Friday, February 6, 2009

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Michael Shaw: Reading The Pictures: America Unraveling Top
(click for larger sizes) Yesterday at BAGnewsNotes , Northwestern Communications professor Bob Hariman posted and discussed a very powerful image by Getty photographer John Moore.    The photo was taken in Adams County, Colorado, and featured Mary Ann Smith. The scene was the front yard of her house -- or her former house. After the owner she had been renting from stopped paying the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property and Adams County sheriff's representatives showed up and evicted her. The depth, acceleration and cruelty of this recession is unlike any I've seen before ... and I fear, it's still early. In my practice, many people are at the employment and financial precipice, and it's supremely painful to absorb. What makes the situation even more upsetting, however, is how difficult it is for the media to simply and sensitively, without patronization or drama, reflect what's going on. It's for that reason I find John's photos to be truly poignant. To give them their due, and to extend the eloquent words Bob offered yesterday, I felt it important to offer a few more images of Ms. Smith's eviction. In each of these close ups, Moore captures the raw edge of not just one person's experience, but the tone and quality of what is happening in towns and cities across the nation. It is one thing to witness the family possessions constituted on the lawn. Seeing it from the inside, with this room torn apart and its contents carted off gets closer to the true violence of it. The second image, with its "throw away" allusion to spirituality references both the cheap morality as well the more existential questions about what is going on. And then, of all things to be floating in this chaos, the baby album speaks to how little place, time and history is counting for now. For more visual politics, visit BAGnewsNotes.com (and BAGnewsNotes @Twitter ). (image: John Moore/Getty Images. February 2, 2009 in Adams County, Colorado.) More on Recession
 
Patricia Zohn: Culture Zohn: Turkish Delights and Debacles Top
A last-minute chance to explore Istanbul, a city I have longed to visit, came just on the heels of the Erdogan-Peres contretemps at Davos, and I leapt at it, if leaping can be measured in six thousand miles. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul A friend, a well known screenwriter, who had been there five or six years ago, sent an email stating, "Don't let me discourage you [but] I assure you I would never go back unless I absolutely had to for work or something, and even then..." She and her two daughters were harassed at every turn and she finished her justifiable rant against the men, the disrespect for women, the defacement of the architecture with, "not my country, not my city". I had lots of other girlfriends who had been and adored it, but this stuck in my head, so when a female museum art director pointed me towards the same hotel she had stayed, the Four Seasons, and a car and driver, I was therefore unusually mindful. Normally a girl who prefers roughing it a bit, I was concerned. I needn't have been. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul Yet the catcalls in the street as I passed on the cobblestones were almost proforma... they were as insistent for any "tourist" that passed by, a culture that has sprung up in any society where so many are out of work and dependent on tourism. (Hundreds of fisherman line the bridge on a weekday morning.) And the off-season in Istanbul for Western tourists is on-season for tourists from other Middle Eastern countries. Many Islamic women hold hands and kanoodle with their boyfriends in the street, which makes the scarves just so much window dressing on love. Women from neighboring countries in full burkas are side by side with women in modified dress and even girls and women who are totally non-observant. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul But the East-West divide, now that I am literally straddling the cradle of the Orient Express, is not nothing. The way of identifying the two sides as Asian and European reminds one constantly of the uneasy traditions that rub up against each other culturally and politically, and which still raise backs in the city. Yet, the mash-up of cultures is just magical. To stay in a Four Seasons and overlook the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque would be as if you could stay at the Catacombs or overlook the Vatican, or Notre Dame on the Seine, something no longer possible in Rome or Paris But we are concerned that we are practically the only ones in the hotels -- and like at all luxury hotels, I'm hyper-aware of the disparities of life -- the vast fountains, heated pool, endlessly helpful staff, are they all there for the two of us? It's not possible that there is already Western backlash against perceived antisemitism and realignment towards the Islamic fundamental bloc, we think, just the usual fall off after the world economy collapses. