http://youtu.be/SIZDgvgTGvQ

The New York Times reports that discussion is occurring within the Obama Administration about drawing down forces in Afghanistan earlier than planned. Sounds like a worthwhile deliberation.

If forced to be labeled dove or hawk, I would decidedly fall into the hawk category – I am a peace through strength believer – but Osama bin Laden’s removal changes everything.  It gives us the rhetorical justification to get out, and we may never get a better one.

But there is a catch, as always. What about the Afghans who have worked alongside us these past eight years?  Will they be executed if the country falls to the Taliban, like so many South Vietnamese were when we abruptly pulled out of Southeast Asia? And what will happen to Afghani women who have tasted a small measure of freedom? How will they be treated if and when the Karzai government falls? American honor is at stake. Do we again walk away from demonstrated allies and prove, as some have said since Vietnam, that the Americans can’t be trusted?

Or have we done enough damage to al Qaeda to justify an exodus?  After all, al Qaeda was the original target in Afghanistan, not the Taliban.  They just got in the way.  And besides, we are not exactly rolling in dough these days.  And this war is being waged on borrowed dollars.

These are all conversations that need to be had going into 2012.  It is healthy that the Obama Administration is beginning the discussion, whatever we ultimately decide to do.

San Francisco banned McDonald’s Happy Meals earlier this year, and New York City is poised to do the same.  There is a bill currently in the New York City Council, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t make it to the floor for a vote one of these days.

The food police on both coasts have decreed that restaurants should be prohibited from giving toys to children if the meals don’t meet their strict nutritional guidelines, with McDonald’s, as usual, taking the brunt of the criticism.  McDonald’s is the fast-food franchise that lefties love to hate — at least on days when they are not learning that the Golden Arches are the entrance way to half the new jobs in America.

But McDonald’s shouldn’t bear the brunt of the criticism alone.  If they are to be banned from providing toys with their food, what about Cracker Jacks? Ounce-for-ounce, Cracker Jacks have more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger. And I dare anyone to find any real nutritional value in a box of the things.   Why are they allowed to include a “Toy Surprise Inside?” Why are companies that sell sugary cereals?

Rather than re-think the stridency of their ways, though, food police officers finding agreement with this post would be far more likely to include Cracker jacks in the prohibition than drop the Happy Meal ban itself.  I wish they would.  It would help bring clarity to the frightful nature of this line of reasoning.

What I would really love to see is some New York City Council Member taking up San Francisco’s bill to ban circumcisions. (An idea likely conceived after a deep bong hit is actually challenging 6,000 years of Judaic custom.) Can you imagine?  In New York?

http://youtu.be/nNneIyKuL0w

I think this would have been better using neo-Nazi skinheads, but still pretty good.

I don’t mean to overdo the God thing, but I keep running into the guy.

Take today. It was one of those Saturdays. I had been warned about it all week from my wife: “Don’t forget about Saturday.” She must have said it 50 times: “Saturday, Saturday, Saturday.”

Details of the day swarmed around my head like gnats you can hear but not quite catch.  “Saturday. Zzzz. “Are you listening to me about Saturday? Zzzzzz.”

“Of course I am, darling. Saturday…”

But I wasn’t really listening at all. And, as usual, she was onto me.

I knew a lot was going on today, just not every detail. There would be a “sleep over” pick up in the morning; my youngest daughter’s first ballet recital after that; then soccer practice (yours truly as coach, a laughable picture); a lunch; a non-profit board meeting for which I had to collect proxy votes; then two work-related conference calls; a press release written and distributed in the early evening, followed by a barbecue at our house with my wife’s family. That and the lawn needed to be mowed.

Of all those things, though, the most important — by far –was the ballet recital.  That was the big deal of the day for my family.  Our little one had been practicing her curtsies and pirouettes  for months.  It was her first public performance of anything, and her sisters and parents and grandparents were all coming bearing promised flowers and video cameras. She even got a touch of lipstick after breakfast.

Things didn’t start out as well for me.

I needed to print something for the older girls and my printer just wouldn’t work. I was already behind schedule and I knew it. But for a solid hour I tried to print the damned thing, with my wife calling upstairs every three minutes, “Did it print yet?” Zzzzz; “Don’t forget to…”Zzzzz; “Shouldn’t you be leaving? Zzzz,  and “are you listening to any of this…?”

“No, dear; yes, dear; in a minute, dear; yes, all of it, dear.”

At 8 am I was actually considering banging my head to death against a wall, but two thoughts dissuaded me: life insurance won’t cover it, and I may not die. So I abandoned the printer, swore, and jumped in my car to pick up daughter number one from her “sleep over.”

I was running late; I really had to hurry. I wanted to be on time for her because I like to be punctual and encourage our children to be the same, but we also were short on time.  We needed to pick up flowers for my little one’s recital and head immediately there afterwards. There was no time to spare, and we couldn’t be late. Georgia would be peeking out from behind a curtain for us.

Now, where I live there is an overabundance of two things, windy one-lane roads and people with too much money. The latter condition doesn’t apply so much to those living in  my town as it does to our neighbors to the north, which is exactly where I was headed this morning.

No sooner did I get on the single-lane country road to get my daughter than I found myself behind a convertible Mercedes Benz ZXBQR5000D traveling 20-miles-per hour. The ZXBQR5000D, or whatever the heck it’s called,  can go 150-MPH through switchback roads in the Swiss Alps in the snow, but its driver today was content to take a Sunday drive on this particular Saturday directly in front of me — for 12 miles.

