Democrats Wake-UP!

You need Balls to pass health care reform.

The Blame Game

There have been many progressive voices in and out of the blogosphere complaining about the Obama Administration as it relates to health care , the bank bailout, Afghanistan or the election in Massachusetts.

Bernard Avishai at TPM believes that the Massachussets voters, particularly the "undecideds" saw Coakley as being completely insincere.

I wish I had a bluefish dinner for every time Coakley referred to the health package as "not perfect." It all came out so forced and fake.

But his real gripe seems to be against the 'real' progressives and the Democratic party.

And we can look no further than Howard Dean, and MSNBC, and Arianna Huffington, and, yes, some columnists at the Times and bloggers here at TPM — you know, real progressives — who have lambasted Obama again and again since last March over arguable need-to-haves like the "public option," as if nobody else was listening. They've been thinking: "Oh, if only we ran things, how much more subtle would the legislation be," as if 41 senators add up to subtle. Meanwhile the undecideds are thinking: "Hell, if his own people think he's a sell-out and jerk, why should we support this?"

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones sees discontent with Obama from the left as being 'inevitable.'

The frustration on the left with Obama — and with healthcare reform specifically — was almost inevitable. During the campaign, a lot of people chose to see in him what they wanted to see, pushing to the back of their minds not just the obvious signs that Obama has always been a cautious, practical politician, but also the obvious compromises and pressures that are forced onto any president. It was a recipe for disappointment. The striking thing to me, though, is how fast the left has turned on him.

Did the mere image of Obama become the 'Hope" that he was selling. It wasn't only the right that labeled him a 'liberal.' It was also the left that really wished and hoped that Obama would become the 'liberal' President they were waiting for. In reality he was and is not as progressive as the right labels him to be and as the left wishes he would be.

Given the reality of the Obama presidency, Drum still feels we need to give President Obama a chance.

I've got all sorts of complaints about Obama. He's been weaker on civil liberties than I'd like. His approach to bank regulation has been far too friendly to financial interests. I'm not thrilled with his escalation in Afghanistan. He hasn't moved as quickly on gay rights as I hoped. And he hasn't used the bully pulpit nearly as effectively as I think he's capable of. He could afford to attack obstructionism and conservative retrenchment far more directly than he has.

Still, none of that comes within light years of providing a reason to turn on him. The national security community has tremendous influence; the financial lobby has a stranglehold on Congress; Obama told us explicitly during the campaign that he planned to escalate in Afghanistan; his caution on gay rights is quite likely smart politically; and he certainly gave us fair warning about his dedication to reaching across the aisle and trying to work with Republicans. The fact that they've spent his entire first year in a raging temper tantrum is hardly his fault. Given the cards he was dealt, he hasn't done badly. I think Andrew Sullivan — writing in his Dr. Jekyll persona — gets it about right here.

Obama is a liberal pragmatist in politics and a traditional conservative in his understanding of the presidency. Once you grasp this, his first year makes much more sense.

He has marshalled conservative constitutional norms - against the radical claims of Bush and Cheney with respect to the presidency - in defense of a liberal restoration of the importance of government. This has made for a frustrating year for those who want instant results - because he has often deferred to Congress; or those who want short-term tactical political coups - because he prefers strategy to tactics. But for anyone taking the long view, it is hard to see where Obama has really gone wrong. [...]

Did Obama make a mistake by sticking with his campaign pledge to reform and expand health insurance in such a perilous economic time? My view is: no. He crafted a compromise bill that would provide insurance to 30 million people, reduce the deficit, and bring the drug and insurance companies along. Such a result enraged the left, and sent the right into a tizzy of fury - but it will endure as the biggest social reform since Lyndon Johnson if it survives the Massachusetts special election. Did he err by allowing the Congress to take the lead? Well: the Clintons tried dictating to Congress and look how that turned out. No president has succeeded in this area before, in good times and bad. Obama got his reform in a year of economic crisis. The further you remove yourself from this, the more impressive the achievement is.

One interesting comment left by Anonymous to Drum's analysis of who's to blame, is also relevant in this discussion.

Mr. Drum reminds me of the Queen Alice in Wonderland: he gets everything reversed.