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul It feels both slumdog and millionaire at the same time. What one gets in the winter is the strait unvarnished by large yachts and dotted only with ferries, the call to the mosque clear and piquant, the Galata Tower courtyard (at the tower itself, a determined cleaning crew literally threw buckets of water at our feet), a sunny holding space for morning coffee or a stroll, the streets of Beyoglu quiet with stores for mandolins, guitars and violins and fish, the only evidence of the famous whirling dervishes, their deserted mansion (now in restoration) surrounded by a charming courtyard and cemetery filled with dead Pashas, sheiks and one French count who became a pasha in the end, and a guardian who was eager to test his rudimentary Italian on an equally challenged tourist. Immense highlights are the passageways, especially the Cicek, that are an excuse for tiny shops and arcade fish restaurants, conjoined by giant chandeliers filled with fake flowers. After a huff and a puff or I'll blow your house down exit from Davos, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan returned home to Turkey a hero; the nation which has the carrot of EU status constantly dangled in front of its nose by France and Germany rallied to support the anti-Israel sentiments of its feisty leader. Suddenly he was the new rallying point of the Islamic middle east, having been Israel's closest ally in the region. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul And the tentacles of the resurgence in fundamentalism reach everywhere . Ozalp Birol, the intensely cosmopolitan director of the Pera Museum , a private museum funded mostly by the branches of the Kirac family, is quick to offer up his "postponed" Chagall exhibition as evidence that he is protecting against possible antisemitic demonstrations down the road. A giant project they initiated to build a Frank Gehry-designed cultural center just across the street is held up by the fundamentalist government. Because he is Jewish? Because he is American? Because they ran out of money? Because of scuffling between the federal and municipal government? Because they can? Nobody knows. There is ample evidence of the deep fault lines (earthquakes too!) of the polyglot society that is held together here by spit and polish. The Pera archives next door at their foundation , a repository of Istanbul-ian wealth: photographs, rare books, dioramas, as well as the collections on exhibit at the museum itself are ample evidence that Istanbul has always been a center for art and culture. Courtesy of the Pera Museum, Istanbul One of the two Four Seasons finds itself at the crossroads of it all. Adjacent to the Hagia Sofia, a few steps away from the Blue Mosque and the Topkapi Palace, looking over an excavation of Roman ruins meant to be finished in December. The cavernous Blue Mosque with its tiny section for women, still calling adherents to prayers and the faded simple splendor of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts across the way (each room of the former palace with a fireplace and coffered ceiling) mark the many faces of Turkey -- the intensely talented tribes with their bejeweled garments and complicated rugs amidst elegantly constructed yurts and the eventually Western-facing Istanbulian wealthy of the 19th century, looking much like their counterparts in Europe. At the Hagia Sofia, finally, one finds the more aggressive overlay of religions and history: massive Islamic medallions slapped on the church walls while elegant tracery and tile recall both byzantine and ottoman forebearers. I, along with the mostly middle eastern tourists clamber up the worn stone ramps. At the Alhambra, one feels the weight of pure Islamic tradition. At the Hagia Sofia, with its wrought iron candelabra and its wooden raised platforms for prayer, one feels only dismay that we are still doing so poorly at assimilating each other's culture. Erdogan and Peres would do well to make a joint visit to this magnificently faded splendid structure and remind themselves that the collision of the culture of their countries, marks some pretty serious co-habitation. Now, they just have to stop living together and finally get hitched. The local English language newspaper, Hurriyet, is filled with column after column of dissection of Erdogan's actions at Davos, now presumed to have been highly orchestrated in advance and negotiated with the Israeli's, why else the dust up having been so quickly patched over by both sides. Here in Istanbul, a man leaving for the airport as local supporters of the ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party came to greet Erdogan was stuck for so long that fearing he would miss his flight got out of the car and walked two kilometers. There are those that think Erdogan is playing straight into the hands of his base (sound familiar?) and those that he is keeping the Israeli balance of payments, now favoring Turkey, well in hand. U.S.