Unfinished Work

Keeping On
He’s an anti-ideological leader in an ideological age, a middle-of-the-road liberal skeptical of the demands placed on a movement leader, a politician often disdainful of the tasks that politics asks him to perform. He wants to invite the nation to reason together with him when nearly half the country thinks his premises and theirs are utterly at odds. Doing so is unlikely to get any easier. But being Barack Obama, he’ll keep trying. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 5/26/2013)

Dionne's love sonnet to Obama reminds us just how hard it is to be Obama. What with the Tea Party and everything....

And so RedStateVT will offer up again (for the umpteenth time) why Republicans do not trust Obama (and it has nothing to do with the birth certificate stuff that Dionne feels compelled to mention in order to delegitimize all of Obama's critics):

Obama and the Dems used parliamentary tricks to pass a healthcare bill that Republicans unanimously voted against. Never mind the argument that Obamacare was a Heritage idea. It does not matter. No Republicans supported it.

Obama got his bill but he forfeited for the rest of his term(s) any chance of Republicans working with him. 

Dionne and fellow bloggers can call Obama a moderate or a middle-of-the-road guy or a non-ideologue until they are blue in the face. We are not buying it. 

And speaking of the Tea Party, close followers of the political scene (e.g. RedStateVT) note that the Legitimate Media has stepped up their usual negative rhetoric on the Tea Party and (particularly) its pernicious effect on the Republican Party. The reason is, of course, obvious. They cannot have the Tea Party viewed in a sympathetic way by the public as a result of being targeted by the IRS. And so - to achieve the Liberal idea of balance - we get the hit pieces. 


Seemingly
Was there really any meaningful connection between the bloody Boston rampage and international jihadism? It seems likely that an al-Qaeda Web site taught the Boston bombers how to build their pressure-cooker bombs, but what about the alienation they obviously felt? What about their mental health? (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 5/27/2013)

Washington Post columnist Robinson concurs with Obama that the Bush War on Terror is over. (Yes, there are going to be things like the Boston Marathon bombing and that guy in Britain who decapitated a soldier, but not to worry!)  We'll refrain from a larger discussion about the dangers of the Obama/Robinson mindset because Robinson gives us an unexpected gem here. 

You already noticed it, didn't you?

Yes, the "mental health" of the  domestic terrorists. Liberals absolutely refused to talk about mental health when it came to Adam Lanza and the Newtown massacre. 

Refused. 

Why? 

Because they wanted to make the issue about gun control and gun control only. Now because they do not want to talk about Islamic fascism they suddenly do want to talk about mental health. Thankfully you have RedStateVT to expose the hypocrisy. 

High Resolve

Divot
The pivot in counterterrorism policy that President Obama announced last week was nearly two years in the making, but perhaps the most critical moment came last spring during a White House meeting as he talked about the future of the nation’s long-running terrorism war. (NYT, 5/27/2013)

Proof once again (did you need it?) that Democrats evolve, heck they even pivot, but they don't flip-flop. That is reserved for Republicans. 


Reality
While most of the attention on the Obama administration’s health care law has been on providing coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans by 2014, workers with employer-paid health insurance are also beginning to feel the effects.
...
Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, suggested the result would be more widely felt than many people realize. “The reality is it is going to hit more and more people over time, at least as currently written in law, ” he said. Mr. Herring estimated that as many as 75 percent of plans could be affected by the tax over the next decade...
...
The changes can be significant for employees. The hospital where Abbey Bruce, a nursing assistant in Olympia, Wash., worked, for example, stopped offering the traditional plan that she and her husband, Casey, who has cystic fibrosis, had chosen.

Starting this year, they have a combined deductible of $2,300, compared with just $500 before. And while she was eligible for a $1,400 hospital contribution to a savings account linked to the plan, the couple is now responsible for $6,600 a year in medical expenses, in contrast to a $3,000 limit on medical bills and $2,000 limit on pharmacy costs last year. She has had to drop out of school and take on additional jobs to pay for her husband’s medicine. (NYT, 5/27/2013)

Not to worry. Why it was only yesterday that in these very pages Paul Krugman assured us that the big surprise was going to be how seamlessly Obamacare will be implemented. 

On a Day Like No Other

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY! THANKS TO ALL OUR BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO SERVED AND SACRIFICED TO KEEP AMERICA FREE.

Cry Havoc
Representatives of these organizations have cried foul in recent weeks about their treatment by the I.R.S., saying they were among dozens of conservative groups unfairly targeted by the agency, harassed with inappropriate questionnaires and put off for months or years as the agency delayed decisions on their applications.

But a close examination of these groups and others reveals an array of election activities that tax experts and former I.R.S. officials said would provide a legitimate basis for flagging them for closer review. (NYT, 5/26/2013)

Breaking its silence on the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the New York Times declares...it was all their own fault. 


Adjustments
Republicans simply want to see the entire law go away and will not take part in adjusting it. Democrats are petrified of reopening a politically charged law that threatens to derail careers as the Republicans once again seize on it before an election year. As a result, a landmark law that almost everyone agrees has flaws is likely to take effect unchanged. (NYT, 5/26/2013)

And as everyone knows, the New York Times has provided detailed coverage of the "flaws" in Obamacare. Just kidding!


Land of Confusion
Yet important new evidence — especially from California, the law’s most important test case — suggests that the real Obamacare shock will be one of unexpected success.
...
So there will probably be a lot of administrative confusion as the law goes into effect, again especially in states where Republicans have been doing their best to sabotage the process. (Paul Krugman, NYT, 5/26/2013)

Not to worry, Krugman sees great success in Obamacare implementation... provided Republicans don't screw it up.


