Breaking: Hillary Clinton concedes, will release e-mails related to her yoga routines

Shredder
Hillary Clinton said today she has deleted more than 30,000 “personal” emails from her days as Secretary of State and won’t allow access to the private server she used to send them. “The server will remain private,” she declared. (NYPost.com, 3/10/2015)

This is now.

In 2007, Mrs. Clinton, then a senator from New York and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused the George W. Bush administration of using “secret White House email accounts” along with secret wiretaps and military tribunals. “You know, our Constitution is being shredded,” she said at the time. (New York Times, 3/11/2015)

That was then.


AKA
Attorney General Eric Holder has used three different email aliases during his six years in the top job at the Justice Department, officials say. (Foxnews.com, 3/11/2015)

RedStateVT can confirm that among the aliases used by Holder were the following: SexyAG@AOL.com, thefunkmeister@yahoo.com and BlackPowerMan@gmail.com


Cooled Off
It is a cool, businesslike approach, similar to the way Mr. Obama deals with members of Congress, donors and activists at home. But historians and some of the president’s former foreign policy advisers say the distance the president keeps from foreign leaders leaves him without the durable relationships that previous presidents forged to help smooth disagreements and secure reluctant cooperation. (New York Times, 3/10/2015)

Liberals love the idea of Obama as a too-cool-for-school hipster. The politics is beneath him. He is playing a different game than everyone else, etc. 

The truth is that he is a loner who does not connect with people. He does not like others and generally they do not like him. 


Not Viable
The two most viable alternatives to Clinton spoke at the IAFF gathering Monday: Biden, who projects sincerity, blue-collar appeal and solid competence; and Warren, who, with her passion and righteous indignation, could ignite a populist movement. But the senator from Massachusetts doesn’t want to run, and the vice president would like to but sees no way to upend the Clinton juggernaut. (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 3/10/2015)

Biden projects "sincerity" and "competence?"

OK, it is official. Nothing Milbank says can ever be taken seriously again. 


Say It Again
The Obama administration said Tuesday that 11.7 million Americans now have private health insurance through federal and state marketplaces, with 86 percent of them receiving financial assistance from the federal government to help pay premiums. (New York Times, 3/11/2015)

Eighty-six percent of Americans getting health insurance through the exchanges are getting subsidies! To Liberals, this is success. To others, this is further evidence of the nanny state gone awry.

The Hangman Fumbles With The Noose

Liberal Story Template (Whenever a Black Teenager is Shot by a Cop)
In (city) last night an unarmed black teenager named (name) was shot by police. The teenager was unarmed. Witnesses said that the unarmed victim had his arms up and was surrendering. An autopsy will determine whether he was shot in the back (while unarmed). It is not known if the officer who shot unarmed (name), possibly in the back, was racist. Many people interviewed on the street said he probably was. To protest the violent death of unarmed (name) by an apparently racist patrolman, protesters began robbing liquor stores. 

Friends of (name) described him as a peaceful person who only wanted to help others. They said that his passions included helping out at the local homeless shelter, saving stray cats and Bible study. 

Holy men Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton flew into town together and held a joint service at the (name of church) church. While alternately praising each other's peaceful ministry, they called for calm and for an investigation into police racism, and in particular, the lawless shooting of unarmed black teenagers by racist cops. Attorney General Eric Holder said: "This just proves what I have been saying all along, this is a racist country."

Meanwhile in Chicago last night there were (number) deaths attributable to black-on-black violence. 

(Just kidding about that last part, it is true but not reported.)


Swept Away
Yet at home, Mr. de Blasio, who swept into office on the promise that New York City could be governed from the left, is discovering that liberalism has its limits.

The mayor who shot to fame denouncing stop-and-frisk tactics and luxury condominiums is now defending hard-nosed policing and cutting deals with developers, bowing to the realities of leading an unruly city but also angering an activist left that propelled his rise to the Democratic elite. Impatience with the mayor is now spilling into outcry.
...
“More and more, every day, they find this was a lot more complicated than they thought,” Bertha Lewis, a longtime friend of the mayor and the former chief executive of Acorn, said of the de Blasio administration. (New York Times, 8/20/2014)

Another Liberal disappoints!

(And yes indeed. Liberalism does have its limits!)


Unsolved
But Mitchell Moss, who teaches urban studies at New York University, said the mayor was wise to be cautious.

“Inequality is not something that a mayor of New York can solve, but public safety is,” he said. “You can never make the liberals happy. Because when you ask them what they want, the answer is always: M-O-R-E.” (New York Times, 8/20/2014)

Teacher of the Year!


Erosion
Comity has been eroding for years in Washington, a gridlocked swamp of a city where the 113th Congress is on track to become one of the least productive in history and the president is alienated from his own party. (New York Times, 8/19/2014)

As reported by the New York Times yesterday, Democrat senators and representatives cannot stand Obama. 

