E. J. Dionne Jr.: Liar at the Washington Post

Dainty Boy
There is no reason to be dainty or evasive in saying that racism and racial resentment are part of the equation, and it’s not just that Obama is our first African American president. Racial politics has been helping Republicans since the 1960s when much of the white South realigned toward the GOP in reaction to the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 10/19/2014)

Dionne thinks that no one knows how Democrats and Republicans voted on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wrong, E.J. This from Wikipedia:

The Senate version:
Democratic Party: 46–21   (69–31%)
Republican Party: 27–6   (82–18%)

The Senate version, voted on by the House:
Democratic Party: 153–91   (63–37%)
Republican Party: 136–35   (80–20%)

So, Dainty Boy, turns out that Republican supported civil rights by A HIGHER PERCENTAGE than Democrats. We will await your apology. Our guess is that - as with all things Democrat - it will come AFTER the election. 


Instability
A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous. (New York Times, 10/19/2014)

Of course, when one of these crazies goes on a killing spree Liberals will bemoan the country's lax firearm laws.


Wonderful
One of the wonders of this political moment is feminist contentment about the infantilization of women in the name of progressive politics. Government, encouraging academic administrations to micromanage campus sexual interactions, now assumes that, absent a script, women cannot cope. And the Democrats’ trope about the Republicans’ “war on women” clearly assumes that women are civic illiterates.

Access to contraception has been a constitutional right for 49 years (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The judiciary has controlled abortion policy for 41 years (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Yet the Democratic Party thinks women can be panicked into voting about mythical menaces to these things. (George Will, Washington Post, 10/17/2014)

Great column by Will reminding us (yet again) that Democrats are the Party of Grievances, Real or Imagined. 


Little Man
Bernie’s annual average growth rate in net worth 2004-2012 was 29%.  The average American’s growth rate for the same period?  -0.94%.  So when Bernie’s telling you he’s working for the little guy, remember that in Berniespeak, little guy means “Bernie Sanders”. (Chris Campion, ethanallen.org, 10/13/2014)

Colonel Bernie Sanders: Vermont's Millionaire Socialist. 


Strike Out
No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it. (New York Times, 10/20/2014)

Choose your response:

-Gwyneth Paltrow will be just so pleased.

-Democracy in action.

-What Imperial Presidency?

Liberals: Ebola Not the Fault of Obama, Maybe of Bush

Percentage
“If you’re looking for someone you agree with 100 percent of the time, go home and look in the mirror, because you’re it.” (New Jersey governor Chris Christie, quoted in George Will, Washington Post, 10/8/2014)

We liked this line from Christie. And this one from Will:

Christie, who exudes executive authority, is the antithesis of today’s bewildered incumbent floundering from the disappearing “red line” regarding Syria to the HealthCare.gov debacle to the Veterans Affairs scandals to the no-one-tells-me-anything surprise about the Islamic State to the Secret Service that cannot lock the White House’s front door.


Not Fonder
There’s the sense of an absence where the president should be. (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, 10/10/2014)

Noonan continues to get off some memorable one-liners on President Abject Failure. 


Freshly
Secretary of State John Kerry announced $212 million in fresh aid for Gaza on Sunday as diplomats from more than 40 nations gathered here to pledge funds for the territory’s reconstruction.

The new assistance is in addition to $118 million in humanitarian aid that the United States provided to residents of Gaza earlier this year. (New York Times, 10/12/2014)

Remind us again, why are we giving millions of dollars to people who hate us?


Take a Pass
It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass. (Gwyneth Paltrow, quoted by Robert Davi on Breitbart.com, 10/10/2014)

Hollywood nitwit Paltrow reveals something that Liberals will occasionally let slip: they like dictators. In their world, dictators get things done without all the unnecessary red tape of a democracy. This explains their fascination with Mao, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.


The Burn
With the contretemps over lane closings on the George Washington Bridge on the back burner for now and Mr. Christie laying groundwork for a Republican presidential run... (New York Times, 10/12/2014)

So what the New York Times is telling us is that - after they provided wall-to-wall coverage of Bridgegate with an endless spate of articles and notwithstanding the eventual exoneration of Christie - they are not done covering the story. Should Christie run for president the Times will be back to gin up the issue. Benghazi coverage, by the way, has concluded. 


