Constitution Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, September 17, 2024
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109 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Nerve decompression surgery in right leg yesterday. So far, minimal discomfort. Since it took a year to diagnose issue and get opened up, we’ll see what recovery looks like.
Since Luddite’s off work (until I’m driven mad at home), I may be lurking here more often than usual. As they say at the auction house, “fair warning!”
“If I have to create stories” — Junior Varsity Thiel
If Dana Bash bodies you in an interview, politicianing might not be your best thing.
I know it’s shocking in this day and age to see journalists committing journalism [actually holding power to account for their chosen actions], but Bash is 110% correct here. This whole stupidity about Haitians is nothing more than Trump and Vance spreading a flat-out lie created by a Nazi group named Blood Tribe.
Trump and Vance are now in the “finding out” stage of FAFO and are all up in their feelings.
Given their relative positions on, and knowledge of, the Constitution, today would be a good day to stop talking about the former guy and pivot our conversation toward the future with President Kamala Harris.
@Tony W: A President Harris fills me with optimism, especially if we can hold the Senate and take back the House. As a nation and as a world, we have a lot of serious issues to deal with, but they are issues we can handle if we just get after them in a serious way. The Republican Party has become the party of “get votes by blowing smoke up angry and confused people and telling them the problems aren’t real. Hey, that’s one funny looking ugly woman going into that bathroom! Let’s check her junk!”. It didn’t have to turn out that way, but it did and if we can push these losers aside and get to work, we can do amazing things.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Good luck, I hope you have a speedy recovery and no long term ill effects.
@Flat Earth Luddite:..fair warning
Bring it on!
I suspect that it is not coincidence that September 17 is the date in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was dissolved after the assembled deputies signed the instrument that they had drafted.
Today’s quiz: Who were Mr. Randolph, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Gerry?
Source
@Flat Earth Luddite:
All my best to you!
@Mister Bluster:
Got my coffee, leg propped up, scrolling through Al Jazeera, Guardian & AP looking around. Presented for your consideration…
It’s a longish read, but what bothers me is how much the government officials quoted throw gas on the fire and drive the xenophobia. Sound familiar?
https://aje.io/sze3mh
ETA — nice hat tip to Ms. Chisholm’s failed but welcome campaign!
@Mister Bluster:
From Elbridge Gerry we got “gerrymander.”
Quite by coincidence, today I started a book entitled “No democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
A lot of that the author identifies as major flaws in the constitution, as well as other structural problems, will be familiar to our little community, especially to Prof. Taylor.
Yesterday I finished a book on Eisenhower. There were several illuminating parts. In particular, Ike was tepid concerning civil rights. He wasn’t against civil rights legislation, but he wasn’t for it, either. His whole handling of the issue reminded me of what Dr. King wrote in 1963 in his Letter From the Birmingham Jail:
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
On a trip to Orlando in either 1989 or 1990, I heard this joke from a South American tourist, I forget exactly from which country:
A man complains to his wife, “I’ve had it with the crime, corruption, and mismanagement! Things are ridiculous. I’ll go out and shoot the president!”
The wife replies, “About time! here, I’ve a gun you can borrow.”
Some time later the man returns home.
“Did you do it?”The wife asks hopefully.
“Nah,” the man replies. “The line was too f**ng long.”
@Flat Earth Luddite: I was just about to text you to ask. Good to know and speedy recovery!
@Tony W: Forgive me for being that guy, but I’ma hold off until the Dem voters actually get the job done. Rooting for ya tho.
@Kathy:
@just nutha:
Presented for your consideration…
I’m sure this occured to Ms. Harris during the debate. If not, it just proves she’s a much better person than Luddite. (Not a high bar, alas)
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/9/17/brazil-mayoral-candidate-hits-rival-with-chair-during-televised-debate
@Mister Bluster:
Mr. Mason was half of the Mason-Dixon survey team that gave the name to the southern border of Pennsylvania. He also was interested in food storage and invented the Mason jar. The TV detective, Perry Mason, was revealed to be the great grandson of Mr. Mason (season 3, episode 5). Finally, he founded the Freemasons and with his family helped retcon the origins of that group to convince the public that the society actually formed before the 1300s. Unlike Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard, Mr. Mason did not intent to found a religious cult but instead wanted to create a beneficent organization.
