Saturday afternoon open thread
Bookworm on Jan 09 2010 at 1:38 pm | Filed under: Open Threads
I will be blogging this afternoon, but my morning has been taken up with family stuff, including the exciting one of reinstating TiVo in our lives. We had TiVo for many years, but when we got an HD TV, we tried switching to the Comcast DVR, because it was cheaper than upgrading to HD TiVo. The whole Comcast DVR experience proved that you get what you pay for. Had we started with Comcast’s DVR, we might never have known what we were missing. Having had TiVo, however, it was obvious that the Comcast product was vastly inferior.
My husband therefore finally broke down and bought an all new TiVo. It’s a lovely piece of equipment, with really smart software. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but I like my old movies, so I’ve been hunting them down. My husband, who is a TV watcher, is in hog heaven, and keeps summoning me to look at one new feature or another.
I’ll try to blog later today, once the TiVo excitement abates somewhat.
Email This Post To A Friend
One Response to “Saturday afternoon open thread”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
On a previous thread, BW said her sister (in law?) suggested conservatives were being hysterical about the foiled Christmas Day bomber and linked to a Glen Greenwald post.
At the time I wondered if we were being hysterical, what level of casualties would her sister consider acceptable before we were no longer considered hysterical. And were we hysterical only because the attempt wasn’t successful, or would her sister shared conservatives concern about Obama security policies if the attack had brought down the plane and several hundered people had perished.
Would two attacks a year be acceptable to her? Would it no longer be hysterical if there were three attacks a year and only one was successful?
We have subsequently learned that as many as 20 terrorists have been trained to carry out attacks, according to the bomber. Is that statement bravado on his part, or is there a new wave of attacks imminent? Judging from the administrations most recent responses, they consider the threats real.
Of course I don’t think conservatives concern over Obama’s attitude toward terrorism in general and specific attacks in particular deserves the hyperbole “hysterical”. Since the defense of the homeland (and we should consider American airplanes filled with Americans as part of the homeland) is one of the federal government’s principal roles, questioning the government’s plans is legitimate.
I will add that American’s have short attention spans, and we are not used to this concept of long war. I admire and wonder how the Israelis have managed to maintain their level of defense. I suspect Israelis live their lives without hysteria, but do demand their government provide effective deterence. When they have failed to do that, Israelis have reacted and replaced leaders.