Chuck Hagel

Cheers To Former Senator Richard Lugar For Blistering Conservative Talk Radio As Out To Promote Discord For Monetary Gain!

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Former Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, one of the few “decent” Republicans left in the GOP, came out yesterday in condemnation of conservative talk radio and other right wing extremists as out to promote discord for monetary gain, in a speech at Duke University.

He also was critical of the attacks on Defense Secretary nominee, former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, by right wing spokesmen, both in the Senate Armed Services Committee (including Ted Cruz of Texas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma), by former Vice President Dick Cheney, and by the usual right wing activists on Fox News Channel and talk radio.

Both Lugar and Hagel are a dying breed, conservative Republicans in a field of right wing loonies taking over the party, led by Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and others. One might not always agree with Lugar and Hagel on every vote, but one could have respect for their intelligence and fair mindedness, and willingness to “cross the aisle”!

It is good that Lugar, despite his defeat last year, is willing to speak up on principle about the extremist turn in his party, and how people are making money off of promoting hate and division!

ONLY when we have future Lugars and Hagels will the GOP rise again to the White House and Senate control, as the Tea Party Movement is the destruction of the party and its future!

Former Vice President Dick Cheney And Obama Foreign Policy: Total Hypocrisy!

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the disastrous Bush foreign policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, has now denounced the Barack Obama foreign policy as a failure, and termed his appointments of John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and John Brennan as dismal and second rate. when the Bush team, including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet and others demonstrated total arrogance and total incompetence in their leadership of our foreign policy for eight years!

The fact that Obama has fought terrorism effectively is ignored, an amazing development when it was under Cheney and George W. Bush that America was attacked. Imagine if Al Gore had been President on September 11, 2001, and the literal hell that Gore would have suffered for such an attack occurring!

Cheney predicted that the war in Iraq would be won easily, and the fact that more than 4,000 Americans were killed in that war does not concern him, or the tens of thousands of men and women disabled by the war.

Cheney helped contribute to a feeble war effort in Afghanistan, and ten years later, we are still in that nation, with over 2,000 Americans killed, and still with 68,000 troops there facing threats every day of loss of life or serious disabilities.

This man also said that deficits and the national debt were not important issues, but of course, now his party emphasizes that, after the destructive financial policies they pursued, including NOT raising taxes in time of war, and helping the top two percent gain the biggest tax cuts in history, and yet see total abuse by Wall Street and the corporations, leading to the Great Recession!

The fact that this most despicable man of recent times has the nerve to even speak up on Presidential leadership, when his own President was a true disaster in so many ways, shows he has no shame or feeling of guilt or responsibility for what he and George W. Bush have wrought!

“Crossing The Aisle”: BiPartisanship Of America’s Presidents From FDR To Obama

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A common theme in American history is the “crossing of the aisle”, the bipartisanship encouraged by just about every American President, and the utilizing of leaders of the opposition party to help make his administration successful.

Franklin D. Roosevelt had Henry Stimson as his Secretary of War from 1940-45, with Stimson having served as Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover. He also had Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy from 1940-1944, who had been the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1936.

Harry Truman had Warren Austin as his United Nations Ambassador from 1947 to 1953.

Dwight D. Eisenhower had Robert Anderson in various roles, as Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Treasury, during his eight years in office from 1953 to 1961.

John F. Kennedy had Robert McNamara as his Secretary of Defense and D. Douglas Dillon as his Secretary of the Treasury and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (who he had defeated for the Senate in 1952, as his Ambassador to South Vietnam.

Lyndon B. Johnson kept on McNamara, Dillon and Lodge as close advisers in his administration, after he succeeded to the Presidency upon Kennedy’s death.

Richard Nixon had Sargent Shriver as Ambassador to France, John Connally as Secretary of the Treasury, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan as Ambassador to India.

Gerald Ford had Moynihan stay on as Ambassador to India, and then as Ambassador to the United Nations.

Jimmy Carter had James Schlesinger as Secretary of Energy, and Lawrence Eagleburger as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Ronald Reagan has Mike Mansfield at Ambassador to Japan, Jeane Kirkpatrick as Ambassador to the United Nations, William Bennett as Secretary of Education, and Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

George H. W. Bush had Richard Stone as Ambassador to Denmark, and Robert Strauss as Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Bill Clinton had Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and William Cohen as Secretary of Defense.

George W. Bush had Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation.

And Barack Obama has had Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation, Jon Huntsman as Ambassador to China, John McHugh as Secretary of the Army, Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and now has pending the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense.

Notice that Obama has had more members of the opposition party in his administration than any President!

Chuck Hagel Will Survive Rough Treatment Of John McCain And Other Republicans On Senate Armed Services Committee, And Be Confirmed As Secretary Of Defense!

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Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel will survive his rough handling in the Senate Armed Services Committee and be confirmed to be the next Secretary of Defense, despite the efforts of Arizona Senator John McCain, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, and newly minted Texas Senator Ted Cruz, to derail his nomination, more on vindictiveness than anything else. Here was a basically conservative Republican, who like Richard Lugar, had the nerve to be independent, and be willing to cross the aisle and work with Democrats, and even, in the case of Hagel, endorse Barack Obama in 2008.

