NYT Benghazi cover-up mirrors First Liar's BS on 9/11/12

The Jug-eared Freak who infest the White House had his fairy tale on Benghazi. House Intelligence Chief Mike Rogers refuted the NYT fantasy strongly and many other outlets with much more journalistic integrity than the NYT practically insulted the Old Gray Whore.

Editor-in-Chief Jill Abramson bends over backwards to suck cafe-au-lait cock.

Mark Steyn and Obamanomics

Steyn has a great put-down of the Big Government liberalism of this Administration.

First Fraud Evades Talking about Dropped Coverage

Obungler didn't mention how messed up his ACA is in his agitprop presentation defending Obamacare.

P.J.O'Rourke on the Boomer Generation

In the '70s, I was living overseas while PJ was editor of the famous comedy magazine National Lampoon. He was alway hilarious and on point.

Read this WSJ article and enjoy his barbed commentary on his own generation.

A Short Primer of Obamacare and its Shortcomings.

The Wall Street Journal has a succinct and damning assessment of the disaster which is Obamacare. Read and weep.

Gerhard Gerecht on Iranian Treachery

Mr. Gerecht is a brilliant CIA analyst of the Middle East whom I once had a chance to meet, but failed because of a misunderstanding between my boss at Waterman Associates and Mr. Gerecht. His article is a learned and insightful discourse on Iran's treacherous "agreement" at Geneva.

Read it and you will understand why Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman was not suffering a slip of the tongue when she testified to Congress that Iran has "treachery in its DNA."

Her spineless gutless vapid insipid bosses Kerry and Obama have "cut and run" out of fear of their cowardly Dem base.

Read Gerecht's brilliant commentary above.

IT Experts Caution that Obamacare website not secure.

Obama is now blaming the GOP after a half-hour mea culpa last week. The weakness of the Finger Pointer in Chief is limitless.

Edward Luce on Obama's Disappearing Street Cred on the Hill [and with the American People]

The Financial Times has a clear outline of what Obama has to face from now on.

Obama’s problems derive chiefly from his tendency to react politically to events, rather than from a lack of time. His fumbling response to the woes engulfing the Affordable Care Act show how hard it is for him to kick the habit – even if the remainder of his presidency depends on it.

Just that community organizer vibe in action!

Thus Spake Obama

Mark Steyn eloquently sums up the travesty Obama's presidency has become...

At last, Putin Comes out with an Honest Assessment of the US and its incompetent Joke of a POTUS.

Putin allegedly said off the record : "negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around, like it won the game.

Here is a comprehensive list of Obama's administrations blunders.

Caution. This is a long long list.

New York Times Cites Oct 8th International Tests Subject in blog below

Americans are being outperformed by all western European countries plus Japan---except Spain & Italy. Check out the alarmist editorial by the august graybeards of its board of wise people.

The Pussification of Today's Male Proceeds Apace

Dennis Mangan writes with his usual insight and brilliance on dimorphism of the genders over the centuries, going all the way back to the Lascaux Cave handprints!

"[Sebelius's] head must roll!"

JournoLista Ezra Klein's expostulation about the cabinet leader from HELL, Katherine Sebelius, although he didn't specify her for fear of incurring the wrath of his imbecile readers, is entirely TRUE.

Read James Taranto's take on the horrid biyotch who will supervise the designated Death Panel executioners as soon as they are appointed.

Who the Tea Party Faithful Really Are

William Galston has an interesting article in the WSJ about the Tea Party as falling into the Jacksonian tradition of American democracy.

American Adults Score low in International Tests

American adults resemble their children in chronic lack of how-to old-fashioned Yankee know-how.

When I was Vice Consul in Lyon, my boss Peter Tarnoff read of a study that showed that American workers were overall more literate than French labor at the same level. Members of the U.S. work-force had double the amount of words at their disposal on average than their French counterparts.

This is still true, according to the latest study, with France, Spain, Poland, Ireland and Italy lagging behind. However, the build-up of a giant educational bureaucracy in the US which spends profligately on layer-after-layer of unnecessary bureaucrats is impeding the actual teaching of the three R's. Instead, a barmy version of sociology is imparted that hate-crimes bullying and all sorts of recreational and social customs that are deemed 'hateful' by elitist extremist busybodies.

Don't expect to read anything about this among the elitist eunuch media courtiers surrounding Obeyme and his media-fed firewall of spinners and prevaricators.

Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar

Simon Sebag Montefiori [Bloomberg] has written the best book on the Red Czar --- a creature who was a terrorist against his own people --- who considered Ivan The Terrible his model for governance!!!

The only issue that disturbed this criminal more than conspiring colleagues was their wives, who were murdered in their hundreds to remind their husbands to obey the Party Line!

For a small taste of this brutal savage's insanity, take the book out of your nearest library or read Richard Pipes' book review in the NYT a few years back.

Remember that Putin stores Stalin's entire hoard of books in his Kremlin Office and is fond of showing visitors Stalin's annotated texts, all while wearing Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring!

The tradition of brutal homicidal maniacs ruling The Motherland continues even unto today!

Obama Gets Lost in the Middle East Bazaar

Fouad Ajami in the WSJ. I myself was gypped for a thousand dollars in the Egyptian souk in Cairo:

There is a trick in the great labyrinthine bazaars of the Middle East: petty hucksters luring the vacationing franjis into the market maze and then getting paid to lead them out. As dusk looms, the unnerved outsider is always glad to be steered to familiar surroundings. In the matter of Syria, and America's staggeringly inept diplomacy, Vladimir Putin is the clever trickster who has seized upon an unsuspecting prey. The Russian strongman now proposes a way out for an American leader desperately searching for deliverance. For the full length of this relentless Syrian rebellion, the Russian autocracy aided and abetted the Syrian dictatorship, a Mafia regime made in the Kremlin's own image. Moscow granted Bashar Assad diplomatic cover at the United Nations, and kept him supplied with the military hardware that enabled him to wage a cruel war against a determined rebellion. The survival of the Syrian regime was a "red line" for the Russian ruler—a true red line. The dictatorship in Damascus had been forged four decades ago, when Soviet power was on the rise. Syrian armies and factories, the intelligence services and the architecture, were all in the Soviet mold. The sun may have set on the old Soviet empire, but on the shores of the Mediterranean, with a derelict naval base in Tartus waiting to be revived, Syria offered Russia the consolation that it could still play the game of the great powers. In the Syrian mirror, Mr. Putin sees a version of his own battle with Chechen insurgents. Enlarge Image Getty Images Vladimir Putin greets Barack Obama at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 5. Now it is dusk, and the hapless Barack Obama has lost his old swagger. He had feigned intimacy with "the East," he had thought that he was at ease with that big Islamic world. Instead, he was befuddled by what awaited him, and now he finds himself at the mercy of a Russian skilled in the ruses of the bazaar. Grant the Russians the consistency of their position on Syria. From the outset of the civil war two years ago, Moscow insisted that it would not stand idly by and accept a repetition of what had happened in Libya. The deranged Moammar Gadhafi was a man the Russians knew and favored. By their lights, they had let him down when they let slip through the cracks of the U.N. machinery a proposal that called for the protection of Libyan civilians. The proposal gave NATO the warrant that led to the destruction of the Libyan dictatorship. No such ambiguity this time around. Russia was determined to see its client regime in Damascus to victory. If Soviet decay and American resolve had all but banished Moscow's influence from Middle Eastern lands, Vladimir Putin was eager for a Russian return—all the more so if the restoration came on the cheap. The Arab rebellions of 2011 had unnerved the Russians. The autocratic model itself was on the defensive, and those Arab regimes of plunder and tyranny were both physically close to Russia and bore a striking resemblance to the lawless Kremlin model of rule. It took no special genius on the part of Mr. Putin to see the irresolution of his American counterpart. There, on display, was the spectacle of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, where American primacy had been secured with much blood and treasure. And there was Iran, unchecked and on a determined drive that had granted it enormous sway all the way from its border with Iraq to the Mediterranean. "The tide of war is receding" was the American leader's mantra. The Russian ruler fully understood that the Middle East was a Hobbesian region sensitive to shifts of power, always appraising the stamina of outsiders who venture into its midst. Syria itself revealed the abdication of American power. For two long years, when so many good options were still possible, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was, in effect, a player on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team. Time and again, American diplomacy hid behind the Russian veto at the U.N. Security Council. The Obama administration deferred to the Security Council, knowing that the White House's public wishes would be rebuffed. This was the pretext for ignoring the Syrian massacres, the terrible war in the Fertile Crescent. At times, Secretary Clinton's brief echoed Russian pronouncements: These were not ordinary Syrians battling for freedom, we were told, they were zealots, affiliated with al Qaeda, and surely we did not want to find ourselves on the same side in Syria with Ayman al-Zawahiri. (Hillary Clinton's remarkable luck holds: The Syrian horrors don't stick to her—apparently "global icons" are not held accountable for political debacles.) Mr. Putin has an eye for the fecklessness of the democracies. He knew that the Obama administration, seized with panic, would take the bait he offered: custody of Syria's chemical weapons in return for giving the Damascus regime a new lease on life. We are war-weary, Mr. Obama intones repeatedly. He was elected to end wars, not to start them, the president reminds us. But none of our leaders—certainly not the ones who mattered, who answered the call of history—was elected to start wars. We anoint our leaders to rid us of our weariness when resolve is called for, to draw for us the connection between our security and menaces at a seeming far remove. The leaders of the past two decades who sent American forces to Bosnia, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, were not thirsting for foreign wars. These leaders located America, and its interests, in the world. Pity the Syrians, they rose up in the time of Barack Obama.

