Re-opened for business

I totally failed to renew "glomarization.com" so now we're stuck looking at "glomarization.blogspot.com," which is about the ugliest damn domain name I've ever been sorry enough to make other people use.

How do you feed 6 million people in Baghdad when it's flooded?

Welcome back to my voice in the wilderness.

The New Yorker offers a longread on the imminent, biblically catastrophic failure of the Mosul dam:

The Iraqi government -- embattled, paralyzed, ineffectual -- seems highly unlikely to carry out meaningful evacuations or large-scale relief efforts in the event of a breach. "The sheer scale of a catastrophic outburst of the dam would overwhelm in-country capacities to respond," the U.N. report said. Adamo, the former official, scoffed at the idea that the government could save anyone. "They have no plan," he said. American officials, emphasizing the practical option of "self-evacuation," have urged the Iraqis to place early-warning sirens along the Tigris. Thus far, two have been installed. "They’re really, really loud," the senior American official told me; they can be heard for miles. Still, as people flee, the sick, disabled, and elderly would likely be left behind. With the Baghdad International Airport flooded, meaningful relief from outside the country might be days away. The U.N. predicted that most of the population affected by the flood would not receive any assistance for at least two weeks, and probably much longer. About four million Iraqis -- an eighth of the country's population -- would be left homeless.

By the time the flood wave rolled past Baghdad and exhausted itself, as many as one and a half million people could be dead. But, some experts told me, the aftermath would prove even more harrowing. "I am not really worried about the dead -- because they're dead," Alwash said. "What worries me is everyone else. How do you feed six million people in Baghdad when it's flooded? How do you give them electricity? Where do they go?"

This will be Iraq's Katrina, no exaggeration. Maybe even two Katrinas. But being in a foreign country, it's not actually our problem. Except that it will be, of course. The President-elect's Twitter responses are left as an exercise for the reader.

Lady lawyers strategizing after Hobby Lobby

Today's longread: The Road Ahead: Gender Equality after Hobby Lobby (PDF) from The Alliance: State Advocates for Women's Rights & Gender Equality.

We offer this Report and state strategies agenda as a resource for allies in the movements for reproductive rights, health and justice, for LGBTQ equality, and for other progressive change across the country. We invite allies throughout the progressive community to join us in adapting and evolving these and other state strategies as we continue forging a powerful joint effort to combat gender discrimination in all its forms, and to protect women’s and LGBTQ rights, health and dignity -- now and into the future.

Local participant in the Alliance is the Women's Law Project.

Friday jukebox: Trask + Hubley

Good lord, I could watch Emily Hubley animation all day long:

And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again

I titled this screenshot "jeb wtf.png"

Putting this here because in November, 2016, we won't believe that a candidate for the Presidency actually said this and then thought it was a wise move to memorialize it the next day on social media.

One of the better reply Tweets notes that he's literally
standing on a pile of American corpses.

The other thing we won't believe Jeb Bush said was that he thought Margaret Thatcher should be on the American ten-dollar bill.

Ass or dumbass? Papal edition

Not sure if these people are assholes or just don't understand supply 'n' demand:

[Mark] Zajak and his wife, Kim, started out asking $16,000 for the whole week. They recently dropped the price to $14,000. They're willing to negotiate.

"I actually am disappointed," she said. "We haven't had anyone reply yet, so hopefully soon."

She wants to use the money to go on vacation in the Bahamas, but her dreams of the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort may not come true.

Or, as the kids say today, why not both?

GOP candidates treating Donald Trump as if he's a real candidate

Well, someone has to.

The best thing about the Donald Trump presidential candidacy is that all the other GOP candidates -- for lack of a better word, let's call them "serious" or "realistic" -- I say, all the other GOP candidates are actually responding to him, in public. Seen on CNN, just this morning:

Reince Priebus has phoned him personally.

George Pataki has invited him to a one-on-one debate on immigration.

Lindsey Graham spent time in comments to an international affairs think tank criticizing Trump and Hillary Clinton, as if they're both of the same caliber of candidate or as if Trump actually had some grown-up understanding of foreign policy.

Following a bouncing link, I see that Ted Cruz actually called Trump "terrific" the other day. I'm not sure if he meant that in sort of a modern, everyday way, like "really neat" or "the bee's knees" or "awesome," or if he was going for a more originalist meaning, like "inducing terror." But whichever meaning he intended to get across doesn't matter so much as why on god's green earth is he bothering to answer any question about Trump?

Another bouncing link shows me that Marco Rubio says that Trump's anti-Mexican comments are "offensive" and that Trump himself is "divisive." Whoa, Marco! Them's fightin' words! Let's cool it with the harsh language and try to be a little more polite next time, eh?