Spasms
In Stockholm and other towns and cities last week, bands made up mostly of young immigrants set buildings and cars ablaze in a spasm of destructive rage rarely seen in a country proud of its normally tranquil, law-abiding ways.
...
The left, which dominated Swedish politics for decades and devised the cradle-to-grave welfare system, has blamed reduced state benefits and a modest shift toward the privatization of public services for the unrest, pointing to an erosion of the country’s tolerant, egalitarian ethos. (NYT, 5/26/2013)

Coming to America. (And it is all the fault of conservatives and their crazy ideas about the private sector.)

Dear Diary

More the Pity
Safely re-elected, President Obama at long last spoke bluntly about the Faustian deals struck by his predecessor, some of them cravenly continued by his own administration. (Maureen Dowd, NYT, 5/25/2013)

Maureen Dowd writes perhaps her most despicable column yet on the Bush family. Considering that she has now written over 10,000 columns on the same topic that is saying something. Drawing on her doctorate in psychology, she once again recycles the Freudian father-son themes that she has written about ad nauseum. We also get Cheney and Rumsfeld redux. Then 'Mission Accomplished.' Then 'The Decider.' We are reminded that Obama, not Bush, killed bin Laden (who knew?) And finally, the snarky description of the gracious former First Lady as 'Laura the Librarian.' 

This is beyond obsession. This is journalistic mental illness. And so we move from despising Dowd to feeling sorry for her. Hopefully her employer can get her the help that she so desperately needs. 


Why Indeed
A reporter asked on Thursday, Why exactly was he running now? “It was a process of figuring out what felt right for the city, what felt right for me,” he said. “I apologize if I inconvenienced you with the scheduling.” (NYT, 5/23/2013)

And now we learn the truth from Weiner-Dog. He had to be sure that running for mayor was the best thing for New York City. Fortunately, it was and no doubt all of NYC breathes a sigh of relief. 


Tip Top
Does the IRS scandal go all the way up to the top? As of now, doubtful. It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone would be stupid enough to have given such a politically fatal directive from the White House (although admittedly the bar is rapidly falling).

But when some bureaucrat is looking for cues from above, it matters when the president of the United States denounces the Supreme Court decision that allowed the proliferation of 501(c)(4)s and specifically calls the resulting “special interest groups” running ads to help Republicans “not just a threat to Democrats — that’s a threat to our democracy.” It’s especially telling when it comes amid letters from Democratic senators to the IRS urging aggressive scrutiny of 501(c)(4) applications. (Charles Krauthammer, 5/23/2013)

Krauthammer's excellent point is a variation of one that we have heard from Peggy Noonan. Namely, Obama did not have to explicitly order the IRS to do anything. They merely listened to his speeches. 

And more from Noonan:

We know the IRS commissioner wasn't telling the truth in March 2012, when he testified: "There's absolutely no targeting." We have learned that Lois Lerner lied when she claimed she had spontaneously admitted the targeting in a Q-and-A at a Washington meeting. It was part of a spin operation in which she'd planted the question with a friend. We know the tax-exempt bureau Ms. Lerner ran did not simply make mistakes because it was overwhelmed with requests—the targeting began before a surge in applications. And Ms. Lerner did not learn about the targeting in 2012—the IRS audit timeline shows she was briefed in June 2011. She said the targeting was the work of rogue agents in the Cincinnati office. But the Washington Post spoke to an IRS worker there, who said: "Everything comes from the top." (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 5/23/2013)


Just Next Door
On Monday, the terminators gained a victory when Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law the "Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act." The bill had been passed by the state legislature the week before without consulting the electorate, possibly because the lawmakers had seen what happened last fall next door in Massachusetts, where voters rejected a similar initiative. Now Vermont doctors will be able to prescribe lethal medication to patients as the state joins Oregon, Washington and Montana in supporting the practice. (WSJ, 5/24/2013)

Key phrase above, of course, is "without consulting the electorate."


Change of Fortune
After years of grueling battles over state budget deficits and spending cuts, California has a new challenge on its hand: too much money. An unexpected surplus is fueling an argument over how the state should respond to its turn of good fortune.
...
Instead, the surplus has set off a debate about the durability of new revenues, and whether the money should be used to reverse some of the spending cuts or set aside to guard against the inevitable next economic downturn. (NYT, 5/25/2013)

It will be fascinating to watch what the Democrat majority in California does with the budget surplus (if it is even real). Will they learn from history and set up that rainy day fund? Somehow we doubt it, but here's hoping.

Love the Sinner

Kill Zone
“The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence,” said Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International. “President Obama should reject these concepts in his speech tomorrow and commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed.” (NYT, 5/23/2013)

Amnesty International recommends that in cases like that of Anwar al-Awlaki and others who are actively trying to kill Americans, the U.S. use the following approach:

-Listen to their demands
-Provide incentives to get them to stop
-Surrender


Denial of Service
The Internal Revenue Service official who first disclosed that the agency had targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, and in doing so ignited a controversy that has ensnared the White House, denied on Wednesday that she had ever provided false information to Congress. She then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify at a House hearing on the agency’s actions. (NYT, 5/22/2013)

Sounds to us like a pretty stunning development in the IRS portion of the Obama Scandals(tm). The New York Times does not rate it in the top three stories of the day. 


Hook, Line, Sinker
President Obama's former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC recently that his guy was off the hook on the IRS scandal because "part of being President is there's so much beneath you that you can't know because the government is so vast."

In other words, the bigger the federal government grows, the less the President is responsible for it. Mr. Axelrod's remarkable admission, and the liberal media defenses of Mr. Obama's lack of responsibility, prove the tea party's point that an ever larger government has become all but impossible to govern. They also show once again that liberals are good at promising the blessings of government largesse but they leave its messes for others to clean up. (WSJ, 5/22/2013)

Bingo. Republicans should not say one more word about the Obama Scandals(tm). They should just let the Carneys, Pfieffers, Axelrods and others do all the talking (or in the case of Lois Lerner, the not talking). They dig the hole deeper every time they speak. 


