Open Skies

Influential
Newt Gingrich is adamant that he is not a lobbyist, but rather a visionary who traffics in ideas, not influence. But in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services and gain access to state and federal officials. (NYT, 11/30/2011)


The lead in the race to become the Republican presidential nominee has shifted rapidly over the course of several weeks between Perry, Cain, Gingrich and Romney. As a result, the New York Times has had to work overtime to trash each prospective candidate. So far they have been up to the task. Here they level a devastating charge against Newt: He may have been a lobbyist!


Extra Extra
The leading conservative voices who have come to Herman Cain’s defense began backing away on Tuesday as he acknowledged that he was reassessing his Republican presidential bid, uncertain that he could withstand a report of an extramarital affair after accusations of sexual harassment and stumbling foreign policy responses. (NYT, 11/30/2011)


Count RedStateVT as flummoxed. Under the Clinton Rules for Presidential Candidates, as enthusiastically championed by both the Democrat party and the media, extramarital affairs are NOT considered grounds for dropping a presidential bid.


All About
“Four years ago it was about hope,” the mayor said. “Now it’s about his (Obama's) record.” (Scranton, Pennsylvania Mayor Christopher A. Doherty (D), NYT, 1129/2011)


If Obama has lost Scranton, he's lost the race!


Blarney
Barney Frank is leaving office at the end of his term. Maybe he just wants to spend more quality time with his pot-growing prostitute friends in the sub-prime lending business. (Michael Graham, Boston Herald, 11/29/2011)

Leave it to the Boston Herald to sum it up for Barney!

Debts That No Honest Man Can Pay

Packaged
Following on from the original 'climategate' emails of 2009, the new package appears to show systematic suppression of evidence, and even publication of reports that scientists knew to to be based on flawed approaches...Yet one of the newly released emails, written by Prof. Jones  - who is working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - said: 'Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. (Daily Mail, 11/28/2011)


As predicted yesterday by RedStateVT, no discussion of Climategate in the state-controlled media today, but we do get a new Herman Cain scandal. Thankfully we have the Climate Depot web site. And now, at last, we have incontrovertible proof that - as RedStateVT has told you - global warming is all about money, i.e. the research grants that grease the "scientists."


Finally, global warming's epitaph:
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse. The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece. 


Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds. (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 11/29/2011)


Featured
Mr. Gingrich taught college history before entering politics, and his historical references on the campaign trail are such a feature of his public remarks as to be nearly a rhetorical tic. They strike some as evidence that Mr. Gingrich is the smartest candidate in the room — and others that he is a man determined to let you know how much he knows. (NYT, 11/29/2011)


One of the requirements that Liberals have for a president is that he appear to be smart. Hence, because Bush sometimes mangled his syntax we got 'Bush is Dumb.' Obama's qualifications for president - given that he had no experience and no accomplishments - were that he was a brilliant orator. (The bloom is off that rose now, however). All this was notwithstanding that Bush was a Harvard MBA and Obama is reported to have been a mediocre student. 


So what to do with Newt Gingrich who is demonstrably smart and well-spoken? Well, the script now being written is obviously going to be that he is "too smart for his own good...nobody likes a smarty pants."


Scandal-Ridden Congressman To Retire
Simply put, Barney Frank has had enough. (NYT, 11/29/2011)


RedStateVT is by no means an expert on the Barney Frank scandals, but here are the ones that we recall:


- His boyfriend was running a male prostitution ring out of Barney's basement.
- His boyfriend was growing marijuana in his beach house.
- Barney recommended his boyfriend for a job at Fannie Mae (no pun intended).


We do not know whether this was the same boyfriend or not.


Oh, and of course, the biggest Barney scandals was when he told Fannie/Freddie that he wanted to "roll the dice" on providing more loans to the poor (unqualified) mortgage applicants.


Finally, Barney's epitaph:
However, it is unlikely that Mr. Frank is leaving for the reason he should depart Congress: out of shame for all he did to stop reform of Fannie and Freddie while there was still time to avert the disaster that almost took down the American economy.


In 2003, he called Fannie and Freddie “fundamentally sound financially” and accused the Bush Administration of trying to “exaggerate a threat of safety… [to] conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see."


A year later, he said talk of financial problems at Fannie and Freddie were “an artificial issue created by the administration...I don't think we are in any remote danger here."


In 2007, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and just as Fannie and Freddie – overleveraged and stuffed to the gills with risky mortgages they’d encouraged and facilitated – were about to go over the cliff, Mr. Frank attacked President George W. Bush’s call for reform as “inane.” (Karl Rove, WSJ, 11/29/2011)

Stranger Passing Through Put Up A Sign

All the Dishonesty, All the Time(s)
The debate over whether to reduce tax shelters and preferences for the rich is one of the most volatile in Washington and will move to the presidential campaign, now that repeated attempts in Congress to strike a grand bargain over spending cuts and an overhaul of the tax code have failed. 


