Sue for Peace

Everything Old
The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials. (New York Times, 9/8/2014)

President Obama's proposed military actions in the Middle East were met by boisterous objections from Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Code Pink and Senator Barack Obama. 

Get it?


Price of Victory
Unilateral action by the president might undermine the prospects for bipartisan agreement on a broad immigration overhaul for years to come.

As the election draws closer, some nervous Senate Democrats have told White House officials that President Obama’s actions could cost them victory at the polls.

It was that concern, shared by members of Mr. Obama’s inner circle as well as other members of Congress, White House officials said, that ultimately prompted the president to break the promise he made on June 30 in the Rose Garden to act on his own before summer’s end to fix the immigration system. (New York Times, 9/8/2014)

Another broken promise! Is anyone out there keeping track...anyone?

And again, Obama will not act - at least for now - to implement a policy that if implemented would cause people not to vote for Democrats. Sounds like another winner.


Pointless
His (new Meet the Press host Chuck Todd) questions to President Obama were succinct and pointed, but Mr. Obama is not a rewarding guest in a one-on-one interview. He tends to give long, meditative and atonal answers that wear down listeners. (New York Times, 9/8/2014)

So Obama is boring and doesn't answer the question asked. Really? The greatest orator of this or any generation?


For Better or Worse
His policy is better than he has articulated it.... (E.J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, 9/3/2014)

Does Dionne even recognize the irony of what he writes? Obama the orator (the greatest of this or any generation - see above) is unable to 'articlulate' his foreign policy. 


Round Up
When President Obama addresses the nation on Wednesday to explain his plan to defeat Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, it is a fair bet he will not call them the “JV team.”

Nor does he seem likely to describe Iraq as “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” with a “representative government.” And presumably he will not assert after more than a decade of conflict that “the tide of war is receding.”

As he seeks to rally Americans behind a new military campaign in the Middle East, Mr. Obama finds his own past statements coming back to haunt him. Time and again, he has expressed assessments of the world that in the harsh glare of hindsight look out of kilter with the changed reality he now confronts. (New York Times, 9/9/2014)

Yes, that about sums it up. Thank you New York Times. It's true we are hard on you, but it feels so right and so honest when you get it correct.


Heartless
A new ABC News poll has nothing but heartache for Democrats and President Obama. By a wide margin of 52-42%, voters see President Obama as a failed president. Americans also see Obama as more of a divider than uniter. Only 38% believe President Obama is uniting the country. A majority of 55% believe he's dividing the country. (Breitbart.com, 9/9/2014)

And he is not yet halfway through his second term! Just think of how much further Obama has to fall. Let's hope Americans remember the next time they use the polls to elect novelty candidates. 

Obama Reaches Out to Congress: Plans White House Ice Cream Social

Bogie
FORE! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our forecaddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible — even when it seems totally inappropriate, like moments after making a solemn statement condemning the grisly murder of a 40-year-old American journalist beheaded by ISIL. (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 8/24/2014)

Loyal readers know that RedStateVT is no fan of New York Times op-ed writer Maureen Dowd. Dowd is a committed Liberal and her obsession with the Bush family borders on mental illness. However, credit where credit is due. Her riff on Obama and the Gettysburg Address is an instant classic. 

And so, the Liberal flight from Obama continues...in earnest. Next we will be hearing the following from our friends on the Left: "I never really thought he was going to be as great as everyone was saying!" 

Yeah, right.


Babylon and On
The question "What should we do about ISIS?" is not the same as the question "Do we want to go back to Iraq?" One is about facing up to an extreme and immediate challenge, which we have to do. The other is about returning to an old experience, which almost no one wants to do. (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, 8/22/2014)

Really, an excellent point by Noonan.

Flaming Visions

JV
Earlier this year, President Obama likened the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to a junior varsity basketball squad, a group that posed little of the threat once presented by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. (New York Times, 8/22/2014)

First Obama says you can keep your health care plan, then he says ISIS is not a threat. Does this guy get anything right?


