Speaking today at the Opera House in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in his first public address since June, denounced what he called the “religious extremists” and “murderous criminals” behind what began as the peaceful uprising against his regime during the Arab Spring, vowing to fight on. He offered a “national dialogue,” though not apparently with the leaders of the opposition he had just denounced, who in any event rejected what he said.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50: A TIMELESS EPIC RESTORED (WITH TIMELESS LESSONS IN STORE), NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
The Obama family returned from holiday vacation in Hawaii late Saturday and early Sunday on Air Force One.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
Obama signaled Saturday through multiple means that he will appoint former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel to be the new secretary of defense, replacing veteran California political figure Leon Panetta.
Signs are from Hagel opponents, mostly centered on the neoconservative tendency in American politics, that there will be a serious fight over this nomination, for reasons I discussed here yesterday.
Obama’s appointment of Hagel is expected to come on Monday or Tuesday, depending on scheduling.
Much more to follow.
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 – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the new state budget, and on various aspects of his rather expansive and mostly futuristic agenda.
All of which is discussed in the essay below.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama talks about the bipartisan agreement that Congress reached this week which prevented a middle-class tax hike, congratulates the newly sworn-in members of Congress, and looks forward to working with the new Congress in the new year on the economy and budget.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50: A TIMELESS EPIC RESTORED (WITH TIMELESS LESSONS IN STORE), NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Hawaii.
He has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the private residence in Oahu’s Kailuana Place where he and his family are staying for their holiday vacation.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
In fact, he is scheduled to have no public events for the remainder of his holiday, now set to run through January 5th.
The Obamas will leave Honolulu sometime tonight and return to the White House mid-day on Sunday.
Obama is signaling through multiple means that he will appoint former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel to be the new secretary of defense, replacing veteran California political figure Leon Panetta.
Having just had one major confrontation with the right, Obama thus sets up another, for Hagel, though a moderately conservative Republican himself, is very much opposed by the neoconservative faction.
Hagel, who now chairs the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and is a professor at Georgetown, has been blasted in recent weeks as an anti-semite and an appeaser, the latter of which must especially grate on a man who won two Purple Hearts as an infantry sergeant in the Vietnam War. Especially so since his most prominent critics all skipped military experience.
On the other side of the inevitable Bill Kristol and company is an array of Hagel supporters, including military brass and the new Bipartisan Group, which includes my old friend, former Senator and Democratic presidential frontrunner Gary Hart, former Republican National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Democratic National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Republican Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, former Republican Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, former Democratic Senator David Boren, and former Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum-Baker.
This should be quite an entertaining tussle. Much more to follow.
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 – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the new state budget, and on various aspects of his rather expansive and mostly futuristic agenda.
All of which is discussed in the essay below.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
** CALIFORNIA’S FUTURIST AGENDA: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS. Governor Jerry Brown is working on the new California state budget, the first in more than a decade to be free of the state’s deep chronic fiscal crisis, thanks to the big 11-point win in November for his Proposition 30 revenue initiative, and on an expansive agenda of major future-oriented issues he began pushing even when he had a massive budget deficit to deal with two years ago.
It’s an agenda — renewable energy and energy efficiency, climate change, high-speed rail, bioscience, cutting edge research, water conveyance and conservation, regulatory reform, reform of education financing — which he intends to keep California in its familiar position at the edge of history.
And it’s an agenda which his two most immediate predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, in large measure promoted themselves, providing a sense of future-oriented continuity amidst all the fiscal distress and hyper-partisan tumult which marked the last decade here.
In his first two terms as governor in the 1970s and early 1980s, Brown blazed the early path on renewable energy and energy efficiency, rail, water, cutting edge research, even climate.
When his former chief of staff Davis ended 16 years of Republican governorships in 1999, he picked up the banner on renewable energy (establishing the nation’s biggest renewable energy requirement), high-speed rail (getting a big bond act through the legislature), and climate (signing the nation’s first law drastically cutting tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases). This latter bill would bring Schwarzenegger and Brown, as governor and attorney general in the late 2000s, together repeatedly in legal fights against the Bush/Cheney Administration which, seeing the effect it could have on national policy given California’s strategic market, an effect which was realized in the Obama Administration, was out to destroy the legislation.
