Barry lays out what is challenging us, today: Two wars, old conflicts unresolved, new strains, terrorism, nuclear powers, foreign oil, etc. Also: education will allow out children to compete head-to-head with foreign children, as mathlete warriors.

These guys share Obama's pragmatism and his sense of purpose.

Hillary Clinton looks exhausted, and kinda pissed off.

Robert Gates: beloved because he's not Rumsfeld. That is his primary qualification for this office? Wait, Obama just said the war on terror will end in Afghanistan!

Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security chief is fine, though we'd prefer maybe dissolving that entire bloated department. Susan Rice is pretty cool, and it will be nice to have a UN Envoy that maybe doesn't want to blow up the UN. Eric Holder will probably be fine too.

10:54 Oh god they all get to speak? Here's Hillary! This is her goodbye to New York, a place she's visited a couple times, and a state she represented in the Senate, we're told by reliable sources. Also the world cannot solve crises without America and vice versa. Blah.

Hillary wants to build a future with more partners and fewer adversaries.

Robert Gates is honored, etc. Eric Holder would like us to both be safe, and he'd like to uphold the "Constitution." We admire his mustache. It'll be kinda wacky to not have an evil Justice Department, right? We hope he has fun with all those right-wing political hacks hired and promoted at every level in Justice. Good luck, Eric!

Here comes Janet! The Governor of Arizona thanks the wonderful people of that state. Like, uh, John McCain. And Kurt Warner. Those are the only Arizonans we know of. Like Hillary, she's looking forward to getting the hell out the state she represents.

Susan Rice is short. She'd like to remind us that the UN totally belongs to America.

James Jones, retired Marine General, will be the National Security Advisor. His job will be to get Hillary and Robert Gates to agree. He introduces our new Vice President, Smilin' Joe Biden! Yay!

Biden would like to remind us that he has been around forever. He knew Jim Jones when he was in short pants, dammit! The shortage of energy, water, and food, the technical revolution, terrorism: these are things Joe Biden would like you to know that he knows all about.

Smilin' Joe Biden is just trying out his stump speech again, we think. These are extraordinary times, "that is not a flight of fancy, or exaggeration." Extraordinary!! But we're optimistic!! Great team!! America will lead not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example, or something!! Heeeeeeere's President-elect Obama again!

Question time: Barack Obama feels really bad about that thing in India. Man, that sucked. Barry would like to remind you that there is only one President at a time, so he can't do anything about it. One president at a time! A new beginning!

How can we make sure this will be a team of rivals and not a clash of rivals? Obama's answer: many of them have worked together before! And they all are v good public servants! Our answer: ideologically they run the gamut from A to B. Seriously, we've got some realists, some interventionists, and some left-center hawks. Not a single know-nothing to be found! Anyway. Vigorous debate.

Did Obama shave? We're thinking not! We hope he grows a Van Dyke during his first term.

Unshaven dirtbag president Obama hopes India catches the terrorists, national sovereignty, not everyone will agree with Obama but he is the decider.

Hey, someone wants to know about how Hillary's foreign policy cred is "grossly exaggerated," according to the Obama campaign, back when they were fighting. Hillary is kinda smirking, and Obama is all "the press loves to stir shit up." They share the view that America should be safe, though, which is why she is qualified. He is maybe just hinting that she's a good SecState because she's respected and liked abroad, even if the Sinbad bullet-dodging thing was made up.

"You're known as a pretty good story-teller. Can you tell us a little story of how Hillary Clinton was selected?" Also: does Robert Gates count as the Republican in the Cabinet or will there be another token pick? What a crazy question. What the hell. Gates is qualified to support our troops! But... no story. Obama didn't go around checking everyone's voter registration cards. Geez. With respect to Clinton, Obama has always admired her, they worked together in the Senate, she is tough and smart and disciplined, they share core values. This is boilerplate. But the press is still all "...her?" Obama acknowledges that that is not a very good story.

Hey, are we still leaving Iraq? We are sort of leaving Iraq. But there will be a "residual force" there forever and ever. 100 years!

