Fables of the reconstruction

You Get Used to It

As I get older, I find joy in even minor appliances.

Three things: I can't read up close, hair is going gray, and I'm getting increasingly pompous. Solution: Bifocals without the line, keep the hair cut short, and never miss an opportunity to keep my mouth shut.

Flotilla Fiasco

Daniel Davies (of "shorter" fame):

My canny theory about what happened is that the Israelis had convinced themselves that the flotilla were gun-running, didn't bother to check, and acted accordingly, planning roughly the clustereff that actually happened, presuming that the justificatory material would be found after the event. And then it wasn't and oooerr, oh shit. This would also explain why the post facto media strategy (via Henry) was so totally incoherent - it was built around a corpus delicti that didn't arrive.

My take is slightly different. I think the IDF went in thinking that the ships were full of silly peace types who would be frozen in terror at the arrival of the mighty Israel military. This would explain why they went in without throwing concussion grenades first and rappelled down singly rather than in pairs. They expected no resistance. Instead, furious opposition in the form of wooden clubs arrived - a pretty gutsy thing, in fact, given they were up against guys with guns - and when the Israelis started losing the fight, they resorted to those guns. Now all they can scratch up is video of their elite commandos getting beaten up by silly peaceniks and a pile of weapons including the wooden clubs, as well as tools from the engine room and cutlery from the galley. There was even a dangerous-looking phillips head screwdriver.

So, in short, the IDF fucked up by not planning for the contingency they found themselves in, period. And a bunch of people are dead as a result.

What Your Email Address Says About You

Remembering George Tiller

April Adicks:

He was kind, soft spoken and caring. He comforted me as I cried that I was a Catholic and that I wasn’t even sexually active. He asked me to trust him and was completely without judgment. He told me that he was going to help me and that he would make sure that I would be OK. And he was right.

It took me years to come to terms with the fact that the rape was not my fault and that I made the best choice that I could possibly have made at that point for myself. It wasn’t easy. But I have now become an activist for choice.

Years later, working for Planned Parenthood, I was able to reconnect with Dr. Tiller. I was fortunate to be able to thank him for saving my life – for caring for me and for inspiring me to be an advocate for reproductive rights and the power of comprehensive sex education.

He was still the kind and gentle man I remembered from so many years earlier. And he was humble as he thanked me for the work that I was doing.

On the afternoon of May 31 , 2009, I received a text that simply said, “they killed dr. tiller.” I let out a gasp of disbelief and horror. It was that afternoon that I felt the time was right to share my story to honor Dr. George Tiller. I decided not to be silent any more.

This is a reminder that the best response to the domestic terrorists and their many sympathizers and enablers is to work and help the people who need help. Attitude is everything.

Just Ask the Question: Philly Edition

Brendan probably helps to kill a "stupid music-killing bill" in Philadelphia City Council:

So I asked, “Can you provide me a list of the most recent incidents, the dates and places these crimes take place?”

That’s when she began hemming and hawing. “Oh, umm… well we don’t have a LIST, but I assure you it’s a problem.”

“You don’t have a list?” I asked. “Then how can you back up your claim if you don’t have the specific incidents noted down?”

“Well, uh.. call the Police Commissioner’s office. They have the list,” she told me.

So I did. But the Commissioners’ office told me they didn’t have any such list.

Basically, the police gave him the run-around and then told him they'd get back to him. They didn't, so he called the councilmember's staffer back and she hit the roof, defensively. Clearly, she'd been hearing from the cops that some guy was asking uncomfortable questions and she was dreading the followup. 

Would it were that more people just pick up the phone, me included.

Attorney General Corbett, PA GOP Candidate for Governor, Subpoenas Identity of Critical Blogger

This is an abuse of power:

The state Attorney General and Republican nominee for governor has subpoenaed Twitter seeking information about accounts connected to the blog, which is fiercely and ceaselessly critical of Corbett. The blog’s tagline is “Exposing the hypocrisy of Tom Corbett.” It has repeatedly hammered Corbett on the details of his Capitol corruption probe over the years.

