Last week was not a good one for proponents of social re-engineering of the U.S. military. 

They had been buoyed by the previous week's congressional testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, widely seen as evidence the Pentagon was prepared to accede to President Obama's demand that avowed homosexuals be allowed to serve in the armed forces. 

Now, however, four other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have weighed in, and all bets are off on the idea of experimenting with - and possibly breaking - the All-Volunteer Force.  One by one, they poured cold water on Mr. Obama's agenda of homosexualizing the US military.

Let's have cup of coffee and talk.  The HFR Saloon is closed for the week after too much toasting the greatest Irish-American in our history - Ronald Reagan - on St. Patrick's Day.  So we'll go next door to the HFR Coffee Shop.

I'm sure you've seen the news reports on how President Teleprompter thanked himself due to his teleprompter foulup.  Note, however, while the media of course videoed the gaffe - it is nowhere to be seen, not on YouTube or anywhere else.

Not only has the video of "Obama thanks himself" vanished, but try clicking on any website claiming to have it.  Up will come a security alert trying to gain access to your computer.  This happens not just on US websites, but world-wide.  And it happens with search engines world wide, not just Google.

The video of Zero thanking himself would go instantly viral once posted on the Web.  But not only has its posting been prevented, they will try to damage your computer as well.  Zero can't stand to be laughed at, and will try to hurt you if you do.

Fortunately, not even he can stifle Gutter Ball gaffes when they are made with Jay Leno.

Speaking of gaffes, did Secretary of Homeland Defense Janet Napolitano call the President of the United States a terrorist?

What do you think was the most costly intelligence failure of all time?  No, was is not the world's leading intelligence agencies' failure to notice that Saddam had few, if any, weapons of mass destruction.

It was the failure of many leading climate model builders to be modest enough about their predictions, and the politicians' and media's failure to ask the tough questions of these climate experts.

As a consequence of what we now know was an overblown global-warming scare, everyone on the planet is paying substantially more for food and fuel than is necessary.  And Democrats in Congress are doing everything they can to keep it that way.

The President has wrestled control of the health care debate away from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by finally introducing his own plan. Unfortunately, the White House's proposal includes everything we found untenable about the old Senate bill - only this one is even more expensive!

This is what you might call putting "perfume on a pig."

What's in this "new" proposal? It has the unpopular (and arguably unconstitutional) individual mandate that forces people and employers to purchase health insurance - only this time with much harsher fines on employers who choose not to go along with another expensive government mandate.

It has provisions that will make employers think twice before expanding their workforce. It has cuts to Medicare Advantage, a popular program which allows seniors to pay a little more money out of pocket for better coverage. And, of course, it still has sweetheart deals - only this time they've been extended even more.

I plopped onto a barstool at the HFR Saloon and ordered a Maximus.  "So you're into Double IPAs, eh?" noted the bartender as he served it in a frosty mug.  "Best beer in America," was my response.

"Well, you look like you need a best of something," he observed. 

"What I need is a refuge from insanity.  That's why I come here - the HFR Saloon is a refuge from the insane asylum America is becoming.  Just today, the big headline in my paper [The Washington Times] is "Obama Vows to Get Tough on Earmarks."  He said this as he was signing legislation that had 9,000 earmarks.  If the nation doesn't laugh itself silly over that, then we have a nation of retards.

"But maybe the whole world is going insane.  Again today, the guy who runs Blackstone declares that "45% of the world's wealth has been destroyed" in this global economic meltdown.  What does that mean?  That close to half of all the homes, cars, commercial buildings, all the gold and silver in bank vaults, all the stuff that everybody owns in the world has been demolished?  Is this guy nuts?  And yet it makes headlines. 

I paused to quaff my Maximus.  I was beginning to draw a crowd.

Berlin, Germany. If you were asked to name one person who has enabled more people to gain wealth and security than any other person on the globe, who would you name?

In 1881, here in Berlin, Otto von Bismarck started the world's first modern pay-as-you-go social security system which served as the model for the U.S. Social Security system and that of many other countries, including setting the retirement age at 65. No, Bismarck is not the answer to the opening question.  

The answer is a fellow named José Piñera , for he has made life more secure and prosperous for millions, and with luck it will soon be billions of people. Here is how.

On Feb. 17, I joined a group of prominent conservatives assembled for the purpose of unveiling a document dubbed The Mount Vernon Statement. It was intended to emulate an earlier articulation of the principles that unite the right issued 50 years ago at the Sharon, Conn., home of William F. Buckley Jr., known as The Sharon Statement.

