Maybe I'm Weird...

But when I see a news story about British police arresting a bunch of would-be terrorists after having them under survelliance for six months, I take that as a good thing, and a reason to be less scared, rather than a reason to be more frightened. But some people seem to take it as a moment of "HOLY SHIT PEOPLE WANT TO KILL US!" and think that means there's terrorists under every bush. No. There's not. There's a very small percentage of people who are willing to do this kind of thing and have the means to do anything. At least as long as they have other options, or we haven't say, killed all of their family by bombing.

Especially when the last "Terrorist threat" that the British police broke up was a bunch of guys who were going to blow us all up with liquid binary explosives that would take hours and extreme cold to mix in a very smelly way, with chemicals they didn't even have yet.

Here's the BBC's take, make sure you read the bit at the end.
And here's breathless fearmongering over at Bizarro world. Warning, the comments over at RedState are completely disconnected from reality.
And here's a bit of breathless fearmongering about the government from a different source.

My guess? I can't guess on the truth of the actual claimed plot until more info comes out. But I'm confident that the danger's been hyped. Terrorists are not going to kill you in your beds. Sleep well, citizens.

Bush: Goodbye, Medicare

So yesterday I was listening to the news while driving home from work, and they were going over the details of Bush's proposed budget. And one of the things he wanted, was to change the means testing for Medicare to not be indexed to inflation.

Which means, as inflation goes up, the caps wouldn't. So elderly people who are making the same effective amount of money would be paying more and more of their premiums and costs than they do now. Which would get rid of the point of Medicare, which is to provide health care for old people.

Man, such a compassionate conservative!

More details here.

A Thing I Don't Get

Republicans in specific and conservatives as a whole seem to believe two things that sure seem to me like they contradict.

First, that government is inherently inefficient and corrupt and unable to handle even the distribution of well, anything, well. And is always attempting to expand its power for nefarious ends, at the expense of you and me.

And secondly, that we should all shut up and trust the government to know best in anything relating to war, crime, security, foreign affairs, or anything related to the above.

I really just don't see how those two mesh.