Hagel is a man of principle, a man of courage and determination, a man of levelheadedness, a man who has served his country well during his years in the military, a man who has been a successful businessman which makes him able to handle the massive bureaucracy of the Pentagon, and a man who is able to deal with adversity as it already has visited him, with his two Purple Hearts while serving in Vietnam, including his bravery in saving his own brother when both were wounded at the same time.

Hagel has a steadiness about him that will make him an outstanding Secretary of Defense, and his criticism of the “surge” in Iraq in 2007, which killed 1200 soldiers and wounded thousands others will stand the test of time, long after John McCain and his hawkishness, which calls for constant military intervention and invasion, is repudiated, as having been the wrong choice for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two “chicken hawks”, to make.

John McCain will be looked back upon as a man who, fortunately, we did not elect President of the United States, while we will look back upon Chuck Hagel’s service as Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama as one of the best cabinet choices ever made for the Pentagon, if not the best, since the agency was created in 1947!

Popularity Of Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton At High, Along With Stock Market, As February Begins!

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As Hillary Clinton leaves the State Department, after four successful and accomplished years as Secretary of State, her public opinion rating is at an all time high, 67 percent. She goes off to a well deserved rest, and a possible run for President in 2016, with the Republican Party hoping she will not run, as they know very well that they would have an extremely difficult time defeating her, if she was the Democratic Presidential nominee!

As Hillary leaves in triumph, our President, Barack Obama, has reached a peak of popularity, now reaching 60 percent, and his agenda, including gun regulation and immigration reform at the forefront, along with the continued creation of jobs and a hoped for budget deal in the next few months, is making him look at his strongest point since he was first elected in 2008.

The Republican Party is floundering badly, and all we see are Tea Party radicals, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas makes fools of themselves, and also witness Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina go on the attack against a former colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who they once were friends with, as he seeks to bring a new direction in the Pentagon. Their vindictiveness and nastiness is appalling, and diminishes both Senators immensely!

The Republican Party is mired in 26 percent support, and while they complain about the economy, a readjusted set of results for November and December shows greater growth in jobs than expected, and housing starts are up, and the stock market just today went over 14,000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the highest since October 2007!

So the Democrats, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton have a lot to be proud of, while the Republicans are demonstrating they have learned nothing from their defeat.. Their future is gloomy, until and when they realize that they must repudiate the Tea Party Movement and the extreme right wing.

The country is rapidly becoming more “Blue”, and once Arizona, Texas and Georgia become so, which seems inevitable by the next decade, the Republican Party will be unable to recover and gain government control and win the White House.

This country is not what they wish it to be–Southern, rural, white, and old. Instead, the Atlantic and Pacific Coastlines and the Great Lakes Region, urban and suburban areas, diverse population of all races, and young, and also women, are the future, and they are going “Blue” by leaps and bounds!

A First: Two Vietnam War Veterans In Charge Of Our Foreign And Defense Policies

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Here we are, 40 years after the Paris Peace Accords ended US involvement in Vietnam, and we finally have two Vietnam War veterans in charge of our State Department and Defense Department, with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts taking over the State Department on Friday, and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska facing a Senate confirmation hearing tomorrow, in which he will be challenged by critics who never served in Vietnam, and could best be described as “chicken hawks”!

Hagel will have a rough reception, but he will be confirmed, rightfully, and he and Kerry will bring a different perspective to our foreign and military policies, the concept of thinking clearly and moving toward confrontation and engagement only when absolutely necessary for our national security and safety.

Kerry and Hagel are a repudiation of neoconservatism, which sees engagement in wars overseas as always a good thing, and constantly looking for places to send military force to promote American capitalist values and Christianity, and in so doing, antagonizing much of the “third world” nations of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. That is why they are fighting so hard to stop Hagel, but they will fail to do that.

Kerry and Hagel know the horrors of war and the reality of military life, and Hagel has war wounds to prove it. They will be excellent advisers to President Barack Obama, and will help to promote sanity in our foreign and military policies. May we wish both of them good fortune as they chart the course of America at a time when rational, sane behavior is essential for America’s revival from a decade of war and economic turmoil.

The Alleged “RINOS”: Colin Powell, Jon Huntsman, Chuck Hagel. Richard Lugar And Others

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Those who call themselves “Republicans”, but promote the Tea Party agenda domestically; the Neoconservative agenda in foreign policy; the social policies of the fundamentalist Christian right, the Radio Talk Show hosts and Fox News Channel; the fanatical gun rights advocates of the National Rifle Association; and other right wing extremists, represent the downfall of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush.

And it is precisely these groups within the GOP who condemn Colin Powell, Jon Huntsman, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar and others as being “RINOS”–Republicans In Name Only!

But it is precisely people such as Powell, Huntsman, Hagel and Lugar who represent the moderate conservative approach to government, a mainstream viewpoint which includes understanding that negotiation and compromise is essential to the workings of American democracy.

