It’s Tuesday, January 8th, 2012….but before we begin, two brief sports comments.  First, Mike Shanahan was supposed to be the adult in the room.  Second, any one of four teams would….not could….have beaten Notre Dame.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, what do you call John Brennan and Chuck Hagel?

Distractions….from an increasingly tenuous economy and runaway federal spending.  Other than that, they’re useless as teats on a boar, and even less so in the positions for which they’ve been nominated.

That being said, the WSJ offers….

A Hagel Education

 

President Obama on Monday chose Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon, inviting a confirmation brawl over a troubling nominee. The Senate should oblige. The Hagel hearings are an opportunity to have the debate over Mr. Obama’s policies and a growing world disorder that we didn’t have in the election campaign.

Mr. Obama also said he’ll nominate White House counterterror chief John Brennan to run the CIA, joining last month’s choice of Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State. Like CIA deputy Michael Morrell, Mr. Brennan is a capable intelligence analyst, but Langley will once again lack senior management without substantial experience in the spy game.

This may further turn the agency away from its traditional and primary duty of collecting and analyzing human intelligence—a weakness that showed up in its failure to know about the threat to U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, for example.

More troubling is the chorus-line worldview of the new Obama security team. In his first four years, Mr. Obama ran foreign policy from the White House more than any President since Nixon. But at least his security team—Bob Gates and Leon Panetta at Defense, Hillary Clinton at State, and Mr. Panetta and David Petraeus at the CIA—had independent political stature and experience. The second-term group is shaping up as a White House echo chamber, less a team of rivals than of dovish loyalists.

That’s all the more reason to carefully question Mr. Hagel, who is a nominal Republican but whose views echo the post-Vietnam Democratic Party. In his Monday remarks, Mr. Obama pointed to the former Senator’s admirable service in Vietnam as an enlisted man and repeatedly called him “a patriot.”

Yo, Bo!  Whatta ya call a busload of Israelis at the bottom of the Dead Sea?

But no one questions Mr. Hagel’s patriotism and military service. What matters at the top of the Pentagon, at this moment in history, is how he would deal with today’s growing security threats amid Mr. Obama’s desire to withdraw the U.S. from its traditional role of world leadership.

By largely continuing George W. Bush’s antiterror policies and expanding drone missile strikes, Mr. Obama has punished al Qaeda. But this headline-making progress has obscured the more general decline in U.S. influence in the world’s hotspots that are likely to become hotter in the second term.

Among the first tasks will be the drawdown from Afghanistan. The Administration has significantly pared back the military’s suggestions for a follow-on NATO force after the 2014 handover to Kabul, and little suggests that Mr. Hagel would push back against the White House. Scarred by Vietnam, Mr. Hagel has taken a dim view of America’s influence and ability to shape events overseas. He supported the Iraq war before he opposed it and then opposed the successful 2007 surge. (Gee….who does THAT….

….remind you of?!?)

He has long urged engagement with Syria’s dictator and the terror group Hamas.

Iran will be another test. The President has declared that Tehran won’t be allowed to get nuclear weapons and accepted tougher sanctions against Iran. Mr. Hagel opposed sanctions and called for the U.S. to recognize and bargain with Tehran’s clerics. So which is it?

According to Mr. Hagel, the U.S. also can’t afford and doesn’t need the military it has today. (Unlike our entitlement programs?!?) Messrs. Gates and Panetta tried to limit the White House demand for defense cuts, but with the election over liberals are again gunning for the Pentagon in order to protect entitlements and diminish the U.S. ability to intervene abroad.

Mr. Hagel has opposed the deployment of missile defenses, since it annoys the Russians. He should be asked if he still believes that, as well as if any new arms deal with the Kremlin must be submitted to the Senate for ratification. He should also be asked to explain Mr. Obama’s record and policies in the Middle East, the failed Russian “reset,” the proposed pivot to Asia that lacks adequate naval resources, and the inadequate response to China’s expanding naval power.

The results of U.S. security policies tend to have a long fuse, good or bad, building for years until some event makes them clear. The Berlin Wall fell after Reagan’s successes rebuilding U.S. strength and credibility, while al Qaeda burst into bloody view in 2001 after a decade of treating terror like a law enforcement problem.

On current trends, President Obama’s second term is likely to see more global troubles and disarray, and the Senate’s job should be to highlight the dangers and instruct the public about the potential consequences of the Hagel-Obama vision of U.S. retrenchment. Whether or not Mr. Hagel eventually wins confirmation, a lengthy fight ought to be a useful education.

In a related item, courtesy again of the WSJ, Bret Stephensweighs in on the relative merits of….