A handful of billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates have joined Democrats in calling for an elimination of the breaks, saying that the current system adds to the budget deficit, contributes to the widening income gap between the richest and the rest of society, and shifts the tax burden onto small businesses and the middle class. Republicans have resisted, saying the tax increases on the wealthy would harm the economy and cost jobs. (NYT, 11/27/2011)


Here the Times fudges the issue of tax hikes and tax shelters using Ronald Lauder as the punching bag. Apparently unable to find a rich Democrat who engages in legal tax avoidance, the Times settles on Lauder, a contributor to Republicans. The Republican position has been no tax hikes on the rich or anyone else for that matter. But Republicans have endorsed reform of the tax code to eliminate various deductions, loopholes, and shelters.  You would not learn the distinction from reading this article. We suspect that Buffet and Gates utilize every known tax avoidance strategy their bevies of lawyers and accountants can muster up. 



First, successive rounds of Tea Party-driven budget cuts this year have clarified this tradeoff: unless taxes go up on the wealthy, Medicare and Social Security must be cut drastically. (NYT, 11/27/2011)


This literary gem focuses on the political genius of New York's Chuck Schumer who is pushing this canard. Of course as has been pointed out, you could confiscate all the wealth of the top 1% and Medicare and Social Security would not be fixed. 



Can't See the Forest
He wants to see, among other things, “a Robin Hood tax” on all financial transactions... (NYT, 11/28/2011)


This from Kalle Lasn, the Canadian who is the true spiritual leader of OWS (sorry Elizabeth Warren). 


Under Water
He badly underestimated the length of this economic crisis.... (Nicholas D. Kristof, NYT, 11/26/2011)


Having seen this repeated in several Liberal columns of late, we now know that this likely comes directly from the Obama re-election campaign. Goes like this: Given a ticked-off electorate, Dems know that they cannot run on Obama's economic record. Therefore they have to do some kind of a mea culpa. The softest way to spin this disaster is to say that Obama erred only in not realizing how bad things were. Of course, it had nothing to do with his policies! A variation is to say that the economy that Obama 'inherited from Bush' was much worse. Of course, the Blame Bush argument is losing steam with voters as we approach the end of Obama's term.


Appeasement
Los Angeles has been relatively accommodating to its Occupy group compared to other major cities, with (Los Angeles Mayor Antonio) Villaraigosa at one point providing ponchos to campers when it rained. But after the collapse of negotiations aimed at persuading protesters to relocate voluntarily, the mayor said last week the encampment would have to go. He said he hoped to avoid violence that erupted in other cities when police used force against Occupy protesters. (NYT, 11/28/2011)


Will the Bloombergs, Quans, and Villaraigosas learn? The Occupiers will take the free stuff you give them and still not obey. We think not, hence the pepper spray.


Make the Case
If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings? (James Delingpole, WSJ, 11/28/2011)


One has to search hard for an article on the latest Climategate scandal revelations! Now if there had been a new accusation made against Herman Cain we know it would have been front page news.

Poorly

RedStateVT has discussed with many of you our feelings about "the poor," a topic which Liberals endlessly invoke as the rationale for their social engineering goals. Like babies and puppies, the poor are held out as beyond judgment. How could the mean Republicans (fill in the blank) punish/cut programs for/ deny the poor. Vermont's own Colonel Bernie Sanders has "the poor" hardwired into every utterance he makes (along with "tax the rich" and "it's all Bush's fault"). The Judeo-Christian ethic of this country (and indeed all of the great religious traditions of the world) counsel empathy for those less fortunate.  And empathetic RedStateVT is, although we do make an important distinction. Namely, the biblical notion of the suffering and downtrodden poor must be updated. No longer is society divided between the elite and the oppressed. Occupy Whatever notwithstanding, in America and much of the world today, there are limitless opportunities for upward advancement for those willing to work hard. Why in America, the biracial child of a peripatetic single mom can grow up to be the President! For those who suffer the ravages of poverty through no fault of their own - illness, abuse, even bad luck - we extend a helping hand. For others, who suffer as a result of poor choices - drug abuse, profligacy, laziness, unwillingness to take advantage of public education, etc. - we say: "buck up little pony." In the wake of a recent CBO report on poverty which was widely trumpeted by the state-controlled media, we revisited an explanatory report from The Heritage Foundation which attempts to provide clearer insights into who exactly the poor are and how they live. (Or as RedStateVT is fond of asking: do the poor have a flat screen television and a cell phone with internet access?) It is highly recommend reading to all. 


Here is a brief summary:


--The typical poor household, as defined by the government, has a car and air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there are children, especially boys, the family has a game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

--In the kitchen, the household has a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences include a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker. 


--The home of the typical poor family is in good repair and is not overcrowded. In fact, the typical average poor American has more living space in his home than the average (non-poor) European has. 