The blog is Casablanca PA. The subpoena is here.

May 16, 2010

The Procession of the Saints, 9th Street Italian Market Festival, outside St. Paul Catholic Church, 900 block of Christian St.

Virtual Astroturf

Boing Boing: 

Telcos' secret plans to use fake "citizens groups" to kill Net Neutrality

Jane Hamsher Defends Erick Erickson as "Honest Broker"

No comment:

Jane Hamsher, the publisher of the liberal blog FireDogLake, said that many bloggers like Mr. Erickson test rhetorical limits, but “that’s no reason to keep him off the air.” Ms. Hamsher said she would rather debate Mr. Erickson, whom she called an “honest broker,” than an opponent reciting prescribed talking points.

Aviation Weekly Suspends Writer Who Criticized Lockheed F-35

David Axe:

The number-one defense contractor is also one of AvWeek’s biggest advertisers. A Lockheed spokesman told reporter Steve Trimble that the company “has not asked Aviation Week to take disciplinary action against Bill Sweetman.” But it didn’t have to. Lockheed only had to keep buying ads. AvWeek’s cowardly editors handled the disciplinary action all on their own. That’s one way influence works in D.C. 

There’s more at stake than one man’s career. The F-35 program has proved, time and again, that it cannot be trusted with the taxpayer’s dollars. Audits and good reporting are the only way to keep the F-35 developers honest. Without Sweetman, that kind of oversight gets a lot harder. 

As a consequence, the United States could wind up like China. Beijing is scrambling to cover up serious, and sometimes fatal, design flaws in its new J-10B fighters, which were partially reverse-engineered from Israel’s Lavi fighter. “The pitfalls of reverse engineering without paying royalty and truly understanding the technology are high accident rates, a fact that China has hushed up with its lack of media freedom,” Manu Sood reports. 

The big difference is that the F-35 has not gotten anyone killed. Yet.

The arms manufacturers are lashing out at Sec. Def. Gates and anyone else who criticizes them. I expect that operators like Gates and Obama are working very closely on this. John Cole, a vet, is pessimistic:

It [the military budget] will just keep growing and growing and growing, and we’ll find more threats to justify the expense, and should the budget continue to get worse, I’m sure the fiscal discipline commission can come up with some cuts to social security and medicare to keep the war machine churning. And then very serious people on both sides of the aisle will tell us that we need to suffer, and suffer we inevitably will. But not as much as the people we bomb, so there is that.

But there are conservatives on our side on this. Not the D.C. wackos and shills, like Heritage, of course. But take James Joyner on Gates' question whether we really need eleven carrier strike groups, when no one else has even two:

Gates is asking the right questions here.

A few months back, I took part in the Navy’s distinguished visitor program, spending 24 hours aboard the USS Eisenhower.  Both the vessel and its crew were extremely impressive.  The amount of firepower and flexibility represented by a carrier group is enormous and likely well worth the cost, given our budget.  But I don’t know anyone who really thinks we need eleven of them.  My inclination would be to figure out how many we’ll plausibly need and add two.  But my strong guess is that would still leave us well short of eleven.  And, given the margin of advantage between us and the next strongest maritime power, the need for the Ford class [supercarriers] is less than obvious.

Or take this remarkably cutting blog post by Mark Safranski at Zenpundit. He's reacting to a statement by a defense industry flack who said, in reaction to Gates' announcement that the Pentagon would have to get by with less, "The only people celebrating at the Pentagon last week were the Mexicans working on renovating the building." To which Safranski said:

It takes a rare class of wit to combine an allusion to an ethnic minority group while shilling for a fabulously overpaid and notoriously dysfunctional industry that is anxious that we are spending too much money on the war wounded. Full story at Danger Room.

Remember people, every dollar wasted on caring for a critically injured combat veteran, or on a pay raise that keeps a private’s family off of food stamps is a dollar that could have gone to cost overruns or a desperately needed executive bonus.

