The inspiration for this little 1,600-word essay actually popped up in 2004 following the mega-tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands. No, I did not have a religious epiphany, I did not denounce an unreasonably cruel Deity nor did I suffer an awakened interest in tectonic plate technology. When some “experts” and politicians blamed the disaster on global warming, that’s when I said, “Okay, that’s enough! I’m not listening to this crap any longer!”

Even I, possessor of a BA in English and an MBA, and therefore bereft of formal scientific training (unless you count my agonized freshman physics and biology courses) know that tsunamis of that magnitude are triggered by sub-oceanic earthquakes. And yet, here were grown-up human beings either so wretchedly misinformed, or enamored of the global warming, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario that they abandoned common sense and any pretentions of respect for the intellectual capacity of their fellow humans and lied through their teeth! Even now, I can feel the disgust rising in my gorge like bile.

And now, according to the latest environmental reports from the world monitors headquartered in the Netherlands , China is now the world’s biggest polluter. Moreover, that country is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical generation capacity each year. That’s equivalent to adding the entire capacity of the United States every three years! Moreover, we know now that a third of California ’s air pollution and a fifth of Oregon ’s already comes from China . And I am both saddened and amused to note that the coal-fired generating plants being built by India and China , from now through 2012, will generate five times the would-be total carbon dioxide savings of the Kyoto accords. So if the Algores of the world are right, and doom is only ten years away, the only hope we have for survival is to H-Bomb China and India back to the Stone Age and keep ‘em from building the world’s two biggest middle classes which, if they continue living, will all want air conditioning and SUVs.

I took a look at what the “global warming deniers,” had to say. (You know, the ones who deny global warming after tiring of denying the holocaust). It is an interesting bunch, many of whom are impressively qualified as climatologists, meteorologists, chemists and physicists who have reasoned stances on the warming question. There too were the pro-warmers who also had all kinds of impressive credentials and reasoned, well-researched stances and are convinced life on earth would end before our SUVs needed new tires. It at first appeared to be a black or white situation, either we were going to sizzle in an inferno of our own making or the whole thing was a hoax, perpetuated by the politicians and those morally adaptable scientists so eager for government grants they were willing to let the truth be damned. One thing became very clear, the most hysterical and vocal factions interpreted available data in only one direction, the worst possible. They were taking ranges of possibilities posited by real scientists and turning them into a hard and fast rise at the peak of the range. Everything they said and unloaded on a terrified public was taken from the utmost extremes of what was originally a mathematical range of possibilities. This practice, in turn, prompted the deniers to respond with an intractable “liar, liar, pants on fire” counter-position and thus the battle was joined.

I will add, though it is unnecessary, that the news media, under the sacred and indisputable prime directive, “if it bleeds, it leads,” were systematically ignoring any scientific position that did not support the direst of scenarios. When the politicians saw almost unlimited possibilities of exploiting dying planet fears to grab even greater power, to impose larger taxes, or just to get rich on the side, the die was cast.

I waded through a lot of material. As I learned to avoid the extremes and winnowed down through the believers and deniers, I found a pattern emerging. The most sober and seemingly most unselfish and objective of the writers were those who had held a long-time concern about the health of the planet itself. Allow me to quote a sampling of some off-hand observations from a few of them.

Recently, many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we’ve seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe.

Richard Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Earth’s mean surface temperature is doubtlessly warmer than it was 100 years ago. Get over it.

What matters is (1)how much it has warmed, (2)how much of that warming is caused by human activity, and (3)how the relationship between that activity and present temperatures can be translated into a reliable estimate of future warming and its effects.

Patrick J. Michaels
Professor of Environmental Sciences,
Research Professor and State Climatologist
University of Virginia
Co-author, Climate of Extremes

“We are defiling our Earth… destroying the wilderness…decimating the biosphere…and we will end up by killing ourselves in the process.” We know the litany and have heard it so often that yet another repetition is, well, almost reassuring. There is just one problem: it does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence.

