In Which We Get A Little Cynical

New York Times editorial headline, January 18, 2016: A Safer World, Thanks to the Iran Deal 
From the same editorial: And even if the Iranians were to attempt to produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb, it will now take them more than a year to do so. Before the agreement, that breakout time was two to three months.

Don't know about you, but we feel safer. Much safer. How could you NOT feel safer? After all, Obama and Kerry extended the breakout time for Iran to produce a nuclear bomb from two months to, call it fourteen, months. Rest easy tonight, America.

Price for the deal? Iran gets $100 billion.


Berned
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he would pay for his plan for a single-payer health-care system with a suite of new taxes, including a 2.2% “premium” applied to all income, a new payroll tax paid by employers, and a variety of tax increases on the wealthiest Americans.

The plan would increase government spending by a total of nearly $14 trillion over 10 years, the campaign said, and together with his other proposals, would bring federal spending to its highest level since World War II. (Wall Street Journal, 1/17/2016)

Don't know about you, but the Sanders plan sounds like a winner to us. A big winner. How could you NOT embrace "a suite of new taxes?" 

Price for the Sanders plan? A $14 trillion increase in government spending.

Democrats React to the Market Sell-Off

Hillary Clinton: The economy was better when the Clintons were in the White House and Bill was diddling with the interns. Elect me and we will return to those glory days.

Bernie Sanders: Break up the banks. Break up the insurance companies. Break up the drug companies. Break up the oil companies. Break up military contractors. 

Barack Obama: I have not been following the news. What happened?


Hall Monitors
It is the consensus of many of us who monitor government behavior that the FBI will recommend indictment. That recommendation will go to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who, given Clinton’s former status in the government and current status in the Democratic Party, will no doubt consult the White House. If a federal grand jury were to indict Clinton for espionage or corruption, that would be fatal to her political career. (Judge Andrew Napolitano, Foxnews.com, 1/14/2016)

The possible indictment of Hillary Clinton is a Republican pipe dream. It is NOT going to happen. The Clintons have skated around the law for most of their professional lives and they have always been given a pass. There is nothing that is going to stop Hillary Clinton from being the Democrat nominee and, quite likely, president. Not Bill and not Benghazi. Not an influence-peddling "foundation" or classified e-mails on the Chappaqua server.

Clinton = Cosby

Term Limits
Mrs. Clinton drew cheers as well for saying she would not use the term “illegal immigrant” ... (New York Times, 1/12/2016)

Illegal immigrant, anchor baby, radical Islamic terrorism... The list of words banned by Liberals grows.


Reconstructed
The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families. (New York Times, 1/11/2016)

Next up in the Times, an in-depth look at reputed Nazi sympathizer and bootlegger Joseph Kennedy. Just kidding!


Castaway
The president is also expected to address the divisiveness in American politics. He will cast continued divisions between the parties as one of several issues that, if rectified, could set the country on a more prosperous course in the future. (Wall Street Journal, 1/12/2016)

And, of course, the path to rectifying the divisiveness in American politics according to Liberals is simple. Everyone should agree with them. Instant rectification!


Slash and Burn
Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Monday he would slash funding for the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency if he is elected president. (Wall Street Journal, 1/12/2016)

Now we are talking. Take that those of you who thought Trump was a one issue candidate! 

Report: Obama Will Shed More Tears to Get Policies Enacted

Eager Beavers
Eager to maximize coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration has allowed large numbers of people to sign up for insurance after the deadlines in the last two years, destabilizing insurance markets and driving up premiums, health insurance companies say.

The administration has created more than 30 “special enrollment” categories and sent emails to millions of Americans last year urging them to see if they might be able to sign up after the annual open enrollment deadline. But, insurers and state officials said, the federal government did little to verify whether late arrivals were eligible.

That has allowed people to wait until they become ill or need medical services to sign up, driving up costs broadly, insurers have told federal health officials. (New York Times, 1/10/2016)

There has got to be a secret plan underlying Obamacare, right? Nothing this screwed up could ever be devised. Now we think we have a possible answer. Democrats purposefully created an unworkable law as a segue-way to what they really wanted: single payer. They will say: "Well, we tried to come up with a solution that utilized the private sector, but it was just unworkable. This is why we need a healthcare system run by government."


