RedStateVT Finds A New Leftist Loon!

Yesterday we were treated via the Washington Post to a heretofore unknown (to us) moonbat. His name is Colman McCarthy and he is identified as the director for (get ready) “the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington.” His column is entitled: 'Don't ask, don't tell has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on campus.’

And therein we get our first hint. Liberals always lie. They don’t want the military on campuses because of DADT. Then DADT is repealed and….they still don’t want the military on campuses.

We’ll let McCarthy speak for himself:

“Even well short of the pacifist positions, they (universities) can argue the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped drive this country into record depths of debt. The defense budget has more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion.”

So never mind the whole gays in the military thing, the real reason to oppose ROTC is….the deficit! Well, that’s novel.

But wait. It gets better!

“Only one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell – offers a degree in peace studies. Their pride in running programs in women's studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded, but schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and funding.”

Were you as shocked as RedStateVT that only one Ivy League school offers a degree in peace studies? Particularly when peace studies – along with women’s studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies – are the job-creating engines for the new economy. Unemployment is 10%, but we need more peace studies majors.

But wait. It gets better!

“I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes.”

Some of my best friends are soldiers! Some of them are Taliban!

Where has McCarthy been? RedStateVT could have done a dozen posts on this guy during 2010. We have only one thing to say to this crackpot: You are talking to the wrong side about peace.

RedStateVT Presents the Worst of 2010

Nancy Pelosi – All that is wrong with Liberals concentrated in one individual. “We have to pass the health care bill to find out what is in it.” Perhaps the single dumbest statement ever uttered by a political figure. (And Libs love to stick it to W and Sarah Palin!) Instead of exhibiting graciousness in defeat last November, Pelosi works the sycophants and returns as their leader. They deserve each other.

Obamacare – Challenged by attorneys general. Not a tax, but a tax. Waivers for countless political allies of Obama. Death panels…oh, excuse us, end-of-life panels. You name it, this turkey has only just begun to rot. Given the process that led to its passage, can anyone really be surprised?

Eric Holder – The attorney general takes partisanship (and incompetence) to a new level. Not including Obama, has any one individual ever been so unqualified for so high a government position?

Bob Kiss and the Burlington, Vermont Progressives – You folks wanted to turn cable into a public utility and got your wish. Now you have defaulted on your loans and, apparently, stolen money. In a just world, you would be doing the perp walk.

The Climate Change Crowd – Caught lying about the science, they forge ahead as if the whole world did not see what they did. Damn the torpedoes!

Gloria Allred – Ambulance chaser extraordinaire, Allred agrees to serve as the Prog point person to bring the decent Meg Whitman down. Never mind that Whitman paid her maid above market wages and treated her as a member of the family, Allred throws her client under the bus and, we assume, back across the border.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks – Alleged rapist Assange hides behind a bunch of claptrap about transparency, but fails – as most Liberals do – to distinguish between good and evil. Yes, there is a difference. RedStateVT repeats its challenge to Assange to publish secret communication from Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

The Mainstream Media – There is a simple fix for the declining viewer/readership of CBS/NBC/ABC, New York Times/Washington Post and the old guard: report objectively. Flummoxed by Fox News, they double-down on their leftist agenda and the bleeding continues.

Reality TV – Here in one genre is encapsulated the decline of western civilization. Special shame goes to the Kardashians whose mother continues to find new and novel ways to pimp her daughters.

Home Stretch

Words To Live By
The elections resulted in an overarching victory for conservatives, making it clearer than ever that the Republicans’ position can be summarized in 6 words: Small Government. Low Taxes. National Security. (Boris Epshetyn, Foxnews.com, 12/28/10)

Certainly makes more sense than “Change we can believe in.”

Step Off
Wall Street's biggest banks, whose missteps caused a global financial crisis and economic slowdown two years ago, were more agile when it came to countering the political and regulatory response. The U.S. government, promising to make the system safer, buckled under many of the financial industry's protests. (Washington Post, 12/28/10)

Obama and the Dems caved to their financial benefactors on Wall Street.

