As I have noted before, the FBI followed the same procedure they employed in previous, similar cases. The arrest of failed shoe bomber, Richard Reid, back in December 2001 is the very same thing. We did not hear from one elected Republican back then accusing Bush of being “soft” on terrorists. Not one insisted that Reid go to Guantanamo.

And don’t give me the bullshit that “this is different.” The only difference here is that Umar Farouk is Nigerian and flew to Detroit. Both men had training from Al Qaeda operatives. Here is what is really galling.

Republican crocodile tears on “politicizing terrorism.” Especially from the likes of Kit Bond. Here’s what I wrote five years ago:

The Bush Administration’s new offensive against leakers just reminds us that when the President’s political standing is at stake all is fair if the purpose is to protect the Pres…., er I mean the nation. Too bad George Bush did not express the same outrage when Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and others in his employ, told eager journalists that Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. I guess divulging secrets is okay if the White House needs to discredit Joe Wilson and his claim (subsequently proved true) that the President had misled the nation during his January 2004 State of the Union address. Plus, it offers the added benefit of warning the rest of the intelligence community–shut up or else. You can’t have whistle blowers coming out that would tarnish the President’s image as a tough guy waging war on the terrorists.

I also seem to recall that the Bush White House used leaks in the midst of the 2004 Presidential campagin to burnish the President’s image and keep Americans on edge. Remember the name of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan? His name was leaked to the New York Times in August of 2004 while Khan was still cooperating with Pakistani, CIA, and British authorities as part of a sting operation against Osama bin Laden’s network. On the eve of the Republican convention, unnamed senior NSC officials told New York Times reporters that Mr Khan was being used to send e-mails to al-Qaida members as part of a coordinated effort to identify and dismantle terrorist networks. Just because this leak destroyed the secret program’s effectiveness was no big deal because he helped remind Americans that George Bush was the only one who could keep us safe.

And here’s a snippet, courtesy of Laura Rozen, describing my old CIA colleague’s encounter with Senator Kit Bond. Jim Marcinkowski and I were trying to set the record straight on Valerie Plame’s outing. Check this out:

[Jim] Marcinkowski was an unlikely Bush White House antagonist. As the first chairman of the Michigan State University College Republicans, he had received an award from Jack Abramoff—the now-disgraced GOP lobbyist who was tight with the Bush White House—for heading the fastest-growing state College Republicans chapter in the country. He had helped run Reagan’s 1980 campaign outreach to Michigan college students. Marcinkowski had been a CIA officer, an FBI clerk, a Navy enlistee, a public prosecutor, and by 2003, was deputy city attorney for Royal Oak, Michigan.5In 1992, he ran, unsuccessfully, as a Republican for a state office. Marcinkowski later donated to the Bush/Cheney campaign at a 1999 fund-raiser headlined by Laura Bush. …

Nothing in his past experience as an FBI clerk, CIA officer, lawyer, and public prosecutor prepared Marcinkowski for what he faced when he went to testify before Pat Roberts’s intelligence committee about the Plame leak. “We sent a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying we want to tell them something,” Marcinkowski recounted. The letter was signed by a half-dozen former CIA officers, including three from Valerie’s 1985 Career Trainee class. “They blew us off. After that, nothing happened until [then Senate minority leader] Tom Daschle contacted us and said, ‘I am going to have a Senate Democratic committee hearing,’” and asked if they would appear.

The Democratic Policy Committee hearing was supposed to take place on Friday, October 24, 2003. Shortly after it was scheduled, Marcinkowski recounts, “my boss here in Detroit got a fax from a staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Basically it said in some snotty way, ‘Somebody claims in your office to have information.’ [The staffer] made it sound like, ‘Who is this punk? If he wants to say anything, he can come in at 1pm on Thursday’”—the day before the policy committee hearing was scheduled, Marcinkowski recounts.