Monsters Ball
Four teenagers suspected of taking turns raping an 18-year-old woman at gunpoint at a Brooklyn playground after ordering her father to leave her side were taken into custody on Sunday, the police said.

The brazen attack on Thursday night, which the police said was carried out by the four teenagers along with another young man who remains at large, set off waves of fear and uncertainty in the Brownsville neighborhood where it happened. Elected officials also questioned whether the police notified the public quickly enough after the attack, a suggestion that the Police Department strongly contested.

Two teenagers, ages 14 and 15, were turned in to police custody by their parents; the two others, ages 15 and 17, were apprehended by the authorities, the police said. Charges against them were pending. (New York Times, 1/11/2016)

Prediction. Ten years from now Al Sharpton will succeed in getting these monsters released from prison. He will say there was a "rush to judgment." They will sue the city of New York and be awarded millions of dollars. Remember then that you read it here at RedStateVT first.

Boots on the Ground

Kicked to the Curb
The stocks of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger spiked again after the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings last month. They also moved sharply in advance of President Obama’s announcement on Tuesday of measures to curb gun violence. (New York Times, 1/5/2016)

Rumors persist that Smith & Wesson is preparing to name Obama its Salesman of the Year. No one is responsible for more gun sales in America. No one.


Spin Control
Liberal spin can’t disguise that the law is failing on every level other than expanding coverage—as if anyone ever argued that a new entitlement couldn’t reduce the uninsured rate. The huge premium increases and other disruption in the health-care markets that the critics predicted explain why the law continues to be so unpopular with the public six long years after passage. (Wall Street Journal, 1/5/2016)

"...as if anyone ever argued that a new entitlement couldn't reduce the uninsured rate." Exactly the point. Obama and Democrats offered people free or heavily subsidized insurance and then take a victory lap over the success of Obamacare. 


Life Sentence
Apparently, all it takes to get Muslims to sign up for a life of terrorism is one speech by a wealthy reality-show star who holds no office. I mean, joining ISIS is no small commitment; it’s not like changing your vote come Election Day, or registering for a different party. The political and media elites really want us to believe that all it takes to get Muslims to devote their lives to ISIS is a speech by Donald Trump. (David Cole, 12/31/2015, Taki's Magazine) 
http://takimag.com/article/donald_trump_carnage_recruiter_david_cole/print#ixzz3wb3dwFIc

Ann Coulter linked to this great article in her recent column. Why is it that Americans - who have suffered terrible atrocities at the hands of self-proclaimed Muslim zealots - have to walk on eggshells for fear of offending Muslims?


Imposition
For eight years, Barack Obama has imposed failing economic policies on the country, even as he has brilliantly exploited the results for political gain. Democrats produced stagnating wages, rising prices, economic insecurity and failed antipoverty programs—and then somehow blamed the resulting inequality and fear and destitution on conservatives. (Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 1/7/2016)

Explanation? Obama owns nothing. Not Russian aggression. Not Middle East chaos. Not skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Certainly not economic malaise. Three-quarters of the media and half of the country do not hold him accountable. 


Dog Eat Dog
The State Department provided an “inaccurate or incomplete” response when a watchdog group asked in 2012 whether Hillary Clinton had used any alternate email accounts, saying it had no relevant records, even though dozens of top officials knew that she relied on a private email address for official communications, an independent investigator reported Thursday. (New York Times, 1/7/2016)

Cynical yet?


Elitists
Since at least the early 1990s, a lot of the public has been intimidated into keeping its mouth shut and head down about subjects in the political and social life of the country that the elites stipulated as beyond discussion or dispute. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 1/6/2016)

Good column by Henninger about how Donald Trump and Ben Carson have confronted political correctness.

All Bill

(Bill Clinton) also suggested that he would not thrive politically today because he was not “mad at anybody,” an implicit jab at Mr. Trump’s harsh attacks on Muslims and others — and a signal that Mr. Trump had not gotten under Mr. Clinton’s skin. (New York Times, 1/5/2015)

Two points. Bill Clinton would not thrive politically today because he was a moderate Democrat, more or less anyway. Second, maybe his implicit jab was not directed at Donald Trump as the Times states. Maybe it was directed at Bernie Sanders, the guy running against his wife who seems to be mad at everyone.


