RUTHFULLY YOURS

One’s personal grievances are not conclusive evidence of society-wide problems.
At the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen takes issue with critics (me among them) of Michelle Obama’s comments at the recent dedication of the New York City’s new Whitney museum. After a few unpleasant words about Rush Limbaugh, Cohen gets to his argument, the whole of which is neatly summarized in the second of these two sentences:

When the first lady of the United States suggests that something’s wrong when black and other minority children feel alienated from an institution like the Whitney Museum of American Art, maybe she has reason for saying so. In fact, she was talking out of experience.

I have referred to Cohen’s “argument,” but I regret to say that that is a misnomer. In fact, Cohen has abdicated the responsibility for making an argument, finding it sufficient to pin his conclusion entirely on the first lady’s testimony: Mrs. Obama has felt it, therefore it is a problem. Q.E.D.

The Obama narrative that Israel poses the only opposition goes up in smoke.
There appears to be a small problem with President Barack Obama’s summit of Persian Gulf states taking place at Camp David on Thursday: Arab leaders want virtually nothing [2] to do with it. Only the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait, two out of the six leaders of countries that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), will attend. The point man of the apparent snub is Saudi Arabian monarch King Salman, who took power in January after his brother, King Abdullah, died. Salman decided [3] not to attend at the eleventh hour, despite Obama promising him a separate meeting, described [4] by sources in Riyadh as a “photo op” aimed at convincing an American audience that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are on board with Obama’s determination to secure a deal with Iran. They aren’t.

The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council has long been regarded by the sane world as a farcical organization consisting of the world’s worst human rights abusers. It is a place where nations like Saudi Arabia – which still implements oppressive Sharia laws, subjugates women and bans all religions except for Islam – sits in judgment of other nations and dictates to them ways in which to address human rights abuses. In metaphoric terms, it’s akin to the fox guarding the chicken coop.

Driven by blind anti-Semitism and hatred for the “infidel Yahuds” who defile “holy Arab-Muslim soil,” Israel frequently and almost exclusively finds itself on the receiving end of the UNHRC’s hypocritical invective. Occasionally, however, the democracy stalwarts of the UNHRC will challenge the human rights records of other democracies. On Monday, the Council zeroed [2] in on the United States and took great pleasure in needling the world’s greatest democracy.

In the Cold War days, the KGB relied on an extensive network of Communists and leftist fellow travelers for espionage and propaganda. As the motherland of socialism, the USSR could draw on allegiances from foreign leftists too in love with all the infrastructure projects to care about the prisoners building them.

But the easy ideological solidarity was faltering even during the Cold War. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the temporary anti-war line demanded of Western Communists and fellow travelers put a bigger strain on the relationship than the assorted trials and executions of domestic Communists had. Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin drove away the Stalinists and left the apologists. The USSR lost its radical edge and those seeking it turned to Communist regimes in Asia and Third World terrorists.

President Obama said today that the incidents with police in Baltimore and Ferguson, along with “a growing awareness of inequality in our society,” can turn attention back to poverty in America and bridge “ideological divides that have prevented us from making progress.”

At the Georgetown University panel on poverty, Obama name-dropped Ayn Rand and acknowledged he may speak differently to a black audience.

Panelists joining the president were American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor Robert Putnam, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

Megyn Kelly interviewed former Governor Jeb Bush on Monday and took the opportunity to ask him about his support for the Common Core education standards. Unfortunately, she asked the wrong questions and didn’t follow up when Bush gave a glib and weaselly little speech about how he’s a firm believer that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in education standards.

Kelly noted that Common Core is wildly unpopular with Republican voters. According to the latest Gallup poll, 58% of Republican parents have a negative view of it and only 19% favor it. “They say it makes no sense. It forces teaching to the test. They say kids are in tears over it. Are they wrong?” Kelly asked.

Heroic quarterback Tom Brady was apparently caught lying about his involvement in deflating footballs. One assumes that such prevarication counts for little in the larger scheme of football and Tom Brady’s own career trajectory. His defense is that he did not need to use underinflated footballs to win, so what did a lie or two matter?