Joyner and Safranski are mainstream conservative policy wonks and seem as fed up with the military industrial complex as any liberal. I think I know how the Congressional GOP is going to try to handle the situation, but their position may not be nearly as strong as Cole fears it is.

Beau Biden Had a Mild Stroke

A.G. Biden has had a 'mild stroke' and has been transferred to an unnamed Philadelphia hospital, per CNN.

Local Programming: Free Furniture in West Philly Today

Do you have a truck and want to redecorate? Today is moveout day for the University of Pennsylvania. Thousands of kids with more money than brains and their parents will be leaving barely used, high quality furniture out on the campus sidewalks because they'd rather throw it away and buy new next year than move it.

Go!

Beau Biden Hospitalized

I hope he's okay:

The White House says Vice President Joe Biden's son is being treated at a Delaware hospital. 

In a statement Tuesday, the White House says Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden is awake and alert and communicating with his parents and wife, who are with him. 

I got to meet Beau at the 2008 convention. He seems like a nice guy, like his dad.

Liberal Opposition to Kagan Might Help Her Confirmation

So, Obama nominated Kagan. Glenn Greenwald opposes her on the grounds she is too conservative, arguing with his characteristic restraint and dispassion that the record on Kagan's views is thin but she would move the court "closer to the Bush/Cheney vision of Government and the Thomas/Scalia approach to executive power and law." In other words, we know little about the substance of her views and that proves what her views are. He also says that any Democrat who approves of the pick is the "pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism". Paul Campos argues she is not too bright as a legal thinker and compares her to Harriet Miers. His implication is that Obama is not much smarter. I'm not sure how productive this kind of condescending criticism is, but I guess it puts eyeballs on pixels.

The interesting part to me is, as Ambinder puts it, that "all judicial battles are fought on the right's terrain." Bowers says:

If anything, such opposition [by Greenwald and Campos] would probably help Kagan's confirmation, by making her look moderate, or something.  If progressives want to stop her from being confirmed, the absolute least effective attack will be going after her for being too far to the right.

Far-right legal blogger Steven Bainbridge proves the point:

I don't know very much about Elena Kagan other than that a couple of Harvard folks for whom I have a lot of respect think highly of her. When I look at some of the lefties who are opposing her and their reasons for doing so, however, I'm tempted to conclude that she's the most acceptable--from my perspective--candidate Obama is likely to put forward for the SCOTUS. You can tell a lot about a person from who their enemies are. 

So, yeah, it's hippie-punching. Some hippies are masochists for it, because the more you get punched, the bigger a hippie leader you are. Like Kagan's career moves, it's good for raising their influence without there being a noticeable benefit for the rest of us.

I think Obama nominated Kagan because (a) he knows her well and understands her thinking, and he hates surprises, (b) she probably shares most of his constitutional law views or at least there is a strong overlap, (c) he respects her for keeping her head down and drafting behind the powerful to get to where she is, just as he's done, (d) he thinks that (c) will make her sail through confirmation, and (e) he sees her the way he sees himself: Someone adroit at managing the conflicts among difficult personalities. He figures she will have a good thirty years to form coalitions on her side, away from Roberts; she is the liberal answer to Roberts, the young bureaucratic infighter. Why would she side with the liberals if she's so conservative? Because the conservatives on the Court don't need her. Obama knows from looking into the mirror that people who have sought to be influential all their lives don't stop when the venue changes. The only way to be influential on the Court is to make the cases come out differently than they would otherwise.

Local Programming: Drinking Coffee Liberally in Mt. Airy Tomorrow

Sunday, May 9th, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
Drinking (Coffee) Liberally Mt. Airy
Mt. Airy Drinking Liberally meets at Infusion Coffee + Tea (7133 Germantown Ave.), from 12:30 until 2:30 PM.

Report: Army Spy Plane Helped Catch Bomber. Me: I Doubt It.

