Chuck Schumer Opposes Obama's Iran Deal. Is He a Racist?

Witless
Jon Stewart Signs Off From ‘Daily Show’ With Wit and Sincerity (New York Times headline, 8/7/2015)

The New York Times writes its eighty-second article on Jon Stewart quitting his job. So far, one article on Planned Parenthood representatives selling fetal organs.

Today's articles include:
-Jon Stewart and ‘The Daily Show’: 9 Essential Moments
-Jon Stewart Signs Off From ‘Daily Show’ With Wit and Sincerity
-The TV Watch: Jon Stewart Cements His Legacy in ‘Daily Show’ Finale
-Nocera: When Jon Stewart Took Down Jim Cramer

In fairness, however, there is one article among the eighty-two that we like and from which we will quote extensively (happily entitled - Jon Stewart, Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness):

Many liberals, but not conservatives, believe there is an important asymmetry in American politics. These liberals believe that people on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum are fundamentally different. Specifically, they believe that liberals are much more open to change than conservatives, more tolerant of differences, more motivated by the public good and, maybe most of all, smarter and better informed.

The evidence for these beliefs is not good. Liberals turn out to be just as prone to their own forms of intolerance, ignorance and bias. But the beliefs are comforting to many. They give their bearers a sense of intellectual and even moral superiority. And they affect behavior. They inform the condescension and self-righteousness with which liberals often treat conservatives. They explain why many liberals have greeted Tea Partiers and other grass-roots conservatives with outsize alarm. They explain why liberals fixate on figures such as Sarah Palin and Todd Akin, who represent the worst that many liberals are prepared to see in conservatives. (Gerard Alexander, New York Times, 8/7/2015)


Mumsy
Challenging Hillary Clinton, who now describes herself in appearances as the grandma candidate, we have the 73-year-old Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders. Or if not Bernie, maybe the 72-year-old veep Joe Biden, or—let no one doubt it—the silver surfer, John Kerry (71). (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 8/7/2015)

The Republican party fields an African American, a woman, a couple of Hispanics, and an Indian American. The Democrat party field consists entirely of old white men. How come RedStateVT is the only one talking about this?


Not Working
U.S. economy added 215,000 jobs in July; unemployment still 5.3% (New York Times headline, 8/7/2015)

The Obama recovery. No U.S. president in history has ever so completely evaded responsibility for the economy like Obama. Seven years in and he is still getting away with blaming Bush while the Liberal media never once asks about the efficacy of his policies. When Hillary is elected, she too will blame Bush.


Road Blocks
Unions may not matter much in American workplaces anymore but unions represent the main political obstacle to just about every kind of reform: School choice. Entitlements. Pensions. Health care. (Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 8/7/2015)

Well, unions and their political lapdogs, the Democrat party.


Skipper
... Mr. Obama escaped the long, hot August days in Washington for Martha’s Vineyard, as he has every year but one since he became president. In 2012, Mr. Obama skipped his vacation on the island, the affluent summer destination south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, as he waged a re-election campaign in which he attacked the wealth of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. (New York Times, 8/8/2015)

So the New York Times unwittingly admits that the Democrat party's "attack the rich" strategy is a ruse. Thanks for the clarification.

Meeting Of Moderate Muslims Cancelled Due to Lack of Interest

Asked and Answered
Many ask, Is there something about Islam that leads inexorably to violence, terrorism and subjugation of women?

The question arises because fanatical Muslims so often seem to murder in the name of God, from the 2004 Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people to the murder of hostages at a cafe in Sydney, Australia, last month. (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, 1/8/2015)

Yes, that horrible Madrid train bombing and the Sydney cafe shooting. Were there other incidents where fanatical Muslims "seemed" to murder in the name of Islam? Kristof does not say, but we were sure there were others, some even worse. 

So we googled it. 

At the top of the list was an event that happened in 2001 wherein some Muslims "seemed" to hijack several planes, crash them into buildings and kill 3000 Americans.  That was probably the worst one. But there were others including Army base shootings, various attacks on embassies, assorted beheadings, etc. 

Maybe Kristof is saving those for a latter column?


Squares
Lawyers for abortion clinics squared off with Texas state attorneys in a federal appeals court here on Wednesday, arguing over the constitutionality of stringent abortion clinic rules that would force more than half the remaining abortion providers in Texas to close. (New York Times, 1/8/2015)

Liberals want to regulate every aspect of your life: taxing your soda, banning plastic bags, forcing you to buy health insurance, etc. There is no regulation they will not consider...unless it affects your God-given right to have an abortion, wherever and whenever you want.


