Phil Angelides, the former California State Treasurer who oversaw California’s slippage into bankruptcy is now chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission charged with finding out causes and solutions to the market breakdowns. He starts out by failing to consider the roles of the Fed, and Barney Frank’s Fannie and Freddie; the scripted conclusions are already set. Apparently, Phil hasn’t learned any lessons while he watched California slip into bankruptcy!  See: D.C. Witness Protection Program in the January 15th WSJ.

And how about national security and the intelligence necessary to make it work? The departments are run by so-called managers like John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Janet Napolitano, and Dennis Blair, not by professionals who know how to connect the dots. People like Napolitano are comically clueless. With these people in charge intelligence will continue to fail according to Herbert Meyer a former CIA official. His article Why Intelligence Keeps Failing, in the January 16th edition of Real Clear Politics presents a summary of intelligence from the OSS days to today’s CIA and NSA. His point that only the pros should run intelligence services is hard to refute.

So what do we get from our Democratic rulers in these critical areas? Laughable incompetence!

Tom Motherway