The problem isn't the Left, who have been totally ignored by the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership . . . the problem is the "centrists", who are little more than political whores always with their finger up in the air tracking the latest poll and focus group study results: the American people, completely disgusted with the behavior and failures of "centrist" Democrats, shouted a resounding "NO!!!!" to Obama and the DLC.

If the Democrats want to win, they have to earn a win. That means real change. That means principle. That means doing a U-turn from the "Turn Right" sign they have been following, and GO LEFT.

1. Mr. Obama has, for the most part, embraced or expanded Bush policies. He's a Democrat with a black skin and a white Wall Street soul.

2. Polls have shown, time and time again that Americans don't want this freak of a health care bill, which that mandates people are forced to buy products from the same insurance companies that are responsible for the miserable state of America's health care, they want a single payer system similar to other developed countries which has proven far superior to the present American system.

3. The American people don't want to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.

4. The American people don't to bail out Wall Street and billionaire bankers.

5. The American people don't want political hacks like Rahm Emanuel and Wall Street crooks like Larry Summers and Bob Rubin controlling Obama administration policy.

6. The American people voted for real change, and they're sick of getting empty promises and Madison Avenue pabulum.

Where does the truth lie in all this analysis? Probably somewhere in between.

Prof. Robert P. Watson, Coordinator of American Studies, Lynn University, has put together two lists of accomplishments of President Obama that the media has not reported on. The first is a list of 90 accomplishments of Obama in the first six months of his presidency. The second is a list of 159 accomplishments in President Obama's first year.

Yes, Obama is a " liberal pragmatist in politics". It is true that Coakley ran her race for the MA Senate seat without fire in her belly. The Democrats bear some blame in not getting the Blue Dogs in line. The Blue Dogs should stop calling themselves Democrats and just become the Republicans they vote with. President Obama bears blame in not taking into consideration the progressive viewpoint on health care and the economy. The progressives bear some blame for not organizing and screaming as loud or louder than the right wing-nut pundits and birthers.

Now that the 'Blame Game' has been played. What will the next step be in order to piece this mess together?

FINALLY...Some Change to Believe In!!!!

Proposal Set to Curb Bank Giants

Obama Seeks To Return to the Spirit Of Glass-Steagall

WSJ: President Obama meets with Paul Volcker and proposes new banking firewalls in the "spirit of Glass-Steagall."

Mr. Obama's proposal is expected to include new scale restrictions on the size of the country's largest financial institutions. The goal would be to deter banks from becoming so large they put the broader economy at risk and to also prevent banks from becoming so large they distort normal competitive forces. It couldn't be learned what precise limits the White House will endorse, or whether Mr. Obama will spell out the exact limits on Thursday.

Mr. Obama is also expected to endorse, for the first time publicly, measures pushed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, which would place restrictions on the proprietary trading done by commercial banks, essentially limiting the way banks bet with their own capital. Administration officials say they want to place 'firewalls' between different divisions of financial companies to ensure banks don't indirectly subsidize 'speculative' trading through other subsidiaries that hold federally insured deposits.

The White House's proposal, one aide said, wouldn't resurrect the exact limits put in place by the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act, which essentially walled off commercial banks from investment banks and was repealed in 1999. Instead, the White House proposal would seek to return the "spirit of Glass Steagall," meant to limit large banks from becoming too big and complex that create enormous risk.

This is the path for change that will truly help regulate the billionaire banks. Self-regulation never works.

The Private Option Wins!

I can see clearly now!

Where Does the Blame Lie?

Les Leopold has an interesting perspective of who to blame for the the loss in Massachusetts. He says that the initial blame might fall on Obama but that progressives need some introspection in order to see that they didn't do enough.

The Obama administration bears much of the responsibility for the debacle in Massachusetts. It didn't go hard enough against Wall Street, and it didn't recognize the depth and breadth of the jobs crisis -- and the connection between the two.

But don't stop there. Much of the failure also rests with the progressive community which is clueless about how to respond to our new billionaire bailout society.

Over the past thirty years we've gone from a quasi-social democratic/capitalist economy to a full-fledged billionaire bailout society whose primary purpose is to maintain the wealth and prominence of a tiny handful of elites, even if it means raiding the national treasury to protect, restore and enhance its riches. [...]

When it all came crashing down, we still didn't realize, until too late, that that we had entered a new billionaire bailout society. The crash should have produced immediate investigations and drastic reforms. The big bankers were on their knees groveling for funds. That was the time to address "too big to fail" by breaking them up so they never again could crash the entire system.