Life during Wartime
Past some point, it is feckless to call these events “incidents.” They are acts in a war. The people committing them think so and they say so. Why don’t we?
...
One may assume that many, if not most, of the thousands in Paris’s streets over the Hebdo massacre believed in 2013 that Edward Snowden was a hero for stealing software from the U.S. National Security Agency, the world’s primary surveillance instrument for identifying terrorists before they kill.

Here we have two symbolic and broadly embraced beliefs about the West’s posture toward the reality of fundamentalist Islamic terror—that Edward Snowden is a hero and “I am Charlie.” They are incompatible. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 1/8/2015)

The best commentary we read on the attack on Charlie Hebdo by Muslim extremists. 

Yonder Tomb

Depths
In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages — invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation — to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington.

The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression. And their source is surprising. The effort is being led by national Democrats and their state party organizations — not, in most instances, by the shadowy and often untraceable political action committees that typically employ such provocative messages. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

There is nothing that Democrats will not stoop to in order to win elections. They are a despicable and disgraceful party.


Eat More Pot
Since recreational marijuana sales began here in January, edible pot has become a top seller at dispensaries across Colorado, a sweet and tasty way for wary first-timers to sample marijuana, or for people to get high without coughing and reeking of smoke. But a spate of accidental ingestions by children and adults, and two deaths tied to edibles this year, have prompted widespread calls to clamp down on the edible corner of the marijuana market. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

Liberals have unleashed the genie. Society will pay the price. And then there is this deranged moonbat:

“They clearly did not consider why we created edibles in the first place,” she said. “We believe wholeheartedly that this is a medicine.”


This is a Liberal's Brain on Drugs
But it has long been known that, with the brain developing into the mid-20s, young people who smoke early and often are more likely to have learning and mental health problems. Now researchers suggest existing studies are no longer sufficient. Much of what’s known is based on studies conducted years ago with much less powerful pot. 
....
High-THC marijuana is associated with paranoia and psychosis, according to a June article in The New England Journal of Medicine. 
....
Emergency room visits related to marijuana have nearly doubled, from 66,000 in 2004 to 129,000 in 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
....
What is already known is that in casual users, THC can disrupt focus, working memory, decision making and motivation for about 24 hours. “The fact that we can see these structural effects in the brain could indicate that the effects of THC are longer lasting than we previously thought,” said Dr. Gilman, an instructor in psychology at Harvard’s medical school. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

Mere weeks after the New York Times goes on a week-long high touting marijuana they give us this sober report. Perhaps the editors forgot their previous glorification of dope. That is what happens with dope. 


Every
Foreign-policy planners and national leaders in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing get up every day and do one thing: think about how they can diminish or destabilize the U.S. Our leadership got up every day for six years and thought about . . . wind farms. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 10/29/2014)

Exactly right. Liberals cannot be trusted with keeping the country safe. 

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. 

Desire for Gain

Seeing Red
Having stripped the Washington Redskins of patent protection could the next target of Obama's out-of-control patent office be....RedStateVT? 

If it happens, RedStateVT will respond exactly as the Redskins have:

Redskins attorney Bob Raskopf said that no thought has been given to changing the professional football team's name in the wake of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's decision Wednesday to revoke six trademarks to the team's name and logo. The USPTO ruled that the team's name disparaged Native Americans and was therefore impermissible under federal trademark law.

"Zero. It's not happening," Raskopf told the Washington Examiner Thursday when asked if there had been any discussion at all on finding an alternate moniker, if only to spare the team from legal and public relations problems related to continuing to fight to retain the name. (Washington Examiner, 6/19/2014)


No Talking
As we have noted, the Liberal defense of the collapse of Iraq under President Obama is that anyone who supported the war cannot pass judgement. So let's use the same argument on Obama. Given the bankruptcy of Solyndra, Obama cannot talk about solar energy. How's that?


Anaerobic
As to the American people now pushing his approval below 40%, Barack Obama entered office with more good will than any president since John F. Kennedy. If the Obama presidency has run out of aerobic capacity 2½ years from the finish line, it is because of Mr. Obama's own decisions. He did this to himself. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 6/18/2014)

The response Democrats try to use - heck, Obama uses it himself - is that his failures are due to Republican obstructionism. Which, of course, just confirms his ineptitude.


