Monthly Archives: September 2011

IKEA: comfy or creepy, asks The New Yorker

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America and much of the rest of the world continue to be fascinated by IKEA – you all know of it, right! — the symbol of Sweden for so many…

As a Swede, I don’t know whether to be proud over its world-wide success, but I can’t ignore it, as I think back to May of 1985, when IKEA opened its first store in a Philadelphia suburb.

In its latest issue, The New Yorker devotes quite a bit of space to the Swedish phenomenon under the headline “House Perfect — Is the IKEA ethos comfy or creepy?”

It is, indeed, a fascinating story.

“Another Obama Foreign Policy Success”

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That’s the headline on Taegan Goddard’s blog Political Wire in the aftermath of the reports that the al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, has been killed in a drone attack, and Goddard cites two other blogs, MSNBC’s First Read and ABC TV’s Jake Tapper.

Tapper lists the many names of suspected terrorist leaders killed during Obama’s now almost three years in the White House. If this is defense, I wonder what offense looks like, writes Tapper, referring to former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s statement that an Obama presidency would mean that the U.S. would play defense rather than offense in the war against terrorism.

But First Read says that Obama does not get much credit for this success.

After Troy Davis, is there still hope?

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Troy Davis was executed last night in Georgia.

The question is whether it could be said any better than by Robert Scheer on Truthdig:

”There is something stunningly disgraceful about the company we (USA) keep on this issue…Execution is a means of summarily ending the pursuit of justice rather than advancing it.”

Scheer did not mention that another death sentence was carried out last night, in Texas, against Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist who killed a black man, James Byrd Jr., in a hideous hate crime in 1998. The execution took place, quietly, without any public protests.

Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, 1, 267 people have been executed in the United States. Of all the things about America, this is the hardest for us Europeans to comprehend, and nothing upsets us more.

Still, there might be hope that America will finally turn against the death penalty, as outlined in two recent must-read articles on the death penalty by Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic, and Dahlia Lithwick on Slate.

Some good news: Elizabeth Warren to the lead

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Some really good news:

Elizabeth Warren has taken a surprising lead in the Senate race in Massachusetts.

In the first poll since launching her candidacy a few days ago, the Harvard law professor and consumer advocate, leads Republican Scott Brown 46 to 44, according to Public Policy Polling.

Warren, who should have been the permanent head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had it not been for the scandalous behavior of the Republicans in the Senate, surprised everyone by her strong showing.

Although November is far off, and she must first beat the other four Democratic hopefuls who all are beaten by Brown in the same poll, Warren now looks to have a real chance to take the nomination and then recapture that old Ted Kennedy seat for the Democrats.

Indeed, som really good news!

A new Obama, and the good fight is on, finally…

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Are we seeing a new President Obama? Yes, I hope and believe so. And it’s uplifting, even liberating. Finally.

Republican commentators like David Brooks regards himself in his column today in the new York Times a “sap” for believing that Obama wanted to move beyond the ideological stalemates. I don’t know Brooks, he might be a sap, but what he fails to point out is that the party of “no” is the reason for this new and more fighting, partisan tone from the White House. Obama has tried the reasonable, bipartisan approach for three years, in vain.  So…

As Steve Benen writes on his Washington Monthly blog:

“What the columnist (Brooks) refuses to understand is that Obama still believes in the governing style Obama talked about in 2008. But I desperately want Brooks to answer one question: what happens when the president is the only one willing to adopt this posture, and his ostensible partners in governing — congressional Republicans — refuse to even consider compromise? In all sincerity, what choice has the GOP left for Obama?”

Another Republican commentator, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, writes that Obama has now entered a “pathetic phase.” But isn’t it so, that the Republicans in Congress are the pathetic ones, locked in, as they are, in their stubborn, repetitive denial of the necessity of a balanced approach, with both cuts and new taxes, in order to get America out of this deep and painful economic mess.

The fact that Obama’s approach is also fair, lends it even more credence. It’s extremely difficult for me to understand the anti-tax sentiments of the Republicans, which have been so bad for America, as Michael Tomasky writes today in the Daily Beast. No one loves to pay taxes, but they are needed. Americans are not over taxed, and some, certainly, are under taxed. It’s time to remedy this this matter.

So, the big fight is on, and it’s a good fight. As Tomasky writes:

“This tax fight will be the great test of the Obama presidency. All else—stimulus, bailouts, financial reform, even health care—was prelude. The tax debate is the money shot. If he wins this one, all the failures, even the calamitous debt-ceiling agreement, can be forgiven. Mr. President: Show us the money.”