He provided the fax sent October 20, 2003 by then Republican chief of staff to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bill Duhnke—strangely, to Marcinkowski’s boss. “The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has received a fax from your office sent by James Marcinkowski,” Duhnke, Roberts’s staffer, wrote in his e-mail to Marcinkowski’s boss. “Mr. Marcinkowski claims to have ‘important information’ he wishes to share with the committee. . . . The letter states that ‘[t]ime is of the essence.’ Therefore, I respectfully request that Mr. Marcinkowski contact me at his earliest convenience to discuss an appearance before the Committee.” It seems obvious that, under the guise of a backhanded invitation to say something to the committee, Duhnke intended to try to get Marcinkowski in trouble with his boss. But it failed, Marcinkowski says, because his boss is an old friend with whom he had worked for years, who recognized the virtue in Marcinkowski’s desire to seek justice for their former colleague Valerie. “Like I told you, it was my classmate they exposed,” Marcinkowski says he told his boss. “He said, ‘OK, great. Go beat the shit out of somebody.’”

“The next evening I was on the plane to D.C.,” Marcinkowski continues. As it turned out, various other colleagues were out of town and Marcinkowski ended up facing twelve senators from the Senate Intelligence Committee for the closed briefing on Thursday, October 23, 2003, all by himself.

Marcinkowski told the senators that the exposure of Plame by her own government was “unprecedented. It was our classmate. We had kept a secret for eighteen years. And we were all betrayed by this White House.” Marcinkowski had prepared a statement to deliver in open session before the Senate Democratic Policy committee the next day. “I also said she was covert, and I knew it. And they were taking it very seriously.”

He took questions after his statement. One of the committee’s more moderate Republicans, Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam vet from Nebraska, asked him, do you think this White House can investigate itself?

As Marcinkowski responded that if the attorney general was trying to intimidate federal judges, why would you think they would not be prepared to intimidate a special counsel, a ranking Republican close to the White House, Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri, walked in.

“He went off,” Marcinkowski said. “‘I am not going to sit here and listen to this guy attack my good friend, the attorney general Ashcroft, of this country.’ “A total “food fight” ensued, Marcinkowski said, with committee member Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein accusing Bond of trying to intimidate a witness.

After he finished with his testimony and the senators’ questions, Marcinkowski went out the back door of the building and walked over to a little park between the Senate office building and Union Station. He sat down to think about what had just happened and his cell phone rang. It was Tom Daschle’s staffer, who was setting up the hearing for the next day’s Democratic Policy Committee meeting. “And she told me, ‘Jim, Pat Roberts just declared all your testimony to be secret. I don’t know what you are planning on saying tomorrow, but he declared it secret.’”

Marcinkowski, the lawyer and deputy city attorney, was stunned. “I sat on the park bench, in a daze. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Now it hits me, that is why the Senate Select Intelligence Committee had scheduled their testimony for the day before the Senate Democratic public hearing. Until that happened we didn’t hear shit from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. They slapped the secrecy thing on it, that was their intention,” to try to prevent Valerie’s CIA colleagues from testifying publicly about what had happened to her, and why it was a betrayal of everyone in the CIA.

Marcinkowski called a close friend, an attorney in Detroit, to get legal advice on what he should do, since what he had told the Senate Intelligence Committee was exactly what he planned to tell the Senate Democratic Policy Committee the next day, and Roberts had appeared to try to suppress that testimony by, implausibly, declaring it classified. “‘Jim, I tell you what,’” his friend told him. “‘I already know what you’re going to do. I am going to call all your friends and start collecting bond money right now,’” Marcinkowski recounts. “I told him, ‘You think this is funny. I’m sitting here in a park, by my lonesome, and they’re saying I’m violating all kinds of laws.’ And he said, ‘Yep, and I know exactly what you are doing tomorrow morning.’”

Gathering courage, Marcinkowski called Daschle’s staffer back. “You call Roberts’ office and you tell him, I said that he can go straight to hell,” Marcinkowski says he told her. ….

People like Kit Bond were nowhere to be found when the Bush Administration was playing politics with national security. In fact, they encouraged the reprehensible behavior. Now they want us to believe they have found religion? I don’t think so.

