Monday, January 07, 2013

The Hagel And Brennan Nominations And What They Tell Us about Obama

As I expected, President Obama nominated ex-Senator Chuck Hagel today as Secretary of Defense and  John Brennan to head the CIA. Both nominations tell us something interesting about this president and about the future.

I pretty much figured out that Hagel would get the nod  once the White House put the word out to the usual suspects to start  pushing him after his abysmal record  on Israel and on Iran came to light.It was especially a giveaway when they enlisted Obama surrogates with Jewish names like Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg.

I would be very surprised if Hagel didn't get confirmed by the Senate, barring something unusual happening. The body has 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans and 2 left leaning independents who mostly caucus with the Democrats, as well as a potential tie breaking vote in Vice President Biden. I doubt that President Obama didn't discreetly have his own caucus polled before he put Hagel up for nomination.

Hagel would have to lose at least 6 Democrat votes to be denied confirmation, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Administration gave behind-the-scenes permission to Senate Democrats in states with large Jewish populations like like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or Ben Cardin (D-MD) to choose to vote no if there's enough of a margin to get Hagel across the finish line without them.

There's no question about Hagel's consistently  pro-Iran and  anti-Israel stance.  He was a reliable anti-Israel vote during his entire senate tenure, becoming one of the handful of senators refusing even to sign on to resolutions that were essentially just measures of support for an ally.

At the same time, his positions on Iran make one almost think he should have registered as a foreign lobbyist at some point.He's been a consistent opponent of even President Obama's relatively mild sanctions, no matter what he says now. He favors direct US negotiations with Hamas and Hezbollah, and was one of only 12 Senators who refused to lobby  the EU asking them to declare Iranian proxy  Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

In fact, Hagel has long been an advocate of taking Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah off the State Department's list of terrorist groups, and while he was a sitting senator Hagel voted against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.And remember, as Senator Hagel starts burnishing his veteran's credentials, that until 9/11 Hezbollah killed more U.S. servicemen than any other terrorist group. And that the Revolutionary Guard has the blood of American soldiers on its hands as well.

Just as a coincidence, Hagel also sits on the board of  Deutsche Bank, which is now  being investigated by U.S. authorities for violations of the same Iran sanctions Hagel voted against when he was in Congress.

Even worse is the message this nomination sends to Iran.They now realize that President Obama was not telling the truth about not allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and has no interest whatsoever in stopping them. They have a green light.

Is Hagel an anti-Semite?  A number of his former Jewish constituents in Nebraska seem to think so. Many of them  recall him as hostile and unfriendly not just on Israel but towards the community in general:

The flavor of the accounts is given in a headline in one Jewish website: “Nebraska Jews Recall Senator Chuck Hagel as ‘Unfriendly’ and ‘Unmovable’ on Israel, ‘Didn’t Give a Damn About the Jewish Community.’” The former editor of the Omaha Jewish Press recalled that “Hagel was the only one we have had in Nebraska, who basically showed the Jewish community that he didn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or any of our concerns.” Another community leader commented that  “During his last year in office, we knew he was not going to run again, he never returned any of our calls.”

It's also a matter of record that in 1999, when the American Jewish Committee asked members of the U.S. Senate to sign an advertisement condemning anti-Semitism in Russia the AJC subsequently ran in the New York Times during Russian President Boris Yeltsin's U.S. visit, the only Senator who refused to sign was yes, Chuck Hagel.

More troubling is Hagel's tendency to conflate 'Jews' and Israel. Aside from his quaint belief that the 'Jewish Lobby' runs DC, ( as quoted by  author Aaron David Miller's 2008 book "The Too Much Promised Land"), there's also a disturbing incident I wrote about previously, Hagel's campaign to shut down the Haifa USO facility when he was president and CEO of the World USO from 1987 to 1990:

“He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it’,” said Marsha Halteman, director for military and law enforcement programs at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which led the battle to keep USO Haifa operational.

Hagel’s campaign to close the storied USO port struck many observers, including the U.S. Navy and congressional leaders, as misguided. Those same critics argue today that Hagel’s animosity toward the Jewish state leaves him unsuited to be the nation’s next defense secretary.

“He essentially told us that if we wanted to keep the USO [in Haifa] open—and when I say ‘we’, he meant ‘the Jews’—he said the Jews could pay for it,” said Halteman, who recalled being taken aback by the comment.

Again, note that Hagel never said something like 'maybe we can seek outside funds to keep it open' or talked about shutting down other USOs by telling, say, Italian Americans to pay for the USO in Palermo or Naples if they wanted to keep it open. He made a point of demanding it be shut down unless the Jews paid for it.

Yet, with all that, I'm not particularly interested in labeling him an anti-Semite,although it's worth looking at how virtually every anti-Semite and Israel hater in in public life has lined up solidly behind him. Andrew Sullivan and Pat Buchanan, for instance, are absolutely ga ga over the president's pick and so are the kameraden over at Stormfront. If Hagel isn't actually a Jew hater, he apparently likes how he looks in the uniform, if you take my meaning. I fully expect him to make the same sort of pro forma vague remarks about 'commitment to Israel's security' you'd expect in this situation, but let's just say the man's entire history belies anything he says during his Senate hearings.

Odd, isn't it how many of President Obama's present and former close associates have a similar Israel or Jewish problem? If you look at the president's other close associates over the years like Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said and a host of others, Hagel fits right in, and he and the president are said to be quite close personally.

One can only imagine what might be said about a prominent white politician with long time close associations with David Duke, Tom Metzger, Barry Mills, or Don Black, but the media isn't going to go there. Jew hatred - ooops sorry, 'anti-Zionism' - is fashionable in a lot of circles nowadays. And it is a mainstream opinion in a significant part of the Democrat party.

