Force Majeure

Check Mate
“It’s not so much about checking a box, like on a census form,” said Tracy Sefl, a Democratic political consultant in Washington. “It’s about the qualitative properties that the candidate takes to the position. In this case you’re talking about tremendous women, and then we get a whole bunch more white guys.” (NYT, 1/8/2013)

Actually - when Liberals start talking about diversity - it is exactly about checking a box. We'll pause for a second and offer a modicum of sympathy to Obama who is being called out on not having enough women in his "inner circle." OK, the second is up. Now we'll say that Obama is being bit by the very diversity nonsense that he has championed. 


Across The Universe
From Hurricane Sandy to Sandy Hook, the GOP response to almost every problem is to privatize it — and give it a tax cut. Republicans’ alternate universe is one where school principals carry guns, Halliburton pulls people from burning buildings and the government polices women’s bodies. (Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Washington Post, 1/8/2013)

Actually moonbat Vanden Heuvel is one-third correct. Republicans would prefer that principals carry guns, the net effect of which would be fewer school shooting casualties. As to fire fighters, even in Liberal fantasy land we have never heard Republicans question the efficacy of local fire fighters. Spurious charge. And finally, we can assure her that the government has absolutely zero interest in her body. Feminists don't want the government to tell them what they can and cannot do insofar as their bodies are concerned. They just want the government to pay for their abortions with our tax dollars.


Pushy
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy is pushing for a law banning large-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones authorities say accused gunman Adam Lanza used in the Newtown shooting. (NYT, 1/10/2013)

So the emerging Liberal Big Idea on guns is to ban automatic weapons and 30 bullet magazines. Here's a question assuming that they get their wish. If in the next school shooting (God forbid) a madman kills (only) 10 people using two pistols (six shots each), would Liberals consider that a success?


Partly
The vice president also will be meeting with the entertainment industry because, he said, "part of this is cultural as well." (NYT, 1/10/2013)

Well it's a start anyway and we will take it even though we get the sense that Liberals are just going through the motions. They still think the real problem is the guns.


Everybody
“Anyone who has a sash, bring it along, because tomorrow the people will be invested as president of the republic, because the people are Chávez,” Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly, said Wednesday. “All of us here are Chávez, the people in the street are Chávez, the lady who cooks is Chávez, the comrade who works as a watchman is Chávez, the soldier is Chávez, the woman is Chávez, the farmer is Chávez, the worker is Chávez; we’re all Chávez.” (NYT, 1/9/2013)

Even Sean Penn is Chavez!


ABCs
Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is “L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.,” which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

“Q” can mean “questioning” or “queer,” an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. “I” is for “intersex,” someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And “A” stands for “ally” (a friend of the cause) or “asexual,” characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it’s catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate “gender-neutral” restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter. (NYT, 1/9/2013)

We have absolutely no comment on this.

RedStateVT Announces 2012 Cheney Award Winner

 

Who will win RedStateVT’s annual Cheney Award? It is a question that conservatives ask every year around this time. The Cheney Award is given annually to the individual who in our view  has done the most to preserve and promote the values of American liberty, strength and exceptionalism.  The award honors Vice-President Dick Cheney for his service to and defense of this great country. Previous winners include Glen Beck (2009), Dick Morris (2010) and Michelle Malkin (2011).

One of the most important developments in the modern conservative movement is the rigorous ‘calling out’ of bias in the mainstream media. (RedStateVT is just one offspring of this effort, albeit a highly effective one!) It is safe to say that almost no act of Liberal bias in the media today is not exposed, documented and dissected. The big ones – Candy Crowley’s tossing of a presidential debate to her favored candidate - obviously receive much attention. However, even the subtler acts of bias are now regularly exposed. 

Sample:

Question to Mitt Romney – Why does your party’s platform disparage the poor in America?

Question to President Obama – How do you explain the personal attacks on you by Republicans to your daughters?

Brent Bozell, founder and President of the Media Research Center deserves enormous credit for his relentless efforts in this regard. Through his television appearances, his columns and his Newsbusters website Bozell lets no act of journalistic dishonesty go unanswered and serves as one of the most effective watchdogs on Liberal media bias. For his heroic efforts Bozell is the winner of RedStateVT’s 2012 Cheney Award.

