Turning The Soil

Green Mountain$
Mr. Obama’s remarks came midway through a daylong fund-raising trip to Vermont and Maine. The president began with a lunch in Burlington with about 100 supporters who paid at least $7,500 each, campaign officials said. Then some 4,500 people — many of them students who paid $44 — attended the University of Vermont event, which featured a performance by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. (NYT, 3/30/2012)


After the departure of the president, students rallied to protest tuition hikes. 


When Liberals Attack...Liberals
Keith Olbermann has been fired by Current TV, the network announced Friday. He will be replaced by former New York governor and CNN host Eliot Spitzer.


Olbermann had hosted "Countdown," which he brought from MSNBC after his exit there, since June. His short tenure began with fanfare, but ended, as many of Olbermann's previous jobs have, with deep acrimony on both sides.  (Huffington Post, 3/30/2012)


RedStateVT has learned that Olbermann is in talks with both Al Jazeera and Nick at Night.

Six, Seven, Eight

Hood's Up
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday praised Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) for wearing a hoodie on the House floor in protest of the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida.


"I think that Bobby Rush deserves a great deal of credit for the courage he had to go to the floor in a hoodie knowing that he would be told he was out of order," Pelosi said during her weekly briefing. (Huffington Post, 3/29/2012)


Background: EVERY crime story in Vermont begins this way - "The suspect was wearing a hoodie...." And so, Nancy Pelosi celebrates a misguided politician who celebrates apparel associated - like it or not - with thuggery and criminal behavior. Oh, and he broke House rules.


Lazy Days
Vice President Joe Biden offered a frank assessment of his career in remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago Thursday night.  According to a White House pool report, Biden, surrounded by the city's movers and shakers, praised former Mayor Richard M. Daley and then said: "I never had an interest in being a mayor 'cause that's a real job.  You have to produce.  That's why I was able to be a senator for 36 years."

Biden was elected to the Senate in November 1972, when he was 29 years old.  When he took office in January 1973, he had turned 30, the minimum age set in the Constitution for membership in the Senate.  Biden served in the Senate from that time until January 2009, when he became vice president. (Washingtonexaminer.com, 3/29/2012)


Perhaps Republicans should weave into their campaign narrative that Obama should be defeated because if - God forbid - something were to happen to him, the country would be stuck with a self-admitted lazy career politician. And Democrats were aghast at the choice of Sarah Palin. Say what you want, no one ever accused her of being a slacker.


Trust
But really the message, the important one, concerns us, here in America. It is that the American people can't be trusted if the president is honest with them about what he proposes. More bluntly, that the American people are not trusted by their own president. Otherwise the president would tell us the truth about his intentions. And here he is, admitting his distrust of his own people to a leader of a nasty foreign government that seeks to thwart our purposes in the Middle East and elsewhere. President Obama is in cahoots with the Russian regime against America's very body politic. (Martin Peretz, WSJ, 3/29/2012)


A fitting analysis of Obama on the day he visits Vermont.

Concordia

Absentee
The law professor side of President Obama is highly intrigued by the Supreme Court hearings over the constitutionality of his health care law. He studied a summary of the arguments aboard Air Force One as he flew back from a nuclear summit meeting in South Korea. (NYT, 3/28/2012)


Anyone else notice that Obama skipped town right as his signature legislation reaches the Supreme Court? Even Obama is distancing himself from Obama!


Cold Warrior
Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender. (NYT editorial, 3/28/2012)


The Times rips Romney for his antiquated view of Russia. But what is this just a couple of paragraphs later?


Russia is an unsavory player. In December, Vladimir Putin’s party tried to steal a parliamentary election; this month, he faced fraud charges from international observers after his own re-election as president. He has cracked down on critics and restricted democracy. His support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is unconscionable. (The same New York Times editorial)


Charles Krauthammer had a great line a couple of days ago questioning whether Obama reads his own speeches. Now we wonder whether the New York Times reads their own editorials!


Shrunk
At insurance-industry conferences over the last month, executives have told me that the shrinkage of companies and coverage is only increasing as the industry finds it difficult to cope with the regulatory burdens. This will lead to less supply and less competition just when the law contemplates dramatically expanding the number of people with insurance. (Karl Rove, WSJ, 3/28/2012)


What Rove does not say is that less competition is EXACTLY what Liberals want. Once they have driven the insurance companies out of the market, they can realize their dream of single payer, government run insurance.


Goof Ball
Vice President Biden once again proved that he's America's goofy uncle when he mistakenly referred to Scott Community College President Dr. Theresa Paper as "Dr Pepper." (Huffington Post, 3/28/2012)


Even the Obama media cannot continue to look the other way while Biden fumbles his way across the campaign trail. How to deal with him? Simple, they have landed on this rather benign image of Biden...he's just our "goofy uncle." Now let's try hard to remember the way in which this same media treated, say, Sarah Palin.......