Every action they're taking to delegitimatize Trump only increases how seriously the media is taking him. "Amateur hour" is one term for it. The GOP clown car could not be more literally full of clowns, though at least one outlet is being realistic about the situation.

If you get rid of it, it'll still be there

If flying the Confederate battle flag is outlawed, then only outlaws will blah, blah, blah:

Once you have this neo-Confederate mentality at some level of your consciousness, I don’t really have to tell you how to vote or give you a position on some issue — you’ll have this idea already, it naturally comes out of your consciousness. Neo-Confederacy forms American consciousness.

[...]

I’m interested to see whether this current reaction against Confederate symbols lasts more than three months because they’re going to organize a counter reaction. Even if you get rid of the license plates and flags through legislation, the movement’s still going to be there. And people might go home thinking a victory has been won.

Maybe they could go full Philly dogwhistle and fly Irish flags or stick little shamrock symbols on their vehicles.

Friday jukebox: Harry and Henson

Today we found it:

The NSA is "drowning in information"

This article touches upon my thoughts about the vacuum cleaner that is NSA communications collection. That is, I'll buy that the NSA is collecting everything: phone calls, faxes, e-mails, text messages. I'll buy that the NSA has multiple storage locations around the U.S. where this mind-bogglingly vast amount of data is being stored. And I'll buy that they have some artificially intelligent search and analysis capacity, analagous to but even surpassing that of Google's often creepily accurate predictive typing feature, which draws out communications relevant to what they're looking for.

But it all comes down to the volume. The NSA isn't merely gathering all the haystacks in its search for needles, as the article suggests. It's gathering haystacks that are being delivered via firehoses. Via Niagara Falls. Sure, the NSA has a shop-vac that handles the volume, but how much analysis can they really do? Which raises two questions. One, how effectively can they find actual threats? And two, how much American privacy can they really violate?

So I've been and I continue to be ambivalent about the NSA's mass surveillance. On the one hand, I do strongly believe that the collection of cell phone signals via StingRay-type technology is a straightforward example of an unconstitutional search and seizure, a 21st-century general warrant. This is something we fought a war over and then abolished the use of in the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. But on the other hand, I've always been a fan of "security by obscurity" -- you'd piss your pants laughing at me if I told you where I store all my computer passwords -- and I honestly don't see how the NSA can effectively catch the people whom it seeks to catch through this mass data collection. They're looking for a needle in a continent of haystacks. They're looking for a bubble in the foam going over Niagara Falls.

It's homeopathic policing!

Friday nickelodeon: young Lucas

javascript:void(0);

Or, as I like to call it, Alphaville USA.

Penna. State House Resolution honors terrorist

This guy was usually protesting on days that I escorted patients in and out of an abortion clinic. After handing little brown-colored plastic fetuses to young men of color who were helping their partners to the clinic, he would get into my face and actually threaten me with physical harm:

[S]tate House Resolution 82.

It honors John Patrick Stanton, of Jenkintown, as a "humanitarian, activist and founder of the prolife movement in this Commonwealth."

Stanton died in January 2014 at the age of 86.

The measure, sponsored by Montco Republican Rep. Thomas Murt, was voted out of the House Health Committee this week 18-9.

It was supported by all 16 Republican committee members and two Democrats: Philly Rep. Kevin Boyle; Luzerne County Rep. Gerald Mullery.

Stanton was known for demonstrating outside abortion clinics. His decades of doing so resulted in lawsuits, charges of harassment and trespassing, arrests and at least one incarceration.

So fuck you, Thomas Murt (R.-Montgomery County). Fuck you very much.

Lynne Abraham's favorite speech-muzzling law tossed

GWB appointee throws out the anti-Mumia "Silencing Act" on First Amendment grounds, because of course:

The Revictimization Relief Act, as it was called, "is the embodiment of content-based regulation of speech," [Judge Christopher] Conner wrote. "Its terms single out a distinct group and disincentivize its members from speaking."

[Also 5th Amendment grounds, particularly because the law didn't define "offender."]

"As a result, many plaintiffs -— prisoners and non-prisoners alike -— instantly modified their conduct for fear of falling within the ambit of the act," the judge said.

He said the law hinged on the emotional response of victims.

"Short of clairvoyance, plaintiffs cannot determine in advance whether and to what extent a particular expression will impact a victim's sensibilities," Conner wrote.

Minus one point for using the "word" disincentivize, but plus one for explaining that the law is no good because, as drafted (PDF), it required the speaker to be a mind-reader.

