Discreet and of Good Character

What is in Today's New York Times?
A Ban With Roots in Myth and Xenophobia: An atmosphere of hysteria in the 1930s took hold and shaped a national policy on marijuana that lives on today.

Evolving on Marijuana

Highlights from the Editorial Board’s changing view of marijuana over six decade

Editorial Observer: The Federal Marijuana Ban Is Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia

Editorial: Let States Decide on Marijuana

Repeal Prohibition, Again

What Science Says About Marijuana by the Editorial Board
While marijuana is not harmless, it is less dangerous to human health than alcohol and tobacco.

Oh, and there are problems in the Middle East...

But the most important thing the Times wants you to know about is dope.


In a Line
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. (New York Times, 7/31/2014)

So with Arab governments on the side of Israel, those opposed now include only Liberals in the U.S. and Europe.


Countless
The real utility of the body count is that it offers reporters and commentators who cite it the chance to ascribe implicit blame to Israel while evading questions about ultimate responsibility for the killing. Questions such as: Why is Hamas hiding rockets in U.N.-run schools, as acknowledged by the U.N. itself? What does it mean that Hamas has turned Gaza's central hospital into "a de facto headquarters," as reported by the Washington Post? And why does Hamas keep rejecting, or violating, cease-fires agreed to by Israel? (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 7/28/2014)

The fact is that Liberals only use "body counts" when it is to their advantage. Hence, we heard endless recitations of body counts when George Bush was president or when Israel fights Palestinians terrorists, but nothing about how many soldiers have died during Obama's reign.


JV President
This much is certain: The president did not take the Islamic State threat seriously. In a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker, Obama glibly dismissed the Islamic State as a bunch of junior varsity terrorists who posed little danger to Iraq or the United States. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama declared. He brushed aside the rise of the Islamic State as just internal Iraqi sectarian violence, something that is not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”
...
Obama’s own attorney general, Eric Holder, recently told ABC News that the rise of the Islamic State is “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” adding that “9/11 was something that kind of came out of the blue. This is a situation that we can see developing.” (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 7/28/2014)

Obama must have thought himself enormously clever with his basketball reference. Now even his own attorney general takes time out from searching for racism in America to go on the record about ISIS. One guesses that - should the unthinkable happen again and America is attacked - Holder wants to distance himself from Obama's dismissive remarks.  


Peach Pelosi
In June 2008, 12 House Democrats—including committee and subcommittee chairmen and close allies of Mrs. Pelosi—introduced a bill to impeach President George W. Bush. (Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 7/31/2014)

Thanks to Rove for this reminder amid all the Democrat hysteria. 

The Level of the Gods

Liberal Logic
The Hamas apologists in the Liberal media are at it again. Today on NPR, one actually defined Israel's actions as genocide. Well Israel knows a thing or two about genocide. Actually it knows 6 million things about genocide...the body count of worldwide Jewry in World War II. Yes, Israel which phones the occupants of buildings it is about to bomb warning residents to vacate the premises... 

The same Liberals call for "proportionality" from Israel which apparently means they should strive to keep the body counts on each side the same. 

This is how Liberals believe wars should be fought.


Bernie Folds
House and Senate negotiators reached agreement during the weekend on a legislative package intended to stabilize the Department of Veterans Affairs’ sprawling and embattled health care system, according to people briefed on the deal.

The leaders in the negotiations — Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Representative Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican — plan to outline the agreement at a news conference Monday afternoon.

The legislation is expected to include provisions for emergency relief that would allow veterans who live far from a V.A. facility or who face wait times that exceed a certain duration to see private doctors, and have those visits paid for by the government. The measure is also expected to set aside billions of dollars to hire new doctors and nurses; build or lease dozens of additional buildings needed to treat patients; and upgrade the department’s outdated scheduling system. (New York Times, 7/27/2014)

So - if we have this correct - Colonel Bernie Sanders has admitted that government run health care is not the answer and he now endorses a voucher system. So he will also change his vote on Obamacare, right?


Pick One
In Afghanistan and Iran, John Kerry brings some reasons for hope (Headline of David Ignatius column, Washington Post, 7/24/2014)

The world is aflame and our leader is on the 14th green. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 7/24/2014)

OK, which is the more accurate depiction?


Conveyance
The United States has concluded that Russia violated a landmark arms control treaty by testing a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile, according to senior American officials, a finding that was conveyed by President Obama to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in a letter on Monday. (New York Times, 7/28/2014)

Obama has now called for a RE-RESET with Russia. Hillary Clinton could not be reached for comment. 


