Obama on Snooze-Control

Obama – On Snooze-Control

 The View from the Middle

There was actually some great news for many Americans in President Obama’s final news conference of 2016.  A recording of this event will be made available through YouTube for the millions of Americans who suffer from occasional to chronic insomnia.  And it really works.  This is just my own personal testimony, but I had to watch it four times because I fell asleep during the first three viewings.

It’s also hard to be humorous and boring at the same time, but our President was able to pull it off.  At the end of his prelude to the news conference, the President was talking about his plans for his final year in office.  His actual words were, “I’m going to leave it all on the field”, which to any sports enthusiast suggests a supreme effort.  However, he said it with so little emotion that I didn’t know whether to doze off or laugh. 

Then the President segued into what I'll call “statistical babble” in an attempt to convince us that things couldn’t be better here in the good old US of A.  For example, unemployment has been cut in half to 5%.  Wow, that’s great.  Of course, he didn’t mention that’s because his administration drove it up to 10% after promising it would never go above 8%.  He also didn’t point out that the labor participation rate is at its lowest level since 1978 and in its longest decline – EVER.

Blah, blah, blah.  By the time he got done spewing his selective data I thought I was living in Whoville (after the Grinch returned Christmas) instead of the United States. He then went on to congratulate Congress on the great work they just did on the budget deal.  He said it’s a big win, and I’m sure it is – for somebody, but certainly not for the conservative Republicans who control the House and the Senate.  The Republican Congress getting kudos from Obama is like Hillary Clinton getting al-Baghdadi’s endorsement for President.  That analogy actually works for any American Presidential candidate.

Of course, he had to report that ISIS is on their deathbed - again.  And he was tricked into saying ISIS instead of ISIL.  Please do not call these thugs ISIL.  It is an aspirational label, and if you don’t believe me just look up what “The Levant” (the “L” in ISIL) includes.  And for God’s sake, he suggested, use your common sense and say something if you see something, unless you see a Muslim kid carrying what you think could be a briefcase bomb into a school.  In that case you’ll be vilified and sued and Obama will invite the kid to the White House.

And then he finished with what’s on top of everyone’s mind - we must close Gitmo.  Actually, I could not find a single recent survey of the American people where “closing Gitmo” even registers as a concern.  And making a financial argument by this administration to close Gitmo is a farce.  We spent more money training five Syrian rebels (that’s right 5) than it would take to fund Gitmo for a year.  There is plenty of waste in Washington that can be eliminated if we want to balance the budget.

He did finish strong, however.  He really perked up at the end when he talked about seeing Star Wars and going on vacation.  You may want to delete that part from your sleep inducing video, however.  It might actually wake you up!

Sam's CEO Rosalind Brewer on Diversity

Diversity for Diversity’s Sake

Just yesterday, CNN reporter Poppy Harlow interviewed Sam’s CEO Rosalind Brewer.  Ms. Brewer is a black female and part of the interview focused on diversity in the workplace, which has led to some screams of racism (or reverse racism if you prefer).  Being a 63-year-old white guy and a diversity agnostic, I thought I should check it out.

I have to admit, the claims of racism are way overblown.  Most of the interview was a substantive discussion of compensation for Walmart and Sam’s employees in the form of salaries and benefits.  Not only did I agree with her positions, but I also thought she conducted herself extremely well.  She was articulate and thoughtful and came across as a great role model for anyone climbing the corporate latter, no matter your race or gender.  I particularly liked her stance that companies should be responsible for the decision to provide certain benefits like paid family leave, versus government mandate.

At the very end of the interview Poppy asked Ms. Brewer what was she doing to get more people like herself into leadership positions at Walmart and Sam’s.  She suggested that it starts at the top and she was trying to do her part to mentor young black women and men.  I certainly don’t object to that, in fact I applaud it.  She didn’t say that she didn’t mentor old white guys like me.  I’m sure she does that also, but if truth be told, young black men and women are in need of positive role models and if she can be an example, I’m way OK with that.

But, I rarely agree with 100% of what anyone says, so I would have a small caution for Ms. Brewer.  At the end of her interview she talked about a company that was meeting with her that was represented by all white males.  This seemed to bother her.  My first warning to Ms. Brewer is that diversity is about more than skin color or gender.  Even if members of a group look the same, they could differ in levels of experiences, ways of thinking (brain styles if you wish), work ethic, etc.  The point is, diversity should be about results, not just looks.

I love to use sports as the example here.  The NBA has a real shortage of short, slow white guys.  Do you think they care?  They simply want to win and are willing to bring anyone onto the team that can help them do that.  However, they are looking for what I’ll call “good diversity”.  Shaquille O’Neal was a great player.  He was the NBA’s MVP and won four NBA titles with the Lakers and the Miami Heat, but can you imagine a team of five Shaqs?  They wouldn’t get the ball over mid court.