At least that’s how I imagine ChatGTP would answer.
On the topic of how smart people can be stupid, I offer last Sunday:
First, I totally forgot there were football games all day. Instead I spent the day streaming more Mythbusters eps and cooking. I remembered only late enough to catch the second half of the evening game. I could go into why with a long weekend Sunday felt like Saturday, or how I missed reading the paper int eh morning, but I won’t.
As to cooking, well. I attempted the pressure cooker version of beef in onion sauce (no longer claiming this has anything to do with any sort of timballo), with two other modifications. one, using dried garlic flakes instead of fresh garlic. Two adding a couple of diced potatoes for flavor and texture.
Maybe I got impatient, as sauteing five large onions on the multipot took an inordinate amount of time. Maybe I was worried that the pot of cabbage, carrots, and soybean sprouts on the stove was overcooking. Point is I had the diced potatoes and garlic flakes right there next to the pot, and forgot to add them.
I added the tomato paste, the quarter cup of wine, the beef, and even a Parmesan rind. And then set the pot to high pressure. About the time it finished pressurizing, I noticed the raw potatoes just sitting there in the counter.
Oh, well. I boiled them separately and added them afterwards. not bad, but not the same thing. I made rice to mix with the beef, and added the garlic to that. Again, not bad, etc.
It turned out fine, but mixing potatoes afterwards, even with a bit of the potato water, is not the same as cooking everything together. I also should have cooked the whole thing longer. I did 30 minutes at high pressure, plus 20 “natural” release*, and then opened the release valve. The beef was tender and did shred, but required some effort. I think 40 minutes is indicated next time.
*I don’t think there’s any actual release on “natural release.” Rather the temperature goes down and some of the steam condenses, lowering the pressure inside the pot. But everything remains inside.
George Mason, Virginia delegate to the constitution, one of the people who did not sign the Constitution (maybe the other two as well? don’t know off the top of my head). George was also principle author of Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as a basis for the United States Bill of Rights.
As an aside look at the wording of section 13 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights which GM wrote and was the basis of the 2nd amendment in the Bill of Rights (especially all the folks out there that talk about “original intent”).
This was written in 1776 years before the Bill of rights. Adds a little bit of context to how the founders actually thought about the right to bear arms. A much different take then the everyone has a right to a gun we have to live with today. I will also note the the Army clause in the constitution was supposed to be a check to make sure we don’t have a large standing army, but the original intent people just hand waved that aside along with the 9th amendment to the constitution with no one seems to ever talk about.
Ohio looks like a more fun place to visit every day: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ohio-sheriff-suggests-residents-keep-list-harris-yard-sign-addresses-rcna171385
“When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip — Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo…when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!” the post said.”
Doesn’t he sound like a charmer? Seriously, Ohio, you’re supposed to be one of the more normal states. Good luck attracting investment to your towns.
El Cheeto and JD, he is your peeps!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/17/ohio-sheriff-harris-walz-campaign-signs?CMP=share_btn_url
Oooookay, I’m going back to episodes of Midsomer now.
There are reports this morning that hundreds of pagers that belong to members of Hezbollah exploded simultaneously in Lebanon due to what one presumes is Israel having hacked the pagers.
Lots of folks were injured and it sounds like some folks may have lost their hand when the pager exploded.
Exploding pagers as a weapon of war…did not have that on my bingo card.
@Not the IT Dept.: @Flat Earth Luddite:
Gee, what a swell guy.
@Flat Earth Luddite: This is just another example of an unfortunate truth about humanity: if suffering unjust discrimination made people LESS likely to inflict that discrimination on others, we would have had universal peace and harmony millennia ago
I’m fascinated by language. Words change over time. I tend to put “conservative” in quotes as a signal that in modern American politics the word means nothing like what Funk and Wagnalls say it means.
