Source: Obama Will Nominate Illegal Alien To Supreme Court

The Supremes
Democrats said that if Mr. McConnell persisted in trying to block a nomination, he should anticipate little cooperation from them moving forward, and that they would strive to frame the refusal to act as a radical and unprecedented move. (New York Times, 2/15/2016)

Why kind of like using reconciliation to pass Obamacare!


Mr. McConnell’s threat to block a confirmation could complicate the re-election chances of Republican senators in swing states. (New York Times, 2/15/2016)

And President Obama's insistence on nominating someone could complicate re-election chances of Democrats in other swing states. 


Reid to GOP: For the good of the country, stop your nakedly partisan obstruction: Mr. McConnell’s threat to block a confirmation could complicate the re-election chances of Republican senators in swing states. (Harry Reid, Washington Post, 2/16/2016)

Has there ever been a more hypocritical politician in the United States than Harry Reid? The same Harry Reid who used parlor tricks to pass Obamacare. Who obstructed at every turn. Who accused Mitt Romney of not paying his taxes. Who never submitted a budget. Who has gotten wealthy through a career in politics. 

We think not. 

The Democrat attack line on the brewing fight over the Supreme Court is that the public will turn on Republicans who obstruct Obama. No they won't. Fifty percent of the country will stand up and cheer. 


Appetizers
This attitude intensified the unappetizing solipsistic subtext of her campaign, which is “What is Hillary owed?” It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness. (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 2/17/2016)

Maureen Dowd is as partisan as one can get. Her unending attacks on the Bush family long ago crossed the line of basic decency. We'll give her kudos, however, for this biting column on the Clintons. 


Singular
Mr. Sanders’s synecdoche for his idea is Wall Street. Everything wrong with American life can be charged up, in his telling, to a small neighborhood in lower Manhattan. Something old-fashioned there is about blaming Wall Street for all the country’s deficiencies. But, then, lunatics of one idea, basking in the pleasure of Manichaeism, like to focus all their enmity on one target. (Joseph Epstein, Wall Street Journal, 2/17/2016)

Must read column on One Trick Pony Bernie Sanders. 

RedStateVT Presents the Worst of 2014

UPDATED  Here they are folks! The Worst of 2014! 

Dianne Feinstein – A true American traitor. Feinstein actually was respected by politicians on both sides and then for inexplicable reasons she went all in with the anti-American Liberals. Her report on the CIA ginned up controversies that had quieted down; failed to interview CIA officials involved; and, was signed off on by Democrats only. There will be blood… on her hands.

Jonathan Gruber – The MIT professor who was a chief architect of Obamacare….or maybe he wasn’t.  He sure had a lot to say about it though. Most of it disturbing. The term “pointy-headed Liberal” was coined with Gruber in mind.

Peter Shumlin - Vermont's governor had a rough year. Of course as with all Liberals his troubles were self-inflicted. When there are too few people to pay for Liberal social re-engineering, guess what? You run short of money! When you try to inflict government-run healthcare in a state already known as distinctly business-unfriendly, guess what? Existing businesses leave, other businesses decide not to add employees in Vermont, and others simply form elsewhere. Shumlin knew - there can be no doubt - that the Liberal dream of single-payer in Vermont would never work economically. Instead of standing up to Liberals he danced around the hard truth for years, all the while spending millions of taxpayer dollars. If a third party candidate had not siphoned votes away from Republican Scott Milne, Shumlin would now be sitting on a rocker on his porch in Montpelier scheming again about how to get his neighbor's property.  

Harry Reid – The outgoing majority leader continued to disgrace himself with his ridiculous attacks from the Senate floor on the private citizen Koch brothers. Reid never passed a budget, blocked all legislation and then watched while lap dogs in the media blamed the Republicans for obstructionism. 

Elizabeth Warren – The Indian princess and Left-wing darling railed endlessly about Wall Street. Of which she knows nothing. Warren specializes in telling low information Americans that they are getting screwed by the guys in suits. Bring charges or shut up.

Kaci Hickox, the Ebola Nurse – Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox reportedly does not like to be called the Ebola Nurse. You will remember that Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox refused to agree to a quarantine which would protect innocent Americans from a deadly disease. Too inconvenient for the Ebola Nurse, Kaci Hickox. Selfish, selfish, selfish that Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox.

