After yesterday's stunning events, I've been amazed at the warm and thought-provoking contents of these threads. While I couldn't access the news web sites yesterday -- I assume they were overloaded -- I found much more pertinent info here.

I was about to ask what Bin Laden's "beef" with the U.S. was, but see that Lonesome EJ has answered that -- although, as has been pointed out here often, it's still a question of "if" it was him.

Beyond that, if Bin Laden is a millionaire, what is his money in ? Wouldn't destroying the Trade Center affect some of his wealth ? Or maybe not.

It's also been interesting to me to see how the media has covered this. TV is/was hands down the most immediate - in terms of the visual. But as several people have pointed out, their substantive material is, as always, suspect. I couldn't help thinking that it was these same talking heads who authoritatively pronounced Gore the winner, until quite late, in the Presidential election.

Radio, to me, was mostly useless. Harried announcers describing plumes of smoke just didn't handle it. Once in a while there was an interesting interview with a terrorism expert, but... mostly useless.

Even more useless, our local newspaper decided to put out an afternoon edition, of material that was several hours old, and mostly saying nothing. And to make it more obvious how far behind they were, they advertised it with a bottom "banner crawl" on the local TV station. They are so old fashioned in their thinking, it's hopeless !!!

And, as mentioned above, while I thought the news web sites would be the most informative, I couldn't get on. But then I looked here at Mudcat, and found much more thoughtful commentary than most professional media outlets were offering. I love this place !!!