I’ll take this Constitution Day post as an opportunity to note an early example and make a book recommendation. Having seen a glowing revue by Brad DeLong, I recently read William Hogeland’s The Hamilton Scheme. It’s a fascinating, and very readable, look at the real world politics of the Founding, wrapped around Alexander Hamilton’s financial machinations. Much of the politics revolves around the “Continentalists” who wanted a strong national government and the”Sovereigntists” who wanted to maintain strong state sovereignty. The Constitution as drafted didn’t go as far as Hamilton wanted, to make the states mere administrative districts of the national government, but it was a very Continentalist document, retaining some state sovereignty while creating a strong national government. To support ratification, Hamilton and his fellow Continentalists wrote several tracts. PR is not a modern invention. Knowing opposition was largely sovereigntist, they called themselves the Federalists, emphasizing the federation of sovereign states aspects of the Constitution and masking their own intent. This left Jefferson and group opposed, who actually wanted a federation of sovereign states to call themselves the Anti-Federalists. As it worked out, their pamphleteering was largely wasted as New York, which wanted to maintain it’s state monopoly on tariffs at the Port of New York, went ahead and ratified anyway before the first Federalist Papers were published.
Also, too, the Continentalists set up the Constitutional Convention because of the failings of the Articles of Confederation. Hogeland points out that the primary failing was that Congress and the states might not honor the bonds that had been used to pay the officers of the Revolutionary Army. In Hogeland’s telling, the ever so noble Society of Cincinnati was largely a lobby to support the officers’ bonds. The script with which the troops were paid, not so much.
@MarkedMan: Indeed. Somehow, “Never again” becomes “Never again to us”
This is funny. Mossad being Mossad.
Good interview with Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman, who won his award for debunking several longevity studies. He showed that the studies and the concept of “blue zones,” areas of the world where people live past 100 at high rates, are not valid. Instead, these are places where poor record keeping occurs (where the recording of birth certificates and death certificates is deficient, so old people often don’t know their actual ages, and people rumored to be over 100 are often dead), or areas where a lot of pension fraud takes place, or both.
The actual secret to longevity, says Newman? Be rich. Wealth brings better food, better healthcare, and less stress.
I know there’s been criticism of those on the left theorizing about Trump’s assassination attempts being staged. But now I see it on the right. Marjorie Taylor Greene and several other conservatives on social media are talking about how the gunman laid in wait for hours at a golf course that Trump decided to go to last minute, and is one of four nearby golf courses where he plays. So they’re asking how the gunman could have known he would be there.
I’m not sure if they realize the implications of what they’re saying—that if the gunman was involved in some conspiracy, that conspiracy had to have involved people in Trump’s inner circle.
@inhumans99: So how were these pagers detonated? Can the same be done to cellphones? iPads? Has this tech tactic been used before?
@Monala:
Which should have been obvious.
Basically every OECD country has a life expectancy between a low of 80 and a high of 85. A range of, what, ~6%? The top end are wealthy Asian countries that live on fish. The next cohort are Europeans and North Americans who live on chicken and beef. But while dietary choices have some effect, it doesn’t really amount to much, and may be something else entirely. The French hit 83.46, vs. Japan’s 84.85. The US scores just under 80, largely due to suicide by firearm and suicide by drug abuse.
The lowest life expectancy is found in poor countries. Death in childbirth (poverty), death from preventable childhood diseases (poverty), poor nutrition (poverty), etc…
The idea that people would all live to be 100 if they ate nothing but yogurt made from the milk of the goats they raise in the mountains was romantic nonsense.
@becca:
It seems to have been a single shipment of new pagers which Hezbollah likes because they think they’re a secure means of communication. Evidently someone (let’s see if we can guess who) found a way to insert a small explosive charge.