Yes, it is not difficult to snooker a naive silly boy like our Coward-in-Chief.

Patrick Kennedy breaks the Law at the State Department.

Patrick Kennedy is the scoundrel still at the Management position plotting away to do the bidding of his master/mistress Hillary Clinton. Ambassdor Gutman is typical of the political ambassadors chosen by this Administration. A Democrat, a crook and a pervert all at once.

Coup de Pouce by Obama threatens the US Constitution

Rush Limbaugh warns that a coup against the Constitution is in progress. It is almost invisible and Obama's typing pool of stenographers is busy denying that the evidence means what any unbiased observer would say it means.

Stroke Slows me Down

Am full of saeva indignatio about Benghazi and 100 other eff-ups that this Thousand Clown Circus of an Administration commits on an epic-fail basis... My stroke last month has slowed me down a bit, but will be posting from time to time...

Mayor Nutter of Philly Expounds His Insanity

James Taranto of the WSJ has a great post on how the Philly mayor [appropriately named Nutter] has said that racial sensitivities trump The First Amendment. The link has how this certifiable nut job is probably worse than the ineffable boy-bitch Bloomberg.....

Sabato Predicts Dem Problems for 2014 Elections

This link has a good analysis of why the odds are close to overwhelming that the GOP may actually pick up seats in the House and Senate in the 2014 midterms. Hint: getting the Dimmorat slackers and layabouts to the polls is a major problem. The white GOP tends to vote, the crazy-quilt Dimmorats to get out of bed on election day is always a problem.

Campaign by Terrorist Journalists to Smear Pope

A Jewish Communist named Verbitsky leading a campaign by Argentine leftist garbage to smear Pope Francis for alleged complicity with the military regime which happily rid the country of fake militants like its skank presidentissima Kirchner.

....the Kirchner government's pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff's character and reputation at home and in the international news media.

The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn't endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits' provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.

This is propaganda. Mrs. Kirchner and her friends aren't yet living in the equivalent of a totalitarian state where there is no free press to counter their lies. That day may come soon. The government is now pressuring merchants, under threat of reprisals, not to buy advertising in newspapers. The only newspapers that aren't on track to be financially ruined by this intimidation are those that the government controls and finances through official advertising, like Mr. Verbitsky's Pagina 12.

The Montoneros were a collection of marxist garbage swept aside by Peron, although they claimed to be fighting in his name. The traitor Verbitsky is now Presidenta Skank's chief publicist, so that his Pagina 12 is called the 'Official Gazette' sarcastically by the decimated Argentine middle class.

Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told BBC Mundo that "there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no." As to the charge that the priest didn't do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: "I know personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted."

Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father Bergoglio well and that "he helped many people get out of the country." In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who happened to look like the Jesuit. "He gave him his identification card and his [clergy attire] so that he could escape."

Ms. Oliveira also told Perfil that when she was in hiding at the home of the current minister of security, Nilda Garré, the two of them "ate with Bergoglio." As Ms. Oliveira pointed out, Ms. Garré "therefore knows all that he did."

So even the head of the Argentine Security Ministry ate with Fr. Bergoglio at the time and knows of the cowardly agitprop of the left-wing junta that masquerades as a democracy in Peronista land---a prosperous country ruined by socialism and an object model of the perils of state dominance.

Birth of the Cyprus IMF Monster Policy

The Guardian has this article on the horrors of the IMF as denominated by Joseph Stiglitz:

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.

At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.

Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz isn't simply a conspiracy nutter. He is a marxist @$$hole as well, and a publicity freak along the lines of another freak named Paul Krugboy.

Creep-in-Chief Flies 747 to Chicago to Campaign for End to Fossil Fuels

The First Hypocrite has once again proved himself the worst POTUS in US history. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...!!!

Ted Van Dyk Laments Long Lost Dimmocrat Insanity

Ted Van Dyk is a gentleman and a scholar, I learned over a long lunch one-on-one with him before I defected from the Dimmocrat morons now infecting the Party of Jefferson & Jackson. He was Hubert H. Humphrey's troubleshooter and would have had a high position were HHH elected in '68. Here is what Ted thinks of Obama and the other parasites attaching themselves to the US government.

Obama Kisses Hem of Putin's Robe

The cowardly loser in the WH fulfilled his onstage promise to Medvedev last year to cut back missile defense after he was re-elected.

Sen. Warren a Stalinist...

Sen. Warren makes the usual starving or sick baby arguments pro regulation. She is a Stalinist bitch and a stain on the state of MA where I'm trying to sell property in a stagnant economy.

Viva Gov. Walker!

Governor Walker from my native state of Wisconsin [and from my last place of residence in Wauwatosa] may run for POTUS. I'm all for him after he cleaned out the union racketeers in WI & roundly trounced the big national outside-agitator propaganda assault.

"The Bible" Gets Better Basic Cable Ratings than

History Channel's Epic 'The Bible' was the biggest mini-series since The Hatfields and The McCoys last year.

According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week.

Of course, NBC's ratings are in the tank as a law of the Universe, but read the link above for a good read-out on the low ratings the critics gave "The Bible," no surprise to those who are aware of the atheistic paganism the Hollyweirdos affect when exerting their questionable analytical skills.

Pope Francis Rides Bicycle or Public Transportation

The first Jesuit Pope is a man of deep humility and pastoral leanings, as reading this link will attest.

How Bill Clinton Inspired The 47 Percent Filmmaker

Not that it matters to the serial scofflaws that are the Democrats & their political hacks, but recording a person without their permission is against the law in the state of Florida. And it is doubly significant that the president who continued to lie under oath to the American people for six months is the one who inspired this illegal activity.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Makes Major Miscalculation Politically on Tax Hikes

Obama has dropped the ball big-time and his precipitous slide in the polls shows that the American public believes that he's been overplaying his hand badly. Read Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen's POLITICO piece on BHO's arrogant folly.

NYT Peter Baker on Doldrums of WH Press Beat

Glamour has left the job in the White House Press Corps' existence serving largely as lapdogs and stenographers to Jay Carney and other purveyors of the Party Line.

Obama Meets with Arab-Americans Before Trip

Around 1982-3 I was a consultnt for NAAA, the National Association of Arab-Americans. NAAA was a completely Lebanese Christian group, with a sprinkling of Christian Palestinians. George Salem of Ramallah is Greek-Orthodox, i believe, and I knew James Zogby whom I had lunch with on occasion. GWHBush was interested in NAAA and other Arab-American groups, but nothing ever came of it.

Ashley Judd Senate Run: Actress, Activist Planning To Declare Candidacy, Sources Say

Ashley has a lot of strange stuff in her baggage, not the least being her participation in the 2012 Dem POTUS campaign as a delegate at the Charlotte Convention from the state of TENNESSEE!!! And there is a YouTube out there where she proclaims that she's a 'great daughter of the Volunteer State,' not that that will deter the low-information voters in the Dem sheeple herd from following their nut-job get-out-the-vote minders. I hope McConnell's sniper squad gets the YouTube stuff with her full frontal movie shots out there for the uncommitted voters to ponder. She's a lot like Al Franken without the looks....!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

UN Rebukes WaPo & BBC for ignoring Hamas Killing of Baby

The Muslim-leaning journalistic dogs supporting the Hamas terrorist path have been mentioned in a UNHCR report which states that a widely-circulated photo and story of a Hamas baby falsely reported as killed by an Israeli rocket was actually killed accidentally by a Hamas rocket exploding on the ground---another clue that these animals can't handle modern ordnance, let alone PR.

