We hope you’ve been enjoying the summer sun and some lazy days before we hit the higher energy of the fall season – and what a season we are creating for you! We were very happy to see many of you at our conversation with Jonathan Alter on his book, The Promise, last month. But whether or not you made it to our recent events with economist Alan Blinder, Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann or Googled author Ken Auletta, there are many exciting new events planned this fall and we hope you will join us.

September 15: Luncheon with Mayor Ed Koch, 12:15-1:45pm. Join us for our first event of the fall. Mayor Ed Koch will be joining us the day after the New York primaries to give us his unvarnished dissection of the primary results and his new initiative, NY Uprising. Mayor Koch is taking on entrenched interests by demanding non-partisan redistricting, responsible budgeting, and ethics reform in Albany. Come hear the outspoken and tireless former Mayor’s ideas for turning New York around.

September 29: Restrepo Screening, 7pm. We are very privileged to have the highly acclaimed documentary about the on-the-ground experience of the war in Afghanistan. After the screening, filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington will be on hand to discuss the film, as well as their books, Infidel and War. We are thrilled to have the film that won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award and the two men behind it.

October 13^th: The Common Good TOWN HALL with Hunter College on The Mid-Term Elections, Wednesday, 6-8pm. Stay tuned for more information about our exciting pre-election event. This will be an exceptional evening with stellar and bi-partisan panel and a reception with the panelists at Roosevelt House. You will not want to miss this event!

Back from a quiet summer vacation with the family on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama brings Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House this week to renew the peace process.

On Monday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House and make a statement on the economy. There have been a few recent signs of renewed economic recovery, though most of the recent news has been mediocre.

On Tuesday, Obama will travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he will meet with troops returned from Iraq. In the evening, the President will also address the nation on Iraq from the Oval Office.

All U.S. combat troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, actually ahead of schedule. 50,000 U.S. troops designated as non-combat, who will not patrol or engage in combat operations, remain in country. They are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House. Much of that is around the re-start of the Israeli/Palestinian peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, special envoy of the Mideast Quartet powers, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be on hand for a working dinner Tuesday night and scheduled peace talks on Wednesday.

Incidentally, Blair’s memoirs are published this week, which should be quite interesting.

After that, while Obama’s public schedule remains flexible as it always is later in the week to accommodate emerging issues, much of America’s attention turns to the start of Labor Day weekend.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been staging attacks in the relatively stable north, in addition to the usual attacks in the east and the south. The touted Taliban offensive hasn’t amounted to that much. But then again, neither has the ballyhooed U.S./allied offensive in Kandahar Province, which is far behind schedule.

In Pakistan, relief efforts to deal with the country’s worst flooding in history are ongoing. Private American contributions to the effort are relatively low.

In Iraq, the governance situation remains unresolved over five-and-a-half months since national parliamentary elections on March 7th. Which is why Vice President Joe Biden is there for the formal end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq and to urge the various factions to coalesce behind a national unity government.

You can check things during the day on my site.

William Bradley

We’ll see if events cooperate with Obama, who has taken about one-third as much time off as former President George W. Bush by this point in his presidency. During Obama’s first year in office, down time frequently coincided with intervening events, such as the death of Senator Ted Kennedy last year while Obama vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard.

The last major U.S. combat unit was withdrawn from Iraq on Thursday, leaving only about 2000 more combat troops to pull out before the August 31st deadline, coincidentally, two days after Obama returns from vacation. 50,000 other military personnel will remain till the end of 2011, when virtually all of them are scheduled to be withdrawn.

Sectarian violence continues in Iraq, where a new government has still failed to form over five months after national parliamentary elections.

General Ray Odierno, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said yesterday that U.S. forces may remain there following the December 31, 2011 deadline for complete withdrawal. He cited basing potential basing agreements with the Iraqi government similar to those with Saudi Arabia.

Odierno was responding to complaints of a few days ago from Iraq’s foreign minister that the U.S. is “abandoning” Iraq to foreign intrigue. The commander of Iraqi armed forces has said that he wants a major U.S. military presence in Iraq at least through 2020.

Iraq’s governance remains unsettled more than five months after national parliamentary elections. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose secular Sunni party finished first in the national election but is being blocked by Shiite parties from forming a government, is in Moscow meeting with Russian leaders. Shiite party leaders, for their part, regularly travel to Tehran for consultations with Iranian leaders.

We’re seeing a return of Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites to default positions from the Saddam Hussein days, with the difference that Saddam had the power to quell disturbances, frequently brutally when they erupted.

Over the weekend, Iran celebrated the fueling of its first major nuclear reactor, the long-delayed Russian-built Bushehr plant. Russia provides the fuel, and its guarantee that it will not be used to develop nuclear weapons. Moscow says this reactor is not to feared with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, and the the Obama Administration’s stance is that Bushehr, with Russian safeguards, will not lead to nuclear weapons proliferation.