High Times
The Injustice of Marijuana Arrests
1926: Marijuana ‘Is Reported Safe’
Marijuana Is a Welcome Wedding Guest in Colorado and Washington State

At the New York Times (7/29/2014), it is All Dope - All the Time(s).

And to think this was once the country's premier newspaper...

Mailing in a Presidency

Cursed
So far, at least 620 Palestinians have died, around 75 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations, including more than 100 children. Gazans did not get a vote when Hamas chose to escalate conflict, nor did they when Hamas selected areas near their homes, schools and mosques to fire rockets from the densely populated strip. At the family house of four boys killed last week by an Israeli strike while playing on a beach, some wailing women cursed Hamas along with Israel. (New York Times, 7/23/2014)

Nothing changes in the Middle East until honest Palestinians rise up and throw out their oppressors...Hamas. 

Yes this Hamas:

But as the recent fight with Israel has revealed, Hamas was importing tons of cement — desperately needed for Gazan schools and houses and construction jobs — to reinforce the tunnels it built to infiltrate Israel and hide its weapons.


Courted
The Obama administration has consistently underestimated court challenges to the health care law.... (New York Times, 7/23/2014)

Of course.


Smoked Out
Asked last month for her opinion of marijuana, Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “I didn’t do it when I was young, I’m not going to start now.”

Not so fast, says Daniel Halper. In his new book Clinton, Inc., which hits bookshelves today, Halper quotes a friend and law-school classmate of the former first lady and New York senator who says: “I think she’s acknowledged it, and if she hasn’t acknowledged it everybody else will tell you: She was an enthusiastic pot user.” (Nationalreview.com, 7/22/2014)

What is it about the Clintons and the lying about their past drug use? It is particularly silly because - as Obama has proven - the Legitimate Media is not the least bit interested in past illegal drug use if you are a Democrat. Hillary should embrace her stoner past, go on Jimmy Kimmel and get some yucks about it.

The Top Four Lies of the Top Four Democrats

Bill Clinton
"I did not have sex with that White House intern young enough to be my daughter."

Hillary Clinton
"My philandering husband Bill and I were dead broke when we left the White House."

Elizabeth Warren
"I am a Native American and therefore eligible for special treatment."

Barack Obama
"If you like your health care plan you can keep it....oops!"

Absolute Terms

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Ad:
A women's health care choice is her own not her boss's 

Proposed Republican Rebuttal Ad:

Buy your own abortion pills.


Seriously
President Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that he had “serious concern” about the growing number of casualties in the fighting in Gaza, including both Palestinian civilian deaths and those of Israeli soldiers. (Washington Post, 7/20/2014)

Choose Netanyahu's response to Obama:

a) S**w you.
b) S**w you, your weak leadership has enabled the world's bad actors.
c) Don't you have a tee time?

We think it was Netanyahu who once said - after being lectured by some U.S. senator - "Don't talk to me about security. You go home to Chevy Chase. I go home to Tel Aviv."


Carbonara
Opposition politicians and environmentalists in Australia reacted with dismay Thursday to the country’s repeal of laws requiring large companies to pay for carbon emissions, saying that it made Australia the first country to reverse progress on fighting climate change. (New York Times, 7/17/2014)

On rare occasions a story comes along that gives us hope.


Shepherd and Flock
Outside Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s Northwest Washington colonial and Secretary of State John Kerry’s historic Georgetown Federal, armed security guards wait with car engines humming. The motorcades idle so they are ready to shepherd Mr. Kerry and Mr. Holder to their offices or planes at a moment’s notice. (New York Times, 7/17/2014)

The global warming crowd. Hypocrites all. 


Read This and Become a Conservative
The Bureau of Prisons has rejected the Army’s request to accept the transfer of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to a civilian facility where she could get better treatment for her gender-identity condition. The military will instead begin the initial treatments for her. The initial gender treatments could include allowing Private Manning to wear some female undergarments and also possibly provide some hormone treatments. (New York Times, 7/17/2014)

Paid for with your tax dollars. Outraged yet?

Every Single Israeli-Palestinian Conflagration Summarized

An atrocity is committed against Israeli civilians.

A Palestinian spokesman for one of the H's (Hamas, Hezbollah) denies responsibility but praises the perpetrator. 