AP's List of the Papabilii

AP has an interesting list of papal 'candidates' who are widely regarded as having a long shot at being Benedict XVI's successor.

The Last Word on Chavez

The Economist sums up the utter failure of the Chavez demagoguery that for fifteen years [1998-2013] hampered and ultimately destroyed Venezuela's democratic institutions as well as its economy.

BACK in the 1990s Latin America seemed to have turned the page on military rule and embraced democracy and free-market economics, with the sole, beleaguered exception of communist Cuba. And then along came Hugo Chávez, a bumptious Venezuelan former lieutenant-colonel who, having staged a failed military coup against a democratic government, got himself elected as president in 1998.

Mr Chávez proceeded to dominate his country for more than 14 years until his death this week from cancer. His secret was to invent a hybrid regime. He preserved the outward forms of democracy, but behind them he concentrated power in his own hands and manipulated the law to further his own ends. He bullied opponents, and encouraged the middle class to emigrate. He hollowed out the economy by mixing state socialism and populist redistribution with a residue of capitalism. And he glued it all together with the crude but potent rhetoric of Latin American nationalism. Mr Chávez claimed to be leading a “Bolivarian revolution” against the “empire” (ie, the United States). It did not seem to matter that Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan hero who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonial rule, was an Anglophile conservative.

Chavismo turned out to be a remarkably successful formula: Mr Chávez won four elections by margins ranging from sweeping to comfortable and lost only one of his six referendums. In October he won a new six-year term even though campaigning was restricted by his illness, which was graver than he admitted. He spawned imitators elsewhere in Latin America, financing an anti-American alliance of like-minded leaders and client states. And he was the saviour of communism in Cuba, his aid keeping the Castros in power while slowing the transition to capitalism in a bankrupt island.

Chavez's buffoonery was occasionally coarse and crude, but it was politically effectve, if one considers theatrical gestures a substitute for building a long-term viable democracy. The long sad road that he led Venezuela along like a barnyard animal will soon lead to a fiscal cliff, and the reckoning will be something his followers will use to start another necrophiliac cult ala Peron.

Scarier Job Chart Topped by SCARIEST!!!

The SCARIEST Job Chart posits that compared to past recessions, by this time our economy should have THIRTEEN million more jobs than we have now. That's 13 million jobs less because of the 2007 crash and the BUFFOON in the WH who isn't doing jack-shit about new jobs.

Remember when the FIRST-CLOWN [or is it CLOWN=IN-CHIEF?] promised to have the jobless rate down to 6% if the stimulus or porkulus package was inflicted on the US economy?

Now the lapdog MSM stenographers are claiming 7.7% [in reality over 15% were the Bureau of Labor Statistics honest] as a great and pleasant surprise.

The low-info voter probably has forgotten what good times are all about, but real Americans understand that we are sliding into the kind of decades-long recession-slump-depression that Japan suffered in the late-80s.

America may be fading economically as productivity wanes with taxes mounting because the elites want to turn the US into Europe.

How's Europe working out lately?

Why I Love The Packers

A Short Dalliance with the Redskins while I lived in DC for fifteen years did not keep me from always following the NFC North's Packers. As a WI native, I can say that my loyalty is the result of the Pack giving back. Check the ESPN link above that I got from a Bill Simmons article---Bill actually was in the running [hypothetically] for the job of Bucks GM and claims to have always liked and wanted to live in Milwaukee. After a twenty-year sojourn there, I can understand.

Peggy Noonan on Dr Doom in the White House

Noonan in the WSJ sums up the abiding metaphor of the Obama years thusly:

Barack Obama really is a study in contrasts, such as aloof and omnipresent. He's never fully present and he won't leave. He speaks constantly, endlessly, but always seems to be withholding his true thoughts and plans. He was the candidate of hope and change, of "Yes, we can," but the mood of his governance has been dire, full of warnings, threats, cliffs and ceilings, full of words like suffering and punishment and sacrifice.

It's always the language of zero-sum, of hardship that must be evenly divided, of constriction and accusation.

It's all so frozen, so stuck. Just when America needs a boost, some faith, a breakthrough.Mr. Obama is making the same mistake he made four years ago. We are in a jobs crisis and he does not see it. He thinks he's in a wrestling match about taxing and spending, he thinks he's in a game with those dread Republicans. But the real question is whether the American people will be able to have jobs.

"Aloof and omnipresent" is an apt description of this absentee POTUS. He is like Clinton---an eternal campaigner. Yet he has no close confidants, except perhaps Valerie Jarrett and Reggie Love, his "body man." More Noonan:

On the plane home I read a piece by Mort Zuckerman, who's emerged as one of the most persuasive and eloquent critics of the president's economic policy. The unemployment picture is worse than people understand, he explained in U.S. News & World Report. The jobless rate, officially 7.7%, is almost twice that if you include those who have stopped looking, work part time, or are only "marginally attached" to the workforce. "The labor force participation rate . . . has dropped to the lowest level since 1984," Mr. Zuckerman noted. "It is harder to find work today than it has been in any previous recession."

Meanwhile, the president is stuck in his games and his history. He should have seen unemployment entering a crisis stage four years ago, and he did not. At that time I was certain he'd go for public-works projects, which could give training to the young and jobs to the experienced underemployed, would create jobs in the private sector and, in the end, yield up something needed—a bridge, a strengthened power grid. He instead gave his first term to health care. And now ObamaCare is being cited as a reason employers are laying people off and not hiring, according to a report from the Federal Reserve.

There's a good case to be made that The Dowager Empress Pelosi tricked Obama into the fraud that is ObamaCare----no committee hearings, no 72 hours to even read the thousand-plus compendium of absurdities that Sebelius and her Orcs compiled for a 218-217 vote which the Senate under doddering old codger Harry Reid rushed through with a "reconciliation" vote which the Senate parliamentarian ruled was technically illegal. Noonan avoids the leaves on the trees and goes straight to a U2's eye view of the forest: What a mess.

Conservative media should stop taunting the president because he spent the past month warning of catastrophe if the sequester kicks in, and the catastrophe hasn't happened. It hasn't happened yet. He can make it happen. He runs the federal agencies. He can decide on a steady drip of catastrophe—food inspectors furloughed on the 15th, long lines at the airport on the 18th, sobbing children missing Head Start on the 20th, civilian contractors pointing to a rusting U.S.S. Truman on the 25th.

He can let them happen one after another, like little spring shoots of doom. And it probably won't look planned and coordinated, it will look spontaneous and inevitable.

And you have to assume that's the plan, because that's kind of how he rolls

Obama rolls toward convincing the 'low information voter' that those Big Bad Republicans are on the prowl to grab back some of the failed programs like Head Start from the spending trough so they can finance their 'executive jets and expensive yachts." He's aiming to take the House from the hapless GOP in 2014.

But what is the sequester about? At the end of the day it's about fewer jobs or fewer hours. In the midst of what is already a jobs crisis.

Right now his attention has turned to dinner with Republican senators and meetings with members of both parties on Capitol Hill. He is trying to show, after a hit in the polls, that he can reach out. He's trying to convince America he's capable of making a deal.

The new engagement may work if in the past few days the president has changed his political style, approach and assumptions. But people don't usually change overnight. On the other hand there's plenty of reason for him to make a cosmetic reach-out in order to show that whatever happens it's not really his fault, and if the sequester causes pain at least the responsibility is shared. He didn't stiff the opposition, he treated them to lamb at the Jefferson Hotel.

But wait, there's an old game still being played at the Casino of Catastrophe orchestrated by careerist adventurers trying to boost their own profile while pretending to speak for the newly-branded centrist people's president.

It is interesting that almost at the same time as the dinner the president's people once again begun warning of doom. A blast email from Organizing for Action, signed by Stephanie Cutter, used these words: "Devastating," "obstructionism," "destructive," "this is real." It claimed 100,000 "teaching jobs" will be cut, along with "70,000 spots for preschoolers in Head Start, $43 million for food programs for seniors, $35 million for local fire department," and nutritional assistance for "over half a million women and their families." All this because of loopholes "for millionaires and billionaires" who want their "yachts and corporate jets."