Discreet and of Good Character

What is in Today's New York Times?
A Ban With Roots in Myth and Xenophobia: An atmosphere of hysteria in the 1930s took hold and shaped a national policy on marijuana that lives on today.

Evolving on Marijuana

Highlights from the Editorial Board’s changing view of marijuana over six decade

Editorial Observer: The Federal Marijuana Ban Is Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia

Editorial: Let States Decide on Marijuana

Repeal Prohibition, Again

What Science Says About Marijuana by the Editorial Board
While marijuana is not harmless, it is less dangerous to human health than alcohol and tobacco.

Oh, and there are problems in the Middle East...

But the most important thing the Times wants you to know about is dope.


In a Line
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. (New York Times, 7/31/2014)

So with Arab governments on the side of Israel, those opposed now include only Liberals in the U.S. and Europe.


Countless
The real utility of the body count is that it offers reporters and commentators who cite it the chance to ascribe implicit blame to Israel while evading questions about ultimate responsibility for the killing. Questions such as: Why is Hamas hiding rockets in U.N.-run schools, as acknowledged by the U.N. itself? What does it mean that Hamas has turned Gaza's central hospital into "a de facto headquarters," as reported by the Washington Post? And why does Hamas keep rejecting, or violating, cease-fires agreed to by Israel? (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 7/28/2014)

The fact is that Liberals only use "body counts" when it is to their advantage. Hence, we heard endless recitations of body counts when George Bush was president or when Israel fights Palestinians terrorists, but nothing about how many soldiers have died during Obama's reign.


JV President
This much is certain: The president did not take the Islamic State threat seriously. In a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker, Obama glibly dismissed the Islamic State as a bunch of junior varsity terrorists who posed little danger to Iraq or the United States. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama declared. He brushed aside the rise of the Islamic State as just internal Iraqi sectarian violence, something that is not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”
...
Obama’s own attorney general, Eric Holder, recently told ABC News that the rise of the Islamic State is “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” adding that “9/11 was something that kind of came out of the blue. This is a situation that we can see developing.” (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 7/28/2014)

Obama must have thought himself enormously clever with his basketball reference. Now even his own attorney general takes time out from searching for racism in America to go on the record about ISIS. One guesses that - should the unthinkable happen again and America is attacked - Holder wants to distance himself from Obama's dismissive remarks.  


Peach Pelosi
In June 2008, 12 House Democrats—including committee and subcommittee chairmen and close allies of Mrs. Pelosi—introduced a bill to impeach President George W. Bush. (Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 7/31/2014)

Thanks to Rove for this reminder amid all the Democrat hysteria. 

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. 

Surrounded by Liberals

Dusty
“There is a set of recurring patterns on the Republican side trying to grind him into the dust, so we’re a bit dubious of their complaints,” said Representative Peter Welch of Vermont. (NYT, 6/1/2013)

Vermont's Welch speaking about AG Eric Holder. Those "patterns" Welch references being explained in the previous paragraph as the following:

Under his leadership, the department scaled back a voter-intimidation lawsuit from the Bush era involving the New Black Panther Party, a decision that conservatives used to portray the black-nationalist fringe group as a political ally of the Obama administration. He reopened criminal investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terrorism suspects and tried to prosecute five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks in civilian courts rather than military tribunals, which provoked accusations that he was soft on terrorism. And he abandoned the legal defense of a law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage that social conservatives viewed as a bulwark against attacks on the traditional family. The party-line furor peaked with hearings into Operation Fast and Furious, a botched gun-trafficking investigation by federal agents based in Arizona. When Mr. Holder, after Mr. Obama invoked executive privilege, refused to provide department e-mails relating to the fallout after the operation ended, the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.

These are the dubious Republican patterns that give Welch pause.... Does he see nothing here worthy of further discussion?

Meanwhile this is what Holder still wants to accomplish:

“Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason,” he said in a speech in April.

Those dubious Republicans will say that the AG is wants to be kinder and gentler....to criminals.


Large and Small
And the other part of this is that liberals measure success in their sort of compassion ratings by the number of people on food stamps, welfare. The larger the number, the more compassionate you are, whereas a conservative says the smaller the number, the more successful the society. (Dailycaller.com, 5/30/2013)

This is Charles Krauthammer capturing - as only he can - the essence of Liberals and Conservatives. What's that word?  Oh, right...irrefutable.


Rub Down
Okay. Let’s accept the dubious proposition that the Yemeni prisoners could be sent home without coming back to fight us. And that others could be convicted in court and put in U.S. prisons.

Now the rub. Obama openly admits that “even after we take these steps, one issue will remain — just how to deal with those Gitmo detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks but who cannot be prosecuted.”

