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.

Deep in the Purse

Red Letter Day
As Western powers pressed the Syrian authorities to permit United Nations inspectors to examine the site of a claimed poison gas attack outside Damascus, France said on Thursday that outside powers should respond “with force” if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed.
...
The notion of “red lines” was initially introduced last August by President Obama, who said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would radically alter American calculations about the war.

At the time, Mr. Obama declared that the use or deployment of chemical or biological weapons would “change my calculus” and “change my equation.” (NYT, 8/22/2013)

The Middle East is a cesspool. Bush went in because of 9/11. We get that. Beyond that, however, we believe that the U.S. should stay out other than to back Israel, the only democracy in the region. Obama's hesitancy to get involved is understandable. Give weapons to the "freedom fighters" and they will turn around and kill Americans at the first opportunity. But Obama was the one who said "red line." He created the current problem which has America looking weak because he will not enforce a line that he himself drew in the sand. He is a foreign policy rube.


Soiled
A federal judge sharply rebuked the National Security Agency in 2011 for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a program that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic e-mails and other Internet communications of Americans each year, according to a secret ruling made public on Wednesday. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

Let's play a game. Substitute 2007 for 2011 in the above excerpt. How many times would the name of President George Bush appear in this article? If you guessed "more than five times" you would probably be right. 

Now guess how many times the name President Barack Obama appears. 

Correct. Zero.


Chelsea Mourning
Bradley Manning, sentenced to 35 years in military prison for the biggest breach of classified U.S. documents in U.S. history, said in a statement on Thursday he is female and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea.

"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female," Manning, 25, said in the statement read on NBC News' "Today" show.

"Given the way that I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible," Manning said. "I also request that starting today you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun."

Manning's lawyer David Coombs said on the program that he expected Manning to get a pardon from President Barack Obama. (NYT,8/22/2013)

Where to begin? First, perhaps, a rare RedStateVT correction, albeit provisional. Yesterday, we predicted a pardon of Chelsea Manning by President Hillary Clinton. Turns out that Obama might beat her to it.

Next we wonder how taxpayers feel about the fact that they will now be on the hook for Manning's hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. (That's what they call it, right?)

The world is upside down, my friends. Upside down. 


Usual Suspects
In the past, for example, Mr. Spitzer has railed against offshore tax shelters, portraying them as dubious practices of the financial elite.

On his Current TV news talk show last fall, he wagged his finger at “offshore shelters and other games that are suspect,” as he questioned the personal finances of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate.

But as of 2011, the last year for which public documents are available, the Spitzer family trust invested in at least four funds that are incorporated offshore.

That strategy has insulated the trust from taxes it would have owed for investing in certain kinds of domestic funds. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

Proof (once again) that there are two sets of Liberal standards. 

Like It or Not

Born Again
But even in Dallas, Mr. Cruz could not escape questions stemming from a report in The Dallas Morning News on Monday that because he was born in Calgary, Alberta, he held both Canadian and American citizenship. He was forced before the rally to reiterate to reporters eager to discuss the matter that he had “been an American since birth.”

On Monday, Mr. Cruz — the child of an American mother and a Cuban-born father who moved to Texas from Canada when he was 4 — renounced his Canadian citizenship. “Nothing against Canada,” he said. But as a United States senator, he added, “I believe I should be only an American.” It may not be quite the same as printing up signs or fashioning a presidential campaign Web site, but the announcement was widely seen by analysts as another step leading to his entry in the 2016 Republican primary race.

It is a novel episode in the annals of presidential politics. Looming over his prospects are questions about his eligibility to run, given his place of birth. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

The New York Times suddenly and curiously develops an interest in where a prospective presidential candidate was born. Cynical yet?


Implausible Denial
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson denied Tuesday that her paper has a liberal bias, despite the fact that her current and former public editors both criticized the paper’s left-leaning viewpoint. (Dailycaller.com, 8/20/2013)

RedStateVT has a conservative bent. Strongly conservative. Maybe even fanatically conservative.

There, that wasn't so hard. Why does the Times refuse to come clean?


Leaky
The Army soldier who leaked more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and diplomatic cables while working as an intelligence analyst was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, 25, who gave reams of classified information to WikiLeaks, faced up to 90 years in prison. He was credited with 1,294 days already served and was and be dishonorably discharged (sic). He could be eligible for parole before he reaches the age of 40. (Foxnews.com, 8/21/2013)

Admittedly we lost interest in the Manning case once the death penalty was taken off the table. But here's a prediction. President Hillary Clinton will find a way to get Manning out on parole during her first term. At the end of her second term, she will award him the Presidential Medal of Honor.

