Fitful Echoes

Just Because
The president thinks people are depressed because they don't understand how good the economy is. Actually right now they are depressed because he is president. (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, 9/18/2014)

Loyal readers know that RedStateVT holds Ann Coulter in high esteem for her brilliant political analysis and superb wit. Here she gets a run for her money from Peggy Noonan. 


Great Moments from the Obama Presidency
If you like your health plan you can keep it

The 1980s wants their foreign policy back

There is not a smidgen of scandal at the IRS

Tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility after the election

I did not set a red line on Syria

ISIS is a JV team

We do not have a strategy yet

No boots on the ground


Shutdown
Nearly a year after its bungled rollout subjected thousands of Vermonters to a state mandated health insurance marketplace that was more expensive, nearly impossible to navigate and never fully functional, Governor Shumlin today announced that Vermont Health Connect will be shut down for repairs until after the November elections. (VTGOP.org, 9/16/2014)

In the private sector, you get fired for this level of incompetence. In Vermont, Burger Boy Shumlin will get re-elected.


Declaration
Gov. Peter Shumlin declared $721,445 in income on the 2013 federal income tax return he filed last spring. Nearly half the money came from real estate income. Shumlin also released a list of $10.3 million in assets that includes 16 properties valued collectively at $3.86 million. (Burlington Free Press, 9/19/2014)

Another Liberal 1%er!

Occupy Shumlin!


Unsettling
...the climate lobby should return to the climate science and explain the hiatus in warming that has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years depending on the data set and which the climate models failed to predict even as global carbon dioxide emissions have climbed by 25%. Their alibi is that the new warming is now hidden in the oceans, an assertion they lack the evidence to prove. (Wall Street Journal, 9/22/2014)

To which climate liars (i.e. the opposite of climate deniers) say...what?

RedStateVT Presents the Worst of 2013

Here it is! Our annual list. Happy reading.

President Obama
Readers may be surprised to learn that Obama does NOT appear every year on RedStateVT’s annual list. (See, we are an objective blog!) “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” will go down as one of the biggest (maybe THE biggest?) presidential lies of all time. Of course, “I didn’t set a red line” was a good one as well….


Obamacare
Twenty thousand pages of sheer madness. 


Kathleen Sebelius 
“Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.” 

Done.  We hold Sebelius accountable for the debacle.  Then she does not even have the decency to resign!


Wendy Davis
Urged on by Dems, Davis seeks to build a race for Texas governor (and a national profile) on a filibuster of modest requirements to abortion in the state. For example, the abortionist has to have an affiliation with an area hospital. In case, you know, something goes wrong. 


The Kardashians
Everything that is wrong with America encapsulated in one dysfunctional family. Wait; don’t we say the same thing every year?


Gay
No doubt as Gay looks back on 2013 it has much to be happy about. In fact, it was a marvelous year. Same sex marriage is out of the closet and well on its way to national legitimacy. But as always, Gay overplayed its hand. In 2014, this may come back to bite Gay on the backside. Average Americans who – like RedStateVT – believe that people should be free to love who they love are nonetheless getting fed up with the vilification of anyone who dares to disagree with Gay.  Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims all live by a moral code passed down for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Society is better because of their focus on morality, charity and fellowship. What to do about their rejection of homosexuality? How about stop talking about your sexual preferences all the time?

As usual, Coulter gets it right:
The first time someone stands up to a bully and the sky doesn't fall, the tyranny is over. The gay mafia was out of control, drunk with power. This time, they got their wings clipped. (AnnCoulter.com, 12/31/2013)


Chris Matthews
Matthews makes the list for one action and one action only. (Yes, we ignore the daily nonsense he spews because it is expected.) We cannot, however, ignore his infantile and fawning interview with President Obama last month.  It was journalism at its most embarrassing. 


Hillary Clinton
Hill makes the list for one issue and one issue only: Benghazi. The death of brave Americans should never be politicized and never callously dismissed.  She did both.  “Who cares what caused it?” goes down as one of the most abominable utterances by any U.S. public figure…ever. 


Detroit Democrats
It took decades, but through hard work Democrats registered their biggest score. 

They killed a city.