Another point I don't expect to be raised during Hagel's hearing but should be is his craven behavior on Iraq. After voting for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when it was easy, he later had a change of heart and began doing his best to sabotage our war effort. Anyone can have a change of heart, and considering the way AfPak and Iraq were run it might even be considered commendable to some degree. But Hagel joined up with Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and yes, Senator Barack Obama in doing their very best to sabotage the Surge strategy by starving it of funds, doing their best to destroying morale on the home front and publicly maligning and insulting its originator and Iraq'a commander, General Petraeus while it was underway and our troops were under fire.

The Surge successfully accomplished what it was meant to accomplish, to allow America to make a more or less graceful withdrawal from Iraq. But the games played in DC by people like Senator Hagel made it just that more difficult, and it was frankly despicable behavior. I'd expect that sort of thing from Harry Reid, but not from someone who makes a point of letting us know he's seen combat. Politics did not stop at the water's edge with these people, and our troops suffered because of it.

So what does President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel tell us about the president, and about what we can expect in the future?

Along with President Obama's new pick for the CIA, John Brennan, Hagel is quite outspoken about America normalizing its relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah.The prsiddnt and both men all agree, to put it bluntly, that the way to end any conflicts between America and Islam is to forge closer ties with the emerging Muslim Brotherhood governments, withdraw from the region, be careful not to 'offend' Islam here at home and to distance ourselves from Israel.Or in other words, let's give them the Jews and they'll go away.Brennan once famously referred to Jerusalem as 'al-Kuds' its Arab name and is a vociferous and out spoken advocate of treating Islamist terrorism as a crime problem. He even supported mirandizing the Underwear Bomber, after which we stopped getting information out of him, of course. That should give you a pretty good idea where Brennan's coming from.

History has proven what a fallacy this sort of policy is many times before, but that pretty much is their position - and this president's- in a nutshell.

Hagel is also an outspoken foe of military spending, so you can expect him to continue Leon Panetta's work in hollowing out our military to provide more revenue for the president's pet domestic projects.

I've said for some time that President Obama is not at all serious about preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, or at least not having America do it.It may very well be that the president fully intends for the Israelis to do it themselves and take the onus..after which he can use Israel's 'aggression' to push for a dictated settlement to the Arab Israeli conflict and for sanctions against the Jewish State. In any event,expect a much more adversarial relationship with Israel, even to the point of our terminating joint weapons projects that actually benefit the United States or refusing to sell arms to them any more.

The way to squeeze and pressure Israel is directly through the Department of Defense simply holding up any shipments of arms and spare parts at a crucial moment. President Obama did it for the first six months of his administration in 2009 by executive order, and with  Hagel's emnity towards the Jewish State,  he can be counted by the president to be an enthusiastic backer of such policies.

The Israelis will no doubt cope, having been through this before, but our disengaging from the Middle East will come back to haunt us.

President Obama's ideal is to turn America into a European style socialist state. But he apparently hasn't noticed the financial turmoil going on in Europe these days as the system there collapses or the fact that the only reason the Euro Socialist states have lasted this long is because the U.S. allowed them to farm out their national defense to America.

There's no one waiting in the wings to take over the job of defending America.
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Soccer Dad's Mideast Media Roundup, 1/7/13


Today's sampler and analysis of Mideast media content from my pal Soccer Dad:

 1) An intellectually honest editorial


Daled Amos and Israel Matzav linked to a Washington Post editorial, Overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements:
Overall, the vast majority of the nearly 500,000 settlers in Jerusalem and the West Bank live in areas close to Israel’s 1967 borders. Data compiled by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace show that more than 80 percent of them could be included in Israel if the country annexed just more than 4 percent of the West Bank — less than the 5 percent proposed by President Bill Clinton 12 years ago. Diplomats were most concerned by Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to allow planning and zoning — but not yet construction — in a four-mile strip of territory known as E-1 that lies between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, a settlement with a population of more than 40,000. Palestinians claim that Israeli annexation of the land would cut off their would-be capital in East Jerusalem from the West Bank and block a key north-south route between West Bank towns. Israel wants the land for similar reasons, to prevent Ma’ale Adumim — which will almost certainly be annexed to Israel in any peace deal — from being isolated. Both sides insist that the other can make do with a road corridor. This is a difficult issue that should be settled at the negotiating table, not by fiat. But Mr. Netanyahu’s zoning approval is hardly the “almost fatal blow” to a two-state solution that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described.

I won't pretend to agree with some of the criticism of Israel in the editorial, but this is a very important point. Nothing Israel is doing endangers the peace process.


In praising this editorial, Barry Rubin explains two ways in which the settlement blame game is wrong:  
First: the day after the Israel-PLO agreement was signed in 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that Israel’s interpretation was that it permitted continued construction on existing settlements. The Palestinian Authority did not object, and that policy did not prevent it from negotiating over the next seven years.
Misrepresentations — deliberately? — often make people think that Israel is establishing new settlements or expanding the size of existing ones. Both claims are untrue.
Second: if the Palestinian side wants an end to settlements, that should be an incentive for reaching a peace agreement faster and thus getting rid of all settlements on the territory of the new state of Palestine. Notice that Israel — under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, no less — demolished all of the settlements in the Gaza Strip as, among other things, a sign of what could be gained by a peace deal.
Yet the Palestinian side has been in no hurry to make a deal. In theory, when it complains about settlements, the response should be: “So why don’t you compromise for peace and get rid of them, rather than having them become ‘larger?’”
This is important. It means that those who complain that settlements are destroying the peace process are really the ones who are preventing peace. They are providing cover for the Palestinians, who refuse to negotiate in good faith with Israel. If Abbas knew that elite world opinion thought he was the obstructionist, he might be inclined to negotiate. Since he knows that the "settlements" excuse exists he can drag his feet, feigning outrage and pay no price - diplomatic or political - for his obstinacy and get Israel blamed in the bargain, he has no incentive to negotiate.