It didn't happen. It's still not happening.

Instead, we bailed them out without asking for anything significant in return. [...]

To drive home the reality of what a billionaire bailout society really means, the biggest banks, (which are still major beneficiaries of billions of dollars of public largess even after they payback TARP) are declaring near record profits and bonuses again while nearly 30 million people are without jobs or forced into part-time work. And to rub it in, the banks are using their new found wealth to lobby against any and all reforms that might stand in their way. (Isn't it nice to see the stock market rally as Obama's reform agenda is further wounded?)

What did progressives do? What are they doing now?

Not nearly enough. We put our faith in Obama and now are moaning about how he failed to take on Wall Street and the insurance giants. We concentrated on shaping the health care bill, but did little to shape the outrage against Wall Street and the anxiety about job loss.

The moment was missed. The American public truly became outraged at the Wall Street rip offs, but progressives failed to mobilize on Main Street. Instead the terrain was abdicated to the Tea Party, a loose collection of right wing populists who stirred up a potent brew of anti-Obama, anti-government resentments and anti-Wall Street anger.

In a matter of months the Tea Party has gained more popular appeal than either of the two parties. Unbelievably, it is becoming the party of Main Street. [...]

Where is all that new progressive Internet organizing that was supposed reshape American politics? Where is that virtual mass movement that supposedly got Obama elected? Did we expect to tweet our way into reforming Wall Street? [...]

Unfortunately, the crisis also is revealing how tied progressive are to the Democratic establishment, and how meek our protests seem, just when our nation most needs our loudest voices and most spirited reforms.

Another example of a lost moment. Progressives waited for Obama. The wait is over. It is time to mobilize and set a new course.

Under-Achievement is the Culprit

"Democrats are being told (and telling themselves) that they over-reached, but what became clear as the months dragged on is the Democratic party under-achieved, and so did its president."

Coakley's loss in Massachussets is now being analyzed and picked apart by pundits and politicans alike to understand what happened that a blue state went red. William Greider of The Nation has a compelling and right-on-point article, Coakley's Loss; Pie in the President's Face.

The humiliation, I decided, could become a good thing for this presidency if it forces Obama to rethink his political strategy and rearrange his governing order. For all his brains and talent, for all the brainy people around him, the Obama White House seems tone-deaf and blind on many aspects of the popular reality. Too full of itself to listen closely. Too condescending to recognize the rage and fear are about more than right-wing frothers.

On healthcare, Obama played coy while his White House aides cut private deals with the drug industry and other sectors. The legislative process was drawn out month after month in an addled bargaining marathon with hostile Republicans (who stiffed him in return) and industry-leaning Democrats (who got whatever they demanded). The liberal base was conned, ignored and bullied, as its vital issues were one by one discarded. Labor unions were stroked and intimidated by the White House, then double-crossed as Obama's reform extracted greater costs from union members than it demanded from the drug makers. People at large were confused, then frightened. They could not understand what reform would do for them, and some of their doubts were well-founded. The longer it went on, the more people wondered why Democrats weren't talking about their problem--jobs and incomes.

Obama's mild-mannered faith in bipartisan deal-making seemed strangely out of touch. Didn't he realize Republicans were going to maul him at every turn?

The bankers, meanwhile, did their own tap dance on the new president, putting a paw on his shoulder while gobbling up public resources. Obama kept holding meetings with them, urging them to do the "right thing." They practically laughed in his face.

People were meanwhile agitated by the swelling budget deficits and easy prey for right-wing propaganda. Instead of explaining the economic necessity of deficit spending in a straightforward way, Obama adopted these worries as his own. He has promised to reduce spending, but he cannot deliver on this if he truly expects recovery.

Obama's style became an inadvertent formula for sapping the life out of the political majority that elected him, deflating the reach of reform and turning off the electoral base that came together in 2008. Democrats are being told (and telling themselves) that they over-reached, but what became clear as the months dragged on is the Democratic party under-achieved, and so did its president.

Obama's most disturbing quality is that he evidently intended this from the start. Soaring rhetoric notwithstanding, he managed the presidency as a pragmatist in search of the possible. The real goals for change were minimalist, not visionary. This has to change and soon, if he is to revive his presidency.