If you are going to make fun of Barack Obama needing TOTUS to talk to fifth graders then you better ensure you are not writing answers and notes on your own damn hand:

Sarah is still just a small town girl. Nothing wrong with that. I applaud her for having the courage to take on the entrenched interests in Alaska. But that does not mean you have the ability and skill to bring leadership in Washington. We already are suffering at the hands of an intellectual lightweight with no significant experience running any organizaiton who also is a consumate egotist. Now we have Sarah, who can’t even remember off-the-cuff what her three key messages are. Sorry, but certainly not ready for prime time.

Is she? I’ll tell you what I think if you tell me.

I truly enjoyed Sarah Palin’s speech at the Tea Bag Convention. For starters, she did NOT use a teleprompter. That suggests confidence, even though she had to glance at a script. Nevertheless, she looked right at us often enough (no POTUS “tennis game head”). She was peppy and sometimes funny, and that felt sincere, even if I don’t agree with many of her positions and how she explains things.

Also–and I don’t think it is sexist to note– she is really pretty.

In short, Sarah Palin is a great spokesperson for the Republican Party. She is likable as well–I never understood the hate and ridicule that some spewed out. She has accomplished more in her 40-some years than anyone I heard putting her down. Jealousy, probably.

She is adept at pointing out what is wrong with the current administration and Congress in an enganing manner. She nailed a lot of it, yet that’s not difficult to do with so much material to work with! But, when it comes to what needs to be done instead, well, she was rather weak and general. And, as helpful as I think she can be to the GOP, I don’t see her as a presidential candidate. She has more experience than our current POTUS, but, sadly, I see her as one more attractive rock star in a time when we need so much more at the helm. (Hillary–are you listening at all? Bill, could you talk to her?)

OK, how about you?

I am referring to my major interest in the use of student vouchers for the funding of secondary education. Time and again I come across stories of urban families who are desperate to get their children well educated in hopes of moving on to a better life. These hopes are evidenced by the overwhelming demand for admission to a charter school or access to a student voucher.

Regrettably, the teachers’ unions in our country maintain a stranglehold on the futures of many of our urban youth. How so? The unions’ support for the Democratic Party comes with the price tag of limiting both charter schools and the use of vouchers. What a shame!

I am not stating that the problem in urban education does not extend beyond the unions. It most assuredly does. What I am saying, though, is that I strongly believe the answer to the problems in urban education can and should be increasingly addressed via the growth of charter schools and the use of student vouchers.

What city extensively implements student vouchers? Milwaukee. How are they doing? Let’s review this morning’s Wall Street Journal, which writes Milwaukee’s Voucher Graduates:

President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget calls for a 9% increase in federal education spending, and he has famously said that the money should go to “what works” in education. So he ought to take another look at Milwaukee, where the nation’s oldest and largest publicly funded school voucher program is showing academic gains.

A report released last week by School Choice Wisconsin, an advocacy group, finds that between 2003 and 2008 students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had a significantly higher graduation rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

“Had MPS graduation rates equalled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2008, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher,” writes John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota. “That higher rate would have resulted in 3,352 more MPS graduates during the 2003-2008 years.”

In 2008 the graduation rate for voucher students was 77% versus 65% for the nonvoucher students, though the latter receives $14,000 per pupil in taxpayer support, or more than double the $6,400 per pupil that voucher students receive in public funding.

The Milwaukee voucher program serves more than 21,000 children in 111 private schools, so nearly 20% more graduates mean a lot fewer kids destined for failure without the credential of a high school diploma. The finding is all the more significant because students who receive vouchers must, by law, come from low-income families, while their counterparts in public schools come from a broader range of economic backgrounds.

Vouchers are of course taboo among most Democrats, and Mr. Obama has done nothing to stop Congress from killing the small but successful voucher program for poor families in Washington, D.C. The Milwaukee program has survived for 20 years despite ferocious political opposition, and it would have died long ago if parents didn’t believe their children were better off for it.

Remember, America’s future is about the kids. It is not about political parties and political lobbies. Defendants of the status quo will scream that vouchers and charters can not be implemented on a larger scale.

I would maintain it is high time we try. Our national 50% urban graduation rate is not only a travesty, but a death knell for our future economic prosperity.

Keep your unions. Keep your political parties. Keep your pandering and posturing.