Bill Cosby – Say it ain’t so, Cos! We loved Cosby’s message to young black Americans: pull up your pants and speak English. Now that great advice is lost.

Mary Landrieu – It is always embarrassing to see a politician try so desperately to hold onto their job. Louisiana Landrieu is the poster girl. Particularly despicable was her race-pandering to black voters in a last ditch effort to avoid losing. Thankfully she lost.

Obama – Because the lies continued. First he said you could keep your health care plan. You couldn’t. Then he said that he never set a red line on Syria. He did. And then he said that he did not have the power to grant amnesty to illegals. He did anyway.  All captured quite clearly on video.

Kardashians – Every single one of them. You know why.

Coming Soon from Democrats: The Republican War on Children!

Bernie Sanders: Keystone XL 'makes no sense to me' (Washington Examiner, 11/18/2014)

RedStateVT: Bernie Sanders 'makes no sense to us' (RedStateVT, 11/18/2014)


Currently
In the current Democratic-controlled Senate, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has long refused to bring a Keystone bill to a vote for fear that it could hurt the re-election chances of environmental-minded Democrats who might have voted against a project that is popular with many voters. (New York Times, 11/18/2014)

So to fellow bloggers who write endlessly of Republican obstructionism we forward the passage above. Turns out Harry Reid's Senate (which never passed a budget either, by the way) may have doing some obstruction of their own! Also nice to hear that the Keystone pipeline is "popular with many voters." We are guessing that said voters like jobs and low gas prices. 


Starkly
President Obama is poised to ignore stark warnings that executive action on immigration would amount to “violating our laws” and would be “very difficult to defend legally.”

Those warnings came not from Republican lawmakers but from Mr. Obama himself.

For years, he has waved aside the demands of Latino activists and Democratic allies who begged him to act on his own, and he insisted publicly that a decision to shield millions of immigrants from deportation without an act of Congress would amount to nothing less than the dictates of a king, not a president. (New York Times, 11/18/2014)

For any of you cynics out there, remember: Republicans flip flop, Democrats evolve.


Mutually
But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment. (New York Times, 11/17/2014)

During the Obamacare debate, Charles Krauthammer once famously said: "I care not a whit about the insurance companies." We agree. They sold their souls to Obama for short term profits but given the opportunity Obama will sell them out in a heartbeat.


Surely
As headlines go, “ Obama Moves Close to Calling Russian Action in Ukraine an Invasion,” from a weekend story in the New York Times , must surely rank among the year’s most revealing. The Obama presidency has long been at odds with the obvious. Once this was called hope.

Now it is generally recognized as farce. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2014)

Bret Stephens picks up on RedStateVT's recent point!


Extensively
Mr. Gruber wrote a 2011 cartoon book called “Health Care Reform” that aimed to explain the federal law. A note about the author says Mr. Gruber “consulted extensively with the Obama administration and Congress during the development” of the law. (Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2014)

Of all the egregious sins that Gruber has perpetrated, surely this is the worst: he wrote a cartoon book on Obamacare. 


And Then This
Here comes the tea party of the left. (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 11/17/2014)

Honest column from Milbank. Yes, the Dems have a tea party too.

Fertile Soil

Christie Count
Seeking Political Revival, Christie Joins ’16 Contenders at G.O.P. Forum (New York Times, 3/30/2014)

Only one Chris Christie story in yesterday's New York Times. This is outrageous. Write the Times today and demand more Christie/Bridgegate stories. 

(Of course still nothing on gun-running California Democrat Leland Yee....)


Melting, Collapsing, Intensifying
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct. (New York Times, 3/31/2014)

The previously discredited IPCC issues its April Fools Day missive on global...make that climate change.

Of course you would have to dig deep to find out the real objective. It's all about foreign aid:

It cited a World Bank estimate that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries.

The wonderful Climatedepot.com provides the real (convenient) truth:

Seventeen and a half years. Not a flicker of global warming. The RSS satellite record, the first of the five global-temperature datasets to report its February value, shows a zero trend for an impressive 210 months. (Climatedepot.com, 3/4/2014)


Horror Story for Harry Reid
Then there is Donna Morse, 61, a widowed dental hygienist and yoga buff who is long overdue for a mammogram and blood work. She lost her insurance last year because it did not meet the new law’s standards. Now she has a new plan with much higher premiums, and which few doctors and hospitals will accept. (New York Times, 3/31/2014)

Not sure how this got by the censors at the Times, but it would appear that, for some, health care premiums are much higher and their doctors and hospitals are no longer available. Oh well...