-- By its own report, the typical poor family was not hungry, was able to obtain medical care when needed, and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.  


(The Heritage Foundation, Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?, Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, July 19, 2011)

Vise Grip

Validated
The Republican inquiry has raised valid questions, but it has also unfairly tried to exploit one bad bet to discredit public investments in renewable technologies. As the investigations continue, Congress must not lose sight of the bigger picture: the need to invest in promising alternatives to fossil fuels. (NYT, 11/25/2011)


The New York Times editors conclude that the loss of one-half of one billion dollars of taxpayers' money (Solyndra) was just, gosh darn it, bad luck. And shame on those Republicans for trying to politicize it!


Eliminated
Raising revenue through tax reform is better than simply raising rates, which Democrats insist upon with near religious fervor. It is more economically efficient because it eliminates credits, carve-outs and deductions that grossly misallocate capital. And it is more fair because it is the rich who can afford not only the sharp lawyers and accountants who exploit loopholes but the lobbyists who create them in the first place.


Yet the Democrats, who flatter themselves as the party of fairness, are instead obsessed with raising tax rates on the rich as a sign of civic virtue. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 11/24/2011)

Democrats have identified their weapon of choice - tax hikes on the rich - and they are determined to ride it all the way through the 2012 elections. We'll see where it gets them. Meanwhile they ignore the two levers which really can have an impact: tax loopholes and entitlements.

Turkey Time

Happy Thanksgiving to All! RedStateVT is thankful to live in the freest, fairest country in the world.


Vividly
As the busiest retail weekend of the year begins late Thursday night, the differences between how affluent and more ordinary Americans shop in the uncertain economy will be on unusually vivid display. Budget-minded shoppers will be racing for bargains at ever-earlier hours while the rich mostly will not be bothering to leave home. (NYT, 11/23/2011)



So now the New York Times is using Black Friday to push Obama's class warfare agenda...


Violated
But the investigators currently looking at MF Global's messy implosion, specifically the disappearance of as much as $1.2 billion in client money, are now coming to a far different conclusion: that people at the firm likely violated securities laws in the handling of these customer accounts, and that those violations could ultimately turn out to be criminal in nature, the FOX Business Network has learned. (Foxnews.com, 11/23/2011)


A Wall Street firm led by a former Republican governor who donated heavily to George Bush and was also a large bundler of contributions as well collapses and over $1 billion of client money goes missing. How much media coverage do you think that story would get? Which networks, commentators and prominent Democrats would be calling for investigations? Which would be explaining that this incident proves their point about the need for greater regulation or the corruption of Wall Street, abetted by Republicans? Make the appropriate substitutions - Obama for Bush, Democrat for Republican - and what do you get? Ho, hum...


Deceived
Along with the day-to-day work of science, the emails reveal internal debates, anger at skeptics and even deception from scientists investigation whether man's actions are warming the planet. (Foxnews.com, 11/23/2011)


Climategate Part II heats up! Of course, the outcome is preordained. An internal investigation will reveal that - notwithstanding what the Climategate scientists said in their e-mails - climate change is real and skeptics are ignorant.


Fall Into The Gap
We already have a huge welfare state, with entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- the biggest expenditure of the federal budget. Europe's welfare state is larger, with a slightly smaller "gap" between the rich and the poor. Yet its citizens also take to the street to denounce inequality. Puzzling, isn't it? (Larry Elder, Townhall.com, 11/24/2011)

Great point from Elder!

For God And Country

Pepper Time
To the American Civil Liberties Union, its use as a crowd-control device, particularly when those crowds are nonthreatening, is an excessive and unconstitutional use of force and violates the right to peaceably assemble. (NYT, 11/23/2011)


The peace and love crowd - yes, the same group that stood by idly while murder, rape, and drug use took place in their midst - is all upset about pepper spray.  Let's review the facts: 1) They refused to obey the orders of police to disburse; 2) ...Well, there really is nothing else to know. They refused to obey the law.  They were told they would be sprayed if they refused and they were sprayed.  End of story.  As a society, do we want the rule of law or not?


Au Contraire
The anonymous hacker who shook the world of climate science two years ago by posting a trove of stolen e-mails delivered a new batch on Tuesday, stirring up climate-change contrarians a little more than a week before global negotiations on greenhouse gases are to begin in Durban, South Africa. (NYT, 11/23/2011)


More great stuff from the 'scientists who stand to gain financially from pushing climate change.' Not surprisingly, the Times and all "scientists" involved quickly conclude that there are no damaging or contradictory revelations. End of story.


Mr. Big Stuff
I voted for Barack Obama, and I don’t want my money back. He’s never gotten the credit he deserves for bringing the economy he inherited back from the brink of a depression. He’s fought the war on terrorism in a smart and effective way. He’s making health care possible for millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, and he saved the auto industry. This is big stuff. (Thomas L. Friedman, NYT, 11/22/2011)


Another view - using the same fact pattern - is as follows: unemployment remains sky high and the economy is moribund after three years of Obama; he has emboldened Islamic terrorists by pre-announcing the date of U.S. troop withdrawals; he jammed through a highly unpopular health care plan using dishonest accounting for its costs; and, he bailed out his union supporters in the auto industry which now produce a highly subsidized $40,000 electric car which no one will buy. Big indeed.