Don't doubt RedStateVT.

(And we sincerely hope that Manning uses his time productively. Like perhaps by working out his gender identity issues.)

Ghost of a Chance

Personalities
Andrei A. Piontovsky, a political analyst, said the cancellation underscored a visceral personal enmity between the two leaders. “Putin openly despises your president, forgive my bluntness,” he said.

He added that Russia sensed weakness in Mr. Obama that could lead to more dangerous confrontations. (NYT, 8/7/2013)

Liberals were forever bemoaning the way Republican presidents like Reagan and Bush (41/43) conducted foreign policy. Cowboys, they were said to be and not in any good way. Well cowboys or not, at least they were respected and even feared a bit by America's enemies and rivals. And that is much better (and safer) for America then to be perceived as weak.


Granted
Colonel Lind reduced the maximum sentence facing Private Manning to 90 years from 136 years on Tuesday, granting part of a request from the defense team and acknowledging the similarities between some of Private Manning’s charges. (NYT, 8/8/2013)

More proof that the military has gone soft.


Thought Process
"No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot," Obama said. (Huffington Post, 8/9/2013)

Well thank God for that. The bigger tragedy, of course, is that any American would ever even consider Snowden anything other than a traitor. 


Hard Rein
Warning of the fiscal danger if New York City fails to rein in its spiraling pension and health care costs, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday challenged his would-be successors to take a tough line in negotiations with the city’s unions, while worrying aloud that whoever is elected will be too beholden to labor. 
....
Over the course of Mr. Bloomberg’s three terms in office, the city’s annual pension costs have increased from $1.4 billion to more than $8 billion as a result of raises, pension sweeteners and a growing number of retirees, while health care spending has swelled to $6.3 billion. The city also has $85 billion in unfunded liabilities for future retiree health care benefits. (NYT, 8/6/2013)

On the way out the door, Bloomberg cautions about New York City becoming the next Detroit. Which begs the question why he was not more effective during his three terms. Prediction: NYC's next mayor will cave to the unions. 

Final Footsteps

Innocence Lost
RedStateVT returned last weekend to our childhood town for a brief visit. What we saw saddened us deeply, but reflects the path of the country. The school playground which once teemed with children of all ages playing ball and attending rec department camps was empty on a sunny summer day. Now it is surrounded by a locked chain link fence. "No Playground Use Without the Consent of the Board of Education" reads the sign. 

Thank you, lawyers. 

Another sign enumerated prohibited activities. In English and Spanish. And so America is now a bi-lingual country. Generations of Poles, Italians, Irish, Germans and every other nationality came to this country, learned the language and assimilated, even as they remembered and celebrated their ethnic heritage. Alas, in the twisted name of diversity, that was not good enough. 

Thank you, Liberals.


Will and Power
World order is maintained by American power and American will. Take that away and you don’t get tranquillity. You get chaos. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/1/2013)

The shortest and most devastating condemnation of the Obama foreign policy doctrine that you will see. Ever. 


War Baby
We apologize for being late in our reaction to the Bradley Manning verdict. Here then are our thoughts based on the New York Times article of July 30th: 

In early 2010, he covertly downloaded gun-camera videos, battle logs and tens of thousands of State Department cables onto flash drives while lip-syncing the words to Lady Gaga songs.

Shouldn't this alone have been enough to find Manning guilty?

He spent much of his childhood alone, playing video games or huddled in front of a computer when he was living with his mother in Haverfordwest, Wales.

RedStateVT has spoken repeatedly of the dangers of video games. Here is more proof.

While serving on a base east of Baghdad, he was reprimanded twice, including once for assaulting an officer, and he complained in e-mails of being “regularly ignored by his superiors” unless they needed him to fetch more coffee.

The "wussification" of the armed forces continues. Poor Manning was ignored by higher-ups. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be in the army?

Private Manning rebelled quietly, friends said, wearing a dog tag that said “Humanist” and keeping a toy fairy wand on his desk.

Shouldn't this alone have been enough to find Manning guilty? Wait...did we already say that?

And finally, the New York Times editors weigh in with a typically weak-kneed verdict on Manning. Yes, what he did was technically wrong, but he should not be punished too severely. Maybe a slap on the wrist. (OK, we made that last one up.)

Physical Manifestation

Liberal Hate Speech
Do you think Wyoming wants a fresh face? Cheney is extremely fresh, having lived in the Virginia suburbs until recently. In her YouTube announcement, she basically argued that her genes were from Wyoming, where her grandmother was the first female deputy sheriff of Natrona County. She frequently points out that her great-grandmother was a settler who walked across the state in her bare feet. If we could get a re-enactment of that, it could make this a campaign for the ages.

