“Council on Foreign Relations” on The Daily Caller

Tim Pawlenty plans to speak out against isolationism within the Republican Party in a foreign policy speech Tuesday.  (more)

1.) Obama’s jobs team gets green-washed — “President Barack Obama will name Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker,” reports Bloomberg News. “Immelt has sounded many of the administration’s themes: boosting jobs through U.S. exports, ensuring companies can compete with powers like China and India, and jumpstarting a clean-energy economy. Immelt wrote today that he and Obama ‘are committed’ to making the U.S. ‘the most competitive and innovating economy in the world.’” According to Bloomberg, “Immelt is among a group of executives — Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney; Motorola Solutions Inc. CEO Greg Brown, and Honeywell International Inc. Chairman David Cote — who have voiced support for Obama policies. The four serve on several of the president’s outside advisory boards”–and all four have made a killing on green jobs subsidies (more)

The arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington Tuesday evening brought the U.S. face to face with the leader whose nation many Americans believe will supplant them as the world’s most dominant super power. (more)

The United States lost an exceptional public servant last month with the passing of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and I lost a friend and mentor. I came to know Holbrooke during the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia and brought a diplomatic solution to a war-torn people. He masterfully directed a peace agreement that demonstrated the true importance of civilian-military cooperation with a team that included me, General Wesley Clark, and Ambassadors Chris Hill and James Pardew. (more)

General Brent Scowcroft (ret.), the former National Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, has been working the phones trying to secure Republican Senate support for the ratification of the New START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. He said he’s “cautiously optimistic” but said he was frustrated with the opposition he’s been hearing from Republicans. (more)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a congressional oversight panel this morning that the cost of the federal financial rescue program will ultimately be only a “fraction” of the cost originally estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. (more)

As friends and colleagues from four decades of diplomatic life reflected on the intensity of Richard C. Holbrooke’s dedication, many were not surprised to learn that concerns about the Afghanistan war were apparently among his final thoughts. (more)

Veteran U.S. diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, 69, whose relentless prodding and deft maneuvering yielded the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia, a feat he hoped to emulate as President Obama’s chief envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, died Monday in Washington from complications following surgery to repair a torn aorta. (more)

Statement from the President on Richard Holbrooke: (more)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right on the money when she said in September that Mexico is beginning to resemble Colombia of 20 years ago, according to leaked diplomatic cables. (more)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, the top House Republican on budget matters, peeled the curtain back a little on GOP relations with the Obama White House Thursday. (more)

Multiple World Bank officials were alerted this week to beware an email virus purporting to be from an unlikely source: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. (more)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama met Friday at the White House with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice for a chat on foreign policy and her new memoir, officials said. (more)

Pelosi said the Ways and Means Committee will consider legislation Friday that could result in punishing tariffs on Chinese imports. (more)

One sanction against Iran that can be implemented before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the U.N. next week is to ban him from U.S. television interviews. (more)

There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I’ll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro’s level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with non-Communist autocrats) but it seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis (you can read about what he said toward the end of my previous post – but he said, in so many words, that he regrets asking Khruschev to nuke the U.S.). (more)

First it was House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, making his pitch to the electorate to be made House speaker in part by calling for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to be fired. (more)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made the Obama administration’s economic case for letting tax cuts for high earners expire at the end of this year, saying that failure to do so would harm rather than help economic growth. (more)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said rising wages would probably spur household spending in the next few quarters, even as weak job gains dragged down consumer confidence. (more)

White House budget director Peter Orszag has gone after Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Road Map” plan before, critiquing the Wisconsin Republican’s vision for solving America’s entitlement and debt crisis earlier this year, when releasing President Obama’s budget. (more)