Transoutrage
A Cambridge transgender woman, outraged that convicted wife killer Michelle Kosilek could receive a free gender reassignment operation that health insurers refuse to cover for law-abiding citizens, has filed suit demanding the same right to tax-funded surgery — a move critics say could mark the beginning of a dramatic, costly shift in entitlements under the controversial federal court ruling. (Bostonherald.com, 3/31/2014)

So - to be clear - an individual wants his/her health insurance company to pay for his/her "gender reassignment" surgery based on the legal precedent that a convicted criminal has apparently won the right to have taxpayers pay for his/her surgery (the criminal's that is).

This is the world that Liberals have created. And America as we knew it is gone.

Further Reflection

The Uneducated
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to explain the Obama administration's latest decision to extend a key ObamaCare deadline by saying people just "are not educated on how to use the Internet." (Foxnews.com, 3/26/2014)

Liberals are now forbidden from ever - that's ever ever ever ever ever ever - saying anything derisive about Sarah Palin. 

Ever.


Dirty Harry
Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reimbursed his campaign for nearly $17,000 in payments made in late 2013 to his granddaughter for “holiday gifts.” But new payments are surfacing bringing the total to $31,000. (Breitbart.com, 3/24/2014)

MSNBC has just interrupted their 24 hour coverage of the New Jersey Bridgegate scandal involving Gov. Chris Christie to report on Harry Reid's illegal gifts to family members. Just kidding!

In fact, kid wunderkin journalist Ronan Farrow opened his show on MSNBC talking not about Obama's visit with Pope Francis, not the mudslide out west, not the missing jet. No, instead he talked about the findings of Christie's lawyer on Bridgegate. For the first ten minutes of the show. No kidding!


Absolute
Even if Russia moves into eastern Ukraine, senior administration officials said, there should be absolutely no expectation that American troops would head to Kiev.

“The American people are not going to war with Russia over Ukraine, full stop,” a senior administration official said, echoing public comments by Mr. Obama. (New York Times, 3/27/2014)

There was a time not long ago (well, the Bush administration really) when America did not tell its potential enemies its military strategy in advance. All that has been changed now that General Obama is in charge. 


Aspirations
“If you aspire to be a gangsta rapper, by definition your lyrics need to be violent,” said Charis E. Kubrin, an associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.
...
“What’s getting really unnerving,” said Erik Nielson, an assistant professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond, “is the amount of time it appears both police and prosecutors are spending over rap lyrics and videos on social media rather than using that time to go and gather more convincing, more conventional forms of evidence.”
...
Critics like Andrea L. Dennis, an associate professor of law at the University of Georgia, say law enforcement ignores the fact that rappers do not necessarily live the lives they sing about. (New York Times, 3/27/2014)

The New York Times writes an article about rappers in jail, perhaps in the view of the Times unfairly, because of their violent lyrics. America's elite academics weigh in. Naturally they support the thugs.

Here is an example of those lyrics - quoted in the very same article - that Liberal professors (yes, that is redundant) suggest that we not take so literally:

"But nobody saw when I [expletive] smoked him. Roped him, sharpened up the shank, then I poked him, 357 Smith & Wesson beam scoped him."

Weep for the state of higher education in America.

Spear in Hand

Baseless
Yet the culture of the professional Left, enthusiastically aided by the establishment media, is going bonkers in pushing active homosexuality (or any one of several exotic variants thereof) as an absolute virtue. One can hardly turn around these days without facing, in fiction or in real life, what amounts to homosexual chic. From the amount of primetime air time afforded to gay Americans, one would think they constitute at least a large minority of the population, rather than the 3 to 5 percent they actually do..... At base, the problem isn’t homosexuality, but public sexuality. There was a time, a better time, when the sex lives of strangers were nobody’s business. (Quin Hillyer, Nationalreviewonline.com, 2/24/2014)

Great article that deserves to be read in its entirety endorsing the RedStateVT doctrine on sexuality: Stop talking about it.


