GLOBAL WARMING: MAN-MADE OR NATURAL?

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the
University of Virginia, a distinguished research professor at George Mason
University, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
He performed his undergraduate studies at Ohio State University and earned
his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University. He was the founding dean of
the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of
Miami, the founding director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service,
and served for five years as vice chairman of the U.S. National Advisory
Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Dr. Singer has written or edited over a
dozen books and mono-graphs, including, most recently, Unstoppable Global
Warming: Every 1,500 Years.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College
campus on June 30, 2007, during a seminar entitled “Economics and the
Environment, ” sponsored by the Charles R. and Kathleen K. Hoogland Center
for Teacher Excellence.

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IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate
change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been
stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate
adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of
governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human
activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way.
Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and
cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of
human action. I would also argue that-should it occur-a modest warming would
be on the whole beneficial.

This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is
political. Because of the mistaken idea that governments can and must do
something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of
distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national
economies, decrease standards of living, and increase poverty. This
misdirection of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in
industrialized nations, and even more in developing nations. Thus it could
well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between
them.

If not for this economic and political damage, one might consider the
present concern about climate change nothing more than just another
environmentalist fad, like the Alar apple scare or the global cooling fears
of the 1970s. Given that so much is at stake, however, it is essential that
people better understand the issue.

MAN-MADE WARMING?

The most fundamental question is scientific: Is the observed warming of the
past 30 years due to natural causes or are human activities a main or even a
contributing factor?

At first glance, it is quite plausible that humans could be responsible for
warming the climate. After all, the burning of fossil fuels to generate
energy releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The
CO2 level has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the industrial
revolution and is now 35 percent higher than it was 200 years ago. Also, we
know from direct measurements that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” which strongly
absorbs infrared (heat) radiation. So the idea that burning fossil fuels
causes an enhanced “greenhouse effect” needs to be taken seriously.

But in seeking to understand recent warming, we also have to consider the
natural factors that have regularly warmed the climate prior to the
industrial revolution and, indeed, prior to any human presence on the earth.
After all, the geological record shows a persistent 1,500-year cycle of
warming and cooling extending back at least one million years.

In identifying the burning of fossil fuels as the chief cause of warming today, many politicians and environmental activists simply appeal to a so-called “scientific consensus.” There are two things wrong with this. First, there is no such consensus: An increasing number of climate scientists are raising serious questions about the political rush to judgment on this issue.

For example, the widely touted “consensus”; of 2,500  scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) is an illusion: Most of the panelists have no scientific  qualifications, and many of the others object to some part of the IPCC’s  report. The Associated Press reported recently that only 52 climate
scientists contributed to the report’s “Summary for Policymakers. “

Likewise, only about a dozen members of the governing board voted on the
“consensus statement” on climate change by the American Meteorological
Society (AMS). Rank and file AMS scientists never had a say, which is why so
many of them are now openly rebelling. Estimates of skepticism within the AMS regarding man-made global warming are well over 50 percent.

The second reason not to rely on a “scientific consensus” in these matters
is that this is not how science works. After all, scientific advances
customarily come from a minority of scientists who challenge the majority
view-or even just a single person (think of Galileo or Einstein). Science
proceeds by the scientific method and draws conclusions based on evidence,
not on a show of hands.

But aren’t glaciers melting? Isn’t sea ice shrinking? Yes, but that’s not proof for human-caused warming. Any kind of warming, whether natural or human-caused, will melt ice. To assert that melting glaciers prove human causation is just bad logic.

What about the fact that carbon dioxide levels are increasing at the same time temperatures are rising? That’s an interesting correlation; but as every scientist knows, correlation is not causation. During much of the last century the climate was cooling while CO2 levels were rising. And we should note that the climate has not warmed in the past eight years, even though greenhouse gas levels have increased rapidly.

What about the fact-as cited by, among others, those who produced the IPCC
report-that every major greenhouse computer model (there are two dozen or
so) shows a large temperature increase due to human burning of fossil fuels?
Fortunately, there is a scientific way of testing these models to see whether current warming is due to a man-made greenhouse effect. It involves comparing the actual or observed pattern of warming with the warming pattern predicted by or calculated from the models. Essentially, we try to see if the “fingerprints” match;” fingerprints” meaning the rates of warming at different latitudes and altitudes.

For instance, theoretically, greenhouse warming in the tropics should register at increasingly high rates as one moves from the surface of the earth up into the atmosphere, peaking at about six miles above the earth’s surface. At that point, the level should be greater than at the surface by about a factor of three and quite pronounced, according to all the computer models. In reality, however, there is no increase at all. In fact, the data from bal-loon-borne radiosondes show the very opposite: a slight decrease in warming over the equator.

The fact that the observed and predicted patterns of warming don’t match
indicates that the man-made greenhouse contribution to current temperature
change is insignificant. This fact emerges from data and graphs collected in
the Climate Change Science Program Re-port 1.1, published by the federal
government in April 2006. It is  remarkable and puzzling that few have noticed this disparity between observed and predicted patterns of warming and drawn the obvious scientific conclusion.

What explains why greenhouse computer models predict temperature trends that
are so much larger than those observed?

The answer lies in the proper evaluation of feedback within the models. Remember that in addition to carbon dioxide, the real atmosphere contains water vapor, the most powerful greenhouse gas. Every one of the climate models calculates a significant
positive feedback from water vapor; i.e., a feedback that amplifies the warming effect of the CO2 increase by an average factor of two or three.

But it is quite possible that the water vapor feedback is negative rather than positive and thereby reduces the effect of increased CO2.

There are several ways this might occur. For example, when increased CO2 produces a warming of the ocean, a higher rate of evaporation might lead to more humidity and cloudiness (provided the atmosphere contains a sufficient number of cloud condensation nuclei). These low clouds reflect incoming solar radiation back into space and thereby cool the earth. Climate researchers have discovered other possible feedbacks and are busy evaluating which ones enhance and which diminish the effect of increasing CO2.

NATURAL CAUSES OF WARMING

A quite different question, but scientifically interesting, has to do with the natural factors influencing climate. This is a big topic about which much has been written. Natural factors include:

• continental drift and mountain-building
• changes in the Earth’s orbit
• volcanic eruptions
• solar variability

Different factors operate on different time scales. But on a time scale important for human experience-a scale of decades, let’s say-solar variability may be the most important.