Provocateurs
The secretary general of the United Nations on Monday condemned what he called “provocations” at Jerusalem’s holy sites, hours after the Israeli police said officers had locked Palestinians inside Al Aksa Mosque to thwart a riot as Jews visited for the holiday of Sukkot. (New York Times, 10/12/2014)

What could have prompted the Israelis to act so belligerently, violating the rights of the Palestinians to worship in peace? Luckily we have only to read the next sentence of the article to find out:

Scores of officers entered the mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem at 7 a.m. on Monday and found “petrol bombs, stones, bottle rockets and fireworks” as well as “masked Palestinians,” according to the police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld. 

OK, got it.


Bluntly
Islamic State militants have gained territory in Iraq and Syria despite weeks of bombing by the U.S. and its allies, raising questions about the coalition’s strategy of trying to blunt the jihadists’ advance while local forces are being trained to meet the threat on the ground. (Wall street Journal, 10/12/2014)

Well thank God we have no boots on ground....

Goddard College Announces 2015 Commencement Speaker: ISIS Beheader Jihad Johnny

Speaks for Itself
In a statement, Goddard College Interim President Bob Kenny said the college holds 20 commencement ceremonies annually to provide personalized graduation ceremonies in each degree program.

"As a reflection of Goddard’s individualized and transformational educational model, our commencements are intimate affairs where each student serves as her or his own valedictorian, and each class chooses its own speaker," Kenny said in a statement. "Choosing Mumia as their commencement speaker, to me, shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expresses their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that." (foxnews.com, 10/1/2014)

This is what happens when Liberals are unconstrained.


Shop Til Ya Drop
President Obama said healthcare costs are rising for Indiana steel workers because employers are not “shopping” correctly for insurance plans during an event at Millennium Steel Service in Princeton, Ind., on Friday. (freebeacon.com, 10/3/2014)

Well RedStateVT's must REALLY be shopping incorrectly. Our premiums tripled!


Bananas
By the weekend, Typhoid Barry will be blaming the epidemic on YouTube videos, like he did with Benghazi. Or he’ll claim it’s not a disease, it’s “workplace violence.”

Other African countries have closed their airports to flights from Ebolaland. But not the U.S. – we are now out-banana-republicing the banana republics. Obama has gotten his wish. The nation is fundamentally transformed, and we don’t even have the fiasco of amnesty yet. (Howiecarr.com, 10/5/2014)

Every once in a while we think that Howie Carr spends too much time beating the drum on illegal aliens. Then we realize...he is right and we are wrong. 


Remains of the Day
Adolescents also try to truncate arguments by saying that nothing remains of any arguments against their arguments. Regarding the ACA, Obama said the debate is “settled” and “over.” Progressives also say the debate about catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change is “over,” so everyone should pipe down. And they say the debates about the efficacy of universal preschool, and the cost-benefit balance of a minimum-wage increase, are over. Declaring an argument over is so much more restful than engaging with evidence. (George Will, Nationalreviewonline.com, 4/23/2014)

Apologies for recycling this old point from Will. On second thought, no apology necessary!

Not What You Think

Ventilator
At the end of a week of frustrating developments for the White House, at home and overseas, President Obama took time on Friday afternoon to vent.

The president revealed a long list of gripes in a nearly 50-minute news conference: a recalcitrant Congress that is refusing to deliver the amount of emergency funding he requested for a border bill; crises in the Middle East and Ukraine that defy quick or simple solutions; even a press corps that neglected to wish him a happy birthday. (New York Times, 8/2/2014)

The Whiner-in-Chief.

Note to Liberals: this is what you get when you give the country an untested politician just so that you can feel good about yourselves.


What He Did
“Well, you know what?” the president said. “What we did worked, and the economy’s better. It shows you that if you stay at it, eventually we make some progress.” (New York Times, 8/2/2014)

Almost six years after Obama takes office unemployment is over 6% and the Federal Reserve is forced to keep interest rates at near 0%. 

And then there is this (also from the New York Times):

Here’s an unusual but extraordinarily graphic description of the current state of the labor market: If you lined up all of the unemployed shoulder-to-shoulder, the queue of people looking for work would stretch all the way from New York out past San Francisco. (Justin Wolfers, New York Times, 8/1/2014)


Folksy
"We did a whole lot of things that were right [after 9/11], but we tortured some folks," Mr. Obama said at a news conference Friday. (Wall Street Journal, 8/2/2014)

And, to be clear, by "folks" Obama means violent Muslim terrorists committed to the destruction of America and who wantonly slaughter innocents. Those "folks."


Devotion
...the Democratic Party’s activist core is incurably devoted to identity politics — the proposition that people are whatever their gender is (or their race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever seems stupendously important at the moment). (George Will, Washington Post, 8/1/2014)

Will sums up the guiding principle of Liberals.