White Cane

Renewable
If Democrats make little progress on alternatives, some purists might decide it’s best to just renew the case for a single-payer system in which all Americans receive health care paid for by the government. (Michael D. Shear, NYT, 3/28/2012)


The government will conjure up the money to pay for this...... from thin air.


Half Time
President Obama’s deportation-dodging half-uncle, who surrendered his driver’s license yesterday after admitting Framingham cops had a solid drunken-driving case against him, could be back behind the wheel within days, the Herald has learned.

Onyango Obama, 67, whose license was suspended for 45 days after a surprise plea deal stemming from his August arrest, plans to apply for a hardship license as early as Friday to get to and from work, his lawyer said. (BostonHerald.com, 3/28/2012)


The Obama media writes endless stories about Bristol Palin, but largely ignores the president's...er, "colorful" uncle.

Sweepstakes Ticket

Overheard
A senior House Republican on Monday accused President Obama of going back on promises he would not weaken U.S. missile defenses through negotiations with Russia after the president was overheard promising more concessions after his reelection.

Rep. Michael R. Turner (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, sought an explanation for the overheard comments made by the president Monday in a discussion in Seoul with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

Obama told the outgoing Russian president that “this is my last election and after my election I’ll have more flexibility” regarding contentious missile defense talks with Moscow that have been underway for the past three years. (Washington Free Beacon, 3/26/2012)


Years ago when RedStateVT began its political education, a mentor explained that the single most important job of the president was to keep the country safe. Everything else is secondary. Growing up in Indonesia, this is not a lesson that President Obama ever learned. Hence his comment to the Russians on "flexibility" can mean only one thing and that is disarmament. No rational person can believe any other interpretation, and this is the single most important reason that Obama must be defeated. Yes, even ahead of the repeal of Obamacare.


Hand-Off
There has indeed been some warming, perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age in the early 1800s. Some of that warming has probably come from increased amounts of CO2, but the timing of the warming—much of it before CO2 levels had increased appreciably—suggests that a substantial fraction of the warming is from natural causes that have nothing to do with mankind. (William Happer, WSJ, 3/27/2012)


And from the same article....


During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: "It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather."


Another nail in the climate change coffin (and Obama embraces global warming!)


Inexplicable
"Take it from a centrist..." (Chris Matthews)


A friend constantly writes that political stalemate in this country results from Republicans being unwilling to compromise. We think stalemate results from Liberals not admitting who they are.

Motionless

Never Mind
There were other complications. Mr. Verrilli’s argument that the penalty is not a tax for purposes of the 1867 law was in potential tension with one he will make on Tuesday, that the mandate was authorized not only by Congress’s power under the commerce clause but also by its power to levy taxes. 
....


Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said. “Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax.” 


Mr. Verrilli argued that the name Congress gave to the payment required for violating the mandate in the health care law — calling it a penalty, not a tax — mattered for purposes of the 1867 law but was irrelevant in connection with the constitutional taxing power. (NYT, 3/26/2012)


Liberal logic.....what does it matter as long as we get a single payer system!


Heart Beat
“Damn. No more jokes about Cheney not having a pulse,” tweeted liberal blogger Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University assistant professor. “Cheney’s only remaining medical problem is no reflection when he looks in the mirror.” He added defensively later, “Hey, it’s a great day for the Cheneys. Why shouldn’t we have some fun?” (BostonHerald.com, 3/26/2012)


These are the people who are teaching our sons and daughters.

This Time

Down Below the Borderline
President Obama's campaign has responded to comments Rick Santorum made about Malia's school trip to Mexico. Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager, told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that she is "surprised" Santorum would drag the president's children into the political crossfire. (NYT, 3/22/2012)


Obama was all to willing to invoke his daughters in the controversey surrounding recreational sex expert Sandra Fluke. Now, however, they are off limits. 


Solar Cranks
There are only 10 full-time employees here at the Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility, the largest photovoltaic solar power plant in the nation, although company officials note there will be more jobs if two other proposed plants move forward.

There are also questions about the electricity output here. This plant cranks out just 58 megawatts per hour to power 17,000 homes, while a typical coal-fired power plant can produce 600 megawatts an hour and about seven times the electricity. (Foxnews.com, 3/22/2012)


The energy of the future!

Empty Quiver

Carney-val!
In advance of the trip, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, said the president’s focus on energy is no election-year phenomenon, but has been a high priority since he took office. The economic stimulus package of spending and tax incentives that Mr. Obama signed into law a month after taking office in 2009, at the height of the recession, including billions of dollars for clean-energy projects. (NYT, 3/21/2012)


Obama wants to run on his green energy record? Mitt Romney is the luckiest man on the planet!