The editorial is extraordinary for another reason. Shortly after Binyamin Netanyahu formed a new government in 2009, The Washington Post ran an editorial, Israel's new Government and Palestinian Statehood, that concluded:
The problem with that course is that it could deliver a fatal blow to the two-state solution, which most Israelis recognize as the only way to preserve a democratic Jewish state. As outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert understood, the time for that solution may be running out. It is vital that the United States and European governments insist on Israeli acceptance of it -- just as they have done with Palestinian governments -- and that they publicly oppose actions that could undermine it, such as settlement expansion. If that creates tension between the United States and Israel in the short run, the result may be productive. Israelis -- starting with Mr. Netanyahu -- need to get the message that acceptance of a two-state solution has become a prerequisite for normal relations with the United States.  
Four years ago the Washington Post viewed the newly elected Prime Minister Netanyahu the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East. What's changed?


A few months later, a member of the of the editorial board (and former Jerusalem correspondent for the paper) Jackson Diehl wrote Abbas's waiting game on peace with Israel:
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.
...
What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.
Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' "  
Last year, in Mahmoud Abbas's unhappy anniversary, Diehl wrote:
Abbas’s defenders will claim that Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and the Obama administration’s inability to influence it, left him with few options. That’s a canard. In fact, Abbas has never seriously tested the Israeli leader. He could have done that by fully committing to the negotiations the Obama administration tried to organize or to those sponsored by Jordan’s King Abdullah this year. That would have forced Netanyahu to reveal his terms for Palestinian statehood — and brought real pressure to bear on him if they were unreasonable.
Instead, Abbas has repeatedly backed away from serious diplomacy, citing as an excuse Israeli settlement construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank — something that did not stop him from participating in negotiations with previous Israeli governments. He embarked on his unity-U.N.-intifada strategy on the premise that it would bring about Palestinian statehood without the need for negotiations with Netanyahu.
And, not for the first time, Mahmoud Abbas succeeded only in delaying Palestinian statehood — and weakening his own cause.
I believe that Jackson Diehl was the mover behind last week's editorial, as he was watched Mahmoud Abbas closely over the past four years. This is the way journalism should work. opinions and reporting should be based on observations not unsupported allegations. As the editors of the New York Times becomes even more unhinged when discussing Israel, it's encouraging that another important paper can discuss Israel soberly.


Postscript: On Twitter two of those to criticize the editorial were M. J. Rosenberg and Lara Friedman. Rosenberg a known anti-Zionist accused editorial page editor (and Diehl's boss) Fred Hiatt of being an "Israel firster." Friedman a leader of the supposedly pro-Israel group, Americans for Peace Now, cited anti-Zionist Matt Duss. See item #2 below.


2) Zealots, the truth and polls


Recently, a campaign to support the flagging nomination of Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense began. Part of that campaign were two op-eds in the New York Times casting opponents of Hagel as extremists. One by longtime political correspondent James Besser asserted:
There is also a lesson here for American Jewish leaders, who increasingly tremble in the face of a small minority of zealots, whose vision of Israel’s future diverges from that of the majority of American Jews and clashes with core American values of freedom and democracy.
The other by regular columnist Thomas Friedman argued:
The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth. But most U.S. senators, policy makers and Jews prefer to stick their heads in the sand, because confronting Israel is so unpleasant and politically dangerous.
In different ways both argued that mainstream support for Israel is driven by fanatics who are divorced from reality and that support for Hagel, came from thoughtful people free from ideological blinders. It's interesting to revisit these arguments in light of a recent poll of American views towards the Middle East. (via Daily Alert)
There continue to be stark partisan differences in Middle East sympathies. Conservative Republicans maintain strong support for Israel with fully 75% saying they sympathize with Israel compared with just 2% who sympathize with the Palestinians. By contrast, liberal Democrats are much more divided: 33% sympathize more with Israel, 22% with the Palestinians. Independents sympathize more with Israel by a 47% to 13% margin.
There were two other categories, but the only group that didn't have a preference for Israel over the Palestinians by at least 3 to 1 was those self-identified as "liberal Democrats."


Friedman and Besser comfortably fit in the liberal Democrat, the least pro-Israel, grouping. Each, in his own way, from that perspective, accuses the mainstream pro-Israel organizations of being out of touch and in agreement with extremists.


I pointed this out to Barry Rubin who summarized the phenomenon like this:
Option 1: Israel is at fault for losing the Obama cult crowd and a small but vocal increasingly left-wing sector of Americans (many of whom aren’t that thrilled with the United States either).

Option 2: Given an increasingly left-wing ideology that’s based on faulty assumptions and neglects the dangerous radicalism of Islamist forces and other enemies of America, it is the dominant worldview in the mass media, academia, and ruling circles in America that is to blame for turning away from Israel.

Understand this well: Option 1 requires Israel to change; Option 2 requires the people voicing such complaints about Israel to change. Well, these people don’t want to examine their assumptions and change their views. They’d end up suffering for their support of Israel, they’d be out of step with the mob; they might have to—shudder!—step away from what’s popular and “in.” My goodness, they might even have to question Obama’s brilliance and policies! No contest. So it’s not surprising that Option 1 wins out. Hey, do what you have to do to avoid admitting your wrong and paying some price for telling the truth. But don’t blame us.
When J-Street was founded, its supporters claimed that it represented the true consensus of pro-Israel Americans. More specifically they claimed that there needed to be an alternative to AIPAC, which was too "right wing." Now, more than four years later, AIPAC is still the main pro-Israel lobby and J-Street remains marginal. The market for J-Street's pro-Israel views is rather limited.


If groups claiming to be "pro-peace" don't have much traction in the pro-Israel community, who are their allies?


This leads to another phenomenon. Last week, Haviv Rettig Gur wrote How the Hagel nomination battle became a fight over the Israel lobby. Part of Gur's argument is:
And opposition has even come from gay rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign. Though Hagel has apologized for comments made in the 1990s that seemed to denigrate gays, the criticism has continued from some quarters of the gay rights movement, especially on the right. In the latest critique, published in a full-page ad in the New York Times on Thursday, the pro-gay rights Republican group Log Cabin Republicans urged supporters to “tell President Obama that Chuck Hagel is wrong for Defense Secretary” and expressed support for “a stronger and more inclusive Republican Party.”

Hagel’s supporters have responded vigorously to the agitation of the Israel lobby, and in the process perhaps sought to crowd out opposition to Hagel that can’t be as easily dismissed as illegitimate and – Zbigniew Brzezinski said it outright – disloyal.

What's shocking isn't that there is strong support for Israel in America, but that a significant minority of the political elite are willing to disparage this support in such crude terms.


While Besser or Friedman might claim that they are pro-Israel or looking out for Israel's best interests, what's undeniable is that they find themselves closer to those who would suggest that Israel's supporters are guilty of dual loyalty than to mainstream pro-Israel opinion. They don't realize how far they have migrated.


Richard Baehr has related thoughts about American public opinion regarding Israel.


3) The "realist" paradox


Jackson Diehl, in an essay today, The Middle East Morass writes:

In Washington, some of the loudest calls for Obama’s reengagement come from the “realist” foreign policy camp, populated by figures such as former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft — and former senator Chuck Hagel, whom Obama is considering for defense secretary. These folks opposed the war in Iraq, and they reject U.S. intervention in Syria or military action against Iran’s nuclear program. They have been arguing for years that it is time for the United States to recognize limits to its power.

When it comes to Israel, however, the realists assume boundless U.S. strength. If only he chooses to do so, they argue, Obama could join with U.S. allies or the U.N Security Council in imposing a two-state solution on the Israelis and Palestinians, like it or not. The supposition seems to be that a United States too weak to force Bashar al-Assad out of Syria can compel Israel’s advanced democracy and the leaderless Palestinians to accept compromises they have resisted for decades.
I don't buy everything in this essay. I'm not convinced of the good intentions of Brent Scowcroft or Zbigniew Brzezinski. However this is an important point.


Instapundit points to a paradox in Senator Hagel's expected nomination.
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Forum:What's Your Reaction To The Fiscal Cliff Agreement?



Every week on Monday morning , the Council and invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day. This week's question:What's your reaction to the Fiscal Cliff Agreement?

 The Razor:Everyone said Boehner was dealt a bad hand, but I don’t play poker for a reason: I suck at it. I understand that the best poker players are able to win regardless of their luck, which leads me to the following conclusion:
A great speaker in Boehner’s situation would have bested Obama and gotten an amazing deal. A good speaker would have gotten a decent deal where Democrats and Republicans were both upset but glad the worst was behind them. An incompetent speaker would have gotten a bad deal where the Democrats would have gotten everything and the GOP nothing that it wanted. A terrible speaker got the deal Boehner got – which is a disaster that was worse than the Democrats were offering.

I’m still trying to understand how Boehner managed to do that, but the bottom line was that he got a bad deal AND instead of talking about the 77% of Americans whose pay checks will be cut by 2% from now on, the wags were talking about how the GOP screwed the Northeast with the Hurricane Sandy bill. Yes the bill was bad and will be made right by the next congress, but the GOP were made out to be petty and divided by the way the bill was handled. Lost in the kerfluffle was the higher taxes everyone that’s working is paying, and Moody’s threat to downgrade our debt which shows the danger of Obama’s spending ways.

Yes the GOP is in civil war, and I’m all for it. Boehner is clearly incompetent, and the rest of the GOP leadership needs to be rounded up. I’m grabbing my pitchfork and heading to the Bastille because the way it stands today, the Republican party will join the Whigs on the ash heap of History, and it’s time for something better.

 The Political Commentator: While the Democrat position regarding the fiscal cliff negotiations came as no surprise, what struck me was the unfortunate maestro-like way in which the Obama-led Party played the Republicans in much the same way that a concert pianist would play the Chopin Funeral March.

While it remains to be seen how much backbone the Republicans exhibits when the debt ceiling debate reaches the point of maximum noise, what is painfully obvious is that the Party of Obama is focused on everything but spending cuts and deficit reduction as evidenced by a "cliff" deal that's projected to add $4 trillion to our federal debt.

My reaction is one of angst and fear for myself, my children and my future grandchildren concerning the fact that the POTUS and his Party could care less about destroying the American currency, the American economy or of breaking the backs of the people who present the greatest opportunity for reversing our economic tailspin while at the same time creating an atmosphere of class warfare that threatens to at some point pit one American against another in violent confrontation!

For them it is all a political calculation geared towards reelection by pandering to a gullible and ignorant electorate with giveaways.

G-D help us all.

The Noisy Room: Intense anger is my reaction. I expected evil machinations from Obama,
but Boehner truly outdid himself this time. Not only did Obama get
everything he wanted, he showcased the Republicans for the spineless lot
that they truly are and tore their ranks asunder.

Even now, I hear the political cries that everyone had to do this, to
save us from radical tax increases. Well, Obama got his tax increases
anyway and laid the ground for much more, so I am puzzled at this
justification. The middle class was hurt the most by all of this - not
the elite. My husband just received a $1500 a year pay reduction and
that is before Obamacare kicks in. Let's not even discuss what is
happening to my business - it is heartbreaking. There is no longer a two
party system... just Progressives on both sides of the aisle, all
snuggly under the covers with each other while telling working Americans
they can just pound sand. The elite Progressives view Americans as their
serfs who fund their lavish lifestyles. But the slaves have just about
had enough.

What's even worse, is this whole piece of sordid theater laid the
groundwork for Obama to finish off the Constitution and rule by
executive fiat in toto. He no longer fears an actual fight as he moves
to gut the Second Amendment and take full control via a dictatorship.
But as Bob Owens has astutely pointed out, he will have one hell of a
fight on his hands.

Obama will tax us into submission if he can. He will finish off America
by destroying her great economy once and for all, while neutering our
military and baring our throat to our enemies. How he must truly hate
America and revel in the potential for her glorious demise. The one
thing he has miscalculated on is the American people. He may be using
class warfare to get his way, but there are just enough patriots among
us who will fight to the end to see America regain her glory.

Sadly, the Republicans will go down in history on the wrong side and
will be remembered only as weak, Progressive underlings, who, when the
fight came, sought shelter, fiscal crumbs and strength at the feet of a
Marxist despot. For that, they will wish that they be forgotten. May G-d
forgive them, because America and history will not.

The Independent Sentinel:  President Obama won, We have trillions in increased spending over the next several years with a promise of more taxes. Our Republican leaders are wimps who didn't do what they said they would do.

 Bookworm Room: Short answer: Republicans got rolled (again).

Long answer: Republicans can try to sell this as "giving the voters what they asked for.' Obama promised higher taxes and the Republicans yielded to that promise. They also protected as many people as possible by freezing as much of the Bush tax cut as Obama would allow.

The next thing is to do a big spending fight, with no backroom deals. Never enter into secret negotiations with a known liar. Also, since Obama is a mean fighter, it's better to have that out in the public. The Republicans also should get a message and stick to it. The message is that Obama's election meant people were open to a tax increase, but that the continued Republican majority in the House means that the American people wanted cost controls. Call out the Democrats on this one.

Oh, and my really short answer: Gag!

JoshuaPundit: I pretty much  already said what I thought about this here.

As an aside. there were three unintentionally humorous parts to this fiasco. 

The first part was the huge deal made out of the Fiscal Cliff by the media in terms of the relatively  tiny amount of money involved as 'revenues' versus what the Federal Government is actually borrowing and  spending. The second was the way an ObamaCare mandated decrease in fees paid to doctors seeing MediCare patients was 'avoided' by essentially fudging the math and figuring how to pay for it later...which is a joke you only get if you remember how Obama's surrogates talked up th eway ObamaCare was going to save money by doing exactly that. And the third knee slapper was out benighted president pounding his chest, crowing  and taking credit for 'his' win when the actual  work - if you can call it that - was done by VP Biden  and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

The actual formula they Republicans and the Administration signed amounts to $41 of new taxes for every $1 of spending cuts, and I think we all know by now that even those spending cuts won't ever be instituted unless they involve defense.They never have been, if you look at the history of this sort of thing since Democrat  Speaker Tip O'Neill conned President Reagan into raising taxes back in 1982 in what was supposed to be $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes.

 It also struck me as pretty funny that neither  the media or anyone else  ever discussed all of the shiny new taxes mandated by ObamaCare that took most people by surprise when they got their first 2013 paychecks.These new taxes and the huge tax raise given to President Obama by the House Republicans amounts to another huge transfer of wealth, which is what the president has always been about anyway.

Expect more of the same, especially when it comes to the debt ceiling. Because much of the GOP leadership appears to be afraid of doing what they're constitutionally mandated to do, control the purse strings.

Eventually, that cowardice is going to have to be paid for.

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD: Obsession with how this will effect Defense and defect Great Satan's Global Hyperpuissance. Alliances cut in good faith - like Taiwan, SoKo and or Nippon are in jeopardy - not to mention understood understandingments with spiritual sisters like Little Satan.

There are many challenges and opportunities in the coming years. There are also opportunities for less benign nation states that do not value free trade, democratic imperatives or human rights to take advantage of a hollow American Force Projection ability and cause probs for eons

  Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

 It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.
And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

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Sunday, January 06, 2013

Mother Of Two Fends Off Home Invasion With Five gunshots

Cops: Mother of two surprises intruder with five gunshots photo

The gentleman above is one Paul Ali Slater, a career criminal with multiple arrests and a history of violence who for some bizarre reason was out of jail and on the streets in Gwinnett County, Georgia. He made the mistake of picking the wrong house to rob and the wrong people to assault.

The Loganville mother of two assumed the knocks on her front door Friday afternoon were from a solicitor.

“Don’t answer,” she yelled to her 9-year-old twins playing downstairs.

When the visitor began repeatedly ringing the doorbell, she called her husband at work.

“Get the kids and hide,” he told his wife.

As he dialed 911, his 37-year-old spouse, who works from home, collected the children and hid with them in a crawlspace adjoining her office. By that time, the intruder had forced his way into the three-story residence on Henderson Ridge Drive with a crowbar, authorities said. He allegedly rummaged through the home, eventually working his way up to the attic office.

“He opens the closet door and finds himself staring down the barrel of a .38 revolver,” said Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman, who relayed the woman’s narrative to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He asked that her name be withheld.

The woman fired six bullets, five of which hit Paul Ali Slater in the face and neck area, Chapman said. But Slater was still conscious.

“The guy’s face down, crying,” the sheriff said. The woman told him to stay down or she’d shoot again.

Slater, unaware that she had emptied her chamber, obliged as the mother and her children ran to a neighbor’s house.

The injured burglar eventually made it out of the home and into his car, driving away before deputies arrived on the scene. He didn’t get far.

“When you got five bullets in you, it makes you kind of disoriented,” Chapman told the AJC.

The bad news is that Slater didn't die, and is expected to recover. Pity.He'll undoubtedly be someone else's problem once he gets out of jail.

Chapman remarked that one of his deputies, impressed with the woman’s resolve, told the sheriff she had handled her first shooting better than he had.

“That mother’s instinct kicked in,” Chapman said. “You go after a mother’s kids and she’ll find herself capable of doing things she never thought she was capable of.”

This mother is whom President Obama wants to disarm and make helpless. If she had been, this story would have had a far more tragic ending for her and her children.

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Palestinian Authority Cancels Electricity Debts For All Residents - On $$ Owed To Israel!



When it comes to pure, unmitigated gall, you really can't beat the Palestinian Authority.

They just issued a blanket cancellation to all residents of all past due debts owed for electricity.

The Palestinian Authority announced on Wednesday that it is cancelling outstanding electricity debts for each West Bank resident, on the heels of a deal that aims to help assuage the electricity companies' own arrears.

Government spokeswoman Nour Oudeh told Ma’an that all residential bills owed until Dec. 31, 2012 will be canceled. Businesses and people facing investigation for electricity theft will not be included in the deal.

Now here's the fun part.The Palestinian Authority receives all of its electricity from- wait for it - Israel!

The article briefly alludes to this, explaining that the unpaid bills outstanding totaled about $100 million, the sum the Israeli government transferred to the Israeli electricity supplier out of tax and customs duties collected for the PA by Israel.

So let's reiterate - the PA is cancelling bills owed to someone else with money it doesn't have and taking credit for it as a goodwill gesture!

Of course, the real suckers are those people that actually paid their bills. The PA simply pocketed that money and never remitted it to Israel as they had agreed to do.

It's worth noting that most of what passes for infrastructure in the Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria was built by Israel after the Six Day War. Aside from totally revamping the power grid, the sewage system, the roads, schools, hospitals,Bir Zeit University, even parks and zoos, the Israelis supply almost all of the PA's water and electricity.

Needless to say, they never gotten so much as a cursory acknowledgement for any of it.

After the way the Palestinian Authority has behaved, I think it might be simple justice for Israel to simply turn off the juice and the tap and let the Palestinians negotiate something with say, Jordan to fulfill their needs.

I'm sure their Arab brothers will treat them with the same compassion they always have.
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Israel's Surging New Voice On The Right



There's an amazing development taking place in Israeli politics as the country continues its ongoing election campaign.

The polls show that a new party and a brand new face is gaining ground on Netanyahu and Likud from the right.

The Party is HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home), and the new face is 40-year-old Naftali Bennett.

Jewish Home is essentially a coalition of various religious Zionist factions. Bennet and his party favor a number of common sense moves, such as annexing Area C in Judea and Samaria where most of the Jewish communities are and where hardly any Arabs live, moving more towards a free market economy and creating a national solution for affordable housing, a huge issue in Israel.

And his message is resonating.

Currently, the polls show the Likud-Israel Beiteinu merger to be on track to get only 32 seats (the two parties currently hold 42), while Jewish Home is looking at 16 seats.And most of it is at the expense of Likud/Israel Beiteinu.

That's up from 14 seats last week and nine at the end of October.

At this rate, Jewish Home may even surpass Labor, currently polling at 17 seats.

Netanyahu, foolishly, has been sniping at Bennett and Jewish Home, which has only continued to drive more voters to support them. The magic number for Israel's 120 member Knesset is 60+, and at this rate, Netanyahu, who is still the favorite to win enough seats to be re-elected and form the next Israeli government may have to swallow his words and bring Bennett and Jewish Home into his coalition.

Naftali Bennett's story is an interesting one. A native of Haifa, he is the son of American olim(immigrants) who moved to Israel from San Francisco after the Six Day War.

He's a major in the IDF reserves, having served in Netanyahu's old unit, the elite Sayeret Matkal and with the Maglan (Ibis), a very hush hush IDF unit that specializes in operating behind enemy lines. During the Second Lebanon War, the Maglan destroyed 250 Hezbollah targets on Lebanon's coast in Operation Beach Boy.

A lawyer by training, he made his fortune with an Israeli company that invented and marketed some SOTA anti-fraud software, which he later sold to a larger company for a nine figure sum.

He also served as Netanyahu's political chief of staff in Likud 2006 to 2008, helped develop Netanyahu's program on education and masterminded Netanyahu's primary campaign to head Likud in 2007.

It appears that that Bennett and Netanyahu fell out over the 2010 Settlement Freeze Bibi was arm twisted into by President Obama as a unilateral 'good faith gesture' which, of course, gained Israel absolutely nothing.

Bennett, then Director General of the Yesha Council vigorously opposed the freeze and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some personal issues between the two.

It's not surprising to me that there would be a surge of support for the right in Israel. At this point, only the most delusional Israelis or those who get their paychecks from the EU believe the two state solution is viable anymore.

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Obama Expected To Nominate Anti-Israel Pro Iran Chuck Hagel Next Week

According to a number of sources former Senator Chuck Hagel, who endorsed President Obama in 2008 and in 2012 is set to be nominated as Secretary of Defense by the president Monday or Tuesday of next week. And if Hagel is nominated, this is a significant signal.

I pretty much called this last week once I saw how the White House coordinated a media assault in his favor. Prominently featured, of course, were left wing pro-Obama writers with Jewish last names like Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg.

In Goldberg's case, he even had the asininity to admit he was 'uncomfortable' with the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel nature of a lot of the people backing Hagel, but wrote, essentially, that his (Goldberg's) hatred of those he terms 'settlers' and Israelis on the right trumps that.

I've already had a lot to say about Chuck Hagel's record previously. Aside from a consistent anti-Israel stance, he is so pro-Iran that he might need to register as a foreign lobbyist. Aside from vociferously working against labeling Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organizations, he's also on record as being opposed to even the Obama Administration's relatively mild sanctions against Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program.

And it seems it's not just Israel Hagel apparently dislikes. Aside from well-known remarks about how 'the Jewish lobby runs DC', there's also a revealing story about the USO in Haifa that's surfaced.

Israel, unlike many other countries we call allies gives America carte blanche use of many of its facilities. One of them is the Mediterranean port of Haifa, a very popular stop for the U.S. Navy.

Senator Hagel initiated efforts to shut down the USO club in the city when he served as president and CEO of the World USO from 1987 to 1990:

“He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it’,” said Marsha Halteman, director for military and law enforcement programs at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which led the battle to keep USO Haifa operational.

Hagel’s campaign to close the storied USO port struck many observers, including the U.S. Navy and congressional leaders, as misguided. Those same critics argue today that Hagel’s animosity toward the Jewish state leaves him unsuited to be the nation’s next defense secretary.

“He essentially told us that if we wanted to keep the USO [in Haifa] open—and when I say ‘we’, he meant ‘the Jews’—he said the Jews could pay for it,” said Halteman, who recalled being taken aback by the comment.

