James Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men elected president. Born in poverty in rural Ohio, by dint of his brilliance and work ethic he became a wunderkind scholar…a bold Civil War General…a passionate advocate of freed slaves… and gave spellbinding speeches in Congress and at the 1880 Republican Convention. Though Garfield was shot in July 1881 and died in September, he defeated the corrupted leadership of the Radical Republicans and changed the “destiny of the Republic” by bringing North – South – East – and West together after the bitter Civil War reconstruction period.

Last week, no meeting due to Thanksgiving. The week before we had the honor to welcome Richard Kerr – to address the topics on Global Warming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fifth report in two decades on the science of climate change, a.k.a. global warming. The report largely said what it said in its 2007 report but with more confidence: Global warming is real, we humans are behind it, and it’s going to get worse, much worse if we don’t do something to rein it in. There were a few relative bright spots, such as extreme weather like hurricanes and floods not yet being noticeably worsened by global warming, but that is small comfort.

Last week Michael O’Hanlon a senior fellow at the Brooking Institute for Defense and Foreign Policy  talked about the Syrian civil war and compared it to Bosnia in the late 1990’s. The US was eventually shamed into intervention in Bosnia with air power. In Syria the longer the civil war, the larger the outside Muslim terrorists foot hold in Syria will become, and the bigger the terrorist threat will be to us, Europe, and Israel. But this time the solution won’t be from the air. Michael said the US will intervene in Syria with European and Muslim countries as allies. After about 10 minutes, Michael opened up for questions which he took 3 at a time. He talked about Iran, sanctions and Israel’s lack of patience and about Israel/Palestine negotiations. He was asked “what effected the fact that by 2015, due to fracking technology, the US will be the largest producer of oil and natural gas will have on the Middle East situation?” He said that it is already having an effect on sanctions in Iran.