By that point, Schwarzenegger and legislative allies had made the tailpipe emissions law — which makes cars more fuel efficient and cleaner all around — a cornerstone of the state’s landmark climate change program. Schwarzenegger also dramatically ramped up Davis’s already expansive renewable energy requirement, and became one of the nation’s biggest champions of high-speed rail, pushing hard till the very end of his term two years ago. He also championed bioscience through California’s world-leading stem cell research program and got the legislature to pass the first major water program since the days of Jerry and Pat Brown. (Which program is being recalibrated.) Among other things.
Again, all this in the midst of political trauma and the great global recession.
For all his visionary aspect, Brown is also a notable pragmatist, as I note frequently in my writings about him. A certain degree of pragmatism is what secures the ability to practice futurism, after all. But still, there are those who remain confused, at least according to the Los Angeles Times, which reported recently on Brown’s “flummoxing pragmatism.”
Following two recent articles in the LA Times — which shows some signs of being acquired this year by Rupert Murdoch, which would make things quite interesting indeed — on Brown changing course and trimming his environmental sails by encouraging continued oil drilling in California, Brown reminded me that what he’s doing is actually nothing new.
“I promoted, as governor in the ’70s, independent oil drilling in California and certainly wanted the state to get the max revenues from the Long Beach oil fields,” he noted. “That means big bucks for higher ed capital outlay.”
California’s storied public university system has taken major hits since the dot-com bust. But even as Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis before him, struggled, as Brown did when he took office anew, with the overall state budget, they pushed forward on much of the future-oriented agenda Brown is pursuing today.
Some imagine that Brown is at last embracing the way of his father, the legendary late Governor Pat Brown, widely credited as the builder of modern California, in developing what might be called an Edifice Complex. But that’s not quite it.
Jerry Brown famously differed with his father — whom I knew pretty well, last lunching with him less than a year before he died — earlier in his life but later developed more of an expressed appreciation for Pat’s way of doing things and what Jerry called “the family business.” But pop psychology doesn’t capture the dynamic in question.
This Governor Brown is more into what might be described as developing the infrastructure of the future. Rather than preside over the building of dozens of nuclear power plants, as was the wont of the big utilities during his first tenure as governor during the 1970s and early 1980s, he put California on a course of energy efficiency (known in those days as energy conservation) and renewable energy.
As a result, California became for many years the most efficient user of power in the country. Governors of both parties kept on the efficiency path, though they strayed off of renewables. Brown’s former chief of staff, Gray Davis, renewed the renewable course, and Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ramped things up dramatically, turning the path into a superhighway. Brown, naturally, is continuing that.
His focus on high-speed rail, which he shares with Schwarzenegger and Davis, is a focus not on expanding existing transport infrastructure, perpetuating the old and increasingly expensive development pattern and the fossil fuel economy which underlies it, but developing a new path. A new path in America, that is, which is why he is working closely with the Obama Administration on it. In Europe and Asia, high-speed rail is well-established.
California’s high-speed rail agency was actually begun under then Republican Governor Pete Wilson in the ’90s. When Democrat Davis came in, he ramped things up and got a major bond issue passed by the legislature.
That was deferred to the favorable election year of 2008 by high-speed rail champion Schwarzenegger, where it passed with 53% of the vote in a campaign managed by Brown and Davis friend David Townsend despite the onset of the great global recession.
Schwarzenegger then aggressively pursued billions in federal funding, partnering with the Obama Administration as more conservative Republican governors listened to the Tea Party instead. …
While House Republicans fight amongst themselves over Superstorm Sandy relief, President Barack Obama is back on Oahu finishing up his family vacation. Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia take in the local delicacy called shaved ice to the acclaim of well-wishers.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S FUTURIST AGENDA: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50, NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – FRIDAY. President Barack Obama is in Hawaii.
He has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the private residence in Oahu’s Kailuana Place where he and his family are staying for their holiday vacation.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
In fact, he is scheduled to have no public events for the remainder of his holiday, now set to run through January 5th.
