- After another day of massive street protests in Iran on Saturday (check out this video I posted here of the protesters chasing off the government shock troops), yesterday was a day of "relative calm," at least on the surface of society. Peel back that veneer, however, and one finds evidence of a serious struggle in the highest reaches of power, and millions of Iranians preparing for a showdown with their government this week. Ayatollah Khamenei arrested several members of Ali Rafsanjani, a former president who leads several important councils, and was seen as an attempt to quiet Rafsanjani's challenge to Khamenei.
- The government of Iran has admitted a discrepancy of three million votes in their election-- more ballots were cast than there are eligible voters in the country. The Guardian Council said it is "not clear" if the discrepancy would "decisively change" the election result. Remember last week Ayatollah Khamenei was telling us the election results were fair, and that an 11 million vote gap was too big to fake. Well, 11 million doesn't seem so big anymore, and and the Ayatollah seems to have jumped before counting.
Politics
- Paul Krugman has written off the Republican side of the Senate, but sees the possibility for a few renegade "centrist" Democrats to scuttle health care reform. Chuck Schumer, for one, is ready to go it alone.
- Sen. John Ensign has seen a 14-point slide since announcing his extramarital affair. If he's through, who will replace him as the Senator from Nevada? Draft Ramirez!
Economy
- The welfare rolls are growing for the first time since Bill Clinton reformed the program more than a decade ago. And reporting from the WaPo indicates that it could be a long time before jobs start returning to our economy.
- Oil has fallen to near $68/barrel, but this isn't really good news for our economy.
International
- The Chinese government has ordered all PC manufacturers to load Green Dam censoring software on their computers. Purportedly, this is intended to filter pornography, but it could be used to censor politically sensative content, as well. The U.S. State Department has filed an official complaint with the Chinese government.
- The U.S. Navy is tracking a North Korean cargo ship that appears to be headed for Myanmar. This could be the first test of just how far the U.S. is willing to go in its new commitment to stop DPRK military shipments.
New From NDN
- We've been tracking the situation in Iran closely. Keep up with our ongoing analysis here, or just watch the blog.
- Check out this backgrounder of our best, recent economic work assembled by the crack team in our Globalization Initiative.
One More Thing
- Last, more video from the protests on Saturday in Iran:
Via Nico and Andrew comes this video of a standoff between a few dozen government shock troops and a truly massive crowd of protesters. It's a triumphant picture of the power of people acting together, and a rejection of those who would silence them.
It's also a reminder that if the Iranian government has any intention of stopping these protests, they're headed for confrontation on a scale we haven't yet imagined.
In his weekly YouTube address, President Obama talks about all the new consumer protections and financial regulations he introduced this week, and highlights especially the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. As Obama described it, the new agency is "charged with just one job: looking out for the interests of ordinary Americans in the financial system."
Joe Nocera commented on the new regulations in a column this week, and took a relatively dim view of the President's plans, saying the President doesn't come close to what F.D.R. accomplished as he fought the Great Depression:
Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered...
Rather, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value.
Paul Krugman painted a slightly more generous picture, who says Obama's new regulations close many important loopholes, but don't go far enough.
But don't take my word for it, watch Obama give his address here:
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, spoke out Friday for the first time since the elections a week ago. He praised the election as "an epic moment that became a historic moment," and warned the protesters to stay off the streets. He alleged that a gap of 11 million votes between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi was too big a gap to have been falsified, and accused "Zionist media" and "Western powers" for casting doubt on the election.
- After days of looking to appease the protestors by offering a recount, the Ayatollah appears to have given up hope that these protests will play themselves out and wind down to his advantage. This announcement is a clear step up in the ongoing power struggle. It's hard to imagine the protesters will quietly acquiesce and stay indoors, so it seems the government will have little choice but to crack down harder. How can this play out but with further escalation?
- The NY Times looks at the vigilantes who are known as Basijis, and have been roaming the streets in Iran after dark, intimidating, beating up, and sometimes killing protestors they followed during the day.
- in the FT, Philip Stevens looks at the divide between the realists and the idealists-- a battle that has raged on our blog, as well.
- Moussavi's external spokesman, based in Paris, gave an interview with FP. Of course, he insists he would rather hear President Obama issue full-throated support of Moussavi, though I suspect he's just playing politics, as I'm confident he realizes, as I suggested the other day, that any U.S. government support of Moussavi would backfire and be used as fodder against him by Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah.
- The NY Times published an op-ed by an anonymous student in Iran who insists that Americans have a three-decades-old conception of his country.
