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....

Assessing Points to Nowhere

Attention Deficit
The land appropriation has quickly turned attention back to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and exposed the contradictory visions in the Israeli government that hamper the prospects of any broader Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (New York Times, 9/1/2014)

Let's see...is there anything - anything at all - about Hamas that might "hamper the prospects of any broader Israeli-Palestinian peace process?" A few paragraphs later The Times concedes that Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist.  Could that hamper peace? 

The Times does not say.


Abandoned
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a separate interview that Obama is perhaps "too cautious" in his approach to combating Islamic State.

"This is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous," she said on NBC's Meet the Press." And they'll kill with abandon." (foxnews.com, 9/1/2014)

Obama has confirmed Republican accusations that Dems cannot be trusted with national defense. Therefore, smart Dems are getting to the right of Obama on terror. 


Identity Theft
The state’s voter identification law, which took effect in June 2013, is one of the most stringent of its kind in the country. It requires voters who show up at the polls to identify themselves with one of five forms of government-issued ID, including a driver’s license, a passport or a concealed-handgun license. (New York Times, 9/2/2014)

Look at what those racists in Texas are requiring! To vote you have to present five different kinds of ID to vote. Why it's Jim Crow all over again! 

Oh wait. You have to present ONE of FIVE different kinds of ID. And one can be a concealed carry permit. Actually that sounds pretty - what's the word? - liberal. 

(Of course the Times highlights the horror that is Texas ID laws by showing us a pretty 22 year-old wearing a college tee shirt who does not have an approved ID. Victim alert!)


Unequal
Vice President Joe Biden declared “it’s time to take back America” to ensure “you get an equal share” at a Labor Day rally in Detroit, MI on Monday. (Breitbart.com, 9/2/2014)

America's national punch line shows up in Detroit to tell the crowd that they are not getting their fair share. 

Detroit! 

You can't make this stuff up. 

White House Confirms: Obama to Attend Choom Gang Reunion

At Pains
For President Obama, any decision to reinforce the Iraqis or Kurds will be painful. On Thursday night he still took credit for removing all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011. He was at pains to reassure Americans that the U.S. will not fight another war in Iraq even as he committed U.S. air power to the war that continues in Iraq.

It's clear now that his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2011 was a strategic and increasingly a moral disaster. The President—which is to say the United States—bears responsibility now for the humanitarian catastrophe occurring in Iraq... (Wall Street Journal, 8/8/2014)

So Obama takes credit for withdrawing from Iraq which emboldened Islamic terrorists to commit atrocities which now requires Obama to reengage in Iraq. Only Liberals can see the logic of Obama's thinking.


Low Tide
As he explained himself to a national television audience, Mr. Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there. Yet his presence in the State Dining Room testified to the bleak reality that the tide of events in that ancient land have defied his predictions and aspirations before. (New York Times, 8/8/2014)

At Iraq to the list of things that have disappointed Obama. 


Sorted
... Mr. Obama managed to condemn "torture" while simultaneously lecturing Americans not to be "sanctimonious" against CIA officials doing their "job." Sort through that one. (Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 8/7/2014)

Like most presidents Obama has discovered that it is much easier to throw darts at the decisions of his predecessor when you are a candidate. The small voice in the back of his head must torture him everyday as it reminds him that Bush/Cheney were right.

And then there is this, also from Strassel's column:

All this started when Nancy Pelosi claimed in 2009 that the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about its enhanced-interrogation program. Details then flooded out, including embarrassing facts about just how repeatedly and thoroughly Democratic leaders and Intelligence committee members in both chambers had been briefed—including Mrs. Pelosi. 


Gain and Loss
Mr. Abu Marzook said Hamas had gained popularity, remained able to fire rockets at Israel, and could re-establish its network of tunnels under Gaza.

For agreeing to the cease-fire, he argued that Hamas should receive relief from the blockade on its territory. “The Palestinians should gain something out of these battles,” he said. “They want the siege to end; they want all the gates to open.” (New York Times, 8/6/2014)

A Hamas spokesman argues - incoherently - that Hamas should be rewarded for their actions and that things have just gone swimmingly for them. THIS is why there is no peace.