One piece of good news: I probably won’t have a stroke tomorrow because I didn’t have one driving behind this fellow today.  But I will be spending some quality time in purgatory for the thoughts and words I manufactured along those dozen miles of road. I muttered cusses people have never heard before. Truly original and detestable stuff.

When he finally turned off, and I passed him with a polite wave, I slammed the accelerator to the floor of my beloved little Ford Focus, and, impressing even myself, went 85 in a 30 for the rest of the trip. Three minutes late. It was miraculous.

Yada, yada, yada with the lovely “sleep over” mom and we were off. Only cost us four minutes.

No room for error, but if nothing went wrong — if we stopped for flowers and drove quickly and directly back to our town — we should make the recital exactly on time.

One thought had been nagging me all morning though. The recital is where the ballet lessons are held, right? I was sure that it was — of course it would be — but the vaguest phantom memory of gnat buzzing was giving me an unsettled feeling.

I had thought about asking my wife to be sure before leaving, but I just couldn’t suffer the humiliation. So I thought deeply and logically about it and determined that the recital absolutely would be held in the church where the lessons are given. Nothing else would make sense. Daughter one and I raced on.

There are a dozen places where we could have stopped to buy flowers, but for some reason I pulled into the unlikeliest one — a garden shop two towns away from where we live. What made it so unlikely is that it doesn’t sell flowers. I realized it the moment I walked in. But then I remembered that there is an A&P behind it, and they definitely would sell flowers — not spectacular ones, but flowers nonetheless.   How could I not have thought of that?  I would have driven right by if it were not for that garden store — the one that doesn’t sell flowers.

I left the motor running and sprinted inside the A&P.  I grabbed a bundle of roses and headed straight to the checkout. There were two lines, neither one discernably shorter than the other. I got on one. And then thought better of it and got on the other. But then I thought better again and got back on the first line — then immediately back to the second where I nearly cut off a nice lady buying only a gift card. “I’m so sorry,” I said.  “Crazy morning.” And by the time I returned to the original line, God, a mother, and her little girl had stepped in front of me and taken my original place.

The girl, around the age of my youngest daughter, was wearing a pink tutu, a mere coincidence I was sure. We were two towns and seven miles away from where we were going, and there are ballet recitals probably happening in every town this time of year.

I wanted to say something sporting like “I’m going to a ballet recital, too!,” but I was afraid I’d look like some strange middle-aged man holding roses and talking to little girls wearing tutus on line, so I held my tongue.

But the cashier mercifully broke the ice. “Recital today, honey?, she asked.

It was the opening I needed: “I’m going to a ballet recital, too!,” I chimed in. “Here?”, the mother asked. “No, in Mount Kisco,” I said.

Polite smile while she paid the bill.

“You don’t have someone named Georgia in your class do you?,” I finally asked the girl.

“Nope,” she said.

I knew she didn’t! How could I have questioned my logic?

But then her mother, collecting her bags to leave the store, halted and turned: “Funny,” she said, “that’s usually where we take classes, too, but for some reason our recital is at a school here today. Is it possible that yours is, too?”

Thank you, God. We headed right to that school. We were 15 minutes early. I got to give my astonishingly understanding wife a little “no problem” smirk before watching my little girl, in all her adornments, walk onto stage, scan the auditorium for her daddy and beam when she saw me. And right there I saw God for a second time today.

Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan today said that income tax increases — back to Clinton Administration levels — may be necessary to help plug the nation’s yawning debt load because the Democrats won’t budge on spending reductions, although he made it clear that he would prefer to fill the gap with budget cuts as prescribed by congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

It was clearly an attempt by Greenspan to shake up the current stalemate in congress between the House and the Senate.

“I like the Ryan budget in all respects and I think that essentially that sort of thing is what I would vote for if in fact we’re voting,” Greenspan told CNBC. “But the problem essentially is that is not going to get a majority vote in Congress or be signed by the president of the United States. The question is, what’s my fallback position?”

Could there be a grand compromise where Ryan’s cuts and tax hikes could be passed together? Extremely doubtful. Greenspan’s words are in direct conflict with House Speaker John Boehner’s.  He has said everything is on the table — except tax hikes.  And the Democrats are treating the Ryan entitlement reform plan like the contagious form of leprosy.

Those points aside, one look at the political calendar suggests no.  No way the Democrats or Republicans raise taxes going into 2012.

http://youtu.be/Y9RAxAgksSE

Here’s an one-minute TV spot for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. It’s one of the earliest political television spots.  The ad is pure upbeat — with a catchy tune that may stick in your head all afternoon.  Sorry if it does.

Governor Rick Perry (R) and his Lone Star State legislature put a whoopin’ on the Trial Lawyers Association this week in passing the nation’s first “Loser Pays” law to address job-killing law suits of the kind New Yorkers see promoted ad nauseum in subway cars and on late night television ads. The 1-800-SUE-THEM (that’s an actual number) trial lawyer gang spent $13 million in Texas trying to beat back the legislation, yet the Texas Senate voted 31-0 to pass the reform. Texas is now considered the best state for business growth in America.

Other states are now pursuing similar legislation in an effort to free businesses from shake-down lawsuits, according to this National Review story today. They include Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and — this one should be a shot across the bow to New Yorkers — Pennsylvania.

If Pennsylvania passes such a bill, people living on 33rd and Third in Manhattan may not immediately feel it, but those struggling to attract jobs to Western New York will.  In an instant.  Reform is catching fire in states around the U.S. and New York will either catch up or fall further behind. It’s that simple.

“In politics, it’s pretty much an immutable rule that if they’re talking about your underwear, you have a problem.” —Eugene Robinson, Washington Post.