The Fever
Then there's Poland, the exception to Europe's feverish disarmament. The Poles already have the Continent's seventh-largest army and are adding to it. This year's defense budget is 7% higher than in 2012. Even more eye-catching is Poland's decision to devote 140 billion zlotys ($43 billion) over the next decade—a third of all military spending—to upgrade and purchase equipment.
...
For NATO to stay remotely relevant, Europe needs militaries modern enough to deploy alongside the U.S. The Poles are doing their part, and there's a lesson for others here. The first step is a serious political commitment to security. The country's leaders recognize growing threats to the south (from Islamists in Africa and the Middle East) and from an authoritarian Russia to the east. Warsaw wants to play a leadership role in its region. (WSJ, 5/22/2013)

Unlike (ahem) some in the U.S., the Poles get it. They learn from history. That is what comes from being overrun by the Germans from one side and the Soviets from the other. Imagine how they felt hearing Obama tell Putin's flunky that he "would have more flexibility after the election." No doubt they figured that U.S. support under the current administration was squishy...and so they increase defense spending. 


Maddening
You know the world’s gone mad when I think Rand Paul is the only one who made sense at Tuesday’s Senate grilling of Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook’s crime? Making sure his firm pays as little in taxes as the law allows. (Matt Milller, Washington Post, 5/22/2013)

Miller added: "And while we are on the topic, I want to remind readers that the same applies to how individuals approach their own payment of taxes. Namely, pay as little as the law allows. That is why I alone among Liberal columnists did not criticize Mitt Romney on this issue during the election."

Just kidding!

This and More

Low Down
One of Mr. Obama’s ambitions on taking office was to forge a new, more positive American image in the Muslim world. But the drone strikes, along with the president’s failure to carry out his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, have helped drive the United States’ approval rating to new lows in many Muslim countries. In Pakistan, for instance, 19 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a positive view of the United States in the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. By last year, the approval rating had fallen to 12 percent. (NYT, 5/21/2013)

We could cite this as yet another failure of the Obama presidency, but that misses the real issues. First, a foreign policy should not be built around "getting other countries to like us." Second, Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries are never going to like us. 


Starstruck
Anthony D. Weiner, once a rising star of New York politics whose career cratered over revelations of his sexually explicit life online, announced an improbable bid on Wednesday for the job he has long coveted: mayor.
...
In the new campaign video, Mr. Weiner describes himself as a champion of the city’s middle class, and decries rising rents, inadequate schools, overregulated neighborhood businesses, and a paucity of “good jobs with benefits.”
...
Last year, though, Mr. Weiner moved from Forest Hills, Queens, to Gramercy Park in Manhattan, where he lives in a four-bedroom luxury apartment with Ms. Abedin and Jordan. (NYT, 5/22/2013)

How excited are you that Weiner is back? Us, too. It should be just a very short time before new pictures of Weiner's awesome pecs show up.

New Yorkers are understandably thrilled that Weiner is going to fight for the middle class....from his four bedroom luxury apartment.


Ghostly
Even the panel’s fiery chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, after blasting Apple for creating “ghost companies” that diverted billions of tax dollars from American coffers and caused needy seniors to go without meals, had some kind words for Mr. Cook and his company.

“We love the iPhone and the iPad,” Mr. Levin said, going on to commend Mr. Cook and two other executives for voluntarily appearing before the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations. “I know it’s not easy to come in front of a spotlight but it’s important for us.” (NYT, 5/21/2013)

Next up before Levin, the Koch brothers, who can expect similar praise from the chairman. Just kidding!


Limits
The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart. 
...
Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller… retires

Joseph Grant, Commissioner of Tax Exempt and Government Entities... retires.

Lois Lerner, Head of Exempt Organization…says she will invoke her 5th amendment right to not incriminate herself when called before Congress on Wednesday.

Holly Paz, Director of Exempt Organizations, subpoenaed to Washington to be interviewed by members of Congress.

All of this IRS leadership, in Washington D.C. 

Then one level down is Cindy Thomas, the highest ranking employee in Cincinnati in this Tax Exempt and Government Entities Department that no one in Congress is talking to... yet.  (Fox19.com, 5/21/2013)

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote an entire column yesterday claiming that Republicans were picking on the IRS when it was really all about overworked low level employees (there's that phrase again) who he - using a fictional composite - named Mitzie. No word from Cohen today yet. 

Castles Burning

Words
But his own words only fed the attacks. On ABC’s news program “This Week,” Mr. Pfeiffer said that he did not know whether laws had been broken at the I.R.S., but that regardless, the agency’s actions were seriously wrong.

“I can’t speak to the law here,” he said. “The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped, and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again.” (NYT, 5/19/2013)

Unfortunately, Team Obama keeps providing inadvertent and disastrous soundbites. Witness Hillary saying "what difference does it make?" in responding to a Benghazi question, Obama exhorting the press to "move on" from the death of four Americans and now Pfeiffer claiming the "law is irrelevant." And then there is Jay Carney who assures us (fourteen times and counting) that Obama believes in "an unfettered press." 


Ignorance
We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation’s capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about — jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education — it’s worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 5/19/2013)

So according to Dionne and fellow Liberals, we should stop focusing on government corruption and start focusing on jobs. Well Republicans have been talking about jobs for the past five years...but whatever. 

What Republicans should say is - parroting Obama who said that he could do Obamacare and climate change (or was it Obamacare and gay marriage?) - that they can investigate the Obama Scandals(tm) and do immigration. 

Multi-tasking, that's it.


