Covert Action

Intentions
Mayor Bob Filner of San Diego agreed to resign on Friday under a barrage of sexual harassment complaints, offering an apology to his accusers while still denying the allegations and blaming his downfall on “a combination of awkwardness and hubris.”  “I never intended to be a mayor who went out like this,” Mr. Filner said before a packed City Council chamber, drawing sporadic applause from some supporters in the audience. (NYT, 8/23/2013)

Prediction: Filner will be back on the political scene in nine months; first with a show on MSNBC, then with a new run for mayor of San Diego. In 2016 he will make the keynote address at the Democrat National Convention. 


Zeroed Out
Egypt today is a zero-sum game. We’d have preferred there be a democratic alternative. Unfortunately, there is none. The choice is binary: the country will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood or by the military. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/22/2013)

Krauthammer gets it exactly right. 


Sued Up
Currently, the U.S. Army doesn't provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery. But David Coombs, Pfc. Manning's attorney, indicated that he will sue the military if they don't make it available to his client at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. (WSJ, 8/22/2013)

Of course Chelsea's attorney will sue. He'll probably even win. The military is no longer the military of the Greatest Generation. Now - thanks to Liberals - it is a traveling circus. The Islamists don't even have to fight us anymore. All they have to do is wait. 


Rush to Judgment
During President Obama's wide-ranging interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo Friday, the president responded to a question about the "lack of action in Washington" with the claim that when it comes to shutting down the government to kill ObamaCare, his "Republican friends" tell him "privately" that they agree with him but are afraid of Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party. (Breitbart.com, 8/23/2013)

Rush actually talks about this a lot on his show: Obama's total obsession with him. Nary a week goes by but that Obama doesn't mention Limbaugh. To what end we cannot fathom.

Two Beaten Swords

Behavior Modification
Sixteen women, the latest a great-grandmother, have now stepped forward to accuse Mr. Filner, 70, a Democratic former congressman, of inappropriate behavior. Calls for his resignation have been piling up, including demands from national Democratic leaders and the entire City Council. (NYT, 8/19/2013)

So how does this work exactly? Is the Filner story part of the "War on Women?" Or is that strictly a Republican thing?


Nearly
An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. (NYT, 8/19/2013)

All scientists who support the finding of climate change caused by human activity vote Democrat and receive government funding. (RedStateVT, 8/19/2013)

(Readers are referred to Marc Morano's wonderful website ClimateDepot.com for the other side of the "settled science" of climate change.) 


Undeserving
Secretary of State John Kerry has "determined that the four State Department officials placed on administrative leave by Hillary Clinton" after Benghazi "do not deserve formal disciplinary action" and he has asked them to come back to work. (Breitbart.com, 8/20/2013)

Cynical yet? There are no consequences - none - in Liberal Land. 


Keyhole
The key political asset is the ability to sit in a room with four or five other people and have them accept your leadership.....Obama doesn’t have that. (Chris Matthews quoted in WashingtonFreeBeacon.com, 8/20/2013)

RedStateVT agrees with Chris Matthews. RedStateVT agrees with Chris Matthews? Is it Backwards Day?

By the way, does Matthews now agree that Mitt Romney, a former governor, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and CEO, would have been a more effective leader than BHO? Just wondering. 

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Persuasion
The court found that states are “pre-empted” from regulating safety by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which made safety a federal responsibility. The Legislature had sought to shut the plant by denying Entergy a “certificate of public good” that is required for all power plants. But the court said Vermont was unpersuasive when it said that the reasons for the denial were that the reactor was too costly and unreliable, and that closing it would encourage the development of renewable energy from wind or wood. (NYT, 8/14/2013)

Reliable, cheap power survives in Vermont...at least for the present. Do not underestimate the desire and creativity of moonbats when it comes to returning humanity to the Stone Age. 


Ideology
Do liberals have any arguments for their idiotic ideas besides calling their opponents "racist"? 

The two big public policies under attack by the left this week are "stop-and-frisk" policing and voter ID laws. Democrats denounce both policies as racist. I'm beginning to suspect they're getting lazy in their arguments. 
...
Yes, Democrat Bob Filner can pat down his female employees, but cops can't pat down suspected criminals. (AnnCoulter.com, 8/14/2013)

RedStateVT had the best line about Filner: He should issue a ringing endorsement of abortion in all its permutations in order to save his career. Coulter is a close second. 


Obamacare Lies
This fall, Indiana's new online health-insurance marketplace will present some tough choices for consumers like John Nowak, who will be able to pick a plan from his current insurer—or go for one that includes his primary-care doctor.

That is because Mr. Nowak's current insurer won't include Indiana's biggest health-care provider, 19-hospital Indiana University Health, in the plans it sells on the consumer exchange. If Mr. Nowak buys a new exchange plan from WellPoint Inc.'s WLP -0.51% Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, he will generally have to pay the cost out of his own pocket if he sees the system's doctors, because they aren't in the network. (WSJ, 8/14/2013)

"If you like your current insurance coverage you can keep it." 
President Barack H. Obama

Counting the Score

Sign Post
Mr. Biden’s attendance is a sign, Democratic officials here say, that he wants Iowa voters to know he is very much considering another White House bid in 2016. (NYT, 8/11/2013)

Run Joe, run!

In keeping with our practice of supporting the novelty candidacy of Democrats for office (see Sharpton, Rev Al; Weiner, Anthony; Spitzer, Eliot) RedStateVT urges Joe to get in the race. It's not too early, especially with Hillary out there grabbing the headlines. (Benghazi? What's Benghazi?)


Limited
In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.
...
The discovery is likely to fuel continuing Republican efforts this fall to discredit the president’s health care law. (NYT, 8/12/2013)

Republicans do not have to do anything to discredit the law. That is happening organically.


Two By Four
Two decisions Monday, one by a federal judge in New York and the other by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., were powerful signals that the pendulum has swung away from the tough-on-crime policies of a generation ago. Those policies have been denounced as discriminatory and responsible for explosive growth in the prison population. (NYT, 8/12/2013)

And yet somehow, magically almost, crime is down. Liberals just do not get this whole cause-and-effect thing.


Sympathies
Whenever I write sympathetically about religion, I get bombarded by tweets and notes from readers who normally agree with me but cannot abide by the idea that religious belief should be seen as intellectually serious.
...
Getting lambasted doesn’t bother me. On the contrary, citizens talking back to the purveyors of opinion is a glorious aspect of free speech. But my correspondents underscore the existence of a strong anti-religious current within a segment of the liberal community that is both an important political fact and a potential problem for progressives. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 8/4/2013)

Loyal readers know that Dionne Jr. is often a subject of our ridicule. Today we will give him a tip o' the hat for calling out Liberals on their animosity toward religion. We saw this first hand recently at a local lecture. The topic was a theistic view of the big bang theory and the speaker was a local professor who was also a minister. His presentation was wonderful. He was clear about where his beliefs lay; he was scientific in his approach; and he fervently welcomed a discussion on opposing views. Such openness and candor which drew scorn from the atheists in the audience who were more interest in scoring cheap shots then in having an intellectual discussion.


How Bob Filner Can Save His Political Career
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s endurance in the face of mounting sexual harassment accusations may be driven by his need to get out of an even bigger problem: a federal criminal investigation that has received little attention from the national media. (Dailycaller.com, 8/9/2013)

It is very simple, actually. All Filner has to do to escape sexual harassment charges is to issue a press release reaffirming his iron-clad, 100% support of abortion. All abortion including late-term abortion, partial birth abortion, abortion for minors, abortion for minors without parental notification. Feminists and Liberals will rally to his defense.