@Monala:
I’ve been hearing “inside job” a lot lately. In this case, the implication is “from inside the Weirdo’s camp.” The deplorables seem to think it means “done by the government,” if not “done by the Democrats.”
@becca:
You put explosives inside them, and rig some kind of timed or remote means to detonate them. Electronics don’t just blow up, nor can they be made to blow up. Lithium batteries can catch fire (remember he Samsung Note 7). If they explode, it’s a small explosion that won’t cause serious injury in most cases. Whereas a small amount of C4 can kill and maim easily.
It can be done with any device you can access and tamper with. Seeing as many pagers were sabotaged, I assume it was done prior to delivery.
I wonder how much explosive can be planted and where. Today’s electronics pretty much use up all internal volume. I suppose some internal structural parts can be replaced with plastic explosives molded to resemble them.
@Not the IT Dept.:
The local radio station I listen too has a feature called “OTF”, where they describe a situation of an idiot doing something stupid and you have to guess whether the event took place in Ohio, Texas or Florida. So I think that perception of Ohio being normal may be a bit dated….
@Michael Reynolds:
That makes more sense than my thinking that Israel hacked the network and figured out a way to make the phones battery/chip act like the battery in the phones where you see the occasional YouTube of the phone catching fire due to a catastrophic failure of the battery.
Good old fashioned physical sabotage of an electronic device, still a pretty novel use of a pager to inflict harm on your opponent.
@Monala:
I find it interesting as well that across all income groups there’s a remarkably consistent 4-5 year gap between men and women.
@inhumans99:
It’s going to seriously mess with Hezbollah’s communications and planning. If they can’t trust pagers do they go back to phones and iPads, which are regularly surveilled by every intelligence alphabet agency in the developed world? Reminds me of the ratfucking of Iranian centrifuges.
@Pete S: FWIW, I’ve heard Indiana described as “Midwestern Florida”
@Monala: Cui bono argues that if it was a conspiracy, it would be by Trump’s people. GOPs think Trump should get a bump out of this and are pissed they’re not seeing it. But it’s hard to see how they could have arranged it. I guess Hanlon’s Razor should be amended to add “or one lone loon”.
@Michael Reynolds: There are probably a number of reasons but one that is intriguing is that women have two X chromosomes while men only have one. In this analysis can think of our Y chromosome as a deficient X, one missing much of the important stuff. So women have two copies of everything while men only have one, so when something goes wrong, we have no backup. No idea if this is actually plausible, but it sounds true-y
Words matter, and I wish people would stop calling this latest an “assassination attempt”. He never got line-of-sight to Trump, he never had even the opportunity to make the attempt. He fled the scene and would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for those darned kids. He’s being held on “weapons charges”, whatever that means, not assault or attempted murder or any of the more egregious charges that would come with an actual attempt. The guy barely made it past the planning stage.
“Planned assassination”? Maybe – if you can prove it. I lean “concept of an assassination attempt”.
@Pete S: I occasionally question myself for retiring from Ohio to a political loony bin like FL. But I constantly see stories that Ohio’s become just as bad.
Also, of late, I’m seeing stories that Floridians have tired of DeUseless’ act. His endorsed school board candidates didn’t do well. He approved building pickle ball courts and golf courses in state parks. Also trading a couple hundred acres of prime undeveloped coastal land to a developer in exchange for acreage of nondescript second growth pine forest somewhere off in the woods. The revolt was immediate and widespread.
@becca: I have been wondering the same thing. I did a bit of searching on this, and it seems that nobody knows. I first thought that ‘explosion’ was hyperbole for some method that triggered amplified vibrations. But no, there is apparently video of it exploding in someone’s hands, hitting only them even though they are in a supermarket.
So, the best guess now is that the pagers were rigged, and somehow they were put into the supply chain so that when they decided to switch to pagers and buy a bunch, they got the rigged ones. Probably a bit of luck there, too.
