Due to FAA and military incompetance...

Minneapolis or St. Paul could have been targets for a terrorist-controlled jetliner. I'm posting this not to sound like Fox News, but to highlight the fact that the FAA, NORAD, the military, et al are acting the same way they were prior to the September 11th attacks.

Despite all of the billions soaked into the war on terror, despite all the debate over the loss of civil rights and the right of government to acquire intelligence by whatever means, despite all of the new bureaucracy, we still have a significant problem with the incompetence of key links in the chain.

What the FAA's action tells us is that the only security profile of terrorists we have is whatever profile they used before.

Babbit defended his people by noting the transponders weren't turned off and the plane didn't send out an emergency signal (the ones on 9/11 didn't either, by the way). Others have pointed out it didn't change course or altitude.

That profile has been used only once before and prior to that, it wasn't used at all and the fact we didn't have that profile is one of the reasons the FAA was slow to react on 9/11.

So what do terrorists learn from this? Keep your transponders on and hijack a jet that's already heading to your target, and the U.S. government won't bother you.

There was a lot of incompetence going on in the cockpit of Flight 188, but the incompetence that is far more serious in the big picture is that exhibited by the command and control structure of the agencies in charge of the one area where people think the next attack will come from -- the sky.

It Doesn't Compare...Yet.

Swine flu is deadlier than leprosy. And that's about it.

Nobel Part 2

I’m humored by the commentators saying Obama doesn’t deserve the Peace prize because he hasn’t done anything. That’s precisely the point. And it’s speaks volumes about how much damage Cheney and Bush caused, and for so long, that the rest of the world is giving our leader a prize simply for cutting it out, and doing nothing. - A Daily Dish reader

On the Media/On the President's Nobel

No one is above the outrage cycle. We have now, in our culture, synthesized the two worst elements of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 media: the pre-9/11 obsession with meaningless bullshit; and the post-9/11 obsession with filling every story with apocalyptic portent and over the top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert hysteria. We still care too much about J-Lo’s dress and the Summer of the Shark. Now, we get around the idea that we are shallow for giving a shit about such things by infusing them with pseudo-political importance and our current national drug of choice, outrage. Everything is an outrage. Everyone is outraged. Every turn of the news cycle gives us a new opportunity to pound the table. -Source

Autumn is my favorite time of year.

Maybe it's because it seems so short, but everyone rags on fall for being the prelude to winter. Enjoy it for itself.

Health Care Will Ruin Us All

Bob Cesca puts into words what I've been suspecting.