Discharged
Ferguson police officials have said Mr. Brown and a friend were walking in the street when Officer Wilson stopped them. In an ensuing struggle, they said, Officer Wilson was hit in the face and Mr. Brown tried to take his gun, which discharged. Later, Officer Wilson shot Mr. Brown six times as the two men faced each other. (New York Times, 8/23/2014)

Weeks later, after writing countless stories reminding us every few sentences that Michael Brown was unarmed, the Times pens an article about police procedures in confrontational situations. Thirteen paragraphs in we finally hear the police side of the shooting. Of course the Times just says that the officer was "hit in the face" not that his eye socket was broken as others have reported. 

If we were writing the first sentence quoted above we might have written it differently: Ferguson police officials have said Mr. Brown and a friend were illegally walking in the middle of the street high on marijuana after having robbed a convenience store when Officer Wilson stopped them.

RedStateVT's Health Insurance Cancelled! Obama, Shumlin are Mum

What, Him Worry?
If Mr. Obama hoped to show America’s enemies that they cannot hijack his schedule, he also showed many of his friends in America that he disdains the politics of appearance. He long ago stopped worrying about what critics say, according to aides, and after the outcry over Wednesday’s game, he defied the critics by golfing again on Thursday, his eighth outing in 11 days on the island.

It was all the more striking given that Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain canceled his vacation after the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released the video showing Mr. Foley’s death because the accent of the masked killer suggested he came from Britain....But the criticism went beyond the usual political opponents. Privately, many Democrats shook their heads at what they considered a judgment error.  (New York Times, 8/22/2014)

Too Cool for School Obama. Even Democrats must be silently wishing that his term would just end. If the mid-terms do not go the Dems way, it will only get worse. You think he is checked-out now? Just wait. 


Live Fire
Russian Forces in Ukraine Are Firing Artillery, NATO Says
The Russian military has moved artillery units manned by Russian personnel inside Ukrainian territory in recent days and is using them to fire at Ukrainian forces, NATO officials said on Friday. (New York Times, 8/22/2014)

Which, of course, takes us back to the famous Hillary Clinton reset button with Russia. Somewhere a Republican strategist is already writing the campaign commercial...

Which also reminds us of the Ann Coulter adage that Democrats can NEVER be trusted with national defense. 

Everyday Moods

He's Got the Fever
In part, of course, that depends on what Republicans do in the next two years. Mr. Obama has been frustrated by his inability, even after a decisive 2012 re-election victory, to “break the fever” of hard-core Republican opposition. With control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans might feel a greater responsibility to join Mr. Obama in governance by striking politically appealing compromises. (New York Times, 8/21/2014)

After George W. Bush was re-elected, Democrats immediately began advising him that now was the time to compromise. Whereupon HRH Ann Coulter said something to the effect of: "Compromise? Why should Bush compromise? He has Dems in a cage. He should be poking them with a stick!"

Anticipating a shellacking in the coming elections, Dems are already urging Republicans....to compromise!


Touchy
Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department's top brass told FoxNews.com. (Foxnews.com, 8/20/2014)

And so it unfolds as it always does. A black teenager coming home from choir practice is killed by a racist white cop. Slowly we learn that the teen had marijuana in his system, had just robbed a convenience store and busted the cop's face. The details change slightly from incident to incident, but the basic pattern is the same. Maybe the cops should sue claiming racial profiling.....


Kill Them Before They Kill Us
But Foley is dead and his killers won't fail on their own. They will not fail because Barack Obama reached out his hand in peace on Inauguration Day. They will not fail because of a progressive vision that mankind has finally in the 21st century reached some higher level of being. Like every evil in human history, ISIS will stop only when it is forced to stop. This means only when enough of its fanatics have been killed. (Wall Street Journal, 8/21/2014)

Our favorite paragraph from today's WSJ editorial.

But the lesson of the last century is that a coalition of the willing forms only when America leads. The main reason that ISIS has advanced so far has been the U.S. failure to act against it. Mr. Obama's refusal to intervene in Syria created a breeding ground for jihadists. And his total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 created a vacuum for those jihadists to spill over and occupy Sunni Iraq.

No, this is our favorite.

Even if Mr. Obama absolves himself and still blames George W. Bush for his Middle Eastern troubles, that does him and the world no good now. Disorder is spreading while he is the world's ostensible leader. ISIS is marching while he is Commander in Chief.

Or maybe this one...

It does not matter, the point is that the lesson that Liberals like Obama have not learned and may never learn is that evil exists in the world and it must be eradicated by force and only by force. 