These people above are thoughtful, rational, accomplished leaders in the party, but they are being swept aside—Powell ignored and pilloried by many; Huntsman quickly being repudiated in the Presidential primaries; Hagel now facing a massive battle to overcome opposition within his own party to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense; and Lugar defeated in a Senate primary by an extremist who then lost the Senate seat that Lugar had held for 36 years.

As Powell said yesterday on a television interview, it concerns him that his party is ignoring the demographic reality of the growth of minorities in the voting population, and they have a problem with skin color and ethnicity. Hard to believe that is is the party that ended slavery and promoted civil rights in the mid 19th century!

A First In A Presidency: The President, Vice President, Secretary Of State, And Secretary Of Defense All Former Senators!

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For the first time in the history of the Presidency, we have now the unique circumstance of having four former United States Senators about to be serving at the same time as President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense!

The fact that most Senators aspire to be in one of those four positions is belied by the fact of just how rare that is, and never have all four positions been held by former Senators whose next public position was to serve in one of those posts.

Barack Obama is the former Senator from Illinois. Joe Biden is the former Senator from Delaware. John Kerry soon will be the former Senator from Massachusetts. And Chuck Hagel, when confirmed, will have the distinction of having been a former Senator from Nebraska.

These four men are a distinguished team, with all having sought the Presidency, except Hagel, who had thoughts of it, but had no chance in a Republican party that he realized, as time went by, was no longer the party he had believed in, based on its past.

Chuck Hagel And The Bloated Defense Budget

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Newly nominated Defense Department Secretary Chuck Hagel was a war hero, wounded in Vietnam, helping his brother in the war theatre, being himself an enlisted man and first Vietnam veteran to be nominated to lead the Pentagon, and now he faces the neoconservatives, many of whom NEVER served in the military, and have no real concept of what life is like for the average soldier in the war theatres, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or earlier in Vietnam!

As President Barack Obama said yesterday, Hagel can relate to the soldiers bleeding in the soil and mud of combat zones, since he experienced it himself. And Hagel knows that there is a lot of unnecessary waste, fraud, abuse in defense spending, and that America no longer can commit major combat troops all over the world, and that there is a need for a cutback in our defense spending, which has gone out of control since September 11, 2001.

We have over $700 billion a year spent on defense now, more than the next THIRTEEN nations combined, and this includes many of our own allies and friends. But even China, with four times our population, has a miniscule amount of money spent annually on defense!

The question is why we need such a large number of bases all over the world, particularly in Germany and Japan, but also the multitude of bases in many other nations that most Americans are not even aware of the extent of our military commitment, which eats up money that could better be spent on domestic needs!

Chuck Hagel is the right man to cut back unnecessary bases and spending, as he is not beholden to the Defense establishment, and knows how to position our military to deal with threats in the future.

Barack Obama is perceptive in his choice of Hagel, and while there will be a battle over his nomination, the inconsistencies of his critics will be displayed in testimony, including laudatory comments by Mitch McConnell and John McCain and many others, who once thought Hagel was an outstanding colleague and showed regret when he chose not to run for another Senate term in 2008, in disgust at the partisanship and pettiness that existed.

Just because he chose to be an independent person, a maverick, is no reason to deny his capablities and talents to be Secretary of Defense, and politics should “stop at the water’s edge” when it comes to the operation of the Pentagon!

Hagel is worth fighting for, and despite opposition, the nation will be fortunate to have this courageous Republican maverick as the creative, reformist oriented leader that our Defense Department needs in the second decade of the 21st century as we face the need for budget reform and savings on expenditures!

The Battle Between Bush I Loyalists And Bush II Loyalists Begins Over Chuck Hagel Nomination For Defense Secretary

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Hard to conceive, but the battle between loyalists to President George H. W. Bush and loyalists to President George W. Bush has begun over the nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense in his second term in the Presidency.

The “old guard” Establishment Conservatives around the first President Bush, including Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and the former President himself, have no major problems with Hagel.

On the other hand, the neoconservatives, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and conservative ideologues like Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Frank Gaffney, John Bolton, and Charles Krauthammer all will find Hagel wanting in his foreign and defense policy views. It is not clear where President George W. Bush will come down, but in theory, he would agree with his key advisers and consultants mentioned above. Note that Powell and Rice are more linked to father Bush, and both were certainly involved in major battles with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others during the second Bush Administration.

It will be an interesting battle, and it is likely that many Republican Senators will refuse to back Hagel, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, newly sworn in Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has particularly gone on the attack already against Hagel.

A key person to watch will be Senator John McCain of Arizona, who still harbors resentment that Hagel backed Obama over him in the 2008 Presidential campaign, and vehemently disagrees with Hagel on issues involving Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran. McCain has been attacking Obama on every front lately, but will he concede that Obama has a right to the Defense Secretary he wants?

Stay tuned for the fireworks, particularly to wonder where Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky will take their stand–with the old line establishment figures, which include also many military and naval leaders; or with the neoconservatives who brought us into long, drawn out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with very little success!