Sturm und Drang

See Through
Hillary Clinton claimed Monday that she is the most transparent public official “in American history” on email during her town hall Monday on NBC. (freebeacon.com, 10/5/2015)

We get it! This was a joke from Hillary's SNL skit!

What? It wasn't from SNL?


Unlikely
Unlike his father, who said on television that he had no idea Mr. Harper-Mercer cared so deeply about guns, his mother was well aware of his fascination. In fact, she shared it: In a series of online postings over a decade, Ms. Harper, a registered nurse, said she kept numerous firearms in her home and expressed pride in her knowledge about them, as well as in her son’s expertise on the subject.

She also opened up about her difficulties raising a son who used to bang his head against the wall, and said that both she and her son struggled with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder....Ms. Harper and Christopher’s father, Ian Mercer of Tarzana, Calif., divorced in 2006 and were separated years earlier. Mr. Mercer told CNN last week that he thought the nation should change its gun laws, saying the massacre “would not have happened” if his son had not been able to buy so many handguns and rifles. (New York Times, 10/6/2015)

No, actually Mr. Harper, the massacre would not have happened if your ex-wife had exhibited a modicum of common sense and kept your mentally ill son away from firearms. By the way, where were you while this was happening?


Mistaken
Russia squared off with Turkey and its NATO allies, calling the air incursion on Saturday an innocent mistake because of foul weather — a claim American officials rejected. News services said late Monday that a second airspace violation might have been committed on Sunday, but that report could not be immediately confirmed. (New York Times, 10/6/2015)

RedStateVT has always believed that the gravest danger that Barack Obama poses to America is in the area of foreign policy. Yes, he has and will continue to screw up things domestically; saddling future generations with Obamacare, strangling business with draconian regulations, failing to protect our borders and (today) opening the doors of the jails to free drug dealers. All of these things can be fixed, more or less. But it is Obama's weak-kneed approach to dealing with the geo-political challenges faced by every president that puts America most at risk in ways from which it will be hard to recover. The world's bad actors see in Obama a naive wimp. And accordingly they steamroll over him and over American interests. A new president and a strong Republican Congress can undo Obama's domestic disasters. But how do you get the Ukraine back? How do you get the Russians out of Syria?

Worse, Obama thinks he is getting it right. Witness:
Mr. Obama believes his Syria policy—the one that did nothing as 250,000 people were murdered; the one that did nothing as his own red lines were crossed; the one that allowed ISIS to flourish; the one that has created the greatest refugee crisis of the 21st century; the one currently being exploited by Russia and Iran for geopolitical advantage—is a success. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 10/5/2015)


Discouraged
Parents, teachers, classmates, friends and others are in the best position to pick up on these clues, but they often dismiss or ignore them. So “see something, say something” strategies, like those developed in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, can help encourage people to speak up, Dr. Meloy said. (New York Times, 10/7/2015)

Of course, "see something, say something" is not to be employed when a kid name Mohammed brings a box to school with a lot of wires coming out of it. 


Shapeless
The group trying to persuade Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enter the presidential race is set to broadcast an unusual commercial on national television in which Mr. Biden recounts how his life was shaped by the 1972 car accident that claimed the life of his first wife and their daughter and nearly killed his two sons.

The haunting, mostly black-and-white commercial from the group, Draft Biden, features audio from a speech he gave at Yale University’s commencement in May, just days before his elder son, Beau, died of brain cancer. (New York Times, 10/7/2015)

OK, we'll say it. We have hesitated up til now, giving Joe Biden and his supporters the space to grieve over the death of the VP's son. Now they have crossed the line and we are forced to say what some of you are, no doubt, thinking: The idea that Biden is deserving of the presidency because his son died tragically is just creepy. Of course, it fits in perfectly with the Liberal playbook: the part about the glorification of victims.


Pow Wow
Dartmouth College has removed the new director of its Native American Program after tribal officials and alumni accused her of misrepresenting herself as an American Indian. (Wall Street Journal, 10/5/2015)

On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren - another fake American Indian - remains a venerable figure at her old employer, Harvard Law. Heck, she might even be the next VP!

