Smithsonian Magazine’s March cover story is well-timed. Entitled “Future Shocks,” it is on the study of  earthquakes and tsunamis, those previously unrecorded in history and the potential for others to occur.

The story focuses on past and potential quakes in the Pacific Northwest.  Predictions remain elusive, but past disasters, Smithsonian reports,  can now be recorded with great specificity.  Scientists, for example, peg a massive earthquake just off the Washington state coast on January 26, 1700.  Evidence from the resulting Tsunami was uncovered thousands of miles away in Japan.

Definitely worth a read, but it makes the reader feel like he is living on an elephant’s back. So do the pictures coming out of northern Japan.

California has a $26.6 billion budget deficit and a pension shortfall now estimated at $500 billion.

So what do its legislators propose?

Requiring an alcohol detector in every car in California – one you continuously must blow in while driving for the car to continue to operate.

Plus, The Los Angeles Times reports, “the proposed bill would make $60 million available over the next five years to develop new devices, such as technology which would measure blood alcohol content by touching the steering wheel, or even an ignition button.”

Just what an insolvent government should be spending its money on.

They must be smoking the medical marijuana. They just have to be.

President Obama claims to be “tightening the noose” around Moammar Gadhafi, but news reports suggest that the only nooses being prepared are for the necks of Libya’s brave dissidents. By the time an international no-fly zone gets implemented – if it ever does – the revolution may effectively be over.

There are strong arguments for and against such a no-fly zone, but the lack of clarity coming out of the White House is troubling. Washington seems to have contradictory messages every day. Forgive me for putting it this way, but the President needs to be a decider. Libya’s rebels need to know if help is on the way.

Friday marks the 34^th anniversary of the end of Hanafi Siege in Washington, DC. in which 149 Americans were taken hostage by radical Black Muslims.  Two hostages were killed,  including a police officer.  Demands included the burning of the film Mohammad, Messenger of God.

The siege is largely forgotten, but it shouldn’t be because a.) it is part of our history and b.) there are historical ironies.  Release of the hostages was negotiated by Muslim ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and…Iran.

Different world.

The Associated Press reported today that Saudi Arabian police fired on unarmed demonstrators.  Oil prices, which had been selling off, dramatically spiked again.

The larger, planned protests in Riyadh are scheduled to begin tomorrow, and the Saudi government has made it clear they will be dealt with harshly.

What exactly does that mean in light of today’s gunfire?

If the Saudi’s crack down on demonstrators – really crack down on demonstrators – the  U.S. is going to have some real decisions to make.  We will have to peer into our soul and decide democracy or economic recovery? We have talked the talk for years, but will we walk the walk?

If we stand with the Saudi demonstrators – and how can we not? – a lot of us may be walking to work for a long, long time.

Let’s pray today’s police action is a one-time event.

UPDATE: The Saudi government is claiming the bullets fired were rubber. For now.

Years ago, I recommended to an elected official I was advising during the jittery heights of New York City’s crime wave that he ask his constituents to take part in a citizen anti-crime initiative being run out of local police precincts.

He was aghast.

Elected officials provide things to their constituents, he instructed, they don’t ask of them.

This was a famously talented local politician, and an enormously learned man, but I found I couldn’t disagree with him more on the point.  It made me question my judgment at the time, but 20-some-odd years later I hold the exact same belief, only more so.

Here was/is my reasoning:  People follow leaders.  Leaders ask things of them.  Define the cause and solution – and commandingly make the ask – and you will lead the movement.  At the end of the day, isn’t that what every politician dreams of?

Benjamin Franklin advised that the best way to build friendships is to borrow something – in Franklin’s case a book – and then return it promptly.  That little sacrifice – that tiny outlay by the lender – establishes trust , he noted, and, over time, long-term bonds.

President Kennedy – and his speechwriter  Ted Sorenson – understood that.  “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is remembered for a reason.  It is ennobling.  It tapped into something inherent in man that wants to sacrifice to serve a greater good.

President Obama has several “ask” opportunities that I think would well serve him:

1. Ask the American public to voluntarily reduce gas and electricity consumption to lower demand – and prices at the pump (tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a terrible and short-sighted idea.);
2. Ask young and middle-age Americans to begin discussing postponing retirement plans by a year or two to save the Social Security system;
3. Ask American businesses – large and small – to begin identifying job opportunities for returning veterans, and while he’s at it…
4. Ask the pot-smoking American public to voluntarily lay off the stuff –at least for a while – to help our Mexican neighbors stabilize their country.

These might not top the President’s list of asks, but you get the idea.

The thing I remember fondly of President Carter – perhaps the only thing – was his leadership in asking Americans to sacrifice during the 1970’s energy crisis.  His simple ask: turn out the lights when leaving a room.  I do it to this day – even though my wife says I don’t  – because it still makes me feel just a little patriotic.

President Obama has a leadership crisis because he is not leading.  That’s not from lack of opportunity.

