Deft Dealing

Relentless
The Heritage Foundation and the Franklin Center presented conservative journalist, commentator, Fox News contributor and entrepreneur Michelle Malkin with the second annual Breitbart Award on Thursday for relentlessly pursuing the truth while empowering citizen journalists to do the same. (Breitbart.com, 4/25/2013)

Congratulations to Michelle Malkin. Loyal readers will recall that in 2011 Malkin was the winner of RedStateVT's coveted Cheney Award. Conservative women are the toughest!


Engaging
The top legislative leaders in Congress -- Reid, Boehner, McConnell, and Hoyer -- are now "engaged in high level confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Obama's health care overhaul" according to Politico.com. (DickMorris.com, 4/25/2013)

Heard this one? Congress to the American people: Shut up and take your medicine!


Starkly
In March 2011, the Russian security service sent a stark warning to the F.B.I., reporting that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “a follower of radical Islam” who had “changed drastically since 2010” and was preparing to travel to Russia’s turbulent Caucasus to connect with underground militant groups. Six months later, Russia sent the same warning to the C.I.A. (NYT, 4/25/2013)

We can only guess what the Russians must think about U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

And while we are on the subject, our outrage is growing at the failures that led to the deaths and mutilations in Boston. Where is the Legitimate Media demanding answers? Where are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? 

Response to RedStateVT: We do NOT ask those questions when the president is a Democrat. That is your answer. 


Varied
The White House said Thursday that it believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its civil war, an assessment that could test President Obama’s repeated warnings that such an attack could precipitate American intervention in Syria.

The White House, in a letter to Congressional leaders, said the nation’s intelligence agencies assessed “with varying degrees of confidence” that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had used the chemical agent sarin on a small scale.

But it said more conclusive evidence was needed before Mr. Obama would take action, referring obliquely to both the Bush administration’s use of faulty intelligence in the march to war in Iraq and the ramifications of any decision to enter another conflict in the Middle East. (NYT, 4/25/2013)

We wonder if President Obama ever wakes up and thinks: how is it that I get to relive the Bush presidency?  All he wanted to do once elected was enact a single-payer healthcare system, grant citizenship to illegal immigrants and redistribute the wealth of the top 10%. Instead he gets to manage the same issues as W: attacks on U.S. soil and possible WMDs. Let's see how Obama deals with the same intelligence issues that Bush did. Of course, as the Times tell us, Bush used "faulty intelligence" while Obama is using "varying degrees of confidence" intelligence!

And another way that Obama mirrors Bush:

When Bush left office, his approval rating was down in the 20s to low 30s. Now it's at 47%, which is what Obama's is. (Peggy Noonan,WSJ, 4/25/2013)


Once Adopted
Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago.

Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly. (NYT, 4/25/2013)

Of course they should pay a price for passing a bill that none of them had read.


Austere
But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics. (Paul Krugman, NYT, 4/25/2013)

Paul Krugman declares victory....again.  After mere months of austerity, Krugman concludes that he was right after all. Austerity doesn't work and countries should begin ramping up the spending as he has long advocated. Here's another idea. How about we give it a bit more time.