So-So
The “only solution,” he (Obama) averred in yet another major energy speech last week, is that “we start using less — that lowers the demand, prices come down.” Yet five paragraphs later he claimed that regardless of “how much oil we produce at home . . . that’s not going to set the price of gas worldwide.” 


So: Decreasing U.S. demand will lower oil prices, but increasing U.S. supply will not? This is ridiculous. Either both do or neither does. Does Obama read his own speeches? (Charles Krauthammer, Wasington Post, 3/15/2012)


This great one from Krauthammer received lots of attention, but in case you did not see it... 


Speaking of gas, we heard a good one (believe that it was Republican Senator Thomas Coburn from Oklahoma). Goes like this: Like it or not, we are dependent on oil for the next 25 years. So we have two choices: we can keep buying it from the Middle East, thereby transferring $250 billion a year to despots. Or we can drill in the U.S. today, creating jobs and keeping the money here. 


To which Obama says.....can we speed up development of the windmill-powered automobile?


Breaking News
RedStateVT has learned the first name of the suspect in the shootings in France of several Jewish children. It is Jesus. Just kidding.....it's Mohammed. 


And joking aside, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, including those of the French soldiers also murdered in the latest incident of radical Islamic terrorism.

Bright Ambassadors of Morning

Influential
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Chu whether his decisions had been influenced by several specific people tied to the administration, including former National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers, who before joining the White House worked as a part-time managing director at D.E. Shaw, a New York-based investment firm that has an ownership stake in the Kahuku Wind project.

Chu replied that Summers’s connections to the Hawaii wind farm had nothing to do with it securing a $117 million loan guarantee in July 2010.

The DOE chief also had similar replies when asked about Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who before joining the administration sat on the board of directors at BrightSource, which won a $1.6 billion loan guarantee in April 2011 to support the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert; Nancy-Ann DeParle, a deputy White House chief of staff for policy who served on the board of directors at Noble Environmental Power, the owner of the Granite Reliable wind energy project that won a partial $168.9 million loan guarantee last September; and Michael Froman, a deputy assistant to Obama and deputy national security adviser who worked at Citigroup, a major investor in SolarReserve, winner last September of a $737 million loan guarantee. (POLITICO.com, 3/19/2012)


The state-controlled media refuses to focus on real congressional hearings like those of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee where we learn details like those outlined above about the corruption inherent in Obama's green energy give-aways. No, instead we get fake hearings like recreational sex expert Sandra Fluke appearing before Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats and compliant media in an orchestrated photo op.


Accommodations
Now, with Occupy Wall Street’s resurgence, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s response to the protest movement has not been ambivalent. Asked at a news conference on Monday if he had a strategy to prevent large-scale arrests of protesters, Mr. Bloomberg said: “You want to get arrested? We’ll accommodate you.” (NYT, 3/19/2012)


Even Liberal billionaire mayors can learn new things.

By The Hand

Singularities
During the 2008 campaign, Obama frequently suggested his mother had to fight with her health-insurance company for treatment of her cancer because it considered her disease to be a pre-existing condition. In one of the presidential debates with GOP rival John McCain, Obama said: 


“For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.” 


But then earlier this year, journalist Janny Scott cast serious doubt on this version of events in her excellent biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s mother.” Scott reviewed letters from Dunham to the CIGNA insurance company, and revealed the dispute was over disability coverage, not health insurance coverage. (Washington Post, 3/19/2012)


Turns out, Obama lied.


Swept Away
Eight months after deficit talks between the nation’s top two elected officials collapsed, a 4,600-word inside-the-room narrative by The Washington Post on Sunday — the first of several sweeping accounts in the works — paints the Obama administration as walking away from a nearly done agreement with Boehner. And when the president eventually came around and wanted to cut a deal, Boehner said it was too late. In short, the Post piece bolsters the Boehner team’s narrative that it was Obama who got cold feet and became unwilling to strike a grand bargain to fix the nation’s finances. (POLITICO.com, 3/18/2012)


Turns out, Obama lied.


Bio-mess
Obama’s “bringing down gas prices one presidential address at a time” strategy is expected to prompt the Department of Energy to sponsor another contest — one that would award top dollar to the first auto company that can invent a car that runs on speeches. Algae would also be acceptable, of course. (Michelle Malkin, 3/19/2012)


Good one!


By the Phone
In the wake of President Obama calling Georgetown University law student and women's rights activist Sandra Fluke to discuss Rush Limbaugh's remarks, Bristol Palin, the daughter of the former Alaska governor, posted a question to the current White House resident Sunday.

"Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?" (NewsBusters.com, 3/19/2012)


Do it, Mr. President. Call Bristol Palin and return Bill Maher's $1 million....for the sake of Malia and Sasha....