The Sharon document advocated victory over totalitarian Communism.  By contrast, the Mount Vernon document made no mention at all of today's totalitarian ideology - what authoritative Islam calls Sharia - or the threat it poses to America, let alone declare that victory should be our purpose in dealing with this menace.

Still, the Mount Vernon Statement is a paragon of robust national security-mindedness in contrast to what took place in the succeeding three days at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

When I walked into the HFR Saloon today, everyone at the bar was laughing their heads off.  "What's so funny?" I asked.  "Haven't you heard?" came a reply.  "Our messiah-in-chief has a new title.  He's now President Teleprompter."

"Yes, even the New York Times is saying he's addicted - can't give a speech or make the simplest announcement without it," my barmate continued.  There's even a website now: teleprompterpresident.com

"And this guy has the audacity to make fun of Rush Limbaugh - who just spoke at that CPAC conference for 90 minutes straight without a single note.  Can you imagine what would happen to Zero if he had to debate Rush one-on-one?  He'd be a joke."

"He already is a joke, and a quite tasteless one," I responded.  "That's why he's being called ‘Jimmy Obama,' after the disastrous bad joke of the Carter presidency."  I ordered a pint of Guinness.

"But he's already blown way past Carter incompetence.  So I think we should start calling him ‘Richard Obama' - after Richard Nixon."

Everyone at the bar gave me a blank stare.

"Ah, how did Nixon's presidency end?" I asked rhetorically.  "He resigned, he quit.  Our country literally cannot afford four years of Zero - our economy and our national security will be ruined, no joke, no exaggeration.  We need this guy outta here ASAP.  We need him to suffer the fate of Richard Nixon."

Everyone promptly ordered another Guinness with which to properly reflect on this.

Have you ever wondered why so many people see higher taxes and more government as the solution to every problem, despite the empirical evidence that more government reduces economic efficiency and growth, plus diminishes our liberties?

As will be shown, the arguments from the big government advocates are usually based on a combination of economic and historical ignorance, envy, and just plain delusional thinking.

The New York Times editorial page has long been a bastion of this delusional thinking. On April 24, the paper produced one of its classic inane editorials in favor of higher taxes on labor and capital, which contained this gem of a sentence: "Memo to McCain: 401(k) savers get no benefit from a low capital-gains [tax] rate."

Everyone who has ever taken basic economics should know a lower tax rate on an investment (i.e., the capital-gains tax) will lead to a higher rate of return, and hence the investment will be worth more. Though this concept is not difficult for most people to understand, it seems beyond the knowledge and reasoning ability of those who write editorials for the New York Times.

Unfortunately, the Times has plenty of global company when it comes to economic ignorance, envy and delusional thinking. We find it among many politicians in almost every government world-wide.

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar -- the Taliban's equivalent of Gen. Stan McChrystal -- by Pakistani agents and CIA operatives is a big win.

Subordinate only to Mullah Omar, the Taliban's CEO, Baradar ran the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan. Responsible for the upgrade in insurgent tactics -- fighting smart, rather than just fighting -- he also created the Taliban's hearts-and-minds campaign.

For two weeks, he's been under interrogation by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency. The CIA's also involved in the questioning on some level -- but the ISI always holds back some chips.

The grab won't affect the ongoing fight for Marjah in Afghanistan, but the loss of Baradar's operational savvy could degrade future Taliban operations. And if he sings -- as we're told he's doing -- it could be the biggest anti-Taliban bonanza since 2001.

Or maybe not.

The bartender here in the HFR Saloon always eyes me warily when I say off-the-wall things like, "It doesn't matter how much I drink today because I'll still stay sober."

He refused to serve me anything but soda water until I explained myself.  "Well, nothing could be more sobering than what happened to America this week.  You know how they say that in Chinese, the word for ‘danger' or ‘crisis' is the same word for ‘opportunity'?"

He nodded, I continued.  "One thing this entails is that the bigger the danger, the bigger the opportunity.  I'm not sure I can imagine a bigger danger to my country than its president purposefully planning to destroy it - and with the political power to do so."

"The opportunity on the other side has got to be amazingly big to match that," he noted.  "What is it?"

"To get rid of all this liberal-commie anti-American fascist Big Brother crap once and for all.  To replace the Moocher America we have now with a Free America, a Constitutional America."

His brow furrowed.  "So you're saying that having a president out to destroy America is what it takes to wake people up and get them to save America?  Does that mean you're glad to see this guy in the White House?"

I winced.  "Ouch.  Let me think about that, man.  I better stick to soda water today, huh?"   "Good idea," he observed.