Bjorn Lomberg
Associate Professor of Statistics
University of Aarhus , Denmark
Author, The Skeptical Environmentalist

…many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation and social injustice.

Freeman Dyson
Theoretical physicist and Mathematician
Writing in the New York Review of Books

You can see from what these gentlemen said, the Earth is getting warmer, but there is no need for immediate panic. Instead, we should be seeing to those that are suffering the most and start taking realistic (and actually doable) steps now to prevent our atmosphere from becoming a 22nd century dump ground for poisonous wastes while, at the same time, avoiding hasty moves that might impoverish our nation. Let me quote from uber statistician Lomberg’s objective view of our present situation.

We are not running out of energy or natural resources. In 1900, we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country.

Global warming, though its size and future projections are rather unrealistically pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, and moreover its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future. But the typical cure of early and radical fossil fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affliction. Nor will we lose 25-50 percent of all species in our lifetime – in fact we are losing probably 0.7 percent. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted.

Lomberg tempers his glowing report:

Please note carefully what I am saying here: that by far the majority of indicators show that mankind’s lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, mean that everything is good enough.…ever fewer people in the world are starving. In 1975, 35 percent of all people in developing countries were starving. In 1996, the figure was 18 percent and the UN expects that the figure will have fallen to 12 percent by 2010. This is remarkable progress: 237 million fewer people starving.

...but in 2010, there will still be 680 million people starving , which is obviously not good enough.

We can now see that the idea of ending world hunger is no longer a pipe dream envisioned by starry-eyed dreamers. With the progress mankind has made in the 20th century, we now can see that actually ending starvation is an achievable goal.

So the Earth gets warmer as it has in the past. The Medieval Warming Period, which occurred long before SUVs, was when the Vikings farmed Greenland and raised livestock for 400 years till the icecap came back (which the experts with all their models still can’t explain). If the Earth warms, we’ll deal with it. If the politicians don’t know how to do it, let’s tell them to move aside and be supportive while the scientists lead the way.

Development of a non-fossil fuel for transportation purposes is not yet on the horizon and probably won’t be for 30 to 40 more years. Moreover, it will be extremely expensive to create. Such development not only will require huge amounts of money but close and honest cooperation among the developed countries. The important thing is we cannot cripple our own economy by hasty and illogical action so that we have the funds available for research. There is a logical sequence in which these things must occur. Though our politicians are having trouble apprehending that, we must be charitable, knowing logic is not necessarily their guiding force.

The pols keep shooting off their mouths about an energy crisis. If there indeed is an energy crisis in this country, it is caused by the United States Congress refusing to allow drilling in deposits that will meet our needs for the next 100 years. If you’ll recall, the much-maligned Governor Palin of Alaska wondered in the press why we genuflect to the descendants of camel-drivers (my wording, not hers) and crawl, cap in hand, begging them to step up production of oil when the Chukchi’s waters northwest of Alaska are brimming with gas and oil. Whatever you think of that lady, she was more than damn well right in what she said. As it turns out, the U. S. Geological Survey now says that Chukchi contains 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, 30% of the world’s supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the globe’s conventional resources. If we don’t exploit it, Vladimir Putin will and then we can buy it from him and let his commissars set the price

Max sat down on my couch, twisted the cap off a dark beer and looked thoughtful. I asked, “What’s on your mind?”

He replied, “I’ve been reading some editorials about this and that, matters political, you know. I sort of put together some questions that beg for answers.”

“Now, are you being serious?” I asked. “Or is this some kind of gotcha?”

“No, I assure you,” he answered. “I’m being very serious. The Press and the talking heads aren’t really coming up with the answers that I’m looking for.”

The answers for which I am looking.” I corrected. “Grammar, grammar.”

Max gave me that look of his that signifies he is out of patience.

“Anyway, do you want to hear my questions?” he asked, squinting at me.

“Certainly, why would I not?” I retorted.