They aren't dropping the Frighten Everyone strategy.

Their whole approach is still stoke and scare—stoke resentment and scare the vulnerable into pressuring Republicans.

The leopard has not changed his spots. He's just aloof and omnipresent with a slightly different hue of blue.

Filibusters

AP has the longest filibusters on record, making Ron Paul's effort look puny in comparison. Note to self: I used Sen. Proxmire's office when he was back in my native Wisconsin in the early eighties.

The Big Bang Theory Keeps Expanding

USA Today has an article on The Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite TV shows. The audience continues to expand after eight years and many syndication sites.

Chavez: Charismatic Dictator Run Amok

WSJ has a great summary of the disastrous rise and death of a half-wit dunce from the Andes:

The takeaway from Chávez is to beware charismatic demagogues peddling socialist policies at home and revolution abroad.

That's a lesson one would have thought the world had learned by the time Chávez came to power. By 1998, the Soviet Union was a memory, Latin American countries from Mexico to Chile were successfully adopting free-market policies, and Chávez's friend and role model—Cuba's Fidel Castro—was a discredited dinosaur.

Chávez showed that it's possible to run against the tides of history, at least for a while, and at least if you happen to get lucky with an oil revenue bonanza. When he took power, Venezuelan oil prices were plumbing lows of about $10 a barrel. When he took to the podium of the United Nations in 2006 to compare George W. Bush to the devil, he was high on surging global oil prices that would peak in 2008 at more than $150.

That kind of money can buy a lot of influence, and Chávez was quick to use it to purchase the political support of Venezuela's poor, the army and a loyal nouveau riche. It also allowed him to become a classic petro-dictator. In 1999 he revised the Venezuelan constitution to give him expanded powers. He used a constitutional assembly under his control to appoint a chavista Supreme Court. He stripped independent TV and radio stations of their licenses and intimidated reporters with draconian libel laws.

Though elections were held on schedule, he made sure to tilt the playing field. For his fourth election last October, opposition politicians were limited to three minutes of advertising a day, while Chávez could commandeer the airwaves at any time. He permitted no debates. Public workers risked being fired if they voted against him. It was the sort of election only Jimmy Carter could bless—which our 39th president predictably did.

Yet despite the populism and government handouts, life for Venezuela—and particularly the poor—has only become worse. While wealthier Venezuelans could flee, the less-fortunate now endure routine food and medicine shortages, thanks to price and capital controls. Prices are more than 20 times higher than in 1999. Capital has fled the country. The murder rate in Caracas is one of the highest in the world. Bridges and roads are in disrepair, blackouts are routine, and untreated sewage pollutes drinking water.

Meanwhile, state-owned oil company PdVSA has been all but stripped for parts. Daily production fell by more than one million barrels over the course of Chávez's rule to 2.5 million barrels at the end of 2012.

Chávez made his mark on the world stage by forging alliances with Bashar Assad in Syria and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, giving sanctuary to Colombia's narco-terrorist FARC movement, providing the Castro regime with free oil, and inveighing loudly against the United States. He succeeded in spawning political imitators in Ecuador and Bolivia.

This brought him some adulation, notably from the usual Hollywood suspects. But the reality of what Venezuela became under Chávez is hard to ignore. On Tuesday the Venezuelan government expelled two U.S. Air Force attaches. Heir apparent Nicolás Maduro also accused the U.S. of poisoning Chávez with cancer, suggesting that the combination of buffoonery and thuggery that Chávez pioneered will continue past his grave.

As for Venezuelans, they will have to fight to reclaim the democracy they once enjoyed. Mr. Maduro lacks his predecessor's charisma or military background, but the institutions of the regime are now entrenched, and its beneficiaries will not easily part with them.

The Constitution requires that new elections be held in 30 days, assuming Mr. Maduro honors the law. Let's hope Venezuelans seize the chance to bury the tragic legacy of Chavismo alongside its author's corpse.

Socialist Hero Hugo and his family managed to embezzle $2 billion from the PDVSA revenues, while feigning to help the poor. These sad sacks on the bottom loved Hugo for letting them have some crumbs from the table. Cuba & Bolivian criminals were the chief beneficiaries of this creepy clone of Sean Penn.

The left-leaning Miami Herald has an editorial roundly condemning the corrupt half wit for his stupidity and venality.

Only a total fool like Jimmy Carter and his two soul mates Penn & Oliver Stone can believe that this monstrosity wss good for his country.

Oh yeah, and Chavez' new phalanx of 'Bolivarian revolutionaries' who were bought and paid for by PDVSA cash....

Eric Holder: Voting Rights Act Can't Be Called Unnecessary Yet

"We saw in stark relief the rank hatred, discrimination and violence that still existed in large parts of the nation," the vice president said Sunday, recalling news coverage of the beatings.



The buffoon Biden could have said that these 'parts of the nation' still exist today in at least two 'parts of the nation' that I have lived in. In Chicago, the rank hatred, etc., is largely between the black and Hispanic parts of the city, with the South Side a seething cauldron of violence. In DC, Anacostia and NE/SE are equal to some parts of Chicago, although the homicide rate is nowhere near the Windy City's...



So Joltin' Joe can blow it out of his most productive orifice one more time and be marked as a complete fool. A walking, talking example of Obama's 'Leading from Behind.'
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Truth Is Out: Obama Is a Liar

Obama consciously lied about the sequester during the debates last fall. Romney didn't call him on it, nor did Obama's lapdogs/stenographers in the Lamestream Media.

Everyone on the Dimocrap side of the aisle says they Bush lied about WMD. But THAT is a lie, because EVERY intelligence source on the planet said Saddam had WMD [which he moved to Syria, where it might be used against Syrian citizens---to protect their socialist government, which is what the Ba'ath Party is.]

R.I.P. Nicholas Prasinos [1921-2013]

My father-in-law Nicholas Prasinos, born in Chicago on March 3rd 1921, passed away early today, March 3rd 2013, on his ninety-second birthday. Nick is survived by his beloved spouse Bessie, who just celebrated her ninety-first birthday. Also survived by his daughters Marilyn Mangan, nee Prasinos and Laraine Lippincott.

Nick went to MIT and was one of the first B-29 pilots who flew over Japan, including over the battleship Missouri at the Surrender of Japan on VJ-Day.

He was Honeywell's chief lawyer who argued the case for the proprietary nature of software in front of the SCOTUS in 1979, a landmark case which is today still cited as precedent in legal cases.

Nick and Bess lived in Concord, MA before moving to Florida about five years ago.

During his retirement, Nick published several books of poetry and won a national prize for his poems.

Nick also painted portraits and landscapes and won a prize on Cape Cod for one of his paintings.

Nick was the most generous and loving of parents and in-laws one could wish for.

Nick was one of the founding fathers of the Greek Orthodox Church in Lexington and is well-known in the Greek community in the Boston area and will rest in peace in God's Arms.

He was truly a wonderful representative of America's Greatest Generation.

Noonan Lambastes Obama & Idiot Maxine Waters

This WSJ should be read for much more than the following:

The sequester's impact may be bad. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a 22-year House veteran and ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, this week warned of "over 170 million jobs that could be lost." That's actually more jobs than America has, and it's little comfort to say, "But she's a famous idiot," because Washington is full of famous idiots who are making serious decisions about how the sequester cuts are to be applied.

Noonan is on her game as she deconstructs the FOOL in the WH.

First Fraud Demonstrates Bvllshitting Stunts re Sequester

The WSJ has a great article on Obama's slow sinking into the slough of despond he himself created.

'Just to make the final point about the sequester," said President Obama at his press conference Friday, "we will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said." That's a relief, but it is also a major walk-back, since the "some people" who have been predicting apocalypse are the President and senior members of his Administration.

Normal Americans awoke Friday to find that the veneer of civilization had not fallen away. If the federal government does end up spending $44.8 trillion over the next decade instead of $46 trillion, they may not notice at all. This may explain Mr. Obama's morning-after concession that "what's important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away," and that the gruesome cuts that the President had been invoking are now merely "a slow grind that will intensify with each passing day."