Obama got some relatively good news today with the economy adding another 155,000 jobs in the last month, maintaining the steady if anemic job growth of our very mild economic recovery.
After enduring a firestorm of controversy for putting off Superstorm Sanday relief legislation, House Speaker John Boehner — who won re-election yesterday with only 220 votes — had part of the bill brought up today, with nearly $10 billion of the proposed $60 billion rushed through passage.
But New Jersey and New York Republicans are seething over delays to the bulk of the program.
Unfortunately for them, the Republican Party is no longer the Northeastern party it was in the ’60s. Rockefeller Republicans today exist on Mad Men, not in national politics.
Today’s Republican Party has its center of gravity in the South.
Meanwhile, the Syria crisis drags on, with no resolution in sight. The Assad regime refuses to participate in any transition in which a precondition is its surrender of power.
US troops took up position yesterday and today manning Patriot anti-missile batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria. Russian advisors were already assisting Syrian air defense forces.
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 – FRIDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the new state budget, and on various aspects of his rather expansive mostly futuristic agenda.
If you include reforming education funding as futurism.
More to follow.
Rather than try to find his own spot in Current TV going forward as it becomes Al Jazeera America, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom is ending his show there, although at a date yet uncertain.
I discussed yesterday here at length how complicated it would be for a very ambitious American politician like Newsom to be part of Al Jazeera.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was released on Wednesday from hospital in New York City, where she was undergoing treatment for blood clotting following a concussion last month. Her prognosis is good.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50, NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – THURSDAY. President Barack Obama is in Hawaii.
He will receive the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the private residence in Oahu’s Kailuana Place where he and his family are staying for their holiday vacation.
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
In fact, he is scheduled to have no public events for the remainder of his holiday, now set to run through January 5th.
Obama returned to his holiday family vacation in his home state after Tuesday night’s passage by the House of the fiscal cliff compromise legislation.
The package, as previously discussed, does not actually solve all of the problems that gave rise to the catchy media moniker “fiscal cliff.” (It’s such an historic event that Obama signed it by auto-pen.)
In fact, the whole thing looks like a slow-rolling trap for the Republican Party.
First, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, who is playing a critical role in all this, and Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi get many Republicans to sign on to raising taxes on the rich by ending the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for them while preserving those for the middle class and working class. Thus making the divide between pragmatic conservatives and radical conservatives ever wider and more public.
Then, they do remarkably little on the cuts front, deferring most of that for a few months in a bid to get Republicans to spell out what they want to cut.
As we have seen in California politics, where the far right dominance of the Republican Party took place years ago, right-wing Republican politicians are very happy to talk about big cuts but are usually loathe to discuss specifics. Because they know that much, if not most, of what they want cut is actually relatively to wildly popular.
Sounds like Obama and company believe it’s time for a return to the Ryan Plan.
The evident plan to destabilize the Republican Party got a big boost yesterday when House Speaker John Boehner, acceding to Tea Party wishes, refused to bring up the big Superstorm Sandy relief bill. Which brought gales of condemnation from New Jersey Governor Chris Chris Christie, New York Congressman Peter King, and most of the media.
This again brings out the contradictions of the Republican Party, much of which opposes federal efforts to aid in disaster relief on ideological grounds, as has been discussed here before. There may also be some legitimate concern about pork inserted into the disaster relief process, but you can be sure that there is no alternative Superstorm Sandy disaster relief bill emanating from the Tea Party and its congressional adherents.
All of this is more good news for the Democrats, who may simply want to shatter a party that has been so uncooperative over the first four years of Obama’s presidency.
It is not unlike the situation in California, where Governor Jerry Brown tried very hard to work with Republicans during his first year in office, only to be rebuffed in any realistic sense of making a deal. He then resolved to simply defeat the Republicans, again, which happened in dramatic fashion in November.
Now California Republicans are in grave danger of being overtaken by registered independents by the end of this decade.
Meanwhile, the Syria crisis drags on, with no resolution in sight. The Assad regime refuses to participate in any transition in which a precondition is its surrender of power.