- Spencer Ackerman got an interview with one of the leaders of the protests in Iran.
- Nico Pitney continues his excellent liveblogging over at HuffPo. He's got a number of excellent videos and photos up, and is currently watching the fallout from the Ayatollah's remarks.
Politics
- The NY Times runs an editorial arguing that now is the time for immigration reform, and I think they've been reading our stuff:
The American people have been far out front of the politicians on this issue, overwhelmingly supporting comprehensive reform. Washington can still catch up. There’s still time. And the country is waiting.
- The Obama Administration wanted to push healthcare reform through the legislative process quickly, but it hit some pretty big bumps this week, as congress has balked at the cost. Dems are scouring the bill for ways to cut its costs, but finding the money will be a challenge, regardless.
Economy
- President Obama's plan to tighten the regulations on our banking system would have a new role for the Fed. And our Congress is a little wary of the Fed's expanding role.
- Paul Krugman responds to the proposed rules, saying that yes, they do close some big holes, but there's still more to do:
I’m aware of the political realities: getting financial reform through Congress won’t be easy. And even as it stands the Obama plan would be a lot better than nothing.
But to live up to its own analysis, the Obama administration needs to come down harder on the rating agencies and, even more important, get much more specific about reforming the way bankers are paid.
International
- The Global Post reports on sex workers in Chennai, India, learning Kung Fu and other martial arts for self-defense.
- A car bomb went off near Bilbao, and the Spanish government is blaming Basque separatists.
New From NDN
- Mike Hais comes out with his second weekly post on polling, and finds that Democrats are much more popular than we give them credit for.
- Simon stays on Iran, pulling quotes from some of the best pieces of recent days, and pointing you toward our work on all this.
One More Thing
- I assume you've seen the sweet video of President Obama killing an irritating a fly in the middle of an interview with ninja-like swatting skills. Well, PETA came out against the President's action, calling it an "execution." This is why nobody takes you seriously, PETA.
- Last, I don't know how you feel about Henry Kissinger, but it's always good when people think you're doing a good job, right?:
- Protests continued in Iran yesterday, with somewhere between "tens of thousands" (according to most news outlets) and "hundreds of thousands" (according to the WSJ) of people taking to the streets to protest the results of their election that is now nearly a week in the past. The government of Iran continues to try to stifle the media, but reports via Twitter, cell phone camera, and blog continue to stream out of the country.
- The Iranian soccer team played South Korea to a tie yesterday-- no small feat playing in the Koreans' home stadium in Seoul. The team played wearing green wristbands in solidarity with the reformist protestors in Iran. They emerged from the locker room for the second half without the wristbands.
- Joe Klein is back from 10 days in Iran, and reports on what he saw in the election and its aftermath.
- John Kerry has an op-ed in the NY Times today making an argument that's an awful lot like the one I made here on the blog on Tuesday.
Politics
- President Obama still enjoys a 63% favorability rating, but some of his policies are less popular. Particularly, a new NYT/CBS poll finds that most Americans think he should be focusing more on controlling the deficit. CQ interprets all this to mean that Obama's honeymoon is over.
- President Obama unveiled plans for an overhaul of financial regulations, moving toward a system that would try to limit the array of financial products available to mostly "plain vanilla" varieties. Joe Nocera of the NYT takes a closer look at Obama's proposals, and notes that his proposal isn't anywhere close to what F.D.R. accomplished in the Great Depression:
Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered...
Rather, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value.
Economy
- Greg Mankiw highlights a chart put out by the Cleveland Fed showing that different measures of inflation offer disparate estimates of where we stand. If you take energy out of the picture, however, everything appears much more normal.
- A suicide bomb attack in Somalia killed the country's security minister, among 19 others. Their government is blaming al Qaeda. Another blow to Somalia's barely-existent infrastructure.
- An ancient temple in Myanmar collapsed yesterday, and the military junta that runs the country is liable to take it as divine judgment on their legitimacy.
New From NDN
- Andres announced the release of new presentations, backgrounders, and video on immigration reform. Enjoy!
- Two Republican congressmen who are apparently new to Twitter compared their minority in Congress to the oppressed reformists of Iran. Keep it classy, guys.
- Last, SENATOR Barbara Boxer lays a little bit of a smackdown:
- Iran's religious leaders have agreed to a recount of Friday's election results, but protests continue around the country. Tuesday's protests were smaller than those on Monday, likely a result of the violence that resulted in seven deaths the previous day. Compared to student protests in 1999 and 2003, the NY Times reports, the Iranian government will have a much harder time shutting down these protests quickly and quietly, in part because of their size. The government is trying their darndest to shut down the media, but social media like Twitter are proving nearly impossible to curb.
