One outlines the imminent change in policy that will most likely put KSM on trial before a military tribunal.  President Obama has been against this always, but faced with the reality that no state touched physically by the 9-11 attacks wants anything to do with this trial, he (or more specifically the AG) may have no choice.  At worst a flip-flop, at best a poorly thought out strategy that anyone with average intelligence saw coming.  This strong quote comes from politico.com:

“If this stunning reversal comes to pass, President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “If the president flip-flops and retreats to the Bush military commissions, he will betray his campaign promise to restore the rule of law, demonstrate that his principles are up for grabs and lose all credibility with Americans who care about justice and the rule of law.”

Look for the White House to swallow this bitter pill before the end of the month.  It will be interesting to see how they spin it for least embarassment.

Second verse:

The White House is pressuring the legislature to continue pushing through a national health care law, according to reports, because since you voted for it the first time, you can’t turn back now.

Two senior administration officials said the White House is telling Democrats reconsidering their support for health care reform that they will pay the price for their original vote no matter what happens, so they should reap the political benefits of actually passing a law.

This feels a little like blackmail.  You made a big mistake, but if you change your mind you will be admitting you made a big mistake.  Better to put on a confident face and power through. But the fine print between the lines says, you probably won’t be around after the next election anyway.

Politico goes on to say:

There are 59 senators and 216 House members who put themselves on the record in support of the Democratic plan for health care reform. And the way the White House and Democratic leaders see it, they have little choice but to vote for it again: Think John Kerry, and his immortal words about an Iraq war appropriations bill – that he was for it before he was against it.

The 1st Amendment?  How could America be America without it?  But a lot of people believe they have a right to not be offended.  I’m sure glad that isn’t written in the Bill of Rights.

Actually we all have the right to be offended and the right to offend.  Call me mean, but I like that.

One of the oddest things I see these days are groups that are offended by something, so in the name of tolerance, they try to make the other side shut up.

The NCAA this week removed a paid banner from its website that seemed to me to be as innocuous as a Kleenex ad.  According to an Associated Press article, the ad:

…featured a father holding his son and the words, “All I want for my son is for him to grow up knowing how to do the right thing.”

It included:

…the address of Focus on the Family’s Web site and the slogan, “Celebrate Family. Celebrate Life.”

The NCAA, which is obviously an athletic organization for college students, said it had no problem with the ad.  The NCAA just doesn’t like Focus on the Family because Focus on the Family doesn’t embrace gay and lesbian relationships.

NCAA spokesman Bob

Williams said the decision to pull the ad was based not on the message but on the messenger.

In other words “we embrace tolerance to the point that we can’t tolerate you.”

The AP article continued:

But Pat Griffin, a retired University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who is a consultant to the NCAA on gay and lesbian issues, said it’s not a generic feel-good message.

She said the slogan’s “life” reference is anti-abortion, and celebrating families does not extend to all families but “a very specific kind of family — heterosexual married families. A large part of their energy goes to preventing other kinds of families of having recognition.”

So now we have a woman telling us what Focus on the Family really means. The sentence above is so revealing, so dogmatic, so crazy…I have read it over and over and I am fascinated by it at so many levels:

Reference to “life” is code for anti-abortion.  We all know Focus on the Family is pro-life, but why bring this up here?  Because she can’t tolerate those who don’t believe the way she does.  She’s intolerant of another point of view.

Then she says Focus spends a “large part of their energy” trying to prevent other kinds of families of having recognition.  This is absolutely, positively, false.

I can’t even find that “other kind of family” in the dictionary.

There’s enough stuff that goes wrong in families (common definition) to give Focus topics of discussion for the rest of our lives without trying to take away from “other kinds of families.”  And where are these other kinds of families?  I’ve never even seen one.

The message in all of this is so clear:  You should tolerate me, but I will only tolerate you if you agree with me.

Note to those who I’ve just offended: This blog entry is not about gays or abortion, though you may be tempted to label me based on your beliefs on those subjects.  This entry is about freedom of speech and the strange concept of tolerance that some people use like a bomb to attack those who don’t agree with them.  If you choose to disagree with me that is your right, and I heartily embrace your right to disagree.  What a country!