He ignored my smart mouth and went on.

“People seemed to be so surprised at Obama’s reaction to the dynamic Latin duo spewing out their hatred of America .”

“You’re talking about Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega no doubt. What reaction was that?”

“That’s the problem,” Max replied. “There was bland indifference, as if they had commented on the weather.”

“Oh yeh, now I remember. What’s your answer?”

Max leaned back and gazed out my window. “Obama spent most of his childhood hearing about how unfair and unjust the free enterprise system is and his adult life hanging out with people who hate this country and run their mouths constantly about it. So when Ortega and Chavez joined the chorus of how bad we all are, he just thought it was another day in the neighborhood. We can’t really expect him to rebut that asinine effluvia.”

“Conditioning is everything,” I remarked. “What’s next?”

Max said, “There has been an awful lot of after-the-fact moralizing, breast-beating and really loopy talk about charging some attorneys with felonies because they gave legal opinions on interrogations , right?”

“Right.”

“They have very carefully ignored the reality of give and take, trade-offs, in other words. The reality is, if you are in charge, you have to ask yourself how many American lives are you prepared to sacrifice so you can spare an uber terrorist from experiencing some discomfort?”

“Good point,” I observed. “I think there may be a couple of thousand Los Angelenos walking around right now that wouldn’t have been alive if someone had stopped to ponder that question. How many do we let die, a thousand, five thousand? Is that piece of religio-pathological scum sitting in that chair in front of you worth a single one of those Americans, much less a thousand?”

“Nice summing up,” Max said.

“Thank you. Anything else I can help you with?”

“With which I can help you!” Max barked, then laughed.

I was speechless.

“While you are licking your wounds,” Max said, “I’ll pose another question.”

“Since morality deals with behavior and not geography, why is the relocation of terrorists from Gitmo to the United States suddenly a moral problem?”

“Other than illustrating to all of us why the prison at Gitmo was built in the first place, it isn’t a moral problem. But hold it Max, that ain’t all of it.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“If these terrorists…can I still call them terrorists or do I have to call them ‘freedom fighters” or ‘poor misunderstood babies’?”

Max answered, “You are among friends, call them anything you like.”

“If these terrorists,” I went on, “are located within prisons in the United States, and some of them, carefully selected for the assignment, are placed within the jurisdiction of certain enemy-friendly circuit court judges who can find a reason to turn a few of them loose, what do we do?”

“You just broke the code, my good fellow!” Max exclaimed faking a British accent. “Indeed, what do we do?”

“I like ‘em where they are, Max,” I said.

“I think the general population feels the same way,” he replied.

“I think we’ve come up with some darned good answers, Max. A good day’s work.”

“There’s one more,” he said, holding up an index finger.

“The heaviest one of all, no doubt?” I asked.

“Indubitably!” he replied.

I sighed and said resignedly, “Hit me with it.”

Max leaned back, put his fingertips together and closed his eyes. Pronouncing each word carefully, he intoned, “Since governments are supposed to govern, why should they attempt to micro-manage economies?Any government self-deluded enough to think it can micro-manage an economy which depends on literally ten of thousands of inter-related and constantly changing economic and demand relationships is much more highly likely to screw things up than make them better. The Soviet central planners never understood that. But of course, most of them were assassins and thieves before becoming commissars, so it’s understandable. But remember, their economy could be propped up for just so long and finally folded.”

I laughed. “I can think of some government screw-ups right out of the starting gate.”

“Such as?”

“Yucca Mountain for one. Been working on it since 1987, spent eighteen and a half billion dollars of taxpayer money so we’d have a place to store spent nuclear fuel and now we’ll never use it; not because of technical problems but because of politics. We're talking about nukes instead of coal, but where in hell do we put the expended fuel?”

“Bravo!” Max said. “And how about Fannie and Freddy and the whole mortgage mess? The House and Senate financial committees who owned Fan and Fred told everyone the old loan vetting rules were off and to put those poor people in houses regardless, and the whole time, whenever the market started cooling and trying to self-regulate, the Fed kept cutting the interest rate to blindly keep things hot until the bottom dropped out.”