Yeah Right

Gravity
Many mass killers gravitate to violent video games, as do many young men in general, though this could be more a symptom of their isolation than a cause of their violence. (New York Times, 10/4/2015)

Mental illness, video games and guns equal mass killings.


Duel
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, in Dueling Speeches, Focus on Transgender Rights (New York Times headline, 10/4/2015)

Republicans had better get busy or they are going to lose the transgender vote in the next election!


Vows
(Hillary Clinton) vowed to do more to curb violence against transgender people, particularly African-American women, and urged the military to reverse its policy and allow transgender Americans to serve in the armed forces. “Having the world’s strongest military, she said, “doesn’t just mean having the best-trained forces or the biggest arsenal.” “It means,” she added, “being a leader on issues like this.” (New York Times, 10/4/2015)

Because there is NOTHING that is going to cause America's enemies to pause more before challenging us than knowing that our military is "transgender-friendly." 

Patton weeps.


Vastly
Mr. Biden, in talking about how the vast majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, appeared to deliver an off-the-cuff line. “There are homophobes still left, most of them are running for president, I think,” he said. (New York Times, 10/4/2015)

Wow, a "vast majority" of Americans support gay marriage. We wondered what constitutes a "vast majority." So we did a Google search. It took .00002 seconds and yielded the following:

....support for same-sex marriage has steadily grown. Based on polling in 2015, a majority of Americans (55%) support same-sex marriage, compared with 39% who oppose it. (pewforum.org, 7/29/2015)

Oh, according to the New York Times, a "vast majority" is 55%. In the good old days, that would have been described as "slightly more than one-half." Now, when you have a political agenda, the definition changes. 

Spicy

Over and Over
More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier. In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year....“Across the country, we’ve all found it’s not the individual who never committed a crime before suddenly killing somebody,” Mr. McCarthy said on Monday. “It’s the repeat offenders. It’s the same people over and over again.” (New York Times, 9/1/2015)

Liberals are marching in the streets after thugs who threaten police and refuse to surrender are shot. Meanwhile the thugs are killing each other - and the occasional innocent victim - with abandon. We've seen this movie before: tougher laws will eventually be enacted to take the criminals off the streets and keep them off the streets. And then, inevitably, Liberals will begin to whine about how poor minority neighborhoods were decimated by the mass incarceration of young males. (That is, the thugs.) 

Egged on by Vice President Al Sharpton, President Hillary Clinton will open the jail doors and set the criminals free.  


Blow by Blow
Monday on CNN’s “AC360,” New York Times columnist and CNN regular Charles Blow was asked to react to the argument the Black Lives Matter movement and misses a point that all lives matter and shouldn’t be used as a rallying cry.

According to Blow, it’s a “great concept” but ignores the different treatments of people along racial lines.

“In general, that is a great concept,” Blow replied. “And I wish that all of America believed that all lives matter. However, what we see is disparate treatments of different segments of the population, particularly along racial lines in America, which looks like devaluation of specific segments of the population, specifically black people. And I think that until America says, in its core, that all lives matter, it is appropriate, and in fact necessary to point out the lives that America seems to value less.”

Blow went on to argue that since the government in charge in America is a reflection of the people, America is against black people because certain elements of the government don’t treat blacks equally in his view. (Breitbart.com, 8/31/2015)

If only America had a black president. Or a black woman as senior advisor to a black president. Or a black Attorney General. Or black congressmen. Or black governors. Or black mayors. 


Reserved
Mr. Casey, who announced his decision in a 17-page memo that included a page and a half of footnotes, said in an interview that he still had many deep reservations, especially doubts that Iran would keep up its end of the bargain. But he said he ultimately concluded that it was in the national security interests of the United States to support the agreement. (New York Times, 9/2/2015)

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. Has "deep reservations" about the Iran deal. About whether Iran will cheat. 