Listen hard to the kids and families who want a chance at life.

LD

Until it becomes a formal political party and looses the quaint feel that endears the concept of a “movement” to independent voters, the National Tea Party represents what the political experts hate and fear. Active independents, with a little i.

Professionals like campaigns nicely wrapped with a bow on top. Suppress the opponent’s party. Energize your base. And campaign to the big block in the middle. The middle is easy to work. They are not getting memos from local party leaders and they make their decisions late in the campaign.

That gives the pros time to “educate” the early undecided voter; identify which ones are buying your message; re-educate the rest based on your first field results; identify again and then make sure that, on election day, you quietly turn out your Yes votes.

But what happens if these people start educating themselves before the pros get a chance to influence them? And what happens if locally raised groups are already performing functions once reserved by the parties, such as contacting their neighbors and friends and identifying who among them is animate about and intimate with the idea of the need for change?

Well, the answer should be obvious. The pros go nuts. Their new vacation home is in jeopardy so they will go on television and write junk pieces of op-ed works. They will try to destroy this movement before it gets traction. Citizens organizing independent of a political machine are a threat to the income of the professionals in the business.

Watch the talk shows and read the papers. The pros will find a five second sound byte, out of a ten hour tape of the convention, and beat the “extreme” logo to death and then invite their hosts to tramp on the body they just flopped flat before them in an effort to discredit this movement and to discourage others – people who may not want to be labeled kooks – from acting on their own.

After watching some of the presentations of the Tea Party Convention on C-Span once would easily conclude that these are not tin-foil-hat-wearing nuts. These are people who do not appreciate the power and influence that the national political parties have over our government.

Zogby says:

According to Zogby there is One common thread.

Hint to consultants: Careful with that idea of changing the message.

(I)ndependence is being decapitalized, and the pros have no idea what to do about it.

This video explains why I haven’t uploaded many videos lately. It is the first in a three-part series that tells of a musical I have been working on, which I hope will at least provide some entertainment for my friends on No Quater and on my Youtube channel.

If you enjoy musicals, you might enjoy this affectionate parody of musicals in general and some of the great classic musicals like West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Damn Yankees, Singing In The Rain, a Chorus Line, Hello Dolly, How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying), and a number of others.

Two more videos are to follow (unless everyone hates the first one!)`

Naturally, my prejudices are evident in the video, even if it is about something as seemingly innocuous as musicals. Political correctness is one of them.

Every time John Edwards’ tale of lies and adultery seems to have reached its sordid limit, a newly depraved twist arises. Is Edwards unsalvageable? Could he ever return to any form of public life? We asked a chorus of Dark Arts practitioners.
——-

Focus on Fatherhood: Edwards has “an opportunity to come across as an outstanding and doting father in a way that most other men who stray don’t. And I do believe the American people like and respect people who are good parents,” said David Heller, president of Main Street Communications.

Outlast Your Ex: One prominent PR consultant voiced what others were too polite to say (but only, of course, on the condition of anonymity): John Edwards will have a hard time venturing back into the public eye as long as his wife is present to remind Americans of the scope of his betrayal. “I honestly don’t believe he can make a true comeback until well after Elizabeth has passed away,” the consultant said. “As long as she is alive, his comeback chances are dead.”

Meanwhile, resident Palin-gynecologist-hater (won’t use his name; it makes my keyboard bleed) continues to refer to Sarah Palin as all the horsemen of the apocalypse rolled into a skirt.

Titled “One Last Word” (could we possibly be that lucky?), gyno-wannabe breathlessly says two lines from Palin’s Nashville address stood out for him:

Two lines stood out for me. The first is a sign that she believes and her followers believe that she has a divine destiny. She is Esther, with a touch of martyrdom:

“I will live, I will die for the people of America.”

The second was the Dolchstoss attack on the duly elected president of the United States:

“We need a commander-in-chief not a professor of law.”

These two potent messages – delegitimizing Obama as “the other” and as a weak-kneed traitor to the troops, and casting herself as the avatar of the real America, ready to die for its survival – are political gold. Most politicians in liberal democracies she somewhat from stating them so obviously, because they clearly invoke certain, shall we say, non-democratic forms. Not she.