- Robert Kagan finds President Obama's response to the unrest in Iran "disturbing." He does not suppose that Obama necessarily prefers working with Ahmadinejad to Moussavi, but thinks his indifference to the pro-reformist protesters is wrong.
- Simon had a major piece in HuffPo yesterday arguing that Obama had little choice but to shun realism and stand up for democracy around the world.
- An op-ed in the Times sees the recent crackdown as the culmination of Iran's shift to become a full-fledged military dictatorship.
Politics
- The President will make a gesture toward gay rights today when he allows federal employees to extend their benefits to unmarried domestic partners, including same-sex partners.
- The White House released a report on climate change with strong language describing the man-made damage already being inflicted upon our environment.
Economy
- The White House will propose sweeping new changes to the regulations that oversee our financial markets. George Soros comments on the plan in the FT.
New From NDN
- Shai Agassi shows up in Wired today, and he'll show up at our offices tomorrow. Come by our event!
- We had a lot of commentary on Iran yesterday. Here's Dan, here's Jake, and here's me.
One More Thing
- An Arizona town settled a tied election by cutting a deck of cards. Draw!
- Last, Nico Pitney has been providing great liveblog coverage of everything going on in Iran over at HuffPo. Here he is discussing his work with Rachel Maddow:
[President Obama] has already been cast in a different role by history -- one of inspiring champion of all those throughout the world who need someone to speak for them… Our president, as chief global advocate of free and open societies, cannot sit on the sidelines as people attempt to throw off the shackles of old and anti-democratic regimes. This moment is too important, this particular leader too powerful, for America not to ambitiously re-assert itself as the great global champion of universal aspirations of all the world's peoples.
I think Simon is right that this will be the central challenge of the Obama Doctrine—to lead the world by example and not by fear. To stand for our values without shoving them down the throats of our partners overseas. To hold America up as a paragon of liberty and justice while, of course, keeping the country safe and secure.
It has been extraordinary to watch the fallout from the hijacking of the Iranian government by President Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Supreme Council. The massive protests we have read about on Twitter, watched on YouTube, and seen in so many incredible photographs continue to gain steam, and there’s no telling where they could lead.
And here we have a situation where our interests and our ideals converge. Moussavi and his followers clearly carry the twin banners of freedom and self-rule in the face of what is, in effect, a military coup. The reformists would, it seems, be more likely to cut a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, and would certainly be easier to work with on the global stage.
But what can we do? What can President Obama say?
The last time our country got involved in Iranian politics, we helped overthrow a democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadeq, and enabled a decade of autocratic rule by the Shah. That misadventure led directly to the 1979 Revolution, and our image hasn’t much improved among the Iranian people since then. Any bold statement by the American president in support of Moussavi would be turned against us as fodder for Ahmadinejad’s populist, anti-American rhetoric. Any evidence of covert American involvement in Iran would shatter the legitimacy of the reformist movement.
President Obama’s challenge is to support this movement in Iran without undermining it, and in this objective, he has been right to hang back and quietly offer an ongoing commitment to negotiations with Iran. As I wrote above, his task is not to enforce democracy, but to enable it when he can, and lead by example when he cannot. Guided by this pragmatic Liberalism, he will have the chance to "ambitiously re-assert America as the great global champion of universal aspirations of all the world's peoples."
- All eyes are on Iran, where massive street protests yesterday ended with seven people killed by riot police in a clash near a university. Mondays' protests were the largest since the revolution in 1979. Iran's Guardian Council has indicated they are willing to allow a partial recount of disputed ballots from Friday's election, but they will not cancel the results and order a new election, stopping short of the demands of challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi and his followers.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hit the road this morning to meet with the BRIC countries and other rising powers in Russia.
- Many extraordinary photographs of yesterday's protests are available around the web. Take a look at this slideshow from the WSJ, the HuffPo's collection, the WaPo's gallery, the NYT's slideshow.
Politics
- Sen Chuck Schumer is leading the charge for forgery-proof worker ID cards, as a provision in immigration reform. The cards would make it easier for employers to avoid hiring undocumented workers.
- President Obama gave a major speech to doctors of the American Medical Association yesterday, telling them bluntly he opposed a limit on malpractice awards-- their highest legislative priority. That aside, he generally tried to woo them to his side of the fight for a better health care system.
- Speaking of health care, Obama's favorite new article is this one from Atul Gawande at the New Yorker. He's apparently given it out to his staff, and mentioned it in his speech yesterday. Is it good. Yes, it's worth a read. Does it reveal new things? Unsure.
