Washington Post Opinion Writer Robert Kagan’s recent column extols five foreign policy victories for President Obama in the month of June. RedStateVT wondered why we hadn’t heard of any, so we read on. Here is number two:
The second success was the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran. Yes, it was too mild, badly watered down by China and Russia. Yes, the administration oversold how much Russia acceded to American desires. But the administration did get a resolution, only a little later than planned, and passage kicked off additional sanctions by Europeans and others. Will this by itself stop Iran from getting a bomb? No. But it does increase the pressure on the Tehran regime, which may indirectly help those Iranians who dare to struggle for a new kind of government. Nor did Turkey and Brazil's votes against the resolution, following their pro-Iranian diplomacy, do more than discredit their leaders in decent world opinion -- imagine voting no even as China and Russia vote yes. (Robert Kagan, Washington Post, 6/29/10)
So to summarize, success according to Kagan is defined as a mild, badly watered down resolution that was oversold and late, that will not stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb and that was not supported by U.S. allies Turkey and Brazil! Talk about defining success down. We will not even share the other four “successes” with you. It is not surprising perhaps, as we learn that Kagan hails from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Works for Us
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the right to bear arms puts lives at risk. (New York Times, 6/29/10)
Yes, but the lives at risk are the criminals!
Uneven Bars
The death last year of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — who was second only to Mr. Byrd in length of Senate service — and his replacement in January by a Republican, Senator Scott Brown, forced Democrats into procedural gymnastics to enact the health care law. (New York Times, 6/29/10)
Wow! RedStateVT does not recall the New York Times referring this derisively to Democrat shenanigans to pass the health care bill at the time.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Two-fer
Reid raises more money from outside his state than any other senator. Vermont's Patrick J. Leahy (D) edges out Reid in the percentage he raises from out of state with 86 percent…. (Washington Post, 6/28/10)
This little ditty from the Washington Post is what we call a “two-fer.” We learn that Nevada Democrat Senator Harry Reid raises the most money from out-of-state special interests than ANY OTHER SENATOR, but Vermont Democrat Senator-for-Life Patrick Leahy gets the largest percentage of out-of-state special interest money than ANY OTHER SENATOR. Thick as thieves!
Supreme Madness
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Kagan had a "sterling reputation" and was "unquestionably qualified" to serve on the Supreme Court, calling her lack of judicial experience "refreshing." (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
In the same way that Barack Obama’s lack of experience is “refreshing!”
Leahy echoed that point, saying the charges against Kagan have been made in a "vacuum" because the nominee has not had a chance to answer. (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
Because Leahy would never make charges against a Republican Supreme Court nominee before they had a chance to answer!
Bad Humor Man
Vice President Biden called the manager of a custard shop outside of Milwaukee, Wis., a "smartass" after the man asked him to lower taxes. Biden made the comment Friday after the Kopp’s Frozen Custard shop manager told him that his dessert would be on the house if he lowered taxes. (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
President Obama had his brush with the common man in his Joe the Plumber encounter. Now Vice-President Biden follows with his Joe the Custard Man moment.
This little ditty from the Washington Post is what we call a “two-fer.” We learn that Nevada Democrat Senator Harry Reid raises the most money from out-of-state special interests than ANY OTHER SENATOR, but Vermont Democrat Senator-for-Life Patrick Leahy gets the largest percentage of out-of-state special interest money than ANY OTHER SENATOR. Thick as thieves!
Supreme Madness
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Kagan had a "sterling reputation" and was "unquestionably qualified" to serve on the Supreme Court, calling her lack of judicial experience "refreshing." (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
In the same way that Barack Obama’s lack of experience is “refreshing!”
Leahy echoed that point, saying the charges against Kagan have been made in a "vacuum" because the nominee has not had a chance to answer. (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
Because Leahy would never make charges against a Republican Supreme Court nominee before they had a chance to answer!
Bad Humor Man
Vice President Biden called the manager of a custard shop outside of Milwaukee, Wis., a "smartass" after the man asked him to lower taxes. Biden made the comment Friday after the Kopp’s Frozen Custard shop manager told him that his dessert would be on the house if he lowered taxes. (FoxNews, 6/28/10)
President Obama had his brush with the common man in his Joe the Plumber encounter. Now Vice-President Biden follows with his Joe the Custard Man moment.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Let's (Not) Hear It For The Boys
Joke Boy
The time has come, Franken said in an interview, for progressives to recognize that Roe v. Wade has distracted attention from what is now at the heart of the judicial controversy: the ability of individuals to assert their rights against corporations. (E.J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, 6/28/10)
Funny, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings that we recall have been characterized by incessant questioning – even badgering – by liberals of the potential nominee. And what has the topic been? Why it was Roe v. Wade!
Mortgage Boys
The bill represents the triumph of the very regulators and Congressmen who did so much to foment the financial panic, giving them vast new discretion over every corner of American financial markets.
Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, those Fannie Mae cheerleaders, played the largest role in writing the bill. Congressman Paul Kanjorski even offered a motion to memorialize it as the Dodd-Frank Act. It's as if Tony Hayward of BP were allowed to write new rules on deep water drilling. (WSJ, 6/28/10)
In a just world, Dodd and Frank would be serving time.