I'd call this anecdotal, except that there are numerous sources cited who reported similar remarks by Hagel on this issue.

What it signifies, just as Hagel's remarks on the so-called 'Jewish Lobby' do, is that he coflates Jews and Israel. To him, they appear to be the same.

There will be major opposition to Hagel's appointment as Secretary of Defense on Capitol Hill, and President Obama has to know that. If he is willing risk that kind of fallout to go ahead an dtry to push Hagel's nomination through when Hagel’s views on Iran and Israel are supposedly out-of-step with those of President Obama, that raises the question about whether the president’s real positions on Iran, Israel and national defense are the same as the ones he’s voiced publicly.

If Hagel is nominated, let alone appointed, it tells us essentially that regardless of the rhetoric, President Obama is unconcerned about a nuclear Iran and plans on vastly increasing the 'daylight' he wants between Israel and America.

There is simply no other way to read it.

And if Hagel is indeed nominated, I have to wonder how America's Jews - and Jewish Democrats - will regard the matter. Most of them voted for Obama, disregarding this president's previous record on Israel, his support and enabling of the Muslim Brotherhood and his long time association with a number of figures like Jeremiah Wright, Rashid khalidi, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Edward Said, Bill Ayres and a number of others who could justifiably be considered anti-Semites. Many of America's Jews essentially bought President Obama's statements about his commitment to Israel's security, although what happened at last year's Democratic Convention should have opened a few eyes.

Now that President Obama no longer needs Jewish votes or campaign donations, does he simply feel free now to be more open about his real views?

Stay tuned..because we're about to find out.

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Friday, January 04, 2013

LATMA's Latest - Cutting Edge Israeli Satire!



The latest from the LATMA crew...'Yom Y'Ahvo' ('A Day Will Come') is just wonderful.
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Middle Class Reacts With Surprise as New Obama Taxes Hit Their First 2013 Paychecks



Ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is, well, truth hitting you between the eyes.

When Obama signed the fiscal cliff bill into law he said, “Under this law, more than 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses will not see their income taxes go up.”

*chuckle*

@NathanWurtzel
And now, time to write checks to my employees for less take-home pay than they got two weeks ago. #thanksobama #thanksdemocrats
about 20 hours ago 
 
 
@hollonheels
The gild is off the lily. My employees were genuinely perplexed by the higher taxes reflected on their pay checks today. Seriously?
about 22 hours ago 
 
@VintageStan
just noticed ALL my employees, part time, hourly, etc, will have more tax $ taken out of their checks, contrary to president's promise. LIAR
 
 
Welcome to what you voted for America!
 
 
 
(H/T, Twitchy )


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The Council Has Spoken!! THis Week's Watcher's Council Results

 

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for the first Watcher's Council match up of 2013!

Even taking into consideration the normal high level of quality in both the Council and Non-Council entries, this was a tough call with some exceptional pieces to choose from, and the close vote tallies reflect it.



 

It's been said that one of the most deadly weapons on earth is A U.S. Marine and his rifle, but as this week's winner, The Mellow Jihadi shows us with Corporals of the United States Marine Corps , some of them are pretty deadly with a pen in hand as well, especially when speaking truth to our pompous, self aggrandizing elites! Here's a slice:

The Navy, in its infinite wisdom, sent me and 66 of my ruffian cohorts to the Marine barracks. We had run out of room in the Navy building.

I got all the guys together and told them from that day forward we would solve all our own problems. No one whines to the quarterdeck until he gives us (me and four of the older guys) a chance to straighten things out.

For a year, this worked perfectly. (One minor exception, but we forgave the guy for blabbering to the JOOD. He was sleep-deprived and ate only Willy Wonka candy. A story for another time. . .)

In the Marine barracks, once my Marine friends made Corporal, they were a breed apart from us. It was a major step up from Seaman and Lance Corporal. They were men. Take this letter Corporal Joshua Boston wrote to Diane Feinstein. Without any fuss, the Corporal makes his point. And it ends with this beauty:

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

Nice group, Corporal Boston, and right on target...Semper Fi!

In our non-Council category, the winner was veteran humorist Bob Owen with  What You'll See In The Rebellion  submitted by Rhymes With Right.It's his view pf what might happen in the event there's an attempt at a federal gun grab.

As a lagniappe, here's a link to Owens being interviewed on the subject over at PJTV by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Gay Patriot was unable to vote, but was not subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty.

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners



See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council takes apart one of the provocative topics of the day and weighs in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!
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Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Iranians Evacuate City Located Near Nuclear Site

 Key nuclear sites map

The Mullahs have ordered the 1.5 million population of Isfahan to flee from the city because pollution has now reached emergency levels. At least that's their story.

Isfahan is also the site of one of Iran major uranium conversion sites, where yellow cake is processed to make Hexafluoride gas used in gas centrifuges. It also processes uranium oxide (which can be used to fuel reactors of a different type than the ones Iran has or to not the type Iran is constructing or to separate out plutonium for nuclear weapons using a fairly easy chemical process) and metal, mostly used in the cores of nuclear bombs.

And there have been previous reports that the nuclear facility has been leaking radioactive material.

There was also an unexplained explosion at the plant in 2011 that was reported to have done damage to the Isfahahn facility.Since no IAEA inspectors have been allowed in, there's no guarantee as to how safe the plant is or what precautions have been taken. Remember Chernobyl?

Of course, there's also the possibility of sabotage.

In any event, Iran's regime is not noted for honesty either to its people or the outside worlds, and I doubt they would go to the trouble and expense of evacuating a large city unless something fairly bad had happened.

Isfahan has always been a nuclear accident waiting to happen anyway. Aside from every thing else, the plant sits on an active earthquake fault line, one that has destroyed the city of Isfahan something like half a dozen times ion recorded history.
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New Year's Eve Car-B-Que Returns: 1,193 Vehicles Get Torched In France

 Hundreds of cars torched in French New Year 'tradition'

Ah, those frisky 'youths'!