“Nicely phrased, my friend!” I brayed.

“And how about my favorite, Nixon’s War on Drugs?" Max announced. " The government spends $75 billion a year on the drug War, half of the Americans now in jail and prison are there because of it and it takes up 50% of the time of our judiciary. The all-wise, all-seeing government has spent hundreds of billions since the Nixon administration and has not denied one single person the drug of his choice. It’s a farce, a complete failure and the people of this country cling to it like it’s the Shroud of Turin or the Holy Grail. What a waste! What a pathetic waste of time, money and humanity!”

“But it employs a lot of people, especially prison guards and pays really neat salaries to a bunch of bureaucrats, Max,” I pointed out.

“My point exactly!” he replied.

“We have answers, Max. To whom can we give them?”

Max slumped back on the couch and shook his head. “Everyone on our distribution lists, to start with. Remember what Chairman Mao said: ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’”

“Yep,” I replied. “And he finished that journey, didn’t he?”

Max nodded. “The first part, China . Let us hope that his boys are not thinking about the rest of it beyond Taiwan ,” he said darkly.

“Taking any bets? I asked.

Max just raised his left eyebrow in the way of an answer

I called Max on the phone and asked him what recent words he’d heard that he thought would go down in history. He said, “That incompetent George Bush spent us into a trillion dollar deficit. I’m going to fix it by spending us into a four trillion dollar deficit.”

“Words to live by, Max,” I said. “Surely those words will be engraved in marble somewhere, someday.”

“What’s really on your mind,” he asked.

“I was wondering about the speaker of the house, Nancy baby. I haven’t seen any rants coming out of you about her.”

“It would be an overly crowded field if I started ranting about dear little Nancy ,” he replied. “The Republicans are loudly enjoying their outrage, Fox News is leading the march of the peasants, complete with torches and pitchforks, and the Democrats won’t release any illuminating documents because they claim they are suddenly classified and thus sacrosanct. My voice would be a twitter in a thunderstorm. I am content to sit back and watch events unfold.”

“Then you would not add your voice to the attack on Miz Speaker?”

“No, I believe in being charitable. After all, she really may have been unaware that those nasty CIA types were telling her about torture.”

“How could she not hear that what everyone else in the room did?” I asked incredulously.

“Well now, give her the benefit of the doubt,” Max soothed. “After all, she has a tough job which demands long hours. It’s possible she drifted off during the briefing and failed to catch all the subtle nuances of a torture briefing.”

“I suppose that’s possible, now that you mention it,” I admitted grudgingly.

“After all,” Max added, “it wasn’t like they were talking about something really important like giving tax rebates to people who don’t pay income taxes.”

“Good point, Max,” I sighed. “You got me there.”

Fellow citizens:

As you folks know, being a libertarian, I am tolerant of just about anything, lifestyles, alternate lifestyles, opinions, agins and fers. I have known and worked with gays and I have some gay friends. I don’t ask them about their sexual proclivities and they return the favor. Above all, I believe in free speech and that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. On top of that, I rarely write anything about celebrities, comedians, or especially the Hollywood autophiliacs.

But something happened in connection with the Miss USA contest that damn near gave me whiplash. One of the judges asked Miss California what she thought of gay marriage and she answered, as we would expect a young lady who has grown up in a traditional household to answer, that she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman. Incidentally, that’s the answer that probably better than half the folks in this country would have given as well. I do not intend to question whether her answer was right or wrong, it was her opinion. She was asked a question and she answered it.

As it turned out, the question was a set-up, and it appeared all the demons of hell were set loose upon the young lady.

The USA crown went to another young lady, but that wasn’t enough for the pack of wolves that gathered. What the young lady did not foresee was the wave of hostility and condemnation that followed.