Chuck Hagel’s Courage

A brave soldier who knows how to be on the right side of conventional wisdom.

 

Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska and Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of defense, served with honor as an infantryman in Vietnam and was wounded twice. This fact, a tribute to Mr. Hagel’s personal courage, will now be trotted out repeatedly as proof of his fitness to serve in high office.

If the standard by which our prospective secretaries of defense should be judged is prior military service, neither Edwin Stanton (Lincoln’s secretary of war) nor Henry Stimson (FDR’s) would have passed the test. Robert McNamara and Don Rumsfeld would have. But I digress.

Perhaps the better test for Mr. Hagel is political courage, something he’s supposed to possess in spades. “He had the courage to buck his own party on the Iraq War,” says White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. Tweets David Axelrod: “He’s tough, courageous, sensible & able to withstand political pressure to do what’s right for USA. What we need!”

OK, let’s see about that.

In 1998, when it was politically opportune for Mr. Hagel to do so, he bashed Clinton nominee James Hormel for being “openly, aggressively gay,” a fact he said was disqualifying for becoming ambassador to Luxembourg. Late last year, when it was again politically opportune, Mr. Hagel apologized for his gay-bashing. Mr. Hormel accepted the apology, while noting that “the timing appears to be self-serving.” Yes it did.

In 1999, when the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy was broadly popular, Mr. Hagel scoffed at the idea of repealing it: “The U.S. Armed Forces aren’t some social experiment.” Since then, Mr. Hagel has offered his opinions on many subjects in scores of published articles. In not one of them did he recant or amend his views on gay issues. His public about-face only occurred when his name made Mr. Obama’s shortlist for secretary of defense.

In 2002, also when it was overwhelmingly popular, Mr. Hagel voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The lack of political courage is especially noteworthy here, because Mr. Hagel was, in fact, prescient in warning his Senate colleagues that “imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice.”

Yet as the inimitable David Corn notes, “Bottom line: Hagel feared the resolution would lead to a war that would go badly but didn’t have the guts to say no to the leader of his party.”

In 2006, when the war in Iraq had become overwhelmingly unpopular, Mr. Hagel was on the right side of conventional wisdom. “The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq,” he wrote in the Washington Post that November. Still swimming with the tide the following year, he called the surge “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

The surge turned out to be George W. Bush’s finest hour—a genuine instance of political courage as opposed to Mr. Hagel’s phony ones. It rescued the U.S. from humiliating defeat. It gave Iraq a decent opportunity to stand on its feet. It allowed the U.S. to conduct an orderly withdrawal of its forces. And it might have led to a long-term security relationship with Baghdad had the Obama administration not fumbled the endgame. Again there is no public record of Mr. Hagel acknowledging any of this.

Moving forward, in 2008 Mr. Hagel endorsed engagement with Syria’s Bashar Assad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, and he was especially keen on engagement with Iran, enthusing at one point that “Iran had rights for women long before many countries in the world. Women could vote, I actually think before they could vote in America.” (He’s wrong: Iranian women were enfranchised only in 1963, thanks to the Shah.)

In each case, Mr. Hagel was articulating a view that was exactly in keeping with received Beltway wisdom. In each case, he was subsequently disproved by events. In no case was Mr. Hagel ever held to any kind of account for being wrong. In no case did he hold himself to account for being wrong.

Oh, by the way, in 1995 Mr. Hagel told the Omaha World Herald that his opposition to abortion was total and made no exception for cases of rape or incest—a view that helped get him elected to the Senate the following year. He later voted repeatedly against allowing servicewomen to pay for abortions out of their own pocket, according to the left-wing magazine Mother Jones. Now that Congress has authorized the Defense Department to pay for abortions in cases of rape, it would be worth asking Mr. Hagel if he has evolved on this one, too.

But give Mr. Hagel this: When it comes to expressing himself about Israel, its enemies, and the influence of the so-called Jewish lobby, he has been nothing if not consistent and outspoken. Maybe that’s political courage. Or maybe it’s a mental twitch, the kind you can’t quite help. The confirmation process should be illuminating.

Or maybe it’s the mark of a man bereft of any core beliefs or principles.

Here’s the juice: like John Kerry, Chuck Hagel….or anyone else who would willingly assist The Obamao in the destruction of America:

Oh, and by the way, John Brennan’s even worse than Chuck Hagel and John Kerry ever thought of being!

Next up, George Will, yet again, calls it as it ought to be seen:

Mark Steyn puts it in less elegant, more-understandable terms:

Two months of arguing over 10 hours of savings 

 

And they still haven’t realized they’re funding our vacations!