Who Runs Barter Town?

Impeach
At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court.

That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely the quality that separated legal technicians like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. from great justices. Justice Sotomayor would have none of it. “We apply law to facts,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. “We don’t apply feelings to facts.”

We are now three months into Justice Sotomayor’s second term on the court. That is awfully early in a justice’s career to draw any general conclusions. But some things are becoming tolerably clear. Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues. And she has displayed a quality — call it what you will — that is alert to the humanity of the people whose cases make their way to the Supreme Court. (NYT, 12/27/10)

So, what the New York Times is saying is that Sotomayor lied during her confirmation hearings.

Christine O’Donnell’s Revenge
Alvin Greene, the unemployed Army veteran who suggested during his failed bid for the United States Senate this year that making action figures of himself would help create jobs, is running for office again. Mr. Greene paid the $165 filing fee on Friday to run in a special election for a South Carolina House seat made vacant by the death this month of Representative Cathy B. Harvin, a Democrat. (NYT, 12/28/10)

Just to be clear, Greene is a Democrat. That’s Democrat. Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.

Sarah Palin Will Now Accept Your Apology

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1. Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment. (NYT, 12/25/10)

Funny how all the things that Republicans (including Sarah Palin) warned about Obamacare – and for which they were derided – are now coming to pass. Cost will go down. Sorry, they will go up. The insurance mandate is not a tax. Oops, it is a tax. Not death panels. Well, yeah they are sort of death panels……

Merry Christmas from RedStateVT!

All We Want for Christmas.......

The biggest immediate danger to incumbent Democrats will be in the Rust Belt, where Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio are all losing Congressional seats and Republicans now control the state governments, giving them the power to draw the new political maps. Politicians liken this process to a game of musical chairs, wondering who will be left without a seat. With Ohio losing two seats, political analysts expect the Republicans to eliminate a Democratic seat from the Cleveland area — possibly the one now held by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich.  (NYT, 12/24/2010)

All On A Waywarding Day

Synchonicity
The departing Democrats are, as one in their ranks put it, "Obama's Orphans." So many of them cast vote after vote for the president's program. They were then left at the side of the road while history moved by. During the recent campaign, these loyalists were accused of being "out of touch," and they certainly were out of sync with the prevailing mood of those who chose to vote this year. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 12/23/10)

Yes, Dionne will admit that Dems were “out of synch.” But only with those who “chose to vote.” If not for those pesky voters, Dems would have fared so much better!

All It Was
Democrats also disputed that the election results were a repudiation of their agenda and pointed instead at the hard times many Americans are suffering through. “The economy has been awful all over the country,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “The economy is the reason you had the uproar from the Tea Party. That’s all it was.” (NYT, 12/23/10)

Obamacare. Ground Zero mosque. Arizona immigration law. Spending. Taxes. Oh, and the economy. Yes, that’s all it was.

A Separate Reality

Insanity Now!
Caught a few minutes of Democracy Now! (note the exclamation point) on Monday. Host Amy Goodman has a new spin on the extension of the Bush tax rates. Tax rates are cut for millionaires/billionaires, but actually go up for the working poor! Wow, we don’t think even Colonel Bernie Sanders was peddling that line.

The Marquise de Merteuil
There was no time for a valedictory or even a toast. Pelosi still had history to make, inequities to erase, strategies to craft. (Washington Post, 12/22/10)

Opinion piece from the WAPO? No, objective news reporting! Later in the day, Pelosi helped a blind man cross the street, offered scientists some ideas on curing disease, and pitched in laying sandbags to stop hillside erosion in California. All in a day’s work for the Speaker.

Simple(ton) Math
An audit of Burlington Telecom, prepared for the Department of Public Service and released this month, concluded the city-owned telecom utility incurred a debt of more than $50 million to build a network that reaches fewer than 5,000 residents and ignored rules imposed by the state to protect Burlington taxpayers from risk. (Burlington Free Press, 12/22/10)

So let’s get out the calculator. $50 mil divided by 5,000 subscribers equals $10,000 per subscriber. Assume an average annual bill of $1,000 per and you get a smoking return…after 10 years!