Generally
When as respected and scrupulously independent a national security expert as David Ignatius calls Kerry’s intervention a blunder, you know this is not partisan carping from the usual suspects. This is general amazement at Kerry’s cluelessness. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/1/2014)

Krauthammer manages to eviscerate both John Kerry and fellow WaPo opinion writer Ignatius in two sentences!

Continuing Outreach Obama to Challenge Five Released Taliban to Pick-Up Hoop Game

Who Said It?
All along, Obama’s weakness has been the lack of a worldview. Problems are approached individually — unconnected to anything else — and often left to languish. We pivot to Asia . . . in a speech. We applaud the Arab Spring and promise hugs and kisses . . . in a speech. We call recent developments in Ukraine a success for U.S. policy, but Russia’s seizure of Crimea stands. Sure, this was not Obama’s fault, but it is not his success, either — and certainly not something to boast about.

What can be done? Although Obama is by nature a prudent man, there’s always the chance that he will overreact, attempt to show he is strong by doing something a tad reckless. In the meantime, no more speeches. They no longer work because they are no longer believed. They are coming attractions for a movie that never opens and merely reminds us all — the world’s bad guys most of all — of the president’s intellectually chaotic and bumbling foreign policy. Fix the policy, then give the speech. (Washington Post, 6/2/2014)

Was it: 
1) Charles Krauthammer
2) Ann Coulter
3) George Will
4) Liberal Washington Post Op-ed Writer Richard Cohen

If you guessed 4) you are today's winner!


Old and in the Way
Issues that had bitterly divided the Obama administration — about the wisdom of the prisoner swap and the risks of releasing a group of aging Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay — were swept aside in the rush to secure Sergeant Bergdahl’s release. (New York Times, 6/5/2014)

This is how the New York Times shills for the Obama administration. Those five terrorists that Obama released? They are "aging." In all likelihood they just want to go home and play dominoes. Call us skeptical, but we're guessing they still have some of the old jihad in their bones.

How You Can Profit from the Government Shutdown!

Adventures in Liberal Logic
Climate change is real even though the Earth has not experienced an increase in temperature in the past ten years.

Obamacare is working even though no one can get access to the new insurance exchanges. 


Will Power
George Will, who has been a conservative presence on ABC News for more than three decades, is leaving for the Fox News Channel, the cable news network announced on Tuesday.
...
Because “This Week” already has a deep bench of contributors, Mr. Schneider said, ABC will not hire anyone to replace Mr. Will. (NYT, 10/1/2013)

An unnamed source at ABC added: "We don't really want to hear from conservatives anyway."

Spin the Dial

Seeing Red
Why should the mullahs in Tehran worry about crossing Obama’s red line on WMDs when they see the Syrians cross Obama’s red line on WMDs — and the president’s reaction is to do as little as he can without getting mocked? (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 9/2/2013)

In the Illinois legislature, he voted “present” 129 times to avoid difficulties; now he stoops from his executive grandeur to tutor Congress on accountability. In Washington, where he condescends as a swan slumming among starlings, he insists that, given the urgency of everything he desires, he “can’t wait” for Congress to vote on his programs or to confirm persons he nominates to implement them. The virtues of his policies and personnel are supposedly patent and sufficient to justify imposing both by executive decrees.
....
Now, concerning Syria, he lectures Congress, seeking an accomplice while talking about accountability. (George Will, Washington Post, 9/2/2013)

But overall the Obama foreign policy team seems to suffer from a Pollyannaish approach to the world. They do not seem to understand that those who hate America will hate us, and will try to harm us, whether our president is Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama. (WSJ, 8/27/2013)

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.  Or more accurately, shamed into action. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/29/2013)

Among the best of the commentary on Obama's Syrian problem. In a nutshell:

• By projecting weakness and vacillation, Obama emboldens America's real enemies. Not Syria, but North Korea and Iran.
• Obama flaunts executive privilege to get his way, but seeks Congressional consensus when he is looking for a skirt to hide behind.
• The Obama foreign policy charm offensive is an abject failure. 

Telling Tales
"First of all, I didn't set a red line," said Obama. "The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are [inaudible] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn't something I just kind of made up. I didn't pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it." (Weeklystandard.com, 9/4/2013)

So this is what it has come to: painted into a corner with his own brush, Obama resorts to lying. He didn't set a "red line?" Once again the video evidence and the transcripts will expose the lie, but once again it will pass because the Legitimate Media will not report it. (Don't expect Rachel Maddow to devote a show to red lines. There are more important topics to cover; like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz.)

"I did not have sex with that woman."
"I didn't set a red line."

What is it with Democrat presidents and the truth?