The politics of the “fiscal cliff” deal is debatable: On the one hand, Boehner got the “Bush tax cuts” made permanent for most Americans; Obama was forced to abandon his goal of increasing rates for those earning $250,000. On the other, on taxes Republicans caved to the same class-warfare premises (the rich need to pay their “fair share”) they’d successfully fought off a mere two years ago; while on spending the Democrats not only refused to make cuts, they refused to make cuts even part of the discussion.

Which of the above is correct? Who cares? As I said, the politics is debatable. But the reality isn’t. I hate to keep plugging my book “After America” in this space, but if you buy multiple copies they’ll come in very useful for insulating your cabin after the power grid collapses. At any rate, right up there at the front – page six – I write as follows:

“The prevailing political realities of the United States do not allow for any meaningful course correction. And, without meaningful course correction, America is doomed.”

Washington keeps proving the point. The political class has just spent two months on a down-to-the-wire nail-biting white-knuckle thrill-ride negotiation the result of which is more business as usual. At the end, as always, Dr. Obama and Dr. Boehner emerge in white coats, surgical masks around their necks, bloody scalpels in hand, and announce that it was touch-and-go for awhile but the operation was a complete success – and all they’ve done is applied another temporary Band-Aid that’s peeling off even as they speak. They’re already prepping the OR for the next life-or-death surgery on the debt ceiling, tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday or a week on Thursday or the third Sunday after Epiphany.

No epiphanies in Washington: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the latest triumphant deal includes $2 billion of cuts for fiscal year 2013. Wow! That’s what the Government of the United States borrows every 10 hours and 38 minutes. Spending two months negotiating 10 hours of savings is like driving to a supermarket three states away to save a nickel on your grocery bill.

A space alien on Planet Zongo whose cable package includes “Meet The Press” could watch 10 minutes of these pseudo-cliffhangers and figure out how they always end, every time: Spending goes up, and the revenue gap widens. This latest painstakingly negotiated bipartisan deal to restore fiscal responsibility actually includes a third of a trillion dollars in new spending. A third of a trillion! $330,000,000,000! Fancy that! In most countries, a third of a trillion would be a lot of money. But in the U.S. it’s chump change so footling it’s barely mentioned in the news reports. Then there’s the usual sweetheart deals for those with Washington’s ear: $59 million for algae producers, a $20 million tax break if a Hollywood producer shoots part of a movie in a “depressed area” as opposed to a non-depressed area, like Canada. I’m pitching a script to Paramount called “The Algae That Ate Detroit.”

In all the “fiscal cliff” debate, I don’t recall a lot of discussion of algae. But apparently it’s essential to the deal. And don’t worry, it’s paid for by all the new revenue – an estimated $620 billion over a decade, or about $62 billion a year, which is what the Government of the United States borrows every 13 days. But don’t worry, that’s a lot of algae.

We’re already broker than anyone has ever been ever. But this is America, where we can always do better – or, anyway, bigger, and broker: Under the “deal,” the federal debt of the United States in 2022 is officially projected to be $23.9 trillion. That’s in today’s dollars, as opposed to whatever we’ll be loading up the wheelbarrow with in 2022. With “deals” like this, who needs total societal collapse? By 2050, the federal debt will be $58 trillion. But you won’t have to worry about a United States of America by then: it’ll just be one big abandoned Chevy Algaerado plant.

Around the world, the only interest of friends and enemies alike in this third-rate Beltway hokum is (to return to the theme of my book) the question of whether America is capable of serious course correction – and, from debt ceiling to supercommittee to fiscal cliff and now back to debt ceiling, the political class keeps sending back the answer: No, we’re not. For a good example of how Washington drives even the greatest minds round the bend, consider Charles Krauthammer’s analysis on Fox News the other night:

“I would actually commend Boehner and Paul Ryan, who in the end voted ‘yes’ for a bad deal. But they had to do it.”

If courage is the willingness to take a stand and vote for a bad deal because you’ve been painted into a corner and want Obama to fly back to Hawaii at the cost of another $3 million in public funds that could have gone to algae subsidies so he’ll stop tormenting you for a week or two, then truly we are led by giants.

But is that all there is? As the old song says: What’s it all about – algae? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all about when you sort it out – algae? Are we meant to take more than we give? If you think politics is a make-work project for the otherwise unemployable, then the system worked just fine. And I don’t mean only the numbers.

On Monday, 300 million Americans did not know what their tax rates would be on Tuesday. That’s ridiculous. Then, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spent the night alone in a room with Joe Biden (which admittedly few of us would have the stomach for). And when they emerged they informed those 300 million Americans what their tax rates now were. That’s unseemly.

Then, in the small hours of the morning, the legislature rubber-stamped it. That’s repulsive.