-Jewish support groups are rallying against Turkey, yet know that it is their only hope of support in a region increasingly pitted against Israel. The sultans seem to have had it all figured out. Here is how it worked: beautiful and intelligent girls from the provinces were brought to the palace as concubines. If you became a favorite, and pregnant, you could rise to the level of a consort, an instrument of the perpetuation of the dynasty. Eunuchs guarded your every move behind the elaborate tiled and filigreed existence in the harem where you existed with other women in a highly structured society of refinement and relative luxury. Yet, in the end, your entire life passing behind a screen a harsh alternative to poverty elsewhere. Western artists came to Istanbul with their fascination for all things "oriental" and painted their fevered, opulent versions of what must be going on behind the walls of the harems -- but now having seen one of the finest at the Topkapi Palace, I think they are almost understated -- the real thing a fabulous fantasy land prison. Having been the cradle of the East and West's fascination for each other, Turkey is a complicated spot, at once showing how worlds can collide magnificently and the collision course itself: let's hope Israel and Turkey can get their mojo working towards detente instead of cant. More on Davos
 
John Amato: Obama to speak Monday night on stimulus while Rep. Pete Sessions says Republicans are the new Taliban Top
It looks like President Obama has been reading our blogs and is finally going to use his bully pulpit to go directly to the American people to explain his stimulus plan on his terms. President Obama will significantly ramp up his salesmanship of his economic stimulus plan over the next week with a prime time news conference planned for Monday and an address from the Oval Office on the topic also being considered. I've said repeatedly that the Republicans are forgetting that Obama is an incredible communicator and when Obama does use it, they will pay. If the media hadn't acted so irresponsibly the past two weeks and President Obama hadn't tried to be so bipartisan, he might not have had to take to the airwaves, but that's not the case anymore. As Michael Hirsh says : The reason Obama is getting so few votes is that he is no longer setting the terms of the debate over how to save the economy. Instead the Republican Party--the one we thought lost the election--is doing that. And the confusion and delay this is causing could realize Obama's worst fears, turning "crisis into a catastrophe," as the president said Wednesday. Obama's desire to begin a "post-partisan" era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending. This makes very little economic sense when you are in a major recession that only gets worse day by day. {} The decisive issue here is leadership. The lack of it is what is plaguing the Obama administration. Every war needs a successful general, and this administration doesn't have one yet. Digby repsonds: I think the administration thought they could be mediators between the two parties rather than leaders of the Democratic party. That just won't work, particularly when the Democrats aren't very good at battling the Republicans in close combat and the Republicans can make those who stay above the fray seem lightweight and insubstantial, which is what they've managed to do. They've showed they don't respect Obama and are unimpressed with his mandate --- the administration needs to accept that and strategize with that in mind. He said today that bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is not desirable. He should just drop that whole schtick. He can have the cocktail parties and the get-togethers and talk to them all he wants. And if they happen to have a good idea (very doubtful) then fine. But they are going to represent their narrow interests because that's what they believe their constituents want. That's the way the system works. They aren't partners, they're political adversaries and they remain adversaries even when there is an emergency at hand. Accept that and fight it out on the merits. I was hoping for the Republicans to obstruct him like they have so he would stop serving them cookies and crumpets to try and coax the right wing punditocracy to help him pass his legislation. That was never going to happen. Republican Pete Sessions said that the House Republicans are the new Taliban now. I kid you not. . That's when Texas Rep. Pete Sessions compared House Republicans to the Taliban , the fundamentalist Muslim terrorist group that has targeted U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Sessions' staff insists he wasn't lauding the Taliban's goals, only their tactics. See what you think: Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban -- no, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their front line message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with. At least he didn't use a Nazi metaphor . Sessions should apologize immediately for this statement. How insane is it that Sessions identifies his own party with the group that housed Osama Bin Laden? I thought they wanted to catch Bin Laden, not be like him. Are the Taliban going to run ads now that say I want to be like Bin Laden ? So the American Taliban (House Republicans) want President Obama to fail and they will act like the Taliban to do it. I saw the press asking Gibbs if Obama was dropping bipartisanship earlier today. When will the press ask the New Taliban why they want to be associated with our enemies in battle. This has been a big lesson for President Obama. May he learn it well. John Amato is the founder of CrooksandLiars.com ) More on Barack Obama
 