@Michael Reynolds: some have suggested the Israelis can insert malware during updates. Others are thinking Wi-Fi something something. The connection is being made to all handheld devices. Be afraid of your phone…
Intercepting hundreds of pagers and implanting explosives and having them explode somewhat simultaneously across the region… I am terrified and impressed.
@MarkedMan:
It’s the Penis Penalty. (I’m copyrighting that.)
@Pete S:
Somehow, the chorus of a CSNY song is now stuck in my ears…
https://youtu.be/l1PrUU2S_iw?feature=shared
And I’m visualizing Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit in the role of Sheriff Z.
WaPo is tracking polling movements in swing states from Biden to Harris:
NC: +4.7
NV: +5.1
AZ: +4.3
GA: +4.5
MI: +4.8
PA: +3.5
WI: +3.7
Note: These are shifts, not current advantages.
I worry about two things. Latent racism and sexism. And ashamed Trump voters.
I am encouraged by enthusiasm, Trump burn-out, fund-raising and GOTV.
Right now, I think we’re ahead.
@MarkedMan:
@Michael Reynolds:
The Y chromosome is just a bit over a third as extensive as the X chromosome. So, yes, there are a number of base pairs missing.
But there are many other factors. Women produce far less testosterone than men (yes, women do produce it, too; and men do produce estrogen*). There is some slight dimorphism, too. Men tend to engage in violent or risky behaviors more often; even in military forces that accept women in all combat roles, the majority are still filled by men.
As with airline accidents and motivations, there is no one simple cause.
*Many substances the body makes or uses do more than a single thing. Different cell types, or even the same cell types in different locations, can and do react differently to the same biochemical stimulus. This is one reason for drug side effects.
This is true for so-called sex hormones. I don’t know exactly what else estrogen and testosterone do, but it’s more than merely developing and sustaining secondary sexual characteristics like body hair or breasts. They’re involved in muscle growth, inflammation response, and a host of other things.
@Michael Reynolds: Right now, I think we’re ahead.
Never feels far enough though. Harris could show +10 in every swing state and I would still be nervous as hell.
Trump/Vance demonizing a very specific group over a made up story is just extremely pre-war Nazi. They’ve already announced their plans to terrorize a lot of minority groups, but this kind of direct targeting presages the worst possible outcomes if they get elected.
@Michael Reynolds:
Or Dick Deficiency.
@ptfe: someone on Threads pointed out that last year when a heavily armed Jan. 6 defendant was arrested near Obama’s home (and had been posting, “See you in hell, Obama’s!” on Telegram), no one called it “an assassination attempt.”
link
Sad news, everyone. From Balloon Juice: https://balloon-juice.com/2024/09/17/sad-news-we-have-lost-our-beloved-ozarkhillbilly/
@Monala: RIP ozarkhillbilly!
@Monala:
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. FUCK.
On magnetic fields from the other day’s discussion, there’s one thing I just can’t wrap my head around.
In cartoons and movies, there’s this notion that a very strong magnet can attract even heavy things from great distances. I’ve played with magnets enough to know this is not the case. A stronger magnet can hold on to things more strongly (duh), and perhaps hold on to more massive things. But it’s effects are limited to a rather short distance. Even the huge, powerful electromagnets mounted on cranes at junkyards, almost have to touch the metal piles in order to lift them. Hey, maglev trains float only a few centimeters off the rails.
The shape and size of a magnetic field from a common toy or household magnet, can easily be determined using iron filings and a sheet of paper. It’s clear the field flows from a pole in one end to the pole on the other end, and it extends only a short distance outward in between. Ergo no way to pull a massive safe, say, with an effingly strong magnet from ten meters away, as happens in the movies and TV (and the Mythbusters did test something like this on Mythbusters Jr.*).
The Earth’s magnetic field, though, can move compass needles all over the world, and deflect charged particles thousands of kilometers up into space, yet it’s relatively weak (don’t quote me on this, but I think it’s weaker than a fridge magnet).
How?
I suppose the size of Earth’s field is huge because the source is also huge. But why then is the power so low, and how can it deflect particles or guide people very far away?
