There is a great misunderstanding about what it means to live a happy life, and it can be summed up in the popular symbol of the smiley face. Now, I like to smile. I love feeling that kind of glowing, delighted state of emotional bliss. It's wonderful to be full of joy and love and laughter. But feeling those things doesn't in and of itself make for a happy life; and just because we don't happen to feel them in the moment doesn't mean we are unhappy. In fact, if simply feeling those emotions all the time was what constituted happiness, and if Aristotle was correct in saying that, "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence," then it would be a simple matter to find the right combination of drugs that would perpetually bathe our neurons with joyful chemicals, and we could all be perpetually happy and fulfill the aim and end of our existence. But this smiley face view of happiness is a mistake. Here's why.

The New York Times headline yesterday (11/24):  A Nuclear Deal for US and Iran Slips Away Again. He did it again, as we should have expected.  Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei walked us right up to the finish line, spat on Obama, and walked away. Months and months of secret and public talks, letters, back channels, and gestures produced nothing of the sort the president, assorted foreign ministers, pundits, and politicians had been predicting. Instead we are to keep talking, and keep paying the Islamic Republic for the pleasure and privilege. It's not Barack Obama's unique failure; the same thing happened to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Both of them came to believe they had a deal with Khamenei, and both of them were rudely disabused of their error when the Iranians walked away. No sensible person doubts Obama's willingness to be generous to the Iranians.  Any lingering skepticism should be definitively eliminated by the latest "extension," which reportedly bestows $700 million on Khamenei every month for continuing to talk. You read that right:  British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond announced that "Iran will receive about $700 million per month in frozen assets."  Iranian Assets Unfrozen ran the headline. Khamenei could certainly have had a very good deal if he wanted it. If he didn't take one, it's because he doesn't want it. Why?

In Moore, Oklahoma Sept. 26, Alten Nolen, 30, beheaded Colleen Hufford, 54. He was trying to behead a second woman when he was shot. A convert to Islam, Mr. Nolen had posted a grisly photo of a beheading on his Facebook page. "Kill the disbeliever, whether he is civilian or military," an Islamic State leader urged supporters in the West five days before Mr. Nolen cut off Ms. Hufford's head. Her murder was "workplace violence," said the FBI. Which is how the Obama administration characterized the 2009 murders of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood by Nidal Malik Hasan, who was shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he gunned them down. In the report of the 911 Commission, the word "Islam" appears 322 times, "Muslim" 145 times, "jihad" 126 times. But in the national intelligence strategy the Obama administration issued in 2009, those words don't appear at all, noted Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security. To know your enemy is the key to victory, said Sun Tzu (544-496 BC). We're losing a war all but won when President Obama took the oath of office because of his bizarre refusal to recognize our enemy.

What sort of deal is being concocted between Obama and the Iranian regime?  Pundits, experts, reporters, and pols are weighing in on epiphenomena ranging from the number of Iranian centrifuges that will be allowed to how quickly or slowly the remaining sanctions will be lifted. Here in Washington the "inside story" that has been circulating for more than a week is: the deal is all done and it will be announced before the 24th, the nominal deadline for the negotiations on a "permanent" agreement. I've been here since 1977, approaching forty years, and "inside stories" have been wrong...almost always.  Say 80-90 percent of the time.  That's because the "information" is circulated to advance or sabotage policies or individuals, not to inform.  So I don't pay much attention to such stories. Especially when it comes to Iran, there's always a considerable amount that we don't know and aren't going to know, so it's best to be tentative. But we do know some things, and there is an historical record that is pretty consistent, so let's go with that stuff.

There are lots of tricks and techniques for making changes in our lives: having goal-setting strategies, setting priorities, and structuring support for new and better habits, to name just a few. But one of the most important elements has less to do with what we do, and much more to do with how we do it. Think of the people who have had the greatest positive influence on you. Did they spend a lot of time nagging, berating, insulting, or shaming you? I suspect not. Shame has its place. But once that feedback is received, and we have taken the steps to correct what we feel ashamed of, that emotion has done its job. For example, researchers have found that among alcoholics who have become sober, those who continue to actively feel ashamed of themselves, to criticize and castigate themselves for their previous behavior, are the ones who go back to drinking.  On the other hand, it turns out that the most effective way to change things for the better is...

The only surprising thing about Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber's revelations that the legislation was based on a series of lies and voter stupidity was that Mr. Gruber was so stupid to think no one would see the videos of him saying so. The good news is that, perhaps, many more Americans will wake up to the fact that Obamacare is not the only hoax they have been subjected to, and will be much more skeptical about policy experts' snake oil. Most of these schemes increase the power and money flowing to the political class and their "experts," while robbing the pocketbooks and liberties of the people. The great economist F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) argued there was a limit to what any one person or even groups of people could know, which was one reason socialist planning always failed. His 1974 Nobel Prize lecture ended with the following sentence:

Only 36 percent of Americans expressed approval of Democrats in a Gallup poll Nov. 12, the lowest in the 22 years Gallup has been asking that question. Republicans were approved of by 42 percent. In Gallup's poll 13 months ago, 43 percent had approved of Democrats, just 28 percent of the GOP. To understand how Democrats could fall so far so fast, consider MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, to whom the Obama administration paid $400,000 to help design Obamacare. Prof. Gruber thinks he's very smart, and you aren't. "(Obamacare) was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies," he said during a health care conference at the University of Pennsylvania in October of last year. "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Mr. Gruber said.