UPDATE: Heh – could this be Popcorn Time?  Seems like Hagel is claiming that he didn’t make the decision.  So, who did?

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Poor Chuckie – first he willingly, as the token bipartisan Republican, became Obama’s patsie to oversee the downsizing of the Department of Defense in compliance with Obama’s policy of Determined Weakness.  After all, the Left hates the idea that America is the lone superpower and blames much of the world’s ills on the US and its ability to project power.  So once again, as Obama continues to make our allies distrust us and our enemies laugh at us, we see that our military is less able to respond – to the point that if our interests are threatened (and Ron Paul should not fear, Obama is ensuring that we WILL have no offshore interests at all – until they start to come here), we will be unable to say “enough”.  Hagel is overseeing the process by which our forces will be as hollowed out as Western Europeans (which, I dryly note, that Obama is telling them they must up their military spending just as he is ramping ours downward.

And now, Chuckie is being made a patsie again in that the White House is saying, contra to what has been said before, that Hagel made the decision to release the Taliban Five:

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel – not President Obama – executed the administration’s final call to proceed with the prisoner exchange of five ranking Taliban detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, administration officials told Congress today in a classified briefing today.

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It seems that the narrative of how Common Core came to be is now going off the rails.  Instead of the story that had it that it was a push outside of formal government processes, we now see that billionaire and tech mogul Bill Gates decided that money well placed at the right legislative times and to those at the right levers of powers basically hoodwinked people into thinking that this was an organic process.  Just the fact that it effectively came about out of nowhere should have had BS antennas whipping back almost fast enough to have liftoff that local control of education was to be superseded by a national agenda.  Now the smoking gun:

The pair of education advocates had a big idea, a new approach to transform every public-school classroom in America. By early 2008, many of the nation’s top politicians and education leaders had lined up in support.But that wasn’t enough. The duo needed money — tens of millions of dollars, at least — and they needed a champion who could overcome the politics that had thwarted every previous attempt to institute national standards.

So they turned to the richest man in the world.

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“Consistency breeds Trust yields Votes” – I have been saying that for months now, trying to impress upon the Establishment Republicans (aka, the “Republican Republicans for the sake of the Party” – RRFTSOTP) that simply running campaigns for the sake of winning is insufficient.  Rather, winning is merely a necessary pre-cursor – it is what happens afterwards that is important.  But many have not listened – they say the words but then do otherwise.  As frequent GraniteGrok readers know, my prime Object Lesson was Frank Guinta.  As in “you promised us in the TEA Party that cutting spending was your #1 priority and promise – but then failed to vote down the Continuing Resolutions that increased spending”.  That lack of Consistency of deed to spoken word caused enough of us to vote down his second run – and Carol Shea-Porter reclaimed the seat.  Sometimes a message has to be sent (and thankfully, her votes were overridden by a Republican majority).

Eric Cantor got blindsided in his primary tonite and many have mentioned Amnesty being the reason.  Well, yes, but not just that.  Is Amnesty for illegal aliens a Republican platform issue?  Not on your life – unless you are a US Chamber of Commerce Republican (like Cantor was – listening Kelly Ayotte??).  But what did Cantor in was in violating “Consistency breeds Trust yields Votes” – he failed that first fundamental virtue.  Like the NH GOP, he burned his brand amongst his voters – and like the NH GOP, didn’t know it until the counting was over (for him, now, for the NH GOP, 2012).  Why?  A lack of Consistency:

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Well, this ought to be interesting for the Democrat Party LGBTQ (and whatever letters are now Politically Correct) – I’ve given up on PC as I have MUCH better things to do, like washing my dogs a coupla days ago (yes, as the saying goes, I wanted friends), and buying some bologna yesterday…you know, having a life built on the important things instead of one built on grievances.  But it is clear – the first modifier should be MUCH more important than the second.

Yes, Stacie Laughton is trying to return to state level politics – in effort if not indeed.  Steve covered him/Barry /her/Stacie /the felon here, here, here, here, and here (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Stacie Laughton, the first openly transgender legislator elected in the U.S., said she’ll ask the state election tribunal to rule on whether she can run for a Ward 4 seat in the state House of Representatives.The saga over Laughton’s eligibility to serve in the Legislature after a 2008 felony conviction for credit card fraud and other charges continued Friday when Secretary of State Bill Gardner reiterated that Laughton can’t be a candidate.  Laughton, of Nashua, said she will write to the Ballot Law Commission to issue a final judgment in this case. Under state law, the commission is the final arbiter on all candidacies, as its decisions can’t be appealed to state courts.

Laughton was sentenced to 7 1/2 to 15 years for the credit card charge, but it was suspended pending 10 years of good behavior. She received a sentence of

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“With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.”—Otto Von Bismarck

Remember Lorin C. Schneider Jr. of Carver, Massachusetts? Schneider plead guilty to voting illegally in New Hampshire. “Trunk Monkey” Schneider, the court found,  was not legally qualified to vote in New Hampshire, but did so three times since 2008. Schneider  received a prison sentence of one to three years, however he will spend no time behind bars as the court saw fit to  suspend the imposition of that sentence

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“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”  – President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09

And that has been Obama’s and the Progressive mantra – size of Government doesn’t matter but if it “works”.  Progressives have placed all of their belief into the [misbegotten, from my standpoint] view that Government is full of non-partisan experts that can run our Society in an efficient manner.  Remember, Progressivism began in the Industrial Revolution, when machines were mechanical, big, and wondrous things.  They reasoned that Government should be so – and in charge of the even larger machine of Society.  Which, as I have said before, reduces the rest of us to mere cogs in that machine – and they are OK with that.  But is that machine working?  No, because after all, we ain’t cogs.

When I went over to Newsbusters (quoting a National Journal piece) and saw this, I nearly plotzed when I read this:

“Questioning why the Veterans Affairs Department hadn’t been overhauled months ago as promised by Obama (actually that was seven years ago, plus six other times, Ron — Ed.), a senior White House official conceded privately to me, ‘We don’t do the small stuff well. And the small stuff is the important stuff.'”

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