The bill would devote $1 billion to upgrade security along Amtrak and freight rail systems, require screening of all cargo carried aboard passenger airliners and allow airport screeners to form a union.
Because everyone knows that 911 never would have happened if screeners had been unionized. Whenever I think that the administration is incompetent, all I have to do is look at the new majority in Congress to realize that it could be much worse.
And of course, if Bush resists, and threatens a veto, the media will accuse him of being indifferent to security.
[Update at 6 PM Eastern]
A little good news. The administration is actually threatening a veto, and the Senate will sustain it. But I stand by my prediction of the media response.
You want to see some legitimate criticism of the administration over managing the war? Here it is:
…the decision by the Bush administration to prioritize the drug war ahead of the war against the Taliban is of course, madness. It’s time for the Brits to take a stand, and announce that either Bush’s drug warriors leave Afghanistan or Britain’s troops do. Ninety days would seem to be adequate warning.
Washington and Brussels cut what is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars in direct aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas’ parliamentary victory.
Both have said they will not resume monetary support of the Palestinian government until Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces violence and fulfills past promises.
Mashaal demanded in tougher terms that Washington resume its aid funding: “The American administration’s insistence on the continuation of the blockade will give birth to more hatred toward America not only … on a Palestinian level but on an Arab, Islamic level.”
Right. “Give us money, or we’ll hate you.”
I don’t mind it so much that, in their permanent adolescent angst, they’re suicidal. I just wish that they wouldn’t take innocents with them when they do it.
A sad, but probably true essay on the mistake that the enemy makes, and will probably continue to make:
The day the man with the wide-brimmed hat nods over one of our cities, the day our people start to die in numbers comparable to the flu of 1918, the day a dirty bomb goes off in downtown Manhattan, is the day the world gets reminded that this fat, happy country of ours, this cheerfully hedonistic civilization, is also the most terrible engine of slaughter the world has ever seen.
Paul McNamara writes about one of the government’s biggest failures since 911. And it was a joint effort between the White House and Congress (including the Dems). Unfortunately, there’s no reason to think that it will change, given all the institutional incentives.
The perceived political weakness of the United States, and the expectation that the Democrats would seek a strategic retreat, may have persuaded the Khomeinist leadership that Ahmadinejad may be right after all: the Islamic Republic can pursue a hegemonic strategy with no fear of hitting something hard.
Ahmadinejad, reported to watch a lot of CNN, has seen the gunboats sail in. But he has also seen Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, Barrack Obama, and other American luminaries such as Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Jane Fonda who would rather see Bush destroyed than the mullahs restrained. The American gunboat ballet does not impress the radicals in the ascendancy in Tehran. And that is bad news for all concerned, above all the people of the region.