Arc of a Diver
Mr. Obama's career has been one in which the main effect has been the impression he leaves on audiences—the main effect has been himself. Familiarity with his country—or any other country—would be helpful at this point, if only to counterweight his mesmerization with the arc of his personal story. (Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, 11/23/2011)


There is an increasing eloquence on the part of all writers - Left and Right - in describing the abject failure of Obama.

You Can Hear The Whistle Blow

Combative
In response to the growing tension between the politicians who debate and the journalists who moderate — a dynamic that will be tested again Tuesday night as CNN hosts the latest of more than a dozen nationally televised Republican debates planned through the end of the year — the news media outlets that sponsor the face-offs have been steeling themselves for combat. (NYT, 11/21/2011)


As well they should. Good job by Newt Gingrich (and others) for standing up to and exposing the Liberal bias inherent in the questions of these "moderators."


Sample question for Republicans: Why is your side unwilling to compromise?
Sample question for Democrats: How difficult is it when the other side won't compromise?


Squeezed
After years of watching the state’s budget for higher education erode, they (University of California students) are demanding that the state and university administrators find a way to lower tuition that they say is squeezing out the middle class. 


“These are institutions that we call the people’s university, but all of us who are in it have just watched this thing collapse on itself being starved for resources year after year,” said Lillian Taiz, the president of the California Faculty Association, the union that represents professors in the California State University system.
(NYT, 11/21/2011)


First, these are the same students, no doubt, who demand a "living wage" for university workers. Then they cannot understand why tuition goes up.


Second, why not ask the union representing these professors for givebacks in salary and benefits...so that the state can afford the "resources" so badly needed?


Disconnected
And Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who is not connected to the Obama campaign, said, “There is a clear sense that the president has reached out and tried to work with Republicans, and there is an equally clear sense that they have not tried to reach out and work with him. (NYT, 11/22/2011)


New York Times objectivity: they quote a pollster not connected to the Obama campaign...who is a Democrat!


Embattled
The result is that at a time when the nation is looking for ways to battle unemployment, big companies are creating fewer jobs, and critics say they are neglecting to lay the foundation for future growth by expanding into new businesses or building new plants. (NYT, 11/22/2011)


Let's see, businesses have the twin specters of more regulation and Obamacare hanging over them and Liberals cannot figure out why they are not hiring or spending their cash. RedStateVT prediction: the day Mitt Romney is elected president the market goes up 500 points and businesses begin investing again.


Preferred
Of course it would have been preferable if the two sides had come together now to cut spending, reform the tax code and remake Medicare. Preferable, but implausible. That would have required President Obama to have shown more respect for the will of the voters when they revoked his credit card by giving Republicans control of the House in 2010. Or for the President to have honored the findings of his own Bowles-Simpson deficit commission by using it as a basis for negotiation. Instead, he ignored them. (WSJ, 11/22/2011)


This is one of the enduring mysteries of Obama.  He is blind to seminal events like the election of Scott Brown and the 2010 mid-term elections. It is why his presidency has failed.

Regained and Regarded

Mounting Calls
(Obama) should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.


...Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance. With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years ago. He—like everyone else—knows that they are worse off.  (Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, WSJ, 11/21/2011)


In a stunning statement (not likely to be reported by the state-controlled media) Democrat heavyweights call for Obama to step aside.  Hillary comes with her own baggage, of course, and we are not certain how well she can work with both Dems and Repubs. But, it couldn't be worse, could it?  


Meanwhile Democrat lightweights like Chris Matthews are voicing similar sentiments.  Matthews asks: What is Obama's case for deserving a second term? He also speaks mysteriously of late night phone calls - presumably from Washington insiders - expressing profound frustration with Obama.


It's Over
In the midst of crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street movements across the country, police in Colorado Springs removed protesters from Acacia Park at 1 a.m. Monday. (Huffington Post, 11/21/2011)


Newt Gingrich's philosophical skewering of the premise of OWS this weekend said it all. Naturally, die-hard Liberals were outraged, but not about the drugs, sexual assaults, murder or violence...

Aimlessly Askew

The Great Divide
The divide was further illustrated by the House’s rejection of a constitutional amendment that would generally require the federal government to balance its budget. The House voted 261 to 165 in favor of the proposal, but that was 23 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment. The vast majority of Republicans supported the measure. Democrats, even some who voted in favor of a similar measure in 1995, pushed it to failure. (NYT, 11/19/2011)


So just to be clear, Democrats oppose fiscal responsibility.