Across The Empire

Mugged
Ann Coulter's new book Mugged is a great analysis of race in America from the perspective of the two major political parties. With example after example after example, Coulter explains what actually happened (covering everything from civil rights to political advertisements to the use of alleged racist "code words") and then what Democrats and their allies in the media said happened. (Pop quiz: Which party had a larger percentage of votes in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Wrong. Republicans did.) The original oppressors of black Americans (southern plantation owners), Democrats have now switched to a different kind of oppression. Call it - as others have - the soft tyranny of low expectations. And so today Democrats fail to hold blacks accountable for bad behavior within their community and relentlessly bombard them with the message that Republicans are out to....what was it the Vice President of the United States of America said to a black audience? Oh, that's right. "Put y'all back in chains." For Democrats, America will ALWAYS be a racist country because by perpetuating this myth it allows them to blame Republicans and secure black votes. Need proof? Why do black Republicans like Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, JC Watts, Michael Steele, Allen West and Herman Cain scare Democrats so much and why are all black Republicans so viciously attacked? You know the answer. They represent an existential threat to Democrats. 

Inspired by Coulter's book RedStateVT tried to imagine what it would take for Democrats to conclude that America was NOT a racist country. What achievement by a black American remains out of reach and - therefore - proof of America's inherent racism? After careful consideration, the only things we could come up with are a black pope and a black NHL head coach. That's it. Blacks have scaled the heights of all aspects of American life: business, sports, entertainment. (We even have a black president!) But no black pope or NHL coach. As we pondered this further, we have come to a tentative conclusion that blame should really be directed not toward Americans, but instead toward Italians and Canadians....  


Labeling
The most outrageous policy proposals are invariably described as the promotion of "civil rights." As long as liberals label something a "right," they never have to explain why it's a good idea. (Ann Coulter, Mugged)

Just one of our many favorite quotes from Mugged!


Carbs
Al Gore and his co-investors just sold liberal cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, the network bankrolled by the emir of Qatar. How much in carbon offsets does Mr. Gore need to balance his estimated $100 million from the sale to an oil sheik? (WSJ, 1/6/2013)

Al Gore is just one of those gifts that keeps on giving.


Never Mind
In 2007 Senator Obama made this pledge: "I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law." In 2008 Candidate Obama said "Congress's job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it."

Last week, President Obama wrote that "though I continue to oppose certain sections" of the defense bill, "the need to renew critical defense authorities and funding was too great" not to sign it. Mr. Obama has issued more than 20 signing statements so far. (WSJ, 1/6/2013)

As the Journal points out, Liberals are largely silent. (Our emphasis)


Stunning
What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' "
...
The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." (WSJ, 1/6/2013)

Boehner can do much to rehabilitate his image with the Right by continuing to divulge more about his negotiations with Obama. The revelations do not flatter Obama. More importantly, they provide insight into the strange thinking of Obama and (presumably) the Democrats. America's fiscal problems are - first and foremost - a result of health care? Stunning indeed.

All of which got us thinking about Obama's legacy. If he is wrong about America's deficit problem being health care and Obamacare being the answer, his legacy will be forever tarnished. Fortunately for us, it will be very easy to track!

Daggers In The Forum

Practice Not Perfect
The practice of medical underwriting — being able to consider the health of a prospective policy holder before deciding whether to offer coverage and what rate to charge — will no longer be permitted after 2014 under the health care law. (NYT, 1/6/2013)

And so insurance as we know it will disappear. 

Next to fall, medical underwriting for life insurance:
Terminally ill? Not to worry. Thanks to President Obama and the Democrat party, you cannot be denied life insurance due to your medical condition!


As The Crow Flies
As the best-selling author Michelle Alexander pointed out in her sensational 2010 book “The New Jim Crow,” various factors, including the methodical mass incarceration of black men, has led to the disintegration of the black family, the disenfranchisement of millions of people, and a new and very real era of American oppression.

As Alexander confirmed to me Friday: “Today there are more African-American adults under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” (Charles M. Blow, NYT, 1/4/2013)

Recall that Blow's columns have been referred to as "the punch line for many writers." So here he apparently agrees with Alexander that "various factors have led to the disintegration of the black family." One of these is the "methodical mass incarceration of black men." The phrase purposefully evokes images of Nazis rounding up innocent Jews and sending them to concentration camps. Here, of course, they would substitute "Republicans" for "Nazis" and "black men" for "Jews." The slander is the same. 

The truth, of course, is that the black men that are being imprisoned are criminals, sometimes apprehended by black policemen and sentenced by black judges to prisons with black guards and black wardens. We just finished reading Ann Coulter's latest best-seller Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. Coulter brilliantly exposes the lies about race that Liberals tell and that the media echoes endlessly. We'll have more on Mugged in future posts. 


Assorted Sins
The Federal Election Commission has fined President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign $375,000 for an assortment of reporting violations.
...
The FEC has levied steeper penalties, but the $375,000 fine is one of the largest charged to a presidential campaign in recent years, according to FEC records. (WSJ, 1/4/2013)

Sick of hearing about this yet? What...you hadn't heard?