We have to kill them. 

Withdrawal, reset buttons, and vacillation only allow the cancer of evil to spread until it is at our doorstep. We have seen that movie before.
  

Devil's Bargain
Economic growth is nonpartisan. But inner-city public education is totally partisan. Democratic politicians made a Faustian bargain with the teachers unions, and the souls carried away have been the black children in those doomed schools. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 8/20/2014)

Dems have sold their souls in exchange for the votes and campaign contributions of unions. That is a fact. 

The Hangman Fumbles With The Noose

Liberal Story Template (Whenever a Black Teenager is Shot by a Cop)
In (city) last night an unarmed black teenager named (name) was shot by police. The teenager was unarmed. Witnesses said that the unarmed victim had his arms up and was surrendering. An autopsy will determine whether he was shot in the back (while unarmed). It is not known if the officer who shot unarmed (name), possibly in the back, was racist. Many people interviewed on the street said he probably was. To protest the violent death of unarmed (name) by an apparently racist patrolman, protesters began robbing liquor stores. 

Friends of (name) described him as a peaceful person who only wanted to help others. They said that his passions included helping out at the local homeless shelter, saving stray cats and Bible study. 

Holy men Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton flew into town together and held a joint service at the (name of church) church. While alternately praising each other's peaceful ministry, they called for calm and for an investigation into police racism, and in particular, the lawless shooting of unarmed black teenagers by racist cops. Attorney General Eric Holder said: "This just proves what I have been saying all along, this is a racist country."

Meanwhile in Chicago last night there were (number) deaths attributable to black-on-black violence. 

(Just kidding about that last part, it is true but not reported.)


Swept Away
Yet at home, Mr. de Blasio, who swept into office on the promise that New York City could be governed from the left, is discovering that liberalism has its limits.

The mayor who shot to fame denouncing stop-and-frisk tactics and luxury condominiums is now defending hard-nosed policing and cutting deals with developers, bowing to the realities of leading an unruly city but also angering an activist left that propelled his rise to the Democratic elite. Impatience with the mayor is now spilling into outcry.
...
“More and more, every day, they find this was a lot more complicated than they thought,” Bertha Lewis, a longtime friend of the mayor and the former chief executive of Acorn, said of the de Blasio administration. (New York Times, 8/20/2014)

Another Liberal disappoints!

(And yes indeed. Liberalism does have its limits!)


Unsolved
But Mitchell Moss, who teaches urban studies at New York University, said the mayor was wise to be cautious.

“Inequality is not something that a mayor of New York can solve, but public safety is,” he said. “You can never make the liberals happy. Because when you ask them what they want, the answer is always: M-O-R-E.” (New York Times, 8/20/2014)

Teacher of the Year!


Erosion
Comity has been eroding for years in Washington, a gridlocked swamp of a city where the 113th Congress is on track to become one of the least productive in history and the president is alienated from his own party. (New York Times, 8/19/2014)

As reported by the New York Times yesterday, Democrat senators and representatives cannot stand Obama. 

Game Over

Obama Is Seen as Frustrating His Own Party (New York Times headline, 8/19/2014)
But nearly six years into his term, with his popularity at the lowest of his presidency, Mr. Obama appears remarkably distant from his own party on Capitol Hill, with his long neglect of would-be allies catching up to him.
...
But what is striking now is the way prominent Democrats’ views of Mr. Obama’s shortcomings are spilling out into public, and how resigned many seem that the relationship will never improve. In private meetings, Mr. Reid’s chief of staff, David Krone, has voiced regular dismay to lawmakers and top aides about White House operations and competency across a range of issues, according to several Democrats on Capitol Hill.
...
Asked to characterize his relationship with the president, Mr. Manchin, a centrist Democrat who has often been a bridge builder in the Senate, said: “It’s fairly nonexistent. There’s not much of a relationship.”
...
Few senators feel a personal connection to the president.
...
Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who was an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid, said that if her fellow Democrats were hoping for Mr. Obama to transform into a Lyndon B. Johnson late in his second term, they should quit waiting.
...
But only twice in more than 180 rounds has the president invited members of Congress to play with him, and only one Democratic official — Senator Mark Udall of Colorado — has joined a presidential foursome.

