Question That We Wish We Had Asked!

After 87 months of Obama, why are young liberals asking for ‘change’? 
(Headline, Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2016)

From the article:

The 2015 federal budget spent about $3.8 trillion, or 21% of the U.S. economy. Year in and year out, that $3 trillion to $4 trillion underwrites programs.

As listed at federalsafetynet.com, the programs delivering welfare include: the negative income tax, SNAP (supplemental nutrition), housing assistance, SSI, Pell Grants, TANF (temporary assistance for needy families), child nutrition, Head Start, job training programs, WIC (food for women and children), child care and Liheap (energy subsidies).

Entitlement programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and the Affordable Care Act.

...

Why are 25-year-old liberals crying out for “change,” if you are spending $4 trillion every year on all this stuff? There’s hardly anything significant left to deliver, other than results, so maybe something is wrong with the delivery system.

The Liberal class rails endlessly about "corporate welfare" by which they mean tax breaks to businesses. At least corporations create jobs and produce goods and services that people want. Whether or not their needs are legitimate, the people receiving handouts of your money from the government produce nothing. But dare to raise these issues? You are a hater, a racist, a bigot. You are greedy or materialistic. 

Liberals deride the earners and extol the takers. 

Liberals can always find new ways to spend your money. 

In America Today

In America today you can lose your job for suggesting that men should use the men's bathroom and women should use the women's bathroom. Apparently, to use the bathroom of your choice all that is required is that you "identify" as belonging to a particular sex. 

Whatever that means. 

Anatomy no longer matters. 

Likewise, you can "identify" as belonging to another race. 

Skin color no longer matters. 

So today RedStateVT suggests pushing the boundaries even further to make all your dreams come true. Always wanted to be a doctor, but did not want to put in the time? Identify as a doctor! Dream of defending the victims of social injustice in court? Lucky for you, a law degree is no longer required. In America today, all you have to do is to "identify" as that to which you aspire. Nothing can stop you now.  

Why we are even thinking of heading to Washington D.C. We are going to "identify" as a member of Congress, a Supreme Court justice, or maybe even as the President of the United States.  

Watch them try to stop us!

It's Over, (for) America

A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled that a transgender high school student who was born as a female can sue his school board on discrimination grounds because it banned him from the boys’ bathroom.

In backing high school junior Gavin Grimm, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deferred to the U.S. Education Department’s position that transgender students should have access to the bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than being forced to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. (Washington Post, 4/19/2016)


Do you want to get ahead in America? Of course you do, but you are going about it the wrong way. Hard work, dedication, perseverance? Sorry, these things don't cut it anymore. If you really truly want to get ahead, the answer is simple: declare yourself a victim. People will rush to defend you. Politicians will extol your struggle. The media will come running. Doors will open. 

Even better, the bar for victimhood is pretty low. Anyone can be a victim. Did a cop ever stop you for forgetting to put on your turn signal? You are a victim! Ever been laughed at by anyone for anything? Victim! Do you have a mental disorder? Are you a member of ANY group that might be classified as a minority? Have you been denied access to the bathrooms of the opposite sex? Victim! Victim! Victim!

This is what America has come to. President Obama goes to the penitentiary and consoles criminals. Black Lives Matters objects to the incarceration of crack dealers that were destroying black communities. Bernie Sanders runs a national campaign based entirely on victimhood. And Donald Trump is called a racist because he believes that illegal aliens are illegal. Sorry Donald, in today's America they are victims. 

Weep for America.

The Failures of Liberalism

Never have the failures of Liberalism been more apparent and never have Liberals been more oblivious. 

Pick an issue, any issue:

Yesterday a Russian war plane threatened a U.S. navy ship. This after Obama and Democrat presidential front runner Hillary Clinton confidently announced a "Russian Reset." Which meant the following: the opposite of whatever George Bush did. Apparently Putin believed the reset meant he could humiliate America at will. Think also: Crimea. It was President Obama who smugly chided Mitt Romney that "the 70s wants its foreign policy back." Maybe someday a journalist will ask Obama if his policy toward Russia was a mistake. But don't count on the question being asked or Obama coughing this one up.  

Obama and his political sycophants passed a sweeping reform of the U.S. health care system promising that 1) you could keep your health care plan and 2) health care premiums for the average family would decrease by $2500. Of course, you could not keep your health care plan and, of course, premiums went up. They continue to go up unchecked. Given that track record alone Obama should now be back in Chicago tending his garden and collecting a high six figure salary serving on the board of a "non-profit." But one of the defining characteristics of Liberalism is that there is never accountability for failure. Never. 

There is no area touched by Liberals that is not made worse. In places where Liberals rule unchecked, the disasters are unmitigated. Speaking of Chicago - Obama's adopted hometown - Liberal policies there have resulted in unrelenting black-on-black violence rivaling ethnic tribal warfare in Africa. The school system run by union toadies is beyond dysfunctional. And public sector pensions have brought the city close to bankruptcy. 

But because Liberalism has co-opted the American media there is no accountability. 

The Democrat Party is Now Governed by Black Lives Matter

Alternate Title: The Pain of Bill Clinton

“You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.” (former President William Jefferson Clinton shouting down Black Lives Matter protesters)


It is hard to feel sorry for Bill Clinton. But just for a moment, feel sorry for him. The Democrat Party is no longer his party. His signature achievements, NAFTA, welfare reform, anti-crime legislation, have all been repudiated by his successors. Heck, they have even been repudiated by his very own wife! No, it is not his party. Instead it is the party of Barack Obama, of Elizabeth Warren, of Bernie Sanders. But even more, it is the party of Al Sharpton and Black Lives Matter. 

