| Morning Jolt – February 1, 2013 Here's your Morning Jolt. Happy Friday! By Jim Geraghty Awful News Out of Ankara Back when I lived in Ankara, I went into this building plenty of times -- I begin today in shock. Turkish police say a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an entrance to the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Friday, killing two people, according to the Associated Press. A U.S. State Department official confirmed to CBS News that at least one guard had been killed at the embassy, but the victim's nationality was not given. U.S. Embassies are usually guarded by a combination of local security personnel and American diplomatic security forces. An AP journalist reported seeing a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. It was not clear whether the victims of the blast were U.S. nationals, but they were identified as embassy security guards by the French news agency AFP. The bomb appeared to have exploded inside a security checkpoint at an entrance to the embassy. CNN's Turkish service said witnesses had seen the bomber approach the building and enter a gate to the fortified compound. It wasn't clear whether the bomber entered the building before detonating their explosives. Back when I lived in Ankara, from 2005 to 2007, people used to ask me if it was dangerous, and I said it was probably the safest city in the region -- the national, political, and military capital of a NATO ally, with cops and special national police and troops of every kind all around. There was a modest U.S. military presence as well, although most of it was working at the embassy, with Turkish troops at nearby bases, or working with moving non-combat supplies through Incirlik Air Base (pronounced In-jer-lick). During my time there a suicide bomber tried to get into the Justice Ministry, but when you saw a terror attack in Turkey, chances are it was the PKK, the Kurdistan Worker's Party who was fighting for a separate Kurdish state. The PKK liked to put bombs in trash cans, etc., but they mostly targeted Istanbul and the coastal beach resorts, trying to scare away the tourists. The PKK certainly wasn't pro-American, but Americans weren't generally the targets of their wrath -- the Turks and their government were. There was an al-Qaeda presence in the country while I was there, and periodically folks who worked at the embassy would tell me they suspected the bad guys were "probing" their defenses and attempting to conduct surveillance, looking for weaknesses, etc. Every interaction I had with embassy security guards, Turkish police, and related folks during my time reassured me about their professionalism. I've commented that I would completely trust Turkish airport security with the see-through-clothes x-ray scanners more than I would trust TSA; they consistently demonstrated a culture of absolute professionalism -- at least to Western outsiders. Keep in mind, I haven't followed Turkish news or politics nearly as closely since I returned in 2007, and my observations about life in Ankara may be outdated. Steven Cook: "Most obvious suspects in Ankara embassy bombing are PKK, Syria, and some al Qaida wannabes. Could even be Turkish nationalists." Chuck Roast No spinning this one; a Democratic aide tells our Andrew Stiles, secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel "got bloodied up today." CNN's chief congressional correspondent declared he "struggled." CNN's Dana Bash said that both Democrats and Republicans are "shaking their heads" at how "unprepared" Hagel was. John Dickerson: "Is it too late for Hagel to blame his testimony on Chinese hackers?" Dan Senor: "The good news for the President: nobody will hold it against him for nominating Michelle Flournoy after Hagel withdraws. She'll sail through the hearings." When the spin from one of your most ardent supporters is, "happily, he is lying today" -- no, I am not making that up -- the Washington political world has spun off its axis. Allahpundit sums up the joy of watching Hagel say he couldn't name a single senator who he deemed "intimidated by the Israeli lobby," and then follow up by saying he couldn't name a single "dumb thing" that the United States has done because of the Israeli lobby. The beauty of this clip isn't just the spectacle of Graham making Hagel eat his own shinola. It's the fact that 90 percent of the reason the left has gone along with this nomination is to see Hagel push back on questions exactly like this one. He was the guy who was going to speak truth to power by standing up to the neocon warmongers and their "Zionist" puppet-masters -- and here he is, rolling over. You could almost hear liberals screaming at their TV sets when Graham asked him to name a dumb move taken by the U.S. at the behest of the Israel lobby, "Say 'Iraq', Chuck! Say 'Iraq!'" But Hagel can't make that move. The Democrats will happily confirm a lightweight who's unprepared for this hearing and unqualified to lead the Pentagon because he's useful as a Republican fig leaf for Obama's upcoming defense cuts. They won't confirm a guy whose unapologetic conspiratorial mumbling about Israel's hidden hand or whatever might alienate Jewish voters, and Hagel knows it. So he's lying here, and not just about this either, purely in the interest of getting confirmed. The Agony, and the Ecstasy, of Twitter Over at Red State, Ben Howe writes about why he loves Twitter, and why he dismisses the complaint that interactions on the social network feel like high school: Arguments, jealousy, cliques, enemies, friendships, offense, all of these features aren't "high school." They are simply how social interaction works when there are enough people involved. High school is