Solar influence can manifest itself in different ways: fluctuations of solar irradiance (total energy), which has been measured in satellites and related to the sunspot cycle; variability of the ultraviolet portion of the solar spectrum, which in turn affects the amount of ozone in the stratosphere; and variations in the solar wind that modulate the intensity of cosmic rays (which, upon impact into the earth’s atmosphere, produce cloud condensation nuclei, affecting cloudiness and thus climate).

Scientists have been able to trace the impact of the sun on past climate using proxy data (since thermometers are relatively modern). A conventional proxy for temperature is the ratio of the heavy isotope of oxygen, Oxygen-18, to the most common form, Oxygen-16.

A paper published in Nature in 2001 describes the Oxygen-18 data (reflecting  temperature) from a stalagmite in a cave in Oman, covering a period of over 3,000 years. It also shows corresponding Carbon-14 data, which are directly related to the intensity of cosmic rays striking the earth’s atmosphere. One sees there a remarkably detailed correlation, almost on a year-by-year basis. While such research cannot establish the detailed mechanism of climate change, the causal connection is quite clear: Since the stalagmite temperature cannot affect the sun, it is the sun that affects climate.

POLICY CONSEQUENCES

If this line of reasoning is correct, human-caused increases in the CO2 level are quite insignificant to climate change. Natural causes of climate change, for their part, cannot be controlled by man. They are unstoppable.

Several policy consequences would follow from this simple fact:

•  Regulation of CO2 emissions is pointless and even counterproductive, in
  that no matter what kind of mitigation scheme is used, such regulation is
  hugely expensive.
• The development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, like ethanol and
  hydrogen, might be counterproductive, given that they have to be
  manufactured, often with the investment of great amounts of ordinary energy.
  Nor do they offer much reduction in oil imports.
•  Wind power and solar power become less attractive, being uneconomic and
  requiring huge subsidies. Substituting natural gas for coal in electricity generation makes less sense for the same reasons.

None of this is intended to argue against energy conservation. On the contrary, conserving energy reduces waste, saves money, and lowers energy prices-irrespective of what one may believe about global warming.

SCIENCE VS HYSTERIA

You will note that this has been a rational discussion. We asked the important question of whether there is appreciable man-made warming today. We presented evidence that indicates there is not, thereby suggesting that attempts by governments to control green-house- gas emissions are pointless and unwise.

Nevertheless, we have state governors calling for CO2 emissions limits on cars; we have city mayors calling for mandatory CO2 controls; we have the Supreme Court declaring CO2 a pollutant that may have to be regulated; we have every industrialized nation (with the exception of the U.S. and Australia) signed on to the Kyoto Protocol; and we have ongoing international demands for even more stringent controls when Kyoto expires in 2012.

What’s going on here?

To begin, perhaps even some of the advocates of these anti-warming policies are not so serious about them, as seen in a feature of the Kyoto Protocol called the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows a CO2 emitter (i.e., an energy user) to support a fanciful CO2 reduction scheme in developing nations in exchange for the right to keep on emitting CO2 un-abated. “Emission trading” among those countries that have ratified Kyoto allows for the sale of certificates of unused emission quotas. In many cases, the initial quota was simply given away by governments to power companies and other entities, which in turn collect a windfall fee from consumers. All of this has become
a huge financial racket that could someday make the UN’s “Oil for Food” scandal in Iraq seem minor by comparison. Even more fraudulent, these schemes do not reduce total CO2 emissions; not even in theory.

It is also worth noting that tens of thousands of interested persons benefit directly from the global warming scare-at the expense of the ordinary consumer. Environmental organizations globally, such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund have raked in billions of dollars. Multi-billion- dollar government subsidies for useless mitigation schemes are large and growing. Emission trading programs will soon reach the $100 billion a year level, with large fees paid to brokers and those who operate the scams. In other words, many people have discovered they can
benefit from climate scares and have formed an entrenched interest. Of course, there are also many sincere believers in an impending global warming catastrophe, spurred on in their fears by the growing number of one-sided books, movies, and media coverage.

The irony is that a slightly warmer climate with more carbon dioxide is in many ways beneficial rather than damaging. Economic studies have demonstrated that a modest warming and higher CO2 levels will increase GNP and raise standards of living, primarily by improving agriculture and forestry. It’s a well-known fact that CO2 is plant food and essential to the growth of crops and trees-and ultimately to the well-being of animals and humans.

You wouldn’t know it from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, but there are many upsides to global warming: Northern homes could save on heating fuel. Canadian farmers could harvest bumper crops. Greenland may become awash in cod and oil riches. Shippers could count on an Arctic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. Forests may expand.

Mongolia could become an economic superpower. This is all speculative, even a little facetious. But still, might there be a silver lining for the frigid regions of Canada and Russia? “It’ s not that there won’t be bad things happening in those countries,” economics professor Robert O. Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies says. “But the idea is that they will get such large gains, especially in agriculture, that they will be bigger than the losses.” Mendelsohn has looked at how gross domestic product around the world would be affected under different warming scenarios through 2100. Canada and Russia tend to come out as clear gainers, as does much of northern Europe and Mongolia, largely because of projected increases in agricultural production.

To repeat a point made at the beginning: Climate has been changing cyclically for at least a million years and has shown huge variations over geological time. Human beings have adapted well, and will continue to do so.

* * *

The nations of the world face many difficult problems. Many have societal problems like poverty, disease, lack of sanitation, and shortage of clean water. There are grave security problems arising from global terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any of these problems are vastly more important than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. It is a great shame that so many of our resources are being diverted from real problems to this non-problem. Perhaps in ten or 20 years this will become apparent to everyone, particularly if the climate should stop warming (as it
has for eight years now) or even begin to cool.

We can only trust that reason will prevail in the face of an onslaught of propaganda like Al Gore’s movie and despite the incessant misinformation generated by the media. Today, the imposed costs are still modest, and mostly hidden in taxes and in charges for electricity and motor fuels. If the scaremongers have their way, these costs will become enormous. But I believe that sound science and good sense will prevail in the face of irrational and scientifically baseless climate fears.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

CHIVALRY IS DEAD, LADIES: AND IT’S (PARTIALLY) YOUR FAULT!

