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.

What would you think if members of Congress voted to require the U.S. military to forgo purchases of most of Canada's oil and thus be forced to increase their dependency on Saudi Arabian produced oil?

As bizarre as it may seem, this is not a hypothetical question.  It is precisely what Congress did in passing the falsely named Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

Chairman Henry Waxman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wrote a letter to Chairman Jeff Bingaman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on March 17 of this year, detailing the "proper interpretation" of the Act.

Mr. Waxman's interpretation makes one wonder if his purpose is to cause as much damage to the US economy as possible.

Sarah Palin, who is considering a run in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, is using her public platforms to reassemble the coalition of security hawks, social conservatives and blue collar workers that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. Her support for Israel serves her in building support among both security hawks and social conservatives.

Unlike Obama's empty protestations of support for Israel, Palin's support is obviously heartfelt and therefore will not diminish while Obama remains in office. And as Palin becomes stronger, her ability to influence the US debate in a manner that constrains Obama's freedom to intimidate Israel into allowing Iran to become a nuclear power will rise.

In spite of Palin's extraordinary support for Israel, the American Jewish community overwhelmingly rejects her. As Jennifer Rubin noted in her article, "Why Jews hate Palin," in Commentary magazine, Jews disapproved of Sen. John McCain's choice of Palin as his running-mate by a 54 to 37 percent majority. The sneering broadsides published against Palin by leading American Jewish writers are legion.

In her article, Rubin gives a number of reasons for American Jews' rejection of Palin.

Ensconced in a booth in the HFR Saloon, we have to be extra careful today.  For no matter how many of Durk Pearson's Party Pills we take to nutritionally protect us from booze, if we were to drink to all the marvelous events of this week, we would all get very seriously sloshed.

So, bartender, just set down a bottle of 12 year-old Famous Grouse and we'll each have a wee dram in praise of...

Let's see, first would have to be celebrating the ongoing travails of Senator Tombstone Burris.  He has become such an embarrassing joke to the Dems that not only has the Chicago Tribune and Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn called for him to resign, the black pastors of Chicago have as well...

...What was it that W. C. Fields said about water?  That it was the stuff that rusts pipes, that you can't trust it because even a straight stick turns crooked in it, that fish do unmentionable things in it.

In light of another of his famous quips, that "Once in the wilds of remotest China, I lost my corkscrew, and was forced to live on food and water for days..." he might get a chuckle out of this headline of February 16: "Parched China to Slash Water Consumption by 60 Percent"

...Amidst all the outrage over our new terrorist-pardoning Attorney General, Eric Holder, accusing America of being "a nation of cowards," shouldn't we notice the irony that Holder is right, in precisely the opposite way he intends?  America is a nation of cowards for electing Obama.  The only reason he was elected is because he is black.  

There is still time to avoid a recession - a recession being technically defined as two quarters of negative economic growth.   What needs to be done, and can be done in the next 60 days, follows.

First, it is important to realize the present economic slowdown was caused by a series of mistakes by the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the administration, and Congress.

Many of our government policymakers and politicians still insist it was the other guy's fault and pretend that taking money from one group of taxpayers and giving it to another (a k a, a "stimulus package") will somehow miraculously revive the economy.

The administration is guilty of having both proposed and acquiesced to spending that resulted in more costs than benefits to the economy, which has slowed growth. Even though those in the administration cannot suddenly reverse much of the wasteful spending on their own, they can do several things by presidential directive - Executive Orders issued by President Bush -- to make things better immediately.

In a breathtakingly cynical example of playing politics, the White House just accused Republicans of playing politics over its Miranda-rights Christmas gift to the crotch bomber.

With fumbling terrorism czar John Brennan walking point, administration spokesmen attacked those who believe that treating would-be suicide-bomber Umar Abdulmutallab the way we handle shoplifters harms our national security.  With its desperate counteroffensive on this issue, the White House is struggling to recover from the PR debacle over the decision to award Abdulmutallab (and other terrorists) rights to which they are in no way entitled.

The White House position is a PR blend of lies, half-truths and ignorance. Let's strip out the politics and lay out the facts from an intelligence professional's perspective:

With every passing day now, we're subjected to another episode in an amateurishly bad TV sitcom starring Obozo the Clown President.  Try changing the channel and the sitcom morphs into that ghastly 1988 horror flick Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

It's enough to give you coulrophobia.  For it really does seem that space aliens looking and behaving like clowns have seized Washington and are engaged in destroying our country.  While this is not literally true, what would be the difference if it were?

***
Well, one difference would be a plain vanilla sex scandal submarining Obozo's Plan for a Fascist America - or at least the health plan part of it...

***
And as long as we're in to juicy Washington gossip, here's the juiciest - or what will become so.

As the administration fiddles and fumbles with its soft- on-terror policies at home, one Obama-blessed campaign abroad is hitting al Qaeda and its franchises hard: the drone war.

Drones work. They kill terrorists. Important terrorists. And we don't have to squabble about where to put their shredded bodies on trial.

For all the billions poured into Afghan pockets, the continuing giveaways to well-connected contractors, the abuse of our military as glorified aid workers and terrorist targets, and the general strategic incoherence in Washington, we're getting this one thing right.

On Tuesday (2/02), an up-the-ante wave of attacks fired 18 missiles from Unmanned Aerial Systems. (UAS is our term of the week for drones.) The strike hit a terrorist stronghold, killing another dozen or more militants.  Cool.  Very cool.

The HFR can only raise a truly half-full glass to the Daschle Disaster this week. 

Exposing the former Democrat Senate Majority Leader as a tax cheat  and millionaire political fixer was good enough.  What compounds the benefits is that Zero's attempt to take over and destroy health care in America has been seriously damaged.

The number of appointees in Zero's White House who owe their political lives to Daschle is very large.  He was the guy who could shepherd and coordinate the health care takeover, and now he's gone.  This is a fantastic two-fer.

It's countervailed by the Dems not approving another tax cheat - one more blatant and disgusting to taxpayers than Timmy Geithner.

For if Daschle had not withdrawn and had been approved with Zero saying he "absolutely" supported his tax cheating and making millions from influence peddling - and with every comic from Jay Leno on down making fun of him - then the one thing America most needs would have been greatly accelerated.

A tax revolt.

Why do individuals and countries engage in self-destructive behavior? Many books have been written on the topic, but given the U.S. election campaign, it is worth examining why some politicians and other opinion leaders advocate policies contrary to both good theory and empirical evidence.

Despite this evidence of success, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to increase the top tax rates, though there is no evidence that raising the top rates will result in any more revenue but there is evidence it will result in slower growth.

They can get away with it because voters have had their brains mangled by public education.

Since education in almost all countries these days is chiefly in public institutions, except for relatively small numbers of students educated in U.S. private schools and universities, it should come as no surprise that the government employees doing the "educating" are biased toward the public sector and are anti-business.