Windows Wide

Talkin' 'Bout
RedStateVT spun the dial recently to check in with the Liberal shows. Here is what we found. Ed Schultz was bellowing about something...it might have been the Republican War on Women. Chris Matthews was once again mocking religion. (Now is Holy Cross going to cancel his upcoming book signing?) And (best for last) Mensa member Al Sharpton was questioning Sarah Palin's intelligence!


Speaking of the Republican War on Women, RedStateVT recently conducted a poll of ten women and found that none believed that the Republican War on Women was real. Respondents include Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Michelle Bachmann, Nikki Haley, Jan Brewer, Sarah Palin, Meg Whitman, Phyllis Schlafy, and Star Parker (wait, that's eleven). In any case, while all believe that the Republican War on Women did not exist, all did concede that the War on Liberal Women Who Want Free Abortions and Birth Control probably was real.


Baseless
“Presidential elections are based on evaluations of presidential performance and on the performance of the economy. You can’t reduce that to one small issue,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. “Are gas prices part of the equation that people think about? They probably are, but only a small piece.” (NYT, 3/16/2012)


Republicans adopt an "ALL OF THE ABOVE" strategy to energy. Democrats and the media have similarly adopted an "ALL OF THE ABOVE" strategy to explain why high gas prices are not Obama's fault. Included is this one which informs us that people really just don't focus on gas prices too much.


Out of Fashion
“It’s not as trendy to be involved in the Obama campaign as it was back then.” President Barack Obama.


Yes, he said it.


Role Play
It is a role that the gregarious, relationship-cultivating old pol seems to have been born to play, and one that has already helped his less-experienced and more distant boss negotiate the political ways and means of the capital. (Washington Post, 3/14/2012)


Did we read this correctly? The Washington Post admits that Obama is politically inexperienced and personally aloof? How did this get by the proof readers at the DNC?


Flub-a-Dub
The Republican National Committee has seized on Biden’s flubs. They have put out press releases about Biden calling attention to a “three-letter word: jobs — J-O-B-S,” and for appearing to empathize with China’s one child per family policy. But since Biden is not running for president anymore, his gaffes for the most part amount to an endearing trait that complements the preternaturally cool president. (Washington Post, 3/14/2012)


Dan Qualye will live in Liberal infamy for a minor gaffe. Meanwhile gaffe-athon Biden is "endearing." Now do you believe it when Republicans say the media is biased?

Detours

Slightly
...the Congressional Budget Office made a slight mistake on Obamacare. Now they tell us that it won't cost $900 billion.  It will cost $1.8 trillion! (DickMorris.com, 3/15/2012)


In a widely reported story.......what? You hadn't heard?


Swamp Thing
Leaders of the nation’s labor unions — which some experts say benefited from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010 — said on Wednesday that the ruling needed to be overturned for the good of American democracy,


 Recognizing that the court is unlikely to overturn the decision, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main union federation, said the United States should consider a constitutional amendment to effectively overturn Citizens United, which allowed unlimited independent campaign spending by business corporations and labor unions.


 Although some union leaders say organized labor will spend $400 million this year on national, state and local campaigns, many union officials are voicing fears that billionaire donors and corporations will spend huge amounts that will swamp labor’s efforts. (NYT, 3/15/2012)


So unions object to Citizens United....because they will now be outspent.


Blanketed
As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney. (NYT, 3/15/2012)


In other business news, Democrat billionaire Jon Corzine has still not been jailed in connection with the demise of MF Global.

All The Trumpets

Silence of the Libs
Rather, Fluke is the latest in a long line of my absolute favorite liberal typology: hysterical drama queens. From Murphy Brown to the Jersey Girls, Cindy Sheehan, Joe Wilson and the New School's Jean Rohe, these fantasists inject themselves into a boiling-hot public debate and then claim victim status when anyone criticizes them.
....
In full indignation, Fluke said her critics were trying "to silence women's voices." She said this on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and a number of other national media outlets. (Ann Coulter, 3/14/2012)

RedStateVT has been waiting patiently for Coulter to weigh in on Sandra Fluke. She does not disappoint!


Down the Road
Lawmakers on Thursday morning approved a hard-fought measure to cut the retirement benefits for future public employees in New York City and across the state, dealing a defeat to labor unions at the end of a dramatic all-night session. 
...
“This is real reform, and for the taxpayers of the state gives them a better deal for their money,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a telephone interview. “It does not hurt any of our current employees or any of our current retirees, and down the road, if people don’t want to come to work for the city or the state, they don’t have to. (NYT, 3/14/2012)


Well we are not sure if it is "real" reform, but it is a start. And how about Mayor Pander talking tough!