Repetition
In his December fiscal negotiations with the GOP, Obama repeated many of the mistakes he made earlier in his first term. Rather than come to the table with a grand vision of his own — a real strategy for cutting the deficit and the entitlement programs that drive it — he played a poker game of incremental bargaining with House Speaker John Boehner. (David Ignatius, Washington Post, 1/2/2013)

With Obama safely re-elected, Liberal commentators now want him to get serious - really - about the deficit and entitlement reform. Geez, there was another candidate for president who actually ran on these positions. What was his name again?

Physical Cliffs

Incredible
Mr. Gore did not directly respond to those lines of criticism on Thursday. But in an e-mail message he wrote of his reason for divesting: “I am incredibly proud of what Current has been able to accomplish. But broadcast media is a business, and being an independent content producer in a time of increasing consolidation is a challenge.” (NYT, 1/3/2013)

Ah, where to start? Gore is "incredibly proud" of Current TV. It had an average of 42,000 viewers which in TV land rounds to 0% market share. "Incredibly proud" that he sold it to Al Jazeera. Osama bin Laden's mouthpiece and favorite channel. "Incredibly proud" that he sold it before year-end. You know, so that he could avoid the Obama capital gains hikes. (Don't Liberals tell us that paying taxes is patriotic?) No doubt he is "incredibly proud" that his cut is $100 million. Isn't Gore just the kind of selfish rich guy that Obama has been talking about for the last five years...non-stop? Where IS Obama on this issue? Why no press conference on the Gore tax deal? We sense a cover-up! The public is outraged! Oh, forget it.


Art Of The Deal
But Congress’s last-minute deal to raise taxes earlier this week will offset some of these sources of growth, since higher taxes trim how much money consumers have available to spend each week. (NYT, 1/4/2013)

With the election over and Obama safely re-elected, the New York Times discovers the economic policy fact that higher taxes leads to less consumer spending and reduced economic growth. 

Now remind us because we cannot remember, which party wanted lower taxes all along?


On The Sidelines
Millions of workers are sitting on the sidelines and so are not counted in the total tally of unemployed. (NYT, 1/4/2013)

With the election over and Obama safely re-elected, the New York Times discovers that the unemployment rate is actually much HIGHER than 7.8% 

We can do this all day folks. 


Vibrancy
The first serious display of XX-chromosome strength occurred well before noon, when the female members of the House Democratic Caucus gathered on the Capitol steps for a group photo.

With many of the women dressed in vibrant hues, they assembled in the chilly January air, waving to old friends and greeting the new. They laughed and joked, inviting Representative Barney Frank, the Democrat from Massachusetts who retired this week, to hop in the picture. (NYT, 1/3/2013)

Of course.


Promises
This Congress promises to be more diverse than its predecessors in several ways. On hand at the Capitol were Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, the first openly gay senator; the first Hindu representative, Ms. Gabbard; and Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, the first Buddhist senator. Representative Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona. also became the first openly bisexual member to serve in Congress. (NYT, 1/3/2013)

Now if they can only get a handicapped transgendered person of Samoan ancestry all the bases of identity politics will be covered. And what a great day for America that will be!

Demagoguery

Measured
Despite the party divisions, many Republicans in their remarks characterized the measure, which allows taxes to go up on household income over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples but makes permanent tax cuts for income below that level, as a victory of sorts, even as so many of them declined to vote for it.

“After more than a decade of criticizing these tax cuts,” said Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, “Democrats are finally joining Republicans in making them permanent. Republicans and the American people are getting something really important, permanent tax relief.” (NYT, 1/1/2013)

Good line from Camp. So Democrats now own tax cuts on something like 98% of the country. The Bush tax cuts are dead. Long live the Obama tax cuts.


Hold Backs
House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present. (Weeklystandard.com, 1/2/2013)

One of the highlights of the Cheney vice-presidency was when he told Vermont's Patrick Leahy: "Go f- yourself." Here's what happened. Leahy had been running around accusing Cheney of somehow profiteering from Halliburton's military contracts for the Iraq war. The charges were blasphemous. So the next time that Leahy bumps into Cheney, Leahy pretends that nothing happened and tried to shake his hand. To his everlasting credit, Cheney told Leahy where to go. And now Boehner - who we certainly have our doubts about - surprises us with this Cheneyesque move. We will have to reconsider him. Meanwhile Reid, like Leahy, shows himself to be a hypocrite.


Automatically
With time running out before a year-end deadline to prevent big automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had reached an impasse with his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid. So Sen. McConnell turned to the one remaining Democrat he thought could break the impasse: Vice President Joe Biden.

In a Sunday afternoon phone call, Mr. McConnell asked the vice president: "Does anyone down there know how to cut a deal?" recalled a Republican aide who overheard the call. (WSJ, 1/2/2012)

And another reminder - if you needed one - of the utter incompetence of Senate majority leader Reid.


