New York, City of Nothing

Every day the Bush Administration brings a mind-boggling litany of insanities to the fore.
One of today’s absurdities creating a pile of anger here on the East Coast is the big reduction in federal Homeland Security funds being parceled out to New York. The city’s share of the law enforcement funds was cut to $124.5 million, from $207.7 million last year. Reason? The feds determined that there are “no national monuments or icons” in the city, according to a story in The New York Times.
That’s right, the federal government doesn't know there are important things in the most important city in the world, which for some odd reason is repeatedly the location of actual terrorist attacks.
In the plane of reality in which the Bush administration presides, terrorists are salivating at the catastrophic national panic they could create blowing up a mall in Topeka or Tacoma as opposed to something unobtrusive like, oh, I don’t know, Rockefeller Center or the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building or the World Financial Center or Times Square or Madison Square Garden or ....