As a paid-consultant on “masculinity” (yep, that’s right: hired by the Coors Brewing Company to help them reach-out to today’s masculine market) I consider myself something of an expert on men. I have, after all, been one most of my life. That aside, I have led what most would consider an enviably active and adventurous life; leading some of my friends to call me the “REAL most interesting man in the world” (forget that aging Latin lothario!). So it is with some degree of authority and an even greater degree of disgust that I say: I am sickened by my fellow men today.

As a man raised by a WWII veteran with a strong sense of chivalry (particularly toward women), I am disgusted with what passes today for manhood. So many men are mere shadows of what their gender represented in generations past. Military service members excepted (which include an amazing collection of very fine young men) most men today aren’t fit to carry the water of the “Greatest Generation”, my father’s generation; much less the dauntless knights who originally defined “chivalry”.

Where have all the Gary Coopers gone?

Now, I suspect, this has always been the case. Every generation laments the declining standards of the next. You just know that the very first cavemen sat around looking at their sons sitting around the fire; and complained, “Look at these wimps, cooking their meat with fire! We didn’t have fire! In our day we ate it RAW!”

But I digress.

My point is that men aren’t what they used to be. My father fought World War II; then got a Master’s Degree on the GI Bill while working nights and supporting a family. Me? If I have to balance my check book and go to the store on the same day, I need a nap!

But I was strongly reminded that by modern standards I am a veritable John Wayne compared to most men today; by what happen on 13 January 2012; when the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Tuscany.

When this occurred we were treated to the sickening sight of men elbowing women and children aside in their frantic, rat-like scurry for the life-rafts. When the first of these life boats arrived on shore, aid workers were expecting to see them filled with women and children. Right? Instead, they saw lots of burly Tony Soprano-wannabes accompanied by their well-dressed wives and “goomahs”! Damned the women and children, it was every man for himself!

Think how things have changed in the 100 years since the Titanic catastrophe.

When RMS Titanic went down in the icy waters of the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, that ship’s women and children boarded the life rafts first; the crew strictly enforcing this custom. Captain Edward Smith was the last to leave the ship, and that after all lifeboats had been launched.

It is telling that although the First Class passengers comprised the very elite of 1912 “Society” (including some of the richest men in the world); more men from the First Class section chose to “go down with the ship” and die that night than did women of the underprivileged Third Class section (67% and 92% of First and Second Class men, respectively, died that night; as opposed to only 54% of Third Class women; and only 3% of women from the First Class section). Clearly, gender counted for more than wealth and privilege on that bitterly cold “Night to Remember”.

Captain Smith told his crew: “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Now it’s every man for himself.” One witness recalled seeing him, probably washed overboard, clutching a child in the water as the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves. A member of the crew always believed it was Captain Smith’s voice he heard from the water after the Titanic was gone, urging him and others on: “Good boys! Good lads!”

How different that is from the Costa Concordia captain, Francesco Schettino, who along with other young brutes apparently launched himself and his Moldavian 25 year old bimbo into one of the lifeboats early on, elbowing women and children aside!

Today the cry of “women-and-children first”, has become “brutes andn bimbos” first!

Too many young men don’t respect women. They don’t seem to respect much of anything. I see it every day in the way men treat their ladies. Or any woman, or the old, the young, or the infirm: the only thing they hold in esteem seems to be what hangs between their own legs; and what they can do with it.

When I look at today’s young men I see a bunch of pierced, tattooed, slovenly louts. These are not men: they are “manlings”. Boys that never grow beyond their toys.

A beautiful 29 year old acquaintance of mine complains that her husband spends much of his time at work (in his parents Real Estate business) playing online poker. He then comes home, eats the dinner she has prepared for him, and then flops down on his Lazy Boy and plays X-Box most of the night! Never mind that his very sexy wife has needs of her own. When he is too tired to continue playing, he goes to bed and passes out.

Not a man: a manling.

But women must accept at least some of the blame for the current deplorable, degraded state of modern manhood.

Not to blame the victim here, but consider: Its women, after all, that raise men (all too often without a man in the house). It’s mostly young female teachers that teach our boys in their most formative years. And, ultimately, its women who accept and give themselves to “manlings”; rewarding thuggish, uncouth behavior by going out with and marrying such cretins.

Were women to choose wisely in their mates, picking the “nice guy” over the “bad boy”; then the old adage that “nice guys finish last” wouldn’t be so sadly true. Were women to demand that the men in their lives not treat them like slutty sex objects; but instead commit to them and family before mating, than many more boys would have involved fathers providing male role models in their lives.

Were mothers to raise boys to be gentleman with a sense of honor, they would grow up into men those mothers could be proud of.

Feminist politics, political correctness, and (most importantly) lack of male role models has left this generation of men with no clue how to behave as MEN!

When the ship is sinking and no one taking charge, wouldn’t it be nice if men were made of the same stern stuff the men aboard the Titanic were; when women and children really did come first, and men went down with the ship?

I will leave you with the immortal words of Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of the British Empire; someone who knew more than a few “real men” in his life:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Richard Milhous Obama

 

(Reposted from Real Clear Politics)

By Carl  M. Cannon – May 20, 2013

He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon.

My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters:

If the caller said, “I have a story that will make Watergate look like a picnic,” Dad would hang up on him.

In the past week, Nixon’s name has been invoked often, and not in a way that pleases the current president or his loyalists. Unless it’s a reference to his dramatic 1972 visit to China, Nixon is not the president any of his successors enjoy being likened to — especially when the suffix “gate” is attached to it.

Barack Obama was only 13 years old when Nixon resigned from office one step ahead of the posse. This is old enough to know that correlations between himself and the 37th president should be contested, which Obama has done.

“I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons,” he replied when asked at a rainy Rose Garden appearance Thursday how he felt about the Nixon parallel. “You can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”

This response echoed language employed earlier in the week by Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney. “I can tell you,” the White House press secretary told reporters, “that the people who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history.”

Fair enough. Carney was a colleague of mine in the White House press corps during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years, and he summoned a pretty good institutional memory about the beat. Nixon’s presidency unraveled on the shoals of widespread criminality with no precedent in American politics. So, yes — by all means, let’s leave Watergate out of it.

Yet, I can’t help but think that Nixon and Obama have more in common than either man’s devotees might imagine.

Richard Milhous Nixon was thin-skinned, felt persecuted by the opposition party, had a penchant for classifying political adversaries — and journalists — as “enemies,” and tried to control his image so fiercely that, ultimately, zealous aides committed illegal acts to further his re-election.