The First Buffoon then kept digging his hole deeper with the usual staccato cadence:

One reason the grind may intensify is that Mr. Obama spurned GOP offers Friday morning to grant him even more executive discretion than he already has to prioritize federal spending. Or as his own Simpson-Bowles commission put it, he could always choose among the "patchwork of thousands of duplicative programs, nearly impossible to track and even harder to evaluate for effective outcomes." This he does not want to do.

What he is trying to do instead is implement the sequester as rudely as possible so that he can extract another tax increase. As the President put it, the problem is that Republicans have adopted "an iron-clad rule that we will not accept an extra dime's worth of revenue."

The Fvck-Up-in-Chief continued his lying Bvllshit:

But not so iron clad that the GOP didn't reluctantly consent to 6.2 trillion dimes in tax increases only this January in return for zero dimes of spending restraint. Mr. Obama wants Republicans to commit political harikiri by doing it again. Asking the other party to commit suicide is not typically a good basis for bipartisan accord.

Mr. Obama pitches his tax increase as "tax reform" and merely cutting "tax loopholes" and "tax breaks for the well off and well connected." He also said he doesn't want to "raise tax rates." But the Senate Democratic bill he endorsed on Thursday included the "Buffett rule" that is effectively a minimum tax of 30%, which means another increase in the tax rate on capital gains and dividends. Real tax reform means reducing rates in return for closing loopholes. Mr. Obama wants to raise rates instead.

The President also stuck to his line that the sequester cuts will hurt the economy, even suggesting that any slowdown in growth in the months ahead is all the sequester's fault: "As long as the sequester's in place we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act."

Investors seemed to take a different view. Stock prices rose on Friday.

On to the next windmill for the Boy of Chicago/Hawaii/Kenya/MANCHURIA

Hit and Run: Obama Regime Most 'Thin-skinned!'

REASON Magazine has a nice piece outlining the neo-fascist operational style of the Obamanation African Dictator Chic:

- There was the time the White House banned a San Francisco Chronicle reporter from the White House press pool for filming an anti-Obama protest at a fundraiser. The White House initially claimed it banned the reporter for using a camera when she was only allowed to write what she saw. Then the White House claimed it hadn't banned her at all. All very confusing and weird.

- There was the time the White House prohibited local journalists from covering a Silicon Valley fundraiser, presumably for fear that they'd be better equipped than D.C.-based pool reporters to recognize major players in the California tech scene.

- There was the time the White House denied the Boston Herald a spot in the press pool because it ran a front-page op-ed from Mitt Romney. While the White House later claimed the Boston Globe got the pool spot because it submitted its request first, that explanation doesn't jibe with this email from a White House staffer: "I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters." Loyalty has its rewards!

- There was the time an Orlando Sentinel reporter was made to sit in a closet at a fundraiser for Joe Biden.

- There was the time Obama agreed to sit down with the editor and publisher of the Des Moines Register, so long as the paper agreed not to quote him or even reveal the topics of conversation.

- My favorite overreaction to a media outlet, however, was one I first wrote about a few years ago after a small-town newspaper editor emailed me to say that the White House had asked her to remove a sentence that "reflected poorly" on First Lady Michelle Obama. The story was titled "Inside Marine One, President Obama's Helicopter," and according to the editor, it contained a single line that suggested Obama was somewhat aloof toward the chopper pilots. “Basically," the editor said in her email, "the reporter said that the First Lady didn’t speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact." Shortly after the story went online, the editor received a call from the White House asking her to remove the sentence (she did). Shortly after my story went online, the White House called me, too (I added a denial from the First Lady's office to my story, but didn't remove or retract anything we'd already published).

Those are just a handful of media anecdotes (inside-the-Beltway reporters have many, many more stories about the Obama administration flipping its lid over reporters not following their instructions). But the Obama machine's obsession with image management isn't limited to haranguing and punishing journalists--just ask Desiree Rogers, Carlos Pascual, Hillary Clinton, or Stanley McChrystal.

For more on Obama's promise to lead the "most open and transparent administration in history," see this piece.

"This piece" refers to an hilarious story on a slavishly-deferential cadre of do=gooders lining up to give His Opaqueness [or is it 'Opaquitude?'] an award for transparency. The award presentation was off Oblunderer's schedule and closed to the press. No press pool was allowed after the newsies got wind of the award and no transcripts issued afterwards.

The piece linked immediately above also recounts a whistleblower at FOIA going to Cong. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight Cte. She alleges that when she complained about illegal redactions in the materials sought under the Freedom of Information Act on several occasions, she was basically threatened by one of Nazi Lesbian Bitch Napolitano's Brownshirts. Even the DHS Inspector General reprimanded UeberHauptmann Napolitano's behavior after he studied the case.

“Obama’s been co-opted by the national security community,” Drake said. “People hoped he would take them on, but he became enamored by all the secret stuff. He’s getting all these cool briefings. It goes to his head. I can send drones anywhere! It’s very powerful stuff. It becomes pathological.”

Yet the LIAR-in-Chief continues to prate constantly about the transparency of his serfs, and the parrots in his cages repeat it constantly. Not even Solyndra, Fast and Furious and Benghazi have made a dent in this Generalissimo's facade.

Govt Regs, Taxes Crush Small Business Creation

Subway Founder & CEO Fred DeLuca says that Subway could not exist if it were founded in today's welter of laws, regs, and taxes. Read the link...

UNIVISION Bests NBC in February Sweeps

UNIVISION is a Spanish language network that bested NBC whose procedurals with Law & Order and Jay Leno Show are the only watchable shows on that left-wing outpost.

Cowardly Craven Loser Egyptian Pilot Jumps Airship Without Turning Off Gas Valve

The Egyptian Pilot of the air balloon where 19 of 21 passengers perished yesterday deserted his charges in the TYPICAL cowardly loser Egyptian fashion:

The pilot of a hot-air balloon that caught fire in mid-air and crashed, killing 19 foreign tourists, jumped from the gondola before shutting off the gas valve, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Wael El-Maadawi said. A Briton also managed to escape from the balloon by leaping to safety before it soared into the sky and exploded in a fireball that left many of the corpses charred in a tragic end to an early-morning tour over the famed pharaonic sites in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor early yesterday, El-Maadawi said, according to the state-run Ahram Gate website.

As a frequent visitor to Egypt, I can only attest that this case of irresponsibility and cowardice is typical. The inbred freaks that are Egyptians in general do not deserve attention nor vacation visits.

Why Michelle-Bangs Had US Military At The Oscars

Jennifer Rubin spells it out for illiterate lefties to know.

She declared of the Best Picture nominees, “They reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage within ourselves.” Alas, none of the films nor her aides reminded her to mention the military, not those personnel behind her nor those serving overseas, an odd omission for the White House that nevertheless was pleased to have them arrayed behind her like, well, set decoration.

The Eternal Campaign Couple have to fill their emptiness inside with all the glam/glitter BS that lefties [for the same reasons] always do.

She did have time to give a crumb to the gay community, applauding the movies that inspire us ”no matter who we are or what we look like or who we love,” adding that “they are especially important for our young people.” (Except when they contain gruesome violence, traffic in stereotypes or use gratuitous profanity, I guess.) Real heroes, such as our servicemen and servicewomen, inspire us, too, I would think.

I can remember when the First BJClinton went to Deutschland and had the Kanzler Schroeder give him a box of cigars, everyone in Europe and most Republicans laughed at him... Only those comedians on the left didn't get it. But, like Clinton...

President Obama pops up at every sporting event in the nation. Now the first lady feels entitled, with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining (this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election). I’m sure the left will holler that once again conservatives are being grouchy and have it in for the Obamas. Seriously, if they really had their president’s interests at heart, they’d steer away from encouraging these celebrity appearances. It makes both the president and the first lady seem small and grasping. In this case, it was just downright weird.

The White House has been overrun by something worse than rats or cockroaches---an infestation of overthinking and corrupt "sophisticates" who know nothing of what the USA is about. Jenny says it better:

No one, it seems, gets within a mile of the White House with any sense of restraint. No one there would dare suggest nearly half the country didn’t vote for him and doesn’t much like him and might want to be left to their small daily pleasures. (Greta Garbo said it best.) And no one there is apt to explain that the White House, the military and the first lady (not this one in particular) are institutions bigger than the Obamas and their e-mail list.

And Rubin gets the last parting shot at these sleazy pretentious pretenders.

Still, it would have been grand if the lefty-maligned “Zero Dark Thirty” (which showed the nasty interrogation techniques her husband deplored) had won Best Picture. Unfortunately, that sort of perfect karma happens only in the movies.

Amen and Roger That.

Is the Euro About to Collapse?

Bernard Connolly was head of Europe's Monetary Commission 17 years ago and predicted back then that the Euro was not feasible. Read this piece & you might realize he was right:

Seventeen years ago, Bernard Connolly foretold the misery that awaited the European Union. Given that he was an instrumental figure in the EU bureaucracy and publicly expressed his doubts in a book called "The Rotten Heart of Europe," he was promptly fired. Mr. Connolly takes no pleasure now in having seen his prediction come true. And he takes no comfort in the view, prevalent in many quarters, that the EU has passed through the worst of its crisis and is on the cusp of revival.

As far as Mr. Connolly is concerned, Europe's heart is still rotting away.

The European political class, he says, believes that the crisis "hit its high point" last summer, "because that was when there was an imminent danger, from their point of view, that their wonderful dream would disappear." But from the perspective "of real live people, and families and firms and economies," he says, the situation "is just getting worse and worse." Last week, the EU reported that the euro-zone economy shrank by 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2012. For the full year, gross domestic product fell 0.5% in the euro zone.

Two immediate solutions present themselves, Mr. Connolly says, neither appetizing. Either Germany pays "something like 10% of German GDP a year, every year, forever" to the crisis-hit countries to keep them in the euro. Or the economy gets so bad in Greece or Spain or elsewhere that voters finally say, " 'Well, we'll chuck the whole lot of you out.' Now, that's not a very pleasant prospect." He's thinking specifically, in the chuck-'em-out scenario, about the rise of neo-fascists like the Golden Dawn faction in Greece.

Mr. Connolly isn't just any Cassandra. When he predicted disaster, he was running the European Commission's Monetary Affairs Committee, the Brussels bureaucracy charged with ushering the euro into being. His public confession of fear that the monetary union would inevitably produce an economic crisis not only cost him his job, he says, it also cost him his pension, and he was barred from his office even before his dismissal was official. In the introduction to the paperback edition of "The Rotten Heart of Europe," Mr. Connolly describes how his photograph was posted at entrances to the commission's offices, as if he were a wanted criminal.

Mr. Connolly went on to a career as a private economist. His research notes while at American International Group's AIG +3.14% trading division showed the same flair for bold prognostication. In 2003, as then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cut interest rates to an unprecedented 1%, Mr. Connolly described the U.S. economy as a debt-driven Ponzi scheme and predicted that interest rates would have to fall even further in the next cycle to keep the scheme going.

Today Mr. Connolly provides his research notes to clients who presumably pay a great deal for his thoughts. He generally doesn't talk to the press. And he doesn't make public pronouncements or market calls, lest he "agitate" his clients.

But with his book back in print, Mr. Connolly agreed to sit down in his publisher's office to explain why the euro went wrong, why nothing has been fixed, and what he expects to happen next.

Superficially, there is some basis for the official view that the worst of the crisis is over: Interest-rate spreads, current-account deficits and budget deficits are down. Greece's departure from the single currency no longer seems imminent.

Yet unemployment is close to 27% in Spain and Greece. The euro-zone economy shrank ever-faster throughout 2012. And—most important in Mr. Connolly's view—the economic fundamentals in France are getting worse. This week France announced it would miss its deficit-reduction target for the year because of dimming growth prospects.

It's one thing to bail out Greece or Ireland, Mr. Connolly says, but "if the Germans at some point think, 'We're going to have to bail out France, and on an ongoing, perpetual basis,' will they do it? I don't know. But that's the question that has to be answered."

The official view is that the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal—and maybe soon Spain—are aberrations, and that once those countries get their budgets on track, their economies will follow and the bad patch will be a memory. Mr. Connolly calls this "propaganda."

And here we get to the heart of Mr. Connolly's rotten-heart argument against the single currency: The cause of the crisis, according to the "propaganda," he says, was "fiscal indiscipline in countries like Greece and financial-sector indiscipline in countries like Ireland." As a consequence, "the response is focused on budgetary rules, budgetary bailouts and rules for the financial sector, with the prospect, perhaps, of financial bailouts through the banking union, although that remains unclear."

But even if the Greeks were undisciplined, he says, "both the sovereign-debt crisis and the banking crisis are symptoms, not causes. And the underlying problem has been that there was a massive bubble generated in the world as a whole by monetary policy—but particularly in the euro zone" by European Central Bank policy.

The bubble formed like this: When countries such as Ireland, Greece and Spain joined the euro, their interest rates immediately dropped to near-German levels, in some cases from double-digit territory. "The optimism created by these countries' suddenly finding that they could have low interest rates without their currencies collapsing, which had been their previous experience, led people to think that there was a genuine rate-of-return revolution going on," he says.

There had been an increase in the rates of return in Ireland "and to some extent in Spain" in the run-up to euro membership, thanks to structural reforms in those countries in the pre-euro period. But by the time the euro rolled around, money was flowing into these countries out of all proportion to the opportunities available.

"And what kept the stuff flowing in," Mr. Connolly says, "was essentially the belief, 'Well, yes, there is a high rate of return in construction.' " That in turn depended on "ongoing expectations" about house appreciation "that were in some ways not dissimilar to what was happening to the United States in the middle of the last decade. But it was much bigger."

How much bigger? "If you scale housing starts by population, then the housing boom in Spain and Ireland was something like three or four times as intense as the peak of the boom in the U.S. That's mind boggling."

That torrent of money drove up wages far faster than productivity improved, while cheap borrowing led to major deficit spending. After the 2008 financial panic, the bubble inevitably burst.

So what's needed now is not simply a fiscal retrenchment, or even a retrenchment along with banking reform. Wages and prices have to adjust to something like their pre-bubble trends, Mr. Connolly says, to make these economies competitive again. One way to accomplish that would be a massive depreciation of the euro—"really massive."

If that's not feasible, he says, Europe can try to "recreate the bubble" by bringing back the conditions that allowed Spain to borrow so cheaply. That is "essentially what [Mario] Draghi"—the European Central Bank president—"appears to be trying to do: to recreate a bubble." Mr. Draghi, by threatening to intervene in the sovereign debt markets, has driven interest rates in Spain down substantially. But because the banking system is distressed, and because house prices continue to fall, even these lower rates are not driving investment into the country the way they did before. And even if Mr. Draghi were to succeed, Mr. Connolly says, the ECB president would merely be "recreating exactly the dangerous, unsustainable situation that we had in the middle of the last decade."

Which leaves Europe with the last option: Germany pays. As Mr. Connolly puts its: "You can say to a country like Spain: 'No need to adjust your competitiveness, you don't need to have full-employment trade balance. You can still have full-employment current-account balance because we will give you transfers instead.' And by definition, if the point of that is to avoid adjustment, you have to do it this year, the next year, the year after, and every year, forever."

That is not how Brussels and Frankfurt see it. In their view, a little help now will simply ease the transition back to a stable future, when the transfers will cease. Of all the countries that have been bailed out so far, Ireland comes closest to realizing this goal. But Ireland, Mr. Connolly notes, "is a much more flexible and much more open economy than Spain, Greece, Portugal, France, Italy." The less flexible economies have been slower to adjust, with the consequence that wages, instead of dropping to a sustainable post-bubble level, remain high—resulting in mass unemployment.

Which brings us back to the politics of the euro crisis. At some point, the people in the affected countries presumably will call a halt to the pain and sweep in a government willing to think the impossible—leaving the euro, for example.

To avoid that, Germany could well agree to pay for a transfer union, either believing that the transfers needn't be permanent, or hoping they'd be less expensive than a euro break up. But, Mr. Connolly warns, once a mechanism is in place to transfer money from Germany to the current-account deficit countries, it's only a matter of time before Germany is faced with the question of adding France to its list of dependents—something even Berlin may not be willing or able to afford.

German reunification has cost the former West Germany about 5% of GDP a year, with no end in sight. The expense has proved politically tolerable, Mr. Connolly says, because there was a strong sense that "they were reuniting their country." But such solidarity does not exist within Europe.

"There is no European demos, and you're not going to create a demos by setting up a system in which you say, 'We will give you money, you will follow these rules,' " says Mr. Connolly. "It simply will not work."

And there is no such thing as a free lunch, unless it's on Germany's tab, so it seems.

