On Screen and Off, Nostalgia for Glory Surges in Turkey

By Dan Bilefsky, New York Times/Arts, October 29/30, 2012

ISTANBUL — Since the lavish, feel-good Turkish epic “Conquest 1453” had its premiere this year, its tale of the taking of Constantinople by the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmet II has become the highest-grossing film in Turkey’s history, released in 12 countries across the Middle East and in Germany and the United States. But its biggest impact may be the cultural triumphalism it has magnified at home.

“Conquest 1453” (known as “Fetih 1453” in Turkish) has spawned a television show with the same title and has encouraged clubs of proud Turks to re-enact battles from the empire’s glory days and even dress up as sultans and Ottoman nobles. The producers of “Once Upon a Time Ottoman Empire Mutiny,” a television series about the 18th-century insurrection against Sultan Ahmet Khan III, said they planned to build a theme park where visitors will be able to wander through a reproduction of Ottoman-era Istanbul and watch sword fights by stuntmen [....]

The three-year-old Panorama Museum, which showcases an imposing 360-degree, 45-foot-tall painting of the siege of Constantinople, complete with deafening cannon fire blasts and museum security guards dressed as Janissary soldiers, is drawing huge crowds.

And in the past few years there has been a proliferation of Ottoman-themed soap operas, none more popular than “The Magnificent Century,” a sort of “Sex in the City” set during the 46-year reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. The Turkish show pulpishly chronicles the intrigues of the imperial household and harem, including the rise of Suleiman’s slave girl-turned-queen, Hurrem. Last year it was broadcast in 32 countries, including Morocco and Kosovo.

The empire’s rehabilitation has inspired mixed feelings among cultural critics [....]

You really need to read the full article, this goes far beyond Ohio.

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio - When Ohio voter Paul Presta opened his door to two election canvassers one recent Saturday he interrupted them in mid-sentence and asked Jim Lewis about an issue close to his heart.

"Do you support the second amendment?" he asked, referring to the U.S. constitutional right to bear arms, and pointed at Lewis.

Lewis grinned and lifted up his shirt slightly to give a glimpse of a Glock 9mm pistol tucked into his belt, for which he has a concealed carry permit.

Presta, 72, a semi-retired businessman, instantly relaxed, cheerfully telling them he had already voted for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Lewis and his fellow activist Ann Becker are a new breed of canvassers going door to door along a sloping street full of modest and mostly well-kept homes in this declining steel town in Butler County. This is the first presidential election since the founding of the Tea Party movement which aims to reduce the size of U.S. government.

The two activists are not beholden to any campaign - some would say they are a rogue force - nor do they mention Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by name.

While they differ with former Massachusetts governor Romney on many policies and suspect his conservative credentials, they are working independently to help him win over undecided voters in swing states such as Ohio.

Fiercely opposed to the reelection of Democratic President Barack Obama, conservatives are trying to employ technology they used successfully earlier this year in a recall vote in Wisconsin to help Romney overcome Obama's narrow Ohio lead in the polls.

Conservative group American Majority Action trains volunteers such as Lewis and Becker to target "low-propensity" voters, or people who are not very interested in politics. They use Gravity, a mobile get-out-the-vote app that aims to filter out regular Republican voters and those who have already voted.

"I'm not doing this for Romney or the Republicans," said Chris Littleton, who is training some 50 volunteers to use the app. "I'm doing this because I'm against Obama."...........

Among the voters Lewis and Becker encounter is Scott Whitt, 46, a truck driver who says upfront: "I'm undecided."

Friendly yet focused, they ask Whitt targeted questions about the U.S. debt, Obama's health reforms and the economy.

"Do you believe the government should take over health care?" Becker asks. "Are you better off now than in 2008?"

Whitt says government involvement in health care "doesn't sound good" and while he is "not doing badly" he worries about those without jobs.

After 10 minutes, Whitt is no longer undecided.

"I'm going to vote for Romney. He has the business experience we need," Whitt said.

American Majority Action said its volunteers at four Ohio field offices had called or spoken in person to 500,000 voters by this week as part of their get-out-the-vote drive.

This and other conservative groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, which has backing from controversial oil and gas billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, are targeting independent voters in Ohio and other key swing states.

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said his group expects to raise and spend $140 million nationwide by Nov. 6........

Shorter Thomas Friedman: the notion symbolized by the phrase "pro-life" should be far more expansive.  Also, BLOOMBERG!!!!!1

Seriously, I actually thought this piece was fairly decent right up until the end.  Somehow, all roads must lead back to the majesty of Michael Bloomberg, whether they begin in a bus depot in Bangalore or with the abortion debate.

By Marc Santora, New York Times, October 30/31, 2012

Never before has the divide between uptown and downtown in Manhattan been starker. Or darker.

On Tuesday, as New Yorkers coped with their first post-Hurricane Sandy night without power, the dividing line between north and south in the city was 25th Street.

South of 25th, the streetlights on the West Side were not working, and the buildings were completely dark. There seemed to be no stores there, no Starbucks, no places to charge a phone and no idea when the lights would go back on. South of 25th, the effects of the storm were deeply felt. Not so uptown.

“I just biked down from Hell’s Kitchen, and it is like a Friday night up there,” said Chris Degner, who lives in TriBeCa. “And then you get down here and it is like entering a zombie movie.”

He had been at a bar in Midtown called Valhalla. He struggled to describe what it was like to go from a “pub that is packed elbow to elbow” to streets where people are scrambling to find a way to find spare candles and were worried about locating a bag of ice.[....]