Immediately after the pageant, the judge who had asked the question publicly berated her, snarling in an online video: "Miss California lost because she's a dumb bitch." (In an even uglier postscript, he later said that he had actually wanted to call her "the C-word.")

California pageant officials slammed her, too; "religious beliefs," one wrote, "have no place in politics in the Miss CA family."

The Miss California USA organization even issued a statement denouncing her for "her opportunistic agenda."

Village Voice columnist Michael Musto went on Keith Olbermann's TV show to slander her as "dumb and twisted …a human Klaus Barbie doll."

This situation was manufactured by the gay judge that asked the question, the answer to which opened the floodgates of hate. He was so far out of line, it's incredible, but we heard nothing against him.

If this is a technique of the gay community to call attention to what it considers injustice, that community should beware. This is the sort of thing that aggravates the distrust and isolation that gays always complain about. This is the sort of thing that leads hare-brained reactionaries to frighten everyone with talk of gas chambers and pogroms. The gay community wants equal rights and we can’t blame them for that. But this tawdry, vicious and egregious display of hate is unjustified and unforgiveable and will serve only to slow their progress toward the rights they covet.

There! By damn, I got that off my chest.

Your libertarian friend,

Maxim Gross
For government that delivers the mail,
guards our shores, and stays the hell
out of my bedroom

"Whataya doin’?” I asked Max as I popped into his kitchen and helped myself to a cup.

Max was sitting at his breakfast table sipping coffee and reading a paper of some kind.

“I was reading about Gallup ’s long-running poll on handgun ownership,” he replied. The Gallup folks have been asking about gun control for several years now and things have changed.”

“Oh really?” I said. “For or against?”

He referred to the paper he was reading. “Back in 1960, support for banning the possession of handguns was 60%. In 1965, that number had dropped to 49%. In the early ‘90s, before Clinton signed off on the assault-weapons ban, it was 43%. In March 2007, the support for banning handguns had dropped to 29%, which Gallup calls an almost fringe position.”

“Dang! That’s some change. What’s happened?”

Max narrowed his eyes in thought. “I can’t say for certain, because I haven’t talked to any opinion analyzers. But I’d guess that improved communications has changed things. More and more, the guy in the street is refusing to go along with opinions that the political elite thinks they should have. It could be because things the elite wanted didn’t turn out as predicted. If you’ll remember, the intelligentsia predicted that licensing the great unwashed to carry concealed handguns would lead to blood running in the streets, shoot outs at traffic intersections and general slaughter. Those things didn’t happen and thanks to the free press and the internet, everyone knows they didn’t happen. Surprisingly enough, the criminals that would pay no attention to gun or any other kind of laws are deterred from attacking those who just might be packing.”

“And that ain’t all,” Max added. “There’s something else that might interest you. When it comes to global warming, opinions have changed too. Gallup has been polling about global warming for several years, asking if the man in the street thought it was serious or the threat was exaggerated. From 1998 to 2007, that guy said it was a serious threat by a 2-1 margin but by March 2009, that opinion had shifted to 57 % to 41%.”

“Considering the noise the true believers have made, I’m not surprised,” I commented.

“But wait! There’s more!” Max said, holding up his index finger. Last month, Rasmussen found that only 34% believe that global warming is caused by human activity while 48% believe it is caused by long-term planetary trends. And here’s the kicker, that's the exact opposite of what the same poll found only 12 months ago, 48 to 34 the other way around.”

“Now that blows my mind!” I said.

Max grinned. “But guess what? Rasmussen found what he calls the 'political class,' in other words, the elite, 48% continue to believe global warming is man made.”

“I assume he includes Pope Albert the Gore, titular head of the Church of Global Warming , in that group?”

“Indeed he does,” Max answered. “And funny you should mention that,” Max said, picking up a magazine and reading from it. “Here’s an observation that Michael Barone just made along those lines. ‘For liberal elites, belief in gun control and global warming has taken on the character of religious faith. We have sinned (by hoarding guns or driving SUVs); we must atone (by turning in our guns or recycling); we must repent (by supporting gun control or cap and trade schemes). You may notice that the ‘we’ in question is usually the great mass of ordinary American citizens.’”