Noah Schachtman passes along a TV news report that was taken down without explanation:

“In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport.”

He then geeks out over the technology, but I call bullshit on the whole story. If the FBI had Shahzad's cell phone number, all they needed to do to listen to his phone calls was wiretap his line. It would be quick, given the state of the evidence it would be easy to get a warrant, and unlike a spy plane over a particular location, it would catch his conversations no matter where in the world he was.

The details of what exactly went down May 1-3 are still unclear, so spin, misinformation and mistakes - whichever this was - fills the void.

Local Programming: Philly for Change + Greendrinks Tonight

Wednesday, May 5th
6 - 9 p.m.
greendrinks Delaware Valley Meets Wednesday Evening
greendrinks.delware valley meets the 1st Wednesday of every month at all five of the official greendrinks.delaware valley locations.

7 p.m.
Philly for Change May Meetup
Philly for Change holds its regular monthly meeting on the first Wednesday of the month at Tritone, a bar located at 1515 South Street.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Center City Tonight @ Jose Pistola's

Tuesday, May 4th, 6 - 9 p.m.
Drinking Liberally Center City
Drinking Liberally meets every Tuesday at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102. Beer specials all evening.

Join Our Facebook Groups
Are you on Facebook? Join the Philly Drinking Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.

Send In Your Event Suggestions
Forward any area events for the week to the Philly DL organizer by Sunday to have them included in the weekly email.

About Us
Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 353 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

Times Square Bomber Suspect is Naturalized U.S. Citizen From Pakistan

Great:

Federal agents and police detectives arrested a Connecticut man, a naturalized United States citizen from Pakistan, early Tuesday in connection with the failed Times Square car bombing, according to people briefed on the investigation.

The man, Faisal Shahzad, was believed to have recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was found loaded with gasoline, propane, fireworks and fertilizer in the heart of Times Square, one of the people briefed on the development said.

Mr. Shahzad was taken into custody at Kennedy Airport, apparently trying to flee, one of the people said. Charges against Mr. Shahzad, who had returned recently from a trip to Pakistan, were not announced.

If the jihadis had a brain, they'd be dangerous.

We definitely have to profile people who work on Wall Street:

Early Tuesday, at Mr. Shahzad’s former home in Shelton, Conn., just outside Bridgeport, a neighbor said that Mr. Shahzad and his wife, Huma Mian, spoke limited English, and kept mostly to themselves. The couple had two young children, a girl and a boy, said the neighbor, Brenda Thurman.

Ms. Thurman said the couple had lived at the house at 119 Long Hill Avenue for about three years before moving out last year. Mr. Shahzad left around May, she said, and his wife followed about a month later.

The house was a gray, two story Colonial-style three-bedroom built in 2003, according to the real estate site trulia.com.

Ms. Thurman said Mr. Shahzad got up early every morning and left to work nicely dressed, and had told her that he worked on Wall Street.

Local Programming: Drinking Coffee Liberally in Mt. Airy Tomorrow

Sunday, May 2nd, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
Drinking (Coffee) Liberally Mt. Airy
Mt. Airy Drinking Liberally meets at Infusion Coffee + Tea (7133 Germantown Ave.), from 12:30 until 2:30 PM.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Delaware + Dining Out for Life Philadelphia

Thursday, April 29th
All Day
Dining Out For Life Philadelphia
Over 200 restaurants across the Delaware Valley will donate 33% of the cost of your meal to the fight against HIV & AIDS. Please visit the participating restaurant page where you can search by location, cuisine type, meal served - even for restaurants taking part in our special "20% Off Tuesday" promotion - details on the promotion are on the Participating Restaurant page.

7 p.m.
Drinking Liberally Delaware
Spring is here and Drinking Liberally Delaware is back! Please join us next Thursday, April 29th at the Iron Hill Brewery on the Wilmington Riverfront, 710 Justison St. (formerly S. Madison St.), Wilmington, DE 19801. We will be meeting on the second floor at 7:00p.m., and if the weather is nice enough will venture out onto the deck. Can’t wait to see everyone!