Were he a second-string quarterback on a losing team, he might be roundly denounced and suffer real consequences rather than a likely brief suspension. No one ever quite believed Lance Armstrong when he swore that he was not using enhancement drugs; they assumed he certainly was doping, but preferred to see him excel and set records first, and then only later get caught and fess up. When he was no longer in the news, then his lying caught up with him.

The national hero Gen. David Petraeus was caught lying when he told federal officials that he had not shared top-secret documents with his mistress. The law and the public apparently bestow to Petraeus, a good man, a sort of exemption from serious punishment on the logic once outlined by Pericles about putting into context the sins of the military hero or in the fashion that we forgave Bill Clinton’s untruths. Academics assured us that in matters of adultery, constructing competing narratives is quite understandable for all involved and sometimes good etiquette.

“If Fast Track passes, Obama will be empowered to negotiate pretend “free trade” agreements that create the equivalent of an international EPA, enable currency manipulation, and slow U.S. economic growth far into the distant future. That would be Obama’s parting present to America — gift wrapped by a Republican Congress.”

American businesses are subject to many levels of regulation. But federal, state, and local levels of environmental regulation are not enough for President Obama. He is currently negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which will add the equivalent of an international Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Obama’s enthusiasm for international regulation is no surprise. More surprising is that Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is helping Obama. Political analyst Dick Morris is aghast. The title of his commentary about climate change and TPP is entitled: “GOP: Lost Its Soul or Just Its Mind?”

Ironically, this is the same McConnell who is fighting the federal EPA’s climate change regulations that are closing America’s coal-fired power plants and threatening the jobs of Kentucky miners.

Perhaps McConnell is simply unaware of TPP implications. TPP is secret from the American people and only two senators say that they have read it, neither of whom is named McConnell.

McConnell reports that working so closely with Obama on Fast-Track has been “an almost out-of-body experience” for him. The simplest explanation is that McConnell has received a transplant of Nancy Pelosi’s brain!

There are two kinds of ice ages; they are fundamentally different and therefore require different methods of mitigation: (i) Major (Milankovich-style) glaciations occur on a 100,000-year time-scale and are controlled astronomically. (ii) “Little” ice ages were discovered in ice cores; they have been occurring on an approx. 1500-yr cycle and are likely controlled by the Sun. The current cycle’s cooling phase may be imminent and calls for urgent action.

Major glaciations – on a 100,000-year time scale

I recently published an essay on how to avoid the next major ice age; there have been nearly 20 such glaciations in the past two to three million years. The coolings are rather severe: the most recent one, ending only about 12,000 years ago, covered much of North America and Europe with miles-thick continental ice sheets and led to the disappearance of barely surviving bands of Neanderthalers; they were displaced by the more adaptable Homo Sapiens.

According to the Serbian astronomer Milankovich, glaciation timing was controlled by astronomical parameters, such as oscillations with a 100,000-year period of the eccentricity of the Earth’s elliptic orbit around the Sun; oscillations with a period of 41,000 years of the Earth’s “obliquity” (inclination of the spin axis to the orbit plane, currently at around 23 degrees); and a precession of this spin axis, with a period of about 21,000 years.

While many consider the timing issue as settled, there are plenty of scientific puzzles still awaiting solutions: For example, how to explain the suddenness of de-glaciation, transiting within only centuries from a glaciation maximum into a warm Inter-glacial, like the present Holocene period.

The trade bill failed a major procedural vote on Tuesday, with every Senate Democrat save one blocking debate on what President Obama continues to call an economic priority. The 52-45 liberal blockade doesn’t mean trade-promotion authority is dead. But preventing a setback from becoming a rout will require a Republican salvage operation to rescue Mr. Obama from the consequences of his governing methods.

The politics of trade require Presidents to cultivate coalitions from the center out, building a majority between statist progressives and the protectionist right. But that is not Mr. Obama’s thing. His instincts are to govern from the left, treat Members of Congress as peasants who must bow before his superior wisdom, and then assail the motives and character of his opponents.