Folded
How does an administration move on from scandals that are still unfolding?
...
The White House is looking to claim scandal victory because it was shown that House Republicans overcooked their characterizations of the administration cover up of the involvement of Islamist militants in the raid on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya. “We deceived you, but not as badly as our opponents claimed,” has got to be the slimmest solace ever offered to reporters on a scandal.
...
Even the announcement of the scandal is scandalous. The IRS official who went public with the internal audit that found the agency had targeted Obama’s political enemies planted a phony question on the topic with a friendly lawyer at a roundtable discussion for tax attorneys. Don’t do that. (Chris Stirewalt, Foxnews.com, 5/20/2013)

We have seen a bit of Stirewalt lately. He is good. 

We love his point that Democrats want to "move on" from the Obama Scandals(tm) even before we know everything there is to know. 

So to review the changing Democrat narrative:

-There is no scandal/wrongdoing.
-Whatever scandal/wrongdoing there might have been is old news.
-George Bush is to blame.
-We need to focus on jobs. And education. And immigration. And climate change. 

Things Change

Spin This
Administering the nearly four-million-word federal tax code involves so many arcane legalities, and is so fraught with potential to ignite Washington’s partisan skirmishes or infuriate taxpayers, that much of the I.R.S. is run by lawyers. (NYT, 5/18/2013)

Yes, the same IRS that will now be responsible for enforcing Obamacare!

Writing on the IRS scandal, the New York Times gives us an inside look at the Cincinnati office where the trouble began. The scandal involves more than this office, but the intent of the Times is to attempt to convince that it was a localized problem, did not reach up high in the organization and was not part of a larger effort to target conservative groups. And so we get lots of details about just how disorganized things were, we hear that liberal advocacy groups were also targeted, and - our favorite - the terms "low level" and "mid level" referring to IRS employees repeated THREE TIMES EACH. 


Impressionism
More troubling for the current crew is that news outlets are starting to pivot to broader questions about whether Obama is competent at the business of government or a passive bystander in his own administration. That impression, if it takes hold, cannot be Etch-a-Sketched away. (Howard Kurtz, CNN.com, 5/17/2013)

A key issue for RedStateVT. Never mind black or white, Democrat or Republican, big government or small government or a hundred other demarcation points. Or deepest fear has always been this: competence or incompetence. There is little that Obama has done in five years that speaks to his competence to hold the office he holds. Be it leading an economic recovery or projecting American strength, he has been a dismal failure. Democrats who point to Obamacare are reminded that Obama's signature achievement was passed by a Democrat super-majority led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that Obama was often a bystander in the process, and that the road to implementation has to date been rocky. 

Electing a junior Senator with scant experience and no legislative accomplishments, almost solely on the premise that it would assuage racial wounds of the past, has proven to be a disastrous idea.


Compensatory
Obama would never pull what Hillary pulled with her longtime aide Huma Abedin. Abedin was allowed, after the birth of her and Anthony Weiner’s son, to work part time as a top adviser in the State Department for $135,000 while also working as a consultant for private clients, some of whom had to be interested in her influence in the government.

As Politico reported, the arrangement was similar to the way many of Hillary’s aides were paid while she was a senator: “They were compensated partly through work on her government staff, and partly through her political action committee.” And others would later land lucrative gigs at Clinton-friendly organizations.

Hillary has a blind spot on ethics, not minding if things look terrible if they’re technically legit. And she has a tight grip on money, so she didn’t choose to simply shift Huma to her personal payroll. (Maureen Dowd, NYT, 5/18/2013)

Well look at what a Liberal columnist has revealed! One possible benefit to the Obama Scandals(tm)? The Obama - Clinton rivalry - always just below the surface - now comes out into the open. Here's hoping!

Counting the Broken Ties

Misunderstood
The Internal Revenue Service, according to an inspector general’s report, was not reacting to political pressure or ideology when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny in evaluating requests for tax exemptions. It acted inappropriately because employees couldn't understand inadequate guidelines. (New York Times editorial, 5/16/2013)

Such guidelines which said to scrutinize conservative groups? No ideological issue there, huh?

The utter lack of curiosity by the Legitimate Media about the Obama Scandals (we are trademarking that one, too) is truly astounding. The same media, for example, which spilled endless ink over two fruitcakes like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame is suddenly maxed out on Benghazi and the IRS. Everyday they confirm what conservatives say about a biased media.

Of course the real goal of Republicans - the Times tells - us is stopping Obama's agenda. Exactly.


Remote Control 
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 4/16/2013)

Liberal astonishment that Republicans have jumped on the Obama Scandals(tm)  does not pass "the shoe on the other foot test." Would Bush's IRS targeting Media Matters raise the ire of Dems? Of course it would.


Back-to-Back
One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack, lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration’s purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate? (George Will, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Four days after the IRS announced that it discriminated against conservative organizations, Carney said repeatedly in his daily briefing that, if true, the president would be outraged. If? By then, the IRS had not only admitted the grievous misconduct but apologized for it — and the president was speaking in the conditional. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Conservatives have the brilliance of Will and Krauthammer. Liberals have Dionne and vanden Heuvel. We like our team's chances. 

War Within a War

The Native Tongue
Years ago it was a joke in New York City that you could not get a native born American cab driver. It is such a fact of city life now that it is no longer elicits even a faint smile. New Yorkers accept it and for New Yorkers to accept something it has to mean that the system works. The immigrant cabbies speak passable English, know where things are and can get you where you need to go, albeit with some occasionally exciting rides.

Doing field research in Philadelphia this past weekend we had a different experience. Namely, the cab drivers do not speak English, at least not enough to communicate. Second, they do not seem to know the streets or landmarks of an historic city. We had an exciting adventure wherein the first cabbie of Middle Eastern origin drove us around for fifteen minutes unable to find our destination. Eventually he flagged down a fellow cabbie, of African origin, who also took us on an unintended tour of the city. 