Yep, these two lines are dynamite!!! Palin loves her country and says so in a somewhat over-the-top manner (she WAS in Nashville – country music USA). Then she has the utter gall to call Obama a. . . . . . PROFESSOR!! Horrors. With cutting language like that, I don’t think political discourse will ever be the same.

Of course, this writer did pardon himself for missing the whole Edwards story because, you know, it hit too close to home.

It just seemed too awful for me to believe. I mean his wife, whom I took to be a very decent person, had terminal cancer. Although adultery is extremely common – especially among people disturbed enough to seek political office – I dismissed it too easily. I mean his wife was confronting death on a daily basis. I just couldn’t believe a husband could do that to his wife then. I also felt protective toward Elizabeth, feeling that investigating this would be deeply hurtful to a woman faced with mortality. Maybe my own brushes with mortality affected me in this as well.

Of course, Mr. Trig-truther, it’s all about you. Mr. Trig-truther had a “brush with mortality” and looked the other way on Edwards. Mr. Trig-truther, however, doesn’t have a womb, so game on regarding Palin’s youngest son. What a guy! What a hard-hitting truth seeker! What a jerk.

Kind of interesting, isn’t it? On the one hand, the Atlantic considers how John Edwards might make a comeback despite a fall of Shakespearean proportions amid lies piled on lies and a sense that there is no center to him. On the other hand Atlantic’s resident Palin-hater-gyno-wannabe says to know Palin is to know fear. So, somehow Edwards is still more viable than Palin? Are you kidding me?

Glum.

Powerless, lackadaisical, aimless remarks by POTUS re the jobless report Friday 5. What is the “hot air” remark? POTUS tries defensive sarcasm at half-speed. And the claims that losing 22k jobs (January estimate) compares well to the losing of 800k jobs last January 2009 is both cynical and ignorant. The long term jobless stats (below) are discouraging and ominous. The confused media reporting of a jobless rate that appears to improve to 9.7% while the month shows a loss of jobs does not help the day’s summary.  The economy is glum.  

POTUS has been told by Axelrod that there is a storm building in the Democratic majority.  The professional campaign ops are telling their candidates to hold on.  What is the pay-off?  Have Axelrod and POTUS decided to throw the Democratic majorities under the bus?  Have they decided that POTUS improves as a candidate if he is running for re-election against a Republican House and a comatose and Harry-Reidless Senate?  Does POTUS welcome the victim of the villainous GOP scenario?  Strange, listless performance by POTUS on the weekend of the exuberant Tea Party Convention – the After Obamatantion — in Memphis.  Speaking to John Avlon, author, “Wingnuts,” on Sunday 7, re the energy of the Tea Party.  Eight million jobless creates the energy for creative politics.  Who is Huey Long?  Who is Wendell Willkie?  Where is Fala?

…the movement shuns any semblance of political elitism. And although many activists here embrace Palin as a spokeswoman, they are deeply divided over whether they want her as their leader — or whether they want any leader at all.
Palin understands this.

“I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by any one leader or any one politician,” she said Saturday night. “The tea party movement is not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-up call to action. . . . This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any king or queen of the tea party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.”

Palin, by some accounts the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, in her speech took an unusual step of encouraging competitive party primary campaigns.

“Contested primaries aren’t civil war,” she said. “They’re democracy at work, and that’s beautiful.”

I appreciate her point about contested primaries. It’s time we shake up the political landscape and inject some new blood into the process.

According to The NY Times…

…pressed about the relationship between the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, and whether the latter should become a third party, Ms. Palin suggested the two should be compatible.

“The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible,” she said. “This is a beautiful movement because it is shaping the way politics are conducted. You’ve got both party machines running scared.”

I suppose she is pushing for Republicans to absorb the tea partiers since they adhere to somewhat more conservative principles, though I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this either. A third party has never been able to take hold in this country and the worry is in siphoning off votes that ulitmately wind up keeping a less than desirable representative in power.

The Republican Party, as it stands now, is just as big a problem as the Democratic Party. Too much entrenched interest plagues both. Her comments about both “party machines running scared” lends some comfort, however.

