Josh:

Looks like the collective wisdom is "yes, we will see more foiled plots and more alerts." I agree.

I used to organize security for an urban college campus. Trust me when I say, good security is very, very boring. You tell your staff to do insanely dull things like read log books, walk around and be visible, check security doors, get to know the students by name. Sirens are exciting, but it's the beat cop that gets it done.

So Dems: embrace your inner Gore. Be the geek who cares about the mundane, terribly boring details of security. Care about locking cockpit doors. Care about scanning containers at ports. Care about tax increases that pay for border security. If dems do this, they will deserve the vote.

The message is this: "cat and mouse" makes a good summer blockbuster but a lousy security policy. How about you keep the mice out of your kitchen by keeping it clean and putting the food away instead of living like a drunken bachelor? A cat in your house means you've failed to put down an ounce of prevention and now must get your pound of cure.

It's poindexter, but true.

Posted at July 12, 2006 7:23 AM in response to Question of the Day

In the US Soccer is for playing, not for watching. Ol' Frank and Richard make fun of soccer because their sports are for watching, not for playing.

Who would actually want to get out, engage the world, and have some fun when you can sit on your ass, make snide remarks, know everything, and watch the world's strongest man competition? Read their byline.

Ah, America, I love you, but you've got to get out from in front of the TV, go outside, shed some pounds, and have some fun. There's a world out there and it has three dimensions, not two.

Posted at June 28, 2006 2:52 PM in response to Neocons on Soccer

Not much of a paradox. George is in charge of the Federal death chambers, but it's the states that tend to execute people.

It is Texas that refuses to shut down the machine for a while to look into DNA. It was Illinois that did it. It was Mark Warner, outgoing governor of Virginia (ahem, "Commonwealth of,") who passed on the honor of the 1000th.

If other nations want to weigh in on our penchant for killing prisoners - and as our friends, they ought to - they should learn the names of governors. Start with Michael Easley.

Posted at December 2, 2005 6:59 AM in response to One Thousand Ghosts

Dover ID school board replaced. Now that's news. Dems win elections while GOP fights in court. Click Here.

Posted at November 9, 2005 6:19 AM in response to What Do You Think?

I live in Arlington and it seemed like I got a "roads" mailer about every third day from Jerry Kilgore. Well, they had pretty pictures of fast-moving traffic and "Kaine doesn't have a plan to build more roads in Northern Virginia" sort of phrase at the start of the glossies, anyway.

Kaine ran a heavy-rotation schoolhouse cake ad that said he was for education and that Jerry would build all those good looking roads by borrowing from the education nest-egg. 

I looked into it and found some truth to the roads vs. schools framing.  

So given - and this is a big given - that both a governor Kilgore and a governor Kaine would want to keep the bond rating high through a balanced budget, I saw this election as a race between educating kids or getting to work faster.  Since I walk to work, it was a no-brainer.

Now that's state and local issues for one voter, anyway. All the other immigration crap is just that, crap.

Posted at November 8, 2005 3:59 PM in response to Issues in the Virginia Governor's Race

Anyone remember how much we suck at human intelligence? You know, getting people to say, "um, yeah, I know where  Osama is, he's hanging out at Omar's place up on Afghan Road."

You can't get human intel without contacts and you can't get contacts without trust, let alone being physically present in a culture. We're acting like a bunch of white cops who hold distain for an urban, black or hispanic neighborhood but who want the kids on the corner to trust them and tell them where the gang bangers are. We've got to get on a foot beat and meet some people in the neighborhood.

Reed's right. We should go in and we should build some trust, prop up law and order, and let the local leaders take credit for the good work we do. Read this synopsis of Imperial Grunts, Kaplan does a better job at describing this concept than I ever could.

Of course, that we don't have a spare division lying around is exactly the problem. So all of this is just a big idea. But do you understand that this is EXACTLY the kind of big idea that the donkey needs to lead our country into a place where we are more secure? We're the minority party, and we have to start acting with ideas. That's all we got. We're out of power.

Our responsibility is to say "this is how we ought to be engaged in the world, and engagement is our best chance for security." 

Posted at October 11, 2005 6:21 AM in response to Pakistan Earthquake

Holy Cats, the whole paper is excellent. I haven't thought of the Federalist Papers in years, but Alexander predicts exactly what's going on right now. Nothing's changed, I guess.

Dear reader, go and print the whole thing. 

Posted at October 5, 2005 2:40 PM in response to What would the Founding Fathers say about Miers?

Burried in the post is a fascinating word, "Santorum." He's up for reelection this year. And there's tons of socially conservative and Catholic voters in PA. What will he do? 

I'd sure like to hear someone smarter than me pick up on this question. Santorum is king of the rightous right. Will he just trust the prez? Or must he demand a higher standard when life is at stake? What say you, Rick? 

Posted at October 3, 2005 1:35 PM in response to The Ponzi Victims Catch On

Pascal:

I wish I could introduce you to my grandmother. She was a sturdy first generation American of Bavarian parents. She lived through the Great Depression and World War II. She never wasted a thing, never bought a thing she didn't need, and never paid someone else to do something she could do herself, even when we begged her to.

When I was growing up, those were Conservative values (with the capital C). My dad, her son, identifies himself politically as a Conservative exactly because he identifies with her values. When I was growing up, the heat did not go on before Thanksgiving (in Pennsylvania). And it went off on March first, no matter what the Groundhog said on Candlemas.

As an adult, I now identify myself as lowercase-c conservative because in my 20's, I moved to Texas. In Texas, energy consumption is a virtue. I had Conservative identifying friends who would set the air conditioning at 70 in the summer and the heat at 85 in the winter. The state proudly runs its own energy grid. It accounts for something like half of the Chevy Suburbans sold in the US. 

But my dad is still with us. And he hasn't moved to Texas. It has not yet dawened on him that the Liberals he likes to deride are actually more conservative than he is, as a Conservative.

Liberals tend to congregate in more energy efficient cities and Conservatives in more energy-wasting suburbs. The reason you know people who get in their SUV to get a loaf of bread is because they would get killed if they tried to walk across the 8 lane highway that hems in their subdivision to get to the supermarket that has a parking lot atol filled with speed bumps because people can't be trusted to slow the hell down.

I guess I'm saying that the US has changed a lot in three generations but we haven't yet adjusted our images of people to that change. Your take is a dead-on snapshot by someone who doesn't have the image history of a put-on-a-sweater dad and a reuse-that-wrapping-paper grandmother. My generation has not yet come to grips with the shift.

Posted at September 26, 2005 3:25 PM in response to The Good Conservatism

What qualified you to be appointed head of FEMA?

Is it your belief that private industry and charities do a better job at solving problems? If so, how did that apply to FEMA while you were running it?

Define "compassion."

What was it that you were doing "A heck of a job" at?

What are the six stages of disaster life cycle as defined by FEMA and that inform everything that FEMA does? Rate yourself, and the support you got from the administration and congress, on each of those stages.

[stages are here.] 

I ask you again, what qualified you to be appointed head of FEMA? 

Posted at September 26, 2005 7:10 AM in response to Brownie