Obama, in other words, has to change himself. That may sound too wishful and maybe it is. But we know he is a brilliant politician, astute in his political vision. The great politicians, when faced with new circumstances, revise themselves. We will see if Obama can.

First, he has to clear out the cobwebs of his hopeful aspirations and take on the fight. To do so, he also has to clear away a lot of the people around him. If Rahm Emmauel was the chief strategist, the guy who made the private deals and told the senators what they could accept, he failed big-time and should be replaced. Find a new manager whose thinking was not shaped by cynical triangulation in the Clinton era.

The president chose Larry Summer and Timothy Geithner to speak for the administration on the economy. Can you imagine finding anyone less convincing? Both are active advocates of the Wall Street status quo, neither has any feel for what's happening in the country. The bean counters led the president into the trap he now faces. Permissive bailouts created flush financial giants that sit on their profits and ignore the public need for lending. Dump the bean counters now.[...]

If comprehensive healthcare reform is out of the question, Obama Democrats can break it down into smaller pieces and try to pass worthy measures one by one. A bill to prohibit insurance companies from banning people with pre-existing ailments? Pass it the House and try to pass it in the Senate. If Republicans want to filibuster, make them filibuster. A measure to allow cheaper drug imports from Canada? Let Republicans vote against that. Repealing the antitrust exemption for insurance companies--Democrats support it. Democrats need to start a fight on taxes too. Do Republicans want to tax Wall Street banks or not? Obama has proposed it, let's have a roll call. The attack strategy will focus on all the reforms people want and need and create a new political dynamic.

Read the complete article here.

I find it interesting that the media seems to be taking the Republican talking point that Coakley lost because people don't want sweeping health care reform. It really is just the opposite. People do want health care reform. They just want reform that will benefit them and not the insurance companies. What Congress has passed, especially the Senate, has chipped away at a robust package and created a broken bill.

Ask yourself, what is President's Obama's position on health care? My point exactly...I don't know. Under-achievement is the culprit!

Vote for David Hoffman in IL

With glowing endorsements from the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, and the Daily Herald, see why David Hoffman has what it takes to be the next U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Change...Not!

Ezra Klein wants to "put the health-care bill into perspective."

It's time for some real talk on health-care reform. By the standards of what Congress generally does in a year, this bill is very big. But by the standards of the health-care system, it's not that big at all. It goes two-thirds of the way on covering the uninsured. It makes a courageous, but insufficient, start on cost control. This is the beginning, not the end, of reform. [...]

So that's really what we're talking about here -- a health-care expansion that's a slight fraction of overall spending. Let's go even further: It's an expansion that most people won't notice in 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill will change the insurance of about 40 million people by 2019, about 30 million of whom would have been uninsured. The other 10 million will come from the employer or individual markets in search of more affordable options. About 8 percent of the country will still be uninsured, though that falls to 6 percent if you exclude illegal immigrants. Ninety percent of Americans will be exactly where they'd otherwise be. [...]

But changing the growth of the health-care system is a lot harder than just cutting a few dollars here or there. It requires us to change how doctors practice medicine, or how much medicine people buy or how much they need -- or maybe all three. We're doing a lot on health-care reform this year, but we're not doing that much. And we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

Putting aside the fact that this bill is anything but robust, the legislation, in whatever form it passes, won't go into effect until 2014.

It's Time to "Repower America"

The Alliance for Climate Protection released a new national television ad, Do Right, encouraging Americans to support the path away from foreign oil and toward clean energy now.

Read more

God and War

A shocking article by ABC News reports that U.S. military weapons are being inscribed with secret 'Jesus' biblical codes.

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.

'It violates the Constitution'

The company's vision is described on its Web site: "Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom." [...]

"It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws," said Michael "Mikey" Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

'Firearms of Jesus Christ'

Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they've told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as "spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ."

He said coded biblical inscriptions play into the hands of "those who are calling this a Crusade."

"This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," said Weinstein. "It's literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we're fighting. We're emboldening an enemy."

It is time to get religion out of the military and out of the government!

Hell Yes!

Retribution comes in many forms.

Pat Robertson had some biting words about the Haitian people and the cause of the recent earthquake which has caused devastating destruction. "[The people of Haiti] got together and swore a pact to the devil."