So is this the state of the country today? We allow in people who cannot speak the language and cannot even do the jobs for which they are hired. Yeah, we certainly need immigration reform. But not the kind that Liberals imagine. 


Unguarded
This week, as Mr. Obama confronted a scandal frenzy unlike any he has faced, he let his guard down during fund-raisers in New York. “My thinking was after we beat them in 2012, well, that might break the fever,” he told donors. “And it’s not quite broken yet.” (NYT, 5/15/2013)

This is the secret narrative of Obama. Absent a super-majority he has neither the talent nor the will to get anything done. No recent president - not Clinton, not Bush - spent as much time complaining about how he is so hamstrung by having to deal with the other side. Obama is a weak and ineffectual leader. 

(You know things are bad for the president when the New York Times puts a story on the Obama scandals ahead of their 60-part series on sexual assaults in the military.)


Angry
President Obama announced Wednesday that Steve T. Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS, had resigned in the wake of the controversy over the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. In an angry statement in the White House, Obama said the IRS’s actions were “inexcusable and Americans are right to be angry about it and I’m angry about it.” He added, “I will not tolerate this type of behavior in any agency but especially the IRS given the power it has and the reach it has.” (Washington Post, 5/15/2013)

Make no mistake about it. The president is.....angry. 

Previously he was outraged.

High Crimes

It's "Scandal Spring" for the Obama administration. (We are trademarking that name so please ask permission of RedStateVT if you would like to use it.) How do we know? Well Piers Morgan has temporarily stopped debating (and losing to) Breitbart's Ben Shapiro in order to discuss the Obama scandals. Other members of the Legitimate Media are dipping their toes into this deep pool.  

Witness:

What I don't understand about what the president is doing is, to a certain extent, you could argue that he wasn't really involved in a lot of this stuff. But he is so centrally involving himself with these repeated lies. And, I’m just going to call them lies because they’re lies. They’re on tape. Nobody thought that he called it a terrorist attack. Last night I went and I looked up at The New York Times how they reported it the day after. They never reference that we've had a terrorist attack against the United States. On September 20th, however, they run a story that says, "Libya envoy's killing was a terrorist attack." And they say, "Until now White House officials have not used that language in describing the assault." That is September 20th. That is The New York Times. Now, at what point are people going to get tired of the president coming out over and over saying things like, "Don’t believe your lying eyes"? 
(Kirsten Powers quoted at Realclearpolitics.com, 5/14/2013)


Broken
The Obama administration tried to stay ahead of the furor with an announcement by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that he had ordered a federal investigation into whether I.R.S. officials broke any criminal laws by singling out the conservative groups. (NYT, 5/14/2013)

Holder is where investigations go to die. He is still investigating whether Team Obama leaked national security details to make el presidente look tough before the election. Whatever happened to THAT investigation?


Painful
The White House has also been at pains to stress that former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told Congress in 2012 that there had been no targeting of political groups, was appointed by George W. Bush. So the Commissioner is accountable to the President, as long as he's the former President? Or what? (WSJ, 5/14/2013)

Best answer we have seen to our Liberal blogger friends who have tried to deflect the IRS scandal!


Die Already
Vermont is poised to become the third state in the nation to allow physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who want to die.  State lawmakers on Monday night approved an assisted-suicide bill, which now awaits the signature of Gov. Peter Shumlin, a first-term Democrat who has said he would sign it, likely within a week. Once enacted, Vermont would be the first state to decriminalize assisted suicide through a legislative vote. (WSJ, 5/14/2013)

Death, dope and taxes. Welcome to Vermont!


Main Course
Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense. (George Will, Washington Post, 5/14/2013)

We tried - really - reading the Washington Post's opinion writers excuse the Obama scandals. The best we get is, yes, there was some unsavory stuff...George Bush...hey, look at that over there. Until, of course, we read Will. 

Free Fall

Vote on YOUR Favorite New Obama Scandal!
And on Monday evening, The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of its reporters. (Snoop-gate)

(President Obama) joined a bipartisan chorus of outrage over disclosures that the Internal Revenue Service had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. (Tax-gate)

Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s secretary of health and human services, has drawn criticism in recent days for soliciting corporate donations to pay for the rollout next year of the new health care law. (Obamacare-gate) (NYT, 5/13/2013)

(Note: Voting on Fast and Furious, Solyndra and Benghazi has closed.)

Special Offer! A free 6 month trial subscription to RedStateVT to any Legitimate Media representative who now refers to the Obama administration as "Scandal plagued." Don't miss this opportunity!



Uninvolved
Jay Carney, a White House spokesman, said the White House was not involved in the subpoena. “Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the A.P.,” he said, adding “we are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Carney added: "Yes, while it is true that President Obama is the Commander in Chief, he really has no idea what that goofball Eric Holder is doing over there at Justice."


Over There
“We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus.” “Suddenly, three days ago,” he added, “this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no ‘there’ there.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Actually, Mr. President, we dishonor our fallen when we lie about the circumstances of their death.


Price Tag
“Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today and he will pay the price for the atrocities he committed,” Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a statement. “Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Follow the logic of the pro-abortion spokeswoman:

Abortion is legal.
Kermit Gosnell performed abortions at a time when abortion is legal.
Gosnell was a butcher.
If abortion is made illegal, we will get more butchers like Gosnell.

Such is Liberal Logic.

Fence Post

Noticeable
But China’s growth in the American auto industry is drawing notice in Washington. Last year, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization that China’s government was unfairly subsidizing the production of some parts shipped to America. And the country’s inroads into American-made batteries and electric vehicles have drawn scrutiny because that sector of the industry has been heavily subsidized by the United States government. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

Has so much irony ever been found in two sentences? Obama is mad at the Chinese government for subsidizing auto parts at the same time that the American government subsidizes electric car parts.