And so now the charade is finally over. RedStateVT and others who have diligently reported the story of Obama's utter incompetence are completely vindicated.  The Liberal media has turned on him as have fellow Democrats. Yes, they are teeing up Hillary Clinton (no pun intended), but their abandonment of Obama is breathtaking. 


And More
Mr. Obama’s increasingly expansive appetite for the use of unilateral action on issues including immigration, tax policy and gay rights has emboldened activists and businesses to flock to the administration with their policy wish lists. It also has opened the president, already facing charges of executive overreach, to criticism that he is presiding over opaque policy-making, with the potential to reward political backers at the expense of other interests, including some on the losing side who are threatening to sue. 
...
The go-it-alone approach has left the administration — which claims to be the most transparent in United States history — essentially making policy from the White House, replacing congressional hearings and floor debates with closed meetings for invited constituencies. ​(New York Times, 8/19/2014)

Just in case you had any doubts....


Really
These educators say their goal is not to vilify marijuana or take a stand on legalization; instead, they say their role is to convince young people and their parents that the use of drugs is not just a moral or legal issue, but a significant health issue.

“The health risks are real,” said Steve Pasierb, the chief executive of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. “Every passing year, science unearths more health risks about why any form of substance use is unhealthy for young people.” 
...
Studies in New Zealand and Canada have found that marijuana use in the teenage years can result in lost I.Q. points. (New York Times, 8/18/2014)

Mere days after the New York Times editors initiated a week-long smoke-in extolling the benefits of legal dope, this article slips into the Science section. Oops!

Here's a thought. Are Democrats in favor of legalizing marijuana because down the road they, along with their trial lawyer friends, will then turn around and sue the dope companies like they did with the tobacco companies? Call us crazy, but....

Press 2 For English

Irrefutable Proof of Liberal Bias at the New York Times
The long-simmering case has centered on Mr. Perry’s veto power as governor. His critics asserted that he used that power as leverage to try to get an elected official — Rosemary Lehmberg, the district attorney in Travis County — to step down after her arrest on a drunken-driving charge last year. Ms. Lehmberg is Austin’s top prosecutor and oversees a powerful public corruption unit that investigates state, local and federal officials; its work led to the 2005 indictment of a former Republican congressman, Tom DeLay, on charges of violating campaign finance laws. (New York Times, 8/16/2014)

In a story on the indictment of Texas governor Rick Perry, the New York Times reminds us that Republican Tom DeLay was also indicted. Here is what the New York Times "forgets" to mention:

The Travis County District Attorney’s office has a long history of politically-motivated prosecutions, including the 2005 indictment of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for alleged campaign finance violations. DeLay’s convictions were completely overturned and he was acquitted after an appeal to the Third District Texas Court of Appeals in 2013—too late to save his political career. (Breitbart.com, 8/15/2014)

An honest, unbiased news organization would have mentioned this fact - inconvenient to those who want to eliminate Rick Perry as a potential challenger for Hillary Clinton. Alas, the New York Times is not an honest news organization.


Deficient
“At least since World War II, presidents have been unwilling to discuss deficiencies in capability because they’re expected to do everything, and they like that sense of omnipotence,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former Obama State Department official now at the Brookings Institution. “Obama has been trying to change that in the last year because he senses that the requirements of omnipotence have gotten so far out of whack with what he can actually accomplish that he needs to change the expectations.” (New York Times, 8/16/2014)

With Obama and his apologists it is all about what he CANNOT do. We never heard Ronald Reagan speak thusly. He recognized, as Obama does not, that appearances matter. Even George Bush understood this. Derided by U.S. Liberals as a "cowboy," the bad actors in the world were just frightened of Bush enough to be wary. None of the world's bad actors - in North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, the Middle East - are afraid of Obama. They know, because he has told them, that he will run from the fight. 


Unexplained
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama’s challenge has not necessarily been his approach to these crises, but his ability to explain and sell it.

“What he’s come up with in Iraq and in Ukraine are sensible strategies,” said former Representative Jane Harman of California, now president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “He now needs to link them with a narrative that explains to the American people why we have to re-engage in foreign policy matters, and I hope he does that.” (New York Times, 8/16/2014)

The greatest orator the world has ever seen and heard cannot explain his foreign policy? Did Democrats oversell this guy or what?


