69 Years Ago Today......

If studying history has given me nothing else, it has given me perspective. And perspective is a gift. It allows you to relate to current events in your own life without overreacting – good or bad. If things are going well, perspective can give you humility. If things are going bad, perspective gives you solace.

So on June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill (the Prime Minister of Britain) gave a speech to Parliament. It was the first year of World War II and Germany had just rolled through France and took over the country – completely unprovoked. Churchill knew that Britain was Hitler’s next target and they we’re going to be in a fight for their lives - literally. Here is an excerpt from one of the most famous speeches ever given:

What General Weygand has called the Battle of France, is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Less than a month later, the Germans starting bombing England incessantly. People in London were forced to live in the subways for fear of the bombings in their neighborhoods. The battle lasted a year and England never gave in. Some historians believe this was the turning point in the war. If Hitler got Britain, he would have their airfields to help fly bombers to North America.

So when you feel things are tough out there, go on-line and find an 80 year old from England to chat with. Ask them what it was like to live in a subway while their home was being decimated for being in a country that Hitler needed in his quest for world domination. Ask them what it was like to know that any given day someone they knew and loved would get killed – completely unprovoked. Or that they themselves could be in harms way by simply running outside to get their food rations for the day. Then ask them how they’re handling these “tough” times we’re faced with today. I bet you might just get an LOL.

Yep. History sure does give you perspective.

Obama's sound stands out more than his look

Much has been made about Barack Obama being the first person of color to get elected President.  To me, what has stood out more are his skills as an orator.  He's arguably the most charismatic speaker in the White House in my lifetime.  Believe me, I'm a fan of "The Great Communicator" Ronald Reagan, but Obama has a more youthful exuberance that the 70 year old Reagan just couldn't have.  Perhaps Obama's oratory skills shine due to the sharp contrast of his predecessor's skills - or lack thereof.

His last couple of speeches were more on the "doom and gloom" side, which was a little disappointing.  I'd been looking to see something more reminiscient of FDR's "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself".  I think we got that tonight.  Whether you agree or disagree with his position on things, I don't think you can deny that he comes across confident, inspiring, intelligent and in-touch with the situation.  The political debate comes in the policies put in place.

He seemed to "promise the world" on his set of initiatives, which sounded inspiring.  I think he got so good at campaigning, he doesn't want to stop.  Which is why we heard great rhetoric without specifics.  But he's smart enough to know the public is bored with specifics anyway, they just want a guy in charge who has some kind of vision he's working toward.  That's the essence of leadership.  It doesn't really matter what he promises anyway since you're ultimately judged on what you actually accomplish as President, not everything you promised.  

Can he accomplish all he promised?  Personally, I'm struggling with the math.  Not sure how you can increase government programs while simultaneously cut spending to go along with declining tax revenues from a contracting economy.  But that's for the political pundits on Fox and CNN to debate.  In times of crisis, action in any direction always wins out.

New to Us, Doesn't Mean its New

As I watched President Obama pitch the Stimulus Bill to the country, I noticed he said we were in "unprecedented times."  That's when I realized he was more of a salesman at that moment, trying to get the country behind the bill.  I also learned that night that the Stimulus Bill wasn't Bill Clinton's nickname, as I originally thought. ;-)  So I decided to take the whole "unprecedented times" phrase and do some research and I found the following paragraph:

"The causes of the economic crisis lay far deeper than in the complex processes of banking or in the faults of Federal administration of the finances.  But, as a man suddenly ill prefers to find for his ailment some recent and obvious cause, and is not convinced that its origin lay in old and continued habits of life, so the greater part of the American people and of their leaders believe this extraordinary crisis to be the result of financial blunders of the President's administration.  They believe that the new president could with a few strokes of his pen repair, if he pleased, those blunders and restore commercial confidence and prosperity.  This crisis became, and remain, the subject of political and partisan differences which obscure its real phenomena and causes."

Sound like they're talking about today?  This was written in 1888 and they were discussing the "Panic of 1837" which, at the time, was the worst economic crisis to hit our country.  The sitting president was Andrew Jackson and the new president was Martin Van Buren.  What were the causes?  There was an increased level of available credit which allowed states to fund the building of canals through the use of state-issued bonds.  Credit restrictions were gradually loosened and the speculative fever created a bubble that burst in May of 1837.  The Panic was followed by a 5 year depression, with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels.  Kinda eerie, isn't it?  The Panic of 1873 had a major Wall Street brokerage firm go under that created panic in the markets.  The Panic of 1907 required a monetary bailout of Wall Street banks to ensure liquidity in the marketplace.  Human nature, if nothing else, is consistent.

Here is the list of Panics, Depressions and severe Recessions in our "boom-bust" economic cycles:

Panic of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1907 (the Federal Reserve was created after this one)

Great Depression - 1930 (lasted 12 yrs, followed by 4 yrs of WWII)

Severe Recession 1980 (milder recessions in 1958 & 1974)

Severe Recession 2008 (milder recessions in 1991 & 2001)

As you can see, the Panics were like clockwork.  Things got spread out once we started putting different things in place, but they'll never go away.  As far as the Stimulus Package that's getting all the hoopla right now.  It's just the new, New Deal - government funded projects to help ease some pressure until the markets can correct themselves.  Government can't get us out of it, they never have and never will.  They have to tell us they can, so to keep us convinced of their importance.  How do I know?  Because these are VERY precedented times.

Any room for a liberal conservative?

It's an election year which means lines in the sand are drawn between colleagues, peers, relatives, friends and foes.  The questions invariably come up -- "Are you a Democrat or Republican?  Are you a liberal or conservative?  You gotta pick one, so which is it?"  Once you answer, you're immediately lumped in with ALL of the stereotypical ideologies of each party.  And that's the problem.  If I look at a list of 10 popular subjects with the liberal stance on one side and the conservative on the other - I may circle 5 of each, or 3 and 7 or 6 and 4.  To me, all are critical concerns (economic policy, health care, social security, etc.).  So who's MY party if my opinions are split?  Are you allowed to be pro-choice and want to "drill, baby drill?"  Can you be pro-life and a staunch environmentalist?  Will your political party accept you if you don't agree with 10 of 10?  Is there no room for independent thought on topics of such great diversity?

George Washington was able to run unopposed twice without a firm two-party system in place. As his second term was ending, lines were being drawn as a two-party system was beginning to evolve.  Washington, an educated and insightful man, gave his concerns on this subject in his farewell speech in Sept of 1796:

"....It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.  It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection....."

I'm not sure if I've ever heard a more prophetic statement in my life (btw, I had to look up the word "foment" too). His opinion was based on two-party systems in Europe and the dynamics that evolved.  I hear people say, "I've never seen an election get this bad."  My response has been, "That's funny, I hear people say that every presidential election year."  Does it mean its getting worse or do we just have short memories?  Well folks, we have short memories.  It's been this bad ever since the election of 1796 - the first time we had two candidates run against each other. In fact, it's probably more civilized, but no less combative.

The question becomes, "Is a two-party (or multi-party) system a good thing?  Is it necessary?"  I believe it is a necessary evil for the betterment of our country.  We have 300 million people in this country with just as many thoughts and opinions.  With that, there's a constant tug-of-war from our elected officials on what are the right decisions. Let me give you an example of how multiple opinions can create the right result. Sir Francis Galton was the first to develop statistical theories on "standard deviation" and "regression to the mean." In 1906, Galton visited a livestock fair and stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was on display and the villagers were invited to guess the animal's weight after it was slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 gave it a go and, not surprisingly, not one hit the exact mark of 1,198 pounds. Astonishingly, however, the average of those 800 guesses (which were all over the place) came very close at 1,197 pounds.

There were a lot of different opinions that varied greatly, but averaged out to be right where it needed to be.  And that's the beauty of the two-party system.  Within this, there can be a focus of the top issues with varied opinions combined with the balance of power through the 3 branches of government that result in the average of all the opinions.  Where things can go terribly wrong is when we don't have an opinion on something - like complicated highly leveraged mortgage-back securities.  Well guess what..............we have an opinion on that now, don't we?  And the average of those opinions has been enacted.

So does it really matter that there's no party for a liberal conservative like myself? I guess not.  I'll vote for my guy and trust that, over time, the average of the opinions will continue to move us forward - or as the old saying goes - "It all comes out in the wash."