There’s a term for societies where power-brokers stitch up the people’s business in back rooms and their pseudo-parliaments sign off on it at 3 a.m., and it isn’t a “republic of limited government by citizen-representatives.”

There are arguments to be made in favor of small government: My comrades and I have done our best over the years, with results that, alas, in November were plain to see. There are arguments to be made in favor of big government: The Scandinavians make them rather well. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for what is now the standard operating procedure of the Brokest Nation in History: a government that spends without limit and makes no good-faith effort even to attempt to balance the books. That’s profoundly wicked. At a minimum, the opposition, to use a quaint term, should keep the people’s business out in the sunlight and not holed up in a seedy motel room with Joe Biden all night.

The fiscal cliff was a mirage. If Washington was obliged to use the same accounting procedures as your local hardware store, the real national debt would be at least 10 times’ greater than the meaningless number they’re now going to spend the next two months arguing over. That’s to say, we’re already over the fiscal cliff but, like Wile E Coyote, haven’t yet glanced down at our feet and seen there’s nothing holding us up. In a two-party system, there surely ought to be room for one party that still believes in solid ground.

But, hey, maybe we can thread all that algae into a climbing rope …

Or, as the Washington Examiner‘s Mark Tapscott so eloquently poses the question:

Don’t like Washington’s games? Here’s how to end them

 

Maybe there’s been a more contrived melodrama in this town sometime in the dim past, but it’s hard to imagine what could top the manufactured malarkey of the “Fiscal Cliff crisis.”

For weeks, Washington politicians and their protectors in the mainstream media warned of imminent doom if President Obama and Congress failed to reach a “deal” to avoid going over the cliff before 2012 hit the exit door. Without the deal — which Obama told us over and over had to be “balanced” with tax hikes and spending reductions — the Bush tax cuts would expire, causing the biggest tax increase in American history. Worse still, if no deal was made, the “sequestration” spending cuts would shut down the Pentagon and toss millions of Social Security and Medicare recipients out on the street.

But it was all a charade. Here’s why: Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner imposed sequestration on themselves in 2011, just as the chief executive’s predecessor in the Oval Office agreed with Congress on the expiration dates for the Bush tax cuts in 2012.

So instead of subjecting America to endless wrangling over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, they could simply have extended the Bush tax rates and delayed the sequestration spending cuts for a year to buy sufficient time to iron out the tax and entitlement reforms this country absolutely must have if we are to avoid becoming Greece.

They didn’t do that because they prefer the crisis charade. It creates multiple illusions, like the one that such negotiations must be done behind closed doors. Otherwise, they claim, nobody will bargain honestly.

Exactly the opposite is the case: Closed-door negotiations give us fables like sequestration deadlines and $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bills stuffed with pork projects that have nothing to do with helping storm victims in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut.

As for playing to the cameras, isn’t that exactly what they do now?

The professional politicians also love the charade because it magnifies their self-importance. They get to pose as our (pick one) heroes, rescuers or saviors.

There’s a third illusion: Because the crises puff them up, the politicians are increasingly substituting manufactured dramas for the dreary, tedious traditional governing processes, like drafting, debating and enforcing annual federal budgets.

And that leads to the fourth and most dangerous illusion, that the “government of laws, not men” established by the Founders in the Constitution no longer works and must be replaced by an Oval Office satrap ruling through executive orders administered by legions of unelected bureaucrats. We once called such a system a “monarchy.”

There is only one way to stop a fixed game, and that is to change it. Here are the two essential game-changers needed to stop the Washington politicians’ charade:

First, demand that C-SPAN cameras be present for all crisis negotiations. As long as such negotiations remain secret, the politicians will keep up the charade.

Move these talks into the sunlight and there will be no more questions about who is bargaining in good faith and serving the public interest. It will also force the participants to learn new ways to negotiate and encourage millions more citizens to take a more active interest in the proceedings.

Second, the day of the professional politician must end.

For a century after the Constitution’s adoption, terms were essentially limited by choice, but then careerism steadily became the norm. So congressional terms now must be limited by constitutional amendment.

Either we let the sun shine in and bring on new blood at regular intervals, or Washington will remain a city of illusions.

As Einstein so powerfully put it, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Then there’s yet another Sign The Apocalypse Is Upon Us….

Daughters of American Revolution Secularizes Literature

 

“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”  George Washington

The Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the nation’s oldest patriotic organizations, has erased any mention of Jesus Christ in their official book, removed prayers and poems that reference Christian imagery, and directed members to refrain from praying in the name of Christ, an outraged group of members alleged.