Above Average
All of the 470 senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs received annual ratings over the last four years indicating that they were “fully successful” in their jobs or even better, according to data released at a congressional hearing on Friday, despite delays in processing disability compensation claims and problems with veterans’ access to the department’s sprawling health care system. (New York Times, 6/20/2014)

In a statement, Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders who oversees veterans affairs in the Senate said...... 

Just kidding! Sanders has nothing to say. 


Taxing
Why shouldn't taxpayers be allowed to use the same excuses the IRS, and other elements of our imperial government, deploy when they get in trouble?  Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) aims to make it happen with his "The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act."  "Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama Administration uses," Stockman declared... (Breitbart.com, 6/20/2014)

This is actually pretty funny!


She Was Once a Poor Black Child
Warren also recounted her struggles, painting a vivid picture of life as a harried parent juggling a career by reading from her book about the time she forgot toast in a toaster oven until it caught fire. And when she tossed the flaming slices toward the sink, one hit the curtains.

Warren noted that today, toaster ovens turn off automatically before flames erupt. "Government agencies ensure basic safety of nearly everything offered for sale," she noted, "but in 2007, no government agency stopped the sale of exploding mortgages." (Burlington Free Press, 6/20/2014)

So in Elizabeth Warren's world we have the government to thank for mitigating the national tragedy of toaster fire casualties. 

Maybe she should stick to describing her time on the reservation.

And what is it about rich white women who are running for president always telling us how tough their lives were?

How to Waterboard a Terrorist

Despicable Him
Sanders, who chairs the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, has been one of the most outspoken defenders of the VA against allegations of misconduct. When asked about reports of multiple deaths related to long wait times at the VA healthcare system, Sanders told CNN: “People die every day.” (Freebeacon.com, 5/23/2014)

Thanks to the Washington Free Beacon for reminding us of this despicable comment by 2016 presidential candidate - and Vermont's own disgrace - Colonel (Bernie) Sanders. Of course, no Vermont media is reporting the Colonel's remarks. This is why you have RedStateVT. 

Here are a couple other of our favorite recent comments about the Obama administration's V.A. scandal:

This is precisely why President Obama’s VA scandal is the most serious and damaging of his presidency. It is the Obama administration in sum and in miniature: incompetent management of a health system, defended by crude media manipulation. (Michael Gerson, Washington Post, 5/22/2014)

As recently as November 2011, Paul Krugman praised the VA as a triumph of "socialized medicine," as he put it: "What's behind this success? Crucially, the V.H.A. is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it's free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense." Ah, yes, the VA lacks the evil profit motive. (Wall Street Journal, 5/23/2014)


GM is Alive and Osama bin Laden is Dead
"We just went through the opening of the 9/11 museum. I know they will come after us if they can. I see the intelligence. Terror is not down in the world. It is up. Both deaths, injuries in many, many different places. Al Qaeda has metastasized. The question becomes how do we prevent an attack in this country." 

Guess who said this?

Give up?

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein!  (As quoted in Daniel Henninger's column in the Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2014) 

And from the same column, there is this:

Here's a save-our-girls conundrum. If you asked their parents if they would waterboard a Boko Haram captive to find where the girls are, what do you think they'd say?

Here's an idea. Let's ask Bernie Sanders!

Human Concerns

Stated
White House officials acknowledged that each state had to make the decision that was best for its consumers.

“States have different populations with unique needs, and it is up to the insurance commissioner and health insurance companies to decide which insurance products can be offered to existing customers next year,” the administration said in a statement. (NYT, 11/21/2013)

Translation: It is now not Obama's fault if states choose not to allow insureds to keep their plans. 

Clarification: "White House officials acknowledged that each state had to make the decision that was best for its consumers on this temporary issue. On all other health care issues, President Obama will decide what is best for consumers."


Shared
Democrats have been sharing “Affordable Care Act success stories” of ailing constituents getting health coverage for the first time, people being allowed to keep their adult children on their insurance, or consumers finding markedly cheaper insurance plans on the exchanges. (NYT, 11/21/2013)

Let's be absolutely clear. The one and only reason that anyone is going to find "cheaper insurance plans on the exchanges" is because they will qualify for a subsidy. 

That is it. 

Period.


Bailed
After spending more than a decade behind bars for the murder of a teenage girl in Greenwich, Conn., Michael C. Skakel was ordered free on bail on Thursday. (NYT, 11/21/2013)

The (Kennedy) War on Women continues.....