Hand Out
Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended hand from the administration, even if the ideas were ones that they themselves once welcomed. Under the circumstances, Mr. Obama would be best advised to stop making peace offerings. Only when the Republican Party feels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin. (New York Times editorial, 5/12/2013)

Well, we found more irony. Democrats - who famously worked so well with George Bush - cannot fathom why Republicans would snub President Obama's "peace offerings." (We tried to come up with a joke about the white man bargaining with native Americans, but we couldn't get the racial components worked out.)

So one more time:
-Democrats would not work with George Bush. They despised him.

-Republicans do not trust Obama or the Democrats because of the way in which they passed Obamacare.

-Both sides are posturing (and waiting) for the mid-term elections.


Suggestion
The New York Times obtained a 12-page timeline from the inspector general’s audit on Sunday. It suggests that the effort to single out Tea Party groups goes back to March 2010 when a special Determinations Unit in the Cincinnati office of the I.R.S. began searching tax-exemption applications that focused on groups on one side of the political spectrum, rather than broadly on political groups without a social-welfare mission. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

Halfway through an article on the IRS investigation of conservative groups we get this, giving hope that the Times does remember its past ability to do investigative journalism. Perhaps the Times has finally found an Obama scandal that they can run with. There have been numerous opportunities after all....


Lean To
President Barack Obama said if any Internal Revenue Service staff targeted groups based on their political leanings, they would be held “fully accountable” for their actions.  “If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Mr. Obama said, in his first public remarks on the issue. (WSJ, 5/13/2013)

Obama added; "And when I say 'fully accountable' I mean just like those responsible for Fast and Furious, the collapse of Solyndra, and the debacle in Benghazi were held fully accountable." Meanwhile, Jay Carney said the IRS scandal was "old news."


Down Below
The State Department board that reviewed last year’s attack on a diplomatic outpost in Libya never questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, because it had already decided responsibility lay below her level, the board’s chairman said Sunday. Thomas R. Pickering, a former ambassador who led the review, said his group discussed its findings with Mrs. Clinton but did not pose any questions because it had established the facts to its satisfaction and concluded that mistakes were made by less senior officials. Likewise, he said, the panel did not question her two deputies. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

This is precious. Why have a review if you have already determined the answer? And why not question the person who accepted responsibility? 

While we are on Benghazi-gate, we saw Rudy Guiliani a couple of nights ago make a brilliant point. The Obama/Clinton administration contends that they did not send help to the beleaguered ambassador in Libya because they would not have gotten there in time. To which Guiliani responds: "Oh really, how did Clinton/Obama know how long the attack was going to last?" 

Pay Attention

Rivets
A veteran diplomat gave a riveting minute-by-minute account on Wednesday of the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept. 11 and described its contentious aftermath at a charged Congressional hearing that reflected the weighty political stakes perceived by both parties. (NYT, 5/8/2013)

The New York Times jumps on the Benghazi-gate bandwagon! Just yesterday they told us it was a partisan witchhunt and buried it as the sixth story. Today it's the second story. Our cynical side tells us that this is so that when Benghazi-gate is brought up when Hillary runs for president in 2016, the Times can say that the story has already been exhaustively reported.

Speaking of the former Secretary of State, it struck us that she has a somewhat dubious distinction: namely she is probably the only person who can be attacked for both declaring that Iraq had WMDs and for claiming that the Benghazi attacks were the result of a YouTube video! 

Not to worry, she will be the Dems choice if she decides to run.


Salty
The hedge fund faithful, more than 1,800 strong, have come here for the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT. Held over four days, SALT is a Wall Street schmooze-fest.
...
Appearing at this year’s event are Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister; Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke University men’s basketball coach; and Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman. (Dealbok.nytimes.com, 5/8/2013)

Barney Frank is a guest-of-honor at a hedge fund 'schmooze-fest?' Hello, anyone there?

We are guessing that See No Evil Frank (recall he famously told police that he did not realize his live-in boyfriend was growing weed in the front parlor of their house nor did he know that a previous boyfriend was running a male prostitution ring from the basement of his Washington townhouse) was not invited to chastise hedge fund 1%ers. 

So what IS he doing there?


The End
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body has been buried, according to Worcester police, ending a days-long saga that left the Boston Marathon terror mastermind’s corpse in limbo as multiple cities refused to accept it. (Bostonherald.com, 5/9/2013)

Why is it that it is left to RedStateVT to come up with the most obvious solution? Instead of taking up valuable space in a Connecticut cemetery why not give Tsarnaev the Osama treatment? You know, wrap him up in burlap and push him overboard out at sea. Too late now, but let's remember this in the event there is a next time. 

And while we are at it, never mind the Islamic rituals and respect for the body stuff. New policy: you kill Americans and we dump you in the ocean. No ceremony, no anointing, no prayers. 

Irons in the Fire

Climate Change
In such a climate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ranks as the model diplomat. She often practiced activity for activity's sake, circling the globe nonstop before adoring cameramen while having no real diplomatic accomplishment to her credit, despite a refreshing tendency to speak boldly on occasion. The media approved of her because she was, well, a celebrity. (Robert D. Kaplan, Stratfor.com, 5/8/2013 -- "http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/american-foreign-policy-no-good-options">For American Foreign Policy, No Good Options
is republished with permission of Stratfor.")

Statfor provides excellent objective reporting on global intelligence and security issues. We liked this excerpt which captures perfectly Hillary's star turn as Secretary of State.


Buzz Off
But much of what the witness, Gregory Hicks, is expected to say — that he appealed in vain for fighter jets to buzz the besieged compound, and that other American officials sought to send a group of commandos to the rescue but were told to stand down — would raise questions that have already been addressed in hearings and in a critical report by the State Department. (NYT, 5/8/2013)

The New York Times finally writes about the Benghazi investigations and does it their way. Within four paragraphs they tell us what the witnesses are going to say and characterize it as nothing new ("old news" in Jay Carney's words). They then go on to explain how it is a story ginned up by Fox News and conservatives. 

