The glass could be filled to the brim this week, or nearly drained, depending on how events in Wisconsin play out. Because as Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation.  Neither the blatant hypocrisy nor the low comedy should divert our attention from the high stakes.  If Governor Scott Walker and the Republican majority in the legislature hold firm, public employee unions will suffer a major blow, and the chief funding mechanism for the Democrat party will be disrupted.  If they cave, all hopes of fiscal responsibility with collapse with them. Walker’s plan has sparked massive protests from state employees, many of them Madison schoolteachers who illegally took time off from work, forcing schools to close.  The protests are organized by the unions, but are receiving assistance from the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America, Zero’s perpetual campaign committee.

President Obama has presented his budget for the 2012 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.  It'd drawn flak from normally friendly places.

The Republican presidential field for 2012 is the weakest that anybody has seen in our lifetime, thinks John Heilemann of New York magazine. Jay Cost, who I think is the best psephologist out there, thinks the nominee will be someone who gets into the race late. Gov. Christie denied again Wednesday any interest in running for president in 2012.  But he continues to flirt with the conservative base. Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC is, alas, typical of television journalists today – a nincompoop who imagines herself to be among the best and the brightest.  Harvard historian Niall Ferguson took her to school about Obama’s handling of the crisis in Egypt.  Enjoy

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We can “Win the Future” if, within 25 years, 80 percent of Americans have access to high speed rail, President Barack Obama said in his state of the union address. The president wants to spend $53 billion over the next six years on high speed rail.  That’s on top of $10.5 billion already spent since Mr. Obama became president, but is a tiny fraction of the $500 billion Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood said is required. The actual cost almost certainly would be higher.  The project furthest along is California’s, which in 2008 was projected to cost between $33 and $37 billion.  The current estimate is $65 billion. If we weren’t broke and deeply in debt, and we were building an intercity transportation network from scratch, high speed rail -- at least east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio -- might make sense.  But we are broke and deeply in debt, and we already have an extensive network of highways and airports.  “What’s disheartening about the Obama administration’s embrace of high speed rail is that it ignores history, evidence, and logic,” said economics writer Robert Samuelson.  “High speed rail is not ‘an investment in the future,’” he said. “It’s mostly a waste of money.” But what Zero proposes is worse than a waste of money.

The president is proposing that the government spend more than $3.7 trillion (his budget "cuts" also contain many spending increases). The terms reckless, irresponsible and mad are inadequate descriptions of what he is proposing. There is evidence that once a government lets its debt/GDP ratio rise more than 90 percent, the economy begins to seriously weaken and government spending starts to spiral out of control as the interest payments on the debt grow faster than the economy. The United States will probably hit the 90 percent threshold within a year (the current level is 68 percent, up from 37 percent in 2008). Greece has already shown the world what happens when the debt/GDP ratio reaches critical levels. Government services, employment and transfer payments are drastically cut because there is no other choice and the economy goes into the tank. Mr. Obama has also proposed a number of tax increases in his budget. Economic growth depends on having sufficient saving, which is put into productive investment to create jobs and technologies. If government is grabbing most of the savings of private individuals and businesses through debt issuance, inflation and taxes, the result is economic stagnation and increasing unemployment. Put on your seat belts because the situation will get worse before the political class will act.

Aside from the man who appointed him, the most dangerous incompetent in our government today is James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Mr. Clapper, you’ll recall, was the guy with the deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face when ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked him about the arrest in London of 12 terror suspects in London Dec. 21.  It was plain Mr. Clapper knew nothing about them, though the arrests had been the lead story on the news for many hours.

Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday (2/10), Mr. Clapper said:  “The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements.  In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al Qaida as a perversion of Islam.”

“There are two possibilities, and they are both appalling,” said Judith Levy.  “One is that Clapper knew everything he was saying was a gross distortion of reality but said it anyway, thereby deliberately misleading the American people and giving aid and comfort to a group whose interests are completely antithetical to those of the United States.  The other is that Clapper is genuinely ignorant of the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, a thought that is just about as unnerving as can be imagined.”

In either case, Mr. Clapper is unfit for the job he holds.  But he’s only the tip of the iceberg.

This has been one of the most momentous weeks in recent history.  It will be some while before we know whether the glass is more or less than half full. The biggest development is the resignation Friday of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and his transfer of power to a military council.  I’ve already written a great deal about Egypt this week, so I won’t say more now, except in reference to the boob of the week below. If Jack Wheeler were writing the HFR this week, his heroes of the week doubtless would be the House Republican freshmen, led by Jim Jordan of Ohio, who forced the leadership to expand the budget cuts they were planning.