Peter Shumlin and Vermont Progressives
Here is what Shummy and the Progs focused on in 2013: decriminalizing marijuana, assisted suicide, closing Vermont Yankee (with its 650 jobs and cheap, reliable power), single payer healthcare (no info on how to pay for it), drivers licenses for illegals, taxes on soda and more taxes.  In short, a grab bag of fringe Lefty issues. 

Too bad they did not spend any time figuring out how to attract more companies to the state and grow the job base. 

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. 

Least Among You

As If
After the Russian warning, Mr. Obama said: “It’s not as if the F.B.I. did nothing. They not only investigated the older brother; they interviewed the older brother. They concluded that there were no signs that he was engaging in extremist activity.” (NYT, 4/30/2013)

Apparently posting jihadist videos on your Facebook page does NOT qualify as "extremist activity."


Bite of the Apple
About two-thirds of Apple’s cash — about $102 billion — sits overseas in lower-tax jurisdictions. If it returned some of that cash to the United States to reward its investors, it could have significant tax consequences for the company. (NYT, 4/30/2013)

Liberals would argue either that Apple should return their cash hoard to the U.S. and pay higher taxes in order to be patriotic or that Apple should be taxed more heavily because they evade U.S. taxes by moving their money offshore. Conservatives would argue that the U.S. should lower taxes so that Apple would keep money in this country. Which makes more sense to you?


Notional
“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “The notion that we’re going to keep 100 individuals in no man’s land in perpetuity,” he added, makes no sense. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?” (NYT, 4/30/2013)

Well boss, you da president.

As the article also points out, Obama could order a case-by-case review of the gentle souls in Gitmo and seek individual releases. He has not done so.

Also, when he does not get his way on other issues, Obama resorts to Executive Order. Apparently it is easier for him to simply demagogue.


Train Kept a Rollin'
President Obama said Tuesday that his health care law was “working fine,” and he played down concerns that the law could disrupt coverage or lead to higher premiums for people who already had health insurance.
...
At a hearing two weeks ago, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that many of his constituents were confused about the new law, and that “education and outreach” efforts by the administration were inadequate. “I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” Mr. Baucus said. (NYT, 4/30/2013)

Who should we believe, the Democrat President or the Democrat Senator? 

(And what do we read into the fact that Baucus is not running for re-election?)


If Ever
One hundred days into his second term, Obama has already lost control of the agenda, if he ever had control in the first place. He ricocheted through his news conference, as he has through his presidency recently, between issues and crises not of his choice. (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 4/30/2013)

Coulter is too hard on the president. Oh, it's Liberal Milbank?


Controlling
Today Vermonters are not celebrating the 6 percent rise in the gas tax. Governor Shumlin and his Democrat controlled legislature have increased a tax on those least able to afford higher taxes, the low income hard working families of Vermont. (VTGOP, 5/1/2013)

The VTGOP gets on board with RedStateVT in condemning the Shumlin tax hike on working families in Vermont.

Pockets of Resistance

Weighs, Leaps, Stints
As he weighs whether to leap into the race for mayor this year, Mr. Weiner’s lucrative stint in business could serve as a compelling campaign credential, blunting efforts to portray him as a career politician, even as it raises uncomfortable questions about the speed with which he cashed in on his government connections. (NYT, 4/29/2013)

The New York Times in 2011:  "As he weighs whether to leap into the race for president this year, Mr. Romney's lucrative stint in business could serve as a compelling campaign credential...."

Just kidding!


Evidentiary
President Obama on Tuesday said there will be no rush to judgment on escalating U.S. intervention in Syria until there is hard evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the government. 

“We now have evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria,” he said in a wide-ranging news conference at the White House. “But we don’t know when they were used, how they were used, or who used them [...] If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves where we can’t mobilize the international community to support what we do." (Washington Post, 4/30/2013)

The administration will go from arguing that it's too soon to intervene in Syria, to arguing that it's too late.
...
Mr. Obama will treat evidence of Iran's impending nuclearization the way he has looked at Syria's use of chemical weapons, demanding a standard of proof that will be impossible to meet until it is too late to do much about it.  (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 4/29/2013)

Great prescient column by Stephens which actually faults both Obama and Netanyahu for dithering on Iran. 


Convincing
When the ghastly news from Boylston Street first hit, there was an immediate divide between those who were sure the attack was a form of Islamic terrorism and those just as convinced that it was organized by domestic, right-wing extremists. April 15 was Tax Day, after all.
...
My faith in a tolerant, pluralistic America made me worry that hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Muslim citizens could become the victims of our anger — much as Italian Americans were stereotyped in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti.
...
I also found it disturbing that we have given scant attention to the April 17 explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Tex., that killed 15 people and injured more than 200.