microcosm of community, not the other way around. The same is true at any job, church, organization or club. Get enough people together and all of these "high school" antics will appear. Twitter doesn't owe the user a thing. It is a social networking platform which affords people the opportunity to socialize & network, often with people you may otherwise never have met without it. It is invaluable in this way. But remember, you get out of it what you put into it. It is only as social as you are. If you're a snarky, sarcastic, moderately intelligent person with a lot to say but are capable of interacting like a normal human being, twitter will be a pretty fun place. If you're an anti-social, whiny, self-absorbed gadfly, your twitter experience will reflect that fact. Howe's pretty clearly tweaking another righty writer he's had some high-profile spats with, Matt Lewis, who recently wrote about how he's come to hate Twitter: Once everyone was on Twitter, everyone's problems were on Twitter. The early adopters might have been tech-utopians, but the succeeding waves were angry cynics and partisan cranks who used the technology to make the world even louder and worse than it was before Twitter. Compounding the problem is that -- unlike everyone else -- if you work in journalism, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Being on Twitter is now part of the job, meaning that you can't not be on Twitter. What was once an inspiring place that gave you a competitive advantage became a prison. Twitter has become like high school, where the mean kids say something hurtful to boost their self-esteem and to see if others will laugh and join in. Aside from trolling for victims after some tragedy, Twitter isn't used for reporting much anymore. But it is used for snark. The "mentions" column, which allows you to see who's responding to your Tweets, means that anyone in the entire world who is on Twitter can respond to you. The good news is, this means you can near-instantly see absolute strangers tell you they agree with you and how great and wise and witty you are. It also means that you can near-instantly see absolute strangers urge you to perform anatomically difficult acts of self-procreation. It will probably not surprise you that the world is full of people who are, for lack of a better term, stupid. And so as your number of followers grows, chances are you'll encounter someone who doesn't merely disagree with you, but disagrees with you in a way that is obnoxious, rude, profane, and threatening. Twitter is also proving to be a venue for the immediate, instantaneous angry reaction. Sending out a message to the world is so easy -- just type a sentence into the app on your phone and boom, it's out there for the world to see. A person's presence on Twitter is probably the most unedited, unvarnished, raw expression you'll find. Some would probably argue Twitter, like alcohol, does not change you; it just reveals what was always lurking in there but generally repressed in public. Ask Nir Rosen. Because of its ease -- Twitter doesn't feel like sitting down and writing a column or a newsletter -- the line between the "professional" self and the personal self is blurred even more than usual. A few Super Bowls ago, CNN commentator Roland Martin got in trouble for some comments that struck me as garden-variety guys-watching-a-football-game comments, mocking guys who are excited about a David Beckham H&M underwear ad and a football fan head to toe pink suit. The usual suspects screamed that the comments were "homophobic," and CNN suspended Martin for three days. If he had merely said the exact same comments at a party, Martin would never have gotten in trouble. But because it was on Twitter, it was put out for the entire world to evaluate, and generate consequences. A little while back I had a picture of my younger son, wearing sunglasses and sticking out his tongue. (I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I have the two cutest boys in the world. I'm sure your children are quite cute as well, but I am absolutely certain that my sons can be empirically proven to be the cutest creatures on God's green earth.) I decided to use that image as my profile picture, just because I liked it, and the expression of whimsical mockery just seemed to fit the tone of most of my Tweets. And a lot of people liked the photo, and I kept it up there for a while, until some jackass reacted to my usual political stuff by tweeting about how sorry she felt for my son being raised by me, being a right-wing maniac and all. The standard-issue ridicule and denunciation and demagoguery just wasn't enough for her; she had to bring my son into it. I switched photos. And sadly enough, you just can't put anything personal out there. You just can't. Because there are enough people out there who don't see lines and limits and the notion that anything can't be fair game; if you disagree with them, you are the most hated enemy they could ever imagine, and you must be destroyed in any way possible. In their minds, there are no civilians and every aspect of your life is subject to their evaluation and commentary; indeed, toddlers are fair targets. This is the state of discourse in our country right now, and you can denounce it and bewail it, but you cannot ignore it or pretend that this isn't the case. So my rule (and I suspect many others have or will adopt this) is that nothing personal goes on Twitter; the populace at large cannot be trusted to comport themselves to even the most minimal standards. Okay, one last exception to that rule. Jolt readers, I'm going to share this, but only because we're metaphorical family: 
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