But even before that had happened — and before Nixon himself began directing a coverup — truth had become a casualty of his administration. This is the parallel between Richard Nixon and Barack Obama.

No evidence has been unearthed connecting Obama, or anyone under his direction, to illicit activities. But the absence of criminality isn’t the only test here. Nixon’s “enemies,” at least in his mind, also included vast swaths of the Fourth Estate. That apparently is how the current president operates, too.

Barack Obama often displays contempt for the proper role of news-gatherers and, by extension, for the value of reporting that seeks to be unbiased. Often, officials in his White House or re-election campaign seem uncomprehending of the concept of straight reporting.

In their Manichean world, there are liberal news organizations (good) and conservative outlets (bad). Some of the news business does work this way — more than when Nixon was president, for sure — but what Obama and his political advisers and White House press handlers have done is graft their own hyper-partisanship onto the media.

In the Obama administration, it’s not uncommon for a White House press official to scream profanely over the phone at journalists whose stories they dislike, plant questions from friendly media outlets, and deny access to briefings to reporters who ask tough questions. This administration has aggressively used the Justice Department to ferret out news leaks, declared open season on a media organization out of sync with his philosophy (Fox News), and routinely questioned the professionalism of reporters and the patriotism of the opposition political party. That disquieting sound you hear is an echo from the Nixon years.

And though the current administration’s evasions about last September’s attacks in Benghazi, the partisan 2010-2012 activities by IRS, and the unprecedented scope of the Justice Department’s snooping into Associated Press phone records are all unrelated controversies, there is a common thread.

Those who work for this president have a fetish for stage managing the news. They never simply trust the facts; or maybe a better way of saying it is that they don’t trust the American people to be able to handle the facts. Washington has been consumed in recent weeks about who, exactly, massaged the administration’s “talking points” on Benghazi.

The underlying problem is that there were talking points at all. The phrase was popularized in the 1970s in the State Department. Originally the practice ensured that government officials were employing the precise, but opaque, language required in the field of international diplomacy. But the phrase soon migrated to politics, where it meant something quite different: Talking points were the lines of the day to be employed in interviews by partisan political operatives either to defend their position or attack the other side.

Benghazi represents the merging of two uses of the term. Four government officials were killed and a U.S. facility was attacked. Yes, some Republicans wanted to use that for partisan gain, but most Americans simply wanted to know what happened, and why. They still have not been told.

All politics is local, famed Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill is known for saying. Under Obama, all foreign affairs is domestic politics.

Concerning the IRS scandal, there is no evidence that Obama unleashed tax collectors on opponents, as Nixon did. But after years of comparing congressional Republicans to terrorists and hostage-takers, and characterizing the Tea Party as racists and extremists, what message did the president or the leaders of his party think they were sending IRS managers?

Obama is never content to simply say he thinks he can show how wrong-headed Republicans are about the federal budget. No, he says they should put “country ahead of party,” thereby suggesting they are deliberately hurting the economy to hurt him.

This, too, is Nixonland.

On June 29, 1972, Nixon was talking to Henry Kissinger in a taped conversation about the Democratic Party platform. “These people are so revolting that they have to be smashed,” Nixon tells his national security adviser.

“I don’t mean just beat them,” Nixon adds. “It’s good to beat them. But I mean smashed. They must be, they must be, disgraced, driven right out of public life.”

No tapes are available to know how Obama speaks about Republicans in private. But tonally, he’s not that much different from Nixon when speaking in public. Last week, even after the Benghazi, IRS, and AP controversies crested on the White House steps, Obama found time to blame Republicans at a New York fundraiser.

“What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008,” the president said. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012, that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet. But I am persistent. And I am staying at it. … If there are folks who are more interested in winning elections than they are thinking about the next generation, then I want to make sure there are consequences to that.”

Get all that? The Republicans don’t merely have a difference of opinion with the president. They are rabid, and craven, and willing to sacrifice their own children’s futures to win elections. This Nixon-esque attitude constitutes a toxic brew: whining, boasting, and name-calling all overlaid with persecution-complex and a profound contempt for his opponents — along with a determination to make them pay.

Like Nixon, Obama also fancies himself a press critic. Although the man received press coverage in 2008 and 2012 that Nixon would have killed for, there are considerable irritants out there, including radioman Rush Limbaugh, but primarily Fox News, which Obama and his aides have attempted to delegitimize by name.

In so doing, Obama has actually gone places in public Nixon only dared go in private.

As I write this piece, I am looking at a memo written on July 30, 1972, by President Nixon to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman. That morning, The Washington Post had published a story by Lou Cannon headlined “Nixon Running Scared.”

That article apparently got under Nixon’s skin. His memo to Haldeman runs for three pages. His premise is that the Washington Post “is totally against us.” Making no allowance for the possibility of objective reporting, Nixon starts by telling his top adviser that he understands campaign aides must deal with “media representatives that we know are antagonistic to us.”

Nixon’s second point is that they should not “waste time” with such outlets at the expense of “turning down interviews with media representatives who are our friends.” This seems to be to a false choice, but Nixon — who would win re-election in 1972 in a landslide — is just warming to his main point:

“Third, even when our most intelligent people are meeting with people like Cannon they must constantly keep in mind that they are confronting a political enemy and that everything they say will, therefore, be used against us.”

We don’t know if Obama or his minions also keep enemies lists, if only in their heads. But we do know that they view the media with the same with-us-or-against-us mentality that Nixon fostered. And though that attitude can help win elections, it surely impedes good governance.

Richard Nixon thought liberals were out to get him. Guess what? Many of them were. Likewise, Barack Obama thinks the Republicans want him to fail in office. Many of them do. But it’s a poor excuse for bad behavior.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Editor for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.

NEWSWEEK PREDICTS CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

Newsweek, April 28

Bureau Reporter Peter Gwynne    

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports

NOTE FROM WORDWARRIOR:

This story actually ran in Newsweek onApril 28, 1975 !!  

Of course none of the predictions of massive food shortages and global famine came to pass. What famine there has been in the last 50 years has largely been the product of civil war caused food dislocation, or governments starving their own (often rebellious) people. 