Revisited
The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday. The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs. But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but "revisit" the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs. (Foxnews.com, 11/18/2011)


Fast and Furious, Greengate (Solyndra, et. al.) and now Minegate. Will Obama's turn out to be the most corrupt administration in modern times? Meanwhile, the state-controlled media yawns.


Strike Out
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said ahead of a meeting Friday with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he would warn his Israeli counterpart about the global economic consequences of a military strike on Iran's nuclear program, adding that he still favors sanctions and diplomacy over a strike. (Foxnews.com, 11/18/2011)


Two Truths: Dems always want sanctions; sanctions are meaningless.


Hedged Bets
“Senator Brown is a free-market advocate who believes that our strength as a nation comes from the ingenuity and hard work of its people,” read an invitation to a fund-raiser at a New Canaan, Conn., country club last week, that circulated among hedge fund and private equity executives. His Democratic opponent, the invitation noted, was all but certain to be the financial industry’s most prominent foe: “big government liberal Elizabeth Warren.” (NYT, 11/19/2011)


Maybe the hedge fund geniuses who have fallen all over themselves to support Democrats in the past have wised up. We are skeptical.


Ovewhelmed
As night fell on Tuesday, protesters voted overwhelmingly to put up tents in defiance of Robert J. Birgeneau, Berkeley’s chancellor, who has prohibited encampments synonymous with the Occupy demonstrations. More than a week ago, the police dragged protesters by the hair and struck them with batons as they tried to protect a similar encampment. (NYT, 11/19/2011)


There are three inalienable tenets of Liberal protest: 1) They support non-violence, 2) When they are asked to obey the law, they become violent, and 3) They then whine about being mistreated by the police. 


Frankly, we think the police have shown remarkable restraint...including the cops in Oakland!

Who Said It?

It’s hard to quarrel with (disgraced Democrat Charlie) Rangel’s reasoning. The fete Wednesday night at the upscale Bistro Bis, near Union Station, was a way for House Democrats to demonstrate that their punishment of the defrocked Ways and Means committee chairman was insincere. By attending the up-to-$5,000-per-ticket soiree, they were proclaiming that all was forgiven. 


a) WSJ Editorial 
b) Sean Hannity
c) Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank
d) Charles Krauthammer
e) Bill O'Reilly




If you guessed c) you are today's winner!




*Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 11/18/2011

Seeds Of Time

Battered Down
Two major clean air rules have been delayed, at least temporarily. The Interior Department announced a significant expansion of offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years. Last week, the administration bowed to pressure from protesters, environmental groups, and residents and officials in Nebraska in announcing that it would delay a decision on the bitterly contested Keystone XL oil pipeline until after the 2012 election. Taken together, the moves mark the White House’s growing awareness of the costs of environmental regulation in a battered economy. (NYT, 11/17/2011)


See, these are the type of decisions that Obama makes (including preserving the Bush tax cuts) that show that he does understand the pernicious economic effects of Liberal policies. 


Dynamic Civic Process Update
The mayor said that a witness told CNN that during a faceoff in Zuccotti Park, protesters tried to provoke officers by flicking lit cigarettes at them. (NYT, 11/17/2011)


Support OWS? These are the animals that you give aid and comfort to.  And note to the state-controlled media: the Tea Party will now accept your apologies.


No Future
Last week, Tim Weldon, 35, quit his job in Connecticut and moved from home to devote his time to Occupy Wall Street. “I think this will end up being the biggest and best career move I ever made,” he said in an interview. That was before the police cleared protesters from their encampment at Zuccotti Park. Now, he said, “I have no place to go.”


...Mr. Weldon graduated from the University of West Virginia, has a master’s degree in economic and social history from the University of Manchester in England, and has worked toward a Ph.D. in social anthropology at the University of Budapest. (NYT, 11/16/2011)


The dumbest person on the planet has now been found! By the way, this is exactly why Republicans want there to be accountability for teachers. This guy has a good case for suing his teachers.

Cease And Desist

The Visitor
And Democrats have made plenty of gaffes in the past, including President Obama, who once said he had visited 57 states. (NYT, 11/16/2011)


Gaffes happen. Just ask Gaffe Machine Joe Biden. Anyone in the public eye who is called upon regularly for spontaneous comment will occasionally slip-up. Most of the time miscues provide a quick laugh and do not reveal anything fundamental about a politician. As always, however, the state-controlled media seeks to define the worthiness for office of a Republican candidate on the basis of a single slip-up. Hence we have been subjected to virtually nonstop "gaffe watch." Obama's "57 states" comment was virtually ignored until now, when in a belated attempt at fairness, the Times mentions it.
  
The Battler
As Barack Obama battled Hillary Rodham Clinton over health care during the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008, he was adamant about one thing: Americans, he insisted, should not be required to buy health insurance.... Polls show the mandate is by far the most unpopular provision of the 2010 bill, and now Mr. Obama, who ultimately embraced the idea, is in the awkward position of defending something he once rejected. (NYT, 11/16/2011)


Now they tell us? Does this make Obama a flip-flopper or is that term reserved for Mitt Romney?