Steve Parker: Bulletin: GM, Chrysler bankruptcies being developed Top
According to Reuters, the U.S. government has retained two law firms with extensive bankruptcy experience and the investment bank Rothschild to advise officials on the taxpayer-backed restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler LLC, a person with direct knowledge of the work said. New York law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP was hired by the U.S. Treasury last month and will consider a range of possibilities for the struggling automakers including the prospect of a bankruptcy funded by the U.S. government, the person said. Cadwalader is joined by Chicago-based law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal and Rothschild in working with U.S. officials as they prepare to review turnaround plans being readied by the two automakers, the person said. A spokeswoman for Sonnenschein in Los Angeles confirmed that the firm had been engaged to advise Treasury on "ongoing matters related to the 2008-2009 developments within the U.S. automobile industry." More to come. More on Cars
 
Steve Parker: Bulletin: GM, Chrysler bankruptcies being developed Top
According to Reuters, the U.S. government has retained two law firms with extensive bankruptcy experience and the investment bank Rothschild to advise officials on the taxpayer-backed restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler LLC, a person with direct knowledge of the work said. New York law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP was hired by the U.S. Treasury last month and will consider a range of possibilities for the struggling automakers including the prospect of a bankruptcy funded by the U.S. government, the person said. Cadwalader is joined by Chicago-based law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal and Rothschild in working with U.S. officials as they prepare to review turnaround plans being readied by the two automakers, the person said. A spokeswoman for Sonnenschein in Los Angeles confirmed that the firm had been engaged to advise Treasury on "ongoing matters related to the 2008-2009 developments within the U.S. automobile industry." More to come. More on Cars
 
Karen Dalton-Beninato: Boxer KO's Graham in Battle of Theatrics (VIDEO) Top
TPM featured this footage from yesterday's congressional debate between Senators Barbara Boxer and Lindsey Graham. In wordage that has the internets buzzing, Boxer twice mentioned Senator Lindsey Graham's theatrical manner: "I find It really rather amazing that the senator is holding up a bill. Holding up bill - Theatrical! Did you ever do that when George Bush was president and he sent down a bill twice as big as that? Did he ever do that? Cause you can do that, that's theatrics. You can do that." Senator Graham's Response: "I will put my ability to speak my mind to my party up against anybody including you senator. I've been on this floor many times . . . " Well you get the picture. Lindsey Graham is not only theatrical, in a different party he could have been fabulous. Larry Craig, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Charlie Crist, J. Edgar Hoover - historically a gaggle of Republicans have raised eyebrows across Capital Hill. But if Boxer is speaking in some kind of code it is fascinating to imagine what will happen if she ups the ante every day until the Stimulous Bill gets passed. Because, frankly, Lindsey looks nervous. It could sound something like this: Boxer on Friday: "I find it astounding that the senator is fighting green jobs in so flamboyant a manner. If Graham's anti-stimulus theatrics keep up, at some point Senator Dianne Feinstein may need to step in and remind Graham that when it comes to impassioned rhetoric he would do well to learn from Harvey Milk's hope speech in 1978. Graham, however, voted against the federal marriage amendment so she would need to point out, Lloyd Bentsen style: "I knew Harvey Milk. And you, sir, are no Harvey Milk." More on Barack Obama
 
Steve Parker: Republicans to auto industry: "Drop dead." Top
According to the Detroit News, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, is attacking the allocation of money from the proposed $900 billion stimulus bill to allow the federal government to replace older and less efficient vehicles with newer, cleaner cars and trucks as "wasteful spending," and further deriding the plan as "$600 million to buy new cars for government workers." And the newspaper reports that, privately, auto industry lobbyists have said they expect the section to be pulled from the bill. As President Barack Obama finally went on the offensive yesterday in the realpolitik world of Washington, DC, News Corp, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and hate radio, Republican legislators continue to demonstrate that Rush Limbaugh is their party's leader, snarky labels and talking points repeated ad nauseum are the key to all victories and some of the world's largest, most important corporations - and their workers; especially the workers - can go to hell. (President Obama spoke at the Department of Energy yesterday in support of $600 million to buy new, fuel-efficient cars and trucks for the government; it's called "priming the pump" for an important industry, and it works). "Critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state of the art fuel efficiency. This is what they call pork," Obama said at a speech at the US Energy Department in Washington, the paper reported. "You know the truth. It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match. "When you hear these attacks deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself -- are these folks serious? Is it any wonder that we haven't had a real energy policy in this country?" Obama said. McConnell's office, the Detroit News said, "didn't immediately return a request for comment." The fleet, leasing and daily rental industries buy about 20% of all the cars and trucks sold in America. That's down from 33% 25 years ago, when I was editor of that industry's magazine, Automotive Fleet. And it's important to know that, especially now, these numbers include vehicles made by the Detroit Three and at the foreign-owned manufacturers, the so-called "captive imports," doing business in the US. And how many cars and trucks will $600 million buy, with the average price of a 2009 vehicle almost $28,000? About 30,000 of them, that's how many. Not enough to fill the Pentagon parking lot, but enough to keep some assembly lines running and people earning paychecks. (Ford sells about 40,000 Crown Victoria-based police cars annually in the US, and all Crown Vic sales became for "fleets only" in the 2008 model year; when Chevrolet still made the Impala, the two companies combined to sell as many as 100,000 cars to police departments in a good year). US factories run by Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, several others and soon, Volkswagen and perhaps Fiat, have kept the United Auto Workers union out of their plants by opening in "greenfield" areas, generally in the Southeast and with high local unemployment. A very real part of the car industry's bottom-line is that these companies have, at least, provided jobs for thousands of Americans, but the George Bush economy is forcing all carmakers to cut workers across the board; one of the benefits of union membership is some form of job security, continuing health care and retirement funding, so today's economic realities may get those non-union workers thinking seriously about organizing. With many of the First Depression-era Smoot-Hawley style protectionist "Buy USA" provisions wisely being pulled from the stimulus bill, companies, private and public utilities and municipalities throughout America will still have the freedom to buy cars and trucks from whichever manufacturer they chose. This is how we know McConnell and his toadies are not just attacking the United Auto Workers and Detroit Three management, but also corporate officers and workers in Stuttgart, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Turin, supplier and factory employees and executives throughout the US, Mexico and Canada, and all those non-union American workers at foreign-owned supplier companies and auto assembly factories. (BMW's assembly plant in Greenville, SC). This time, they're after everyone, including many of their own constituents. Heck, if they really don't want to win another election for a generation or two, that's fine with us. In a rare political double-double (with apologies to Kobe Bryant and my Lakers), Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both garnered not only the expected support from unionized men and women working Detroit Three assembly lines, but also many of the carmaker executives. Polls (and election results) have shown that a large number of the white- and blue-collar workers at the foreign-owned carmakers also supported those Democratic candidates. For his troubles, energy and dreams, Clinton wound-up being impeached by Republicans, his wife called a swindler and murderer, his brother tagged as a major cocaine dealer and, on his several-times-failed TV show, Rush Limbaugh spoke about the "White House dog" while showing a photo of the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea. And look at what Barack Obama's preternatural desire to build consensus and hear from all sides has gotten him: so far, not one Republican vote to support the stimulus plan, and Senators from that same party bragging about doing the same thing today, when the bill may come up for a vote. For the sake of just 30,000 cars and trucks, Republicans are willing to give up whatever resonance they may still have with voters. More on Stimulus Package
 

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