“You know what I just realized when you were reading that?” I asked him. “That stuff has become holy writ for the politicians and the left, right? Now the ordinary guy in the street and the conservatives are shying away from it, just like the left has been shying away from and criticizing God-based religion! Holy smoke! Talk about your ironies! It doesn’t get any stranger than that. It’s like the Protestants in the old days, telling the Pope where to get off. “

“You may have something there,” Max said, looking thoughtful.

“Max, I was at a party last month where I fell into conversation with an honest-to-goodness Green. He drives a hybrid, believes in all the conservation techniques, really works in the movement informing people. I happened to ask him what he thought of Al Gore and I thought he was going to blow a gasket. Apparently, he regards the stuff Gore says and does as actually working against the movement, destroying their credibility. Man! He really took off on old Al!”

“Sort of illustrates what you just said, doesn’t it, Max said, nodding. Even those that should be on the same side are split because of the religious zeal or should I say, hysteria, or maybe just the old lust for gold, in lieu of cold, hard logic and scientific fact. That’s good and bad. It’s good because level-headed people are carrying on. It’s bad because it’s going to slow an agreement on stopping the spewing of all that crap into the atmosphere.”

“In other words, get everyone singing from the same sheet music,” I offered.

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Somewhere, there’s got to be a middle road, a master plan, a step by step process that can be achieved without the help of a miracle. Penalizing everyone for using electricity when there isn’t even a ghost of a viable alternative on the horizon doesn’t make sense, especially while India and China are taking our place in the pantheon of great polluters and the world makes no net gain on reducing the bad stuff. Good intentions don’t cut it. The political elite isn't going to come up with a solution; they’re politicians for crying out loud! They don't invent; the only thing they can do is decree and regulate. It seems to me that we are going about this thing about 180 degrees out of phase.”

“Build it and they will come,” I said.

Max grinned. “If there was a truly international effort by the world's scientists to develop a reliable alternative energy, and each nation contributed a set annual amount to development of an alternative energy, and it came up with something that’s cheaper than coal and gas or at least no more expensive, they would come, just like Shoeless Joe.”

"One caveat has to be added to your scheme, Max. The politicians would have to be barred from the lab, literally and figuratively."

"In my schemes, that's always a given," he replied.

When I walked in, Max was at his desk with sheaves of paper all over the place.

“What in the world are you doing?” I asked.

He replied brightly, “I have been looking at some of the recent polls and they are very interesting. For one thing, we atheists are growing in numbers.”

“No kidding?” I said. “People getting disillusioned?”

“This poll doesn’t give reasons, just the changes in numbers and percentages. It’s based on the changes in numbers between 1990 and 2008. The “No religion” group went from 8.2% of the population to 15%. How ‘bout that? Some folks have stopped buying the ol’ pitch.”

“What happened to the churched?”

“The Papists dropped from 26.2% of the population to 25.1%. But that means there are still 57.2 million of them. Actually, they are not all Papists to be entirely truthful. Those figures include the Greek and Eastern Rite Catholics as well.”

“How’d the Protestants do?”

“The mainline Protestants dropped from 18.7% to 12.9% of the population. You guys aren’t doing too well it appears. Somebody’s on to you.”

I ignored his sarcasm and asked, “Did any group add people?”

“The new movements, like the Wiccans and other newbies added four tenths of a percentage point. They are now 2.8% of the population, not enough to intimidate anyone. And of course, the Eastern religions and the Muslims grew. Oh, yeah, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements grew by three tenths of one percent of the population.”

“I assume you have an interpretation of these Earth-shaking changes?”

“No, not really,” he answered, sighing. “These numbers are too small for me to pronounce doom over any of your arcane sects. It looks like religion is going to go sputtering on, looking for a messiah.”