Willful
In the ongoing saga of the Affordable Care Act, oddly referred to by Democrats as the law of the land even as it is amended at will by presidential fiat... (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 2/13/2014)

Krauthammer devastates with a mere phrase.


Bemoaner-in-Chief
In his address, Obama bemoaned the fact that over the past four years, “average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.” Put aside for a moment the fact that Obama is describing the economy after five years of his economic stewardship. (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 2/10/2014)

Ouch!


At Fault
A co-founder of Greenpeace told lawmakers there is no evidence man is contributing to climate change, and said he left the group when it became more interested in politics than the environment.

Patrick Moore, a Canadian ecologist and business consultant who was a member of Greenpeace from 1971-86, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee environmental groups like the one he helped establish use faulty computer models and scare tactics in promoting claims man-made gases are heating up the planet. (Foxnews.com, 2/26/2014)

Repeat after us: "Climate change is settled science, climate change is settled science, climate change is....."


Story Time
Harry Reid spoke about the Obamacare "horror stories" on the Senate floor this morning. He said that "all are untrue." (Weeklystandard.com, 2/26/2014)

A family member has been trying to sign up for insurance in New York for a month. So far, no luck. Does that qualify as a "horror story?"

Music from a Farther Room

Random Thoughts
If you still do not believe that the Legitimate Media is biased (how is that possible after 5 years of RedStateVT?) watch the Chris Matthews interview with President Obama. It is embarrassing, fawning and cringe-inducing. 

Sample Liberal interview question for George Bush: "What do you have to say to the mothers of soldiers maimed and killed in Iraq?" Sample interview question for Barack Obama: "How do you stay focused on your transformative agenda given the ceaseless attacks by Republicans?"

So President Obama's uncle, in this country illegally for decades, is officially allowed to remain. That's fine, but where is the wall-to-wall coverage from the Legitimate Media? You know, like we got about Bristol Palin....


Drawn and Quartered
The Obama administration said Friday that the enrollment records for roughly a quarter of all the people who signed up for health insurance on its website in October and November could contain errors, raising questions about whether those consumers would get coverage in time to pay for their medical care next month. (NYT, 12/6/2013)

A White House spokesman said that the administration would undertake a "tech surge" and move with "private sector speed" to ensure that these "glitches" involving the enrollment records were corrected for "a vast majority" of website users by January 31st. The spokesman reminded the public that Obamacare is "more than a website."


Multiplicity
Multiple Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried that House Democratic leaders are close to joining with House GOP leaders to support a bipartisan measure that could undermine the White House’s efforts to reach a long term deal curbing Iran’s nuclear program... (Greg Sargent, Washington Post, 12/6/2013)

See, Republicans are perfectly willing to work with Democrats in a bi-partisan fashion. 


Chat It Up
The chattering class is conducting one of its periodic evaluations of Michelle Obama, and is, as usual, finding her wanting. Before, she was too outspoken; now, too demure. A month ago, the New York Times reported that she has been “derided by critics who hoped she would use her historic position to move more deeply into policy.” Then came Politico’s headline calling her a feminist nightmare. (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 12/6/2013)

Milbank's column is about feminist criticism of Michelle Obama. Such criticism which runs to Mrs. Obama should play a larger role in policy decision-making. Here is the sad truth and it is blunt and graphic:

Feminists would not be happy with Michelle Obama unless she were to volunteer her time by working in an abortion clinic. 


Bait and Tackle
Assisting is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose only planetary function these days is as left tackle for the White House. (Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, 12/5/2013)

Just quoting this because it is a killer line!

The Vast Majority

One Trick President
Now that Healthcare.gov has been fixed (you heard that it's fixed, didn't you?), Obama and his media sycophants can pivot to the next issue: economic inequality. Which was his issue for the past five years as well. Yes, class warfare is back. 


Staked Out
“Now that the website is working for the vast majority of people,” Mr. Obama added, “we need to make sure that folks refocus on what’s at stake here, which is the capacity for you or your families to be able to have the security of decent health insurance at a reasonable cost through choice and competition on this marketplace, and tax credits that you may be eligible for that can save you hundreds of dollars in premium costs every month, potentially.” (NYT, 12/5/2013)

Who would not want health insurance that is subsidized by other people?