The dispute has been brewing for more than a year when DAR members learned that the newly revised Ritual and Missal books – the primary guide for chaplains – were altered. They noticed that the name of Jesus Christ had been omitted. The DAR president general did not return calls seeking comment for this story.

The members said DAR leadership made the changes to be politically correct and to accommodate new members of other religious beliefs. A state chaplain in the organization notified members of their concerns in a newsletter. “The newly updated Missal and Ritual was written to reflect the desire to be considerate of other belief systems,” the statement read. “The Chaplain General uses scripture from both the Old and New Testaments and prays in the name of God without reference Christ. Chapter and district chaplains need to follow the example set by the National Society.”

The statement also reminded members to “appreciate the differences in members’ religious beliefs and to adapt our rituals and prayers to respect these differences.”

That directive has infuriated rank and file members of the DAR – an organization that is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. Several members of the DAR (Following the courageous example of Chuck Hagel) spoke with Fox News about their concerns – on the condition they remain anonymous. “They are changing the legacy and intent of the Founding Ladies and rewriting the history of the Daughters of the American Revolution,” one member told Fox News. “How dare they? They’re supposed to be doing it out of inclusion. To me, it’s exclusion. If they are saying it’s because of religious tolerance – my question is – if someone is so incensed over the name of Jesus and words like ‘white crosses’ that reference soldiers who died for America – is it not they who are intolerant?”

“A group of us went through the Ritual and Missal and compared the old version and the new version,” another member told Fox News. “Every single prayer closing in the name of Jesus Christ no longer included the name of Jesus Christ.” “For 122 years Christianity was included in the Daughters of the American Revolution,” said one member. “Without the name of Jesus Christ it is surely not Christianity. This has never been an issue until December of 2011.”

The DAR was founded in 1890 as a non-profit, non-political volunteer women’s service organization. Membership is open to any woman who can prove they are a lineal descendant of a patriot from the American Revolution. The organization has 170,000 members in 3,000 chapters.

The members said they tried to bring their concerns to the organization’s leadership but were rebuffed.

Gee….

….after all, who was George Washington, and WTF did HE know?!?

And in the Environmental Moment, as Hope n’ Change observes…..

Hey, It’s All Gore

 

Overstuffed “green energy” huckster Al Gore has sold his virtually unwatched “Current TV” cable network to terrorist-lovin’ Al-Jazeera for $500 million dollars (every one of which came from the sale of evil, Earth-destroying oil) so that they can reach American viewers with their exciting “Must See Jihad” lineup of shows.

Current TV is so left-wing and anti-American that MSNBC looks fair and balanced by comparison – which may account for its dismal viewership numbers. And Al Gore has remained true to his political beliefs: he turned down what was reported to be a higher cash offer from Glenn Beck and chose Al-Jazeera because “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.” That “point of view” being that America sucks, right Al?

Al-Jazeera has already said that it will scrap Current TV’s format and programming, which will come as a considerable shock to the countless millions of cable viewers who didn’t know that Current TV had either of those things.

As far as the Jewish Ms. Behar’s future with the network, things are a little uncertain – although the network is rumored to be preparing a one-hour special for her called “Joy Behar Gets Stoned.”

We assume that it’s about legalized marijuana…but you never know.

Jihad for everyone….as long as I get my cut!

On the Lighter Side….

Next up, yet another sordid story ripped from the pages of The Crime Blotter:

New York man kills grandmother in alleged TV show fight

 

 

No word yet on whether Mr. Newcomb wanted to watch Dr. Phil or Oprah.

In a related item….

Ex-Burglars Say Newspaper’s Gun Map Would’ve Made the Job Easier, Safer

 

Reformed crooks say the New York newspaper that published a map of names and addresses of gun owners did a great service – to their old cronies in the burglary trade.

The information published online by the Journal-News, a daily paper serving the New York suburbs of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, could be highly useful to thieves in two ways, former burglars told FoxNews.com. Crooks looking to avoid getting shot now know which targets are soft and those who need weapons know where they can steal them.

“That was the most asinine article I’ve ever seen,” said Walter T. Shaw, 65, a former burglar and jewel thief who the FBI blames for more than 3,000 break-ins that netted some $70 million in the 1960s and 1970s. “Having a list of who has a gun is like gold – why rob that house when you can hit the one next door, where there are no guns?

“What they did was insanity,” added Shaw, author of “License to Steal,” a book about his criminal career.

Meanwhile, as John Cotton details, down in Texas….

Which brings us to our final item, which you definitely won’t see covered anywhere in the MSM:

Armed Mom Shoots Home Invader, Saving Herself and Her Children

 

 Gee….guess she should have let her family be crowbarred-to-death!

Magoo