Flowed
Ponder, though, a partial list of the public-policy decisions that have flowed steadily out of the Obama administration and directly into a job-starved U.S. economy:

The no-decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and its union jobs; the 2,000-page regulatory law draped in 2010 across the entire financial sector; the shutdown in 2010 and then the slow-walking of offshore oil drilling; siccing the EPA on the utilities industry and the National Labor Relations Board on all industry; a 2010 FCC decision to regulate Internet growth; a significant tax increase this year; support this month for jacking up the federal minimum wage to over $10, certain to smother new jobs; the Justice Department's $13 billion looting of J.P. Morgan JPM +1.43%  bank; and of course Hurricane ObamaCare.

Barack Obama has the U.S. economy on lockdown. It's the worst thing this president has done. (Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 11/20/2013)

Henninger reminds us that Obamacaid is only part of the story of this disastrous presidency. It's a good point. There is so very much more.


Charged
Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) has announced that he will take a leave of absence from office and will donate his salary to charity. Radel had pleaded guilty to a cocaine charge and was sentenced to one year of probation earlier Wednesday. (Washington Post, 11/21/2013)

Not good enough. Resign.

RedStateVT will not tolerate bad behavior from Democrats or Republicans. 

Empire Building

Titular
Republicans insist the buck stops with the secretary. But although Ms. Sebelius runs the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency directly responsible for the health care law, there are questions about how deeply she was involved in the development of the troubled Web site.

“Kathleen has the title, but she doesn’t have the responsibility or in many respects the kind of wide authority and access to the president that she really needs to make a difference,” said one person close to Ms. Sebelius and the White House, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss internal decision-making. “Everybody thinks that she’s the driving force, but unfortunately she’s not.” (NYT, 10/23/2013)

The alibis and finger pointing over Obamacare will only grow. Here we learn that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (geez, is that a cabinet level position?) may NOT be to blame. What with that limited authority and all....


Thrills and Chills
“Of course, we want to know when it’s going to be over,” Pelosi told POLITICO, referring to the sign-up problems. “But that is not to diminish the thrill that we have about the Affordable Care Act, and member after member emphasized the fact that good things were happening.” (POLITICO.com, 10/23/2013)

Such thrills which include people finding out that their health insurance premiums are doubling. That thrill, Nance?


Noisy
Because of all the noise and disinformation, President Obama and the Democrats don’t just own Obamacare as a political issue. They own health care. Anytime something bad happens — premiums rise, or employers change plans or pare coverage — Obamacare will be blamed, even if the new law had nothing to do with the change.

“It’s one of the most frustrating things,” says Brad Woodhouse, the former Democratic National Committee official who runs Americans United for Change. “If anybody has a problem with health care, Republicans say it has to be a problem with Obamacare.”

Does Woodhouse believe Democrats now own health care? “In some ways we probably do, which is unfair,” he said. “Nobody said Obamacare was a panacea for everything.” (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 10/22/2013)

Milbank goes back in the RedStateVT doghouse (that was quick!) after this column which talks about how darn unjust it is that Dems will be blamed for any and all problems with the health care system going forward. Hold on a second there, Bucky! First, Dems wanted to own the health care issue. It was their way of demonstrating the compassion they had for their fellow Americans, in contrast to the callous disregard of their political opponents. Second, you can bet that if things had gone swimmingly, they would have claimed credit for everything.  (Life expectancy increase! Dems credit Obamacare...and themselves!)


Uproarious
Mr. Obama assured the German leader that the U.S. isn't monitoring her communications and won't in the future, a White House spokesman said. He wouldn't say whether it had occurred in the past.

The uproar in Berlin is the latest sign that the National Security Agency scandal has the potential to continue to inflict damage on Washington's relationships with overseas partners. Earlier this week, Mr. Obama called French President François Hollande, who expressed his "deep disapproval" over reports that the NSA was collecting data on tens of millions of French phone calls and messages. Reports of U.S. spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as well as Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto during his successful presidential campaign have already strained the U.S. relationship with Latin America. (WSJ, 10/23/2013)

Reset button time!

Wait, wasn't Obama the one who was going to undo decades of American bad behavior and get the rest of the world to love us? How's that working out for him?

And then there is this:

Bluntly, Mr. Obama's partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don't trust him. Whether it's the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they've all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world's important business doesn't get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum. (Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 10/23/2013)

This and That

Little Feat
Mr. Reid’s strategy to break Republicans depends on keeping his caucus unified, which is no small feat in a party as Balkanized as the Democrats can be. (NYT, 10/2/2013)

Another inconvenient truth which slipped by the censors at the Times. 