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% of voters believe that the Democratic Party has a plan for where it wants to take the nation. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree, and 24% aren’t sure.

By comparison, 35% think the GOP has a plan for where it wants to take the nation, but slightly more voters (39%) think the Republican Party doesn’t have any such plan. Twenty-six percent (26%) are undecided.

And a paragraph later:

Interestingly, 65% of Democratic voters say their party has a plan for the future, compared to 57% of Republicans who say the same of the GOP. Voters not affiliated with either party are more closely divided and tend to think neither party knows where it’s going.

Notice the poll doesn’t ask whether the public agrees with the Dems plan.  They just recognize they have one.

I would have actually scored Democrats higher (they seem to have a plan, even though that plans scares the poo out of me).  While I would have scored the Repubs lower (they seam to be rudderless and confused).

What’s fascinating is that the GOP should have plenty of hope.  All they need is to grab the energy from the TEA types and angry independents and come up with some stuff most Americans can believe in.  And then stick to it.  Consider this:  Two thirds of us think America is on the wrong track. That’s good for Republicans, since they aren’t in power.  It seems the public wants to hear some truths that are “self evident.”  So just agree on a simple, powerful credo and then hammer it home.

I can start the list for them:

• Smaller government
• Embrace personal freedom
• Champion personal accountability
• Do not raise taxes
• Balance the budget
• Become a porkless party

Maybe you could then be the party of know.

An Emergency Climate Congress (yes emergency) made up of locals in Cambridge has put together a set of recommendations for the good citizens there — things they can do to put the brakes on global warming, since the world powers aren’t doing anything.  Read it all here.

This group wants to eliminate curbside parking, implement a carbon tax, plus a tax on plastic bags, and I love this one, establish a day when no one can eat meat.

Rarely do these kinds of proposals simply call for a change in behavior, like fastening the seat belt you’re already sitting on.  These “world changing” proposals want you to change your behavior and raise your taxes.

We only make it to page five before we see:

It should be understood that the city will need to raise or reallocate the funds to carry out additional action on climate change beyond what is already in the budget, though this is not always stated in the proposals.

This is great.  We’ll save the planet and raise taxes!  Now that’s a win-win!

The whole report is fascinating.  If you believe the public is too stupid to do the right thing, this is the way to aim them (those poor dummies) the way they should go (for their own good).

My favorite part encourages us to eat less meat, because we all know smelly animals make smelly gas that causes global warming.  If I didn’t know better I would think this was satire.

c) Raise awareness and promote action about the connection between food choices and climate
change; advocate vegetarianism and veganism as a major part of the Climate Action campaign.
Mechanisms may include:
i) Instituting environmental disincentives against meat, especially beef, pork and lamb.
ii) Advising higher levels of government to move towards more organic and sustainable
agriculture practices.
iii) Increasing the emphasis on vegetarian and organic foods in government‐run programs like
the school lunch program and food stamps, and consider setting meat limits for these
programs.
iv) Asking/mandating that local restaurants and schools institute “Meatless or Vegan Mondays”
to increase community awareness and reduce reliance on meat, dairy and eggs as food sources.
v) Sponsoring and promoting vegetarian cooking classes.
vi) Converting City Council meals to meatless only with limits on dairy.

We could all be “encouraged” to work in a “community” garden to raise our own vegetables, thereby contributing to the common good (it’s really in there, see Section 12. Educate for Sustainability & Resilience).  Our children could be “trained” since we’re too dumb to do it.  The foundation is right there for all to see:

The city provide programs for young people in after school programs at community schools or youth
centers in which they can learn simple energy auditing techniques, how to install programmable
thermostats,

Why stop there?  We could have centrally controlled thermostats in our tiny apartments so we could enjoy a comfortable 68 degrees in winter, 82 in summer.