 

 

 

OBAMA’S BENGHAZI PERFORMANCE FOUND WANTING, SUPPORT ERODING

Richard Nixon knew he was in trouble when he lost the confidence of his own side, the Republicans. It was Senator Howard Baker (R-Tennessee) who asked the now famous question regarding Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

In today’s Washington, that kind of honest non-partisan approach to holding our leaders accountable is notably absent. There are no Howard Bakers anymore (and way to many Howard Deans!). Beginning with the multiplicity of scandals during the Clinton Administration, in which Congressional Democrats and the Washington Press Corps not only ignored malfeasance on the part of the Executive, but worked to protect “their guy” from any blame or consequence; running interference for one’s guy from “partisan” attacks has replace honest fact-finding and watchdog oversight in our national politics.

President Obama, though, just might be feeling the rug being pulled out from under him; as he appears to be losing support on the Left, his traditional bastion of support. Here, imbedded in her piece on Clintonesque cover-up deja vu, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (no Republican sympathiser) is scathing in her criticism of the President and his Administration’s handling of the Benghazi fiasco.

Remember, Nixon did not have a direct hand in the Watergate break-in. What sunk the Nixon Presidency was the President and his aides’ attempt at a cover-up. It was lies and obfuscation that nailed the lid on Nixon’s coffin.

But only because principled Republicans sided with Democrats in Congress in demanding a higher standard of accountability from our Chief Executive.

Obama is not yet in trouble. As long as the national press and Congressional Democrats are willing to shield him, he can survive any scandal. But if Dowd’s example is just the beginning of an erosion of support from his base (the Left-leaning press), then Obama may find his Presidency on very shaky legs.

When Myths Collide in the Capital

By  MAUREEN DOWD

Published: May 11, 2013   

THE capital is in the throes of déjà vu and preview as it plunges back into Clinton Rules, defined by a presidential aide on the hit ABC show “Scandal” as damage control that goes like this: “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true, it’s old news.”

The conservatives appearing on Benghazi-obsessed Fox News are a damage patrol with an approach that goes like this: “Lies, paranoia, subpoena, impeach, Watergate, Iran-contra.”

(Though now that the I.R.S. has confessed to targeting Tea Party groups, maybe some of the paranoia is justified.)

Welcome to a glorious spring weekend of accusation and obfuscation as Hillaryland goes up against Foxworld.

The toxic theatrics, including Karl Rove’s first attack ad against Hillary, cloud a simple truth: The administration’s behavior before and during the attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.

After his Libyan intervention, President Obama knew he was sending diplomats and their protectors into a country that was no longer a country, a land rife with fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.

Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Chris Stevens were rushing to make the flimsy Benghazi post permanent as a sign of good faith with Libyans, even as it sat ringed by enemies.

The hierarchies at State and Defense had a plodding response, failing to make any superhuman effort as the siege waxed and waned over eight hours.

In an emotional Senate hearing on Wednesday, Stevens’s second-in-command, Gregory Hicks, who was frantically trying to help from 600 miles away in Tripoli, described how his pleas were denied by military brass, who said they could not scramble planes and who gave a “stand-down” order to four Special Forces officers in Tripoli who were eager to race to Benghazi.

“My reaction was that, O.K., we’re on our own,” Hicks said quietly. He said the commander of that Special Forces team told him, “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more” chutzpah “than someone in the military.”

The defense secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, insisted, “We quickly responded.” But they responded that they would not respond. As Emma Roller and David Weigel wrote in Slate: “The die was cast long before the attack, by the weak security at the consulate, and commanders may have decided to cut their losses rather than risking more casualties. And that isn’t a story anyone prefers to tell.”

Truth is the first casualty here when competing fiefs protect their mythologies. Some unhinged ideologues on the right cling to the mythology that Barry and Hillary are out to destroy America.

In the midst of a re-election campaign, Obama aides wanted to promote the mythology that the president who killed Osama was vanquishing terror. So they deemed it problematic to mention any possible Qaeda involvement in the Benghazi attack.

Looking ahead to 2016, Hillaryland needed to shore up the mythology that Clinton was a stellar secretary of state. Prepared talking points about the attack included mentions of Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group, but the State Department got those references struck. Foggy Bottom’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, a former Cheney aide, quashed a we-told-you-so paragraph written by the C.I.A. that said the spy agency had “produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya,” and had warned about five other attacks “against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British ambassador’s convoy.”

Nuland fretted about “my building leadership,” and with backing from Ben Rhodes, a top White House aide, lobbied to remove those reminders from the talking points because they “could be abused by members” of Congress “to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”

Hicks said that Beth Jones, an under secretary of state, bristled when he asked her why Susan Rice had stressed the protest over an anti-Muslim video rather than a premeditated attack — a Sunday show marathon that he said made his jaw drop. He believes he was demoted because he spoke up.

Hillary’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, also called Hicks to angrily ask why a State Department lawyer had not been allowed to monitor every meeting in Libya with Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who visited in October. (The lawyer did not have the proper security clearance for one meeting.) Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, has been a rabid Hillary critic on Fox News since the attack. Hicks said he had never before been scolded for talking to a lawmaker.

All the factions wove their own mythologies at the expense of our deepest national mythology: that if there is anything, no matter how unlikely or difficult, that we can do to try to save the lives of Americans who have volunteered for dangerous assignments, we must do it.

Islam: Violence Emanates from its Core

By Word Warrior and Russell Farris

The Boston Marathon bombings, by a seemingly “average” college student and his more obviously troubled and radicalized older brother has led to discussion on our policy towards Muslim immigrants; and our Visa policy regarding foreign students in general. What it should also trigger is a meaningful policy discussion on the nature of Islamic violence. Because unlike any other religion in the world, violence is an integral part of Islam.

The problem lies within the Quran itself.

The Quran is no easy read. It is also not a gentle book of enlightening prose. The “Prophet” was no Kahil Gibran, and the Quran is not “The Prophet“. It is the hodge-podge mumblings of a mean old pedophile. Muhammad’s words were collected during his epileptic-like seizures (according to Philip Schaff, during his revelations Muhammad “sometimes growled like a camel, foamed at his mouth, and streamed with perspiration.” ^[1]). A study of the book (a task for only the most perseverant) leads to the inescapable conclusion that believers are repeatedly directed to convert, enslave, or kill all non-believers (in that order).

I will grant that most educated Muslims (particularly American Muslims) choose to ignore those instructions; or try to explain them away. They are the nice face of Islam. When explained by such spokesmen, “Jihad”  becomes an internal, spiritual struggle; rather than holy war against the infidel. Islam becomes a religion of peace, ignoring the fact that the Muslim World (and all other lands with a large Muslim minority) are the most violent, non-peaceful places on earth. Since 9/11/01, there has been an average of 5 attacks a day by Muslim terrorists!

