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Obama at the Tailor's

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A 13-Year-Old Conservative


His name is Jonathan Krohn and he just turned 14 (today apparently), but he was a darling at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference. He’s already written a book, Define Conservatism, and speaks with the enthusiasm and passion of a bar mitzvah boy. His hero is Bill Bennett and he wants Newt Gingrich to ascend to the presidency. Perhaps he, rather than Jindal, should have given the Republican rebuttal to Obama’s speech last Tuesday. Anyway, we’re already working on Max, brainwashing him at every opportunity to turn him into the child prodigy heir to Kennedy liberalism.
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Bush in Tears

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U.S. President George W. Bush re-enters the White House East room to say goodbye to staff and friends after his primetime address in Washington, January 15, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)

This Bush photo, along with many others, are discussed on Errol Morris’ blog at the nytimes.com. It’s hard to feel sorry for the man after all the colossal mistakes he’s made, but this photo, taken right after his final public address to the nation, makes feel sorry for him. As one of the photo editors who talked with Morris said, it seems pretty obvious that Bush had been weeping right before he returned to the room to privately thank his staff and the press corps for the last time. Most of Morris’s Mirror Mirror on the Wall blog entry concerns the subtle role of photography as political propaganda and the way society--even presidents--have come to view images as aesthetic validations of history. The list of the Bush administration’s failures and lies and outright cronyist greed is just amazing, and Bush’s reaction to a lot of these photographs seems to confirm that he remains incapable of contrition. No surprise, given his genius for denial. Of course he did have one great success...

Anyway, this marks my last post about Bush--call it the final catharsis.
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Obama Inauguration at BAM

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BAM Obama Inauguration panorama
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The Tumor Was Finally Removed!

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It feels like a giant cancerous tumor has been removed. Thank god!
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Obama Inauguration Count Down

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Obama Fever in E. Village

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Q: What Was Bush Doing While the Economy Was Melting?

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A: Reading books.

Thanks to spinmaster Karl Rove, we now know that our supreme leader is not a philistine book burner, but a learned man of letters. In Rove’s new career, to rehabilitate his puppet’s legacy, he offers this WSJ column on how he and W. competed to read the most books and pages over the last few years. While it’s plausible that Bush actually read the listed books, a few investigators have done the math, in particular this analysis over at Book Patrol, which comes to the conclusion that it is unlikely Bush could have plowed through his list in so little time.

The above picture, I’ve just learned, is actually a fake. This was disseminated not long after 9/11 when Bush was reading along with an elementary school class down in Florida as the planes hit the towers. Snopes.com nailed the fraud here. I hadn’t realized though, that the book they were reading, America, A Patriotic Primer, was written by Lynne Cheney. Perhaps the only thing better than Oprah to enhance book sales is to have your husband be the vice president.
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Finally the Nightmare Can End!

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Congratulations, Barack! As the Onion said, you are about to inherit America’s worst job. Only ten weeks until Inauguration, ten weeks for Bush to continue his reign of destruction. With a 25% approval rating, I’m sure he’s more than happy to gift industry with some more loose regulations. After all, he’s going to need some big donors to break ground on his presidential library at SMU.
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Max's First Election

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Halloween

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The nominees took some time out from their busy campaigns to stroll with the crowds in the Park Slope halloween parade.
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Powell Finally Does the Right Thing

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After tarnishing his reputation with his U.N. speech about Iraq’s WMD, Colin Powell finally stopped waffling and offered his well-reasoned conclusion on why he’s supporting Obama. While I’ve never been a fan of generals, I did have respect for Powell’s calm, smart demeanor, at least before he shamefully toed the Bush line about the imminent danger of Iraq. Whether pundits want to spin this as a race thing or not, Powell did himself right this time. Tireless diplomacy and engaged multilateralism are the best approaches to ensure world peace, not bullying and jumping into unwinable conflicts. Powell’s experience tells him this and he knows Obama is clearly the better man for the moment.

OReilly and Obama
Speaking of a calm, smart demeanor. The best advertisement for Barack Obama happens to be his appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show on September 4th. If you haven’t seen this 4-part video, you should. Under O’Reilly’s dogged pressure, Obama remains confident, intelligent, and totally reasonable, even displaying a sense of humor. While the Fox News flat-tax, pro-corporate commentator could have sharpened his chainsaw a bit more, he was obviously impressed by Obama’s command of the issues. The usual stuff is discussed--class warfare, cap gains tax, Bill Ayers, Iran, Afghanistan--with Obama refusing to take O’Reilly’s inflammatory bait. Also mentioned, are my two biggest Obama disappointments, his support of FISA and embrace of nuclear power, both of which clearly show Obama is willing to imperil the citizenry at the profit of big corporate power. (I can only hope that this will not actually play out in his presidency.)
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The Manipulator Manipulates McCain

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Somehow I missed this photojournalism controversy last week. Jill Greenberg, aka The Manipulator, was hired by The Atlantic to shoot a portrait of John McCain and she posted photoshopped outtakes (a few shown here) from the shoot on her website (all since removed). The editor of The Atlantic released a condemnation of Greenberg’s actions as well as an apology to the McCain campaign. The whole controversy has spawned some lively discussions (here, here, and here) on photojournalist ethics. Though I find her actions unprofessional and childish, I don’t see why Greenberg can’t publicize her strong political views. Of course, she won’t be working for The Atlantic again, but so what? Maybe she’ll have to give up her title of photojournalist, since she can’t remain impartial. But that’s okay, she’s not documenting reality anyway, she’s an artist illustrator.

Artists can and should take stands; too often they end up only making slick PR advertisements for the subjects they shoot. Even if McCain’s image was made into propaganda, it does not change the fact that he’s a Bush lapdog, a man who has totally lost his principles, and someone we should really fear running this country.

For an interesting read on how a real pro dealt with photographing a subject he considered evil, read this about Arnold Newman posing Alfred Krupp.
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Client 9 Gear Already Available

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The End of Unilateralism

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Parag Khanna makes a long, persuasive argument in the Sunday Times Magazine about how the future of the world is in the hands of the big 3: the U.S., Europe, and China. The most important part of his essay is that it will be the rising second world (countries like Venezuela, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan) who will have the leverage as they grow, picking and choosing alliances with the big 3.

Seen in this context, the Iraq War was an act of desperation by a waning superpower run by an idiot with an oedipal complex who all too willingly bankrupted its coffers to benefit the biggest multinational corporations. And it really was about oil, securing the cheap, free flow of it, because without cheap energy, the U.S.'s economic leverage is greatly reduced. Starting in 2009, diplomacy and innovation, not arrogance, will have to rule the day. Barack will have quite a job ahead of him.
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