THE END. THANK YOU VERY MUCH EVERYBODY. Sheesh. That took forever. Anyways, Gates, Clinton, and Jones will make war on everyone forever and ever, because Obama is the candidate of change. (The actual change being, of course, that Obama's team is made up of realists, not crazy neocon idealists. Did you think you were voting for some liberal peace candidate? Get a job, hippie! The grownups are in charge, again!)

• "One commando leader said earlier that his team had come across a single room in the Taj containing a dozen corpses or more." [NYT]
• "At a news conference in Mumbai, a marine commando, his face masked with a black handkerchief, said those who attacked the 400-room Taj were 'very, very familiar with the hotel layout.'[...]'We do not know the layout of hotels, and hence we had to find our way,' the commando added. 'There was blood all over the floor, bodies lying strewn in the blood.'" [WP]
• "The officer reported that the commandos had trapped three terrorists on the top floor on the hotel. The rest of the suspects were on the ground floor, but he was not sure how many were in the building altogether, estimating between seven and 10. When asked whether they were trying to take any of them alive, he almost smiled at the question. 'If they're alive, it's just coincidence.'" [Time]
• 
  

  At the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the train station that appears to have been the first location hit, a fusillade of bullets left the floor of the main hall quickly littered with bodies and pools of blood. At the Leopold Cafe, a chic restaurant popular with Westerners and wealthy Indians and famous for sidewalk dining, a cluster of gunmen mowed down diners.

  At the opulent Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, the assailants poured heavy fire into restaurant goers on the ground floors, then moved upstairs to round up guests as hostages. And at a range of other locations, from a movie theater to a hospital to a police station, the attackers opened fire remorselessly on anyone in their path, frequently throwing grenades as well.

Also here is a bonus "this thing looks like that thing": this attack was just like 9/11! In that everyone was warned about it beforehand!

A December 2006 letter written by a Mumbai Intelligence Bureau official and obtained by The Post says that hundreds of operatives from Lashkar-i-Taiba had received maritime training.

Members of the group "are being trained to handle large boats, laying of mines in coastal zones and planting of explosives under dams, bridges, ships etc.," says the letter, which was marked "secret."

"[T]hey are being taught navigational techniques, rescue operations, surveillance methods, concealment of explosives and underwater attack on enemy's coastal targets/vessels," the letter says.
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Sriprakash Jaiswal, minister of state for home affairs, told reporters Friday that India's state governments were warned to boost coastal security two years ago. "But now with the new challenges, we will have to deal with this issue on a war footing," he said.

Don't forget to "Digg it" everyone!

Photo: Reuters

Earlier this month, al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri invoked Malcolm X and called our president-elect a "house negro." Apparently, the international press did not take this criticism seriously, and al-Zawahiri was roundly mocked for tryna start shit. Al-Qaeda message boards are dismayed!

Though hardcore Al-Qaida supporters have predictably dismissed any criticism of Dr. al-Zawahiri and are fiercely backing his choice of words, there is a rather ironic (if not entirely unfamiliar) twist to this issue. After observing international press reporting on the incident, these same supporters are now bitterly attacking the media for its "unfair" pro-Obama bias and for deliberately "confusing" the meaning of al-Zawahiri's message.

Hahahaha al-Qaeda message boards—they're just like The Corner!

They have some legitimate policy grievances with Obama, of course, because while the Bush strategy was to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretense to go ahead with a pre-planned invasion of non-al-Qaeda secular dictatorship Iraq, the Obama plan is to go back into Afghanistan—and Pakistan!—and kill all of them. (Bush thought this plan so clever he secretly instituted it himself at the very, very end of his presidency.)

Still, even with the threat of ramping up that particular war, Obama is simply not a very good recruiting tool for Islamic Extremists! So they are kinda reduced to just needling the President-elect, with this Malcolm X talk. Obama, of course, has written at length of reading Malcolm X: "Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me." Who knew al-Qaeda seconds-in-command were reading Dreams From My Father?

But, of course, their invocation of Obama as a "house Negro" is a total misreading. As Malcolm said:

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in this school." You're nothing but a house Negro.

And a pivotal part of Obama's story, of course, is his seeking out and finding a Black community, and creating a role for himself in that community. And Malcolm himself, as we all know, developed more nuanced views of race relations shortly before his untimely death, demanding black people have self-determination within their own communities and pulling back from strict separation from white people. He distanced himself from the Nation of Islam too, making these terrorists look even more foolish. It's almost as if al-Qaeda leaders don't have a complex understanding of the roots of black nationalism and the civil rights struggle and how it informs contemporary discussions of race!