Here We Go Again
With the release of tape today by the Ferguson Police Department of a man who appears to be Michael Brown allegedly physically assaulting a much smaller clerk while stealing Swisher Sweet cigars, the media’s narrative has collapsed. The media – and top-level politicians across the political spectrum – portrayed Michael Brown in saintlike fashion. That narrative no longer holds. (Ben Shapiro, Breitbart.com, 8/15/2014)

We are sorry for the death or Michael Brown as we were sorry for the death of Trayvon Martin.

Unfortunately, in both cases the rush to judgment that the deceased were blameless allows Liberals to berate Florida gun laws and police procedures. Only when pictures of George Zimmerman's battered head are made public does his story that Trayvon Martin was on top of him smashing his head into the concrete sidewalk gain credibility. And now we have video of Michael Brown robbing a convenience store while manhandling a clerk. Is it possible that the 6'4" 300lb Brown caused a cop to fear for his life. Just maybe.

Wanted: An Apology From Democrats For Giving Us Obama

Twisted
The latest twist came just hours after Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing, that the president was likely to receive recommendations about how to mount a rescue operation in the next several days. He said those recommendations could have included the use of American ground troops.

But Mr. Rhodes made those comments as the secret team of Marines and Special Operations forces were already on Mount Sinjar, in the middle of a 24-hour trip to talk to the displaced people and pesh merga fighters. (New York Times, 8/14/2014)

White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval. (Wall Street Journal, 8/13/2014)

So now it is official. As these two passages note, the Obama administration left hand does not know what the Obama administration right hand is doing.


Mindful
Mind you, Obama does deploy grand words proclaiming grand ideas: the “new beginning” with Islam declared in Cairo, the reset with Russia announced in Geneva, global nuclear disarmament proclaimed in Prague (and playacted in a Washington summit). But, untethered from reality, they all disappeared without a trace.
...
He thus admits that Russian and other outside support was crucial to tilting the outcome of this civil war to Bashar al-Assad. Yet he dismisses countervailing U.S. support as useless. He thus tells the world of his disdain for the traditional U.S. role of protecting friends by deterring and counterbalancing adversarial outside powers. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/14/2014)

Leave it to Charlemagne Krauthammer to expose Obama's foreign policy incompetence. (See the following for more on Obama's incompetence...)


Poll Tested
Senate Republican strategists like Mr. Dayspring cite several recent polls as evidence that the results will turn on doubts about Mr. Obama’s competence, chiefly a late-June survey by Quinnipiac University in which 54 percent of registered voters said the president was not “competent in running the government.” In mid-July, 57 percent said “no” when asked in a CNN/ORC International poll if Mr. Obama “can manage the government effectively,” and 53 percent said in a Pew Research Center poll that he is not “able to get things done.” (New York Times, 8/14/2014)

More than one-half of the people think Obama is incompetent. But that is not even what excites the editors here at RedStateVT the most. What excites us is that the Liberal media is even willing to talk about Obama's competence. 


Logjam
Since becoming secretary of state in February 2013, John Kerry has carved out a deserved reputation as the ultimate road warrior. Before his current diplomatic trip, Mr. Kerry had traveled 519,136 miles to 51 countries, logging 230 travel days. (New York Times, 8/14/2014)

The New York Times has just got to get a new measure of the success of a secretary of state. With Hillary Clinton we got endless recitations of how many countries she visited and how many miles she traveled. 

As if these constitute success. 

Now, coming after his astonishingly dismal performance in the Middle East, the Times touts "road warrior" Kerry. We suspect that Woody Allen was right: 90% of life is just showing up. 


Injection
While opportunistic civil rights leaders and liberal commentators are pretending that policemen not only routinely kill black people but do so for no reason, the New York Police Commissioner decided to inject some common sense into the discussion.

"What we've seen in the past few months is a number of individuals failing to understand that you must submit to arrest. You cannot resist," said Mr. Bratton in a radio interview Tuesday. "The place to argue your case is in the court, not in the street." (Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal, 8/13/2014)

Wonderfully stated by Bratton. Award-winning MSNBC host and revered holy man Al Sharpton could save black lives if - instead of ginning up racial conflict - he urged black teens not to confront police. 