The media has been obsessed with the story of the supposed disintegration of the Republican Party because of Donald Trump. But Trump is a faux Republican who could just as easily run as a Democrat. If Trump is not elected he will fade from politics and never ever have anything to do with either Republicans or politics again other than to make political contributions to whichever legislators hold sway over his real estate dealings. The Republican Party will mend, albeit with a stronger conservative bent. 

The Democrat Party has a bigger problem which is currently being ignored. The Sanders/Warren/Black Lives Matter wing of the Democrat Party represents an enormous existential threat. It is giving the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, heartache in a process that was supposed to be a spring training tune-up for a run against the Republican challenger. Somewhere along the way, however, things went awry. Fueled, no doubt, by Obama's tepid support for Hillary and his visceral hatred of Bill, an opening appeared. Obama probably never envisioned Bernie Sanders being the one to fill it. His choice was probably more along the lines of Joe Biden. Instead he got Sanders. Notwithstanding, the new Democrat axis has its own issues. Sanders is an aging socialist who favors massive new entitlement programs, the funding of which will hit the balance sheet of every American above the poverty line. Warren's demagoguery on Wall Street is undercut by her fabricated personal history and her Harvard Law elitism. And Black Lives Matter? Sorry, but there is simply too much video of BLM protesters shouting for dead cops. Yet this is who Democrats are aligning with. 

Yes Hillary will likely still get the nomination and has a good chance of being president. But she will not be taking her orders from Bill Clinton. Instead, she will be getting her marching orders from Black Lives Matter. 

The Most Dangerous Man in America

A dark cloud is gathering over America. Fueled by the rhetoric of one man, a dangerous horde has awakened. The malcontents, the lazy, the grievance-mongers and conspiracy theorists have emerged to express their collective discontent with their station in life and with a country they believe has not done enough FOR them. The man responsible is Bernie Sanders. The Sanders worldview is now infecting the American social discourse like a penicillin-resistant STD. 

Among the tenets of Sandersism are the following:

• Capital is static. If someone has a dollar, it is a dollar that you don't have. That is unfair.

• The Protocols of the Elders of Capitalism rule. They keep the average man from success.

• Despite having spent hundreds of billions of dollars on social welfare programs, America is a cruel country that has not done enough to help people.

• It is all a giant conspiracy being led by the oil companies, the insurance companies, the banks, and the pharmaceutical companies.

• Also part of the conspiracy: a group known as the billionaires. (With apparent exceptions for billionaires who give to Liberal causes.)

What Bernie Sanders has done is to empower people. But not to work harder. He empowers them to complain. He empowers them to envy others. He empowers them to blame everyone but themselves. Unfortunately, it is not just aging hippies from the 60s and other assorted bitter-clingers that Sanders speaks to. In addition, there is a new generation of clueless college students currently undergoing indoctrination by their professors who think Sanders has it right. And so this new generation will turn John F. Kennedy's words upside down and demand to know: What can America do for them.

For this, Sanders is to blame.

Let's Talk Trump

First a disclaimer: RedStateVT has - to date - not endorsed any Republican candidate for president. Our preferred candidate, former Vice President Dick Cheney, decided against running, no doubt due to health problems. So now let's take a look at the current front-runner, Donald Trump.

Here are a few things that give people - Republicans and Democrats alike - pause about Trump.

• First, he may not even be a real Republican. He used to be a Democrat, has given money to Democrats and has held policy positions that Democrats hold.
• Second, Trump says some seemingly outrageous things. Witness the uproar over his comments about immigration and abortion.
• Third, Trump has never held political office before.

Wow! With baggage like that one would think that Trump would have long ago (think Rick Perry) have fallen by the wayside and now be planning his next reality TV show. But - somehow - Trump has convinced MILLIONS of people to vote for him. We will opine in a minute on how that is likely to have happened, but first let's examine the items enumerated above: the reasons why Trump should NOT be where he is today.

Yes, it's true that Trump does not have that Republican feel about him. Neither the Republican-lite of a John McCain nor the Republican- noir of a Ted Cruz. Why it sort of reminds us of another candidate garnering millions of votes who - for his entire decades-long career - has eschewed the label of the party for which he is now running. Who could this be? If you said Comrade Bernie Sanders you would be correct! Sanders has labeled himself an Independent for as long as one can remember. Now he is running as a Democrat. The state-controlled media never questions him about this anomaly. So Trump's party affiliation apparently should not bother us any more than that of Sanders.

The Donald certainly gets a lot of attention whenever he speaks. His most outrageous comments were - apparently - on the subject of immigration. Trump dared to say - in the aftermath of a mass murder attack by Muslims - that maybe the country should reconsider its policy on Muslim immigration. For this apostasy, he was labeled a bigot and a hater. Apparently, suggesting that a country that had allowed the entry of 1.5 million Muslims since 9/11 and had seen an influx of tens of millions of Mexicans hit the pause button offended the Liberal elites. Of course, the record shows that Hillary Clinton once had a more aggressive position on immigration. Sorry, but rational minds (e.g. not Liberals) could hardly call Trump's comments controversial.

Finally, there is the question of Trump's experience. The only thing that Trump has been able to accomplish in his adult life is to grow his family fortune to north of a billion dollars. How did that happen? Meanwhile, Barack Obama rode to the presidency on a resume that includes the following: his brown skin, his experience as a community organizer and his abbreviated political career in which - when face with difficult decisions - he voted "present." No, previous political experience no longer matters. 

Trump's success is based on reading the political mood of the country. Namely, mass immigration, coupled with foreign policy appeasement is destroying America. Bill Clinton's advisers sold a deeply flawed candidate to the country with the tag line: It's the economy, stupid. Trump's tag line is: Make America Great Again. After almost eight years of Barack Obama, that sounds about right.