Shacked Up
Mr. Reid’s upbringing in tiny Searchlight, Nev., where he grew up in a shack, is never far from his mind, even when he is speaking from his mahogany desk in the Senate chamber. (NYT, 10/2/2013)

Yes, Harry Reid, the career politician from Nevada who somehow has managed to become a multi-millionaire on a government salary. 


Omen-ous
Tim Liddle, 53, a Web designer in Nashville, Tenn., said he was frustrated after not being able to create an account on the federal exchange Web site for two days, and called the technological problems “a very bad omen of things to come with this Web site and this program.”

“I can’t imagine Apple or Ford or McDonald’s rolling out any new product before making perfectly sure they first could provide what they promised,” he said. (NYT, 10/2/2013)

What Liddle needs to remember is that we are talking about the government. All expectations need to be adjusted. 

Downward. 


Grab Bag
But to many independent economic analysts, it remains too early to tell how the sweeping Affordable Care Act will affect the jobs market.
...
Anecdotal reports about the law’s effect on jobs have grabbed headlines over the past year. Major retailers like Trader Joe’s and Home Depot said they would no longer provide coverage for part-time workers, instead having them buy it on the exchanges.

Food-service chains like White Castle have said they might hire more part-time employees because of the Affordable Care Act.

“I would like to tell you we’ve continued to open more restaurants in more neighborhoods, providing more jobs, and serving more customers,” Jamie Richardson, a White Castle executive, told a Congressional committee this summer. “I’d like to tell you that, but I can’t. In fact, White Castle’s growth has halted” because of the law, he said. 
...
In a Chamber of Commerce survey in July, about three-quarters of small businesses said the law had made it harder to hire. Of those affected by the employer mandate, half said they would cut employees’ hours or replace full-time workers with part-time. (NYT, 10/2/2013)

It may be too early and the reports may be anecdotal, but there are certainly leading indicators, wouldn't you agree?

Put another way, there have been no reports - NONE - of a company announcing that they are increasing hiring as a result of the new health care law. 


Kneed
With Washington embarked on another of its oxymoronic shutdowns, everyone is giving it in the neck to the Republicans. So maybe someone should give it to Barack Obama in the knees. He's the president. He wanted this job and must bear some responsibility for what has become of politics in the nation's capital. Which is to say, the obliteration of politics. (Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 10/2/2013)

Good column by Henninger. 

Years from now, will historians remark about how effective Obama has been as a leader?

We tend to doubt it. 

Silence the Critics

Devil's Due
The education proposal reflects the Obama modus operandi. First, identify an American industry that long ago made a Faustian bargain for federal support, such as hospitals and housing. Then describe the subsidy-dependent industry's inevitable bloat and inefficiency in images so stark no reasonable person could disagree. "Burdened with tens of thousands of dollars" in student debt, Mr. Obama said at Binghamton University in New York, "they have to put off buying a home, or starting a business, or starting a family." [Footnote: That was federal student debt.] Then after getting buy-in from the mortified industry, he imposes the solution—on his terms. (Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 8/28/2013)

This is brilliant analysis. We have nothing to add. 


Cause and Effect
Here’s how deterrence works in the Middle East. Syria, long committed to the destruction of Israel, has not engaged Israel militarily in 30 years. Why? Because it recognizes Israel as a serious adversary with serious policies.

This year alone, Israel has four times conducted airstrikes in Syria. No Syrian response. How did Israel get away with it? Israel had announced that it would not tolerate Assad acquiring or transferring to Hezbollah advanced weaponry. No grandiloquent speeches by the Israeli foreign minister. No leaked target lists. Indeed, the Israelis didn’t acknowledge the strikes even after they had carried them out. Unlike the American president, they have no interest in basking in perceived toughness. They care only about effect. They care about just one audience — the party to be deterred, namely Assad and his allies. Assad knows who did it. He didn’t have to see the Israeli prime minister preening about it on world television. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 9/5/2013)

Speaking of brilliant analysis, we have Charles, yet again. 

By the way, for a hoot be sure to read the reader comments in the Washington Post whenever Krauthammer or George Will write. The Liberals go crazy. Usually the commentary runs to personal attacks and complaints that Krauthammer/Will cannot be taken seriously because they never liked Obama. Liberals will NEVER argue based on the facts.  


