"...New York Times columnist Roger Cohen writes that the 'chief' reason Hagel should be confirmed is that doing so 'will provoke a serious debate on what constitutes real friendship toward Israel.' Even if you agree with Cohen’s barmy views of geopolitical 'friendship,' Hagel’s got real problems if this is the best case for his nomination. 
 
"The Defense Department faces imminent cuts, Chinese and Russian nationalism are ascendant, the Middle East is becoming even more destabilized and theocratic, and we’re still at war in Afghanistan, but Hagel’s chief qualification is that he’ll be a great conversation starter? Wow. 
 
"The coming nomination fight will undoubtedly focus on the strength of the case against Hagel. But the real indictment of Obama’s pick is the weakness of the case for Hagel — and the pettiness of the pick in the first place."

"We're quickly approaching the point that we have little to lose with a government shutdown, because if we don't cut spending and reform entitlements very soon, we'll run out of this Monopoly money, and the government will go broke. 

"Please let us finally have this debate in public -- a debate the liberal media will be forced to cover because it will happen in the context of a threatened government shutdown. Holding my breath."

"[T]he tax burden will rise more for someone making $30,000 a year (1.7 percent) than it does for someone earning $500,000 annually (1.3 percent). 

"A whole new wave of Obama supporters still don't even know: They'll get their first 2013 paychecks on the 15th of the month. So when you're shooting the breeze in the lunchroom with your grumbling co-workers on the 16th, just ask them, 'Who'd you vote for in November?' When they say Mr. Obama, just tell them: 'Well, you got what you voted for. You did know he was going to raise taxes, right?'    
 
"The looks on their faces will be priceless."

"Serious men don't taunt. And they don't farm the job of negotiating out to the vice president because no one can get anything done with the president. Some Republican said, 'He couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag.' But — isn't this clear by now? — not negotiating is his way of negotiating. And it kind of worked. So expect more. 

"Mr. Obama's supporters always give him an out by saying, 'But the president can't work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in.' That's true enough. But it's true with every American president now — the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side's big mouths are always braying they'll take him down. They tried to capsize Bill Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, they called him an amiable dunce and vowed to defeat his wicked ideology.  

"We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal."

"The president barred significant spending cuts in the stopgap bill, further alienating Republicans and worsening the poisonous political climate in Washington as he begins his second term. 

"This is a bigger problem than Mr. Obama may imagine. The most important issues — the debt ceiling, entitlement reform, tax reform, government spending, the $110 billion sequester — now must be dealt with in an atmosphere that is hardly conducive to bipartisanship and compromise. 

"The essence of bipartisan deals is win-win: Both sides are satisfied, even if not elated. Mr. Obama's approach is that he alone gets to win. The approach worked, more or less, on the fiscal-cliff deal, but it won't produce the larger bipartisan agreements that Mr. Obama now needs. And he'll miss the opportunities that other presidents seized, to their own benefit and the country's."

"This deal is projected to yield $620 billion in revenue over a decade — increasing projected federal revenue by about 1.7% over that time. And that’s about it. The Democrats have made the Bush tax rates permanent for 98 percent of the public, which Republicans couldn’t even do when they controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. ... 

"If even under the conditions of the past month — with a very liberal president just re-elected, Republicans in disarray, public opinion on taxes seemingly friendlier to them than it has been in decades, and higher tax rates automatically taking effect — the Democrats can’t get more than a tiny pittance of revenue and no chips to use later, then their basic approach to fiscal issues just won’t work. The idea that they will raise rates again in the Obama years when they don’t have all these factors working in their favor is a fantasy. ...

"The fiscal trajectory of our welfare state is not sustainable, no matter how much taxes go up. That is the truth at the heart of our budget crisis. The fiscal-cliff debate ignored that truth from start to finish, and so has achieved nothing worthwhile for anyone. The Republicans know why they got nothing out of this: The expiration of the tax rates meant they could only contain their losses here. But what about the Democrats? Now they have gotten their tax increase, and what has it gained them but the prospect of an even slower economy? What’s their game plan?"

Very Best Wishes for a Most Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Filled with Seasonal Cheer!

"After President Obama was re-elected on Nov. 6, Americans faced a reality on Nov. 7: Taxes are going up. The only question facing conservatives now is how much of that tax hike they can prevent while also preserving as much of the hard-fought spending cuts they won in 2011. ... 

"Obama's top priority is to raise taxes as high as he possibly can. A $1.3 trillion tax hike was his latest offer. But undoing the $1.2 trillion spending cut in the debt-limit deal is also important to him. His latest offer not only rescinds the scheduled spending cut, but it also calls for $80 billion in new stimulus spending. Obama did also offer to cut Social Security by $120 billion over 10 years and make $800 billion more in other unspecified spending cuts, but he has flat out refused to entertain any serious entitlement reform proposals."

"WASHINGTON — An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to 'grossly' inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi. 

'"Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,' the panel said."

"If we are going to have a rush to action, it shouldn’t be on guns. It should be on mental illness. It doesn’t make for high political drama or emotional cable chatter, but getting treatment for more of the most seriously mentally ill might actually prevent future shootings. Even if it doesn’t, it would improve the lives of sick and vulnerable people. ... 

"When they are treated, the seriously mentally ill aren’t more violent than the general population. If untreated, though, they are. The evidence is in our ongoing roll call of horrors perpetrated by the deranged. We don’t know yet if Adam Lanza was mentally ill, or if a better system would have helped him. We do know that somewhere out there a young man is about to get very sick. He could become the next Jared Loughner or James Holmes — unless someone gets him treatment."