A new United Nations analysis indicates that some 60,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict that began as part of the Arab Spring movement.
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 – THURSDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the new state budget, the first in more than a decade to be free of the state’s chronic and deep fiscal crisis, and his Think Big agenda.
More to follow.
Speaking of following, following two recent articles in the LA Times on Brown supposedly changing course and trimming his environmental sails by encouraging continued oil drilling in California, Brown reminded me that this is actually nothing new.
“I promoted as governor in the ’70s independent oil drilling in California and certainly wanted the state to get the max revenues from the Long Beach oil fields,” he noted. “That means big bucks for higher ed capital outlay.”
AND, speaking of following, once again, Brown’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, wakes up to a new reality today following Al Jazeera’s acquisition of Current TV.
Newsom has what we might call an edgy relationship with the governor. In my view, it could have been quite different, had Newsom done a few things differently. But he chose not to, so there we are.
Newsom has found an intriguing outlet in a weekly show on Current TV, the cable TV channel founded by former Vice President Al Gore.
Now Al Jazeera, the excellent though controversial Middle East-based TV news operation, has acquired Current as a way to at last find widespread carriage in American cable TV systems. As readers know from the live link below, Al Jazeera has, with one or two exceptions, been available only online in the US, despite winning great praise of late for its international coverage.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Al Jazeera English “indispensable.” The Robert F. Kennedy Foundation has given it its grand prize for journalism.
But all this is a big problem for Newsom.
First, Al Jazeera is going to end Current’s programming sometime in the spring, replacing its the feed from Al Jazeera English.
Second, sometime in the fall, a full-fledged Al Jazeera America will emerge, combining, in some ways I don’t yet know, the existing programming of Al Jazeera English — which is worldwide along with the Arabic channel — with new Al Jazeera America programming.
Third, even if Newsom’s show were to survive this process, would he want it to?
I think Al Jazeera is great, though I don’t agree with everything on it. (Which can be said of all news channels.) I am much better informed when I watch Al Jazeera and the BBC than when I watch American cable news. And I’ve been an analyst for Al Jazeera from time to time in the past.
But when I mentioned it to a name moderate Republican five years ago, he reacted as though I’d just admitted being a member of Al Qaeda!
I pointed out that Colin Powell appeared on Al Jazeera, and he seemed hardly reassured. Of course, by then Powell was well off the Bush/Cheney reservation.
To be sure, Al Jazeera Arabic had made a practice early in the Noughties of running Osama bin Laden tapes without much criticism, and frequently appearing a cheerleader. But the network has moderated, as Qatar, whose government essentially owns Al Jazeera, has become a much closer US ally.
But while Al Jazeera, like the Gulf Cooperation Council of which Qatar is a key member, is essentially favorable to the US these days, albeit with a critical edge, and has been quite denunciatory of jihadist operations, it is still one thing that is very controversial with a number of folks.
It is pro-Palestinian. In my view, reflexively so. Which is hardly a surprise, since it is an Arab and Islamic-based network and the Palestinians have been a cause celebre in those communities for approximately ever.
Meanwhile, of course, the American cable news channels are largely pro-Israel, and reflexively so. Again, not surprisingly, as Israel is one of our longest standing allies.
During the recent Israel-Hamas conflict, I marveled at the near permanent perch that Israeli government officials had on CNN.
Time Warner Cable dealt a quick blow to Al Jazeera late yesterday by promptly dropping Current from its lineup around the country. No explanation was given.
Does Newsom want to get in the middle of this?
He does, after all, have presidential ambitions.
Of course, with Brown on course for a fourth term in the 2014 elections — no, he has announced nothing — by the time Newsom becomes governor of California, if he ever does, the point at which presidential ambitions really hit the ground running, the ground may have shifted dramatically on the Palestinian question. It certainly has shifted on same-sex marriage.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
President Barack Obama, joined by his lead negotiator, Vice President Joe Biden, delivered a statement on New Year’s night on the last minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50, NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – WEDNESDAY. President Barack Obama is in Hawaii.
Stop the presses! Fiscal cliff averted in last-minute compromise! Who could predict it?
