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Saturday, November 27, 2010

This Sunday: Durbin and Kyl

by David Gregory

Fresh off the Thanksgiving holiday, I'll be joined this Sunday by the assistant majority and minority leaders in the Senate: Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (IL) and Republican Whip Jon Kyl (AZ). With foreign affairs in the spotlight lately, I'll ask my guests about the crisis in the Korean peninsula and the fate of President Obama's START treaty with Russia. Plus, as the holiday season is just beginning, tensions are high at home. Are TSA pat-down procedures too invasive? What does Congress hope to accomplish in this lame-duck session? And does the GOP's win on November 2nd signify a new era of bipartisanship in Washington, or an even more divided and polarized government?



Then, our political round table will weigh in. We'll discuss the economy, foreign affairs, and Congress's plan of attack for the upcoming year. Joining me will be the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, Washington Post's EJ Dionne, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.
Also, check out below for some background on Sunday's show:

Peggy Noonan says the President needs a special adviser from outside the Presidential bubble.

EJ Dionne believes that, during the holidays, the country should remember its common bonds.

The New York Times's Peter Baker outlines Jon Kyl's involvement with the White House regarding the START nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

New York & California lay out blueprint for adapting to rising ocean tides


From California, a Game Plan on Climate Change

November 22, 2010, 4:35 PM


By FELICITY BARRINGER
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Boulders were placed along the coast near San Francisco to shore up a cliff eroded by waves. A new report weighs the potential effects of climate change and rising seas on California.
As the push for national and international policies to arrest climate change was running into one obstacle after another, a separate discussion was coming to the fore: how to adapt to it.
New York State and California are creating blueprints for how governments should plan, and pay for, a wholesale retreat from the shoreline in anticipation of a possible rise in sea level of three or four feet or more by 2100.
The most recent report, written under the auspices of the nonprofit Pacific Council on International Policy and released Monday morning, warns that “the upfront costs of adapting to climate change will not be trivial; yet to do nothing and rely on reacting after the fact to deal with the impacts” would entail “prohibitive” costs.
In an interview, William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who is a co-chairman of the council’s adaptation advisory panel, said, “It is not clear to us that there’s any kind of high-level instruction to planners and state-level officials that climate change should be accommodated in things like new runway construction at airports, shoring up roads or building new bridges.”
The San Francisco and Oakland airports are both built at the edge of San Francisco Bay, barely above sea level.
Questions of where and how to build new communities and how to manage water have to be re-examined, he said, adding, “A lot of routine decisions have to be made differently than they are being made, taking into account realities that were not there 25 or 50 years ago.”
The new report focuses on the potential impact of climate change on coastal counties, where more than two-thirds of California’s economic activity takes place. It envisions the potential relocation of some coastal roads and bridges and the construction of defenses around major airports.
The report offers extensive advice on creating mechanisms to document the impacts of climate change and to then use the information to plan responses at the local, regional and state levels. It also recommends the establishment of a Climate Risk Council, a technically sophisticated five-member group appointed by the governor that would assemble and make available data on climate-related risks.
Among other things, it could offer advice to both the state insurance commissioner’s office and private insurers about how to incorporate climate risks into insurance policies.
“I think we need to get the attention of not just the development community but the insurance industry.” He added that state officials and private industry needed to recognize the limitations imposed by the state’s unique geography. “Beach replenishment off the coast of California is not possible,” he said.
He compared the proposed Risk Council’s role to that of the Council on Environmental Quality, which advises the president on environmental issues. “It can range across the agencies, can monitor what is happening and report regularly on observable change.”
The subject of adaptation is not new to California; not quite a year ago a group of agencies led by the state Department of Natural Resources issued its own report.
Among the projects developed by that review is a collaboration with Google to create a grid that identifies climate risks in dozens of regions of California; a prototype of this effort can he found here.

