HALF-FULL REPORT 03/01/13

For the last two weeks, President Barack Obama and his aides have been warning about horrible calamities that will ensue when the dreaded sequester begins tonight:

*FBI, ATF and DEA agents will be furloughed, federal prosecutors laid off, said Attorney General Eric Holder.

*Sequestration will make America more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.  To drive home the point, ICE began releasing illegal immigrants from detention even before the sequester started.  This reminded Bryan Preston of how Saddam Hussein emptied his prisons on the eve of the Iraq war.

*The cuts sequestration will force the Federal Aviation Administration to make will disrupt air travel, said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. 

*Schools will have to lay off teachers, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

No one can outdo Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Cal, in fearmongering. The sequester could cost "over 170 million jobs," she said. 

"This is very disturbing news," said Jonah Goldberg.  "According to the BLS, in 2011 there were 112,564,000 full time jobs. That means the sequester will not only destroy every fulltime job in America, it will go on to wipe out an additional 58 million jobs – give or take –  that don’t even exist yet. " 

This is the Washington Monument Gambit, on steroids. James Capretta and Tevi Troy detail the administration’s scare tactics here.

"Obama and the Democrats seem much more terrified of sequestration than Republicans for the simple reason that more of their key client groups depend on the discretionary programs that will be pinched in sequestration, Steven Hayward said.  But Democrats will learn to love the sequester, Andrew Stiles thinks, because it reflects their priorities.

* * * *

You couldn’t guess from Mr. Obama’s overheated rhetoric the sequester was his idea. "Only in America can a president propose a law, get it passed, and then actively campaign against implementing it," marveled "Hardball" producer Michael LaRosa.

The White House is not at all pleased with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward for reminding people of this fact.  Woodward is "willfully wrong" to assert Mr. Obama is "moving the goalposts," said Press Secretary Jay Carney.  "You’ll regret doing this," Woodward said he was told by a White House aide.

What Obama is saying about the sequester is so wildly at odds with the facts, he could be headed for a Mayan Calendar moment, said Investors Business Daily.

"Normally, the media could be counted upon to sell Obama’s version," Thomas Lifson thinks. "But even the wizards of persuasion can’t overcome the reality that downsizing has been a prominent part of organizational life across America, particularly among the MSM."  So if Republicans play their cards right and don’t lose their nerve, they can win the PR battle this time. The stock market agrees, says Ross Kaminski.

Some of the usual suspects showed flashes of integrity:

*CNN’s Candy Crowley and NBC’s David Gregory were skeptical, of LaHood’s horror stories about air travel. The FAA’s budget is higher this year than last, and the number of domestic flights the FAA must monitor have declined 27 percent since 9/11, they noted..

*When CBS asked Secretary Duncan to name a single district where teachers were being laid off as a result of the sequester, he was unable to do so.

*Obama is exhibiting "a kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of the sequester, Bob Woodward said Wednesday.  The Los Angeles Times noticed "an element of gamesmanship" in that decision.

Federal agencies already have flexibility in how to make sequester cuts.  Republicans want to pass a law to give them more.  Democrats oppose it.  Republicans "are trying to abdicate their responsibility to faceless bureaucrats," said Rep. Debbie Dimwit, chair of the Democratic National Committee.

*But the New York Times (!) said this about that:  "If Congress grants the White House the authority to protect air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents and national parks, the administration’s carefully devised high-pressure campaign that has been mounted for weeks could deflate."

If Obama tries to make sequester cuts as painful as possible to force Republicans to capitulate, people will know, said Charles Krauthammer.

"Yes, the MSM is in love with Obama, but they’re more in love with themselves and will ultimately opt for self-preservation," predicts Stephen Kruiser.  "Should the GOP surprise virtually everyone and not blink, they’ll have to spin for themselves for a while to make it seem as if they weren’t complicit in the president’s doomsday mongering."

So if Obama "concentrates spending cuts on the most visible and critical government functions," this would generate stories "about the bottomless pit of waste, fraud, pork, cronyism, malinvestment, and idiocy that characterize so much of business as usual in Washington," Bill Frezza thinks.

* * * * *

To save money during the sequester, House Speaker John Boehner has banned members from using military aircraft for congressional junkets.  They’ll have to fly commercial.  President Obama is not economizing on the taxpayer funds he spends on himself.

* * * *

Democratic operative Donna Brazile wonders why her health insurance premiums are going up.  The poor lady needs a clue. Jim Geraghty provides one.  Avik Roy provides more.

There’d be no need for a sequester if Obamacare were delayed, said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

* * * *

The Conservative Political Action Conference also began today.  Dr. Ben Carson will be speaking at it.  Gov. Chris Christie will not.