Not to worry. He gets quickly past his internal conflicts...and sells out his country. 


In Writing
Mr. Coons said in a speech at the University of Delaware on Tuesday that just that morning he had received personal, written assurances from Mr. Obama on a range of concerns before finally deciding to endorse the deal. (New York Times, 9/2/2015)

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Gets private assurances from Obama on the Iran deal. Why not share?

Then he sells out the country. 

Meanwhile, here is what the Iranians are saying....
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, announced plans to expand the reach of Iran’s missiles and warned that despite the nuclear deal, America was still the “same Great Satan.” (New York Times, 9/2/2015)


Dependency
But Mr. Biden’s chances of winning the nomination, if he decides to run, may depend on whether Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bumpy summer turns into a disastrous autumn or winter. And there are no signs that will happen. (New York Times, 9/2/2015)

No signs. None. Not a single one. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Just For You

Unmentionables
Not mentioned was Mr. Biden’s own history with the financial services industry, an economic power in his home state of Delaware, or the critics who saw him as too close to credit-card companies in more than three decades in the Senate. (New York Times, 8/31/2015)

The New York Times is conflicted, seriously conflicted. On the one hand, it has already settled on Hillary Clinton. She meets their number one requirement for president: she is a woman. (The fact that she is a grandmother is just icing on the cake.) And so the Times has largely buried Clinton's biggest problem: Benghazi. The e-mail scandal has caused consternation at the Times, no doubt. Rouge elements there have been dogged in pursuing the story. Our thought is that editorial pressure will eventually lead to a concluding article that Hill may have been a tad careless, but THERE IS NO CRIME. Onward to the coronation.

Suddenly, however, Uncle Joe comes along. Biden's main qualification...how to put it delicately? Well, it can't be put delicately. Biden's main qualification is that his son died tragically young. So the Times has to acknowledge Biden's status as a victim of horrible family tragedies. The Times loves victims. But ultimately Biden cannot be allowed to get in the way of Hillary. And so the Times runs a second soft hit piece on Uncle Joe. Call it another warning shot across the bow. 


Unconvinced
One of Mr. Biden’s likely priorities as a candidate would be to make a convincing argument that his approach to consumer issues has evolved since his time as a senator. (New York Times, 8/31/2015)

Once again we are reminded that Democrats evolve while Republicans flip-flop.


Spent
Mrs. Clinton spent the weekend fund-raising in the Hamptons.... (New York Times, 8/31/2015)

With the 1%ers?


Catch and Release
The State Department is scheduled to release another trove of Mrs. Clinton’s emails on Monday, as part of its monthly production of messages from the personal email account she used exclusively as secretary of state. (New York Times, 8/31/2015)

We are impressed. Usually these data dumps take place on Friday so that they can be ignored over the weekend. 

What's that?

Oh, sorry. Monday is Labor Day.


Origins
Originally it (Obamacare) was going to lower rates. Then it was going to keep them roughly the same. Then the Democrats admitted that the rates would go up, but they would go up more slowly than they would if we never passed the legislation. (But hey… we had to pass it to find out what was in it, so I suppose all’s fair in love and legislative war.) (Jazz Shaw, Hotair.com, 8/31/2015)

Well put. 

Ash and Sand

Scrambled
As investors scramble to make sense of the wild market swings in recent days, a number of financial experts argue that, for more than a year now, signs pointing to an equity crisis were there for all to see. (New York Times, 8/26/2015)

There is one thing and one thing only that we can say about the current state of the equities market. Obama will blame Bush.


Two Time Loser
“The Vice President is somebody who has already run for President twice,” Mr. Earnest added. “So I think you could make the case that there is probably no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign.” (Wall Street Journal, 8/25/2015)

So Obama's press secretary is saying that because Joe Biden has run twice for president - and lost - he knows exactly what it takes to run a third campaign and win. Imagine how much more qualified Biden would be to run for president if he lost a third time!


