Shannon, this is for you. God bless you.

Attila Girl, a little troubled by your concern for the Bush cabinet and the Republican-led Congress and not the rest of us.

Meezer, did you really use the word "fun" in pondering an attack on New York? You should be ashamed. Try using that word the next time you talk to someone who lost a family member in New York on 9-11. It's all a game to you guys, isn't it?

Also, there needs to be more planning on what we might do if Congress were hit while it was in session and we lost a lot of reps at once.

This will take some work. Both parties are quite shy about divulging such details.

But, at least in the case of the terrorists, I think that working on it will be far more effective than the constant groundless "alerts" and "contingency plans" we have been plagued with for three years now.

Only a fool tries to plan for every contingency. A wise man gets some information and makes some judgements about what contingencies are realistic and plans, if need be, for that.

I say "if need be" because if we really knew what, realisticly, might be done, then we could probably stop it and not have to elaborately overplan for not stopping it.

But the fact that we do not know, does not make trying to plan for every possible contingency (they are infinite), and making a C.Y.A. alert announcement with every bump in the cell phone traffic from Morocco to the Phillipines, any less folly.

What we are actually getting is terrorist preparation by this sort of "traffic analysis"--a fact which merely demonstrates the softening of the head of everyone here in America. Oh, pardon me, I should call it a "failure of intelligence".

The realistic contingency in the case we are looking at is this: one attack in some specific location, probably Washington, with a nuclear weapon.

No chemical attack, no "dirty bomb", no biological attack, no rogue airliner, and no use of conventional explosive is likely to have a broad impact on our electoral process if we take the security precautions that have now become routine.

It would take kiloton size explosive power placed probably in only one location, Washington, to make the planning proposed even remotely necessary.

In such a contingency, I think preventing the attack is a far wiser use of resources than planning not to prevent it, particularly since terrorists who tried it would face many incredible obstacles--it's a whole lot different than sneaking your box cutters aboard a relatively unguarded airplane.

So, yeah, having Homeland Security focus on reducing the risk of attack rather than planning for not stopping the attack sounds sensible to me.

Two realities.

1. On November 1, Al-Queda blows up two NYC-Washington Acela trains, killing 250. Dubya announces that the national elections will be postponed a week.

2. On November 1, hurricane Lisa, a surprisingly late-season category 5 storm, plows ashore in Jacksonville, Florida, killing 50 and leaving a million-plus people from Titusville to Jacksonville and 50 miles into the interior homeless. Dubya announces that due to the magnitude of the destruction in Georgia and Florida the national elections will be postponed a week.

Q1. Agree with both decisions or no?
Q2. Of the two, which one makes the most sense to delay the elections for?

I'm just wondering. We've had major flooding in local areas on election days before, but it's usually a local decision to delay the election. What if it were a national decision?

She must really get to you, James. The f-word? That's so unlike you... :wink:

I figured out how the Dems pick their leadership.

They pick the people that can say the most inane things while making them sound vaguely sinister.