Assertions
The Post writes that supporters of enhanced interrogation “have asserted that waterboarding led to important intelligence gains. It is not clear this is true.”  Yes it is.  In response to a direct question about the role of enhanced interrogation in the bin Laden operation, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed that, “Obviously there was, there was some valuable intelligence that was derived through those kind of interrogations.” His immediate predecessor, Mike Hayden, was even more explicit, declaring, “Let the record show that when I was first briefed in 2007 about the brightening prospect of pursuing bin Laden through his courier network, a crucial component of the briefing was information provided by three CIA detainees, all of whom had been subjected to some form of enhanced interrogation.”  (Marc Thiessen, Washington Post, 11/15/2011)


The state-controlled media revives the dormant waterboarding issue expressly for the purpose of trying to make Republican candidates look bad. Good for most of them for standing up. And good for Thiessen for reminding the Washington Post that waterboarding is what got bin Laden; the event which the very same press will point to during the campaign season as proof of Obama's foreign policy competence. Can't have it both ways folks!

Sudden Bitter Rain

Pain and Suffering
Mr. Obama’s economic team failed to help him prepare Americans for the pain ahead. It has proved a defining mistake of the Obama administration. (NYT, 11/13/2011)


Liberal media bias is endemic (hence RedStateVT), but it is also subtle. Here we learn that the failure of Obama is 1) not his fault, 2) the fault of his advisers, and 3) not a result of his policies. That clears it up!


Zuccotti Zucchini
(Mayor Bloomberg) added that on Monday, Brookfield asked the city to assist in enforcing “the no sleeping and camping rules. (NYT, 11/15/2011)


After two months Mayor Feckless finally agrees to enforce the law, but only when pressed by the park's owners. 


Dynamic Civic Process*
One part of the group chanted "We are peaceful." Others responded with chants of "We're not peaceful." (WSJ, 11/15/2011)


The great unwashed - peaceful and not peaceful - are asked to move along.


*actual description from OWS blogger.

You Might Say

Tip of the Iceberg
A great deal of attention has been focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources. When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over. (NYT, 11/12/2011)


With every boom there is a bust. Several years hence RedStateVT will be writing about the vast amounts of taxpayer dollars wasted during the "clean energy boom years" of the Obama administration.


Fight Back
Small business owners and local residents fed up with the “Occupiers” at Zuccotti Park in New York City are planning a counterprotest and news conference of their own Monday, to make clear the crowd has long overstayed its welcome — and that businesses will not survive if the “occupation” continues. (Foxnews.com, 11/11/2011)


So here is the choice for gutless mayors like Bloomberg and Quan: keep spending millions of taxpayer dollars to avoid confronting freeloading criminals and anarchists OR protect taxpaying small businessmen. Why are we even asking this question?


Heal Thyself
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is the subject of a report on the stock investments of members of Congress that is to air Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." (Sfgate.com, 11/11/2011)


The Pelosi Swamp Clean-Up takes an unexpected turn!

Happy Veterans Day

A special thanks to all past and present veterans. Thank you for your service and your sacrifices.

More Of The Same

Peas and Pods
On the surface, Greece and Italy seem remarkably alike. Both countries have entrenched patronage networks that predate the European Union by centuries and suffocating regulations and work rules. (NYT, 11/11/2011)


Hmm....reminds us of what? Now to avoid or reverse these issues, the best course of action is to do what?


The Sutton Principle
To solve our debt problems, we have to go to where the money is — the middle class. People who earn between $30,000 and $200,000 a year make a total of around $5 trillion and pay less than 10 percent of that in taxes (owing mostly to tax incentives and the fact that most families make less than $68,000, where larger tax rates begin). Increasing the middle-class tax burden an additional 8 percent, however, would actually have a bigger impact than taxing millionaires at 100 percent. (Adam Davidson, NYT, 11/9/2011)


Why the Republican firewall against raising taxes on "millionaires and billionaires?"  One reason is that Liberals won't stop there. They will then carve away until everyone is paying confiscatory taxes. Of course, another alternative to raising taxes is for government to spend less.


Germ Warfare
Dr. Philip M. Tierno Jr., the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the conditions could leave park-dwellers susceptible to respiratory viruses; norovirus, the so-called winter vomiting virus, which can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and which could quickly overwhelm the limited bathroom facilities in the area; and tuberculosis, which is more common in indigent populations and can be spread by coughing. (NYT, 11/11/2011)


Like the microbes that brought down the alien invaders in War of the Worlds, the Occupiers could also be felled by the unseen!