I would rather not see this movement co-opted by any organized group that is already toxic. My concern is not about small or large government but smart government. Unlike the false way in which the movement was first characterized, I don’t have any problem with paying taxes – I have a problem with waste. I don’t have a problem with health care reform. I have a problem with insurance giveaways, pork, cuts to Medicare that endanger seniors in this country and a lack of transparency. I don’t have a problem with either party as much as I have a problem with corruption in both.

It is also interesting that after the disgusting sexual slurs that greeted Tea Party protesters last year, being called “teabaggers” by everyone from Senator Chuck Schumer to newscasters Anderson Cooper, David Schuster, and pundits like Olbermann and Maddow, not to mention our POTUS making “teabagging” comments as well, now The New Yorker, Newsweek and more are referring a bit more respectfully to “The Tea Party Movement.” No matter how these news outlets tried to diminish the numbers of participants in rallies and protests last year, clearly, more than a few have figured out they would be wise to treat tea parties members with a little more respect. Quite a stunning turnaround. Palin’s “running scared” comment would seem to be accurate.

The greatest effect this movement can have is to scare officials in both parties into remembering how to do the people’s business, instead of their own or that of their cronies. Congress needs to emerge from its insulated bubble, drop the elitist attitude and be more respectful to the concerns of its constituents. To the extent that Sarah Palin can assist in drawing attention to ordinary Americans who want more attentive representation for their hard earned tax dollars and contributions, her “lightning rod” is most welcome.

What is your forecast for the Tea Party Movement? What effect would you like it to have? And is it something that will help or hurt in the long run.

Please tell us what you think…

Our winter wonderland.

Whether it’s AIG’s perverse multiple rewarding of the executives who almost brought our economy down or the likes of Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay, we see our country as rife with greed at the expense of weary American taxpayers. The 2009 Global Corruption Report by watchdog group Transparency International has some stunning revelations about us and the rest of the world.

For the United States there is both good news and bad news.

Here’s some good news. Out of 180 countries surveyed, the United States is tied in 18th place with Belgium and Japan as having lower amounts of business and political corruption. Denmark gets the best rating followed by New Zealand and Sweden. Better ratings reflect political stability, long-established conflict-of-interest regulations and solid, functioning public institutions.

The worst offender is Somalia followed by Myanmar, Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan. (Notice two especially interesting countries at the bottom of the barrel?) China weighs in as tied with 8 other countries for 72nd place, and Russia tied with 3 other countries at a dismal 147th.

It appears that we have made some improvements compared to most countries when it comes to corrupt practices. The report notes that “despite prominent corruption scandals and the lack of transparency and accountability that has been shown to lie at the root of the financial crisis, there has been encouraging and real progress towards stronger corporate integrity.” This is not to say that we are doing great. The report continues, “Corporate performance in the fight against corruption often does not yet match corporate commitments, however.”

Before patting ourselves on the back for making positive strides, it is important to mention that most of the rest of the world is a stinking cesspool of sleaze, so it’s relative. And interestingly, we are skidding backwards in one area. Can you guess which one?

If you guessed lobbying our legislators, you are correct. Lobbying, after all, is a euphemism for bribery. And bribery of one sort or another is often at the root of corruption.

Despite the fact that the United States is one of the few countries that regulates lobbyists, lobbying expenses have almost doubled over the last decade, reaching $2.8 billion in 2007. The all-time record of the number of lobbyists was 16,000 in 2008 (and this may have risen since then). The Center for Public Integrity, has consistently documented unethical ties between business, their Washington-based lobbyists, and powerful politicians.

Term limits and public campaign financing anyone? Maybe if those we elect to represent us know they only have so much time and so much money as opposed to hustling while trying to keep their jobs forever, we would attract candidates who only have the American peoples’ best interests at heart.

The complete and extremely detailed Transparency International report can be accessed and downloaded here.

The first lady made the issue of healthy eating personal last week at an event in Alexandria, Va., where she kicked off a campaign addressing the issue of childhood obesity.