Ever since Le Petit Jihad in 2005, burning vehicles has become what amounts to a New Year's Eve tradition in France as disaffected, predominantly  Muslim youth car-b-que parked vehicles in the banlieus

This New Year's Eve tally was 1193 parked vehicles:

Hundreds of empty, parked cars go up in flames in France each New Year’s Eve, set afire by young revelers, a much lamented tradition that remained intact this year with 1,193 vehicles burned, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday.

His announcement was the first time in three years that such figures have been released. The conservative government of former President Nicolas Sarkozy had decided to stop publishing them in a bid to reduce the crime -- and not play into the hands of car-torching youths who try to outdo each other.

France’s current Socialist government decided otherwise, deeming total transparency the best method, and the rate of burned cars apparently remained steady. On Dec. 31, 2009, the last public figure available, 1,147 vehicles were burned.

Most of the car-B-ques took place in the Paris suburban region of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the 2005 Le Petit Jihad started and other areas the French refer to among them selves as 'La Zone'- urban areas in French cities de facto ceded to France's restive Muslim population, where the police normally only go in armed bands.

Of course France 24 and the AP would never use the word 'Muslim' in the article.

There's a grim sort of poetic justice here.

As Bat Yeor explained in her classic book "Eurabia", large scale Muslim immigration to France was a deliberate policy starting with the DeGaulle government.

It was done for trade, for oil, because the anti-American DeGaulle envisioned France as the leader of a new bloc of Muslim nations with France at their head and because the French figured that a new crop of immigrants would help pay for France's extensive welfare state.

It also meant distancing France from Israel, which is why DeGaulle treacherously cut off all arms and spare parts shipments to Israel on the eve of the Six Day War, even if they had already been paid for. Up until then, France had been Israel's main ally and arms supplier.

But quelle surprise !

The Jews won their war anyway, France's Muslim immigrants consume far more in social welfare spending costs than they came close to paying in taxes, and they account for a wildly disproportionate percentage of France's crime and its prison population.

Funny how that worked out, n'est pa?

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Watcher's Council Nominations -Post New Years Edition



The New Year is upon us and the taxman cometh!Best wishes from all of us for a prosperous happy and healthy 2013, and here's hoping the current antics of the people we voted for to watch the store haven't totally knocked the Holiday spirit out of you!


Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:

First off, congrats to Bookworm Room for winning the title of Conservative Blogress Diva in Waiting in the The Grande Conservative Blogress Diva competition.

This week, Liberty's Spirit, Right Truth, Tina Trent and The Pirate's Cove took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status with some great pieces.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then, just returrn the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning.

Simple, no?

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. Pretty cool eh?

So, let's take a look at what we have this week....


Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!
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Tuesday, January 01, 2013

The New Fiscal Cliff Deal Goes To The House: $41 In New Taxes For Every $1 In Spending Cuts

The Senate pushed through a fiscal cliff compromise bill, It's pretty much what I detailed yesterday.

Tax rates would go up to 39.6% from the current 35 percent on family incomes over $450,000, $400,000 for individuals.Counting the surcharges from ObamaCare I described at the above link, taxes on capital gains climbs from 15% to 23.8%, dividends from 15% to a whopping 43.4%, and other investment income (zero coupons, etc.) from 35.4% to 43.4%. Happy new year, retirees! What, you didn't realize you were part of the Evil Rich?

The Senate deal would restore limits on personal exemptions and itemized deductions, phasing them out for couples earning more than $250,000 a year and single people earning more than $200,000, a direct slap at a lot of small business owners.

Much is being made by the White House of the fact that these are 'the same tax rates we had during the Clinton years, when we had a booming economy.' True enough, especially thanks to the Reagan/Bush peace dividend, but the percentage of GDP we were spending was far less as well.Somehow, I seem to have missed calls from President Obama to go back to the spending levels of Clinton years as well.

There's a permanent Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) fix, and an extension of unemployment benefits for another year.A mandated 27% decrease in Medicare fees paid to doctors was also avoided by essentially fudging the math, or in DC-speak 'fixing the sustainable growth rate formula through the end of next year.'

You might recall how the White House and their surrogates figured up the 'savings' they claimed for ObamaCare by saying that they would simply pay doctors less, conveniently avoiding the reality that doctors would simply refuse to take Medicare patients if it meant they would go broke in the process. This is an attempt to deal with that reality, or rather to avoid it for awhile.

The Republicans actually wanted to have this paid for by cuts in ObamaCare, but caved in when the Democrats dug their heels in and the Republicans smelled the possibility of The Deal.

The spending cuts that were agreed to in the sequestration agreement? Those get delayed for two months while some more bargaining goes on as to who takes the haircut.

The reality of course is that the cuts will never be implemented except on defense, if history's any guide.

In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes by Speaker Tip O'Neill and the Democrats.The tax hikes occurred but the spending cuts never materialized, and President Reagan later characterized it as the worst mistake of his presidency.

President George HW Bush got suckered the same exact way in 1990,making a deal with the Democrats for $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. The tax hikes went through, but not a single dime's worth of the promised spending cuts actually happened.

It will probably be the same this time around. President Obama and the Democrats will never admit we have a spending problem, because bribing their constituents for votes at the taxpayer's expense is how the party has functioned since the days of Tammany Hall:



So, the end result in reality is $41 in new taxes for every $1 in spending cuts - assuming those cuts ever happen.Naturally, there's no mention of the debt ceiling. That fistfight is being put off until February...while the spending continues.

I have to give credit to Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Richard Shelby (R-AL) for voting against this.It really does absolutely nothing to work on the real fiscal problems.

They were joined by Democrats Michael Bennet (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Tom Harkin (D-IA),all of whom felt that the senate agreement didn't raise taxes enough.

We'll see whether the House goes along for the ride.

UPDATE: Yes, they went along. Boehner was able to get enough Republicans to come along and shove this through.


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