Innocence Lost
As the city (Burlington) sees it, a Goliath of international banking is bullying a small city, which sadly but innocently miscalculated its ability to compete in the telecommunications business. From the bank’s perspective, the lawsuit is an attempt by an honest provider of capital to compel a deadbeat municipality to pay its bills. 
...
It argues that “if Burlington is permitted to breach its agreement without any recourse, the ability of Burlington to obtain municipal financing for other city projects ... will be compromised.” (Burlington Free Press, 3/14/2012)


The "deadbeat" argument seems to carry more weight and - win or lose - don't underestimate the difficulty Burlington will have obtaining future financing. Would YOU lend the city money?


Furious, Mad AND Tired
“I am furious,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. “We’re mad, and we’re tired of it.” (NYT, 3/14/2012)


Islam has been called by some: the religion of perpetual outrage because....well, you know why. RedStateVT now deems Democrats: the party of perpetual outrage.


The Nothingness
Standing before Congress, Mr. Obama brought forth "An Economy Built to Last." Not the real one we have now, but the one he's going to conjure after he's re-elected. 


The way this works is the president breaks economic history into two parts. In his right hand are the awful policy mistakes someone else made before January 2009. In his left hand is the economy he'll bring to life after November. In between is nothing. You think you're looking at the Obama years from 2009 to 2012—8% unemployment, low growth, low investment—when whoa, it's gone! Never happened. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 3/14/2012)


In 2008 Obama had no political record to run on. He had done nothing in the Senate except run for president. He voted "present" to avoid leaving a trail. Hence, the only thing Fox News could do was to investigate his past associations which uncovered a web of radicals. The state-controlled media ignored it all. So now, Obama DOES have a record, but as Henninger points out, he will pretend it does not exist. 

Template

Trust and Verify
State elections officials are sharply criticizing an undercover video that surfaced Tuesday and purportedly shows individuals using the names of dead or living people in order to obtain ballots for Vermont elections, including this year’s presidential primary.
...
“It’s unfortunate that outside entities don’t have better things to do than try to make fun of the trusting nature of Vermonters and voting on Town Meeting Day,” Sorrell said. (Burlington Free Press, 3/13/2012)


In a story first brought to our attention by a trusted RedStateVT stringer, voter fraud is uncovered in Vermont. But wait, Liberals told us that voter fraud does not happen and that voter ID laws were discriminatory towards minorities. What to do now? 


Drying on the Vine
More than $16 billion in loans authorized five years ago by Congress to develop fuel-efficient vehicles has yet to be disbursed, with applicants for the money complaining that the Energy Department is crippling plans for greener cars and trucks at a time of rising gas prices. 


Some companies contend that the loans, administered by energy officials, have dried up because of a political firestorm that followed the bankruptcy last year of the solar panel company Solyndra, which had received a federal loan from a related program. The bankruptcy fed Republican criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of clean energy loans because one of the investors in Solyndra was a major fund-raiser for the president. (NYT, 3/12/2012)


Good news! $16 billion of your tax dollars saved from the green energy sinkhole!


Loop d'Loop
Although federal election law prohibits super PACs from coordinating their spending with campaigns they are supporting, the Obama camp is exploiting loopholes that allow the president’s aides to help court donors. (NYT, 3/12/2012)


Bernie? Bernie?


Sparks Flying
New polling data are sparking a vigorous debate over whether an Obama administration rule requiring employers to offer free birth control is a political winner for the White House, particularly among women, as many Democrats have assumed.


Two new surveys, one by The Wall Street Journal/NBC News and the other by the New York Times/CBS News, show overall opposition to the rule's requirement that religious institutions offer contraceptive drugs free of charge. (WSJ, 3/13/2012)


Nancy Pelosi's gambit with freeloader Sandra Fluke just may backfire after all once the truth comes out. Tell us again....how come a 30 year old law student cannot afford $10/month for recreational sex?

The Sixes Have It

Up And Away
Disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher — alongside gasoline prices — as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. (Washington Post, 3/11/2012)


The Post surprises us by admitting this - on the front page, no less. Has RedStateVT been wrong about its objectivity?


In any event, the poll results raise an interesting thought that we have been mulling over. Consider that by all accounts the popular perception is that the presidential race will be a close one and one that - between now and November - could swing either way. What if, however, it is already over? What if Obama's negatives are so high and his support among independents is so eroded that he has no chance of being re-elected?


If Obama is defeated decisively, pundits will look back in awe at the prescience of RedStateVT. 


Creative Problem Solving
Here are a few ways Ms. Fluke and her friends might get their contraceptive costs down below that $3,000 level:


They could have men pay half. Modern men do half the parenting work or pay at least half the child support. Why shouldn't men pay for half of the contraceptive costs? 