NBA teams want people with different skills.  Some need to shoot from the outside and some need to handle the ball and some need to dominate the paint, like Shaq did.  But the key to the diversity they are looking for revolves around winning, and so it should be with business.

As Ms. Brewer looked at the collection of white males, she should be asking, “how are they delivering for me?  Is there something missing from this group that is causing them to deliver a poor product to me?”  This will more likely deliver meaningful diversity that can make a positive difference.

In the mean time, I encourage Ms. Brewer to mentor and encourage all of the young people she can.  The world would be a better place with more Rosalind Brewers in it.

Climate Change and Terrorism

Climate Change Causes Terrorism?

 The View from the Middle

How would you like to create the perfect argument?  This argument would have to be invulnerable to actual statistics, impossible to totally understand and would not be reliant on any future results.  It would be impossible to prove wrong (or right for that matter).  And wouldn’t it be great if you could make millions if not billions of dollars supporting that argument!   Well, stop working on it.  It’s already been invented and it’s called “Global Warming”.   Oops, I mean “Climate Change”.  See, you can’t even tie these guys down to a name!

Remember, it was less than 40 years ago when Stephen Schneider, a top climate advisor for Al Gore, and a hoard of his fellow scientists were warning all of us of an upcoming “Ice Age”.  He also warned “we can't predict with any certainty what's happening to our own climatic future”.  Obviously, in the last 38 years Al has set him down and said, “Hey Steve!  Let’s go with warming instead of freezing and let's say we CAN predict what’s going to happen!”  That makes all the difference in the world.

Of course, Al and Steve stumbled out of the gate by making some actual predictions.  They said the polar ice caps would be gone by 2010, and New York and Miami would be under water.   But these missteps are no problem for the perfect argument.  They just denied those predictions for a while and then changed them when they got caught.  Now these catastrophic events will happen in a hundred years if we don’t act right now.  Of course, Al and Steve will be long dead by then and Al's children’s, children will be spending his billions on some other con game they can perpetrate on America.

And now they’ve changed their cause’s name to “Climate Change”, because temperatures have not been increasing for the past 20 years of so.  This allows them to use any weather related event in their argument.  If we have a year with a lot of hurricanes, it’s Climate Change.  If we have a year with very few hurricanes, it’s Climate Change.  If it rains – Climate Change.  If it doesn’t – Climate Change.  Tornadoes – Climate Change.  No tornadoes – Climate Change.  I think you get the picture. 

But the inaccurate predictions and claims that every event supports their theory have begun to make many of us a little skeptical.  Moving the goalpost for their prophecies to a hundred years from now was the straw that broke my climatological back.  Charles Krauthammer also became suspicious of the all-inclusive claims.  He pointed out that, “if everything supports your hypothesis, then nothing supports it!”  I’m with Chuck!

And now President Obama and Bernie Sanders are trying to claim that Climate Change is causing radical Islamic terrorism.  Wow, how do you disprove that, or prove it?  Don’t worry.  That’s the great thing about the perfect argument.  You don’t have to prove any of this stuff.  You just have to throw it out there and let the rest of us argue about it while you develop your next line of bull.  I’m going to take a big risk here and suggest a counter argument to the President and Bernie.  I think radical Islamic terrorism is caused by a relatively small but growing fanatical, religious group whose goal is to bring the entire world under their control.  Call me silly, but that’s what they say, and I take them at their word.

It finally dawned on me the other day, as I watched the President suggest that Climate Change caused terrorism that even the eventual results don’t matter.  If temperatures fall or maintain, Al, Mr. Obama and Bernie will take credit.  I can just hear them now.  “If we hadn’t done X-Y or Z we wouldn’t have seen these results”.   But, if temperatures go up, it will be because we didn’t do enough.  No one will be able to prove it either way.  And that’s when it hit me.  These guys are full of it, but they have invented the perfect argument.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we should trash the earth, but I am suggesting that no one totally understands how our climate works.  Even climatologists will agree that it is a VERY complex system.  We’ve been through these cycles before when man was clearly not the cause.  This could be a natural process that God put in place when He created the world and we can have little to no impact on it.  If you’re an atheist you can substitute “Mother Nature” for God.   Whatever!

But before we start trashing our economy by destroying the fossil fuel industries, we need to do a lot more honest study on this subject.  There are even some scientists who believe the warming that the President is predicting could be beneficial to the earth.  Whatever you do, feel empowered to be skeptical.  Don’t fall for this unprovable argument.  Don’t trust anyone who tells you that you have to give them money today in the form of carbon taxes or subsidized energy costs or the world will end in 100 years.  Conveniently for these doomsayers, anyone who is reading this article will be dead by then. 

If you aren’t skeptical yet, remember Rahm Emanuel’s famous saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  He was implying that he would use any crisis to advance his ideological agenda.  And if you don’t have a real crisis lying around, just make one up.  Can anyone say “Climate Change”?