Fight to Win

Blessed
Complacency is a kind explanation for Washington's latest plan to make it harder for the National Security Agency to prevent the next attack. A bill recently introduced by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, with the blessing of President Obama, went so far beyond earlier proposals that a judge writing on behalf of the entire federal judiciary last week objected that the bill is unworkable and unconstitutional and would make terrorism likelier. (L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, 8/10/2014)

Thanks to the efforts of Vermont's senior statesman Patrick Leahy, America's ability to fight terrorism is now weaker. And so this:

...no one should be surprised if intelligence fails to stop the next attack. In an area where accountability has been scarce, the names on the to-blame list would begin with Barack Obama and Patrick Leahy.


Sheared
The question is whether she (Hillary Clinton) can belittle Barack Obama as much as she must in order to win, but not so much that it plays as an act of sheer betrayal. (Frank Bruni, New York Times, 8/11/2014)

A Liberal commentary that we (gulp) agree with....


Disavowed
There are a few possible answers to that one. One is that the views she expressed in the interview are sincere and long-held and she was always a closet neoconservative; Commentary magazine is delivered to her mailbox in an unmarked brown envelope. Another is that Mrs. Clinton can read a poll: Americans now disapprove of the president's handling of foreign policy by a 57% to 37% margin, and she belatedly needs to disavow the consequences of the policies she once advocated. A third is that she believes in whatever she says, at least at the time she's saying it. She is a Clinton, after all. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 8/11/2014)

So what is Hillary thinking now that she has begun distancing herself from Obama?  There is certainly a part of us that thinks she is or was a 'strong defense' Democrat. She voted for the Iraq War and agreed with Bush that Sadaam Hussein had WMDs. One can conclude that the Howard Dean faction of the Dem party pulled her to the left forcing her to disavow earlier positions. Which, of course, does not speak well of her on issues of fortitude and consistency.


Stuffed
As the criticism became public, Obama was doggedly sticking with his plans to go on vacation — a decision that, if not in the category of stupid stuff, could fit under the heading of “tone deafness.” (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 8/11/2014)

It is Liberals who are now attacking the Vacationer-in-Chief.


Urged
The Obama Administration was so preoccupied with a grand political solution in Baghdad that for weeks it refused to arm the Kurds for fear of offending Mr. Maliki, even as it was urging Mr. Maliki to resign. How's that for consistent logic? (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/2014)

Possible Obama responses? 

I never urged Maliki to resign.

It is all Bush's fault.

Fore!


Stunned
After nearly four decades in elected office in Hawaii, Gov. Neil Abercrombie was dealt a stunning defeat in his bid for re-election over the weekend, becoming the first incumbent governor in the state’s history to lose in his party’s primary....The race will almost certainly mark the end of Mr. Abercrombie’s long political career. At age 76, he collected only about 31 percent of the vote, compared with 66 percent for Mr. Ige....Mr. Abercrombie enjoyed strong support from the Democratic establishment, including President Obama, as well as huge fund-raising advantages. (New York Times, 8/9/2014)

A firmly entrenched Democrat backed by Obama IN HIS HOME STATE secures only 31% of the vote!

November could be fun!

White House Confirms: Obama to Attend Choom Gang Reunion

At Pains
For President Obama, any decision to reinforce the Iraqis or Kurds will be painful. On Thursday night he still took credit for removing all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011. He was at pains to reassure Americans that the U.S. will not fight another war in Iraq even as he committed U.S. air power to the war that continues in Iraq.

It's clear now that his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2011 was a strategic and increasingly a moral disaster. The President—which is to say the United States—bears responsibility now for the humanitarian catastrophe occurring in Iraq... (Wall Street Journal, 8/8/2014)

So Obama takes credit for withdrawing from Iraq which emboldened Islamic terrorists to commit atrocities which now requires Obama to reengage in Iraq. Only Liberals can see the logic of Obama's thinking.


Low Tide
As he explained himself to a national television audience, Mr. Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there. Yet his presence in the State Dining Room testified to the bleak reality that the tide of events in that ancient land have defied his predictions and aspirations before. (New York Times, 8/8/2014)

At Iraq to the list of things that have disappointed Obama. 