Heartless
The IRS admitted to a federal court there was a second personal email account that Lois Lerner, the official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal, used to conduct agency business. (foxnews.com, 8/25/2015)

We know that the IRS did nothing wrong because President Obama said that it did nothing wrong. (His exact words: "not a smidgen of corruption.") We know that Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong because she told us she did nothing wrong. We know that Planned Parenthood did nothing wrong because the Liberal Media has not covered the story about its thriving business selling aborted baby parts. 

Today's funny: NY Times anoints Elizabeth Warren "progressive avatar."

Water Logged
The meeting comes as Mr. Biden — whose eldest son, Beau, died in May — has begun to intensively test the waters for a third White House run, meeting with his small inner circle and telephoning Democratic donors. (New York Times, 8/23/2015)

Joe Biden has endured almost unbearable family hardship in his life, the latest being the death of his son. He is deserving of our sympathy and support. 

But this does not mean that we should elect him president which is what the emerging story line has become. For the same reason, Hillary Clinton is not deserving of the presidency simply because she has endured years of cheating by her husband. Nor does she deserve the position because she is a grandmother, the emerging story line of her campaign. 

Why not just elect the person most qualified? 


His and Hers
Sheriff’s investigators are to offer evidence to prosecutors that could lead to a manslaughter charge against Caitlyn Jenner for her role in a fatal car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., in February. (New York Times, 8/23/2015)

Defense: "I was not driving the car. It was driven by Bruce Jenner."


Build Yourself a Myth
If there is one health myth that will not die, it is this: You should drink eight glasses of water a day. It’s just not true. There is no science behind it. (Aaron E. Carroll, New York Times, 8/24/2015)

Another myth with no science behind it: global warming.


Damaged Goods
A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department. (New York Times, 8/24/2015)

The Clinton cancer - corruption - infects everyone surrounding Bill and Hill. Huma Abedin (a.k.a. Mrs. Carlos Danger) lawyers up. 


Bombed
In any month other than August in the Summer of Trump, the fact that a sitting vice president asked a major progressive avatar to meet with him before a decision about a presidential campaign would have been a news bomb.

The private meeting on Saturday between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts may have gotten less attention than it might have otherwise, but it was the clearest signal yet of Mr. Biden’s seriousness in thinking about entering the race. (New York Times, 8/24/2015)

So the New York Times has a new label for Elizabeth Warren. She is a "progressive avatar."

Pause while we gag.

Here we have yet another example of how the Liberal Media anoints favored politicians notwithstanding their duplicity and flawed character. Ted Kennedy was a "liberal lion" who also happened to regularly abuse alcohol and women. Bill Clinton is the revered senior statesman of the Democrat party who cheated on his wife with the White House help and then lied about it. Elizabeth Warren was hired by Harvard Law after constructing a false narrative claiming Native American ancestry. None of this matters, of course, because they all hold the politically correct views. Meanwhile, churchgoing Mitt Romney was vilified for having a successful business career. 

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Heartbreaker
Mr. Biden’s first campaign in 1988 ended in heartbreak after news reports that he plagiarized parts of a speech and exaggerated his academic record forced him to drop out. (New York Times, 8/2/2015)

Really? Biden's first presidential run ended in "heartbreak" after he was caught cheating?

We might say that it ended in shame and embarrassment. 


Puzzling
In all, this second cache of emails that Mrs. Clinton sent and received during 2009 and parts of 2010, released by the State Department by court order, added 1,356 new tiles to the mosaic of her tenure in President Obama’s cabinet. And the monthly release of the emails prescribed by the court ensures that her handling of her electronic correspondence will be updated throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. (New York Times, 8/2/2015)

So this is how the New York Times is going to describe Hillary Clinton's disastrous term as Secretary of State. It was a "mosaic!" Is this a joke?


