Opposable Thumbs

Appropriate response from Bruce Schneier on the London bombings:

I would also like to urge everyone not to get wrapped up in the particulars of the terrorist tactics. We need to resist the urge to react against the particulars of this particular terrorist plot, and to keep focused on the terrorists' goals. Spending billions to defend our trains and busses at the expense of other counterterrorist measures makes no sense. Terrorists are out to cause terror, and they don't care if they bomb trains, busses, shopping malls, theaters, stadiums, schools, markets, restaurants, discos, or any other collection of 100 people in a small space. There are simply too many targets to defend, and we need to think smarter than protecting the particular targets the terrorists attacked last week.

Link: Schneier on Security: London Transport Bombings

As both a resident of Texas (and, in case you haven't been reading, I voted for the other guy) and someone who at one time would have been potentially referred to as a metalhead, I find this quite amusing:

While a little over the top (though not in an uncalled for way), this post on Whiskey Bar outlines the precedent for the Bush administrations approach to social security reform.

This is too absurd to even comment on.

Via a near footnote on William Gibson's blog, I read today that the CIA has been order "to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats." They've apparently received word from the White House to purge the ranks of those members who have been perceived as disloyal to President Bush.

In the October issue of Wired, Lawrence Lessig ponders the burden we're leaving for future generations:

There's a pesky flaw at the core of our democracy: How do we count those who can't vote? Not those who don't vote (they can take care of themselves by voting). But those people who can't vote, because they're either too young or not yet born. How, in other words, do we reckon the future?

Douglas Rushkoff hits on what I think was probably the most important moment in the debate last night:

Responding to a question about the use of pre-emptive force against Iraq Bush said, "the enemy attacked us," conflating Osama, Saddam, and, presumably, all who oppose America into one big evil clump. Even more remarkably, Kerry picked up on it, and called the statement "extraordinarily revealing." He then made the distinction that close to half of America still doesn't know: "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us, Osama bin Laden attacked us." "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us," Bush answered.

I doubt a lot of the diehard Bush supports noticed this or even cared, but I would hope it was enough of a indication of the current administrations real perpective to turn some of those undecided voters in Kerrys direction.

Industrie Toulouse: Just Guessing

In a photo-op with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi yesterday, President Bush said that the CIA was just guessing as to what the conditions might be like, in post-invasion Iraq. In particular is the guess that the county would slip into Civil War

Now, there's an interesting way to look at things:

On which point, incidentally, I'm vaguely (ie not really) hoping for a Bush victory: not for political reasons [as much as I'm allowed to given my British citizenship and living in Italy and all, I find the guy deeply objectionable on every count] but because a Bush victory will hopefully cause the US Liberals to either rent some cojones from someone or move en masse over here. The prospects for good conversation are thereby doubled either way. The greatest thing the European Union could do on the day after a Bush election win would be to declare free work visas for anyone who pledged to come over and stay for the course of the term. Someone should suggest it to Chirac.

from Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent

Garrison Keillor, yes THE Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame, the man who I fondly remember listening to back in my youngest days, tears apart the Republican Party:

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear--fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

Whiskey Bar: Where Was Dick?

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave Vice President Cheney a nice campaign present yesterday, in the form of a tidy little settlement of its securities fraud charges against Halliburton - charges that might have proven extremely embarrassing to the company's former CEO if the SEC had showed the same relentless dedication to its job that former special counsel Kenneth Starr showed to his.

I thought this had to be an article on The Onion when I first saw it, but it's for real: Pundit O'Reilly Now Skeptical About Bush.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Quotes from Either President of the United States George W. Bush or Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars Movies

Yes, indeed, former president Jimmie Carter, now has a weblog: Carter Center. Well, sort of...