Anyways, Obama hasn't responded to the provocation but he's totally bombing some caves come January.

i had a nightmare where i voted and then woke up Wednesday morning and Obama won and i forgot to watch the results.

when i told a friend about the dream, she goes, "oh my god, i had that dream too!"

Have you or anyone you loved had similar scary election dreams? Share them!

You know who else is really nervous? Black people.

Democrats are nervous. I mean real nervous. And it's not hard to understand why. They watched the White House go to George W. Bush in 2000 in the most contested election in modern U.S. history. They watched him hang on to the Oval Office in 2004. And they are wigged out that somehow, in some way, Obama will get tripped up on the road to victory.
[...]
Yes, Obama went to the coveted school (Harvard). He got a plum job (U.S. senator). And he got the house in the choice neighborhood (Hyde Park, Chicago). All thanks to the sacrifices of heroes known and unknown who helped the nation stay true to its ideals. He has also run a nimble and near-flawless campaign. He's ahead in every national poll and statistically tied with or ahead of John McCain in states that President Bush carried in 2004. And he's raised more money than any presidential candidate ever, which has made it possible for him to be competitve in those red states. Yet I still can't allow myself to think for one minute that "they" (the infamous, faceless "they") will let Obama, Michelle and the girls move easily into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come January.

An Obama loss would basically destroy the time-space continuum, John Dickerson reports in Slate today:

An Obama loss would mean the majority of pundits, reporters, and analysts were wrong. Pollsters would have to find a new line of work, since Obama has been ahead in all 159 polls taken in the last six weeks. The massive crowds that have regularly turned out to see Obama would turn out to have meant nothing. This collective failure of elites would provide such a blast of schadenfreude that Republicans like Rush Limbaugh would be struck speechless (another historic first).

This situation lends a feeling of unreality to the proceedings as we begin to measure the time until Election Day in hours. It is the elephant on the campaign plane. No one is letting on. Journalists aren't supposed to. Plus, we've been wrong so often, and politics can be so unpredictable, it would be dumb to say that Obama is going to win big.

The AP reports that Obama is working hard not to jinx himself! Because anything could still happen, tonight. Like, uh, another 9/11? Why not! Basically liberals are all superstitious babies, which is why the intramural debate lately has been torn between fevered fantasizing about shock troops and the "Chill the fuck out, I got this" school of trusting Obama's campaign machine.

Us, we are, at this point, utterly complacent, and we have been for some time. As Matt Yglesias says of one of the weirder and more enduring liberal myths:

Something funny happened in 2004 where a lot of progressives convinced themselves near the end that John Kerry was likely to win the election even though he was narrowly behind in the polls. Then a lot of people have gone and misremembered that as thinking that Kerry was likely to win because he was ahead in the polls, which he wasn’t. Thus, many are left unable to believe that Obama’s lead in the polls makes his victory likely.

Basically we've all psychologically collapsed the entire last month or so of the 2004 campaign into that tiny window between polls closing and results coming in, when the "exit polls" looked great. That was just a couple hours of false hope, after weeks of superstitiously hoping "undecideds" would magically break to our guy even though he was down in the polls. In other words, it was like being a John McCain supporter, this time around.

But oh no did you read in the Times about how there will be mass chaos on election day because no one knows how to vote? Ballots will be disqualified and touch screens won't work and all the machines without paper trails are in swing states!

Yes, well, exit polls aside, the 2004 results basically echoed the national polls of the end of the campaign—Bush eked out a narrow victory—and when they "stole" it in 2000, they stole it openly, in broad daylight, not with technical trickery but with old-fashioned voter suppression and lawyers and courts. That's all much easier to do in a one point election than in a 6-10 point election. And keep in mind, everyone, that the Dems did pull off a victory in 2006.

But hey maybe all the polls will be wrong and Obama will lose and the villagers will burn down the MSM. It will probably be Garry Trudeau's fault, entirely. He jinxed it!!