Related, could we build a big magnetic field generator, or more likely several, to shield Mars from orbit?
*That was a one-off show, lasting one season, hosted only by Adam Savage, and featuring a gaggle of young teens and pre-teens who carried out parts of the experiments, and some of the builds involved. It was as good as the original show.
@Monala: Crushing. No words. May his memory be a blessing.
@Monala:..
Damn…
Peace, Love and Tears
Lots of Tears
RIP
@Monala:
Damn.
@Monala:
Oh, no. No no no. This is terrible. I’m sadder than I can say. He was great.
@Monala: Just read that myself. I know we shall miss him. Like many others that have passed on, we each have our own constructed vision and image of who he was. As Walt Whitman (and Bob Dylan) would’ve said, Ozark contained multitudes.
@Kathy: There was a variant in the declining days of the USSR where a man, frustrated with the line for cabbage, tells his wife he’s going to the Kremlin to shoot Gorbachev, comes back an hour later, grouses “the line to shoot Gorbachev is even longer.”
What a gut punch. Just such a cool and talented and good and kind and funny human. I admired him a lot.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think most of us understand that only the ones who own goats would live to be 100. Everyone’s never going to live to be 100. (At least, I hope not.)
RIP, Ozark. OTB ain’t gonna be the same without ya.
His poor wife and family, I hope they are ok.
I think we will all miss Ozark. He was a good person.
Steve
@Monala: RIP, Ozark. 🙁
@Monala:
What the fuck? I knew he has some health issues. Damn. I hope he went easy, in the end.
I’ll raise a glass to him at cocktail hour. Maybe earlier. He was a good dude.
Godspeed Ozark, may the caves be deep and hounds friendly.
@Michael Reynolds:
Let’s all raise a glass to Ozark.
@Monala: Shit.
@Monala:
=(
For me the big question is whether someone knew those particular pagers were going to end up with Hezbollah, or is it more that there’s now a huge number of random civilians unknowingly walking around with remote control bombs in their pockets because someone doesn’t care about collateral damage at all?
@Monala: Life well lived. Advice from him was taken. Cheers to the man behind the familiar name!
@Stormy Dragon:
I think they’d have found out by now.
@Monala: Sad news. RIP Ozark
@Stormy Dragon:
I was wondering the same exact thing. I don’t think I trust the Israelis to take enough care to avoid collateral damage.
@CSK:
Would they though? It seems to me to be effective and potentially safer for non-targets, one would want to be able to control exactly which one is getting detonated. It would probably sow more confusion of some were left unexploded until later.
@Stormy Dragon:
I assumed at the outset the pagers were new and recently acquired. The Guardian’s live blog mentions this (no direct link, sorry). It gives no details where they were made, who sold them, how they were shipped, or in how many shipments.
I’m seriously surprised pagers are still made and used.
@Beth:
I was thinking in terms of how frequently those devices are used. It would be odd if one hadn’t buzzed by now.
Hat tip to Ozark. He lived life. Deeply. And he earned the right to be remembered and spoken of fondly. Which would likely bother the hell out of him. And he’d damn sure let us all know — as bluntly as he could. To which I would respond: “Don’t blame us, blame yourself for being complicit in making this so.”
@Monala:
That’s damn shame.
He was one of the good guys, without a doubt.
Here’s to you, Ozark Hillbilly.
The world was a better place for having you in it.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Do you have access to an exercise pool? I started working out in the exercise pool at our fitness center a while back and am pretty much blown away by the results. Neuropathy has improved, better leg/foot circulation, lost weight & gained muscle. It’s very good for balance, and its very hard to hurt yourself or aggravate arthritic joints.
If its a viable option for you, I highly recommended asking your doctor about it. Also, it does not have the drudgery/grind feeling that a lot of gym routines can develop, its actually kind of pleasant. Pretty close to a panacea in my book, certainy a great option for those of us in the 50/60/70+ club.
@Stormy Dragon: Well, let’s first consider whether there are “huge numbers of people walking around with pagers”. I don’t think that’s the case these days.