What Fate Arranges

The Peace and Love Crowd
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was about 10 minutes into a foreign policy speech in South Carolina on Thursday when she was drowned out by the shouting of protesters. About 30 people rose in unison and began shouting a scripted message during Bachmann's address aboard the USS Yorktown, a World War Two aircraft carrier. The group, which later identified itself as being part of Occupy Charleston, accused Bachmann of "dividing Americans" and promoting discrimination.  (Reuters.com, 11/10/2011)


Occupiers have clashed with police in City Hall Park this evening after police tried to close down the encampment following a fatal shooting. (Burlington Free Press, 11/10/2011)


This is Liberal dissent. The ones who believe in free speech prevent conservatives from speaking. Or they get violent. 


Extra Large
Federal officials postponed a crucial permitting decision for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline Thursday afternoon, issuing plans to consider a new route for the pipeline. The project was proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada to link a vast oil patch in Alberta to refineries in Texas. The additional analysis would not likely be concluded until the early months of 2013. (Huffington Post, 11/10/2011)


Another decision (like gay marriage) that Obama punts to his possible second term. Another gutsy call from our fearless leader!

Double Down

Disunion
Unions have also intervened with politicians on behalf of the protesters. In Los Angeles, labor leaders have repeatedly lobbied Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa not to evict the protesters. When New York City officials were threatening to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, hundreds of union members showed up before daybreak to discourage any eviction, and the city backed down. (NYT, 11/9/11)


At the site of the Occupy San Diego camp, street cart vendors were forced to close up shop Monday when protesters, angry that they stopped receiving free food, ransacked and vandalized the carts. (Foxnews.com, 11/9/2011)


Two points on Occupy Whatever today: The Occupiers want free stuff (wait, we said that yesterday and the day before and the day before)! Second, these protests reveal the utter fecklessness of mayors from coast to coast. Afraid of upsetting the little darlings, mayors from Bloomberg to Quan let them break the law.  Now, because they have ceded power to the mob, they cannot get it back. 


Bounce
Mr. Gingrich predicted, too, that late on Election Night—after it was clear that President Obama had been defeated along with the Democrats in the Senate—the recovery would begin, at once. (Dorothy Rabinowitz, WSJ, 11/9/11)


RedStateVT will now make public its prediction heretofore only mentioned to close associates. If Obama is defeated, the Dow Jones Industrials will register a 500 point gain the next day.


The Wall
In Italy, as in Greece, Spain and Portugal and eventually France, the welfare-entitlement state has hit a wall. Successive governments on the Continent, right and left, have financed generous entitlements with high taxes and towering piles of debt. Their economies have failed to grow fast enough to keep up, and last year the money started to run out. The reckoning has arrived.(WSJ, 11/9/11)


It is stunning that with the future of America in five years foretold by the collapse of the European socialist model, Liberals nonetheless want to follow the same path.

Change Is No Stranger

California Files
Now even unions are catching on to the damage.  The Los Angeles Times reports that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) gave final approval to the new scheme two weeks ago after listening to "scathing comments from union workers fearful of losing their jobs." Hard-hat union members from the steel, concrete and oil and gas industries were among the opponents. (WSJ, 11/31/2011)


The Journal editorial references California's adoption of a cap and trade policy....and the potentially devastating effect on union jobs. As RedStateVT has remarked before, Dems are NOT the party of the working man. 


Acting Out
(Actress Ellen) Barkin also takes issue with the cable broadcaster often tied to the Tea Party. "The blatant lying that passes itself off as journalism. I don’t even need to get there to go mental. Can you imagine a legitimate newsperson—Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw—just lying on the news?" she asked, heating up in rhetoric. "Let alone the entertainment factor—you know, news as entertainment. And because of the enormity of the money behind that machine, they have convinced this ever-growing group of really struggling, working-class people, that these f--kers can somehow, in some way, represent them. They do not. I mean, let’s not even start, because that’ll take up a whole month if I go down that road."


Barkin has never been shy to share her political beliefs, and often in very colorful ways. She once tweeted that, "If Ann Coulter didn't have a dick...I'd call her a c*nt." Following a night of live tweeting a Republican presidential debate, she said, "G'mornin my frenz...Im still all f*cked up from debate nitemares & sh*t...dreamt Newt stuck his Mitt up my a** w/o any Santorum."  (Huffington Post, 11/8/2011)


Making fun of celebrity nit-wits is a lot like fishing with dynamite. It's too easy. So Barkin can't imagine Don Rather "just lying." Even middle schoolers know that Rather was exposed for peddling forged documents about George Bush's military service. Does that count as a lie?  Readers will also recall that Barkin was married to Billionaire One-Percenter Ron Perelman and got millions in a divorce settlement. She then turned around and donated most of this windfall to a local homeless shelter. Oh wait, she didn't?

