"The battle will go on for the rest of our lives" 3

This is his jihad

As a great American once said, "War is the health of the state." But so are epidemics, natural disasters and terrorism, all of which will continue indefinitely into the future. We can expect to live in a more or less constant state of emergency from now on, which is why liberals whining about NSA surveillance is futile. It's here to stay, and there will also be more cameras recording our public life. There's no longer any reason to think that you have any privacy, public or private, in a world that's in a constant state of emergency.

What should be evident to all by now: Our social arrangements are very fragile. One man with a gun can shut down the government of a major city in Canada.

It's pathetic to hear news readers on TV reciting the same old bullshit after another violent attack by an adherent of "the religion of peace," as if whether the lunatic had ties to jihadist groups here or overseas is at all relevant. Or whether such violence is really "Islamic"or not. The fact is that the terrorists themselves think it is, which is the reality we have to deal with, not sorting out quotations from the Koran or other Moslem holy books.

Alternet provides a good example of the latter foolishness: this article cites some ugly stuff from the Bible, the smug conclusion we're supposed to draw is that all religions have some violent passages in their holy books, and Islam is no different than the others. That ignores the reality we are now seeing in the news almost every day: Only Moslems are acting on the violence in their scriptures, not adherents of other religions.

Nor is "lone jihad" like the incidents in Canada or the ax-wielding maniac in New York a new thing: see this, which was published just after the Boston bombing. And this and this.

A Chronicle editorial after the Boston bombing claimed that "It's very important for all of us to remember that incidents like this are incredibly rare." That was untrue then, and it's obviously even less true today.

Five years ago the late, great Christopher Hitchens told us what to expect:

What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims.

The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste...(emphasis added)

A critique of the city's Transportation Task Force Report

Meter Madness sends this from the Pacific Research Institute:

The Pacific Research Institute released a brief reviewing San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s Transportation Task Force Report: 2030. The brief is a supplement to PRI’s earlier study “Plan Bay Area Evaluation” (June 2013), which critiqued the plan developed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). Both the brief and the study were authored by Wendell Cox, a PRI fellow and consultant on public policy, planning, and transportation issues...

Mr. Cox believes that the plan gives little or no attention to the potential for increasing truck and automobile congestion on the city’s streets: “Street improvement programs will give greater priority to transit, cycling, and walking, and will have a necessary effect of slowing general vehicle travel. Similarly, the implementation of additional exclusive bus lanes and taking of capacity from streets for cycle lanes would likely have the same effect. Traffic congestion retards the productivity of the city by increasing travel times, increasing business costs, higher air pollution, and greater greenhouse gas emissions as vehicles are less fuel efficient at slower speeds and in ‘stop’ and ‘go’ conditions.”

In addition, Mr. Cox believes that escalating costs will also present difficulties:

1) Most of the costs of the 2030 transportation plan are for capital improvements. In the public sector, capital improvements are inherently susceptible to substantial cost overruns.

2) The Task Force Report indicates little or no commitment to cost effectiveness. Muni’s costs over the last 15 years have risen far more than inflation. This occurs because there is no competitive influence to keep transit costs under control...