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 Monday, July 18, 2005
Japan Vs. Tivo. High court rules ad-skipping on Tivo boxes are illegal for Japanese citizens... [News America Now]
I wonder how long it will be before this is true here. 11:13:57 AM 
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Spreading democracy... covertly?. Why am I not surprised? In the months before the Iraqi elections in January, President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties, but rescinded the proposal because of Congressional opposition, current and former government officials said Saturday. In a statement issued in response to questions about a report in the next issue of The New Yorker, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office." The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favored by Washington, an issue about which the White House declined to elaborate. The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports that the administration proceeded with the covert plan over the Congressional objections. Several senior Bush administration officials disputed that, although they recalled renewed discussions within the administration last fall about how the United States might counter what was seen as extensive Iranian support to pro-Iranian Shiite parties. Free and fair elections, my ass. More below the fold. [Daily Kos]
Well, as I recall, the Iraqis voted for party slates, not for individual candidates. So, if the Administration wanted to provide covert help, giving it to parties would be the correct procedure. Funny how the Administration will not answer that question. 6:45:52 AM
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"CSI: Disneyland" [Daypop Top 40]
Another reason I will not be visiting Disneyworld anytime soon (and I say that as someone who loved it so much I spent my honeymoon there, and took a 3 month old child on another visit) On my last visit, we spent big bucks staying on the concierge flor of one of the Disneyworld theme hotels. I've got better things to do with my money that spend it at such a place. 6:31:23 AM
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Everything changed on 7/7
or did it?
Via ThinkProgress
we find
this LA Times story
:
On the way to passing a $31.8-billion Homeland Security spending bill Thursday, Senate Republican leaders beat back a series of attempts ó pressed by senators from states with large urban centers ó to increase money for mass transit protection by as much as $1.4 billion. Ö
In the Senateís spending bill, rail and transit safety measures were allotted $100 million,
a drop of $50 million from last year
.
What a difference a week makes.
Mike the Mad Biologist
is (not surprisingly) mad
. And well he should be. As he notes, a well planned attack on the New York subways could kill 500 people with one bomb. The tunnels aren't adequately ventilated and may not have enough fire suppression, so a London-type attack would be much more deadly, since people couldn't evacuate as easily.
We can all agree that anti-terrorism funding should reach every corner of the country, but the per capita risk is more highly concentrated in the largest cities, not least because that's where the media are, and a terror attack that doesn't make the news is less valuable to al Qaeda. So anti-terrorism money ought to be biased toward urban areas with obvious targets on a per capita basis. Right now, each state gets an equal pile of money from one account, and special funding for certain targets on top of that.
Is there any (non-pork) reason to oppose shifting the state funds to a per capita allocation? On top of that, is there any reason not to move the money saved on that into targeted funding for infrastructure and high-value targets?
I don't think so either.
From what I understand, every state eceives the same amount of Homeland Security funds. So North Dakota gets as much as New York. Makes sense? Unless the money is really just being used for pork barrel projects instead of providing real security. 6:27:00 AM
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