An Inaccurate Truth?

I was at a party last night and "An Inconvenient Truth" (Al Gore's latest book, now an independent film) was brought up as a "must see."  If you weren't aware, "An Inconvenient Truth" is about global warming.  The independent film of the same title has been released internationally.  I am here to tell you that Al Gore is absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time.  As you know, I am not a scientist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.  But you don't have to be a scientist to see the misleading arguments within Al Gore's latest attempt at spreading fear to pursue his own misguided agenda.

In the movie, Gore highlights the receding ice cap of Kilimanjaro along with the steadily increasing global temperatures over the past 15 years.  He talks about 2005 as the worst hurricane season ever in America. These statistics combined with compelling video shots of Kilimanjaro and dried up lake beds are enough to scare the hell out of anyone.  But if  you take a step back and look at the big picture, there are some pretty obvious flaws.  Just like watching a magician, don't look at the hand he wants you to look at - the trick is in the other hand.

The most basic and critical flaw to the whole argument is "the sample."  For Gore to say that the 2005 hurricane season was the worst on American record is true.  What he fails to tell you is that we've only been counting hurricanes since the 1930's - and that's only if they actually hit land.  If they spun off to sea or didn't hit the U.S., they didn't count.  I don't need to call Chuck Gaidica to find out that there have been a few hundred million hurricane seasons prior to 1930.  Not a good sample.  By the way, it wasn't the force of Katrina that caused most of the damage of New Orleans and expense to taxpayers.  It was the floods created by the breached levee's - made possible by inept local politicians.

Now let's talk about the receding ice cap of Africa's Kilimanjaro.  Yes, Mr. Gore is right again.  It is receding - just like it did in 1880.  That was well before the modern era of greenhouse gases and Henry Ford's Model T.  Why did it recede? Scientists found that leading up to 1880, the region shifted from a very humid to a dry climate.  This meant less cloud cover which exposed the glacier to more direct sunlight, thus leading to less snowfall to replace the sublimating ice.  This "non-internal combustion caused" recession of 1880 occurred on Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda.  There are no written records of this type of recession occurring prior to 1880, but I'm willing to bet that in the 4 billion years prior to 1880, it probably happened a couple more times.

Let's go back to "the sample" for a moment.  Record keeping on our weather began about 120 years ago - and only the last half is really accurate.  So all of our record highs and lows and our averages are all based on the past 120 years.  The simple problem with this is that we've been having weather for about 4 BILLION years.  This means that the past 120 years represents .00000325% of our weather history.  Not a good sample.  I think we can all agree that .016% would be a better sample.  I'll do the math for you - .016% represents about 650,000 years.  Still not a great sample, but better than .00000325%.

Are we experiencing global warming? Yes, of course we are.  We are currently in the early stages of what geologists call an "interglacial period."  An interglacial period is the time frame that falls between "glacial" periods - or Ice Ages.  In the past 650,000 years there have been 4 interglacial periods with 7 instances of global warming.  Each instance of global warming ranged from 40,000 - 100,000 years.  Each of the 4 glacial periods, or "Ice Ages" or "global cooling" had similar time ranges.  And that's ONLY in the last 650,000 years.

Our current interglacial period began about 10,000 years ago and could go for another 30,000 to 90,000 years no matter what.  So lets check our human ego's at the door and realize that the earth is a much bigger place than we think and we have a lot less effect on its outcome than Mr. Gore would have us believe.  This doesn't mean we don't have real issues of smog, toxic waste, etc.  Those are real issues that have a negative effect on our current lives. My point is that global warming is NOT new and has been happening since the beginning of time - over and over again.  We need to understand that the earth's orbit is not a circle, but elliptical.  Because of this, along with the "wobble" effect of the earth's rotation on its axis, there are great variances as we fly around the sun.  These variances alter the amount of the sun's radiation on earth, which alters our annual weather patterns as well as help create glacial and interglacial periods.  So I would expect our current global warming trend to increase slightly for the next 20,000 years before it starts to level off.

Thanks Al Gore, you give liberals a bad name.  I must say, I AM thankful to Mr. Gore for inventing the internet.  Because without it, I wouldn't have been able to look up all this information on a Sunday night.  Now, back to the football game.