Obama: I pray every night, read the Bible

By Elise Viebeck - 11/27/10 11:13 AM ET

Praying and reading the Bible are part of his everyday life, President Obama said in a wide-ranging interview broadcast Friday.
Speaking with Barbara Walters, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama also described how they involve their daughters in daily prayer.
"Michelle and I have not only benefited from our prayer life, but I think the girls have too," the president told Walters. "We say grace before we eat dinner every night. We take turns."
"[I]n the end, we always say we hope we live long and strong," the first lady said.
"Long and strong. And that we give back."
Obama has been dogged by criticism about his faith since he took office. A poll released in late August showed that a growing number of Americans — one in five, up from one in ten in March — say he is a Muslim.
When asked if he prays himself, the president said: "I do. Every night."
He also says that he reads the Bible, and, asked to explain why so many Americans deny that he is a Christian, blamed the internet.
"Well, you know, the Internet has a powerful effect these days, and so, the way rumors can take on a life of their own ends up being very powerful," he said.

Kerry: Saving START for next year 'a recipe for endless delay'

By Bridget Johnson - 11/27/10 11:27 AM ET

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Friday that postponing ratification of the new START treaty until the next Congress is "a recipe for endless delay."
Writing in the Boston Herald, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said that 18 hearings and more than 900 questions submitted by senators to the Obama administration about the nuclear-arms treaty with Russia showed that "this Senate has done its homework, and this group of senators should vote on the treaty."
"There is plenty of time to consider this treaty," Kerry wrote. "When the Senate returns Monday, there will be 33 days before the end of the year. The original START agreement in 1991 made deeper cuts in our nuclear weapons and the full Senate needed only five days of debate to approve it, 93 to 6. A significant national security matter hangs in the balance and the Senate should be willing to work overtime to allow for a full and complete consideration of the treaty.
"If time is the only concern, then we should have no concerns."
Christmas, of course, falls within that 33-day timetable, and it's unclear if the Senate will be willing to work up until Christmas Eve again, like the upper chamber did on healthcare reform last year.
But other pressing matters await senators returning from the Thanksgiving break, including the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.
Kerry said START was a timely matter not just because of the "unequaled look" that the treaty would give the U.S. at Russia's nuclear arsenal, but ratification would "preserve the cooperative relationship that we have developed with Russia — especially at a key moment in preventing Iran from getting the bomb."
The White House has been putting pressure on Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) to move the treaty forward. But Kyl said in a Nov. 16 statement, "When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization."
“If they try to jam us, if they try to bring this up the week before Christmas, it’ll be defeated,” Kyl since told The New York Times in an article published this week. “If they allow plenty of time for it, and I think it will take two weeks, then it’s a different matter.”

First lady loosens up food rules: 'Have pie! Eat the dressing!'

By Elise Viebeck - 11/27/10 11:36 AM ET

First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged American families to enjoy their food over the holiday weekend and not to worry about "how much you eat."
Obama, who is spearheading a nationwide campaign against childhood obesity, explained to 20/20 host Barbara Walters that "this is the time" to let go a bit.
"I would urge people to use this time to come together, as families and community, and don't take it for granted. Be kind to each other and laugh a little bit. And don't worry about how much you eat. Just enjoy it," she said.
She later added, "Have pie! Eat the dressing!" when prompted to explain her comment.
The wide-ranging interview also included a discussion of Obama's campaign, dubbed "Let's Move," which focuses on healthy eating among schoolchildren.
"You know, our goal is ambitious but simple," Obama said. "We want to end the epidemic in a generation. We're really aiming at children born today, because our goal is that if we begin shaping habits and shaping the conversation and providing information to parents and teachers and engaging all of our leaders in this conversation, that we'll change the habits of young people today."
The First Lady has faced criticism from Republicans, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for advocating what they characterize as government overreach.
"A government has a role to play in this issue, as does every other sector," Obama rebutted in the interview. "And we reached out and engaged the grocery store manufacturers and the restaurateurs. We brought in the mayors and governors of states and towns. We're calling on faith-based community. There is no constituency that should be excluded from this call to action for our kids."
Both Obama and President Obama commented in another portion of the discussion that they both exercise to relieve stress.
The interview aired Friday.