Even though he gave President Obama a "lap dance" after Hurricane Sandy, banning Christie is a mistake, says Charles Krauthammer.  CPAC also has garnered negative press for banning the conservative gay group GOProud.

CPAC has given liberal propagandists just what they need to keep the smear campaign going," said Roger Simon.

Conservatives go to CPAC, hear some good speeches, see some of our celebrities, network among ourselves, get energized, mix and mingle, and that’s all fine… The liberal media come in, treats us as an anthropological study of icky subjects that should be quarantined, and we end up with a fun week inside and bad optics outside," said  Bryan Preston.  "Shouldn’t we turn around from preaching to the choir once in a while, and go outside to see if there’s anyone who may want to come in and see what we’re all about?"

* * * *

Andrew Breitbart died a year ago today.  He is missed.  But not by Ana Marie Cox.

* * * *

"Blue States Double Down on Suicide Strategy," Joel Kotkin notes here.  If there’s hope for Republicans and conservatives, it depends mostly on governors like Jindal, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Susannah Martinez in New Mexico.

* * * *

"I voted for (President Obama) the first time around. I had hopes because he was black. Shame on me," the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce said at a news conference Wednesday. Zero issues "a lot of the pain" felt by the black community, Harry Alford said.

* * * *

Chuck Hagel won confirmation as Secretary of Defense Tuesday by a vote of 58-41. Had the 41 Republicans who voted no voted to sustain a filibuster, Hagel would not be SecDef, noted a bitterly disappointed Jennifer Rubin.  I agree with her that Hagel will be the worst Secretary of Defense ever.  But I can’t get too upset about it.  The fundamental problem is we have a traitor in the White House, so the only choices are between bad and worse.

There’s something to be said for having "worse" be so glaringly obvious.  Even if he were brilliant, even-tempered, and a managerial genius, Hagel figures to the most unpopular SecDef since Engine Charlie Wilson, which is to say, the most unpopular SecDef ever.  You can’t be popular when you preside over the slashing of the defense budget that Obama plans, and with the consequences those cuts are likely to bring. 

Whoever is SecDef, the choices Zero offers are "break the military," or "break the military and new taxes," the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee says here.

A guy like Leon Panetta (who was smart enough to get outta Dodge before the roof falls in) could muddy the waters. But Hagel isn’t very smart, has a tendency to pop off, and no clue about how to manage a large bureaucracy.  He’ll be a lightning rod.  It was in another context that Lenin said: "the worse the better."  But I think that might be true here.

* * * *

Secretary of State John Kerry is off to less than a sterling start.  In a speech in Europe last week, he thanked diplomats for their work in a country which doesn’t exist.  Russia’s foreign minister dodged his calls for nearly a week. 

You’ve heard the expression: "damning with faint praise?"  I can think of no better illustration of it than this: John Brennan is the strongest member of President Obama’s new national security team.  Barbra Streisand offers a musical tribute to it here:

* * * *

A liberal PAC is attacking Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell because his wife is Chinese.

* * * *

In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court signaled it may strike Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires (mostly Southern) states and counties to get permission before it can change its election law.  Mother Jones is upset.

You may recall that in the runup to the 2012 election, Attorney General Eric Holder abused Section 5 to frustrate efforts to curb vote fraud.

* * * *

A federal appeals court ruling may force prisons in California to hire witches as chaplains.

* * * *

Yes, that tape was edited to make Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz look bad, said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.  There’s something to be said, I guess, for having the honesty to admit how dishonest you are.

* * * *

The dam hasn’t broken, but this week fissures formed in the media’s code of Omerta.

"The biggest story for America today is the automatic spending cuts triggered by the sequester," said the New York Post. "The biggest story for the DC Beltway? Whether Bob Woodward was "threatened" by the White House."

Bigfoot journalists who didn’t think running guns to Mexicans drug cartels or covering up the murder of an ambassador were newsworthy were enthralled by it.  There was more critical comment about it on CNN and MSNBC than ever there had been about Gunwalker or Benghazi. 

They’d been threatened too, said National Journal Editor Ron Fournier, USA Today reporter David Jackson, and former Clinton aide Lanny Davis.

Journalists who never before noticed President Obama’s departures from the truth were spotting discrepancies between what he is saying about the sequester, and the facts. thinks the four year honeymoon between the president and the press may finally be over, Jonathan Tobin thinks.

The flap arose "at the perfect time," Paul Mirengoff thinks: "Now that Obama has safely been reelected, and with the Republicans supposedly in hopeless disarray, the pent up frustration of reporters – some arising inevitably from the nature of president-press relations and some arising from the particular arrogance of this administration – needs an outlet."

When Zero feuds so publicly with his most effective allies, the glass is way more than Half Full.  Before yesterday, I could never imagine saying this: for taking on All the President’s Men, Bob Woodward is the Hero of the Week.