Woodward Calls Obama and Lew LIARS

Here is a Washington Post article that puts the lie to Obama's claim that Congress initiated the sequester idea when in fact, it was the lying POTUS and his Treasury & WH Staff henchmen who did.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

“The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.”

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.”

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Once again, The First Fool lies, cheats and steals his way to tax increases while Boehner neglects to stand up like a man.

Commander-in-Criminality Originated Sequester

Bob Woodward exposes the FIRST LIAR do his POS strut on the GOP coming up with the idea of the sequester thus:

On July 26, 2011, Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, went to Harry Reid’s office for a budget strategy session. According to Bob Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” Lew told the Senate majority leader that they had come up with a trigger idea to force a budget deal.

“What’s the idea?” Reid asked.

“Sequestration,” Lew responded.

Reid folded himself over with his head between his knees, as if he were going to throw up. Then he came upright and gaped at the ceiling. “A couple of weeks ago,” he exclaimed, “my staff said to me there is one more possible” enforcement method: sequestration. Reid said he had told his staff at the time, “Get the hell out of here. That’s insane. The White House surely will come up with a plan that will save the day. And you come to me with sequestration?”

Sequestration may have seemed insane back then. But politicians in both parties are secretly discovering that they love sequestration now. It allows them to do the dance moves they enjoy the most.

Democrats get to do the P.C. Shimmy. Traditional presidents go through a normal set of motions: They identify a problem. They come up with a proposal to address the problem. They try to convince the country that their proposal is the best approach.

Under the Permanent Campaign Shimmy, the president identifies a problem. Then he declines to come up with a proposal to address the problem. Then he comes up with a vague-but-politically-convenient concept that doesn’t address the problem (let’s raise taxes on the rich). Then he goes around the country blasting the opposition for not having as politically popular a concept. Then he returns to Washington and congratulates himself for being the only serious and substantive person in town.

Sequestration allows the White House to do this all over again. The president hasn’t actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible.

He does have a vague and politically convenient concept. (Tax increases on the rich!) He does have a chance to lead the country into a budget showdown with furloughed workers and general mayhem, for which people will primarily blame Republicans. And he does have the chance to achieve the same thing he has achieved so frequently over the past two years, political success and legislative mediocrity.

Republicans also secretly love the sequester. It allows them to do their favorite dance move, the Suicide Stage Dive. It was pioneered by Newt Gingrich in 1995 and has been repeated constantly since.

In this dance, the Republicans mount the stage and roar that they are about to courageously cut spending. In this anthem they carefully emphasize cuts to programs the country sympathizes with, such as special education, while sparing programs that actually created the debt problem, like Medicare.

Then, when they have worked themselves up into a frenzy of self-admiration, they sprint across the stage and leap into what they imagine is the loving arms of their adoring fans. When they are 4 feet off the ground, they realize the voters have left the building in disgust and they land with a thud on the floor.

Sequestration allows the Republicans to do the Suicide Stage Dive to perfection. Voters disdain the G.O.P. because they think Republicans are mindless antigovernment fanatics who can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones. Sequestration is a fanatically mindless piece of legislation that can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones. Sequestration carefully spares programs like Medicare and Social Security that actually contribute to the debt problem. Sequestration will cause maximum political disgust for a trivial amount of budget savings.

The Permanent Campaigner is a LIAR without peer. The GOP is led by a pious chain-smoking ex-bartender mumbler.

With a pair of losers in the top two jobs in the land, a sequester makes perfect sense.

And for the Dimocrats to lie about who suggested it at first is not surprising due to it being led by The Father Of Lies.

Data versus Intuition

David Brooks has a nice little philosophical/pragmatic excursion through the enigmas of data versus intuition versus "trust equals reciprocity coated with emotion."

....the strengths and limitations of data analysis. The big novelty of this historic moment is that our lives are now mediated through data-collecting computers. In this world, data can be used to make sense of mind-bogglingly complex situations. Data can help compensate for our overconfidence in our own intuitions and can help reduce the extent to which our desires distort our perceptions.

An interesting piece to check out.

Obama Golfed With Oil Men As Climate Protesters Descended On White House

Ha ha ha. Obama does a round of golf with Carroll & Crane, two directors of a company with links to Anadarko, one of the largest oil & gas firms in the USA. Just like Gore sells his unwatched Current TV to AlJezira for a $100mm personal payback, Obama preaches fighting climate change at the SOTU and then golfs with those frackin' folks to figure out how Carroll & Crane can help him as gasoline prices rocket past $4/gal. Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat...
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Marco Rubio: The Electable Conservative?

Nate Silver has an NYT article that is mildly praiseworthy of Marco Rubio's chances to win the 2016 GOP nomination for POTUS. [Yes, the handicapping has already begun now that The Emperor Jones has been constitutionally ruled out of a third term.]

Some commentators have expressed surprise upon learning about the very conservative voting record of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address last week.

Since winning his Senate seat, Mr. Rubio has generally sided with other Republicans as part of a party that has steadily grown more conservative over the last three decades. (Mr. Rubio’s recent support for immigration reform is more of an exception than his usual rule of sticking to the party line.)

Being reliably conservative, however, is hardly a liability for someone who might hope to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Indeed, one reason to watch Mr. Rubio carefully is that, among the candidates who will be deemed reliably conservative by Republican voters and insiders, he may stand the best chance of maintaining a reasonably good image with general election voters.

But how does Senator Rubio hold up among the other notables in the Senate? Believe it or not, Rubio sits between Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, with five major GOP standouts more conservative than himself.

Silver concludes:

...in 1980 the average Republican member of Congress had a score of 30, the average Republican in the most recent Congress had a score of 48, very close to Mr. Rubio’s. Thus, my contention that Mr. Rubio is a good representative of the Republican Party as it stands today.

This is a potentially advantageous position for a Republican competing in the presidential primaries. In both parties, nominees have usually come from the center of their parties, rather than from the moderate or the “extreme” wings. There are exceptions: Mr. Reagan, although he would fit right into the Republican Party today, was much more conservative than most of his contemporaries in 1980. But in general, Mr. Rubio is pretty close to the sweet spot of where a presidential nominee might want to be.

There are some viable candidates to Mr. Rubio’s right. The 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Representative Paul D. Ryan, rates a score of 55, slightly more conservative than Mr. Rubio. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, rates a 57.

But the most important thing about Rubio's chances is his popularity.

Silver thinks that this likeability and Hispanic background are crucial.

Mr. Rubio's most persuasive pitch to GOP insiders may be that he is more popular than other, ideologically similar candidates. Some of those candiidates, like Mr. Ryan, can probably offer a richer intellectual defense of conservatism, or can claim to have been better vetted. Several others, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, have more executive experience. Mr. Rubio’s relatively favorable public image represents his comparative advantage. (There are also the facts that Mr. Rubio is Hispanic and is from Florida, but these advantages boil down to electability as well: the possibility that he might help Republicans make gains with Latinos, and that he could give them a lift in an especially important swing state.)

What makes matters tricky for Mr. Rubio is that, at the same time he is hoping to persuade Republican party insiders that he deserves their support, he will also need to maintain a reasonably good image with the broader electorate lest his electability argument be undermined. This may lead to some strange positions, such as when Mr. Rubio recently critiqued President Obama’s immigration proposal despite its many similarities to his own.

When the wider electorate learns that Mr. Rubio’s positions are in fact hard to differentiate from those of other conservative Republicans, will his favorability ratings turn mediocre, as Mr. Ryan’s now are?

This is not meant as a rhetorical question. One measure of political talent, and something that characterized both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Obama, is the ability to sell ideas to voters across a wide range of the political spectrum. Perhaps Mr. Rubio will prove to be such a talent. Otherwise, if Mr. Rubio holds a fairly ordinary (and conservative) set of Republican positions, his popularity ratings may wind up being ordinary as well.

And I think that an article by Silver this early in the game is a dog whistle to those salivating foaming at the mouth far-left sites like Media Matters and TalkProgress and dozens of other mindlessly mentally-disturbed commissars to burrow into everything Rubio and elevate anything like Marco's 'Watergate' into a tempest in a teacup.