WATCH:

In response to Pat Robertson's condemnation of the Haitian people, a Pat Robertson voodoo doll is being sold on Ebay, 100% of proceeds to benefit the Red Cross:

Finally! What you've all been asking for! A one of a kind, handmade PAT ROBERTSON VOODOO DOLL.

After an exclusive deal with devil, we are finally able to bring black magic into your very own home! The lucky winner of this auction will attain the soul of Televangelist PAT ROBERTSON in a hand held figurine comprised of the finest straw, cloth, and other organic natural materials!

Ever wanted to cause Pat Robertson a massive headache? give him back pain? jab him in the crotch? Of course you have! Well then BID NOW to own your very own physical representation of the dark, dark soul of Pat Robertson.

'Atonement' for Pat Robertson.

Palin Hits the Jackpot

The New York Post reports that Sarah Palin received $100 for her magazine photo. Sarah Palin and her daughter, Bristol, earned an eye-popping $100,000 for their new In Touch Weekly cover, sources say.

For just eight hours' work at her own home, Palin pocketed nearly as much as her $125,000-a-year salary as Alaska governor. It seems her decision to quit her political role is making big financial sense. Palin also reportedly earns $100,000 per public-speaking engagement, while she has a multiyear deal as a Fox News Channel analyst.

Gottafaff at The Political Carnival has a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Palin family.

Tripp, Trigg, Trak, Truck, Trek, Drek, Heck. They're all just one big happy family living off of their Paris Hiltonesque fame.

All Bristol had to do was give birth and stand next to her mom at conventions and such.

All Barbie had to do was talk about Bristol giving birth, speak in tongues, fail at potential Veepitude, acquire an odd accent that doesn't represent Alaska, talk about her lipstick, forget O'Biden's real last name, incite hatred, have her ghost writer write, and then charge a whole bunch of money for talking incessantly about all of that and other stuff.

The family that exploits together is maladroit together.

Watch out Sarah, too much exposure could be damaging.

Lies, Truth and Newspeak

Glenn Greenwald has a compelling article in Salon, The Fundamental Unreliability of America's Media. Greenwald laments about the role journalists now play in the dissemination of false information.

Consider the record of the American media over the last two weeks alone. Justin Elliott of TPM documents how an absolute falsehood about the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing -- that Abdulmutallab purchased a "one-way ticket" to the U.S., when it was actually a round-trip ticket -- has been repeated far and wide by U.S. media outlets as fact. Two weeks ago, Elliott similarly documented how an equally false claim from ABC News -- that two of the Al Qaeda leaders behind that airliner attack had been released from Guantanamo -- became entrenched as fact in media reports (at most, it was one, not two). This week, Dan Froomkin chronicles how completely discredited claims about Guantanamo recidivism rates continue to be uncritically "reported" by The New York Times and then inserted into our debates as fact.

As I documented two weeks ago, government claims about which "top Al Qaeda fighters" were killed by our airstrikes turn out to be untrue far more often than not, yet are always mindlessly featured by our media, ensuring little questioning of those actions; and now, at least two of the three Top Terrorists claimed to have been killed by our recent airstrikes in Yemen -- and possibly all three -- are quite likely alive. As Greg Sargent writes, one of the most provocative and inflammatory claims of the trashy Halperin/Heilemann gossip book -- that Bill Clinton told Ted Kennedy that Obama would have been "getting us coffee" just a couple years earlier -- is not only completely unsourced (like virtually every one of their sleazy claims), but also "paraphrased."

Aside from falsity -- and the fact that they become irreversibly lodged in our political culture as fact -- what do all of these deceitful reports have in common? They're all the by-product of granting anonymity to people and then repeating what they claim as fact, with the falsehood-disseminators protected by "journalists" from any and all accountability for their falsehoods.

Greenwald claims that "unjustified anonymity -- especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret -- is the single greatest enabler of false and deceitful "reporting."

David Sirota in his article, Right is not Center, but 2010 resemble 1984, has another perspective of the problem of truth in journalism when he says, "newspeak can destructively alter the public’s perception of acceptable and unacceptable, possible and impossible."

“War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength” — more than a quarter century after those oxymorons were supposed to pervade an Orwellian 1984, today’s media make such newspeak even more preposterous: On economic issues, we are often told that right is center, center is left, and left is fringe.

