Archive for December, 2009

As is the case when I’m up to my eyeballs in working on a specific issue or issues, I sometimes miss some great stories.

As an Eagle Scout, I have a soft spot in my heart for young men who go through the difficult process of earning their Eagle, the culmination of which is managing an “Eagle project” that is volunteer in nature and has a minimum requirement of 200 man hours to qualify.

A 17 year-old Scout in Allentown, PA arranged a project to clean up a local hiking trail. As a thank you, the local union thugs of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) threatened to sue because the work done on the trail was done by volunteers – not paid union members.

After major outrage in the community, SEIU quickly distanced itself from the union member (there is still a question as to what position he holds in the local union – having been first reported to be the President of the local) and run quickly out of the fire zone.

Michelle Malkin had great coverage of the issue here.

There is no low to which some unions will stoop to try to push their agenda and flex their muscle. Shame on them.

Let’s say your boss is on vacation and something big happens at the office. You don’t want to bother him, so you tell everyone that there is nothing to worry about, “the system worked. Then, a couple days later your boss is compelled to hold a press conference to admit that there was a “systemic failure.” Quite the opposite of “the system worked.” You’d probably then be a little worried about whether you were going to keep your job.

So DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is probably not feeling all that secure right now. Obama hasn’t thrown her under the bus yet. But using “systemic failure” must make Napolitano cringe. As she was doing serious damage control about how her comments were related to the aftermath of the attack, Obama did, kind of, come to her defense:

Mr. Obama appeared to be trying to contain the damage on Tuesday, offering “systemic failure” as a substitute diagnosis for “system worked.” He framed Ms. Napolitano’s statement by saying she was right that “once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it’s clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems and our aviation security took all appropriate actions.”

Remember what happened after the last president defended a top official in a crisis? “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.”

I’m not certain Napolitano should feel much comfort in the comments from Obama. Brown resigned within days of being praised by President Bush.

Air travel. We Americans do a lot of it. More than most countries, by a long shot. I do quite a bit myself – by Dec. 31 I will have logged nearly 200,000 miles this year alone.

What disturbs me about the botched attack by a young Nigerian radical on a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit is that it could have easily been thwarted.

A 23 year-old man buys a one-way ticket with cash and has no luggage on an overseas flight. Are you kidding me? I buy a one-way ticket on my credit card on any flight other than US Airways (the carrier I use the most) and I am almost always selected for secondary security screening.

The New York Times reports that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano initially said “the system worked.” Of course that is absurd, and she quickly had to backtrack on that statement, trying to brush it aside as being taken “out of context.”

From the New York Times article:

Ms. Napolitano was not the only Obama administration official to initially portray the episode, in which passengers and flight attendants subdued Mr. Abdulmutallab and doused the fire he had started, as a test that the air safety system passed.

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, echoed the positive comments Ms. Napolitano made on ABC’s “This Week, ” saying in an interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

But counterterrorism experts and members of Congress were hardly willing to praise what they said was a security system that had proved to be not nimble enough to respond to the ever-creative techniques devised by would-be terrorists.

Congressional leaders said the tip from Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, should have resulted in closer scrutiny of the suspect before he boarded the plane in Amsterdam. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the ranking minority member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said his visa should have been revoked or at least he should have been given a physical pat-down or a full-body scan.

“This individual should not have been missed,” Ms. Collins said in an interview on Sunday. “Clearly, there should have been a red flag next to his name.”

I have blogged a number of times (here, here and here) about Napolitano not being ready for prime time as DHS Secretary. She has proven it once again.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11)

Exactly one year ago today I wrote my first blog entry for NobleThinking.com writing:

I do a lot of thinking.  Probably because I have a fair amount of time alone – mostly in my car, driving to various meetings or appointments.  I might have the radio on, but I’m always thinking about something.

So, I’ll continue to do some thinking, but I’ll open some of my thinking to the world… Noble Thinking… it kinda has a ring to it…

Since then I have written 462 posts, not kept up with “Thought of the Day” in a way that would justify the title and obviously not done much “Deep Thinking.” Readers have posted more than 1,100 comments.

I have had fun. I’ve vented, passed on really funny stuff, created a little controversy a few times, made fun of myself and concluded that I like it and I’m going to keep doing it.

Maybe I’ll convince my wife to read it.

Wind. It’s a necessary element, right?

I hate wind. It is my least favorite element.

I’ll never forget when I decided that I hated wind with a passion. It was my senior year of high school. I was standing in centerfield in Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation during an early spring baseball game. Chinle High School apparently didn’t think having grass in the outfield was necessary. Well, you can imagine what I was dealing with standing out there with 30-mile an hour wind blowing dust around. I thought my eyes were going to be permanently damaged by dust and every fly ball was a circus act trying to judge where it was going to come down.

I decided then and there, with tears running down my dusty face (probably a combination of the dirt in my eyes and pure frustration) that I HATED wind. Nothing since then has changed my mind – it’s just reinforced it.

What could be worse than walking in 15 degree winter weather only to have to deal with wind, causing the wind chill to drive the actual temperature below zero? How frustrating is it when you are in a rainstorm and the wind is whipping your umbrella around like a rag doll? Or you are on a late night flight from the East coast headed west and the headwinds are making what should be a three and half hour flight nearly five hours?

I hate wind.

If something happens twice, it begins to be a trend. Everyone in the world has heard about the couple that crashed Obama’s first state dinner, uninvited, which set off a inside-the-beltway game of finger pointing.

Now the administration is trying to explain how a Georgia couple ended up in a Veteran’s Day breakfast in the White House in November when they were merely there for a public tour. The Associated Press is reporting that the couple showed up at the White House on the wrong day for a tour and were promptly ushered into an invitation-only breakfast honoring Veterans.

This is the same administration that is bringing suspected terrorists into our nation’s borders to imprison them in Illinois.

Somehow I don’t feel safer.

The Arizona Republic editorial board has opined in today’s editorial that Senate President Bob Burns did the right thing by dissolving the committee that was chaired by Senator Ron Gould because of his outspoken opposition to referring a sales tax increase to the ballot to deal with the mounting budget deficits facing Arizona.

That in and of itself was fairly unremarkable. The shocker was this line:

The sticking point for the special session is what else would be on the agenda. If lawmakers can agree on further spending cuts, they should do it now, so the reductions can be spread over more of the fiscal year.

Whoa! Stop the press! The Repblic’s editorial board thinks we should cut spending as soon as possible to spread the savings? We do live in strange times.

I have a neighbor two doors down that is a Christmas lights aficionado. I’m guessing he has more than ten thousand lights on his house. To even try to match him is a completely lost cause, so I can really relate to the genius neighbor in this picture.

Politicians cross the line of civil debate on a pretty regular basis – so I usually ignore it as typical. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) goes completely over the top in what would be shouted down as outrageous had a Republican uttered the words.

Equating Republican attempts to slow the process down on healthcare reform to those who didn’t want to abolish slavery is completely and utterly out of line. Every descendent of slavery is owed an apology from Mr. Reid.