Dog Days
Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. Klein has doggedly pursued closing Yankee from the start of his political career. But like the governor, he also emphasized what he calls an important point.

"This plant is not closing because of anything the state of Vermont has done. This is clearly the economics and the sign of the times of big baseload generators, the price of natural gas," Klein said. (WCAX.com, 8/27/2013)

We got a snicker out of this one. So Tony Klein and Peter Shumlin hounded Vermont Yankee for years, making it all but impossible for it to do business in Vermont. Then in what should be their triumphant moment they don't want to take credit for what they have caused to happen. What's up with that?

Allow RedStateVT to explain. 

Make no mistake, within Progressive Party circles Klein and Shumlin are giving and getting high fives all around. Unfortunately there is the issue of the 650 jobs that will be lost. Klein/Shumlin won't man-up on that little problem (the unemployment, the lost tax revenue) and so the VY closure is really all about the low cost of natural gas. Hypocrisy has a name.

Counting the Broken Ties

Misunderstood
The Internal Revenue Service, according to an inspector general’s report, was not reacting to political pressure or ideology when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny in evaluating requests for tax exemptions. It acted inappropriately because employees couldn't understand inadequate guidelines. (New York Times editorial, 5/16/2013)

Such guidelines which said to scrutinize conservative groups? No ideological issue there, huh?

The utter lack of curiosity by the Legitimate Media about the Obama Scandals (we are trademarking that one, too) is truly astounding. The same media, for example, which spilled endless ink over two fruitcakes like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame is suddenly maxed out on Benghazi and the IRS. Everyday they confirm what conservatives say about a biased media.

Of course the real goal of Republicans - the Times tells - us is stopping Obama's agenda. Exactly.


Remote Control 
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 4/16/2013)

Liberal astonishment that Republicans have jumped on the Obama Scandals(tm)  does not pass "the shoe on the other foot test." Would Bush's IRS targeting Media Matters raise the ire of Dems? Of course it would.


Back-to-Back
One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack, lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration’s purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate? (George Will, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Four days after the IRS announced that it discriminated against conservative organizations, Carney said repeatedly in his daily briefing that, if true, the president would be outraged. If? By then, the IRS had not only admitted the grievous misconduct but apologized for it — and the president was speaking in the conditional. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Conservatives have the brilliance of Will and Krauthammer. Liberals have Dionne and vanden Heuvel. We like our team's chances. 

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. 

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Incentivize
NORAD is considering removing two of its 18 Air Force sites from 24-hour alert, saying it would save millions of dollars without compromising its ability to defend against 9/11-style attacks. (FOXNEWS.com, 3/1/2013)

Now we are talking. Maybe we can use this sequestration moment for greater good. This has been tried in business and there is no reason it cannot work in government: incent the various departments of government to find cost savings; reward the departments that find the greatest savings as a percentage of their annual budget. 


Correction
President Barack Obama has signed an order authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting across-the-board reductions that he opposed but failed to avert. (Washington Post, 3/1/2013)

Dishonest reporting from the Washington Post. More accurate would be to say:

President Barack Obama has signed an order authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting across-the-board reductions that he proposed, then opposed but failed to avert.

Come on Washington Post, get it right! Why someone might accuse you of media bias....


Reckoning
Instead, after Democrats spent a decade griping that the Bush tax cuts were a boon only for “the rich,” they decided that Bush had in fact been correct all along in claiming they benefited everyone.
...
The White House, for its part, plainly reckons it can come back every other month with a fresh plan to “just tax the rich” and the public will cheer.  (Matt Miller, Washington Post, 2/27/2013)

Uber-Liberal Miller rips both Democrats and Republicans over Washington's dysfunction. These are two of our favorite admissions. Good for him for at least attempting to be even-handed.


Incurable
The Fed failed to cure the former (recession), and today’s unprecedentedly anemic recovery — approximately 3 million fewer people are working than were five years ago — has failed to cure the latter: If the workforce participation rate were as high as it was when Barack Obama was first inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent. (George Will, Washington Post, 2/27/2013)

Will puts some astonishing numbers to Obama's greatest domestic policy failure: the economy. 


Revision
The State Department issued a revised environmental impact statement for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline on Friday that makes no recommendation about whether the project should be built but presents no conclusive environmental reason it should not be. (NYT, 3/1/2013)

Reduced dependence on foreign oil from hostile countries and union jobs versus Bill McKibben. What will Obama do? Hard to say, but we have been wrong before in underestimating the extent of Obama's Liberalism. That is why we think he picks McKibben.