Thank Allah He Wasn't a Muslim

If I were on a flight with this guy, instead of barricading him into his seat with pillows, I would have just punched him in the face repeatedly until we landed.

This just proves we need to profile all Air Force intelligence specialists.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Center City Tonight Upstairs @ Jose Pistola's

Tuesday, April 27th, 6 - 9 p.m.
Drinking Liberally Center City
Drinking Liberally will meet at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102. Beer specials all evening.

Video of Shooting Liberally Philly at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
In early April, members of Shooting Liberally Philly road-tripped to Kentucky to attend the biannual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot right outside Ft. Knox. We really had a lot of fun talking to the collectors of automatic weapons, some modern, some dating back to World War I and earlier. We have video of members trying out some of the guns. Sign up here for notices of future events.

Join Our Facebook Groups
Are you on Facebook? Join the Philly Drinking Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.

Send In Your Event Suggestions
Forward any area events for the week to the Philly DL organizer by Sunday to have them included in the weekly email.

About Us
Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 353 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

Mashing

The More People I Meet, The Better I Like My Dog

This.

Our Commenters Suck More

An assholish Philadelphia Weekly commenter gets noticed by the New York Times. Doubly galling to a Phildephan.

Golden Oldie

Graham Cracker Uninvited

Good:

The evangelist Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon has been rescinded because his comments about Islam were inappropriate, the Army said Thursday. Mr. Graham, the son of Billy Graham, in 2001 described Islam as evil. More recently, he has said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins.

Now, if we can just dispense with this idiotic national day of talking to your invisible friend ... .

Preventable Violence

Apparently, this local guy was found dead in his house; he had failed to show up for his court hearing today on an attempted murder charge related to a road rage incident. Duncan had earlier made a point about how suburbanites routinely call urban, usually black or Hispanic criminal suspects "animals" but would never apply that label to a white engineer who lives in Montgomery County.

My take is slightly different: I wish we could direct some of the massive criminal justice industry funding toward providing mandated psychological care for people who are arrested for behavior like "road rage".  I think that it's especially necessary when people pass a certain age - say, 25 or 30. While a younger person popping off might not be a sign of a major emotional or psychological problem, my instinct is that a 40-something who throws bottles out his car window at other drivers is on a seriously wrong path. I'm not an expert or anything, this is just my impression.

Part of the problem is that people acting like dicks on the road is too common for people to report it. Back in September of 2009, Mr. Yannerell nearly ran a couple of people off the road before throwing the bottle at one of them. One driver wrote down his license plate - then didn't report it. Yannerell had a license to carry a firearm issued to him by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If he had been cited in connection with the September incident, the Montgomery County police could have lifted his weapons permit. There's no guarantee that would have stopped him from carrying a gun, but maybe it would have. As it was, Yannerell probably fired and missed at one driver in January before wounding the woman in April.

Another thing we might do is profile white male conservative engineers.*

* - Just a joke; don't freak, teabagger.

Updated to add:

The kind of incident I am talking about is not just someone losing their temper, however extremely. If someone screams and raves, but doesn't do anything physical in connection with it, then generally I don't think it requires any intervention. (Obviously, if someone flies into rages all the time, I think that warrants concern. There is a line.) But if they engage in behavior like reckless driving, throwing things, whether aimed at a person or not, breaking things, brandishing weapons, or touching or physically threatening another person, then they need help and should get it whether they want it or not. This is the same as my thoughts on domestic violence generally: Action is required the first time it happens. 

Also, obviously, I am not saying the burden for preventing this kind of behavior is on the victim or witnesses. The person with the anger issue should take responsibility for getting treatment. Someone like Yannerell, who was functional enough to hold down a job and was apparently intelligent, should have seen and been frightened by the escalation in his own behavior. If you've acted out on anger, you should (a) realize you have a big, dangerous problem and (b) find a shrink who specializes in anger issues.

Unreal is Here