China & Russia hacking our government: the apotheosis of the Obama era

Jim Geraghty, in his Morning Jolt daily e-newsletter, laid out today why China's epic theft of blackmail material on millions of high-level US government workers and Russia's decryption of stolen data compromising US and British intelligence operations is the capstone in a long line of failures and incompetence by Progressives in government under Obama.

The story of the Obama era is the story of one colossal federal-government train wreck after another. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms shipped guns to Mexican drug cartels in Fast & Furious. Recovery.gov, allegedly designed to promote openness and accountability, ended up filled with bad data.

The stimulus “was riddled with a massive labor scheme that harmed workers and cheated unsuspecting American taxpayers.”

The president stood in front of the White House, urging the American public to use Healthcare.gov when it wasn’t working.

The U.S. Secret Service, which began the Obama presidency by allowing the Salahis into the White House and stumbled through one humiliating scandal of unprofessional behavior after another.

The Obama administration toppled the government of Libya -- without any supporting act of Congress -- then sent Americans there and ignored the security requests from our ambassador.

The NSA hired Ed Snowden and gave him the keys to the kingdom after a month.

Veterans died, waiting for care, while the branch offices of the VA assured Washington everything is fine.

We traded terrorists for a prisoner, sealing the deal with an assurance to the public that Bowe Bergdahl “served with honor and distinction.”

The IRS data breach. The postal-service data breach. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hack. The data breach at federal contractor US Investigations Services, which performs background checks on DHS, ICE and border-patrol units.

And now, the epic OPM hack.

We are governed by progressives who have an infinite faith in the federal government’s ability to manage enormously complicated tasks and almost no interest in ensuring the government actually does those tasks well.

That last sentence is the kicker, for me. It's one thing to have wide-ranging Progressive government that works well. Minnesota and Wisconsin are generally good examples of this. Folks like me oppose governments having that much control or say over people's lives, but I admit that it's easier to live under when it works. At the very least, you feel like you're getting your money's worth as a taxpayer.

But to have expensive, wide-ranging Progressive government that fails to fulfill on the basic aspects of its role, especially when it insists that it MUST have control over you, well that adds fatally wasteful insult to the already-tyrannical injury. Think of the failures in California, Illinois, Maryland, DC, New York, or New Jersey. (Or the federal government, naturally.)

These examples illustrate the sad reality that the people who demand the most power and control for government care the least about using that power and control well. That about sums up the Obama presidency, right there.