(Feel free, gentle readers, to share your own paranoid fantasies and angst-inducing nightmares. We'll reprint them all on Wednesday and have a nice laugh.) (Unless McCain wins of course because then we'll all drink ourselves to death.)

Choochy the poodle got out of her kennel as she was being unloaded after a Saturday night flight. "About 15 state police, firefighters, operations personnel and even electricians chased Choochy late into the night," delaying "at least eight flights." They finally caught Choochy, laying on the tarmac, at 1 p.m. on Sunday, when Choochy got tired.

Good work, Boston.

Image: (c) Jana Kohl and Robert Sebree, www.ararebreedoflove.com, used with permission from (c) holder.

From: NYTIMES MAIL
Date: Oct 22, 2008 12:24 PM
Subject: Note from Dennis Stern re the Building
To: NY TIMES NOTES

Folks,

At about 11:30 a.m. today an employee on the 13th floor of our headquarters
building in New York opened an envelope addressed to The New York Times. A
white granular substance was in the envelope. The New York City police
were called and are now on site investigating. The 41st Street side of the
lobby is closed but people are able to get in and out of the building. We
will keep you updated on any developments.

Dennis

The Times put that gambling story on the front page even though there didn't seem to be that much to it. Now Keller admits, basically, that they did it because the McCain campaign was bothering them. So, obviously, then they had to be fair and put some sort of theoretically damaging Obama story on the front page a week later! And they did, with Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths, the story of how goofy '60s Weatherman Bill Ayers cleaned up and went legit and eventually served on a non-profit board with Barack Obama, which means Obama is a terrorist. Like, seriously, this is what they concluded:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

NOW the increasingly, incredibly detestable Sarah Palin is standing before huge angry frothing crowds saying "I read in the New York Times" (BOOOOOO) "that Barack Hussein Osama is a terrorist" (BOOOOOOOOO) "so let's form a posse and kill the liberal media" (YAAAAAY). And, honestly, it's a desperate campaign in self-destruct mode, but that doesn't make it less disgusting and scary, that a major party is engaging in this kind of rhetoric unashamedly before these kinds of crowds.

And it's all the Times fault, just like everything else.

“Vodka and scotch sales are up, there’s no question about that,” said Chris Adams, executive vice president of Sherry-Lehmann Wines & Spirits, on 59th Street. He says that traffic in his store has increased this month—over the counter sales are up 23%, and delivery volume is up about 18%, compared to last year.

Ugh, vodka and scotch. Your fancy investment bank job disappeared, bro, time to switch to bourbon and gin like proper underclass types!

Pareene and I both scored 60%, because he is a genius and I was a journalist then. (All journalists covered nothing but 9/11 until January 2002; it was like Sarah Palin but with anthrax too.) (Also, remember Ashleigh Banfield? Just saying.) Richard got 50%, because he is secretly a genius. Jim Newell of Wonkette got 40%, because he is a child genius whose contemporaries were barely reading that Pet Goat book* in 2001 and Sheila got 40% because she was late to theater class and thought people were describing the plot of some wack ass movie. Ryan Tate got 20% because his mind is filled with information and data points that are actually usable in blog posts.

[MSNBC]

*Yeah, extra credit if you knew it was actually called "The Pet Goat", not "My Pet Goat." I guess we can blame Michael Moore for that common misnomer, but hey, like I told someone I misidentified in a post yesterday accuracy in these times is a giant fucking bridge to nowhere.

And why is their level of discourse so much calmer and smarter than Western blog comments?

“Those overpowering Satan’s seduction are few, and we sacrifice those few since they may win us Paradise,” read a posting on both sites this summer on the subject of “vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.” It continued: “Yet, keeping them alive is beneficial for us, since every one of them is tantamount to an entire people. So we must find a way to save those lives and harness that zeal.”

The post led to a vast and heated online discussion among extremists, illustrating the new complexity of the topic. As the jihadists on these sites move from discussing ideology to the practical aspects, it becomes clear that their biggest technological challenge will be moving on from the radio-wave technology that has proved highly successful in remotely setting off homemade bombs against military convoys in Iraq to the more delicate task of getting the explosive to its target and then detonating it without being exposed.

See, Western blog commenters would move from discussing ideology to discussing, like how other commenters are racist Rethuglicans and how much they love Tyra and how Ekhlaas sucks so much compared to Firdaws recently, don't you think? The new guy sucks, bring back Abu Abdullah al-Qurashi!