Today's Quote
The original sin—and it was nearly global—was to revive the Keynesian economic model that had last cracked up in the 1970s, while forgetting the lessons of the long prosperity from 1982 through 2007. The Reagan and Clinton-Gingrich booms were fostered by a policy environment for most of that era of lower taxes, spending restraint and sound money. The spending restraint began to end in the late 1990s, sound money vanished earlier this decade, and now Democrats are promising a series of enormous tax increases. (WSJ, 6/27/10)
The answer for Democrats is always the same: more taxes.
The time has come, Franken said in an interview, for progressives to recognize that Roe v. Wade has distracted attention from what is now at the heart of the judicial controversy: the ability of individuals to assert their rights against corporations. (E.J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, 6/28/10)
Funny, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings that we recall have been characterized by incessant questioning – even badgering – by liberals of the potential nominee. And what has the topic been? Why it was Roe v. Wade!
Mortgage Boys
The bill represents the triumph of the very regulators and Congressmen who did so much to foment the financial panic, giving them vast new discretion over every corner of American financial markets.
Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, those Fannie Mae cheerleaders, played the largest role in writing the bill. Congressman Paul Kanjorski even offered a motion to memorialize it as the Dodd-Frank Act. It's as if Tony Hayward of BP were allowed to write new rules on deep water drilling. (WSJ, 6/28/10)
In a just world, Dodd and Frank would be serving time.
Today's Quote
The original sin—and it was nearly global—was to revive the Keynesian economic model that had last cracked up in the 1970s, while forgetting the lessons of the long prosperity from 1982 through 2007. The Reagan and Clinton-Gingrich booms were fostered by a policy environment for most of that era of lower taxes, spending restraint and sound money. The spending restraint began to end in the late 1990s, sound money vanished earlier this decade, and now Democrats are promising a series of enormous tax increases. (WSJ, 6/27/10)
The answer for Democrats is always the same: more taxes.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
More
More Democrat Transparency
The agreements were reached after hours of negotiations, most of it behind closed doors and outside the public forum of the conference committee discussions. The approvals cleared the way for both houses of Congress to vote on the full financial regulatory bill next week. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Another broken promise.
More Democrat Hypocrisy
Mr. Obama set the stage for the debate when, shortly before nominating Ms. Kagan, he accused the Roberts court of a brand of conservative judicial activism. Democrats are echoing that language; Mr. Leahy, for instance, complained of a “conservative activist majority” in the court when he previewed the hearings for reporters last week. (NYT, 6/26/10)
Vermont’s Senator-for-Life Patrick Leahy is a hypocrite, and a shallow one at that. Does anyone think for one minute that he would complain about a “liberal activist majority” on the Supreme Court? Of course not. That is his dream.
More Democrat Taxes
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has introduced a bill that would restore the estate tax of 45 percent for those with an estate valued at between $3.5 million and $10 million, his office said in a statement Thursday.Sanders said the legislation could raise $264 billion over the course of a decade. (BFP, 6/26/10)
And then there is Colonel Sanders. It is not enough that we are taxed when we earn money and then again when we invest that money. The Colonel wants to tax it again – hard – when you die. He has to get the money to pay for his glorious social welfare programs from somewhere.
The agreements were reached after hours of negotiations, most of it behind closed doors and outside the public forum of the conference committee discussions. The approvals cleared the way for both houses of Congress to vote on the full financial regulatory bill next week. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Another broken promise.
More Democrat Hypocrisy
Mr. Obama set the stage for the debate when, shortly before nominating Ms. Kagan, he accused the Roberts court of a brand of conservative judicial activism. Democrats are echoing that language; Mr. Leahy, for instance, complained of a “conservative activist majority” in the court when he previewed the hearings for reporters last week. (NYT, 6/26/10)
Vermont’s Senator-for-Life Patrick Leahy is a hypocrite, and a shallow one at that. Does anyone think for one minute that he would complain about a “liberal activist majority” on the Supreme Court? Of course not. That is his dream.
More Democrat Taxes
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has introduced a bill that would restore the estate tax of 45 percent for those with an estate valued at between $3.5 million and $10 million, his office said in a statement Thursday.Sanders said the legislation could raise $264 billion over the course of a decade. (BFP, 6/26/10)
And then there is Colonel Sanders. It is not enough that we are taxed when we earn money and then again when we invest that money. The Colonel wants to tax it again – hard – when you die. He has to get the money to pay for his glorious social welfare programs from somewhere.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Business as Usual
There are no Secret Service agents posted next to the barista and no presidential seal on the ceiling, but the Caribou Coffee across the street from the White House has become a favorite meeting spot to conduct Obama administration business. Here at the Caribou on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a few other nearby coffee shops, White House officials have met hundreds of times over the last 18 months with prominent K Street lobbyists — members of the same industry that President Obama has derided for what he calls its “outsized influence” in the capital.
On the agenda over espressos and lattes, according to more than a dozen lobbyists and political operatives who have taken part in the sessions, have been front-burner issues like Wall Street regulation, health care rules, federal stimulus money, energy policy and climate control — and their impact on the lobbyists’ corporate clients.
But because the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors’ log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the “most transparent presidential administration in history.”
The off-site meetings, lobbyists say, reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ “battalions” of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Remember the endless caterwauling by President Obama about the pernicious effects of lobbyists? Along with the sanctimonious declarations that he would change the way business gets done in Washington? Chalk it up to another Obama failed promise.
Quite frankly, RedStateVT has never had a problem with lobbyists. For heaven’s sake, that is what a representative government is all about. You get access to plead your case. We don’t see that happening in Cuba, Iran or North Korea to name a few places. All we would ask is that there be disclosure about who is getting the access and writing the checks. