THE ENTERPRISE--THE TRAGIC LACK OF TRUTH

THE ENTERPRISE--THE TRAGIC LACK OF TRUTH

THE NEW YORK TIMES BECOMES A TRASHY TABLOID
Past exploits were deplorable: making up stories, lying about facts and taking policy positions so far from "reporting the news" that all pretense of objectivity is gone.  Now the NYTimes has topped itself for an attempt at character assassination of John McCain, worthy of a sleazy tabloid,  fabricated from innuendo and half-truths. This once venerable and admirable newspaper has now become a worthy liner for the cat's litter box.  What is deposited on it then, will be little different than what is printed in it.

THE WORST CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP EVER
They continue to outdo themselves.  They stall legislation that lets the US monitor and head off terrorist plots.   They declare defeat while our brave men and women are in harm's way, risking, and sometimes giving their lives for their country.  They deny progress that is blatantly evident because it is not politically expedient.  The only thing more frightening than the current reign of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi is the prospect of several more terms of their deplorable actions, and the fact that Pelosi is 3rd in the line of succession for the Presidency.  Now there is a truly frightening thought.

Will American voters wake up in time to change this?  I fear not.  I too can find myself liking Obama's rock concert oratory and promises of the welfare state that will fix everything (but I just don't believe it).  It  is appealing to the fears, hopes and naivete of Americans, especially the young and idealistic, or the troubled and unrealistic.  So much of what he says feels good, and seems to make sense that no one stops to calculate the price--and the consequences.  I hope the McCain campaign can add some big doses of reality to the truth of matters. 

ARE YOU TRAPPED IN A COMPLEXITY CRISIS
Here are five tell-tale symptoms of a complexity crisis that is affecting you and/or your organization.   If you can answer yes to 2 or more of these, you are either in or approaching a complexity crisis.  If you answer yes to all five, you are in a full-blown complexity crisis, and you need help.

1. Are you working harder and longer than ever and getting less done; do you feel overloaded and drowning in the number and variety of things you must deal with?

2. Is your in-box stuffed, your email and voice mail overloaded, and you can't ever seem to catch up and get ahead of them-let alone ever catching up on the things you know you should be reading?

3. Are you handling more orders, more reports, more products, and more problems with more customers (or suppliers) than ever, and not making more money-or making less money and getting worse results?

4. Do you have to deal with so many locations, facilities, time zones and places that you have trouble keeping track of who's doing what, where, when and why?  Do you ever find yourself wondering where you are supposed to be, and doing what?

5.  You have to make so many decisions from so many choices that it makes you dizzy with confusion and frustration-and that is just when you are shopping for a cold remedy.

Thanks to an accelerating rate of change of everything-especially technology- and the explosion of globalization, everything has become infinitely more complex.  The antidote for complexity is clarity of focus-working on what's most important.  There are well-defined processes to help you overcome and escape from a complexity crisis. 

OF COURSE THE SOLUTION IS TO READ MY BOOK: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS
The purpose of the book is to help the millions of people at thousands of companies who are drowning in complexity.  Reading the book is just the beginning. The next step is to get enough copies in the hands of managers, professionals and executives, that they can all begin find, fixing, and either using or losing complexity.

As you might imagine--I am available to advise and help.  The main point is to not be in denial--as it seems many are these days.  Below is an outstanding piece of journalism about another complex problem and misguided denial. 

THIS IS TOO GOOD TO EDIT (from IBD Editorials)
What Will Critics Of Iraq Say Now That Reconciliation Is Under Way?
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Posted Thursday, February 21, 2008 4:30 PM PT

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. ... If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government — in security, governance and development — there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."
—Anthony Cordesman, "The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing From the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008

This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006, Cordesman wrote that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good."

Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago. Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq."

Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

We get news of the Anbar Awakening, which has now spread to other Sunni areas and Baghdad. The sectarian civil strife that the Democrats insisted was the reason for us to leave dwindles to the point of near disappearance.

Much of Baghdad is returning to normal. There are 90,000 neighborhood volunteers — ordinary citizens who act as auxiliary police and vital informants on terror activity — starkly symbolizing the insurgency's loss of popular support. Captured letters of al-Qaida leaders reveal despair as they are driven — mostly by Iraqi Sunnis, their own Arab co-religionists — to flight and into hiding.

After agonizing years of searching for the right strategy and the right general, we are winning. How do Democrats react? From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama, the talking point is the same: Sure, there is military progress. We could have predicted that. (They in fact had predicted the opposite, but no matter.) But it's all pointless unless you get national reconciliation.

"National" is a way to ignore what is taking place at the local and provincial level, such as Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, scion of the family that dominates the largest Shiite party in Iraq, traveling last October to Anbar in an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation with the Sunni sheiks.

Doesn't count, you see. Democrats demand nothing less than federal-level reconciliation, and it has to be expressed in actual legislation.

The objection was not only highly legalistic but politically convenient: Very few (including me) thought this would be possible under the al-Maliki government. Then, last week — indeed, on the day Cordesman published his report — it happened. Mirabile dictu, the Iraqi parliament approved three very significant pieces of legislation.

First, a provincial powers law that turned Iraq into arguably the most federal state in the entire Arab world. The provinces get not only power but elections by Oct. 1. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has long been calling this the most crucial step to political stability. It will allow the pro-American Anbar sheiks to become the legitimate rulers of their province, exercise regional autonomy and forge official relations with the Shiite-dominated central government.

Second, parliament passed a partial amnesty for prisoners, 80% of whom are Sunni. Finally, it approved a $48 billion national budget that allocates government revenues — 85% of which are from oil — to the provinces. Kurdistan, for example, gets one-sixth.

What will the Democrats say now? They will complain that there is still no oil distribution law. True. But oil revenues are being distributed to the provinces in the national budget. The fact that parliament could not agree on a permanent formula for the future simply means that it will be allocating oil revenues year-by-year as part of the budget process. Is that a reason to abandon Iraq to al-Qaida and Iran?

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the U.S. and victorious over al-Qaida. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?
© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group
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Best, John