Weave A Wall

RedStateVT Proposes New Advocacy Group
Readers may remember that the Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org was formed during the Clinton Administration. Stuck defending a perverse sex predator, Liberal supporters of Clinton wanted to change the conversation. The best they could come up with was: "let's just move on and stop talking about it." And so, MoveOn.org was born. Unlike the Clinton scandal, there is no, well let's call it "physical evidence," that the allegations against Cain are true. Nonetheless, RedStateVT suggests taking a page from the Liberal playbook and look to move past this issue. We propose the formation of MoveAlong.org. Reader feedback is requested. With enough support, we can get this off the ground.


RedStateVT Watches MSNBC
As a public service to readers, RedStateVT will occasionally watch MSNBC to see how Liberals are spinning the truth. Last week we watched a few minutes of Hardball with Chris Matthews. Here is what we saw. Apparently unable to live down his "leg tingle" for Obama, Matthews has given up any hope of being a serious journalist. In one segment, he asked both a Democrat and Republican commentator the question of which party would take the high road in the upcoming election. He interrupted the Republican response to say words to the effect of: "You guys will probably paint swastikas on pictures of Obama." RedStateVT has been trying to get the exact language from the transcript of the program. Mysteriously, it cannot be found on the Hardball website!


RedStateVT also caught a few minutes of an MSNBC show called: The Mr. Ed Show. Apparently this show is a remake of the old series about a talking horse. Here is what we saw. Mr. Ed played a clip of a frustrated unemployed blue collar worker who called Elizabeth Warren a completely inappropriate name. The title of the segment was: Tea Party Hate. Mind you this was a single individual at a small town hall event in Massachusetts. Why report the story? Because Mr. Ed wanted to deflect attention away from the violence and vandalism committed the day before by numerous members of Occupy Oakland. "A horse is a horse, of course, of course......"


This is MSNBC.


Teachable Moment
Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs, researchers at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, two leading conservative think tanks, argue in a new report that the country's 3.2 million teachers may be overpaid by over 50 percent or more, given their salary, benefits, job security, and intellectual ability. (AOL.com, 11/4/2011)


It is a reflexive Liberal axiom that we need to spend more money on education in this country. It's rare (and nice) to see someone question the conventional wisdom.

Dolly Back

Committed
Sleeping in Zuccotti once was evidence of a deep commitment to Occupy’s politics, but now, some people seem to be there mainly for the donated clothes and free food. (NYT, 11/6/2011)


As RedStateVT told you from the start, the Occupiers want free stuff. Want more proof? Consider:


An "Occupy Wall Street" protester threw a violent fit in a McDonald’s after employees refused to give him free food. (Foxnews.com, 11/5/2011)


Plunged and Poised
As the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Iraq by year’s end, senior American and Iraqi officials are expressing growing concern that Al Qaeda’s offshoot here, which just a few years ago waged a debilitating insurgency that plunged the country into a civil war, is poised for a deadly resurgence. (NYT, 11/6/2011)


Obama's enduring legacy?


Leveled
Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans have blocked a short-term jobs bill proposed by President Obama that has broad support from independent economists, and for the most part they have failed to level with voters about cuts to Medicare, Social Security and the military that a no-new-taxes pledge would require. Democrats, including Mr. Obama, have vowed not to raise taxes on households making less than $250,000, which seems impossible without larger benefit cuts than Democrats have acknowledged. (NYT, 11/6/2011)


Interesting analysis from the Times, reasonably attempting to be objective.  We'd quibble, however, with the comment that Republicans haven't been honest about cuts to entitlement programs.  They have certainly tried to...and then been eviscerated by Dems... and the Times!

Field Notes

LA LA Land
RedStateVT has just returned from a research trip to the Left Coast. Here is what you need to know. Liberal hypocrisy is alive and well. The folks who want to tell America how to live are - no surprise - not heeding their own advice. The prime example is the California car culture. While Liberals want the rest of America to take the bus, carpool, buy American or drive hybrids, none of this is happening in LA LA Land. It appears that Californians are overwhelmingly driving solo in big black German luxury cars. So no public transportation, no carpooling, limited number of hybrids on the road, and certainly the leader in sales of foreign luxury cars. And they are overwhelmingly black, thereby requiring extra air conditioning. Oh, they are sparklingly clean, too. Californians love shiny cars and upscale car washes (often they are called "car spas") are a growth business. For a state that (we thought) had water shortage problems, we found lots and lots of car washes and no flow restrictors. 


Caned
RedStateVT is frankly befuddled by the uproar over allegations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain. We thought that the enduring legacy of Bill Clinton was that inappropriate sexual behavior by politicians was no longer to be considered newsworthy. What has changed? 


Do you wonder, by the way, why black conservatives are accused of misdeeds of a sexual nature? The answer is simple, really. Chapter One of the Liberal playbook is first to accuse a conservative of racism. Case in point is Rick Perry. This is always where Liberals begin. However, the strategy has to be modified when a black conservative appears. Racism is tough to allege. And so Liberals turn next to the charge of sexual harassment. Ultimately - as more black conservatives hit the national spotlight - these Liberal tactics will prove increasingly ineffective.