But to the truly dedicated, observant, fundamentalist Muslims these more cerebral (nice) Muslims aren’t really Muslims at all. To the ones we call “radicals”, a real Muslim has the Allah-given task of converting, enslaving, or killing the rest of us.

“Good Muslims” are commanded to kill other Muslims who stray from the path.  Consequently, the nice Muslims have to keep their mouths shut. This slows down the spread of the nicer varieties of Islam; while the radicalization of Mosques (or ”cells” within those Mosques) goes unabated.

This week has seen even dedicated liberals, like Bob Beckel, call for a slowing of Muslim immigration and a reexamination of our Student Visa policy. But the real problem is how do we distinguish the nice Muslim immigrants from those that want to kill us and subvert our democracy (which they consider Satanic)? The oath of allegiance taken by naturalized citizens, to the country and constitution, should weed out the bad ones. Except that the swearing of false oaths and other means of deceiving the infidel are an integral part of Islam, when deemed necessary in the defense of Islam. And as we see in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, even seemingly nice Muslims can change into bad ones.

Progressives have a pathological need to ignore the differences in people. Though profiling is a proven, effective tool of law enforcement, liberals consider this tantamount to racism. David Sirota, for example, objects to us treating white, non-Islamic terrorists differently than non-white or Islamic terrorists (“Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American”; Salon, Apr 16, 2013).

But there are almost zero white non-Islamic terrorists. Those few that did exist in the recent past, such as Germany’s infamous Baader-Meinhof gang, the Irish Republican Army, or our own Weather Underground (compliments of the President’s friend Bill Ayres) were leftist radicals or a part of nationalist liberation movements; and have mostly faded away after the fall of the Iron Curtain. If any white, non-Islamic groups should commit acts of terror they should indeed be treated just like non-white or Islamic terrorists. (The speedy trial and subsequent execution of Timothy McVeigh demonstrate that we, in fact, do  just that; undermining Sirota’s contention to the contrary.)

Most horrible things done today by white non-Muslims are not acts of terrorism: they are individual manifestations of deranged minds. White, non-Islamic killers are almost never parts of larger groups that brain-wash them, train them, or finance them. That is, at this point in history, a manifestation of radical Islam.

Religiously, it is unique to Islam. There are no Christian terrorist organizations or movements, financing and sponsoring terrorism in the name of Christ. Nor are there any such Buddhist nor Hindu groups.

Liberals hate the idea of evil. But radical Islam is as evil in the 21st Century as Christianity sometimes was in the Middle Ages. And Islam has no prospect of getting any better, of internal reformation because the evil in it comes from its most fundamental tenets.

The evil in Christianity came from ignoring its fundamental tenets.

[1] Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 42 “Life and Character of Mohammed”

IS OBAMA ALREADY A LAME DUCK? OR IS HE JUST LAME?

The opposing party always gets on the phone or gathers in what used to be Georgetown dens to denigrate the new guy and vow to fight him to the end. That’s how blowhards blow.

by Peggy Noonan

The Wall Street Journal: May 4, 2013

I  think we’re all agreed the president is fading—failing to lead, to break through, to show he’s not at the mercy of events but, to some degree at least, in command of them. He couldn’t get a win on gun control with 90% public support. When he speaks on immigration reform you get the sense he’s setting it back. He’s floundering on Syria. The looming crisis on implementation of ObamaCare has begun to fill the news. Even his allies are using the term “train wreck.” ObamaCare is not only the most slovenly written major law in modern American history, it is full of sneaked-in surprises people are just discovering. The Democrats of Washington took advantage of the country’s now-habitual distractedness: The country, now seeing what’s coming in terms of taxes and fees, will not be amused. Mr. Obama’s brilliant sequester strategy—scare the American public into supporting me—flopped. Congress is about to hold hearings on Boston and how the brothers Tsarnaev slipped through our huge law-enforcement and immigration systems. Benghazi and what appear to be its coverups drags on and will not go away; press secretary Jay Carney was reduced to saying it happened “a long time ago.” It happened in September. The economy is stuck in low-growth, employment in no-growth. The president has about a month to gather himself together on the budget, tax reform and an immigration deal before Congress goes into recess. What are the odds?

Republicans don’t oppose him any less after his re-election, and Democrats don’t seem to support him any more. This week he was reduced to giving a news conference in which he said he’s got juice, reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. It was bad. And he must be frustrated because he thinks he’s trying. He gives speeches, he gives interviews, he says words, but he doesn’t really rally people, doesn’t create a wave that breaks over the top of the Capitol Dome and drowns the opposition, or even dampens it for a moment.

Mr. Obama’s problem isn’t really the Republicans. It’s that he’s supposed to be popular. He’s supposed to have some sway, some pull and force. He was just re-elected. He’s supposed to have troops. “My bill is launched, unleash the hounds of war.” But nobody seems to be marching behind him. Why can’t he rally people and get them to press their congressmen and senators? I’m not talking about polls, where he hovers in the middle of the graph, but the ability to wield power.

The president seems incapable of changing anything, even in a crisis. He’s been scored as passive and petulant, but it’s the kind of passivity people fall into when nothing works. “People do what they know how to do,” a hardened old pol once said, meaning politicians use whatever talent they have, and when it no longer works they continue using it.

There’s no happy warrior in there, no joy of the battle, just acceptance of what he wearily sees as the landscape. He’d seem hapless if he weren’t so verbally able.

So, the president is stuck. But it’s too early to write him off as a lame duck because history has a way of intervening. A domestic or international crisis that is well-handled, or a Supreme Court appointment, can make a president relevant. There are 44 months left to Mr. Obama’s presidency. He’s not a lame duck, he’s just lame.

*** Which has me thinking of two things that have weakened the Obama presidency and haven’t been noted. One was recent and merely unhelpful. The other goes back, and encouraged a mindset that became an excuse, perhaps a fatal one.

The recent one: In the days after the 2012 election the Democrats bragged about their technological genius and how it turned the election. They told the world about what they’d done—the data mining, the social networking, that allowed them to zero in on Mrs. Humperdink in Ward 5 and get her to the polls. It was quite impressive and changed national politics forever. But I suspect their bragging hurt their president. In 2008 Mr. Obama won by 9.5 million votes. Four years later, with all the whizbang and money, he won by less than five million. When people talk about 2012 they don’t say the president won because the American people endorsed his wonderful leadership, they say he won because his team outcomputerized the laggard Republicans.