“But by the way, come to think of it.” He rummaged in some papers. “The Papists are changing the way they look at things. According to a Gallup poll, 54% of Catholics say homosexual relations are morally acceptable.”

“Holy cow!” I blurted, “if you’ll pardon the religious expression, that’s a surprise.”

“It’s especially shocking when you compare that number to only 45% of non-Catholics who think the same way. And get this: 67% of Catholics say premarital sex is morally acceptable compared to 57% of non-Catholics,” Max said with a chuckle.

“Good night nurse!” I exclaimed. What’s the world coming to?”

Max put his fingers together in front of his chest, pointing upward, like when he’s about to deliver a great truth.

“I’d say that modern times with its dropped pretenses and free and open communications are pulling the old church out of the 16th century, in fact it’s pulling a lot of churches into the 21st century.”

“Are we growing increasingly immoral?” I wondered.

Max smiled and said, “That’s a big question and the answer depends on whom you query. For example, the Rasmussan poll just announced that 60% of voters now have an unfavorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi.”

“Land o’ Goshen !” I exclaimed.

“Not only that,” Max went on, “that number includes 42% who say their view is ‘very unfavorable.’”

“The Almighty has not totally abandoned us,” I said, looking skyward piously.

“You Republicans!” he exclaimed. “Still grasping at straws.”

Well, well, well! It appears that Mr. Obama, Ms. Pelosi, et al. have gotten crosswise with the CIA. No surprise there after Mr. Obama did one of his patented flip flops and stabbed the CIA in the back. Gosh, Big O, did you learn nothing from watching the Agency give Bushy-Boy endless hell? Boy, are you dumb!

You know, there are very few, if any, Republicans in the CIA. Yeah, that’s right. The Agency has been getting their executive types from those venerable, fancy-assed eastern schools for some time now. If there is anything they can’t stand, it’s an inarticulate Texas Republican cowboy that took their advice on WMD in Iraq and started a war. Even the tactical intel the Agency provided to the U. S. military was virtually useless. That’s right, they blew it and they got even with Bush every chance they got.

The whole world should have noticed what those Ivy leaguers were up to when they asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into who disclosed to Robert Novak that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA. The people making the request and everyone in the security business and the press, I might add, knew that Ms. Plame had been out of the field for more than five years and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act did not apply to her. Actually, her job at the time was clipping and pasting up news articles from magazines and newpapers from all over the world that possibly related to activities of interest to intelligence analysts. One of her fellow employees referred to her as “The Queen of the Paste Pot.”

Though no crime had been broken, they managed to embarrass the Bush Administration (they really wanted to get Carl Rove, but his memory was better than Scooter Libby’s so they had to be satisfied with poor Scooter.) Of course, Bush put the icing on the cake of the great embarrassment by failing to pardon Scooter, something many of us in the intel dodge will never forgive.

Then, in 2004, the CIA man who headed the bin Laden desk during the Clinton Administration, Michael Scheuer, published "Imperial Hubris." The book was severely critical of everything the Bush Administration attempted in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq . No big surprise there. But what was out of the ordinary was the fact that never before had a serving officer been allowed to publish such a book! The Agency previously had always censored and delayed books, even those by CIA retirees.

And now Obama has tweaked the CIA himself and certain Democrats in Congress are running scared. Jed Babbin, a former undersecretary of Defense, wrote, “Pelosi learned that her actions and those of President Obama have so damaged CIA morale that the agency’s ability to function could be in danger. Her fear and frustration have apparently given way to panic after word reached her of the CIA’s reaction to the damage she, President Obama and other Democrats have done to the spy agency in the last three months.”

Moreover, I have received back-channel information that intel services in German, Great Britain , Israel and France are very unhappy with what the President has done. I can safely say they will be very reluctant to cooperate and share information with our people in the future. It’s yet to be seen how much that is going to hurt us.

Most of us live and learn by what we observe. Others seem to learn the hard way. The problem is, how much will it cost all of us?