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The Watcher’s Council

Let’s open up this week with a huge happy birthday wish to the Watcher’s Council fearless leader, Rob at Joshua Pundit! He selflessly oversees the Council, which sometimes is very much akin to herding blogging cats and lends a kind ear in friendship and mentorship to the bloggers who comprise the Watcher’s Council. May he have tons of cake and ice cream, love and laughter on his birthday and may he be surrounded by family and friends.

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.

The president’s mask is off and it didn’t take long did it?

This week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s The Hagel And Brennan Nominations And What They Tell Us about Obama, is my view of what President Obama’s new nominations of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense and John Brennan to head the CIA really mean… and it’s not pretty. Here’s a slice:

I pretty much figured out that Hagel would get the nod once the White House put the word out to the usual suspects to start pushing him after his abysmal record on Israel and on Iran came to light.It was especially a giveaway when they enlisted Obama surrogates with Jewish names like Tom Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg.

I would be very surprised if Hagel didn’t get confirmed by the Senate, barring something unusual happening. The body has 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans and 2 left leaning independents who mostly caucus with the Democrats, as well as a potential tie breaking vote in Vice President Biden. I doubt that President Obama didn’t discreetly have his own caucus polled before he put Hagel up for nomination.

Hagel would have to lose at least 6 Democrat votes to be denied confirmation, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Administration gave behind-the-scenes permission to Senate Democrats in states with large Jewish populations like like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or Ben Cardin (D-MD) to choose to vote no if there’s enough of a margin to get Hagel across the finish line without them.

There’s no question about Hagel’s consistently pro-Iran and anti-Israel stance. He was a reliable anti-Israel vote during his entire senate tenure, becoming one of the handful of senators refusing even to sign on to resolutions that were essentially just measures of support for an ally.

At the same time, his positions on Iran make one almost think he should have registered as a foreign lobbyist at some point.He’s been a consistent opponent of even President Obama’s relatively mild sanctions, no matter what he says now. He favors direct US negotiations with Hamas and Hezbollah, and was one of only 12 Senators who refused to lobby the EU asking them to declare Iranian proxy Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

In fact, Hagel has long been an advocate of taking Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah off the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, and while he was a sitting senator Hagel voted against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.And remember, as Senator Hagel starts burnishing his veteran’s credentials, that until 9/11 Hezbollah killed more U.S. servicemen than any other terrorist group. And that the Revolutionary Guard has the blood of American soldiers on its hands as well.

Just as a coincidence, Hagel also sits on the board of Deutsche Bank, which is now being investigated by U.S. authorities for violations of the same Iran sanctions Hagel voted against when he was in Congress.

Even worse is the message this nomination sends to Iran.They now realize that President Obama was not telling the truth about not allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and has no interest whatsoever in stopping them. They have a green light.

Is Hagel an anti-Semite? A number of his former Jewish constituents in Nebraska seem to think so. Many of them recall him as hostile and unfriendly not just on Israel but towards the community in general:

The flavor of the accounts is given in a headline in one Jewish website: “Nebraska Jews Recall Senator Chuck Hagel as ‘Unfriendly’ and ‘Unmovable’ on Israel, ‘Didn’t Give a Damn About the Jewish Community.’” The former editor of the Omaha Jewish Press recalled that “Hagel was the only one we have had in Nebraska, who basically showed the Jewish community that he didn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or any of our concerns.” Another community leader commented that “During his last year in office, we knew he was not going to run again, he never returned any of our calls.”

It’s also a matter of record that in 1999, when the American Jewish Committee asked members of the U.S. Senate to sign an advertisement condemning anti-Semitism in Russia the AJC subsequently ran in the New York Times during Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s U.S. visit, the only Senator who refused to sign was yes, Chuck Hagel.

There’s a lot more where that came from and it’s literally stomach turning. But it gives us a very good look at what the next four years of this president’s reign will be like, if you connect the dots. Interesting times…

In our non-Council category, the winner was Alanna Goodman in Commentary with Hagel: “Let the Jews Pay for it,” submitted by Rhymes With Right. It also looks at the Hagel nomination with the emphasis on a telling incident in Hagel’s career I also write about in my piece, his campaign to shut down a popular USO facility in the Israeli port of Haifa unless ‘the Jews’ coughed up money.

Okay, so here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 5 2/3 votes! – Joshuapundit – The Hagel And Brennan Nominations And What They Tell Us about Obama
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Bookworm Room – Progressives truly don’t understand the difference between wealth and money
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – Mohamed Mohamud and #MyJihad
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 vote – Rhymes With Right – Senator Ted Cruz
• Fourth place with 1 vote – The Noisy Room – Home of the Enslaved
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! – Dem Connolly the ONLY Va Congressman to Vote FOR “Fiscal Cliff” Bill and $4 Trillion in NEW DEBT!
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – End of Arab Monarchies?
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Stan Lee Had It Right
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Russia: already grieving about Chavez
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Right Planet – The Thief-in-Chief Just Stuck It To Those Making Less Than 30K!
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Razor – If You Have To Ask Who The Sucker Is…
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Gay Patriot – Journalists incredulous that Obamacare means higher health care costs

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Commentary/Alana Goodman – Hagel: “Let the Jews Pay for it” submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Bob Owens – Let it begin here submitted by The Noisy Room
• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Andrew Klaven – Why So Serious? Is Conservative Despair Justified? submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Ashley Herzog/TownHall – Girls With Guns submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Gates of Vienna – If You Elect Idiots, You Get Chaos submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Kira Davis – Not In My Hood submitted by The Right Planet
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Bruce Thornton – A New Year in America; Will We Continue Down the Road to Decline? submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Wolf Howling – Guns, Equality, A Land Where “Thieves Rule The Night,” & An Insane NYT “News Analysis” (Updated) submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Contentious Centrist – I don’t Get it submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Globlogization – A Nat’l Security Team To Heal The Force submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – In These Times… – In Defense of Sports submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Kausfiles/The Daily Beast – Obama’s “no spending problem” fallacy submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Right Scoop – Levin: If Obama seizes congressional power to borrow and spend, he should be impeached submitted by VA Right!
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Daily Caller – Pelosi urges Obama to sidestep Congress, use 14th Amendment to raise debt ceiling submitted by The Political Commentator

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in… don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!