This has left him and his people looking more like cold technocrats who know how to campaign than leaders who know how to govern. And it has diminished claims of a popular mandate. The president’s position would be stronger now if more people believed he had one.

What damaged the Obama presidency more, looking back, was, ironically, the trash-talking some Republican leaders indulged in after the 2008 campaign. It entered their heads at the Obama White House and gave them a warped sense of the battlefield.

In a conference call with conservative activists in July, 2009, then-Sen. Jim DeMint said of the president’s health-care bill, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Not long after, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quoted as saying that the GOP’s primary goal was to make Mr. Obama a one-term president.

The press hyped this as if it were something new, a unique and epic level of partisan animus. Members of the administration also thought it was something new. It made them assume no deals with Republicans were possible, and it gave them a handy excuse they still use: “It’s not us, they vowed from the beginning they wouldn’t work with us!”

But none of it was new. The other sidealways vows to crush you. Anyone who’d been around for a while knew the Republicans were trying to sound tough, using hyperbole to buck up the troops. It’s how they talk when they’re on the ropes. But the president and his staffers hadn’t been around for a while. They were young. They didn’t understand what they were hearing was par for the course.

Bill Clinton’s foes made fierce vows about him, the enemies of Both Bushes did the same. The opposing party always gets on the phone or gathers in what used to be Georgetown dens to denigrate the new guy and vow to fight him to the end. That’s how blowhards blow. When Reagan came in they vowed to take him down, and it was personal. Speaker Tip O’Neill called him “ignorant” and a “disgrace” and said it was “sinful” that he was president. He called Reagan “a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America” and said: “He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.” Chris Matthews, an O’Neill staffer, says he once greeted Reagan in the Capitol with the words: “Mr. President, welcome to the room where we plot against you.”

They did. Reagan knew it.

Yet he had no problem dealing successfully with O’Neill. He didn’t moan, “Oh they hate me, it’s no use!”

Note to the next White House: There’s always gambling at Rick’s place. It’s never a shock and not an excuse. It’s business as usual. And if you’re a leader you can lead right past it.

 

WHY SMART PEOPLE (INCLUDING ME! ) DO DUMB THINGS

Like many of you, I often reflect on seminal (or merely embarrassing) events in my life; and shake my head in disbelief. How could I have been so dumb?

In 2000 I started my own company. This was my second attempt in 3 years, after having worked 15 years in a certain industry and rising about as high as could working for someone else. Over the next 5 years, I made a lot of money and the company was poised for true success.

Then, in 2006, it all came crashing down.

A ”perfect storm” of bad circumstances and bad decisions on my part left me broke and nearly emotionally broken. I was able (barely) to salvage enough of my company to sell it off to a partner for enough money to survive on.

Much of what went wrong for me that year can be found in the list below.

Smart people (and most who know me would describe me in those terms) do dumb things. Maybe not as often as truly dumb people; but more often than we would like to admit.

Business aside, we make a lot of our worst mistakes in our personal lives and choices.

As example, I just got out of a 10 month relationship with a young woman less than half my age. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out.

Now, she was very mature, smart, witty, pretty, liked a lot of the same things I did, and really appreciated and preferred older men. Sounded promising, right?

All of my male friends gave me two thumbs up. Most were at least mildly envious. One advised me to “put a ring on her finger” ASAP!

My female friends saw things far more clearly. From the beginning, my very best friend (a wise woman indeed) described it as a slow-moving train wreck; one she just couldn’t bear to watch. Most others just looked at me with that “you poor dumb shmuck” look, smiled sadly and shook their heads.

I tried telling one that though “weird”, our relationship weirdly worked. She scoffed at that openly, replying, “You just THINK its working!”

Of course, she was right.

This wasn’t the first or worst bad decision I’ve made regarding my choice of feminine companions; just the most recent. Being pretty wise when it comes to analyzing other people’s relationships doesn’t make me any less stupid when it comes to my own…

We all make mistakes, even the smartest of us. But its often surprising when really smart people make really dumb mistakes. Here is a list of the Top 10 reasons that they do:

Top 10 Reasons Why Smart People Do Dumb Things

1. They’re too close to the situation. Lack of  objectivity or perspective is probably the most common reason, but not the only  one, by any means.
2. They’re in uncharted territory. People tend to forget  that intelligence or  experience doesn’t necessarily translate from one situation or company to the  next, as we discussed in Carol Bartz and the CEO’s Dilemma.  Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
3. They’re distracted. They’ve got other things or  priorities on their mind and they’re just not paying attention. Sometimes, it’s  that simple. Like Occam’s Razor says, all things being equal, the simplest  solution is usually the right one.
4. They’ve made up their mind based on limited data. Ever  try to have an objective, intelligent discussion with someone who’s already made  up his mind about something? Didn’t turn out too well, did it?
5. Their assumptions are flawed. As a really smart high-tech CEO once said to me, most  mistakes are the result of bad assumptions. It’s true. Every conclusion and  decision is based on assumptions. The logic can be perfect, but if the  underlying assumptions are flawed, all bets are off.
6. They feel like it. People have a nasty habit of  connecting behavior and decision-making with thinking, reasoning, and logic.  That’s just not the way it is. Both  thoughts and feelings play a role in everything  we do, and the split varies constantly. So, a smart person can do a dumb thing  if the mood is right, so to speak. That’s usually followed by a smartass like me  saying, “He should have known better.”
7. They’re panicking. Emotion to the extreme, usually  fear or anxiety, drives the fight or flight response and, sometimes, behavior or  decision-making that may, in hindsight, prove unwise, to put it nicely.
8. The second law of thermodynamics. In the physical  world, entropy tends to increase. People are no different. Even biological organisms obey physical laws. Smart decisions tend to bring order to chaos; dumb  decisions tend to have the opposite effect. Thus, smart decisions are less  likely and harder to achieve. In other words, s**t happens.
9. People change. People age, things change. Our ideals,  goals, motives, mental state, and of course, behavior and actions, all change  over time. Chrissie Hynde of  the Pretenders calls itTime The Avenger:  “Nobody’s permanent; everything’s on loan here.”
10. They’re off their meds or their rocker. What, you  think I’m kidding? You think really smart people can’t have psychological  problems, temporary mental lapses, brain farts?  Haven’t you ever said  someone’s “lost his mind” or is “off her rocker?” Then there’s the whole meds  thing. They can be just off them or just on them? Either one can trigger erratic  behavior.