When you think about it there are so many more things we could do.  We could all dress alike, wearing drab clothing with no artificial dyes.  These could be made in government run factories to reduce capitalistic greed.

The money raised by meat “disincentives” could be used to fund the “Meat Police.”  We could all ride bicycles made by General Motors (GM would still make cars, but only for the Meat Police and its supporting bureaucracy).  Cadillac would still make armored limos for the political class and the scientists.  This would help guard them from the malcontents who might try to pelt them with old soup bones or beat them with banned high heels.

We could use a little of that “disincentive” money to reward snitches who see someone sneaking a bite of beef jerky on the forbidden day.  Children would be trained to spot this unhealthy behavior and report it.  If someone complained about the lack of meat, he could be sent to a “training center.”  He might come back, he might not.

We could be just like North Korea with a little 1984 thrown in.

After all, this is not about us, it’s about saving the planet.  And who needs freedom when so much more is at stake?

One is a statement on President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget.  Lamborn says,  “This budget spends, borrows, and taxes too much.”

“I had hoped the President was sincere when he called for more fiscal restraint in his State of the Union Address, but sadly, it appears to be little more than rhetoric. This continued spending, borrowing, and taxing is unsustainable.”

Right next to that news release is another about funding for a new cemetery for veterans planned for El Paso County.

Lamborn opines:

I am pleased the Administration is listening to our veterans and responding to their needs.

The money for the cemetery is included in the proposed 2011 budget–which Lamborn says is fiscally irresponsible.  He doesn’t like the budget, but he likes the cemetery.

Last week when President Obama met with Republican leaders he chided them for this exact thing, saying you don’t like big budgets, but you like that money when it comes to your district.  And he was right.  And that’s what’s wrong in Washington.

I don’t have a problem with building a veteran’s cemetery in Colorado, but I would rather balance the budget.  I learned this when I was a teenager:  If I don’t have the money, I can’t buy it.  It’s a simple truth, which our federal government has been denying for years.

Another aside: I can’t find anywhere how much cemetery money we’re talking about.  Maybe if I had a few hours…

While I haven’t heard anyone using the line lately, it certainly seems to fit now more than then. Of course we now have Democrats in charge.

The malaise goes beyond the economy, of course.  Health care bills we don’t want, a climate bill we don’t need and a decision to try a terrorist in New York that we just don’t understand.

I find a good place to gauge the malaise is not at the water cooler at work, but at rasmussemreports.com.  By polling likely voters, Scott Rasmussen has hit the nail on the head over and over, including the last two presidential races and the recent Scott Brown win in Massachusetts.

Take a look at some of these findings:

61% Say Congress Doing a Poor Job

59% Say Cut Taxes to Create Jobs, 14% Expect Congress to Listen

9% Expect Obama’s Spending Freeze To Have Big Impact on Deficit

President Obama’s approval numbers as of yesterday were at -17, two points lower than before his State of the Union Address.  But like George Bush I, he just doesn’t get it.  On Wednesday night he boldly proclaimed, “I don’t quit.”  He apparently believes pressing on with his agenda is the right thing to do, and if we were all a little smarter we’d see it, too.

From the New York Post earlier this week:

President Barack Obama told a group of House Democrats not to fear big losses in the 2010 midterm elections similar to those in 1994, saying House Democrats didn’t have him to lean on back then, Rep. Marion Berry (D-AR) told a newspaper Monday.

Berry told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “I’ve been doing that [pointing out concerns about 2010] with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all. They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’”

According to Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who spoke at a Senate hearing:

“That unit was created exactly for this purpose,” Blair testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “We did not invoke the [High Value Interrogation Group] in this case. We should have.”

The information above comes from the Chicago Tribune.  According to the article by Greg Miller, the FBI did question Abdulmutallab for a few hours and then turned him over to the civilian court system.

But Blair

…and other top U.S. counter-terrorism officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller, testified that they were never consulted on the decision to give Abdulmutallab access to an attorney or be advised of his right to remain silent.