Sure, Al7orya doesn't sound as funny as 4Chan, and they're debating how best to blow people like us up, but why are they all so much more polite about it?

Living to Bomb Another Day [NYT]

Hey girls–

I just wanted to let everyone know that the group has been made secret for at least the next week in order to protect members’ privacy. If you are the admin for a pledge class group, I would recommend that you make that group secret as well, and to all members, I would strongly encourage you to either up your privacy settings or weed out your facebook profile so that nothing is on there that you wouldn’t want the world to see. Finally, if a reporter contacts you, through facebook or any other means, do not speak with them. It is Kappa National Policy that actives not speak with the press. If you have any questions, you can call or email me.

L,

Diana

But America wants to meet the hot co-eds of domestic bioterror! Don't disappoint! Come on, charity car wash on Good Morning America or something!

The closest the internet can come to coughing up a reference to a "terrorist fist-jab" that doesn't involve Hill is one comment on political blog Human Events Online. The comment was deleted. And also it was insane.

Michelle is not as “refined” as Obama at hiding her TRUE feelings about America—etc. Her “Hezbollah” style fist-jabbing—mouth-twisted anti-American speeches is STRAIGHT from ISLAM!

See? Don't you feel bad for Ms. Hill now? All she did was alter and repeat, without citation or context, a ridiculous deleted comment from some anonymous nutjob and present it as but one reasonable interpretation of a goddamn fist-bump. Looks like we all owe E.D. Hill a little apology!

Boulder-Size Chunk Of My Manhattan Apartment Building Falls On BMW 3-Series, Reminds Me To Make Sure Life Insurance Paid Up [Jalopnik]

The "body-language" expert admirably attempts to explain the crazy gesture in a reasonable way, and E.D. basically ignores her. It's odd, to us, that E.D. skipped calling the gesture "black" and went straight to "terrorist," but Fox's modus operandi usually involves less straight-up domestic racism and more generalized fear of The Foreigner.

(Courtney Hazelett, take note! No one would've gotten on your case if you'd just criticized Spike Lee for hating America, not for being uppity.)

[Via MediaMatters]

"'It's a very good idea. It's like a deterrent. It's going to make me feel safer, much safer, yes it will. It's a good idea,' said commuter Patricia Knight Williams." CBS doesn't mention whether she's a high-functioning autistic but we can infer from her statement that she is, at the very least, an idiot.

New York is inching its way toward becoming London, with closed-circuit surveillance cameras (some of them talk to you!) on every street corner and in any subway station, the threat of national ID cards, and shit like this. Not to mention the high prices and early pub closing!

The increasing paramilitarism of domestic police officers is a cause often taken up by cranks and nuts, but the more serious ones have good research and arguments that should make even the most government-happy liberal nervous. Here's a nice little map of botched SWAT raids by police departments across the nation, often carried out against nonviolent offenders, always using high-powered weaponry and violent tactics.

"Torch Teams" "toting MP5 submachine guns and M4 Carbine rifles that are used by Navy seals" investigating every station and car every day seems a bit more Baghdad than "serving and protecting."

And we just don't trust cops. They arrested Sheila! (The dogs are cute, though.)

Post-Sept. 11 'comedies' coming soon [Politico]

Oh no!! This was more than a half-hour after the cops took care of it, but still. Guanabee reports:

The young men had no idea what they were getting into when police stormed the area looking for them after a 911 call was placed by a woman located at 37 King Street. A reporter from Guanabee heard her tell an officer at the scene that she saw the boys through her window playing with the rifle and that one of them 'looked directly at her and smiled.'

See, it sounds idiotic, but you have to remember: white kids are not really clear on the idea that they, too, can be seen as threats and even arrested.

Exclusive Pictures From The Kate Hudson King Street "Shooting" [Guanabee]

But make no mistake, this is still America! "As the formalities dictate, the six are presumed innocent." With that out of the way, we may continue:

The evidence of 2,974 families grieving, a city that was left in turmoil, a world changed forever. And, when guilt is documented, justice is limited to only one punishment for the barbaric murderers who deserve far worse:

Death.