For a year, national reporters (with help from conservative talk-radio goons) have depicted the center-right Obama administration and its corporatist policies as quasi-Marxist. We’ve heard that a government-run public health care option is a “liberal” cause, even as polls confirm that most Americans — not just liberals — support the idea. We’re told that legislators backing no-strings-attached bank bailouts are mainstream “centrists,” while bailout opponents are extremists — even as public opinion surveys say the opposite.

This is Washington’s “fair and balanced” journalism (or “journalism,” as it were) and as two of the most respected metro newspapers show this week, its distortions can bleed into local coverage.

The problem of false information is really more pervasive. Even without journalists, lies get disseminated through the web at the speed of light.

Matt Taibbi on Obama’s Economy

Obama’s Big Sellout




Via Rolling Stone

In “Obama’s Big Sellout”, Matt Taibbi argues that President Obama has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. Rather than keeping his progressive campaign advisers on board, Taibbi says Obama gave key economic positions in the White House to the very people who caused the economic crisis in the first place. Taibbi also points to the ties Obama’s appointees have to one main in particular: Bob Rubin, the former Goldman Sachs co-chairman who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.

The full story is now available online here. — Rolling Stone

The Hope of Change has Fizzled....

Draconian Security Measures vs Civil Liberties

The news media, news pundits, talking heads and politicians are all yaking about fear, terrorism, racial profiling and full-body scanners. Gavin Dahl at Raw Story focuses on the issue of, "'Experts' justify profiling, body scanners with familiar paranoid rhetoric."

In the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound flight, a large number of so-called experts have raised the ire of civil libertarians in their pursuit of increasingly draconian security measures.

Appearing on Fox News Saturday, a retired U.S. general called for "very serious, harsh profiling," singling out in particular all 18-28 year old Muslim men, calling for them to be "strip searched" at airports.

As new TSA regulations take effect, passengers flying into the country from abroad will be subject to random screening or so-called "threat-based" screens.

Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney set up his egregious recommendation by claiming first that "in the next 30-100 days," there is "very high probability a US airliner will come down."

When the host blandly objected that racial profiling would not go over in the United States, he replied, "I agree, that's the problem."

The issue of civil liberties.

The desire to violate American ethical and legal standards, supported by alarmist rhetoric, is reminiscent of the scandalous domestic Pentagon propaganda carried out over the US airwaves under Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.

Turns out McInerney is not even the first surveillance advocate this week seen hawking serious violations of civil liberties on cable news under the guise of expertise and authority.

What is missing in this conversation is a discussion about alternative means of screening.

In fact, there are currently at least two other known alternatives to full-body scanners up for consideration.

American Civil Liberties Union is advocating the use of the “Puffer,” a machine that analyzes puffs of chemically-sensitive air blown around an individual. Greg Soule, a spokesman for TSA told The Christian Science-Monitor 18 Puffer machines, originally developed by General Electric, across the US but are being phased out due to maintenance issues.

Another potential alternative is the “Guardian,” an “explosive trace-detection portal machine” more advanced than the Puffer. Chris McBee, director of sales and marketing for Syagen Technology, told CS Monitor, "We have a better mousetrap. There are solutions out there that are viable alternatives to whole body imaging and that have superior detection characteristics."

Conflict of interest has become an issue in this debate.

Last week Michael Chertoff played "a little fast and loose with the public trust" using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients. He was talking up whole-body-imaging technology as an airline security solution when the conflict of interest came up in a Wednesday interview on CNN. His Washington Post editorial cautions against, "privacy ideologues, for whom every security measure is unacceptable."

Reporters in Britain have discovered that new airport scanners touted by PM Gordon Brown would not have detected the underwear bomber, leading The Independent to ask if the entire plan is a scam. "The solution is to acknowledge that there isn't a single technology out there that is an answer to the whole problem," security expert Kevin Murphy told the paper.

...Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates oversaw the continuation of a domestic propaganda program created to build support for the US invasion of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld recruited military analysts with US taxdollars to espouse optimism and spin on unquestioning TV networks and NPR, even when the analysts suspected the information was false or stood to profit from weapons contracts, according to a bombshell report in The New York Times.

The message is to slow down and evaluate this situation without fear tactics while maintaining our basic civil liberties.