Dogged
In the way that some conservatives worry that marriage equality will ultimately lead to people walking down the aisle with their goats or their half-sisters, some dog owners feared that DNA testing would open the gates to a new era of unstoppable oppression and tyranny. (New York Times, 8/2/2015)

It's Bash Conservatives Day at the New York Times today. How do we know? Every author, no matter what the subject, has to include a denigrating comment about right-wingers. And so here we have an article about a Brooklyn co-op dealing with a problem related to dog owners not cleaning up dog feces. Note how the Times has cleverly tied it back to conservatives.

(By the way, just kidding! It's Bash Conservatives Day at the New York Times every day!)


Beggar Man
At one point, Mr. Sanders begged for the crowd’s indulgence to discuss his campaign platform before focusing on the “save our cities” subject of the gathering. But he called that “your theme” — an off-key remark, and one that echoed a speech he made on Thursday, in which he twice referred to Latinos as “your people” before the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. (New York Times, 8/2/2015)

Bernie Sanders says "your people" to a group of Latinos which apparently is politically incorrect. Not to worry, it gets virtually no press coverage and the Times buries it in Section Q. If Scott Walker said "your people" to a group of Latinos it would be the end of his presidential campaign. 

We Insist that Joe Biden Run for President

A RedStateVT Editorial
The initial promise of the Bernie Sanders No Deodorant Presidential Campaign is beginning to fade. The Bern has failed to deliver any new bon mots lately and, frankly, we are getting bored of hearing about how the "billionaires and millionaires" are ruining everything. And then the Colonel heads to Martha's Vineyard to party. How very unprogressive. Sure Hillary is stepping up to the plate. We just loved it when she said of her self-inflicted e-mail scandal: "The facts are clear." That is good stuff. As for the other Dems....zip, zero, zilch. O'Malley and Chaffee have given us nothing. (There might be one other Dem running but we cannot remember his name. What does that tell you?) It is time for Joe Biden, serial groper and human gaffe machine to enter the race. We need him now!


Castaway
Therefore, Mrs. Clinton cast questions about her emails as little more than an interagency squabble over which emails should be made public under freedom of information laws. “What I think you’re seeing here is a very typical kind of discussion, to some extent disagreement, among various parts of the government over what should or should not be publicly released,” she said. The debate among government agencies “has nothing to do with me,” Mrs. Clinton added. “They can fight over it or argue over it. That’s up to them.” (Wall Street Journal, 7/26/2015)

So Hill sets up her own server, sends classified e-mails from it, then deletes the e-mails and the fuss is all just a bureaucratic squabble. As Peggy Noonan famously says: "the Clintons are insulated from charges of corruption by their reputation for corruption."


Commuter-in-Chief
President Obama announced on Monday that he was commuting the sentences of 46 federal drug offenders, more than doubling the number of nonviolent criminals to whom he has granted clemency since taking office. (New York Times, 7/13/2015)

Once again President Obama focuses with laser-like precision on the issues that a majority of Americans deem MOST important. Who among us has not said: "Gee, I wish the president would let more criminals out of jail?"


End Game
After years of debate about whether the government should encourage end-of-life planning – an idea that Sarah Palin claimed would lead to “death panels” cutting off care to the sick – Medicare, the federal program that insures 55 million older and disabled Americans, is now proposing to reimburse doctors for having conversations with patients about whether and how they would want to be kept alive if they become too sick to speak for themselves. (New York Times, 7/8/2015)

Obsessed with Sarah Palin as they are, Liberals constantly belittle and misrepresent her. It makes them feel intellectually superior. It turns out, of course, that Palin is right. Through Obamacare, Medicare seeks to reduce reimbursement rates for doctors treating the elderly infirmed and now will instead pay them to talk grandma into ending it all. Sarah Palin will now accept your apologies. 


Revved Up
But with the presidential campaign revving up, Democrats and abortion rights supporters are bracing for a sustained, sophisticated and coordinated effort to force a debate on the uncomfortable moral and ethical questions that abortion raises. (New York Times, 7/27/2015)

The New York Times admits that abortion raises "uncomfortable moral and ethical questions?" How did this slip past their editors? We thought abortion was a women's health issue.