But yes, I think that there’s more to this story. In my imagination, Hezbollah decides to go to pagers, and determines to make a bulk buy from a known vendor, and hand them all out, after recording the number/person connected. So the individuals are not each buying a pager on the market, they are getting one from that bulk shipment. Which got tampered with.
Who else buys pagers in bulk in month X in Lebanon?
Interesting. CNN links to a blog post by one JD “Weather vane” Vance, written in 2012, shortly after Romney lost the election. By 2016, he asked the post be taken down.
You can find the full post here courtesy of the Wayback Machine. scroll down to “A Blueprint for the GOP”
Choice quote:
One is tempted to say Mr. Weather Vane is not a bigot, but only plays one to obtain political power.
But then there’s this:
It seems he’s not against the notion of deporting or forcing out over a dozen million people, as much as he thinks it laughable the government is competent enough to do it.
I’ll let someone else engage in literary criticism if they’re so inclined.
@Stormy Dragon:
I strongly suspect the former, because I doubt pagers are an everyday thing in Lebanon, and the Israelis were able to locate and fuck with a very specific order, that Hezbollah assumed was nicely validated.
And the timing of the explosions indicates a trigger signal sent to the compromised pagers.
The most likely desired effect: Hezbollah must now use other methods for communication, and those in turn may well be compromised, if not so dramatically.
@JohnSF:
Depending on how well infiltrated Hezbollah is, they might have unknowingly placed the order with a Mossad agent.
@Stephen Karlson:
It kind of rings a bell, but I wouldn’t swear to having heard it.
@Stormy Dragon: It may be–probably is–that pagers are enough of a niche market even in Lebanon that whoever did this will assume that most of them went into Hezbollah hands and any collateral damage comes under the making omelets/breaking eggs adage.
ETA: “…potentially safer for non-targets…”
Can you say “unwarranted assumption?”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
For some reason, I get drawn a bit to outdated tech. I wonder who uses it and why. So I did some searching. Apparently the frequencies used by pagers penetrate obstacles and underground areas better than cell signals. This makes them still useful to hospital staff and firefighters, for instance. past that, I understand Hezbollah liked them because they can’t be tracked.
Way back in the early 90s, getting calls to your cell cost as much as making calls from it, and they were expensive. A friend had a cell phone only for emergencies, but relied on a pager (known as beepers here) to get messages from customers and family. 99% of which were to call someone. For calling back, he’d use a landline.
The last time I saw a pager in use was at a food court in a local mall. Some sellers gave you a pager that looked like an oversize hockey puck set in a big plastic frame, that would vibrate and flash lights when your order was ready.
@Jay L Gischer: Have no experience in this field, despite having a vowel on the end of my name and having Luddites associates from the home for wayward boys ask me if I could get them into the Mafia, but I would assume that criminal enterprises don’t make bulk purchases of this sort direct from the supplier. Too easy to trace.
@Kathy: Yeah. I’m old enough to remember $0.X per call both ways. And paying for individual text messages. For me, all you can eat phone/text/data is still more than I used to pay for cell/text service alone (including the monthly line charge), but I downgrade to all the data I’m likely to use (in my current case 5 gigs) for $15/month. Last month, I got a warning that I had used half of my allowed data and that the new period would start September 1st.
Since I received the message on August 28th, I didn’t spend any time worrying or searching for wifi hot spots when I visited OtB on my phone.
ETA: And to the extent that I remember pagers only looked cheaper than cell service unless you took huge numbers of calls a day, but I never used paging service. I was low enough on the food chain where I worked that people simply called me at home before they called someone higher up if they couldn’t reach me.
Republican governors and lawmakers better hope there’s not a god because they’re going to hell for all the women dying from the lack of reproductive healthcare treatment due to their inhumane anti-abortion laws. Oh, yeah, and all the corrupt judges, especially the SCOTUS justices.
https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-amber-thurman-death
@Kathy:..Some sellers gave you a pager that looked like an oversize hockey puck set in a big plastic frame, that would vibrate and flash lights when your order was ready.