Meanwhile, her supportive father has agreed to take part in Wyoming’s annual antelope hunt competition with Colorado. Exciting things happen when Dick Cheney goes off to shoot wild critters. (Gail Collins, NYT, 7/17/2013)

With snide female New York Times Liberal columnist Maureen Dowd claiming the hate Bush space, snide female New York Times columnist Gail Collins goes for the hate Cheney space (see the pattern?) Collins takes exception to Liz Cheney running for office in Wyoming after living in Virginia. Which brings to mind a former female senator and later Secretary of State who, having decided on a career in politics, shopped around for a state to run in, eventually settling upon New York. What was her name again? 

Of course, Collins wrote extensively about that at the time. Or maybe she didn't.

As to her reference to Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Well shame on Collins. That is despicable.


Liberal Policies in Action
Detroit has become the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy.

State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr on Thursday asked a federal judge permission to place the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. (Washington Post, 7/18/2013)

Here is what you need to know: the last seven (count em, seven) mayors of Detroit have been Democrats. Dating back to 1962. That's 1962. 


Touty
President Barack Obama on Thursday will tout the benefits of the Affordable Care Act to a skeptical public during a speech at the White House as part of an effort to build support for the health law in the face of continued Republican efforts to block it. (WSJ, 7/17/2013)

We wonder. Will the president's speech address the following?:

The letter was unusually harsh. Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, it was really intended for President Barack Obama. The letter was not from Mr. Obama's GOP adversaries but from the presidents of three powerful unions.

On July 12, James Hoffa of the Teamsters (1.4 million members), Joseph Hansen of the Food and Commercial Workers (1.3 million members) and D. Taylor of UNITE-HERE (200,000 members, mostly culinary and hotel workers) wrote to complain about the president's Affordable Care Act. (Karl Rove, WSJ, 7/17/2013)


Pursuit
The military judge in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning decided on Thursday not to drop a charge accusing Private Manning of “aiding the enemy.” 
......
The government has said it will not pursue the death penalty against Private Manning. (NYT, 7/18/2013)

So basically, good news/bad news.

Full Bore

Lately
The United States came “late” to efforts to find a political settlement to the war in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, as the crisis there deepened with the political uncertainty in neighboring Turkey.....his remarks carried the implication that the Obama administration had moved too slowly in its first term to seek a negotiated political solution to a conflict that erupted more than two years ago and turned into a war. (NYT, 6/3/2013)

Usually it is politicians up for re-election who attempt to distance themselves from the policies of an unpopular president. In this case, it is a member - and a new one at that - of the president's cabinet.


Secrets
The court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, whose secret release of a vast archive of military and diplomatic materials put WikiLeaks into an international spotlight, opened here Monday with dueling portrayals of a traitor who endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers and of a principled protester motivated by a desire to help society who carefully selected which documents to release.
....
Inside the courtroom on Monday, as Private Manning sat quietly, David Coombs, his defense lawyer, told the judge that his client had been “young, naïve, but good-intentioned” and that he had tried to ensure that the roughly 700,000 documents he released would not cause harm.

“He was selective,” Mr. Coombs said. “He had access to literally hundreds of millions of documents as an all-source analyst, and these were the documents that he released. And he released these documents because he was hoping to make the world a better place.” (NYT, 6/3/2013)

Well that changes everything for us. Had we suspected for just one moment that Manning - in releasing only 700,000 documents - was being so selective we would never have been so harsh on him. And besides, he just wanted to make the whole wide world a better place with more harmony and other good stuff. 

For more Liberal wisdom on one of America's foremost traitors, see below.


Allegations
Rather than agree to what strikes me as more than adequate punishment, prosecutors insist on trying to convict him under the 1917 Espionage Act as, essentially, an enemy of the state. Which I don’t believe he is.

I say this even though Manning is allegedly responsible for the biggest unauthorized release of classified documents in the nation’s history. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 6/3/2013)

WaPo's Robinson is conflicted on the Bradley Manning case. How do we know? Well he tells us so himself. It's that old Liberal compassion for criminals. Ultimately Robinson comes down in favor of 20 years with credit for time served. That's certainly more compassionate than we would recommend. Namely, the firing squad. 

The Emperor's Morale

College Daze
Oberlin College, known as much for ardent liberalism as for academic excellence, canceled classes on Monday and convened a “day of solidarity” after the latest in a monthlong string of what it called hate-related incidents and vandalism. (NYT, 3/4/2013)

Another college president takes the bait. 

