RICOCHET

Here’s a scenario that every football fan knows well. Your team has the lead and all signs point to victory. Your aggressive defense has stymied the opponent for three quarters. If they can keep this up for a few more minutes, it’s another game in the win column!

Uh oh. Instead of keeping the pressure on, your timid coach opts for a Prevent Defense.Noooo! He allows the opponent to gain four yards here, seven yards there. He will let them move down the field; he just wants to keep them from making that big play into the end zone.

James K. Polk is Loki's Dad.

RICOCHET

In a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, Barack Obama uttered a prophetic statement about energy prices. “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” The senator added, “under my plan… electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The candidate was talking about his cap-and-trade scheme which Congress shelved long ago. But the president’s EPA is going around democratically elected legislators and their constituents to attack the coal industry administratively. 

The EPA has mandated that new coal plants use expensive and unproven carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology despite angry resistance from coal states and their representatives. Now the administration admits that the new rules will drastically increase electricity prices.

RICOCHET

If I'm going to succeed in this new America, I need to learn how to be offended. It’s not that I haven’t tried, but I sadly have neither pearls to clutch nor a fainting couch to collapse upon.

The past few days have provided a crash course in the new Politics of Offense:

• Piers Morgan offended transgendered activists by saying that a woman who used to be a man used to be a man.
• Jerry Seinfeld offended a Gawker writer by saying he's less concerned about a comedian's race than how funny he is.
• Coca-Cola offended English-only activists by a multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful.”
• Joe Namath offended animal rights activists by wearing a fur coat to the Super Bowl.
• MSNBC offended conservatives by assuming they would be offended by a Cheerios ad.
• Non-white feminists offended white feminists by alleging that white feminists were offending non-white feminists.

RICOCHET

Trader Joe’s wanted to build a new store in Portland, Oregon. Instead of heading to a tony neighborhood downtown or towards the suburbs, the popular West Coast grocer chose a struggling area of Northeast Portland.

The company selected two acres along Martin Luther King Blvd. that had been vacant for decades. It seemed like the perfect place to create jobs, improve customer options and beautify the neighborhood. City officials, the business community, and residents all seemed thrilled with the plan. Then some community organizers caught wind of it.