Only You
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of Obamacare's architects and staunchest supporters, is also the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the law's new exchanges. (CNN.com, 12/4/2013)

Remember our last post? When we talked about the corruption surrounding Obamacare?


The Waiting
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed for reporters Monday that President Obama has yet to sign up for Obamacare, saying “I know he will and has said that he will… but I don’t have an update.”

When asked what the President was waiting for and whether the White House would announce when the President did sign up for Obamacare, Carney laughed uncomfortably and could only respond, “I’ll get back to you on that.” (Washington Free Beacon, 12/2/2013)

Actually, the truth is that Obama tried to sign up, but has been placed in one of those waiting queues...


Lesser
Most important, Mr. Dorn said, younger enrollees, who also tend to be less affluent, will receive tax subsidies. If premium prices spike, the government will absorb that cost, ensuring they do not flee the exchanges. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

So the young who are needed to enroll in Obamacare in great numbers to offset the high medical costs of the old and sickly will receive tax subsidies from the government to pay for their premiums...which are needed to offset the high medical costs of the old and sickly. Does any of this make sense to you?

Not to worry, if premiums go up the government will "absorb that cost." Government will absorb that cost in one of two ways: either through tax revenue collected from taxpayers or from the Magic Money Machine.


Entirely
A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 12/3/2013)

Certainly not George Bush and certainly not Bill Clinton. 


The Toker
More than 20 years after saying he "didn't inhale," Bill Clinton is setting the record straight about his youthful pot smoking. “I didn’t say I was holier than thou, I said I tried. I never denied that I used marijuana," Clinton told Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos in an interview aired Tuesday night.

Back in 1992, in the midst of his first presidential campaign, Clinton famously equivocated when asked about his drug use, saying that during his days as a Rhodes Scholar in England, "I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it, and didn’t inhale, and never tried it again." (Yahoo.com, 12/4/2013)

Permit RedStateVT to set the record straight:

Technically Clinton did not deny smoking dope (depending upon what the definition of "deny" is). 

He did, however, deny having an adulterous sexual relationship with an employee, a White House intern young enough to be his daughter. 


Imagined
Mr. Bush was more of a reader than many Americans imagined — he had reading contests with Karl Rove, his top political adviser, measured not just by the number of books finished, but the cumulative number of pages and even square inches of text. He was particularly drawn to Lincoln, reading 14 books about the Civil War president while in office. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

We are not sure what the average American thought about how many books George Bush read. The only thing we do know is that the Liberal media relentlessly depicted Bush as an intellectual lightweight. Bush who was America's first MBA president. 


Day in the Park
...Chicago parks workers, whose unfunded pension liability grew from $77 million in 2003 to $550 million in 2012, a 615 percent increase. (NYT, 12/5/2013)

Coverage shifts from Detroit to Chicago, now facing its own pension time bomb. What floored us here was the one-half billion dollar pension shortfall for park workers! Not for all Chicago public employees....for park workers alone! How many "park workers" can Chicago have? What kind of pension promises were made to them? One-half billion dollars...? We will say it again: this is what happens when Democrats buy votes from public sector unions. 

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. 

Knocking Round the Zoo

Asking the Questions That No One Else Will Ask About the Boston Marathon Bombing

Will Joker Tsarnaev be charged with vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident in connection with the death of brother Timberland Tsarnaev?

If not, why not?


Reflections
As I have written before, I remember sitting next to Bush when we were in the same residential college at Yale (Davenport -- he graduated a year after me). I recall an evening when a group of us was sitting in the common room outside the college dining hall after dinner and a fellow Yale student walked by who was known to be gay, but in those days was not "out." Someone said some ugly homophobic slurs. I didn't like it, but sat silently. But Bush snapped, saying something like "Hey, knock it off. Why don't you walk in his shoes awhile and feel what he feels?" (Huffington Post, 4/24/2013)

Bush, however, lacks irony ..... or something. Another man in his position might stare at the ceiling at night, seeing the number 4,486 — the number of American dead in Iraq — blinking on and off. The death toll for Iraqis is much less exact — maybe as high as 1 million, maybe as low as about 100,000, still a pretty big number. (Richard Cohen, Washington Post, 4/22/2013)