Israel fires missiles at a Palestinian military site housed in a mosque or residential neighborhood. Before firing the missile, Israel tells the Palestinians exactly where the missile is going to land giving them time to evacuate.

Which the Palestinians may or may not do.

Palestinians civilians are killed.

For the next ten days, television footage is aired of wailing Palestinian family members and the bodies of the deceased being carted through the streets in scenes reminiscent of soccer riots.
 
The U.S. urges both sides to exhibit restraint.

Protests against Israel take place in European countries.

Clueless U.S. college students demand that their university divest from companies doing business with Israel because that is what their clueless professors tell them to do. 

Eventually a tentative cease-fire is reached.

Repeat.


RedStateVT was pleased to see the following...echoing a point we have made many times: where is the Palestinian Gandhi?

It may someday be that Palestinians will wise up; that the next intifada, should it come, will be Gandhian in its methods and philosophy; that the next Palestinian leader will be in the mold of Vaclav Havel, not Fidel Castro. In the face of that kind of movement, Israeli resistance to a Palestinian state would crumble. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2014)

The Bribe of Immunity

Keep Hope Alive
Why Teenagers Today May Grow Up Conservative (New York Times headline, 7/8/2014)


The One-Percenters
...Bill Daley, a former chief of staff to Mr. Obama and commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton who is now a hedge fund executive. (New York Times, 7/8/2014)

Democrats don't really hate one-percenters, or Wall Street bankers. They just hate them if they are Republicans. Such is Liberal hypocrisy. Hey, isn't Chelsea Clinton married to a hedge fund exec?


Experienced
From my own 35 years of experience in the atmospheric science profession as an air-pollution meteorologist, air quality program administrator and science educator, I can attest the fact that long-range, global climate-change outlooks are nothing but insular professional opinion. (Anthony J. Sadar, Certified Consulting Meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic's Guide to Climate Science, Telescope Books 2012, Washington Examiner, 7/7/2014)

How did Sadar slip through the cracks?

Climate scientists who question global warming are like Republican women. They are tough as nails. They have to be. 


Jail Time
C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans who was convicted in February on corruption charges, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in federal court in New Orleans. (New York Times, 7/9/2014)

Question: What does it mean when the New York Times writes a twelve paragraph story on the sentencing of a corrupt politician and does not mention his political party?

Answer: The politician is a Democrat. 

Another Free Day

Liberal Logic
Liberals want to ban "sugary" drinks....and legalize marijuana. (RedStateVT)


Libby Lobby
Let's compare and contrast the Liberal and Conservative views on the recent Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision. 

The Liberal View - Helpless women are involuntarily conscripted to work under indentured servitude-type conditions for a cult-like enterprise whose leaders worship someone they call "the savior of the world." They are denied access to life-saving medications. They are even unable to purchase these life-savings medications with their own money on their own time such is the control exerted by this company. Many die.

The Conservative View - Women voluntarily chose to work for a company whose leaders are well known to be deeply religious. They are offered many generous benefits (see below). The one thing that the company does not want covered under their health insurance plan is the abortion pill. Women employees are free to buy abortion pills on their own. 

That about sums it up. Oh, and here are some additional details about Hobby Lobby:

A retail chain with nearly 600 stores and 13,000 workers, this business sets its lowest full-time wage at $15 an hour, and raised wages steadily through the stagnant postrecession years. (Its do-gooder policies also include donating 10 percent of its profits to charity and giving all employees Sunday off.) (Ross Douthat, New York Times, 7/6/2014)


G.I. Blues
Speaking at West Point in May, President Obama laid out a blueprint for fighting terrorism that relies less on American soldiers, like the cadets in his audience that day, and more on training troops in countries where those threats had taken root.

But this indirect approach, intended to avoid costly, bloody wars like the one the United States waged in Iraq, immediately collided with reality when a lethal jihadi insurgency swept across the same Iraqi battlefields where thousands of Americans had lost their lives. (New York Times, 7/3/2014)

So - and we know it is true because the New York Times tells us - Obama's policies are now failing mere weeks after he announces them. 


Ciao
On his state trip to Italy in the spring, he asked to spend time with "interesting Italians." They were wealthy, famous. The dinner went for four hours. The next morning his staff were briefing him for a "60 Minutes" interview about Ukraine and health care. "One aide paraphrased Obama's response: 'Just last night I was talking about life and art, big interesting things, and now we're back to the minuscule things on politics.'''

Minuscule? Politics is his job. (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, 7/3/2014)

Noonan is very good at this!