Death so ordered by law.

Die, you bastards.

Fun fact: this is actually a slightly repurposed version of the editorial they had saved up in case the Pats won the Super Bowl.

Death is Too Good [NYDN via Choire]

I travel many times a year, and every single time the TSA steals items out of my bag. I have even resorted to putting the TSA regulations on the top of the bag, showing what is allowed in checked luggage, but still I have my TSA Approved lock stolen, ( cut off I imagine, even though the TSA has a key to open it) and my cigars and cutters, and lighters are always stolen. even when they are approved and in special cases.

Why does this happen? nobody has access to the bags but Airline personel. why does this always happen?

TSA stole my toothpaste at ACV. Because of a ridiculous policy banning any "liquids" more than 3 oz. in volume. First of all, I don't think that toothpaste is a liquid. Second, it's a reactionary policy based on false intelligence. My honest belief is that the policy is mainly in place for all those people who have to discard their own water bottles, but can then *buy* another water bottle, containing the exact same tap water, just on the other side of the security checkpoint. Ridiculous!!! Or perhaps worse than ridiculous... how 'bout fascist?

I sat beside an over weight, actually very over weight 325lbs guy, on a Unitied flight from Denver to Chicago O'Hare, Row 19. Airlines need to enforce the over Weight limit. Or at least enforce the two seat rule. The flight was full so no seat was availible to change seats. It was a 1:45 minute flight. Had it been a 20 minute flight it would not have been a problem. Can you Please enforce the two seat limit for cows over 300lbs. Place a seat in the check in area and if someone can NOT fit in that seat and has bulges hanging over the seat require a two seat purchase. It was very uncomfortable for 2 hours. Thank you!

thank you

I watched you guys "wand" thee old ladies so far this year in my travels.

Fail^3

Oh, and one more thing. Exforce some dress codes once in a while for your employees. I saw one employee in JFK wearing a doo-rag and a yankees cap cocked to the side. His white shirt was untucked and his pants were about to fall down around his Timberlands. What a joke! Your organization is a disgrace. Maybe he had to "keep it real", but if he can't show some professionalism, he should keep it real back on 'da skreets, without my taxes paying his salary and benefits.

TSA does a fair job....Americans should be furious with the damn terrorists and those that support/finance them. BUT TSA really looks amateurish with the shoes, 2 oz. liquid policy and some of your recent hires that look/act like unemployed thugs off the street. Personally, I would PROFILE the hell out of everyone—-middleastern descent folks—sorry, tough love! Don't like your "civil rights" violated? Grey Hound leaves at 3pm!

I am an Airline Pilot. I agree with the inconsistencies, unprofessionalism, and harrassment comments already made on this board.
I would like to know why when I am in Las Vegas, with only 45 minutes to get to my plane, I have to sit in the line with the wheelchairs and I get shouted to when I try to move up to the front of the line. If I wait till all the wheelchairs are screened, My flight will be 2 hours late.

The AP obtained classified government documents detailing mock disasters in the Homeland Security Department's "Cyber Storm" wargame. DHS runs the tests with "with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and others," in order to make sure all the agencies are prepared for the inevitable blogger war.

The scenarios all sound like rejected plots to potential Die Hard sequels—what if everyone on the No Fly List showed up to airports across the nation all at once! Some of them might have German accents! But the villains aren't limited to campy British character actors: threats include lowly web scriveners "and even reporters." We are the enemy! We're all pawns of mysterious "anti-globalization hackers!"

While these foolish bloggers keep revealing the locations of deadly trains (maybe they have reliable info from Sam Lufti that Britney Spears is aboard?), an unnamed "major news network" refuses to reveal its sources to the government. And then the stock market tumbles and people panic!

But don't worry—it was only a game. Our precious series of tubes was not harmed.

The exercise had no impact on the real Internet. Officials said they were careful to simulate attacks using only isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Service's headquarters in downtown Washington.

A sequel to this hit wargame, Cyber Storm 2, is scheduled to launch on an invite-only basis this March. With time and training, the government may soon be able to assure the nation that it has done everything in its power to permanently secure all America's base.

And hopefully, citizen, you'll think twice before you tumblog sensitive information.

Trains, Bloggers Are Threats in Drill [AP]