Solstice

Alphabet Soup
For gays and lesbians currently serving in the military, this doesn't mean they necessarily have to make public their sexuality. It just means that soon they won't have to fear being discharged for being who they are. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 12/21/10)

From the incomprehensible Robinson comes this one about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal. Gays and lesbians don’t have to make public their sexuality and don’t have to fear being discharged? Isn’t this what DADT was all about? How about adopting RedStateVT’s axiom: STAYS – Stop Talking About Your Sexuality.

I Dream, You Dream, We All Dream for…..
These young people are of many nationalities, but the overwhelming number are Hispanic, and there is no doubt that the public pressure on Congress is largely aimed at limiting the growth of Latinos in the country. (Edward Schumacher-Matos, Washington Post, 12/21/10)

Another disingenuous WAPO columnist weighs in, this time on the DREAM Act. Don’t you love that name? Who doesn’t want to DREAM? Schumacher-Matos recites a litany of past sins of the federal government (who hates America?) targeting Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans and so on. Of course he fails to mention the one really salient point, that these groups were not here illegally.

Porphyria's Lament

Yes, Indeed
“The problem is tax cuts can be popular," Frank said. (Washington Post, 12/17/10)

Barney Frank explains the problem!

Worth Noting
In 30 states, the people have protected traditional marriage by constitutional amendment: In no state where the question has been put directly to voters has same-sex marriage been adopted by democratic majorities. (Matthew J. Franck, Washington Post, 12/17/10)

Good column by Franck on the demonization of anyone who dares oppose gay marriage….which apparently includes most Americans.

Labeled
The label "conservative" conveys much useful information about people who adopt it. So does the label "liberal," which is why most liberals have abandoned it, preferring "progressive," until they discredit it, too. (George Will, Washington Post, 12/19/10)

The great George Will.

Chances Are

If Reid waits until New START is done before holding the vote on DADT, Senators could start going home once the treaty is resolved, dooming DADT repeal. But this scenario would be averted if Reid slips in the DADT vote before START. By contrast, if the DADT repeal debate and vote are done first, no Senator will leave Washington before START is resolved. So doing DADT repeal first doesn't imperil START. (Greg Sargent, Washington Post, 12/16/10)

Because – clearly – the message that the American people sent to Washington in November – the number one concern of the people – before jobs, before Islamic terrorism, before taxes - was this: let gays serve openly in the military.

No wonder the approval rating of Congress is 18%.

Let RedStateVT Be Your Guide

How Novel
By contradicting two prior opinions, Monday’s court ruling in Virginia against the Obama health care law highlighted both the novelty of the constitutional issues and the difficulty of forging consensus among judges who bring differences in experience, philosophy and partisan background to the bench. (NYT, 12/14/10)

Let’s review: Two prior opinions upheld Obamacare. Suddenly a third judge disagrees. And so the New York Times now wants to talk about judicial partisanship!

The Colonel
Here’s Sanders — a train robber with the audacity to accuse the passengers of “making out like bandits” simply for hanging on to what he couldn’t manage to steal. (Michelle Malkin, 12/12/2010)

Best description of Colonel Sanders that we have heard in a while.

The Bernie Talkathon
Progressives, who have dismissed the charge of socialism as a libel, seemed happy to accept ideological leadership from a self-described democratic socialist. (Michael Gerson, Washington Post, 12/14/10)

Good one from Gerson.

Confounding

As House Democrats met privately to weigh the tax deal negotiated by the White House, an angry chant spontaneously rolled across the room. “Just say no, just say no,” rebellious lawmakers cried. Vulgar words were aimed at President Obama. (NYT, 12/12/2010)

RedStateVT calls for John Boehner to censure those Democrats who defamed the president.

With divided government imminent, Democrats are using these final days to make a desperate push for priorities, including an immigration measure for young Americans who entered the country illegally….. (NYT, 12/12/2010)

“Young Americans who entered the country illegally?” Well, OK, we give up trying to figure that one out!