Torn and Frayed
Congressional Democrats, torn over involving the United States in another unpredictable Middle East war, are emerging as a major barrier to President Obama’s plan to strike Syria. (NYT, 9/4/2013)

Further fueling discontent were Mr. Obama's Wednesday comments that Congress's "credibility" is at stake. Democrats were already frustrated that Mr. Obama had demanded they share his red line. It is one thing for a president to ask his party to support him in a tough moment, but it is quite another for that president to tell voters it is congressional Democrats—not him—who now own his foreign-policy mess. The steam was practically rising from Capitol Hill. (Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, 9/5/2013)

After months (years?) of hearing about divisions within Republican ranks, it is interesting to hear the same about Dems.


Tick Tock
He chose his home state as the venue, and did not refrain from ticking off several problems he saw with the law. But former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday made a meticulous, if wonkish, case for Americans of all political leanings to embrace the Obama health care law.
...
Mr. Clinton made the speech at the request of the White House, but on his own terms. He chose to deliver it at the glass building in downtown Little Rock that houses his presidential library. The venue allowed him to lend a hand to Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat who is facing a difficult re-election fight here...
...
Mr. Pryor did not attend the event for risk of being too closely associated with the health care law, according to one person with knowledge of his plans, but who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. A campaign spokesman has said that Mr. Pryor had a scheduling conflict. (NYT, 9/4/2013)

This is priceless! Clinton endorses Obamacare while lending support to a local politician. Such politician who does not want his support for Obamacare to be widely known in a state where the law is not popular. And who does not show up for the event.


Slights
The nation’s employers added 169,000 jobs in August, slightly below what economists were expecting, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent. (NYT, 9/6/2013)

More proof for all you cynics out there that the Obama economic plan is working. Unemployment is now projected to be below 5% sometime during Obama's fourteenth term.


Of Course
Just in case you missed it, the New York Times features a story today called "Putting the Sex Back in Homosexuality." Actually you cannot miss it because it is a featured story with a photo in the INSIDE NYTIMES.COM section and then the lead story in the Arts Section and also the lead story in the Movie Section. The Times continues to be the paper of record for the .01% of the population that is homosexual.

Crisis Management

Swingers
The president also faces pressure from some members of his own party who argue that the economic benefits of the pipeline are too important to ignore. Last month, 17 Democratic senators signed on to an amendment backing construction of the pipeline. Included in the group were seven senators from conservative or swing states who face re-election in 2014. (NYT, 4/4/2013)

Republicans who favor gay marriage, Democrats who want to build the Keystone pipeline. We have talked about this in the past - and recently - for important reasons. Many people bemoan the lack of bipartisanship in Washington. Perhaps there is more than we are led to believe. The culprit is - as always - the Legitimate Media which will rarely tell us when a Democrat politician is pro-life, but will always detail a "brave" Republican's conversion to gun control or another Liberal position. 


Percentages
Even as he spoke at the second fund-raiser, about 100 opponents of the pipeline protested outside, waving signs and chanting, “What do we want from our president? No pipeline for the one percent!” and “When I say pipeline you say kill! Pipeline! Kill!” (NYT, 4/4/2013)

The peaceful protesters (kill! kill! kill!) have now apparently concluded that the Keystone pipeline is a 1%er issue. Because it will bring cheap gas to all Americans and create blue collar jobs? 

We tease Liberals unrelentingly, we admit it. But we refrain - we really do - from flat-out name-calling. Today we slip up. 

These people are morons. 


Missing Piece
There was something missing from President Obama's Wednesday speech in Denver about gun violence. He focused almost exclusively on passing gun-control laws, and not at all on one of the nation's biggest promoters of violence: the entertainment industry.

The president's campaign against gun violence has produced a stale debate marked by lots of speeches with little achieved. A more creative chief executive would have used this moment to widen the discussion by drawing attention to the increasingly graphic violence so pervasive in television shows, movies and videogames. Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world's elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress. (Campbell Brown, Wall Street Journal, 4/3/2013)

Yesterday we noted that Connecticut passed new gun restrictions while sending a call for a study of other factors in mass killings to a committee. Where it will disappear. 

Today we were delighted to read Brown's outstanding article calling out the President on his failure to focus on entertainment violence. Well done!


Merely
The mere presence of men making money is an insufficient explanation for the persistence of poverty. You have to look elsewhere. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 4/3/2013)

Best line from an excellent Henninger piece on capitalism. Note to the redistributionists: capitalism good, corruption bad.