Meanwhile, chatter about an Israeli military strike against other aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, widely viewed as weapons-oriented, is picking up.

You can check things during the day on my site.

William Bradley

On Monday, Obama welcomes the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints to the White House to honor their 2009 season. He then travels to Texas. In Austin, he headlines a Democratic National Committee fundraiser and delivers an address on education and the economy at the University of Texas at Austin. He then travels to Dallas for a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance event.

On Tuesday, he will attend meetings at the White House.

On Wednesday, Obama will meet with his national security team on Iraq.

On Thursday and Friday, he will hold meetings at the White House.

As you can see, Obama’s schedule late in the week is, as usual, fairly flexible in order to deal with emerging events.

He certainly has a lot to talk about behind the scenes, such as the stalled anti-Taliban offensive in Afghanistan.

A team of 10 civilian medics, most of them American, was massacred on Saturday in rural Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Then there is Iraq. U.S. combat troops are to be withdrawn by the end of the month, only three weeks away. But there is much that is very unsettled there.

The new Iraqi national parliament was scheduled to meet in mid-July, but that had been postponed indefinitely. Then it was scheduled to meet last week. But that meeting was canceled as well, indefinitely.

The reality is that the governance situation in Iraq remains unresolved, nearly five months after national parliamentary elections there yielded a surprise first place victory for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular Sunni party. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, scheduled to be completed at the end of August, is underway and reportedly ahead of schedule.

You can check things during the day on my site.

William Bradley

On Monday, Obama speaks at the national convention of Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta, Georgia. He addresses the ongoing drawdown in Iraq as we near the goal of ending our combat mission at the end of August, as well as the Afghan War, which is worsening.

On Tuesday, Obama will host a town hall at the White House as part of his Forum with Young African Leaders next week to discuss their vision for transforming their societies over the next fifty years.

On Wednesday, Obama will deliver remarks at the AFL-CIO Executive Committee Meeting. In the afternoon, he will depart for a rare trip back home to Chicago.

Wednesday, incidentally, is Obama’s 49th birthday.

On Thursday, Obama continues his message of success, begun last week, in reviving the U.S. auto industry when he visits a Ford plant in Chicago. He will also attend fundraisers while in Chicago. In the evening, he will return to Washington.

As usual, late in the week is kept relatively open for Obama to deal with emerging events, so on Friday, for now, he is scheduled only to attend meetings at the White House.

In his Disabled Veterans of America speech, according to excerpts, Obama says this of Iraq: “We’re moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we’ve seen in decades. By the end of this month, we’ll have brought more than 90,000 of our troops home from Iraq since I took office.”

But, he cautions: “We will maintain a transitional force until we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of next year,” he will say.

Obama also hopes for a big leap in success this week in the Gulf oil disaster, where relief well drilling is approaching the stage at which the rupture may be permanently plugged. Meanwhile, the cap placed atop the undersea gusher two weeks ago is holding, and no new oil is flowing into the water. But the waters are full of already spilt oil.

You can check things during the day on my site.

William Bradley

Today President Barack Obama will hold an event at the White House to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. On Tuesday, he will attend meetings at the White House.

On Wednesday, Obama will travel to New Jersey, where he will discuss the economy in Edison. Later, he will deliver remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York City.

On Thursday, Obama will deliver a major education reform speech at the National Urban League 100th Anniversary Convention in Washington, D.C. Obama will also meet with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Friday, Obama will visit Chrysler and General Motors Plants in Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan.

The White House has also revealed that Obama and his family will spend a weekend in mid-August on Florida’s Gulf Coast, presumably to help stir up tourism again in the wake of the BP Gulf oil disaster. On August 19th, the Obamas go to Martha’s Vineyard for a 10-day summer vacation.

Speaking of the BP Gulf oil disaster, BP CEO Tony Hayward is on his way out, for obvious reasons. After numerous failures and much obfuscation, major progress has finally been made in capping and stopping the undersea oil flow, though it’s been slowed of late by heavy weather.

As you can see by his schedule, Obama is again trying to focus on the economy, which is merely the number one issue in the country. But he may be sidetracked this week by revelations in classified materials released online by Wikileaks, a whistle-blowing organization.

In this case, Wikileaks is a whistle-blowing organization strongly opposed to U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, now clearly bent on proving U.S. war crimes there, as you see above in today’s comments in London by the group’s director. The documents, provided by a 22-year U.S. Army enlisted man, also detail numerous complaints about the role of elements of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service in helping the Taliban. The ISI helped set up the Taliban movement of religious students to fill the void in mid-’90s Afghanistan while the mujahideen leaders who fought the Soviets engaged in civil war.

You can check things during the day on my site.

William Bradley