We can only guess that they expended all of their investigative powers and journalistic curiosity on Bush and WMDs. The Times has nothing more to give us. Underscoring the trivial nature of the story in their view, the Times positions it as the sixth story in its POLITICS section. 

And by way, what is the reason that the Benghazi story must be buried by the Legitimate Media? Simple, the coronation of Hillary Clinton can not be jeopardized. If push comes to shove, the LM would sacrifice Obama before they would derail Hillary in 2016. 


Laggards
Despite the Obama administration’s generous support for green energy, job creation in the sector has both lagged and come at a hefty cost to taxpayers, according to a new report.

According to the Institute for Energy Research, the Department of Energy has spent nearly $26 billion since 2009 on its Section 1703 and 1705 loan programs. However, these two programs only yielded 2,308 permanent jobs — meaning the cost to taxpayers was $11.25 million per job. (Dailycaller.com, 5/8/2013)

Of course, there are no limits on Obama scandals.  Benghazi, Solyndra, cabinet picks....couldn't the Legitimate Media run with at least one?

Jester to the Clown

Frayed
Many Democrats also want to see a more aggressive and visible president to push the law across the country. This week Mr. Obama is returning to the fray to an extent unseen since he signed the law in 2010, including a White House event on Friday to promote the law’s benefits for women, the first in a series of appearances for health care this year. (NYT, 5/6/2013)

As we recently joked with a long-time reader, Liberals have brilliantly commandeered the term "women's health" as an omnipotent shield with which to either explain the validity of any crazy idea they might have or to attack any opposing opinion. 

Do you oppose Obamacare?  You are against women's health!
Do you oppose free contraception?  You are against women's health!
Do you oppose gun control?  You are against women's health!


Short Stuff
Without the participation of that generally healthy young population, insurance premiums for everyone else would increase — threatening support for a law already short of it. (NYT, 5/6/2013)

You already knew this, but just to be clear: Obamacare is a transfer tax (primarily) on the young to pay for the medical expenses of those who couldn't be bothered to get insurance on their own. However, everyone who now has insurance will pay more. 


Benghazi-gate!
The Obama administration wants to consign the Benghazi terrorist attack to the history books, but this week three State Department officials will tell Congress that the Obama administration’s version of history is false — and that the falsehoods it told the American people were willful and deliberate. (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 5/6/2013)

Some in the conservative blogosphere are bubbling up the idea that Benghazi-gate will mean the end of the Obama administration. In addition to Fox News and Breitbart, CNN has even dipped its toe into the scandal. We wish the pundits were right - actually, more than that we wish the truth would come out. 

In our view, the odds are long. The New York Times completely ignored the story again today, despite pending potential blockbuster testimony from whistleblowers.

Glass Houses

Devoted
Aware that intensified American counterterrorism efforts have made an ambitious Sept. 11-style plot a long shot, Al Qaeda propagandists for several years have called on their devotees in the United States to carry out smaller-scale solo attacks and provided the online education to teach them how. (NYT, 5/5/2013)

The article - as the New York Times says in this first paragraph - is on al Qaeda's calls for attacks in the U.S. The accompanying pictures are of Maj. Nidal Hasan, Faisal Shahzad, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev....and Timothy J. McVeigh.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not like the other........

It frustrates the Liberals at the Times (and elsewhere) to no end that it is Muslims carrying out these attacks. And so their response whenever possible is to gratutitously throw in references to non-Muslims, right-wing militias and domestic terrorists...but not Bill Ayers.


Interested In You
Republican senators are likely to be interested in the Pritzker family’s reputation as innovators in the use of offshore trusts and foreign bank secrecy laws to shelter their wealth from income, capital gains and inheritance taxes. Even after tax code loopholes were closed, the family’s trusts were grandfathered in and it kept benefiting from them.

Indeed, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has called for scrutiny of her family’s trusts, saying she was “associated with the kind of tax avoidance activity that the president dismisses as fat cat shenanigans for others. It’s hypocritical to overlook tax avoidance when it’s convenient.” (NYT, 5/5/2013)

It might surprise you to know that RedStateVT has no problem with any of Pritzker's legal offshore accounts or foreign bank holdings, just as we had no issues with those of Mitt Romney.

But it is incredibly fun nonetheless to chronicle once again the utter hypocrisy of Liberals.

And so we add "being a 1%er" to the list of things that Liberals can no longer accuse Republicans of being. 


Lapsed
Clinton, the former Secretary of State and likely frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, could be severely damaged by testimony about the attacks, which occurred in part because of security lapses for which the State Department is primarily responsible. 

Past testimony about the attacks has also revealed that President Barack Obama did nothing once informed the attacks were under way, and that there was no communication among key members of the administration and military who could have responded. (Breitbart.com, 5/6/2013)

History has shown that Republican scandals live on forever while scandal-ridden Democrats are rehabilitated. Bill Clinton is now a revered senior statesman and Anthony Weiner can seriously considering running for mayor of NYC. Jay Carney has already described Benghazi as "old news." Think about what Democrats will say four years from now should Hillary run for office. Likely they will deny it ever happened.

Bad at Math

Moving or using large quantities of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and “change my calculus,” the president declared in response to a question at a news conference, to the surprise of some of the advisers who had attended the weekend meetings and wondered where the “red line” came from. With such an evocative phrase, the president had defined his policy in a way some advisers wish they could take back. (NYT, 5/4/2013)

With ever-increasing frequency the Obama mythology constructed by the Legitimate Media dissembles piece-by-piece. The Right delighted in tying him to his teleprompter, but even Liberals admit now that he is not the soaring orator they imagined. The bungling of the sequester exposed him as inept (and petty) politically, far from the skilled political operator the MSNBC crowd crowed about. And now we see him revealed not as the foreign policy expert who would correct the mistakes of Bush/Cheney, but as a bumbling one-term junior senator. 

