One of the seemingly untouchable cornerstones of the Bush election campaign is National Security, particularly Homeland Security, and how safe is keeping America. The Democrats don't have any retort to this because to take an opposing side would imply that they don't want a safe America. Meanwhile billions are being shoveled in to the Black Hole that is Homeland Defense. And I always thought the Republicans were for shrinking the Government not increasing its fat content.

But I diverge. The problem is Homeland Defense *MAY* be doing something against terrorists but we'll never know. Meanwhile good old American crime is still with us. And, really, if you stop to think about it for two seconds you'll realize that Homeland Defense can not in any way, shape, or form, stop the determined foreign or homegrown terrorist.

9/11 was a spectacular, terrible, tragic act - no doubt. But now the terrorists know they don't have do anything on that scale ever again. In fact, they don't have to do anything every again. All they have to do is threaten to do something and - Boom! - Homeland Defense raises the security level. Even if terrorist did do something it could be small scale - a McVeigh car bomb for example - just enough to get the paranoia back to insane levels.

The terrorists have won. That's it. Yay to them. They've disrupted our Government, our economy, our lives. They've instilled a new level of panic and paranoia to our daily routines. Airline travel, once a minor pain in the butt, has become a major pain in the butt. Homeland Security in order to protect us must take away enough liberties to keep eyes on us.

So again I admit the terrorists have won. Now get rid of Homeland Defense and put the money saved into Education. Give me back more of my personal freedoms, especially Speech. Get Bush and his wacko bunch out of Office. Let's get some sense of normalcy back into our lives.

And for the terrorists we'll have an awards ceremony in Beverly Hills...

Blog, Blog, Blog...

Little Mr Mahatma is expanding the numbers of mirrors for two reasons. The first is that zBlogger is proving most unreliable as a backup mirror. The second is that when I started searching for alternates I got caught up in the quest and so this will kind of review what's out there. All of these sites offer free blog space and are relatively quick and painless to open accounts.

Blogger is my primary site. It's reliable, easy to configure the look, and easy to submit posts in batches with custom HTML (by that I mean I could copy one big file in with headers as I specify, as opposed to entering in things piecemeal with header and text separate). I was also to add two RSS feeds. Atom is part of Blogger's world and Feedster was easily added. Blogger allows you create and delete sub-blogs so you can have more than one blog entity out there. Finally, Blogger has Google behind it. Blogger, of all of the sites reviewed here, was the best - hands-down.

zBlogger was my backup mirror. It was easy to configure and easy to submit posts in batches. However twice now it's gone down, as in dead, kaput, no response, which makes sychronization between sites a chore. I liked the look but it's become too unreliable to recommend as a primary blog site. Pity.

LiveJournal was very easy to start and seems very reliable, however customization is not as easy as Blogger and zBlogger. Entering posts in a single shot isn't easy. Titles are entered separately from text, though you can skip titles and enter everything in the text box. It just doesn't look as neat when it comes out. LiveJournal does have the advantage of having people post responses but some of the other sites offer the same.

eBloggy also has the advantage of having people post responses. Posting is split like LiveJournal. Character count is nice. Blue Ice template is very nice looking. And they have a decent template editor. This may become my main secondary mirror.

Blog-City Not as neat to work with as other sites. Configuration is confusing. Somehow my blog entry ended up as my header, or maybe it's intended that way. It looks horrid. Blog-City is there; it's free.

Blog Drive. Annoying creation of account. It wouldn't accept "littlemrmahatma" as a username but didn't say why it was invalid, nor give examples of acceptable formats. No category for Politics. No easy link to see new posts. No batch posts. Fairly easy configuration of all aspects of page howver. Better than zBlogger and Blog-City.

In summary, if you truly can't stand Blogger than likely you won't like any of the other sites because they all overlap functionality. Blogger happens to be the biggest, best, and generally easiest to configure. eBloggy, Blog Drive, and Live Journal I'd recommend as alternates for different reasons. eBloggy is like zBlogger - easy but more reliable. Blog Drive has great configurability once you get your account opened. LiveJournal is nice and simple. Heck, they're free. Try them all out!