By the end of last week, it certainly looked as if Barack Obama had outsourced his presidency to Bill Clinton. First, he cut a Clintonian-style deal with Republicans on tax cuts and then he literally turned over the White House lectern to his predecessor. (NYT, 21/11/2010)

See RedStateVT’s previous post (The Big Dog is Back) on this issue.

Since You Asked

Quick Question #1
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. defended the use of sting operations orchestrated by government informants, telling advocates for Muslim-American civil rights in remarks on Friday night that the tactic is an “essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing terror attacks.” (NYT, 12/10/2010)

Who is this guy? (By the way, exactly right Mr. Holder!)

Quick Question #2
“This nation has a record-breaking $13.8 trillion national debt at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing,” Mr. Sanders said. “It seems to me to be unconscionable, unconscionable for my conservative friends and for everybody else in this country to be driving up this already too high national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don’t need it.” (NYT, 12/11/10)

Who exactly are Bernie Sanders’s “conservative” friends?

The Big Dog is Back

Anyone walking into the middle of the news conference Friday afternoon at the White House would be forgiven for wondering whether Bill Clinton was back for a command performance as leader of the free world. Clinton -- who for the record has been out of the president's office for a decade -- stood in front of the White House logo and took questions from reporters as if he hadn't missed a beat. But this time, he was selling the policies of his successor. (Foxnews.com, 12/10/10)  

RedStateVT watched this news conference and will state the following: THIS WAS THE SINGLE MOST UNEQUIVOCAL DISPLAY EVER OF PRESIDENTIAL IMPOTENCE.  Mauled by his own party, President Obama meets with Big Dog Bill Clinton to garner support for his compromise deal with the Republicans. Obama cannot sell the deal, so he asks Clinton to sell it for him. Start there. How humiliating must it have been for Obama to have to call in the Big Dog? Dems are turning on Obama, but still have a soft spot for the Big Dog. But wait, the humiliation got worse. Bill commands the center of the podium as though he were still the president. Obama stands off to the side trying to look natural, but no doubt burning up inside. How did it get to this he must be asking himself? But wait it gets worse! During the Q&A, Obama tries to cut in a couple of times, but Clinton talks over him. Finally, rendered utterly and completely embarrassed, Obama says: I’ve got to go, my wife is waiting for me. Bill continues to hold court.

This actually happened! And like the presidential seal falling off the podium a couple of weeks back, it is entirely emblematic of the Obama presidency. He is powerless and adrift.

RedStateVT Returns...and Reflects

It is hard to know what to make of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. Never mind the rape allegations, what exactly is his point? Confidential diplomatic cables should be leaked in the name of transparency? Well OK, how about Assange gets a hold of some Al Qaeda communication and leaks that. Let’s get a look at what Hamas is cooking up. And what about Dr. Evil over in North Korea? Of course he never would because in the alternative universe that Assange inhabits, the U.S. and any other democratic nation are always the bad guys. Assange doesn’t recognize the nature of pure evil. Maybe he’ll discover it in his prison cell.

Meanwhile the Berkeley (CA) City Council wants to honor PFC Bradley Manning who stole military documents and gave them to WikiLeaks. Yes, there are aliens among us.

The leak of classified documents can certainly not be laid at the feet of President Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton and the press has not done so. But consider for just a moment if this had happened two years ago. President Bush, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice would be hounded by Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, that guy Keith somebody, etc. A minute would not pass without Team Bush being blamed. You know RedStateVT is right.

Interesting how the soak-the-rich rhetoric of the Democrats on the Bush tax cut extension issue is not resonating with the public. Kudos to the people! Dems have played the class warfare card so often that it is worn out. Even the common man seems to realize that demonizing the successful is unfair.

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is now officially the new SUDs – Spokesman for Unhinged Democrats - the replacement for the departing Alan Grayson. Weiner on Fox yesterday: “the estate tax doesn’t matter because you are dead.”

The Obama Presidency is imploding.

Nominee for Quote of the Year
Liberals don't care. Their approach is to rip out society's foundations without asking if they serve any purpose. (Ann Coulter, 12/1/2010)