Deadly
The 72-hour truce came after 29 days of fierce fighting that left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and three civilians were killed. (New York Times, 8/8/2014)

A Fox commentator noted recently that Hamas never announces the deaths of its own. All we ever hear about are the deaths of women and children.


Just Business
Promising a major change in the “way the V.A. does business,” President Obama traveled to this Army base outside Washington on Thursday to sign a bill that will expand access to health care for veterans and strengthen the powers of the Department of Veterans Affairs’s new leader to clean up abuses in its troubled network of hospitals. (New York Times, 8/7/2014)

Obama bails out Bernie Sanders. 


Train to Nowhere
High-speed rail was supposed to be President Obama’s signature transportation project, but despite the administration spending nearly $11 billion since 2009 to develop faster passenger trains, the projects have gone mostly nowhere and the United States still lags far behind Europe and China. (New York Times, 8/6/2014)

Obama continues to waste your tax dollars. How does that make you feel?

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. 

Mailing in a Presidency

Cursed
So far, at least 620 Palestinians have died, around 75 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations, including more than 100 children. Gazans did not get a vote when Hamas chose to escalate conflict, nor did they when Hamas selected areas near their homes, schools and mosques to fire rockets from the densely populated strip. At the family house of four boys killed last week by an Israeli strike while playing on a beach, some wailing women cursed Hamas along with Israel. (New York Times, 7/23/2014)

Nothing changes in the Middle East until honest Palestinians rise up and throw out their oppressors...Hamas. 

Yes this Hamas:

But as the recent fight with Israel has revealed, Hamas was importing tons of cement — desperately needed for Gazan schools and houses and construction jobs — to reinforce the tunnels it built to infiltrate Israel and hide its weapons.


Courted
The Obama administration has consistently underestimated court challenges to the health care law.... (New York Times, 7/23/2014)

Of course.


Smoked Out
Asked last month for her opinion of marijuana, Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “I didn’t do it when I was young, I’m not going to start now.”

Not so fast, says Daniel Halper. In his new book Clinton, Inc., which hits bookshelves today, Halper quotes a friend and law-school classmate of the former first lady and New York senator who says: “I think she’s acknowledged it, and if she hasn’t acknowledged it everybody else will tell you: She was an enthusiastic pot user.” (Nationalreview.com, 7/22/2014)

What is it about the Clintons and the lying about their past drug use? It is particularly silly because - as Obama has proven - the Legitimate Media is not the least bit interested in past illegal drug use if you are a Democrat. Hillary should embrace her stoner past, go on Jimmy Kimmel and get some yucks about it.

Every Single Israeli-Palestinian Conflagration Summarized

An atrocity is committed against Israeli civilians.

A Palestinian spokesman for one of the H's (Hamas, Hezbollah) denies responsibility but praises the perpetrator. 

Israel fires missiles at a Palestinian military site housed in a mosque or residential neighborhood. Before firing the missile, Israel tells the Palestinians exactly where the missile is going to land giving them time to evacuate.

Which the Palestinians may or may not do.

Palestinians civilians are killed.

For the next ten days, television footage is aired of wailing Palestinian family members and the bodies of the deceased being carted through the streets in scenes reminiscent of soccer riots.
 
The U.S. urges both sides to exhibit restraint.

Protests against Israel take place in European countries.

Clueless U.S. college students demand that their university divest from companies doing business with Israel because that is what their clueless professors tell them to do. 

Eventually a tentative cease-fire is reached.

Repeat.


RedStateVT was pleased to see the following...echoing a point we have made many times: where is the Palestinian Gandhi?

It may someday be that Palestinians will wise up; that the next intifada, should it come, will be Gandhian in its methods and philosophy; that the next Palestinian leader will be in the mold of Vaclav Havel, not Fidel Castro. In the face of that kind of movement, Israeli resistance to a Palestinian state would crumble. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2014)