NOT OBAMA’S STRONG SUIT, SINCE HE THINKS HE KNOWS IT ALL: Chuck Hagel to the next president: ‘Listen.’

Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has some advice for the next president: “Listen.”

The advice from President Obama’s third Defense secretary came as he and three other former Pentagon chiefs spoke on a panel Monday evening and were asked for recommendations for the next president on the U.S.-China relationship.

Some of the other respondents’ advice extended beyond China. Hagel’s answer was short.

“One word? Listen,” he said.

Hagel also emphasized listening to military leaders in an earlier answer, a tendency of his that reportedly irked some within the Obama administration who thought he was too deferential to Pentagon brass.

“I would say as someone who has walked on both sides of the street, the political side and the administration side, politicians have to listen more to our military,” Hagel said when asked what the U.S. could do to improve the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship.

“And I don’t mean changing the Constitution. I mean listen to our military. They get it better than most politicians on things like this. And some of the finest statesmen I’ve ever met in my life are in military uniform,” Hagel, a former Army infantryman, added.

When asked after the panel whether he felt the administration had not listened to military officers enough, Hagel replied, “I think the comment I made here, I’ll let that stand.”

Since he resigned in November of 2014, Hagel has mostly stayed quiet about his relationship with the Obama administration and the reasons for his departure.

But in a recent interview with Foreign Policy, he criticized the administration’s national security decision-making process and suggested he was less than satisfied with his access to the president.

My advice to voters: Next time, elect a President who cares about defending the nation.

PSYCHOANALYZING THE TED CRUZ HATRED.

EIGHT CRIMINALS, ABUSERS AND HARASSERS WHO REMAIN VERIFIED ON TWITTER: “All of the above have kept their blue verification badges, despite their appalling behaviour. If Twitter is set on maintaining a ‘safe space’ for the vulnerable, perhaps it would be better advised to tackle some of the real offenders, instead of a flamboyant Conservative homosexual whose main crime appears to be hurting the feelings of the most easily-offended people in the universe. Just a thought.”

By overtly politicizing their verification — and now un-verification process, Twitter’s management have left themselves wide-open to these sorts of articles. I hope they think the tradeoff was worth it.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Uneasy Legacy Of Henrietta Lacks.

CHAPTER ONE: HE ADORED GUAM. HE IDOLIZED IT ALL OUT OF PROPORTION. Sooner or later, life imitates the earlier, funnier Woody Allen movies.

Shot: “I’ve got enough for a year. If I, uh, live like Mahatma Gandhi, I’m fine. My accountant says that I did this at a very bad time. My stocks are down. I’m cash-poor or something. I got no cash flow. I’m not liquid or, uh, something’s not flowing. I know it. But they got a language all their own, those guys.”

—Allen’s character kvetching after rashly quitting his job as a TV writer in 1979’s Manhattan.

Chaser: “Democrat Who Worried Guam Might Tip Over Now An Expert on the Free Market (Video).”

—Progressives Today, on the latest utterances of Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-GA) Super Genius, bringing new meaning to the notion of an investment that’s suddenly “under water.”

HEADLINES FROM 2008: What if Hillary Were a Republican?

We’ll know if the left is serious about pushing Sanders over the top this year, if they start treating Hillary as the de facto Republican in the primaries — just as they did to her (and Bill) in 2008 to advance Obama.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: The European Media & the Cologne Attacks.

Scally’s bizarre use of “groping” is close to the worst imaginable example of PC disinformation from Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. “Groping” is a word better reserved for the awkward and/or unwanted advances of an adolescent teenager in regard to someone roughly his or her own age. Here, instead, we have (if Scally’s sources are to be believed) 30 adult men who organized a premeditated attack on a child—not a “young woman” as Scally mischaracterizes her—a child—a person under 18. (18 is the age of majority in most of Europe, including Germany.) This child was not “groped”—I had fingers at every orifice—she was the victim of sexual assault, rape, and attempted rape by multiple perpetrators. Again, groping generally refers to wanted or unwanted touching or fondling. The victim here did not describe “groping;” she described something far more serious: sexual assault and rape.

Euphemisms must apply, since the perps weren’t white frat guys.

THAT SOUND YOU HEAR IS THE NARRATIVE BLOWING UP: No Extinctions’: Polar Bears Survived Periods When The Arctic Had No Ice.

THEY JUST WANT THEIR SNAKE BACK: Thief stuffs python down his pants at pet store.

IN THE BACK HALLS OF GEEK HIGH: Rumors Are Flying That We Finally Found Gravitational Waves .

WAIT, WHAT?  WHY WOULD YOU EVEN? Your penis pics are bush league.  Video. Probably not safe for work. It played jumpy for me, so I might have missed something, but you’d still be at serious risk of bringing your co-workers running if you laugh as hard as I did.

SAYS THE MAN WHO OBVIOUSLY DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT CANCER IS: ‘America can cure cancer’: Obama announces national effort to fight disease.  Also, Biden is supposed to head a new moon shot.  Seriously, who has slipped him the Onion and told him it’s America’s paper of record?

YOU MEAN YOU CAN MAKE PERIOD DRAMAS: Without posturing as superior to our ancestors from the height of our Marxist class consciousness?  I thought that was a Gullag-worthy crime now. A Kinder, Gentler British Empire?

SPEAKING OF NARRATIVE: Hillary’s “White Privilege” Self-Abasement.

TOOK THEM LONG ENOUGH: MoveOn.org moves on beyond the Clintons.

LIES, D*MN LIES AND LEFTIST NARRATIVE: Jane Mayer and the New York Times Dive Into the Gutter.

FROM LARRY CORREIA: Into the Storm.

FIRST AS THE MINORITY REPORT, THEN AS TRAGEDY: The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’.

LIES, DAMN LIES AND GOVERNMENT STATISTICS: The breakdown of December’s extremely misleading job report.

FOR MOST OF THEM THIS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE ENTICEMENT: Feminist Activists Encourage Women to Trade Sexual Favors for Votes.

I HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY YOU CAN’T BE RIGHT WING AND AUTHENTICALLY GAY:  By good authority I mean, of course, lefty blogs, usually when talking about Milo.  And as for who administers the tests of authenticity for gays, and what the tests are, I don’t even want to know. Out, right-wing — and in office: An Israeli lawmaker moves beyond identity politics.

WHAT HAPPENS AT THE CANYON STAYS AT THE CANYON: Watchdog uncovers long history of sexual harassment among Grand Canyon employees.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Jane Mayer and the New York Times’ Dive Into the Gutter. It’s more of a wallow than a dive, these days.

Plus: “Now we learn that Ms. Mayer his written a book called Dark Money. (In the leftist lexicon, ‘dark money’ is money spent on conservative causes rather than liberal ones.)”

HOLY COUNTERFACTUAL, BATMAN: What if Hillary Were a Republican?

REALLY? WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE? Obama’s foreign policy far from victorious. Though to be fair, to judge whether he’s succeeding, you have to know what he’s trying to accomplish.

Related: Nick Gillespie: Obama’s Final SOTU Is a Dud, Like His Presidency. Domestically and abroad, he has set more fires than he put out. “He promised a short speech but then droned on for what seemed like a hell of a long time. He said he wouldn’t give a laundry list and instead just sort of dumped laundry on the table. There were feints toward the sort of optimism—the hope and change—that energized his original victory, but nobody in or out of the Capitol was energized by it.”