http://www.observer.com Just another WordPress site Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:59:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Barack Obama's campaign, not content with a Google+ chat, jumped onboard a new tech craze by uploading a Spotify playlist for the 2012 race. (Spotify is the music network that publicizes the songs to which one listens and allows the creation of epic playlists.) It's pretty easy to cherrypick out the songs of which Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2012/02/barack-obama-uploads-spotify-playlist-pretends-to-like-florence-the-machine/ Before he was leader of the free world cruising around in armor-plated vehicles with a Secret Service retinue, then-legislator Barack Obama allegedly tooled around in this tasteful gray Chrysler sedan. This is apparently a legitimate auction for the 2005 Chrysler 300C the President used while he was an Illinois State senator. Lisa Czibor, who has told reporters that she is holding the auction for someone else, says the  first 19,000 miles were all [future] presidential powered.

The auction holders are also a little defensive about the $1,000,000 asking price: Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2012/01/take-a-presidential-cruise-in-obamas-million-dollar-car/ The Rockefeller tree lighting ceremony. President Barack Obama's visit to town. Read More

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Last night, demonstrators who arrived in midtown to protest a Barack Obama fundraiser found themselves corralled into a "free speech zone" on 53rd Street and 7th Avenue. Reporters--like Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones and Meg Robertson from MSNBC --were not allowed near the penned-in demonstrators, despite Commissioner Ray Kelly's recent orders that the NYPD was to play nice with journalists covering OWS. This directive came after the events of the November 14th raid of Zuccotti and the Day of Protest on the 17th left 26 reporters arrested.

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]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/12/nypd-still-barricading-journalists-from-covering-obama-protests-midtown/ Robert Moses built as often with expressions and syllogism as with stone and steel. “The important thing is to get things done.” “If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?” “Either you want it or you don’t want it, and either you want it now or you don’t get it at all.”

They peppered his conversations and correspondence and were bellowed at rooms full of subservient staff, intransigent politicians and hostile citizens. The most influential and enduring of his maxims is undoubtedly: “Once you sink that first stake, they’ll never make you pull it up.”

More than the thousands of miles of roads and bridges and tunnels, the grand parks and parkways, the exhibition centers and fairs, more than the innumerable demolished homes and displaced families, the congestion and pollution, the social unrest—more than anything that Moses built or destroyed, this idea, get the shovels in the ground and there will be no stopping us, shaped the country’s public works ethos.

While his projects were largely confined to New York, his ideas about how, and why, to build persisted across the country. Sure, there were the acolytes who parroted Moses ideas' of urban renewal in cities across America, but they fell out of favor not long after their patron fell from power. How to build, and more importantly how to keep building, persisted for decades after Moses was deposed. For almost 30 years after he was laid to rest in 1981, Moses’ spirit lived on in infrastructure.

Sink those stakes, and the money will follow for more. It always does.

Then, almost over night, we gave up the ghost. It did not start with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his decision to cancel the ARC Tunnel—recall the Congressional fight over much-maligned stimulus spending—but that was certainly the clarion call. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/11/raiders-of-the-lost-arc-christie-cuomo-and-the-collapse-of-american-infrastructure/ You can thank all that traffic in Midtown this week to the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, which brought in not only the world's most important leaders, but all their bodyguards and beefed up security as well. Don't even try going east of 3rd Ave today, is all we're saying.

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]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/09/ambassa-dirty-the-sexiest-united-nations-general-assembly-attendees-slideshow/ Wednesday, September 7 Reever Madness They’re making another Superman flick with some British gent—don’t they know that for screen magnetism as well as real-life heroism, the buck stopped with Christopher Reeve? The beloved screen icon, who became an advocate for the paralyzed after a horseback-riding accident, is remembered at the Christopher & Dana Reeve Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/09/its-fashion-week-in-the-eight-day-week/ Hurricane Irene played matchmaker for the political odd couple of President Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The potential 2012 rivals are unlikely allies in the debate over hurricane relief and they're spending an awkward afternoon together tomorrow touring flood damage in Paterson. Despite his repeated denials, Christie is viewed by many insiders as a Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/09/obamas-awkward-garden-state-date/ Vogue editor Anna Wintour is one of President Obama's 27 mega-bundlers--individuals who collected $500,000 or more in donations apiece for a joint account for Obama’s 2012 campaign and the Democratic National Committee, reports Politico. Other mega-bundlers include former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and Hollywood producer Jeffery Katzenberg. With phone calls and Calvin Klein-co-hosted dinner parties, she's Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/anna-wintour-apolitical-editor-dnc-fundraising-all-star/ Barack Obama's rather unremarkable summer reading list (see below) has sparked some VERY IMPORTANT debate. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/obamas-summer-reading-list-incites-the-pundits-to-knee-jerkery/ That's what Charles Gaeta, a Fiat specialist—as the carmarker likes calls to call its salespeople—told The Observer when we visited the Fiat studio—not dealership!—on Monday night. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/why-the-fiat-500-is-perfect-for-america-its-the-obama-car/ Last night, after her Piers Morgan walk-out, Christine O'Donnell spoke briefly at the Women’s National Republican Club about her memoir, Troublemaker, and about the virtue of pulling together and showing cohesiveness as a party going into the 2012 elections. "I told it in a way that some political advisors have said was a little too honest," Ms. O'Donnell said, "and I probably shouldn't have admitted some things." Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/more-on-christine-odonnell-obama-is-a-strapping-young-man/ At 1:30 PM—half an hour after the scheduled time—President Barack Obama will kick off his press conference on Standard & Poor's Friday night downgrade of America's long term sovereign credit rating from AAA to AA+. Plenty's been said about this by plenty of people, except for this guy. We'll be taking notes, with Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/video-obama-vs-s-p-downgrade-the-liveblog/ The fireworks have died down (hope you enjoyed the show, Jersey … better luck next year, Brooklyn and Queens) and all that’s left of this year’s patriotic festivities are the tiny flags littering the West Side Highway, the distended abdomens of the contestants in Nathan’s annual hot dog-eating contest and the sobering knowledge that, according to Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/strauss-kahn-bids-adieu-and-beck-does-so-too/ Mark Halperin's suspension from his MSNBC commentating gig for suggesting that President Barack Obama was "a dick"--after asking for a seven-second delay for his extremely premeditated slip of the tongue--calls to mind so many recent suspensions: David Shuster's, from MSNBC, for saying Hillary Clinton had "pimped out" her daughter Chelsea during the Read More

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