Sorted
... Mr. Obama managed to condemn "torture" while simultaneously lecturing Americans not to be "sanctimonious" against CIA officials doing their "job." Sort through that one. (Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 8/7/2014)

Like most presidents Obama has discovered that it is much easier to throw darts at the decisions of his predecessor when you are a candidate. The small voice in the back of his head must torture him everyday as it reminds him that Bush/Cheney were right.

And then there is this, also from Strassel's column:

All this started when Nancy Pelosi claimed in 2009 that the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about its enhanced-interrogation program. Details then flooded out, including embarrassing facts about just how repeatedly and thoroughly Democratic leaders and Intelligence committee members in both chambers had been briefed—including Mrs. Pelosi. 


Gain and Loss
Mr. Abu Marzook said Hamas had gained popularity, remained able to fire rockets at Israel, and could re-establish its network of tunnels under Gaza.

For agreeing to the cease-fire, he argued that Hamas should receive relief from the blockade on its territory. “The Palestinians should gain something out of these battles,” he said. “They want the siege to end; they want all the gates to open.” (New York Times, 8/6/2014)

A Hamas spokesman argues - incoherently - that Hamas should be rewarded for their actions and that things have just gone swimmingly for them. THIS is why there is no peace.


Deadly
The 72-hour truce came after 29 days of fierce fighting that left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and three civilians were killed. (New York Times, 8/8/2014)

A Fox commentator noted recently that Hamas never announces the deaths of its own. All we ever hear about are the deaths of women and children.


Just Business
Promising a major change in the “way the V.A. does business,” President Obama traveled to this Army base outside Washington on Thursday to sign a bill that will expand access to health care for veterans and strengthen the powers of the Department of Veterans Affairs’s new leader to clean up abuses in its troubled network of hospitals. (New York Times, 8/7/2014)

Obama bails out Bernie Sanders. 


Train to Nowhere
High-speed rail was supposed to be President Obama’s signature transportation project, but despite the administration spending nearly $11 billion since 2009 to develop faster passenger trains, the projects have gone mostly nowhere and the United States still lags far behind Europe and China. (New York Times, 8/6/2014)

Obama continues to waste your tax dollars. How does that make you feel?

Not What You Think

Ventilator
At the end of a week of frustrating developments for the White House, at home and overseas, President Obama took time on Friday afternoon to vent.

The president revealed a long list of gripes in a nearly 50-minute news conference: a recalcitrant Congress that is refusing to deliver the amount of emergency funding he requested for a border bill; crises in the Middle East and Ukraine that defy quick or simple solutions; even a press corps that neglected to wish him a happy birthday. (New York Times, 8/2/2014)

The Whiner-in-Chief.

Note to Liberals: this is what you get when you give the country an untested politician just so that you can feel good about yourselves.


What He Did
“Well, you know what?” the president said. “What we did worked, and the economy’s better. It shows you that if you stay at it, eventually we make some progress.” (New York Times, 8/2/2014)

Almost six years after Obama takes office unemployment is over 6% and the Federal Reserve is forced to keep interest rates at near 0%. 

And then there is this (also from the New York Times):

Here’s an unusual but extraordinarily graphic description of the current state of the labor market: If you lined up all of the unemployed shoulder-to-shoulder, the queue of people looking for work would stretch all the way from New York out past San Francisco. (Justin Wolfers, New York Times, 8/1/2014)


Folksy
"We did a whole lot of things that were right [after 9/11], but we tortured some folks," Mr. Obama said at a news conference Friday. (Wall Street Journal, 8/2/2014)

And, to be clear, by "folks" Obama means violent Muslim terrorists committed to the destruction of America and who wantonly slaughter innocents. Those "folks."


Devotion
...the Democratic Party’s activist core is incurably devoted to identity politics — the proposition that people are whatever their gender is (or their race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever seems stupendously important at the moment). (George Will, Washington Post, 8/1/2014)

Will sums up the guiding principle of Liberals.


Generally
When as respected and scrupulously independent a national security expert as David Ignatius calls Kerry’s intervention a blunder, you know this is not partisan carping from the usual suspects. This is general amazement at Kerry’s cluelessness. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/1/2014)

Krauthammer manages to eviscerate both John Kerry and fellow WaPo opinion writer Ignatius in two sentences!