For example, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid would phone the White House after he had insulted the president—such as in 2005, when he called Mr. Bush "a liar" and "a loser." He said he didn't know that his speechwriters had slipped "loser" into his remarks until he delivered them, so he wanted to apologize for using that word (but not for calling the president a "liar"). Mr. Bush didn't take umbrage. I did. The president felt he had better things to do, starting with handling threats foreign and domestic. (Karl Rove, WSJ, 4/24/2013)

A sampling of comments about W on the occasion of the dedication of his presidential library. Kudos to Democrat Lanny Davis for his gracious comments. A class act, for sure. And then there is WaPo's Richard Cohen who takes us down a different path. We get to hear again about the WMDs that W (and Hillary Clinton) thought were in Iraq. Cohen is mean-spirited and petty. Shame! Rove's anecdote reminds us of two things: 1) how comfortable Bush is in his skin and 2) how Harry Reid is a despicable person. 


Hoboland
Last year California lawmakers approved a "homeowner's bill of rights." Now in the spirit of social and legal equality, Democrats have proposed a "homeless bill of rights."

The bill's Assembly sponsor Tom Ammiano, who hails from San Francisco (also known as the hobo capital of California), says state legislation is needed to stop businesses and local governments from discriminating against poor people merely because they can't afford housing. (WSJ, 4/25/2013)

Have you BEEN to San Francisco?

Never mind the rights of families to walk down the street without being accosted, San Fran Liberals want to protect the bums. 

Essential Cover

The Web
Mr. Reid’s evolution from a proponent of gun rights to the shepherd of legislation that would expand background checks, among other gun control measures, emerges from a complex web of political calculations that have come to define his leadership style over the last decade....With guns, as with gay rights and immigration, Washington has observed in Mr. Reid an evolution — less flip-flops than slow dances to the left — that reflects shifting attitudes not only in his Democratic conference but also in Nevada, where Democrats have gained an edge in the last decade.  (NYT, 3/31/2013)

Another Liberal evolves!

From the New York Times stylebook: When a Republican changes positions, it is a "flip-flop" driven by crass political considerations. However, as we all know, when a Democrat changes positions he or she evolves. Often such evolution is captured in a long and reflective article describing the journey of said politician from the wasteland to the Promised Land. Such is Harry Reid's story.


Lifestyles of the Liberal Politician
Public cynicism deepens further when taxpayers see what becomes of the revenues earned by lifestyle taxes. Last year, an organization called Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids ran the numbers on 14 years of tobacco-related taxes. The report estimates that, in fiscal year 2013, states will collect a record $25.7 billion in revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes. But states are expected to pay less than 2% of it on tobacco-smoking prevention and cessation—even though the 1998 settlement was sold to fund such programs. People notice when promises go unfulfilled and tax revenues are diverted from their intended purposes. (Michael L. Marlow, Wall Street Journal, 3/31/2013)

Loyal readers know that RedStateVT hates taxes. 

The reason? 

We do not trust politicians to spend our money wisely. 

The reason? 

They have proven time and time again that they do not spend our money wisely. We have been especially cynical about the Liberal sleight-of-hand wherein taxes levied on X will be used to pay for Y.  Of course, we never have believed that it works out that way and now Marlow validates us. 

Point To Heaven

Weighty
Mr. Reid, the majority leader, who for years proudly curried favor with the National Rifle Association, will now be forced to weigh the relative merits and political implications of four new gun safety measures that have cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee. (NYT, 3/1/2013)

Harry Reid is a gun rights supporter? There must be some mistake. As the Legitimate Media has told us time and time again: all Democrats want gun control, no Republicans do.

Why the next thing the Legitimate Media will tell us is that Mormon Harry Reid is pro-life....


Back to the Future
Big government likes big providers. That's why ObamaCare is gradually making the local doctor-owned medical practice a relic. In the not too distant future, most physicians will be hourly wage earners, likely employed by a hospital chain. (WSJ, 3/14/2013)

Don't believe it? Well here is a quick story for you about Vermont which is certainly philosophically aligned with the Democrats nationally on healthcare and, if anything, is further to the Left. A doctor friend described a conversation with Vermont healthcare officials before he moved to the state. He outlined his plans to buy a building, open a practice, grow it and hire more health care professionals, something he had done successfully in another state. There was a long pause before the official said: "well, we are not really encouraging that..."