Libertarian Party founder dies in Tucson

By Elise Viebeck - 11/27/10 10:47 AM ET

David Nolan, who helped to found the Libertarian Party and ran in recent years for House and Senate, died unexpectedly last Sunday, the party confirmed this weekend.
Nolan, who was 66, lived in Tucson, Ariz., and reportedly experienced a fatal heart attack or stroke while driving his car.
A life-long supporter of libertarian and conservative causes, he ran for the House as a libertarian in 2006, receiving about 2 percent of the vote in Arizona's eighth district. This cycle, he opposed Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) bid for reelection, again as a libertarian, and received about 5 percent of the final vote.
As a college student, Nolan had supported Barry Goldwater's campaign for president in 1964. He later worked on a constitutional amendment to eliminate the federal income tax.
The Libertarian Party was founded by him and others in the early 1970s.

Miller protests Murkowski's motion to hurry up lawsuit over write-in ballots

By Elise Viebeck - 11/27/10 03:21 PM ET

Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) call for a speedy end to a legal challenge by Joe Miller met with opposition on Friday, according to court documents.
The AP reports that attorneys for Miller filed a response to Murkowski's motion declaring that the state is the sole entity in deciding the issue at hand.
Murkowski had asked that the state expedite the suit, arguing that she could lose her position of seniority in the Senate if she is not seated by Jan. 3.
Her request was granted by Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Douglas Blakenship.
Murkowski, who mounted a write-in challenge after Miller won the Republican primary, was declared the winner of Alaska's three-way Senate on Nov. 17. She led by 10,328 votes, many of which have been contested by Miller's camp.
Miller alleges elections officials illegally counted improperly marked votes for Murkowski while tallying the write-in ballots. He is seeking to block certification of the general election results.
A hearing on the motions is scheduled for Monday.

Obama goes courtside day after being elbowed in game

By Elise Viebeck - 11/27/10 04:24 PM ET

Less than 24 hours after a basketball injury required 12 stitches in his lower lip, President Obama was back courtside to see a game between Howard University and Oregon State.
Obama and his family attended the game at Howard on Saturday afternoon, according to White House pool reports.
The president's brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, is the coach of Oregon State's men's basketball team.
The pooler said that Obama did not appear to be wearing a lip bandage or hurting in any kind of way.

U.S. now in Afghanistan as long as Soviets were

The last Red Army troops left in 1989, driven out after nine years and 50 days by U.S.-backed fighters known as mujahedin. Despite contrasts, the U.S. and Soviet wars have common narrative elements.

Destroyed Soviet tanks now sit outside the western Afghan city of Herat. Moscow's troops were driven out after a bloody war with a ragtag yet ferocious force of U.S.-backed mujahedin, or holy warriors. (Reza Shirmohammadi, Associated Press / November 25, 2010)By Laura King and Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times