Obama has no scheduled public events today.
He returned to his holiday family vacation in his home state after last night’s passage by the House of the fiscal cliff compromise legislation.
The package, discussed here yesterday, is on balance a big win for Obama and the Democrats. Though of course it defers some big decisions down the road.
Victory came on a vote of 257 to 167 — following the 89 to 8 vote win in the Senate the night before — with most of the votes provided, as forecast here over the past week, by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
As I wrote all along here on NWN and in my columns, the fiscal cliff was averted by a last minute compromise, and all that. All very predictable, and you didn’t need to waste your time with the breathless coverage of trivia by the current media culture, which latches on to a thing and bleeds it of all meaning long before it lets go.
It’s a way of avoiding learning anything new and ratcheting up anxiety in core audiences.
One thing was striking about this fiscal cliff folly. And that is, not the dysfunctionality of the political culture, which is hardly new, but its insistence on graffitiing national holidays with the wackiness of it all.
Do Americans really deserve to be bothered by this spun-up melodrama on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day?
Meanwhile, the Syria crisis drags on, with no resolution in sight. The Assad regime refuses to participate in any transition in which a precondition is its surrender of power.
A new United Nations analysis indicates that some 60,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict that began as part of the Arab Spring movement.
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 – WEDNESDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the new state budget, the first in more than a decade to be free of the state’s chronic and deep fiscal crisis, and his Think Big agenda.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
About two-and-a-half hours into the New Year, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the fiscal cliff deal on a bipartisan vote of 89 to 8. The ball is now in the court of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner has already failed to rein in his party’s right wing.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50, CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS, NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – TUESDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama received the intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Today is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, a crucial event in the ending of slavery.
The nation’s first African American president has made no statement on this.
Obama released this statement early on New Year’s Day after Senate passage of a fiscal cliff deal:
“Leaders from both parties in the Senate came together to reach an agreement that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support today that protects 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small business owners from a middle class tax hike. While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay.
“This agreement will also grow the economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way – by investing in our middle class, and by asking the wealthy to pay a little more.
“What’s more, today’s agreement builds on previous efforts to reduce our deficits. Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut spending by more than $1 trillion. Tonight’s agreement does even more by asking millionaires and billionaires to begin to pay their fair share for the first time in twenty years. As promised, that increase will be immediate, and it will be permanent.
“There’s more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I’m willing to do it. But tonight’s agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans. And as we address our ongoing fiscal challenges, I will continue to fight every day on behalf of the middle class and all those fighting to get into the middle class to forge an economy that grows from the middle out, not from the top down.”
The deal is coming under fire from elements of the left — which doesn’t like the definition of a wealthy person moved from $250,000 to $400,000 per year, wanted a smaller exemption from the estate tax (starting at $1 million rather than $5 million), worries that not enough new revenue is generated, and wanted the debt ceiling issue resolved now rather than in the spring — and much of the right, which of course is opposed to any tax hikes on the rich, even though this simply allowing a tax cut to expire.
The deal does extend unemployment insurance and leave entitlements unhatcheted, though the sequestration sword of damocles has merely down the line a few months.
Vice President Joe Biden, who played the point person role for the White House in dealing with both parties in the Senate, is now dispatched to Capitol Hill anew to meet with House Democrats, and perhaps some others.
On balance, a win for the center/left. And the beginning of problems for Republicans extending beyond the presidential level, for the struggle between moderate conservatives and absolute red hots is on full display.
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 – TUESDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
But he is undoubtedly enjoying a spate of stories about the smashing success that 2012 became for him, and the strong prospects for a big year in 2013.
I’ll have a lot more to say about that.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced this morning that, after lengthy talks with Vice President Joe Biden, he and the White House have agreed on preventing tax hikes that the “fiscal cliff” will trigger after midnight.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … LAWRENCE OF ARABIA AT 50, CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE: A TALE OF THREE GOVERNORS, NEW SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE AND STATE and NEW WORLD COMING: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL TAKES A CRACK AT 2030.