Well, yes. That’s always been the problem with Gitmo. It’s not a question of geography. The issue is indefinite detention — whether at Gitmo, a Colorado supermax or St. Helena.

Can’t try ’em, can’t release ’em. Having posed the central question, what is Obama’s answer? “I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved.”

That’s it! I kid you not. He’s had four-plus years to think this one through — and he openly admits he’s got no answer. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/30/2013)

Lucky readers get a double dose of Krauthammer today. Much has been written about Obama's recent address on national security. A speech so bizarre that even POLITICO made a joke about it (Obama Debates Obama). Charles weighs in with his own funny line, but he was likely more incredulous than amused. 

High Crimes

It's "Scandal Spring" for the Obama administration. (We are trademarking that name so please ask permission of RedStateVT if you would like to use it.) How do we know? Well Piers Morgan has temporarily stopped debating (and losing to) Breitbart's Ben Shapiro in order to discuss the Obama scandals. Other members of the Legitimate Media are dipping their toes into this deep pool.  

Witness:

What I don't understand about what the president is doing is, to a certain extent, you could argue that he wasn't really involved in a lot of this stuff. But he is so centrally involving himself with these repeated lies. And, I’m just going to call them lies because they’re lies. They’re on tape. Nobody thought that he called it a terrorist attack. Last night I went and I looked up at The New York Times how they reported it the day after. They never reference that we've had a terrorist attack against the United States. On September 20th, however, they run a story that says, "Libya envoy's killing was a terrorist attack." And they say, "Until now White House officials have not used that language in describing the assault." That is September 20th. That is The New York Times. Now, at what point are people going to get tired of the president coming out over and over saying things like, "Don’t believe your lying eyes"? 
(Kirsten Powers quoted at Realclearpolitics.com, 5/14/2013)


Broken
The Obama administration tried to stay ahead of the furor with an announcement by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that he had ordered a federal investigation into whether I.R.S. officials broke any criminal laws by singling out the conservative groups. (NYT, 5/14/2013)

Holder is where investigations go to die. He is still investigating whether Team Obama leaked national security details to make el presidente look tough before the election. Whatever happened to THAT investigation?


Painful
The White House has also been at pains to stress that former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told Congress in 2012 that there had been no targeting of political groups, was appointed by George W. Bush. So the Commissioner is accountable to the President, as long as he's the former President? Or what? (WSJ, 5/14/2013)

Best answer we have seen to our Liberal blogger friends who have tried to deflect the IRS scandal!


Die Already
Vermont is poised to become the third state in the nation to allow physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who want to die.  State lawmakers on Monday night approved an assisted-suicide bill, which now awaits the signature of Gov. Peter Shumlin, a first-term Democrat who has said he would sign it, likely within a week. Once enacted, Vermont would be the first state to decriminalize assisted suicide through a legislative vote. (WSJ, 5/14/2013)

Death, dope and taxes. Welcome to Vermont!


Main Course
Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense. (George Will, Washington Post, 5/14/2013)

We tried - really - reading the Washington Post's opinion writers excuse the Obama scandals. The best we get is, yes, there was some unsavory stuff...George Bush...hey, look at that over there. Until, of course, we read Will. 

Free Fall

Vote on YOUR Favorite New Obama Scandal!
And on Monday evening, The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of its reporters. (Snoop-gate)

(President Obama) joined a bipartisan chorus of outrage over disclosures that the Internal Revenue Service had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. (Tax-gate)

Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s secretary of health and human services, has drawn criticism in recent days for soliciting corporate donations to pay for the rollout next year of the new health care law. (Obamacare-gate) (NYT, 5/13/2013)

(Note: Voting on Fast and Furious, Solyndra and Benghazi has closed.)

Special Offer! A free 6 month trial subscription to RedStateVT to any Legitimate Media representative who now refers to the Obama administration as "Scandal plagued." Don't miss this opportunity!



Uninvolved
Jay Carney, a White House spokesman, said the White House was not involved in the subpoena. “Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the A.P.,” he said, adding “we are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Carney added: "Yes, while it is true that President Obama is the Commander in Chief, he really has no idea what that goofball Eric Holder is doing over there at Justice."


Over There
“We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus.” “Suddenly, three days ago,” he added, “this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no ‘there’ there.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Actually, Mr. President, we dishonor our fallen when we lie about the circumstances of their death.


Price Tag
“Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today and he will pay the price for the atrocities he committed,” Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a statement. “Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.” (NYT, 5/13/2013)

Follow the logic of the pro-abortion spokeswoman:

Abortion is legal.
Kermit Gosnell performed abortions at a time when abortion is legal.
Gosnell was a butcher.
If abortion is made illegal, we will get more butchers like Gosnell.

Such is Liberal Logic.