This High Value Interrogation Group, according to the article, isn’t working quite right yet.  It is still in its formation stages.  It replaced the old system used in the Bush years where things like sleep deprivation could be used to aid in interrogation.  Too bad the new system wasn’t ready when they shut down the old one.

And I haven’t even mentioned the breakdowns that allowed Abdulmutallab to get on that jet in the first place.

President Obama took the blame for this one, and rightly so.  I hope they’ve figured out a better way.

Take a look:

The incident happened when McCormack asked a tough question of Martha Coakley, Mass. Attorney General and candidate for Senate.  While Coakley played dumb, a photo taken from another angle shows she had to have at least known someone fell right next to her.  We have to assume she knew who McCormack was because he’d just asked her a question.  Here’s how McCormack reported it.

The man who knocked McCormack to the ground, helped him up and then proceeded to block his way, is Michael Meehan, a veteran campaigner who has been nominated to the Broadcasting Board of Governors by President Obama.  He did apologize the next day:

Last evening I was a little too aggressive in the confusion of trying to help the Attorney General get to her car and catch a flight.

I clearly did not intend to cause John McCormack to trip and fall over that low fence.  As the video shows and he confirms in his blog, I stopped to help him up and make sure he was OK.

I talked with Mr. McCormack this afternoon and apologized for my part.

But what bothered me from the video was not the fall, certainly in a media scrum people can and do fall.  What bothered me was the subsequent blocking, and questioning of a reporter doing his job.  On a school surveillance video this would be called bullying.  The delaying tactic was enough to keep McCormack from doing his job, which was certainly what Meehan wanted.

Reporters can be irritating, especially when they ask the tough questions.  But that is a reporter’s job and they (we) need to continue to do it.  Any campaign that tries to remove reporters from its path should be viewed with skepticism.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 45% of likely U.S. voters now think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress.

And why wouldn’t it work? If no one knew who their reps would be in advance and they were “term limited” for say one or two years, I see great promise in the idea.  You might have to use a two-thirds majority rule instead of 51 percent, but the idea is solid for its simplicity.

Owing no favors to political parties, not interested in reelection and presumably most having worked in the real world, they would be motivated to get stuff done.  They would mostly behave, knowing they soon would be back at their real job and they wouldn’t want to screw anything up for fear of embarrassing themselves, their town or their family.  To special interest groups they would be mostly unknown and lobbyists would hold little sway over them.

Makes you think.

Toy poodle with red ribbon:  Not a threat.

Rottweiler with a chain around his neck big enough to pull a car:  Better watch out.

Four elderly women in a semi-dark parking structure:  No problem.

Four young men wearing studded leather jackets and spiked hair in same parking structure:  Eyes wide open, find keys.

I’m not an alarmist, but a realist.  I know Rottweilers do more damage than poodles and I’ve never even heard of a gang of maruading grandmothers.

So the outrage over racial profiling after 9-11 fascinated me.  We all knew all the hijackers were young men of Middle East descent.  No blond women, no Asian grandpas.  So why wouldn’t we pay more attention to people who seem to fit the description?  Isn’t that the idea behind army uniforms? The ability to quickly discern ours from theirs?

It seemed after 9-11 we had gone too far the other way decades after one of our nation’s great embarrassments: the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But taking special precautions with people who fit the profile of a jihadist always seemed to make sense.  I don’t mean assuming they are guilty.  I mean watching carefully (see Rottweiler above).

Now comes a survey that shows most Americans agree with me:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% of adults say factors such as race, ethnicity and overall appearance should be used to determine which boarding passengers to search at airports.

The ACLU vehemently disagrees, pointing to a disproportionate number of people of color who are targeted for investigation and prosecution.  But I don’t have a problem with that.  Proportion has nothing to do with it.  If black people commit crimes they should be charged, if white people commit crimes, they should be charged.

I do have a big problem with unfairly charging people with a crime just because they are black, or some other color.  In fact few things upset me more than those in power going outside the scope and intent of the law, no matter the reason.  I think this is the basis of the ACLU stance.

But profiling at airports?  Gotta do it.