Supreme Court Takes Campaign Finance Case, Will Rule On Contribution Limits

Our Emperor Jones is sitting in his digs on Pennsylvania Ave. plotting how many ways he can overthrow the Constitution and you complain about a few rich guys who make bigger contributions than most? Guess it takes all kinds.
About Campaign Finance
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Supreme Court Takes Campaign Finance Case, Will Rule On Contribution Limits

This case is a logical and entirely sensible extension of Citizens United. It seems that Roberts is donning sackcloth and ashes to demonstrate to the conservative Justices that he has not entirely gone squishy soft after he called The Affordable Care Act a legal tax. Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson are going to be two happy and huge donors if the SCOTUS rules to diminish campaign finance regs... Soros just pulled off another arbitrage coup and might want to spread his largesse to the Dems, so everybody [including Apple's Tim Cook] might be happy with that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Mike Allen puts a New Gambit in His Playbook: Useful Morons Reply

POLITICO has removed its nose from Obama's nethermost orifice [note reference to tiny Schwannstueke] and sent their masterminds to decry the terrible treatment this White House is giving them---and after all they've done for HIM! His Most High Solipsist has benefited from the Band of Brothers/Sisters who avoided Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Benghazi [during the election, no less] and [and many other gaffes too numerous to name] not even the NYT can get access to a one-on-ONE with His Most High Narcissist. Of course, sniveling sycophants like Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, Diane Sawyer and the House Poodle from 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft, all get their face time with The Emperor Jones.

"The balance of power used to bemore in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”

McCurry and his colleagues in the Clinton White House were hardly above putting their boss in front of gentle questions: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore often preferred the safety of “Larry King Live” to the rhetorical combat of the briefing room. But Obama and his aides have raised it to an art form: The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?

Piers Morgan has adequately replaced Larry King, but his reputation as a fugitive from a British newsie scandal would tarnish the shining armor of the Commander of the Faithful,[Rais al-Mu'mineen to his Arab confreres whom he bows and kowtows to as much as it isn't seen as dreadfully impolitic]. The usually compliant Ann Compton bleats thusly:

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

No more interviews of nominees when there might be a chance to slip up and ask a real query:

When Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, she gave one interview — to White House TV, produced by Obama aides.

The GREAT ONE or is it WON still has a choir of clowns like the alcoholic whore Charles H. Pierce over at the unread broadshit called Esquire roars that POLITICO has always been unreliable. The WaPo's in-house sod hole Greg Mitchell calls Vandehei and Allen "Crybabies" when he himself is a victim of perpetual buggery and submission by the White House, the DNC, and the far-left conclave of covert communists like little Ezra Klein. But there's more:

“They use every technique anyone has ever thought of, and some no one ever had,” New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker told us. “They can be very responsive and very helpful at pulling back the curtain at times while keeping you at bay at others. And they’re not at all shy about making clear when they don’t like your stories, which is quite often.”

Peter is actually the very best foreign reporter in the NYT stable. In the past, the "newspaper of record" was given special treatment. But now Twitter, Facebook, Google+, legacy lefty TV broadcasters like NBC, CBS, ABC and especially 60 Minutes along with many other communication outlets are employed by this White House to undermine the GOP and ignore the traditional media. Some of Obama's techniques are:

* There’s the classic weekend document dump to avoid negative coverage. By our count, the White House has done this nearly two dozen times, and almost always to minimize attention to embarrassing or messy facts. “What you guys call a document dump, we call transparency,” the White House’s Earnest shot back. If that’s the case, the White House was exceptionally transparent during the Solyndra controversy, releasing details three times on a Friday.

* There is the iron-fisted control of access to White House information and officials. Top officials recently discouraged Cabinet secretaries from talking about sequestration. And even top officials privately gripe about the muzzle put on them by the White House.

* They are also masters of scrutiny avoidance. The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.Kumar, who works out of the White House press room and tallies every question a journalist asks the president, has found that in his first term Obama held brief press availabilities after photos ops or announcements one-third as often as George W. Bush did in his first term — 107 to Bush’s 355.

* While White House officials deny it is intentional, this administration —like its predecessors — does some good old-fashioned bullying of reporters: making clear there will be no interviews, or even questions at press conferences, if aides are displeased with their coverage.

And the press had a good time with an old pic of Obama shooting a skeet shotgun, but got slapped on the wrist by Carney and Plouffe, demonstrating the essential silliness of the sandbox toddlers in the West Wing when someone criticizes their toys.

A number of these techniques were on vivid display two weekends ago, when the White House released a six-month-old photo of the president shooting skeet, buttressing his claim in a New Republic interview that he fires at clay pigeons “all the time” at Camp David.

Obama and his team, especially newly promoted senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, often bemoan the media’s endless chase of superficial and distracting storylines. So how did the president’s inner circle handle the silly dust-up about whether the president really did shoot skeet?

Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney tweeted a link to the photo, with Pfeiffer writing that it was “[f]or all the skeeters” (doubters, or “skeet birthers”). Longtime adviser David Plouffe then taunted critics on Twitter: “Attn skeet birthers. Make our day - let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” Plouffe soon followed up with: “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

The controversy started with an interview co-conducted by Chris Hughes, a former Obama supporter and now publisher of The New Republic. The government created the content (the photo), released it on its terms (Twitter) and then used Twitter again to stoke stories about conservatives who didn’t believe Obama ever shot a gun in the first place.

Methinks that David is delusional.

And I'm sorry Neil Monroe of the Daily Caller wasn't mentioned when he supposedly "heckled" THE MOST HIGH during a sheeple only exposition in the Rose Garden.

The brave White House reporters literally and figuratively chased him out of their cozy coterie. Look where that got the herd of suck-ups....

Is Chuck Hagel a Terminal Dud & Why does BHO Like Chuck So Much?

Jennifer Rubin wonders why Sens. McCain & Graham are starting to get cold feet on filibustering the Hagel nomination:

Republicans are in this fix because Democrats won’t act responsibly. Recall what happened when President George W. Bush nominated the hapless Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The opposition party was pushing for her, figuring she’d be a dim pushover. But following in-person meetings on Capitol Hill, it was Republicans, unlike Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his Democratic friends, who came out not to vouch for her but to say they were concerned and unsatisfied. Republican senators and a grass-roots conservative movement organized against their own president. (We can do better. This is an insult to the institution. She’s in over her head.) And sure enough the White House found a graceful way to end the nomination, saying it couldn’t provide documents needed for confirmation because of executive privilege.

Now, however, it is Democrats who cheer for an inept nominee. According to Bob Woodward, some Democrats have called the White House to see if Hagel is withdrawing. And yet none will publicly admit their qualms; none have hinted that they will vote against Hagel. There is no graceful exit from the White House because President Obama doesn’t give a darn whether Hagel is an incompetent fool. He’s not backing down. He’s going to stick it to the pro-Israel community and to Israel. He’s going to stick it to the Republicans.

There is no other way to read his determination to go forward with such a flawed nominee. And Democrats, unlike their Republican counterparts in the Miers nomination, don’t have the nerve or the concern for the institution in which the nominee would serve to force the president’s hand.

Let’s recap. The president doesn’t care about an inept nominee. The Democrats don’t care about an inept nominee. But Republicans are supposed to defer to the White House’s judgment? This is, frankly, nuts.

Hagel's tenure on the Hill showed that behind that crusty and idiosyncratic persona was and administrative nightmare---according to former staffers. Obscenities and nasty insults were hurled at terrified staffers.

Hagel accused the State Department of being "an adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. During my tenure as an Arabist FSO working in NEA, the Near East Asia Bureau, the support of the State Dept. was only on the Seventh Floor and that because of political reasons. A solid phalanx of FSO's on the fifth floor in NEA and our Ambassadors in the 22 Arab countries were neutral or very much opposed to Israel's policies.

I would have agreed with Hagel during Kissinger's tenure, but Cyrus Vance and Jim Baker were instructed by the White House to moderate policies towards Israel.

The inside skinny on the entire American/Israeli/Arab saber dance is that the Democrats supported Israel's left-wing Labor Party until in 1978, Likud ousted them from power. The Dems abruptly changed their attitude and policies toward Israel when the right-wing Likud kept Begin, Shamir, Rabin in power until Rabin's assassination by a far-right settler.

The Dems hate Netanyahu and Hagel is Barry Soetero's pet anti-Israeli thumb-in-their-eye. Iran, Syria, Egypt would all be boosted if Hagel were confirmed.

Obama is angry that the GOP is not bowing to his narcissistic sense of self-entitlement.

I'm hoping some less controversial nominee oversees the painful cutbacks the imbecile in the White House is gleefully overseeing as he continues to geld America through economic and political incompetence and dishonesty across the board.