Sure, Nate Silver's model says it's not really close at all, but doesn't it feel like it's a dead heat?  It sure does if you're a paid pundit!

...Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion.....It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines....Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

NY Post on Romney supporter/hedge fund manager Paul Singer, and Delphi deal.

Palast on Romney bonanza at Democracy Now. "...they’ve not only moved the company operations to China, but they’ve moved their incorporation of the auto parts division of General Motors from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey in the Mediterranean Sea, which hides their taxes and also, of course, hides their accounts."

By Linton Weeks, NPR.org, October 26, 2012

[.....] After all, plants can sometimes exhibit humanlike behavior. And we're not just talking about the butterwort-flytrap hybrid in The Little Shop of Horrors. Some plants respond well to music. Some "smell" other plants. Still others seem to shrink away when touched.

Plants display remedial types of memory and possess "anoetic consciousness" — the ability of an organism to sense and to react to stimulation — writes Daniel Chamovitz in his 2012 book, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses.

And, according to recent reports from a research team led by Australian biologist Monica Gagliano, some plants (such as chili peppers) may be able to "hear" other plants (such as sweet fennel). "We know that plants recognize what is growing next to them," Gagliano says in the University of Western Australia's University News. "There is chemical communication between them. Plants can warn other plants of a predator by releasing a chemical, and the warned plants can release chemicals to make themselves unpalatable to the predator."

She says, "I think we might realize that plants are more sensitive than we think."

Sensitive enough to deserve rights? Some people think so [.....]

October 25.  Exemplifying the Post's steady rightward drift in recent years, this incoherent mush reads like about what you would expect if a committee composed of Charles Krauthammer, George Will and E.J. Dionne, Jr.--or Fred Hiatt all by himself--was tasked with writing it.  Still, I'll take mush endorsing Obama over mush endorsing Romney.  The editorial's last 3 paragraphs:

..........

The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes. His unguarded expression of contempt for 47 percent of the population seems as sincere as anything else we’ve heard, but that’s only conjecture. At times he has advocated a muscular, John McCain-style foreign policy, but in the final presidential debate he positioned himself as a dove. Before he passionately supported a fetus’s right to life, he supported a woman’s right to abortion. His swings have been dramatic on gay rights, gun rights, health care, climate change and immigration. His ugly embrace of “self-deportation” during the Republican primary campaign, and his demolition of a primary opponent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for having left open a door of opportunity for illegal-immigrant children, bespeaks a willingness to say just about anything to win. Every politician changes his mind sometimes; you’d worry if not. But rarely has a politician gotten so far with only one evident immutable belief: his conviction in his own fitness for higher office.

So voters are left with the centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s campaign: promised tax cuts that would blow a much bigger hole in the federal budget while worsening economic inequality. His claims that he could avoid those negative effects, which defy math and which he refuses to back up with actual proposals, are more insulting than reassuring.

By contrast, the president understands the urgency of the problems as well as anyone in the country and is committed to solving them in a balanced way. In a second term, working with an opposition that we hope would be chastened by the failure of its scorched-earth campaign against him, he is far more likely than his opponent to succeed. That makes Mr. Obama by far the superior choice.

John Sununu suggests expressly tonight that Colin Powell endorsed Obama because of the color of the president's skin.  This really is the stuff that separates the Democratic Party, which would never tolerate this filth, and the GOP of the 21st Century.   And I ain't the kind of guy to pretend that the Democratic Party, or our president, is all sugar and spice and all that is nice.  But there is a difference, and it's as clear as day.   Sununu never would have said what he said if the campaign didn't consider the power of the whistle.

Heaven help us if we the people elect Mitt Romney.  Seriously.

By Keith Bradsher, New York Times, October 25/26, 2012

HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access early Friday morning to the Chinese-language Web site of The New York Times from computers in mainland China and gradually halted most access to the English-language site as well after the news organization posted an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister. ("Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader" by David Barboza.)

The authorities were also blocking attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in postings on Sina Weibo, an extremely popular mini-blogging service in China that resembles Twitter [....]

Yesterday I suddenly realized that with so many new rape options available to women, there might be some confusion knowing exactly how to proceed in case of a violent sexual assault. And then I remembered another ham-fisted attempt by another administration to let us know how to react in case of "terror". I'm sure if they are elected, the Romney administration would find the same method useful to help us ladies straighten out our pretty little heads. So here's the Romney Administration's Rape Advisory Chart! Find your level of horrifying assault on your person and proceed accordingly!

The quote is from the original post, which is funnier though less specific.

BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS:

He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.'........

The practice of requiring high-level legal review continued for the rest of Romney’s term, despite a warning from a Department of Public Health lawyer who said such a system placed the children of same-sex parents at an unfair disadvantage.

Crossouts and handwritten alterations constituted “violations of existing statutes’’ and harmed “the integrity of the vital record-keeping system,’’ the deputy general counsel of the department, Peggy Wiesenberg, warned in a confidential Dec. 13, 2004, memo to Mark Nielsen, Romney’s general counsel.

The changes also would impair law enforcement and security efforts in a post-9/11 world, she said, and children with altered certificates would be likely to “encounter [difficulties] later in life . . . as they try to register for school, or apply for a passport or a driver’s license, or enlist in the military, or register to vote.”

Romney’s interventions mostly resulted in delays awarding birth certificates for women married to same-sex partners who gave birth. Gay men seeking parental rights were required to take a different route, by obtaining a court order. By law, birth certificates must be issued within 10 days of birth, and in some instances, those deadlines were not met.