capitol Boy says:
September 6, 2012 at 11:10 am (Edit)
Awesome!!
Jonas says:
September 6, 2012 at 10:52 am
Bill Clinton’s speech is so good to see here.