A morning in lower Manhattan always remembered

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Today, as 9/11 and its nearly three thousand victims are remembered, lower Manhattan has changed but much also remains the same. Where the twin towers used to stand is still a huge construction site and will continue to be for years.  But the view out over the water with the Statue of Liberty in the distance is as stunning as always. The marina over in Battery Park City is full of sailing boats, kids are playing, and people are enjoying the sun set. The dark and narrow streets around Wall Street are full of people as lower Manhattan today has many new residents.

That morning, ten years ago, our world at 80 John Street, where we then lived three blocks from what would become known as Ground Zero, came crashing down.

The morning had begun so brilliantly beautiful as my wife, our daughter and I were preparing us for an ordinary day in New York. Suddenly there was a big explosion, much larger than the usual noise on lower Manhattan. I rushed down and out on the street where people had gathered and stood and looked up at the sky up to the north twin tower that stood in the fire. A plane had run straight into the North Tower. How could it happen?

Chaos, confusion. Then another big explosion when the south tower was hit. This was no accident. Then, the unthinkable – the gigantic south tower simply fell, like a deck of cards, straight from the top down in a roar. A huge, dark mass of debris and smoke and dust rushed towards me like a dark wall on our narrow street. It got pitch-black . Coughing and shocked people filled our foyer. We couldn’t see and we could hardly breathe.

It did brighten somewhat before the north tower – again in an incredibly, almost simple way. We were swept back into the dust and smoke and complete darkness. Out on the street more and more people appeared. They came out of the smoke and dust and darkness from Ground Zero as from another world. Employees from the shops and residents provided protective masks and water bottles. Many had no idea where they were and how they could get away. Go north, north, we said and pointed.

By now, we had no electricity, no telephone. We started to pack the essentials and headed out on the street, covered with many inches dust and debris, away from Ground Zero and walked north. Soon we were out in the sun and the clear blue sky, but behind us, where the twin towers once stood, there was now emptiness.

It took over a week before we could return home. Life on John Street in lower Manhattan had changed. Several months after September 11, we walked around nervously, watching intently aircraft that flew over the town a little too low, flinching with any loud noise. A foul odor from the smoldering hole at Ground Zero followed us constantly.

In June, we moved up to the West Side of Manhattan, near the greenery of Central Park. It was no easy decision, but we needed to get away from the daily reminders of Ground Zero and a neighborhood that was going to be a gigantic construction site for years to come.

It’s been said that after 9/11, life will never be the same again. For us, that is certainly true.

A somber Labor Day and thoughts of Jimmy Carter

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Labor Day today – America’s First of May – but it is somber and gloomy, no music orchestras and no marches, no resounding speeches and appeals, like in the Stockholm of my youth.

At dinners recently here in Washington, old journalist friends, lawyers, lobbyists, all of them passionately interested in politics and in the future of America, are worried — zero job growth, unemployment stuck at 9.1 percent, which means 14 million unemployed plus 9 million who have had to settle for part-time jobs, and over 6 million who are no longer looking job. “Not since World War II,” writes Robert J. Samuelson in today’s Washington Post.

Like most people of Greater Washington, my friends are Democrats and voted for Barack Obama in 2008. They still like him, but they are troubled, even disappointed, in his leadership and his willingness to compromise with the Republicans. They want him to stand up and fight for what he believes in and for what is right. Obama should know by now that it is futile to try to work with Republicans and the tea party movement, for they hate him. Their goal is to ensure that Obama is not re-elected next year, and any compromise that might help him must be avoided.

My friends hope that in his speech on Thursday before Congress Obama will be bold and grand and revive their enthusiasm for him and bring optimism back to this country. But they are not sure, burned by last year’s budget deal and last summer’s debt crisis. They don’t know if Obama has it in him.

And so the dreaded name Jimmy Carter comes up in our conversations, an intelligent and Democratic president, just like Obama, who in 1980 became a one-term president. Obama a new Jimmy Carter? One almost dares not say it. But Jimmy Carter’s famous, or infamous, “malaise” speech in July 1979 contained some things that ring true today:

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

Carter’s speech was no hit. On the contrary, it contained little of what the American voters wanted to hear, and they didn’t even think it was true. And so they elected the eternal optimist Ronald Reagan President the following year.

Thursday is an important day for President Obama, and for America.  And I still have hope.