As the labor writer Mike Elk pointed out this week in a Post commentary, industrial accidents are far more common than are acts of terror. We have more control over how we enforce worker-safety laws than we do over random acts of violence. Yet we have allowed the Texas story to be buried beneath all our speculation about the Tsarnaev brothers. (E.J. Dionne Jr, Washington Post, 4/24/2013)

Just getting around to E.J.'s column from last week. And what a column it was! 

First we get the old head fake: "Maybe the Boston bombing was the militias!" Which nobody except E.J. thought for more than four seconds. 

Then we get: "Let's not blame the Muslims..." Turns out it was the Muslims. 

Then - bizarrely - we get: "Don't forget the Texas fertilizer explosion."

It's official, E.J. is now rivaling Charles Blow for the title: Funniest Liberal Columnist.


Consider This
Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sabet, President Obama’s previous senior advisor at the Office of National Drug Control and Policy, spoke out Thursday against marijuana deregulation efforts under consideration in the Vermont Legislature. (VTDiggers.org, 4/25/2013)

Even a Kennedy argues against pot. Good for Patrick Kennedy!


Nickle Here, There
Gov. Peter Shumlin on Monday afternoon signed the transportation budget bill that contains a new gas tax, meaning the tax will go into effect Wednesday.  The tax is a net increase of 5.9 cents per gallon.  (Burlington Free Press, 4/29/2013)

On behalf of the plumbers, electricians, contractors, painters, teachers and all other working class people in Vermont: "Thanks for nothing Shummy!" 

Vote him out.

Motionless

Stoner Shums
In the hamlet of Essex Junction, Vermont we hear of a backlash against the proposed opening of a smoking accessories shop wherein a variety of smoking-related paraphernalia would be sold. Some call these "head shops." So will Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin - who famously offered to be a spokesperson for NORML - support the beleaguered proprietor? If not, why not? This is what he has wrought after all. 


Laugh Track
Yes, we need to reform Social Security, but the reform should increase, not cut the income support that millions rely on. In an important political blueprint for sensible reform released by the New American Foundation, Michael Lind, Steven Hill, Robert Hiltonsmith and Joshua Freedman call for adding a supplement to Social Security that would guarantee all retirees about 60 percent of their average wage in retirement (similar to that of most other developed nations). (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post, 4/9/2013)

Why do we do it? We vow to ignore vanden Heuvel and we always break our promise. After considerable reflection (and therapy) we had an epiphany. We return for the yucks. Proving the old maxim about Liberals that if something is not working, double down, vanden Heuvel argues for MORE Social Security. How to pay for it? Tax the rich! We have many dear friends (and loyal readers) who are actuaries and quantitative analysts. We'll call upon them to do the math here. Not to pre-judge the conclusion, but our educated guess is that you could confiscate all the Buffet, Koch and Soros wealth and not fund a 60% social security benefit for more than one month. 

But thanks to vanden Heuvel for the laugh.


Valued
The first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, and those in the dozen years since—all were fueled by Islamist hatred for the U.S. and its values.

There are Muslim organizations in this country, such as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, headed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, that speak out bravely against that totalitarian ideology. They receive no shout-out at presidential speeches; no outreach is extended to them. (Michael B. Mukasey, WSJ, 4/21/2013)

Follow-up to yesterday's post about Muslims who speak out against violence. Glad to hear of this organization. Why does Obama not host them at the White House?


Media Mash
Other than financing a few fringe libertarian publications, the Kochs have mostly avoided media investments. Now, Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant. (NYT, 4/20/2013)

Lots of interest in the Koch brothers media strategy. Next up: an investigative journalism piece from the Times about the media strategy of George Soros. Just kidding!


Twit
Anthony Weiner is back on Twitter. The former congressman and potential candidate for mayor  began posting messages Monday on a new account on the social networking site that played a key role in his high-profile downfall two years ago. (WSJ, 4/22/2013)

Weiner will apparently maintain two Twitter accounts. The new account will be geared toward his potential campaign for mayor of NYC. His original Twitter account will remain active and be the one on which he sends pictures of his private parts to women.