Overhauling
The 2010 health care law overhaul was probably the biggest attack on inequality since it began rising in the 1970s, increasing taxes on businesses and the rich to pay for health insurance largely for the middle class. (NYT, 1/2/2013)

New year, same lies from the New York Times. Obamacare is now "for the middle class." Who knew?


Matters
Meanwhile, even as Democrats claim these tax rates won't matter to investment, Senators stuffed their bill full of tax subsidies for special business interests. The wind tax credit survived (cost: $12.1 billion), and so did the tax breaks for cellulosic ethanol ($59 million) and the impoverished producers of Hollywood ($248 million). (WSJ, 1/2/2013)

Obama pays back his supporters. Cynical on politics yet?

The Op-Ed The New York Times Refuses To Publish!

Some Material Unsuitable

In the days since the terrible Newtown shooting, the media has been filled with articles, editorials and op-eds on the issue of guns and gun control. Many call for renewed efforts to revive or institute bans on this weapon or that armament accessory. Those opposed to regulating guns have cited – among other things - a decline or degradation of American cultural standards. Video game and movie violence are included in this list of cultural issues along with divorce and single parenthood, medical and societal standards for treatment of mental illness and the de-emphasis of religion in daily life.

Focusing on the first two, video games and movies, is relevant as they appear to capture a significant portion of the attention and free time of young males. Coincidentally or not, young males seem to be the exclusive perpetrators of these horrible crimes.

So what is it about video games and movies that might cause some to look at them as a causal agent for violent acts? Perusing the New York Times website recently, here are two descriptions that we find:

Reviewing a video game called Dishonored:

The game encourages players to resist employing the many creative methods of killing that it offers. You’re rewarded for the indirect approach: sneaking around corners, over roofs and through tunnels, and eavesdropping on characters who provide clues to your target’s whereabouts. But there’s nothing to stop you from making Corvo charge right through the front door and kill everyone in his path.There are many ways to accomplish each mission. Corvo can assassinate his enemies — or bystanders — with his blade, or he can choke them into unconsciousness with his hands. (New York Times, 10/15/2012)

Reviewing the new Tom Cruise movie Jack Reacher:

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and adapted from “One Shot” the ninth in Lee Child’s series of macho best sellers, “Jack Reacher” brings its hero to Pittsburgh, where a sniper has just shot down five innocent people, including a nanny accompanying a small child, in broad daylight. (New York Times, 12/20/2012)

The video game Dishonored is recommended for age 17 and over while the rating of Jack Reacher is  PG-13, making both easily accessible to a troubled 20 year old such as Adam Lanza.

Is there even the slightest chance that repeated and prolonged exposure to the likes of Dishonored and Jack Reacher could push a mentally unstable person over the edge? Lanza was described in one article as spending hours in his bedroom playing violent video games. Colorado theater shooter James Holmes committed his atrocity at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises of which the New York Times movie review of July 18, 2012 said the following:

In “The Dark Knight Rises” Mr. Nolan, working from a script he wrote with his brother Jonathan, further muddies the good-and-evil divide with Bane. A swaggering, overmuscled brute with a scar running down his back like a zipper and headgear that obscures his face and turns his cultivated voice into a strangulated wheeze, Bane comes at Batman and Gotham hard. Fortified by armed true believers, Bane first beats Batman in a punishingly visceral, intimate fist-to-foot fight and then commandeers the city with a massive assault that leaves it crippled and — because of the explosions, the dust, the panic and the sweeping aerial shots of a very real-looking New York City — invokes the Sept 11 attacks. It’s unsettling enough that some may find it tough going.

As I recall, the juxtaposition between Holmes’s deadly actions and the specific movie at which he chose to act received some, but not a lot, of attention. To the extent that the movie itself was mentioned, the focus seemed to be on the challenges that the movie studio would have marketing their product going forward.

As a society, would we be wise to bet against a connection between entertainment violence and violent acts? Such acts which are typically characterized as “random.”  Remember that the protagonist of Dishonored has the option of killing “bystanders” while Jack Reacher kicks off with a sniper gunning down “innocents.”

In a discussion recently with my 24 year old son (a movie buff of sorts), I attempted to get at the idea of the desensitization of violence. I talked about how the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs was shocking in its time for its depiction of actual and implied violence, including torture and cannibalism. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most violent movie you have seen, I asked him, how would you rate The Silence of the Lambs? I’d give it about a 4, he replied.

By all means, let’s have a national discussion of gun laws and agree upon what types of guns are and are not acceptable for Americans to own. That conversation will be meaningless, however, if we do not address the culture of violence that takes place in the darkened movie theaters and behind the closed bedroom doors of America.

 RedStateVT