“We went to our pediatrician all the time,” Obama said. “I thought my kids were perfect — they are and always will be — but he [the doctor] warned that he was concerned that something was getting off balance.”

“I didn’t see the changes. And that’s also part of the problem, or part of the challenge. It’s often hard to see changes in your own kids when you’re living with them day in and day out,” she added. “But we often simply don’t realize that those kids are our kids, and our kids could be in danger of becoming obese. We always think that only happens to someone else’s kid — and I was in that position.”

It is my sense that the first lady should not have mentioned her own children in this debate. I don’t think she was trying to shame her kids publically. But by using them as an example to show other families she is in the same position they are, she is being insensitive to the fact that Sasha and Malia live in the worst kind of goldfish bowl — growing up with attention paid to their every move. Young girls are sensitive enough about their appearance without their schoolmates reading on the net that their Mom is worried about the size of their behinds.

I have personal experience with this, being on a diet since age 11. I always felt criticized at home for my baby fat and sensed I was being closely monitored. The result was a bad relationship with food that lasted for years. I have at one time been borderline anorexic and at other times, subject to binge eating. While I have been relatively slim my entire life, it took me until I was nearly 40 to forget about dieting (p.s., diets don’t work).

Oddly, when I no longer obsessed over what I ate, I started exercising regularly and ate what I felt like. I threw my scale in the trash. Checking the fit of my pants is good enough to see if I need to lay off the bread for a few days. It took 30 years to figure this out. At 51, I’m probably in the best shape of my life. And for the record, a mother clothes shopping for her daughter, making comments to the saleslady while her child is within earshot such as “Give her the next size, she needs it is the hips” is a killer.

Worry and fear creates the obsession. Making a child hyper aware of his or her weight and appearance can make food a drug of choice and grow any potential eating disorder into a worse problem than it might have been. A better answer is modeling good behavior. By setting an example for her girls without preaching about it, I wonder if a better result is possible. Girls are always worried about being compared unfavorably to their mothers. To feel like Mommy does not approve of them in some way is a recipe for disaster. I’m no shrink, but common sense tells me that when children feel loved and approved of for who they are, it is possible they will not require “a drug of choice” to hide in.

Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an eating disorder activist and executive director of Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Disorder (F.E.A.S.T.) pointed out the First Lady should discuss “behavioral change, not weight loss”:

“We’ve confused health and weight in a way that’s very confusing for children and very confusing for parents,” Lyster-Mensh said. “When we speak publicly about putting our children on a diet, we start to get into weight stigma and confusing the message to families.”

The focus on obesity, Lyster-Mensh said, turns this into an issue of appearances, which does not bode well for children, especially girls.

“There is simply no reason to be pushing children into weight reduction diets and that’s the message parents out there get,” Lyster-Mensh said. “Dieting is a gateway drug to eating disorders for those with a biological predisposition to eating disorders.”

I do not pretend there is an easy solution. Obesity is a huge problem in our country brought on partially by obsession with too many electronic toys that keep one sitting on one’s backside, too much junk food, and no P.E. Not to mention kids internalizing the family stress around them.

What do you think the First Lady should have done? What is a better solution here.

Remembering my own time as a “tweener” I never appreciated being discussed in front of other people by my parents as though I were an inanimate object or their possession. I think it would have been prudent for the First Lady to remember that in her quest to help a national problem, her children do not need to be a casualty of that discussion.

This a shot of my side porch. You can see the porch railing in the background.

Here’s another angle.

And the view from my home office:

Out back we have had a couple of bird feeders go down. Some of the trees also are leaning precariously.

Just a reminder, you don’t mess with Mother Nature. She can be cranky.

Editor’s Note: Paulie has just had her power restored, in the nick of time to get us the promo for her regular Monday show tonight. This show sounds special!

Join Sins of Omission Monday, February 08, 2010 at 9pm (ET) as host Paulie Abeles asks award-winning historian and best-selling author John E. Ferling, “Who was the real George Washington?”