In January I noted how happy Lynne Abraham was to be present with Governor Corbett at the bill's signing into law. Would love to see someone ask her about the law now that a federal judge has ruled so predictably on it.

Your devices require and result in acres of radioactive clay

Keep upgrading your cell phone and laptop every year:

China’s dominance of the rare earth market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from. And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake.

Years ago I was chatting with someone who was very enthusiastic about hybrid automobiles, which at the time were only newly available in the U.S. An early adopter, enviro-weenie myself, I took my key fob out of my pocket and said something to the effect of, "OK, but look, here in this fob, from the petro-chemical plastic outer casing to the chip and battery inside, there is more environmental destruction than in a single Tin Lizzie. How many miles do I have to drive my Prius to make up in gasoline savings in order to offset the incredible amount of energy and resources that went into the battery pack, the dashboard computer display" -- this was pretty new at the time -- "and all the other technology and materials that went into it?"

Where do the two curves meet, I wonder: the energy and resources that go into a key fob, versus the energy and resources that go into a particular year and model of an American car? It's thoughts like these that keep me wound up and unable to sleep in the wee hours.

Voice in the wilderness, Indiana edition

In light of this week's clusterfuck in Indiana, I remind my readers of the proposal I offered nearly two years ago: The Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony:

You know what the state of Indiana needs? A church the only doctrine of which is same-sex marriage in the great State of Indiana. It should be called the Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony, and its greatest -- because only -- sacrament would be same-sex marriage.

So, Daily Beast? You're welcome.

Murderous and bizarro, part 2

My voice to god's ear? Three weeks ago I suggested that someone might start a disciplinary proceeding against the lawyer in California seeking to legalize extra-judicial killings of gay people, an astonishing abuse of California's direct democracy process. Today:

[T]he California Legislature's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus [has] filed a formal complaint against McLaughlin with the State Bar of California, asking that he be investigated.

So . . . keep an eye on Matthew McLaughlin's listing, I guess.

bisy backson

Spent all weekend and all day yesterday working, making Philadelphia safe for democracy, with nothing but a low-powered, only somewhat smartphone keeping me in touch with the world.

What did I miss, other than a plane crash in the French Alps?

Friday Jukebox: Harrison

Good one for a snowy vernal equinox.

Shane Bauer back in prison

Wow, one of the Iran hikers can't seem to stay away from prison:

On Friday night, sheriff’s deputies from Winn Parish, La., arrested reporter James West for trespassing at an area prison and discovered a camera-equipped drone among the reporter's belongings. And early this week, an employee of the prison resigned his position in the aftermath of the arrest and was called an "operative" of Mother Jones by Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. "He was working as as guard," said Jordan.

Jordan identified the now-former prison employee as Shane Bauer, who is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, according to the magazine’s Web site.

Looks as though Bauer parlayed his experiences in Iran into a gig doing an exposé on Corrections Corporation of America for Mother Jones. I'm looking forward to the article.

Scene from a suburban Philadelphia courthouse, March, 2015

The scene: A large courtroom in the courthouse of a county in southeastern Pennsylvania. Large-scale portraits of recent-looking judges (some female but all white), apparently painted from photographs, line the room's walls. The case is a petition to set aside the nomination petition of a candidate for the office of commissioner in a mid-sized township. In other words, someone's trying to get a candidate kicked off the ballot for the primary election. Three COURT WORKERS stand between the JUDGE's bench and the parties. They are not sure what's going on -- it is Florida, 2000, writ small.

COURT WORKERS: "What's a petitoner? What's a respondent? We don't know where you should sit. Parties, just pick a table, any table."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "Your Honor, the law states that a candidate has to file Statement X with the Ethics Board and file a copy with the Board of Elections. The law further states that failure to file with the Ethics Board is a fatal defect to candidacy. Candidate filed only the latter. Therefore, her candidacy is fatally defective and she should be stricken from the ballot. Please issue an order to that effect."

CANDIDATE: "It's true I didn't file the statement with Ethics. But I'm disabled and I had to take my son to sportsball game and the notary had stepped out and the Party person said they'd take care of it. In fact, this lawyer should be representing me, not the petitioners, because the Party person didn't do what they promised."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "The law as written is unambiguous about the requirement. Also, Case Y from just 2 years ago in the state supreme court says that judges aren't allowed to make an exception when a candidate says they relied on someone to do something and it didn't happen. Please issue our order."

JUDGE: "Board of Elections, do you have anything to add?"

BOARD: "Nope."

JUDGE: "Sounds good to me. I'm not interested in getting overturned by Superior Court. Too bad, so sad, Candidate. Order issued as requested."

Fin