November 27, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Moscow — As wartime days go, Friday was a fairly quiet one in Afghanistan. Helicopters skittered across the sky; convoys rumbled along desert roads; soldiers in mountain outposts scanned the jagged peaks around them.
But one thing set the day apart: With its passing, the length of the U.S. military's campaign in Afghanistan matched that of the Soviet Union's long and demoralizing sojourn in the nation.
The last Red Army troops left Feb. 15, 1989, driven out after nine years and 50 days by the U.S.-backed Afghan fighters known as mujahedin, or holy warriors. Ragtag yet ferocious, they were so spectrally elusive that the Soviet forces called them dukhi, or ghosts. A fitting term, perhaps, for a country that has been called "the graveyard of empires."
Many of the 100,000 U.S. troops deployed across Afghanistan weren't even born then, or were too young to be aware of that distant tumult. And although Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar lost an eye fighting the Soviets, many of his foot soldiers also have no real recollection of that time.
So to today's antagonists, the Soviet war in Afghanistan is ancient history. Yet its remainders are scattered across the Afghan landscape.
The rusting hulks of Soviet aircraft and armor lie crumpled in valleys and on hills. Soviet land mines linger in the soil, even after years of mine-clearing efforts. Soviet-era infrastructure dots the country, including a strange metal runway that commercial planes still land on. The biggest U.S.-run air base, at Bagram, north of the capital, was once a key Soviet staging ground.
And history twists back on itself. In the Soviets' war, the United States armed and aided the mujahedin; in this one, Russia is increasingly cooperating with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moscow agreed this month to let the Western military alliance take armored vehicles through its territory. Last month, Russian counternarcotics agents went along on a joint NATO-Afghan drug raid.
To those who experienced it on both sides, the Soviet occupation lives on in memory.
"I will never forget the day when my motorized infantry unit entered Afghanistan," said Andrei Logunov, then a young sergeant, later the leader of a major Russian veterans organization.
"We crossed the border from Uzbekistan without a single shot," he recalled. "We sat on our armor and looked at the peaceful countryside all around us. Nothing could have prepared us for the bloody war that would shatter us soon enough."
Sultan Mohammed remembers too. Now a sixtyish barber in a district outside Kabul, he spent nearly a decade battling the Soviets north of the capital, in the fight from beginning to end.
"We all together defeated them," he said. "Every man grabbed a weapon to fight. They shouldn't have been in our country, against our honor and culture."
Western officials generally shun comparisons between the Soviet conflict and this one. The aims, the manner of waging the conflicts, the numbers of dead, the treatment of Afghan civilians — all these, they argue, are vastly different.
The Soviet invasion sprang from Cold War geopolitical machinations, with Moscow's troops keeping an unpopular Communist regime in power. The U.S.-led war, targeting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, began with an air assault Oct. 7, 2001, less than a month after the Sept. 11 attacks.
For the Soviets, the scope of bloodletting in their Afghan war was enormous, with 13,833 dead troops and tens of thousands maimed. U.S. military fatalities to date total about one-tenth that: 1,403 as of Friday, according to the website icasualties.org.
The Soviet forces made scant distinction between combatants and noncombatants, and more than 1 million Afghan civilians died. U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, in theory at least, puts protection of civilians at the forefront; even so, civilian deaths this year have run about half a dozen a day, with most blamed on the insurgency.
Despite the contrasts, the two wars have vivid narrative elements in common: An invading force finds that its vast military superiority is no guarantee of victory against a guerrilla insurgency; resentment against foreigners sometimes boils over; the terrain is timelessly formidable; local ways can seem impenetrably mysterious.
The Soviet withdrawal is a favorite public relations theme of the Taliban movement, which itself was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in a matter of weeks, only to regroup and reinvigorate itself in recent years.
"This was their graveyard," said Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group. "As it will be for the Americans."
The Taliban movement is far smaller and less broad based than the anti-Soviet mujahedin, which encompassed many ethnic groups and political factions. Nonetheless, the insurgency is expanding its territorial reach, and NATO troop casualties this year are the highest of the war.
In the eyes of some, even the Pentagon's recent decision to deploy M1 Abrams battle tanks in southern Afghanistan evokes the David-and-Goliath confrontation of the mujahedin and the Red Army: The massive tank is seen as an effective battle weapon, but not one likely to win the hearts and minds of watching villagers.
Billions of Western dollars spent for aid and development are overshadowed, for many Afghans, by a sense that the NATO force abets corruption and graft in the government of President Hamid Karzai.
"It is better now than during the Russian period, definitely," said Kabul shopkeeper Mohammed Omar (no relation to the Taliban leader). "But everything is for the warlords, and nothing for the poor."
The NATO force, now on track to remain in a combat role until 2014, has lately taken an optimistic public tone about the war's direction. President Obama declared at last week's alliance summit in Lisbon that, militarily, "we are in a better place now than we were a year ago."
Russian analysts and veterans, however, say the picture they see in Afghanistan is a familiar one.
"Americans haven't drawn any lessons from the Soviet military presence; they keep stepping on the same rakes," said Sergei Arutyunov, a senior fellow at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow.
Logunov, the onetime infantry sergeant, remembers watching a live television broadcast in 1989 as the last of his compatriots crossed the bridge out of Afghanistan. Later that year, the Berlin Wall would fall, and the Soviet Union not long afterward.
"We had many toasts as we drank our vodka," he said. "The third toast, without clinking glasses, is to those who never came back from that war, to our dead brothers-in-arms.
"Then I stood up to make the fourth toast. I said, 'Let's drink to my wish that men will never have to raise the third toast in the future.' "
laura.king@latimes.com

sergei.loiko@latimes.com



King reported from Kabul and Loiko from Moscow. Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Afghanistan contributed to this report