George W. Bush wants $87,000,000,000.00 of extra deficit-funded spending for his wars (of which, amazingly, more than 10% is for a slush fund primarily designed to bribe other goverments into sending troops and acting supportive).
Here's a web site that tries to help you visualize just how much money $87,000,000,000.00 really is. It's effective.
The Register has the Director of the Program on Terrorism and Trans-National Crime at the University of Pittsburgh (connected to this?) warning 'Expect terrorist attacks on Global Financial System'. Is this more likely than other terrorist activities? As likely? Or just sufficiently bad if it happens ('A successful terrorist attack on America's financial infrastructure could bring the US and global economies to a standstill, and the real surprise is that it hasn't been attempted yet.') that we should prepare for it even on a low probability threat analysis?
I wasn't able to find a copy of the paper on the web, so I can't go to the source and form my own conclusions. The article tells me very little. As a general matter, I tend to some skepticism about warnings from anti-terrorism experts Their incentive structure is to be scary, as this maximizes the demand for experts. I imagine that in this business you don't in that business get in nearly as much trouble for false alarms as you do for being asleep at the switch.
So, how to evaluate this warning (especially as the ad that happened to be served when I was reading had this graphic)?
California is voting today. As a supporter of democratic institutions to the maximum extent compatible with broadly republican government – in other words, as someone who is predisposed to like the institutions of ballot initiatives and petitions, and who thinks that recalls do have a place in a well-run representative democracy, I take away two and a half lessons from the California fiasco: The two main lessons are that the bar for a recall needs to be somewhat higher, but not too high, and that if ever there was on object lesson on the virtues of single transferable vote, this is it. (The half lesson is that I need to rethink the virtues and vices of postal voting.)
The People Speak: America Debates its Role in the World is a program to encourage public debates about foreign policy. The idea is that events should be held all around the country, primarily between the 5th and the 18th of October (i.e. now). You know they have to be doing something interesting if they can get the simultaneous endorsement of The United Nations Foundation, The Open Society Institute, The League of Women Voters, The American Enterprise Institute, The Jesse Helms Center [!!!], and lots of other do-good groups.
They've actually put together an ideologically balanced but nonetheless meaty debate package (MS Word document). And they offer micro-grants to groups that want funds to help stage an event.
Impressive.
I've added three items to the left column:
I have not personally checked these numbers, but they all look as if they are serious attempts to provide meaningful estimates [and in the case of the military data, a simple tally] of very gloomy data sets.
Who knew that George W. Bush was an even better poet than he is leader and policy-maker?
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