Economy
- Fareed Zakaria comes to the defense of capitalism in the Washington Post. We have a lot of regulating and restructuring to do, but fundamentally, capitalism is the system we need.
- The CBO came back with a pretty surprising estimate of the costs for the Affordable Health Choices Act. Ezra Klein points out this is because the bill they were evaluating is nothing like the one Kennedy and Dodd actually plan to introduce.
International
- On Borneo, an island mostly known for its Orangutans, the Indonesian government is opening up "honesty cafes," where customers pay on the honor system, as part of a long-term attempt to curb corruption. Wacky! (h/t Sarah)
- US News and World Report writes on Secretary Hillary Clinton's high-techification of the State Department, beginning with hiring our friend Alec Ross to work on facilitating diplomacy through technology.
New From NDN
- Simon has a new piece up this morning looking ahead to what the Obama Doctrine will be, and how he can define it toward Iran.
- President Obama's half-brother George will be penning a memoir entitled Homeland. Community organizing will be a theme (apparently it runs in the family).
- Last, the latest in the series of incredibly cool White House events hosted by Michelle Obama was an evening of jazz:
- President Obama backed down on the resettlement of Guantanamo detainees yesterday, giving up on plans to bring some of them into the United States. There may be "a few" candidates for resettlement in the U.S., but the Admninstration has decided not to push this against opposition from Congress. This move may make it significantly more difficult for the U.S. government to convince European countries to accept detainees. Four Uighurs were shipped out to Bermuda yesterday, where they will live as foreign guest workers, and the U.S. is seeking similar arrangements with other tropical island states.
Politics
- President Obama is removing the Inspector General responsible for investigating our country's national service programs, after he conducted a dubious inspection of a Sacramento non-profit group that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Corportation for National Service.
- The Senate yesterday gave the F.D.A. the power to regulate nicotine, and while they cannot outlaw it altogether, there will be a range of new policy options on the table to deter children from starting to smoke.
International
- Iranians will go to the polls today, with the chance to unseat their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in exchange for Mir Hussein Moussavi, a rock-star moderate. The WaPo profiles Dennis Ross, and the monumental task before him in Iran, as he works to keep Iran from the bomb.
- President Obama will meet today with Morgan Tsvangiari, the opposition leader in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
- Last, ever wonder who cleans up after members of congress?:
- An 88 year-old white supremacist opened fire with a .22 caliber rifle in the Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington yesterday, killing a security guard before other guards wounded him with gunfire. James von Brunn had published anti-Semitic and anti-black rants on the internet, and in 1983, had stormed into the Federal Reserve Board attempting to kidnap members of the Board, before being captured just outside the boardroom doors.
Politics
- President Obama will do a town-hall meeting in Green Bay today, and will talk about the need to rein in costs in our healthcare system. The choice of location, as always, has been carefully thought out. Green Bay is something of a success story in American healthcare, with a high quality of care delivered at a relatively low cost.
- The Fix covers the Republican Party in its three body parts-- the heart, the head, and the gut. Who do you think is which?
- Kenneth Feinberg, a "well-known Washington lawyer," has been appointed the "pay czar" of the White House, and will oversee compensation at the big banks that have received federal bailout money.
Economy
- The NY Times reports, somewhat unsurprisingly, that China's economy is now more dependant on domestic demand than ever, as exports are a less viable engine for growth.
- Foreclosures in May were 6% lower than in April, but it was still the third highest month in history. I'd like to point you back toward our working arguing that we must keep people in their homes.
International
- The Kyrgyz government reiterated its insistence that the US airbase in their country would be closing later this year. The airbase is generally considered to be essential to the U.S. war-fighting effort in Afghanistan.
- Four Chinese Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay have been resettled in Bermuda. Not to make light of a seriously situation, but I wouldn't mind being resettled in Bermuda right about now.
New From NDN
- Mike Hais released his first in what will be a weekly series of columns on polling. He wonders if there's any way the Dems can win without the support of Latinos, and if Millennials could be the key to such a victory.
- Rob Shaprio blogs from Stockholm, and says it's time to get serious about our financial mess. What happens now could affect our economy for decades to come.
One More Thing
- Last, I have nothing to add to the title of this video: "Bird in San Francisco Smacks Unsuspecting Pedestrians in the Head:"
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Leader: Surface Calm in Iran
Leader: Iranians Speak
Leader: Sporting Green
Leader: Protests in Iran Continue
Leader: Eyes on Iran