The Fairness of the Proposal

Slowdown
New York Times Headline (5/2/2013): U.S. Spending Cuts Seen as Key in Slowing Growth

New York Times Accompanying Article: Without the impact of federal cuts and higher taxes, Ms. Swonk estimates, annual economic growth would be close to 4 percent, above the 2.5 percent pace she is expecting in 2013.

Apparently the Times could not squeeze "higher taxes" into the headline!


Promotional
The measure was promoted by House Speaker Michael Madigan, who has led the chamber for nearly three decades. Ahead of Thursday's vote, Mr. Madigan acknowledged that the pension problem flowed partly from lawmakers and governors enhancing retirement benefits over the years and not always weighing the costs of their decisions. A spokesman for Mr. Madigan said the speaker accepts his share of blame, but was one of many who contributed to the problem. (WSJ, 5/2/2013)

This on public pensions in Illinois. Kudos to Democrat Madigan for at least acknowledging that he and others ginned up public employee pensions. It will take Democrats to correct these problems. 


Ain't No Sunshine
Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/2/2013)

Krauthammer's column is an indictment of the Obama presidency, but we'll focus only on this opening which is sage advice for any political party. 


Roll Coll
The vote on Governor Shumlin's gas tax hike in Vermont (from VTGOP.org): 

Timothy Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) – YES
Claire Ayer (D-Addison) – YES
Philip Baruth (D-Chittenden) – YES
Joseph Benning (R-Caledonia) – YES
Christopher Bray (D-Addison) – YES
John Campbell (D-Windsor) – YES
Donald Collins (D-Franklin) – YES
Ann Cummings (D-Washington) – NO
William Doyle (R-Washington) – NO
Margaret Flory (R-Rutland) – YES
Sally Fox (D-Chittenden) – YES
Eldred French (D-Rutland) – ABSENT
Peter Galbraith (D-Windham) – YES
Robert Hartwell (D-Bennington) – ABSENT
M. Jane Kitchel (D-Caledonia) – YES
Virginia Lyons (D-Chittenden) – YES
Mark MacDonald (D-Orange) – YES
Richard Mazza (D-Chittenden-Grand Isle) – YES
Norman McAllister (R-Franklin) – YES
Richard McCormack (D-Windsor) – NO
Kevin Mullin (R-Rutland) – YES
Alice Nitka (D-Windsor District) – YES
Anthony Pollina (P/D/W-Washington) – NO
John Rodgers (D-Essex-Orleans) – YES
Richard Sears (D-Bennington) – YES
Diane Snelling (R-Chittenden) – YES
Robert Starr (D-Essex-Orleans) – NO
Richard Westman (R-Lamoille) – YES
Jeanette White (D-Windham) – YES
David Zuckerman (P-Chittenden) – YES

Remember those who voted "yes" every time that you fill up. 

Central Plank

Trashy
President Obama is a gifted politician, but sometimes he tries to exceed even what his spinning can accomplish. Witness this week's spectacle of the President denouncing his own antiterror policies.

Mr. Obama renewed his vow to shut down Guanatanamo during his Tuesday press conference, and to transfer or release the 166 military combatants still held there, details to follow. Then he trashed the larger antiterror program that he continues to execute using the rhetoric of a rookie ACLU lawyer: "The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are," he said. "It is contrary to our interests and it needs to stop." Note the passive voice. (WSJ, 5/1/2013)

We actually disagree with the Journal's contention that Obama is a "gifted politician." The Journal's Taranto, we believe, has it right (see below). 

Obama has been called out in the past on his use of straw men to advance whatever argument he is trying to make. Sometimes he is his own straw man!

On another note, we did some channel surfing last night. There was lots of coverage of the new suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing as expected. Until we got to CNN which decided instead to highlight Guantanamo! Christiane Amanpour had her large violin out for the gentle souls in Gitmo who are on a principled hunger strike against their detention. She attempted to bully Rudy Guiliani by guffawing and talking over him. 

You don't bully Guiliani.

Mr. Mayor laid out the case in simple and stark terms. Some released prisoners have returned to the battlefield and killed Americans. Indefinite detention may be unfortunate, but the solution lies not with America, but with the larger Muslim world. It was a bravura performance. Amanpour was left whimpering. 


Adversarial
Every time we write a column making note of Obama's deficiencies of political skill, our small gaggle of fanboy adversaries on Twitter honk away at the "obstructionist Republicans" they believe are to blame for all that is wrong. Of course one man's obstructionist is another's valiant defender of the republic, but to insist on the former designation begs the question anyway. The Republicans in 1995 were no less "obstructionist" than today's, but Clinton was able to master the problem. (James Taranto, WSJ, 5/1/2013)

A fellow blogger constantly chides us about "Republican obstructionists." (By the way, these are the same as "obstructionist Republicans.")  Our response usually includes some combination of the following:

- We don't recall Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi being noted for their willingness to advance George Bush's agenda.
- Obama has demonstrated time and again that he has little interest in working with the other side; indeed his expectation is that the other side should agree with him.

The larger issue, of course, is that Obama is now into his fifth year as president and continues to beat the same drum: blame Republicans and tax the rich. This is what his presidency has become. (Forget the "transformational presidency.") It's official. Obama fatigue has set in.  


Anticipation
"Obamacare is extremely problematic, it is expensive, it is a $500 billion [higher] cost than we originally anticipated, it's cutting into Medicare benefits and it's having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it. That is extremely problematic, it needs an enormous fix." (South Carolina congressional candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch quoted by Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, 5/1/2013)

Never mind not campaigning with Obama, Democrat candidates are now campaigning against Obamacare.