We owe a huge debt to Ann Coulter for (among many other things) educating us about how these "college hate crimes" play out. Here's how it goes: somebody spots racist graffiti on campus; the college president shuts classes down and declares this a 'teaching moment'; the national press picks the story up and laments that America is still a racist country; some time later the whole thing is found out to be a hoax, but the media has moved on by that point. 

Let's say at Oberlin, however, that an underclassman or two or three really were responsible. So Oberlin's president thinks it is a good idea to lock 2800 students out of class because of three knuckleheads? It is the classic example of "the terrorists win."


Intangibles
“I don’t see how ‘I’m fine with the sequester’ differs from ‘I’m fine with slower growth and continued high unemployment, or longer delays at airports, fewer Head Start slots, furloughs among civilian D.O.D. folks’ and so on,” said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., referring to the Department of Defense. Mr. Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, said that as the cuts became real, they would “deeply discredit” those who foster the idea that government spending is inherently wasteful and that there is no tangible cost to reducing it. (NYT, 3/3/2013)

This nonsense about how the sequester (Obama's idea) is going to cause "longer delays at airports", gut national defense or make the streets unsafe is maddening. It is a pure Democrat partisan scare tactic. If Dems don't like the cuts as mandated, change them. Scale back the holiday party at the State Department, reduce the travel and conference budget of the GSA and don't replace retiring federal workers. Another problem solved by RedStateVT.


Hard Time
America keeps too many secrets, and much more that government does should be transparent and declassified. But that is not a decision for a Private First Class to make. He faces a sentence of 20 years on the charges to which he pleaded guilty, and the military is planning more serious charges such as aiding the enemy. He is not a hero, despite the attempts by the anti-antiterror left to make him one. He will learn that the hard way in prison. (WSJ, 3/3/2013)

A Wall Street Journal editorial on traitor Bradley Manning echoes RedStateVT!


Comeback Kids
Congressional Republicans have had quite a comeback. In January, the GOP was forced to vote for a major tax hike with zero spending cuts. Now it is President Obama who has been forced to accept spending cuts with no tax hike. Who says divided government doesn’t work? (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 3/4/2013)

The New York Times and MSNBC (among others) have been crowing about 'deep divisions' among Republicans, 'a party that has lost its way' and other predictions of the end of the Republican Party. (Democrats, by contrast, are apparently fully unified on every conceivable issue.) Helpfully, these and other representatives of the Legitimate Media offer useful prescriptions for curing Republicans of their malaise. All of which involves them acting more like ...Democrats. Anyway, Thiessen makes a good point above. Don't count the Republican Party out yet.

In The News

Society Decays
Synopsis of the movie COYOTE UGLY: Piper Perabo stars in this musical romantic romp about a songwriter who tries to make it in Manhattan. When the music business door slams in her face, she takes a job in a rowdy bar where female bartenders whip the crowd into a frenzy with sexy shenanigans.  

When we happened by COYOTE UGLY on television recently, we saw a scene of scantily clad females dancing on top of a bar while being doused with buckets of water. Here’s the kicker: the movie aired from 1-3 pm on the ABC Family channel. 

We can picture the network programming executive sitting at home during school vacation week viewing this “musical romantic romp” with his twelve year old son and ten year old daughter. It would indeed be a heart-warming scene. 

And so society decays. 

Immunization
Rush Limbaugh reminded us a few days back of the - we'll call it - awkwardness - of Michelle Obama announcing the Oscar for best picture for ARGO. ARGO being a movie about the rescue of American embassy personnel from Iran in 1979. Which of course brings to mind (but not for Obama and his supporters) the events in Benghazi where embassy personnel were NOT rescued. Awkward indeed, but only if you have been paying attention.

Well here's another one. We were flipping through a year-end issue of Newsweek recently (yes, it is still being published) and got to the section which recounts notable deaths during the past twelve months. The obituaries were actually remembrances of the famous person by other famous persons. And then we saw it: Ambassador Christopher Stevens was eulogized by....Hillary Clinton. We found it....awkward. 

It is almost as though the Obama administration is seeking to immunize itself from further criticism over what it did or did not do in its biggest foreign policy debacle.

Happening
Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he released the information to help enlighten the public about “what happens and why it happens” and to “spark a debate about foreign policy.” (NYT, 2/18/2013)

An Army private saw his role as serving to initiate a national debate about U.S. foreign policy. It's what happens when Liberals 'dumb down' the military. 

On a positive note, the traitor has now confessed. 

Life sentence.