"Courage"

In November 2010, voters in heavily Democratic Wisconsin elected a Republican governor, a Republican state assembly, and a Republican state senate.  They did it for a reason.  Tonight, those Republicans fulfilled a large part of their campaign promise to bring fiscal sustainability back to the Badger State. Despite weeks of protests, recall campaigns, and back-room arm-twisting one can only imagine, the Republicans held firm.  They prevailed in their quest for sensible union reforms through the use of a clever legislative maneuver that apparently was available to them the whole time.  Cries from out-of-state Democrats that the Republicans violated the “open meetings” rule are almost laughable, considering the geographic circumstance in which they were made.

This one will make the history books.

Nations need wise elders. Smart dispassionate citizens who look to the long-term when others, even intelligent others, rush to do what feels right at any given moment.

George Will is one of our wise men.

Will, who took considerable heat in conservative circles for opposing the Iraq War eight years ago, today cautions against American intervention in Libya. The seasoned columnist poses 16 questions to Americans favoring no-fly-zone intervention:

1. The world would be better without Gaddafi. But is that a vital U.S. national interest? If it is, when did it become so? A month ago, no one thought it was.
2. How much of Gaddafi’s violence is coming from the air? Even if his aircraft are swept from his skies, would that be decisive?
3. What lesson should be learned from the fact that Europe’s worst atrocity since the Second World War – the massacre by Serbs of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica – occurred beneath a no-fly zone?
4. Sen. John Kerry says: “The last thing we want to think about is any kind of military intervention. And I don’t consider the fly zone stepping over that line.” But how is imposing a no-fly zone – the use of military force to further military and political objectives – not military intervention?
5. U.S. forces might ground Gaddafi’s fixed-wing aircraft by destroying runways at his 13 air bases, but to keep helicopter gunships grounded would require continuing air patrols, which would require the destruction of Libya’s radar and anti-aircraft installations. If collateral damage from such destruction included civilian deaths – remember those nine Afghan boys recently killed by mistake when they were gathering firewood – are we prepared for the televised pictures?
6. The Economist reports Gaddafi has “a huge arsenal of Russian surface-to-air missiles” and that some experts think Libya has SAMs that could threaten U.S. or allies’ aircraft. If a pilot is downed and captured, are we ready for the hostage drama?
7. If we decide to give war supplies to the anti-Gaddafi fighters, how do we get them there?
8. Presumably we would coordinate aid with the leaders of the anti-Gaddafi forces. Who are they?
9. Libya is a tribal society. What concerning our Iraq and Afghanistan experiences justifies confidence that we understand Libyan dynamics?
10. 10.  Because of what seems to have been the controlling goal of avoiding U.S. and NATO casualties, the humanitarian intervention – 79 days of bombing – against Serbia in Kosovo was conducted from 15,000 feet. This marked the intervention as a project worth killing for but not worth dying for. Would intervention in Libya be similar? Are such interventions morally dubious?
11. Could intervention avoid “mission creep”? If grounding Gaddafi’s aircraft is a humanitarian imperative, why isn’t protecting his enemies from ground attacks?
12. 12.  In Tunisia and then in Egypt, regimes were toppled by protests. Libya is convulsed not by protests but by war. Not a war of aggression, not a war with armies violating national borders and thereby implicating the basic tenets of agreed-upon elements of international law, but a civil war. How often has intervention by nation A in nation B’s civil war enlarged the welfare of nation A?
13. 13.  Before we intervene in Libya, do we ask the United Nations for permission? If it is refused, do we proceed anyway? If so, why ask? If we are refused permission and recede from intervention, have we not made U.S. foreign policy hostage to a hostile institution?
14. 14.  Secretary of State Hilary Clinton fears Libya becoming a failed state – “a giant Somalia.” Speaking of which, have we not seen a cautionary movie – “Black Hawk Down” – about how humanitarian military interventions can take nasty turns?
15. The Egyptian crowds watched and learned from the Tunisian crowds. But the Libyan government watched and learned from the fate of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments. It has decided to fight. Would not U.S. intervention in Libya encourage other restive peoples to expect U.S. military assistance?
16. Would it be wise for U.S. military force to be engaged simultaneously in three Muslim nations?

I recall holding my nose while reading Will’s columns on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Reading his column today inspires no such personal protest.

John Foreman, the father of a five-year-boy murdered and cannibalized in 1975 is vowing to hunt down and kill his son’s murderer if the man is released from prison next month as scheduled. The heartbreaking story on the MSNBC website already has around 2,500 comments, 2,499 of them offers to help. As much as I’d like to be better than this, all I can say is Godspeed, Mr. Foreman.  If you need a place to hide out, give me a shout.

Fast Tube by Casper

I actually thought this was a joke. I thought Jesse Jackson, Jr. was being spoofed.

I’m still holding out hope.  Please someone tell me this is a Saturday Night Live skit.

Someone…