** OBAMA TODAY – MONDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama received the intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He had no scheduled public events, but held a swiftly organized rally of a sort in the South Court Auditorium with some carefully selected middle class taxpayers who don’t want a tax hike, which is what will happen if Republicans keep holding out for continued tax cuts for the rich, an obviously unpopular position.
The U.S. Senate held a rare Sunday session on the matter. But there was no Senate vote. The Senate reconvened Monday morning at 11 AM Eastern time.
Obama appeared Sunday morning on NBC’s Meet the Press to throw down the gauntlet on the fiscal cliff issue.
If the system goes off the cliff, the Democrats evidently believe they will win a war of words with conservative Republicans with regard to culpability.
But Senate Republicans have apparently struck a deal in negotiations with Vice President Joe Biden. In this scenario, the Bush/Cheney tax cuts would be extended for all but the wealthy, the core of the Democratic position.
However, there is to be an adjustment in what counts as wealthy, with that threshold now being $450,000 for a family and $400,000 for individuals.
Now we will see what happens in the House.
House Democratic Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the wily political veteran who got her start in politics Jerry Brown’s first presidential campaign — has more votes for a fiscal cliff solution than current House Speaker John Boehner, whose leadership position may be a casualty here.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hospitalized late Sunday in New York City after it was discovered that she had developed a blood clot.
Clinton has had a stretch of significant health problems in the last few weeks, first developing a serious flu which turned into a case of dehydration, causing her to fall and suffer a concussion. This kept her off the playing field for a major international trip — Clinton has logged more miles than any other secretary of state — and for an appearance on the Benghazi disaster before a House committee.
Now she has blood clotting, which requires an emergency regimen of anti-coagulants and a required stay of at least 48 hours in hospital.
I haven’t mentioned it here, but of course right-wingers claimed that Clinton was faking illness to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Not that they are actually interested in understanding what went wrong there, which goes far beyond the State Department.
What a sick political culture this has become.
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 – MONDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on the next state budget, and pursuing plans for the continuation of his Think Big Agenda.
He may have a glass or two of wine tonight to usher in the new year.
Click here for my compendium of articles laying out the re-emergence of Jerry Brown as governor of California.
Click here for my compendium of articles providing a narrative of his governorship.
** THE CLIFFS WE AREN’T FALLING FROM (AND ONE FROM WHICH WE ARE). … From my December 15th column.
** EXIT SUSAN RICE. … From my December 13th column.
** WHERE THE DEMOCRATS GO NEXT, OR, PIVOTING WITH HILLARY. … From my December 10th column.
** FROM THE NOTEBOOK: OBSERVATIONS ON JERRY BROWN’S PROP 30 VICTORY. … From my December 5th essay.
** OBAMA PRACTICES KABUKI WAR AT HOME WHILE MANAGING POTENTIAL WAR ABROAD. … From my December 3rd essay.
** WAR OF THE WORDS: A NEARLY FOUR DECADE VENDETTA AGAINST JERRY BROWN. … From my November 29th feature.
** FROM GOVERNATOR TO MOONBEAM. … From my January 3rd, 2011 feature.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
Skyfall, the 50th anniversary film in the James Bond series, just became the first Bond film to gross one billion dollars in worldwide box office. And Skyfall, which has major scenes set in Shanghai and Macau, has yet to open in China. The film, already the biggest ever in the UK, and Sony Pictures’ highest grosser ever, will end up high up on the all-time top 10 worldwide list. Enjoy key images from the film accompanied by Adele’s theme song.
** 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 $93.09 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.
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| Comments (53) |
Good bad news news video on the Syria crisis.
Monday, monday, should be good!!
BB:Obama signaled Saturday through multiple means that he will appoint former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel to be the new secretary of defense, replacing veteran California political figure Leon Panetta.
Signs are from Hagel opponents, mostly centered on the neoconservative tendency in American politics, that there will be a serious fight over this nomination, for reasons I discussed here yesterday.
Obama’s appointment of Hagel is expected to come on Monday or Tuesday.
I know this is kind of off topic but I was curious if you knew
somewhere I might possibly get a captcha plugin for
my feedback form? I’m utilising the same blog system as yours and I’m having trouble finding
one?