The Panera coffee shop that I frequent has used similar pagers for years. When they work. Which is most of the time.
@Mister Bluster: The Panera coffee shop that I used to go to in Kelso, WA, occasionally had to go to number tents* because the front employees never returne the pagers to the ordering stations from the pick-up area. (ETA: In Kelso, no one staffs the “Order Here” counter, so customers usually order at the self-service station.)
*which they also never return to the order stations 🙁 (but this is a theme at Mickey D’s in Kelso, too. 🙁 🙁 )
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’ve had a work cell phone for years. I can’t recall when I last paid for a cell plan, but it must have been before 2010. I do vividly recall when the company got a cell contract that offered unlimited calls within all phones in the company plan. That was like HUGE. Also when we began to favor cell phones over landline.
@Mister Bluster:
I mostly recall between the noise of the food court, and the talk at the table, we usually missed them when they went off.
I’ll miss him.
@MarkedMan:
More obviously, testosterone is a powerful anabolic steroid. Anabolic steroids are bad for you, in lots of ways. The fact that everyone needs some, and men need more, just to function doesn’t change that.
@DrDaveT: Anabolic steroids are no more “bad for you” than cocaine or morphine. Using anabolic steroids to create conditions that might not normally happen can be bad for you in ways similar to those in which the other previously mentioned substances can be bad for you. That’s why it’s called “substance abuse.” The problem is not that substances are “good” or “bad” but rather that the line marking “abuse” is faint and hard to see.
@JohnSF:
I suspect this is a prelude to a major attack. Anyone in southern Lebanon might want to catch a bus.
@ptfe:
Preaching to the choir, dude. I never believe anything till it’s over. I never believe I’m going to get paid until I’ve not only received the money, but squandered it.
@DrDaveT: @Just nutha ignint cracker:
I take T. And if I can believe my doctor, I have just about perfect labs. No ill effects. I mean, who’s to say I wasn’t already going to kill those hobos?
Diddy has been denied bail. It’s interesting that they think he’s a flight risk. He’s pretty well-known.
Raising a strong Boulevardier to the memory of OzarkHillbilly. Rest easy, blog friend. I wish I’d known you in person.
Sorry to hear the sad news on Ozark Hillbilly. He was a good egg.
And so the gish begins to gallop.
Ok. But then the media did fact check his insane claims, found them without merit, found no evidence of them, and he keeps pushing them.
They don’t give a damn about the nasty consequences of their actions, because they can always blame it on someone else.
@Kathy: At this point, the interviewer should immediately ask “So, you’re saying that you have no responsibility to know whether or not the things you are saying are true!? Is that what you taught your children?”
@DrDaveT:
First it was true. then it was a story to draw attention. then it was the media’s responsibility to fact check. What will it be tomorrow?
Not o mention just about everything else in that piece. In particular that he blames Harris for the attempts on El Felon, because calling out what El Felon has done and intends to do somehow is incitement to violence. But then El Felon’s call for actual violence and payback, and Vance’s own blood libel, are exempt from consequences.
That’s the modern GQP in a nutshell: their actions shouldn’t have negative consequences; and any call for accountability is persecution.
@Kathy:
They’re shitty people who sold their souls at, ‘grab ’em by the pussy.’
@Michael Reynolds: Isn’t pretty much every black dude that some number of white people associate with the term “thug” considered a flight risk? I’m not seeing anything thing other than the “rule of law” working it’s usual magic.
@just nutha:
Apparently Diddy is a genuine piece of shit. I get all my cultural insights from standup comics, but take a listen. This kid’s really good, and current as fuck. Not easy to write stand-up on the fly.
@Michael Reynolds: I’d heard rumors to that effect in the past but decided not to spread them without being certain. Diddy isn’t a person whose life I pay any attention to whatsoever.
@Monala: What awful news to come home from vacation and see. RIP Ozark.