(Read more:  http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-24/strategy/30197335_1_assumptions-ceos-smart-people#ixzz2ROtn5AVD)

OBAMA SNUBS A GREAT LADY

“I find the President smug, arrogant, and when it comes to politics, classless.”

In the decisive years of the Cold War, when America and the West finally achieved victory over the Soviet Union and its world-communist allies, freeing Eastern Europe and reuniting Germany; no ally stood closer or provided more support than Great Britain.

Led by the remarkable “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher”, the “Special Relationship” between Britain and America was never more special than during the 1980s. Prime Minister Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan worked hand-in-glove to bring down the Iron Curtain (working with Pope John Paul II as well, the third key player of the Big Three that crafted the Soviet downfall).

She and Reagan were friends as well as leaders of two allied countries. In the face of what seemed, in the early 80s, a dire threat from an aggressive Soviet Union and its proxies around the globe, neither the Iron Lady nor President Reagan “were for turning”.

So its with a sick anger that I hear today that at the funeral of this most special friend of America, President Obama has deliberately snubbed Lady Thatcher and Britain; by sending no high level representative! When a foreign head of state (or significant former head of state) dies, it is customary for the Administration to send a high-level delegation. That is the job of the Vice President: attend the funerals of foreign leaders. At the least, our Secretary of State can “pinch hit” in the VP’s absence.

When the President of Ghana died last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a delegation to the funeral. Could not John Kerry, at the least, have attended the Iron Lady’s funeral??

This is not the first snub of our closest ally by this President, who has in the past made his personal distaste for Britain all too clear.

When he first took office, the President infamously sent packing a bust of Winston Churchill, that had decorated the White House. When the Queen visited, he arrogantly gave her an ipod collection of his speeches. When former  Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited, he gave the President The Prime Minister gave Mr. Obama an ornamental pen holder, made from the timbers  of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet; a thoughtful, significant gift. What did Obama give in return?

Why, 25 DVDs of classic movies.

I wish I was joking.

Now we have another, perhaps ultimate snub. The funeral of the greatest post-WWII Prime Minister comes, and Obama blows it off. (Two Republican former Secretary’s of State did attend: George Schultz and James Baker.) This follows close on the heals of Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez unsuccessful attempt to block a resolution honoring the late Lady Thatcher in the Senate!

So its not just Obama, apparently. Other liberal Democrats have a visceral and (to my mind) distasteful dislike for one of America’s greatest friends.

Could it be that some on the left still begrudge our victory in the Cold War; and Thatcher’s support of Reagan (who they also hated) in brining this about? Or do they just dislike her because her conservative economic policies rescued Britain from economic decay and restored in Briton’s a national pride the leftist Labor’s policies had undermined?

I have never liked this President. I find him smug, arrogant, and when it comes to politics, classless.

Today, my judgment of him has been vindicated.

Here’s John Heyward of Human Event’s take on this snub to Thatcher and Great Britain:

There’s no other way to interpret this: it’s a deliberate and profoundly embarrassing slight to a vital American ally.  Granted, the United Kingdom isn’t quite as vital to American history, culture, business, or strategic interest as a world-straddling hyper-power like Ghana.  From Front Page Magazine:

When John Atta Mills, the President of Ghana, died last year, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally led the delegation to his funeral along with such figures as Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, General Carter F. Ham, the Commander of the United States Africa Command and Grant T. Harris, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs. But under Barack Obama, what Ghana gets, the United Kingdom does not. Instead the US delegation to the Thatcher funeral looks a lot like the US delegation to the Chavez funeral. Two former secretaries of state friendly to Thatcher and several congressmen who agreed with her views, including Michelle Bachmann. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is coming. Barack Obama obviously is not. Neither is any high ranking member of his government. As at Chavez’s funeral, the highest ranking Federal official will be the charge d’affaires at the American embassy. It’s hard to get any lower profile than that.

The UK Daily Mail reports this is not being taken well across the pond, where “friends and allies of Baroness Thatcher expressed ‘surprise and disappointment’ last night as it emerged President Obama is not planning to send any serving member of his Administration to her funeral.”

Former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox, Lady Thatcher’s closest ally in modern-day politics, said: ‘I think it would be both surprising and disappointing if after President Obama’s fulsome tribute to Lady Thatcher, the American administration did not send a senior serving member to represent them.’ Sir Gerald Howarth, chairman of the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group of MPs and peers, said: ‘The bonds forged between the UK and the US through Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in ending the Cold War and liberating millions of people. ‘That the present administration feels unable to be represented as the world marks the extraordinary contribution Margaret Thatcher made will be a source of disappointment to those who served with her in that great endeavour.’

The snub is especially noteworthy because the Queen herself will attend the funeral, a decision that “effectively elevated it to a state occasion unprecedented for a political figure in Britain since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.” According to the UK Sun, the British government is miffed that Angela Merkel won’t be attending from Germany, although at least she’ll be sending her foreign minister.  ”But Downing Street is most angered by rejections from Obama, First Lady Michelle, and Vice-President Joe Biden,” the Sun continues.  ”A No 10 source said last night: ‘We are a little surprised by the White House’s reaction, as we were expecting a high-profile attendance.’” The given reason for the complete lack of Administration officials at Lady Thatcher’s service is that everyone is busy pushing gun control legislation back in the United States, as the Daily Mail explains:

The US embassy insisted no snub was intended, but confirmed that Mr Baker and Mr Schulz would represent the US. ‘This is a hugely significant week in terms of US domestic politics,’ a spokesman added. He said that both the First Lady and the Vice President were ‘the President’s point people on gun control’, adding: ‘This is a week when there is a lot of movement on Capitol Hill on gun control issues.’

Every single member of the Administration is required to shove a half-baked grab bag of gun control measures nobody will actually read through Congress?  Half of the proposals heading for the Senate floor are born-to-die distractions, whose only purpose is to get voted down by red-state Democrats so they can polish up their “pro-gun” merit badges for the benefit of gullible constituents.  How about if Americans just keep our Constitutional rights, leaving Obama free to bring a blue-ribbon delegation to show proper respect to a towering figure of Western history?

THE OBAMA BUDGET PLAN

Comic-songster Ray Stevens’ satirical look at Obamanomics.