Ms. Fluke and her friends could use condoms instead of prescription birth control pills. One Georgetown student group reportedly handed out 4,500 "free" condoms during one recent semester. Or the law students could buy condoms online at $40.25 for a package of 100. At about 40 cents a condom, the Georgetown students could have sex twice a day, 365 days a year, for all three years of law school, for just $881 dollars. (Ira Stoll, WSJ, 3/9/2012)


Perhaps Rush Limbaugh and fellow conservatives were wrong in demonizing Sandra Fluke. Stoll's approach is to view Fluke's dilemma as a problem solving exercise. Here, several very useful and creative suggestions are offered up.

Sunlit Uplands

Lemon Drop
The legendary test drivers at Consumer Reports this week got their hands on a $107,000 dream machine — the Fisker Karma, an electric sports car that goes zero-to-60 in the blink of an eye.

Sort of.

Trouble is, the car conked out faster than you can say “lemon.”

“We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process,” noted CR, which had to call a flatbed truck to tow the brickmobile away.

It wouldn’t be much of a tale, except for one thing: The clunker was created by a company that’s been feasting on your tax dollars — specifically, a $529 million green-energy loan guarantee from Team Obama. (NY Post, 3/10/2012)


How many more green energy sinkholes do we need? These are YOUR tax dollars!


Switcheroo
And in what appears to be an abrupt shift, some Republican-leaning women like Ms. Russell said they might switch sides and vote for Mr. Obama — if they turn out to vote at all. (NYT, 3/10/2012)


President Obama’s re-election campaign is beginning an intensified effort this week to build support among women, using the debate over the new health care law to amplify an appeal that already appears to be benefiting from partisan clashes over birth control and abortion. (NYT, 3/10/2012)


The fragile gains Republicans had been making among female voters have been erased, a shift that has coincided with what has become a national shouting match over reproductive issues, potentially handing President Obama and the Democrats an enormous advantage this fall. (Washington Post, 3/9/2012)


The Obama reelection campaign directive to the media this week quite obviously focuses on the need to win back the women's vote. And so, dutifully, the New York Times and Washington Post give us numerous stories about how the evil Republicans are waging a "War on Women." And Liberals scoffed with Bush's "War on Terror!"


Toxicity
Even as there are glimmers of a national economic recovery, cities and counties increasingly find themselves in the middle of a financial crisis. The problems are spreading as municipalities face a toxic mix of stresses that has been brewing for years, including soaring pension, Medicaid and retiree health care costs. And many have exhausted creative accounting maneuvers and one-time spending cuts or revenue-raisers to bail themselves out. (NYT, 3/10/2012)


The logical outcome of both the entitlement society and the benefits-for-votes trade brought to you by the Democrat party.

Coming Up Roses

Apologia
Heard this one on Laura Ingraham's radio show...apologies because we did not hear who the actual speaker was:


President Obama apologizes in an attempt to placate the offended religious sensitivities of Muslims over the accidental burning of Korans. He then turns around and offends Catholics with his mandates on birth control.


Wow!


Must See TV
If you have not done so yet, drop everything and watch the CNN interview by Soledad O'Brien with Breitbart's Joel Pollak. The subject is the Obama Harvard law school video in which the president-to-be champions radical professor Derrick Bell. Pollak is simply masterful in responding to O'Brien's unabashed subjectivity.

It Will Come Back To You

College Daze
Picture this: video is discovered of Mitt Romney addressing a crowd of student activists during his days at Harvard Law School. In the video, Romney is seen asking for support for a controversial professor. Perhaps the professor has stated that admission to Harvard should be based solely on merit and not consider the race of the applicant. DOES ANYONE THINK FOR EVEN ONE SECOND THAT THIS WOULD NOT BE THE LEAD STORY IN EVERY NEWSPAPER AND ON EVERY PRIME TIME BROADCAST? Well of course it would be.   


And yet, video is uncovered of Barack Obama speaking to Harvard Law students in 1991 in support of a professor with extreme racial views. 


Non-event.


To paraphrase the climate change crowd: media bias is settled science.


Dream On
Advocates for the so-called Dream Act have the backing of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said at a recent budget hearing that maintaining a system in which illegal immigrants cannot gain access to scholarship aid “is just asking us to continually have a group of people who can’t share in the American dream.” (NYT, 3/7/2012)


Well, yes, unfortunately the American dream may not be available to people who are not American and have violated the law.


Big Money
Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.


Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors.


More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees. (Washington Post, 3/7/2012)


Kudos to the WaPo for sharing this!

Witness The Quickness

Perspectives
"Your critics will say on Capitol Hill that you want gas prices to go higher, because you have said before that will wean the American people off fossil fuels onto renewable fuels. How do you respond to that?" he said.


Obama's reply combined annoyance and derision.


“Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher?" he said. Turning to the room at large, he added, "Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?” (Huffington Post, 3/6/2012)


No, of course not. The president does not want gas prices to rise "GOING INTO REELECTION."  To glean what the president might think on the subject of rising gas prices in a non-election year, let's turn first to President Obama and then to his Energy Secretary:


(CNBC's John) Harwood followed, “So could these high prices help us?” Obama answered, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.”


Also in 2008, Stephen Chu, who Obama would name as his Energy secretary, said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” according to The Wall Street Journal. (CNSnews.com, 3/6/2012)


President Thin-Skin forgets what he says, but others do not.


Without You
On Tuesday night, progressives confronted the unimaginable: Congress without Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). The eight-term congressman lost his primary election for Ohio's newly created 9th district to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). (Huffington Post, 3/7/2012)


First Barney leaves us, now Dennis. A moment of silence please.

Right

This of course does not mean that Rick Santorum is right; only that he is not a total outlier or a nutcase. His views, although perhaps less well expressed than they might have been, are well within the boundaries of a legal and political debate that has been going on for more than a century. (Stanley Fish, NYT, 3/5/2012)


In her testimony, Ms. Fluke claimed that, "Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school." That's $1,000 per year. But an employee at a Target pharmacy near the university told the Weekly Standard last week that one month's worth of generic oral contraceptives is $9 per month. "That's the price without insurance," the employee said. (It's also $9 per month at Wal-Mart.) (Cathy Cleaver Ruse, WSJ, 3/6/2012)


It is hard what to make of Liberals. They claim to value intelligence and yet they will stoop to the flimsiest of stereotypes (Santorum is a religious zealot!) and will fall for the phoniest of claims (Fluke). The media abets them and Republicans are left to try and explain.

Softly

Energized
President Obama, while in New Hampshire last Thursday, countered Republican charges that he was to blame for the rising pain at the pump. “We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and approved more than 400 drilling permits since we put in place new safety standards in the wake of the gulf oil spill,” Mr. Obama said. (NYT, 3/5/2012)


Obama proudly points to the fact that we are producing more oil domestically than we have for some years. True. But that’s because Bush issued permits for a massive expansion in offshore drilling and exploration on federal lands. And it’s because private and state land is being used for horizontal drilling and fracking despite the increasing objections of Obama’s EPA. (DickMorris.com, 2/28/2012)


In fairness, Obama could not really give credit to Bush after first demonizing him endlessly in 2007 and then quietly continuing many of his policies over the past three plus years...


Fluked
This is the reaction we should have had to Sandra Fluke. Sandra, I hope you take to heart our school’s motto of “Cura Personalis” – care of the whole person. You are so much more than your reproductive organs. Please, have some self-respect and take responsibility for your choices instead of having to beg the government for help. The government should not be able to force a religious institution – like the one we attend – to pay for the things they don’t believe in. That is pretty clear in the first amendment. But since you missed the ten commandments I can’t expect you to read the Bill of Rights either.

I believe in Georgetown. I love this school. And I know that we are so, so much better than what Sandra Fluke would make us out to be. (Angela Morabito, thecollegeconservative.com, 3/2/2012)


Georgetown is a Jesuit University. It's Jesuits, run by the Jesuits, which are a Catholic order of priests. Their policy on birth control is not exactly a secret. It's not given to you in a sealed envelope after you sign up. It's out there for everybody to see. It's a Catholic university! Everybody that goes to there knows. Miss Fluke stated on occasion she went there specifically to change the policy. If birth control insurance is important to you as an enrolling student, and you find out that Georgetown doesn't offer it, you might want to attend (or work at) a school that isn't run by Catholics. (Rush Limbaugh, 3/5/2012)


And indeed, as it turned out, she didn't have much to say.  The entire basis of her testimony to the Democratic Steering Committee the next week was that she had "a friend" who had a medical problem that required her to take birth control pills.  Georgetown's policy covers her friend's condition, Fluke said, but did not actually pay for the pills, which caused her friend to stop purchasing and taking the pills and, later, to suffer a medical emergency.  It was all pretty vague, and certainly wasn't expert testimony. (Byron York, Washington Examiner, 3/2/2012)

Post And Beam

Lawyers in Love
Here is what RedStateVT has learned about Sandra Fluke, the bold and intrepid crusader at the center of the (latest) contraception battle. Fluke is an unmarried 30 year old who voluntarily matriculated at a Jesuit law school where the stated policy is that its health care plan covered contraception for women who had medical reasons for requiring it. Georgetown's plan (again, this is a Jesuit institution) does not cover contraception for non-medical reasons, i.e. recreational sex. (RedStateVT note: cheap and affordable contraception is available at drug stores on every corner in Washington.) Fluke, President Obama and Democrats believe that it should.