Our nation’s first President was famously memorialized as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”. Even in his own lifetime, Washington was mythologized as something above the common herd, disinterested, apolitical—concerned only for the common weal. His contemporaries were in awe of his aloof and regal bearing, military accomplishments, and reputation for integrity—Abigail Adams described his as “terrible as a God.” Historians have blamed Federalism’s partisan excesses on Hamilton, or even Adams—Washington has always been considered above mere politics. But was he? In his new book, award winning, best-selling historian John Ferling traces the evolution of a politically savvy, intensely ambitious man, who may have been the 18th century’s greatest master of public relations.

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Bio:

Award winning historian and best-selling author John E. Ferling is a professor emeritus of history  at the University of West Georgia. As a leading historian in the American Revolution he has appeared in television documentaries on PBS, the History Channel, C-SPAN C-SPAN>  Book TV Book_TV ,and the Learning Channel [1]
 
Ferling is the author of:

New York Times bestseller: “Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence”
“The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution”
“A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America”
“The First of Men: A Life of George Washington”
“Struggle for a Continent: The Wars of Early America”
“John Adams: A Life,”
“Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution”
“A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic”
“Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800″

His newest book is: “The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon.”

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TONIGHT at 9 p.m. ET: NoQuarter Radio’s Sins of Omission with Paulie Abeles

Paulie’s weekly show is aimed at giving listeners insight into the topics of the day beyond the nightly news. To listen to more of Paulie’s recent shows, follow our instructions in the far right column to retrieve all NoQuarter radio shows via iTunes and/or BlogTalkRadio.com.

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I. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
August: 9.4%
September: 9.7%
October: 9.8%
November: 10.2%…revised to 10.1%
December: 10%
January: 10%
– February Consensus Expectation: 10.1%
- February Actual: 9.7%

>> LD’s comments: A fluke. A drop in the rate would typically be viewed as a positive, but then why didn’t we see job growth? Today’s report indicates that a lot of people have given up looking for work, thus shrinking the overall labor pool. The U-6 (the underemployment rate) is now 16.5%. Better? Don’t be fooled. I think it is again more an indication that people are exiting the labor force overall.

II. NON-FARM PAYROLL (click here for definition of this term)
July: loss of 463k
August: loss of 304k
September: loss of 154k
October: loss of 139k
November: loss of 111k…revised to a loss of 127k jobs
December: loss of 11k…revised to a gain of 4k
January: loss of 85k
- February Consensus Expectation: 0, that is no job gain or loss
- February Actual: a loss of 20k jobs.

>> LD’s comments: weaker than it appears as a lot of jobs added were temporary workers and Census workers. Revisions from prior two months was a net loss of 5k jobs.

III. AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS
August: .3%
September: .4%
October: .1%
November: .3%
December: .1%
January: .2%
- February Consensus Expectation: .2
- February Actual: .2%

>>LD’s comments: as expected.

IV. AVERAGE HOURLY WORKWEEK
July: 33.0 hours
August: 33.1 hours
September: 33.1 hours
October: 33.0 hours
November: 33.0 hours
December: 33.2 hours
January: 33.2 hours
- February Consensus Expectation: 33.2 hours
- February Actual: 33.9 hours

>> LD’s comments: this number surprises me. Are we truly seeing the increased demand drive the hours worked this much higher? Overall, this is a positive in the midst of otherwise mixed to negative news.

V. FURTHER COLOR: the major piece of news within our employment situation was actually hinted at a few days ago and that is that the Department of Labor revised overall employment for 2009 down by 930k jobs. Were they looking through rose-colored glasses all along? Who knows? This revision is an indication our recession was even deeper than believed or, in my opinion, reported.

The cheerleaders will run out onto the field and smile for the camera, but don’t be fooled. The labor pool has shrunk and that explains the drop in the rate.

Where are the real jobs? Where is the growth? We’re still looking and waiting.

VI. MARKET REACTION

Pre (8:25am) and Post-report (8:50am)

2yr Tsy: .80 and .80…ho hum…
10yr Tsy: 3.59% and 3.62%…ho hum…
DJIA Futures: -58 points and -7 points…slightly better
S&P 500 Futures: -6.7 and -2.2…
U.S. Dollar Index: 80.19 and 80.04…slight downtick…

Questions and comments always encouraged and appreciated.

LD