Headless chickens

I'd spend entirely too much time writing up a post about the recent events in the U.K. - about how the US media is going into cardiac arrest just because some idiots managed to set their own car on fire.

I ended up tossing it because I was sure someone would do a better job then I could.

And someone did.

Former Scotland Yard Detective John O'Connor (Via Political Animal ) sums the entire affair up nicely:

"I think that rather than using the all-embracing term of 'al Qaeda,' I think that you should be using the term 'jihadists,' which I think makes more sense. Because, though they may share common purposes with al Qaeda, I don't think that al Qaeda has the control to operate something like this. They could operate a major terrorist outrage, but I think it would be more professionally run. I mean this was a hopeless, incompetent terrorist attack."When you see the ludicrous situation where none of the bombs were able to be detonated and these guys are trying to set fire to petrol, when all they did, they didn't get a detonation at the doors of the airport lounge; all they got was a bomb fire.

"They set fire to fuel. Well, that in its own way, is not going to detonate the gas cylinders and it's not going to cause an explosion. It was just a fire. I mean, that is so incompetent as to be almost laughable."

No question the events are newsworthy, but to run to the masses with "The sky is falling!" when its pretty clear that what has actually happened was this:

A small group of homicidal amateurs has followed up their having not blown up two London cars with a failed attack that seriously injured one of their own. Both events failed to inflict serious injuries on any of their supposed targets.

This is - well, just what we've come to expect from our media establishment. All flash, no thought

You'd think the time they devote to coming up with snappy graphics would be better spent analyzing the event so that commentary won't be as inane as NBC's Sunday commentary that "the passengers of the [completely undamaged planes] were glad to be alive."

Disgraceful.