This is the narrative that the Left wants to champion? 


And then we have this, demonstrating that Liberals have absolutely no idea how insurance works:


He (Rush Limbaugh) said insuring contraception would represent another “welfare entitlement,” which is wrong — tax dollars would not provide the benefit, employers and insurance companies would. (Maureen Dowd, NYT, 3/3/2012)


Yes, that's right, insurance companies would pay for contraception, not the tax payer! Of course, insurance companies collect premiums from policyholders to provide coverage and benefits for those policyholders...who are also tax payers.


Shocking
At a conference in Washington, Mr. Obama told representatives of the United Automobile Workers that he would buy a Chevrolet Volt in five years, after fulfilling a potential second term as president. (NYT, 2/28/2012)


General Motors will suspend Chevrolet Volt production from March 19th to April 23rd in order to bring supply of the plug-in hybrid car in line with demand, according to the Detroit Free Press.
...
GM spokesperson Chris Lee told the newspaper that 1,300 employees at the Hamtramck, Michigan, assembly plant where the Volt is built would be temporarily laid off during the production freeze. (Foxnews.com, 3/2/2012)


Obama showing up at a green energy business is like the kiss of death. He shows up and shortly thereafter the business tanks.


Transformed
For Mr. Santorum, a Republican candidate for president, that conversation was an early step on a path into a deeply conservative Catholic culture that has profoundly influenced his life as a husband, father and politician. Over the past two decades, he has undergone a religious transformation that is now spurring a national conversation about faith in the public sphere. (NYT, 3/3/2012)


The Times gives us a detailed review and analysis of Rick Santorum's religious faith today, just like they did for candidate Obama back in 2008....Oh wait, they didn't?


Preferences
The meeting in the Bay Area is for Priorities USA Action, a super PAC set up by Mr. Obama’s former aides. It is being organized by Steve Westly, a venture capitalist and major fund-raiser for the Obama campaign in both 2008 and 2012. 


Mr. Westly, a former California state controller who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006, has drawn scrutiny from the news media, because his venture capital firm, which focuses on green technologies, had stakes in a number of companies that have benefited from millions of dollars of loans and grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, according to an investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity. The federal money flowing to the companies raised questions about whether political supporters to the president received preferential treatment in the awarding of funds, which was vigorously disputed by the administration. (NYT, 3/2/2012)


This has all the elements that Colonel Bernie Sanders has railed about in his attacks on Super PACs and the influence of the wealthy on the political process. We expect him to issue a scathing condemnation shortly. Well, no we don't really. 

Hideaway

RIP Andrew Breitbart
RedStateVT admired Andrew Breitbart greatly and will miss him. Kudos to those Liberal journalists who have - without qualifications - expressed condolences.


New Groove
President Obama has a new message: America has gotten its groove back.
...
“America’s not back,” said Stanley Greenberg, chief executive of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a polling company that works with Democrats. “We have long-term fundamental problems with respect to personal debt, etc. If you look at our data and history, it takes a long time before job numbers translate into accepting at a personal level that things are better.”


 Mr. Greenberg’s firm did a poll of 1,000 likely voters after the State of the Union speech, testing the “America is back” message compared with Mr. Obama’s other messages, and concluded that it is “by far the weakest,” according to a memo the firm put out after the poll. (NYT, 2/29/2012)


Other messages which were rejected:
I Got Osama!
Unemployment Down 1%!
Investing In Our Green Energy Future!
It's Not My Fault!


The Fix Is In
The basic answer to fixing the long-term Social Security imbalance is just to eliminate the payroll tax cap, which currently exempts all income over $110,100 a year. Do that, and you have solved the problem. (Gail Collins, NYT, 2/29/2012)


The Liberal fix to Social Security....well, actually, the Liberal fix to ANY problem. Raise taxes! Brilliant in its simplicity.


Nonforfeiture
The court’s unremarkable logic was that individuals do not forfeit their First Amendment speech rights when they come together in corporate entities or unions to speak collectively. What is the constitutional basis for saying otherwise? (George Will, Washington Post, 2/2/9/2012)


George Will on Citizens United. Which makes us think of a Fantasy Debate we would like to see on this topic: Will versus Colonel Bernie Sanders (who opposes Super PAC money, but may have to consider taking it). After one hour, we envision Sanders sputtering incoherently.


Doctor His Eyes
If Texas physician Jacques Roy turns out to be guilty of charges he conspired to defraud Medicare and Medicaid of almost $375 million, we'll know where at least $1,650 of that money went: to a political action committee affiliated with the Tea Party Express, a group opposed to the health reform law that helped nab him. (Huffington Post, 2/29/2012)

A criminal may have given money to the Tea Party. Ergo......what?