Even before Bill Cosby was charged with a crime, the allegations against him led to his being stripped of honorary degrees, booted off boards and seeing his name replaced on buildings. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is feted and rakes in the millions. (William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/2016)

The title of the article is: The Big Dog - Bill Clinton - Gets Fixed. That is funny stuff!

And can anyone (besides Hillary, maybe) argue the point of Cosby vs. Clinton?

RedStateVT Presents the Worst of 2015

OBAMA

It was a tough year for President Legacy. Obamacare continues to implode; the Russian bear is on the prowl; the national debt soars; the Iranian mullahs get their billions and their nukes; and the Muslims still don’t like us, to name a few of his failures. Worse, even Democrats now don’t really like him, if they ever did.  After World War II, it was said that you could not find a single German who admitted to supporting Hitler. Going forward, it will likewise be harder to find a Democrat who admits to having been all in for Obama. They will say: “Well, I had my doubts all along….” (And no, we are not comparing Obama to Hitler, so relax.) All of Obama’s legacy-inducing policies were delivered either by changing the rules (e.g. Obamacare) or by executive fiat (e.g. amnesty). They will continue to fail, to be challenged in the courts or will be revoked by a Republican president. How’s that for a legacy? Meanwhile, it is less than a year until Obama gets to finally buy that Chevy Volt he said he wanted. Question: is he eligible for the government subsidy?

THE KARDASHIANS

They are like a virulent strain of an STD that cannot be treated with penicillin, refuses to go away, and, in fact, grows stronger with each passing day. The Kardashians continue to despoil America of its soul. Mom, Cruella de Kardash, carefully mentors each new generation in the family business: taking off their clothes for the public. But even the public will eventually tire and turn on the Kardashians. Either that or we weep.

ISIS

Stone Age butchers, the legacy of ISIS will be the destruction of ancient historic civilizations, both the archaeological sites and the people. In the end, they will likely end up having killed more Muslims than any other group – European or otherwise – in history.

HILLARY CLINTON

We should want our presidents to want the job, confident in the belief that they are best suited to lead the country. With Hillary, such self-assuredness always seems to be more grounded in the Clintonian sense of what the country owes them. Thus we get Hillary deserves the presidency because Obama cut the line; because she is a women; because she is a grandmother; because the Republicans have been so mean to her, and on and on. Benghazi alone should be enough to disqualify her. The server/e-mail scandal should be enough to disqualify her. The Russian Reset should be enough to disqualify her. And yet, there is a 50-50 chance that a woman who close to two-thirds of the country believes cannot be trusted, may well be the next president. Which, in turn, means that Bill Clinton is back in the White House too. America needs to move on. 

REPUBLICANS

They increasingly resemble The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. What good does winning back control of the legislative branch of government mean if Obama and Harry Reid continue to outmaneuver you? One wonders if even winning the presidency would solve their collective dysfunction.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The downfall of America’s once great newspaper is complete. The Times proved in 2015 that there is no fringe issue or fringe special interest group too small (or bizarre) for their disproportionate attention and support. The Times supports gay rights including gay marriage, that’s fine. But by RedStateVT’s calculation (not a scientific poll) the Times devoted 32.65% of their coverage to gay-themed articles. Some days, gay-themed articles made up 50% of the ink, or at least it seemed that way. Having successfully championed a group that comprises less than 1% of the population, the Times then turned to transgenders, a group that makes up less than .01% of the U.S. Saturation coverage of transgenders by the Times culminated in a front page story about a transgender who had sex reassignment surgery paid for by Medicaid. The Times exulted while the country wept. (Editor’s Note: transgenders are not the same as transvestites. The latter are guys who like to dress up in ladies clothes.)

VERMONT GOVERNOR PETER SHUMLIN

Look up “sleazy politician” in the dictionary and you may very well find a picture of Vermont’s leader. Shumlin followed in the dubious footsteps of other Democrat politicians with his own real estate scandal (Clinton in Arkansas, Reid in Nevada, Obama in Chicago). Like his philosophical mentors, however, it is his politics which are most offensive. Shumlin’s specialty is in killing jobs in a state already known for being anti-business. Vermont Democrats want fewer corporate jobs (what with those good wages and benefits) and more glass-blowing studios. Not too worry, the state will be saved just as soon as they legalize marijuana and start collecting dope taxes. Shumlin, who announced he will not seek another term after coming within a breath of losing in the last election to a Republican that no one had heard of, will count this as his greatest accomplishment.