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Yglesias and I peeled off after my Afghanistan/Pakistan panel in pursuit of a nearby comic store he remembered seeing through a drunken fog last night. Turned out to be Eide‘s — which, ha, made me think of Kai, in a glorious union of most of my nerdery — and hey were selling some copies of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the counter. This headline, curious even for a Scaife paper, greeted me with a smile.
[Update: Wrong wrong wrong. Sorry for the stupid mistake. Ah, see, I, at least, haven't descended in full on Pittsburgh yet. Sigh.]
So here’s the descent. NN#09 is just getting started as people come out of their pre-game hangovers and swarm the convention center. I’m not sure if I feel like I’ve descended upon Pittsburgh yet, but downtown at least is an inviting metro area of old buildings that don’t suffer from onerous municipal height restrictions. The descent will soon follow. Bloggers are attracted to skylines.
Anyhow: thanks to all for coming to the panel. I’m gratified that so many of you showed up at 9 a.m. on the first day. Thanks particularly to John — I think that’s your name; sorry if it’s not — the dude who raised the point about the lack of expeditionary capacity and contractor overreliance on the part of the State Department. Heather Hurlburt and the National Security Network did a great job putting the panel together, and great points were made by Robert Greenwald, Richard Smith and Anne Richard. Check out @JayAckroyd for comprehensive tweet-coverage.
Update: And I didn’t-see-but-should-have that Pat blogged the panel at Democracy Arsenal. If you’re interested in My Exit Strategy, check it out.
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Actually, the Post-Gazette is what passes for the “liberal” paper here. It’s the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (”The Trib”) that’s owned by Scaife.
Welcome to our city. I couldn’t afford tickets to NN09 this year, but maybe I’ll run into you guys on one of your evening excursions.
Eeek! I HOPE the Post-Gazette hasn’t been bought by Scaife. It is a very old paper, one of two or three in the city when I lived there long ago.
Wish I could be there.
Actually I’m glad to see that the MSM at least locally is noticing NN.
I know you’re on your best behavior, right, Spencer?
Sorry all! My mistake.
Wish you could be there.
Phantom of the Attic in Oakland was my regular store for comics when I lived in Pittsburgh. Highly recommended.
As Martha Mitchell said about something totally unrelated to NN09: “Don’t miss it if you can!”
Just learned today (thanks to a leader in the FT) that “abseil” means to descend, specifically to rappel.
“Megan McArdle’s Hypocrisy Exposed: Portrait Of A Libertarian As A Taxpayer-Subsidized Brat”
http://exiledonline.com/megan-…..ized-brat/
“Just when you think you’ve seen so much hypocrisy that nothing can shock you, along comes Megan McArdle. McArdle, who blogs for the Atlantic Monthly, presents herself as a principled libertarian, fiercely denouncing any attempt to provide any sort of government-funded health care, because as she argues, big government is bad, bad, bad. She’s written some truly appalling things over the years as a shill for big corporate interests, recently defending Goldman Sachs because, as she wrote, “financial meltdowns offer no villains.””
“Last week, McArdle posted an encyclopedia-length article on the Atlantic Monthly’s site, denouncing Obama’s health care plan in a rambling piece that essentially boiled down to this: big government is a bad thing, and free markets are the medicine you need, even if you don’t like it, and even though you can’t afford it.”
“What Megan McArdle doesn’t mention is that her own privileged upbringing was funded by public money. That’s right, Megan McArdle is just a second-generation product of the sleazy NYC construction business, which has been using public money for private gain since the Tammany Hall era. Even more galling is that Megan’s father got his start in the public sector working in taxpayer-funded health care programs. If it weren’t for her father’s employment as a public health care official in the 1970s, Megan McArdle’s life might have turned out completely different from the privileged one she enjoyed…..”
I will not tolerate people threadjacking for attacks on Megan McArdle, who, despite whatever political disagreements I have with her, is my friend. Attacking her background is a way of not dealing with her arguments. Do progressives really want to admit such argumentative weakness?
This is not directed just at robertsmith. The next time I see one of these comments, I’m deleting it.
Belated welcome to Pittsburgh! I catch my bus home across the street from the Convention Center hotel where the event is. Try the bar on the corner, great happy hour drink prices.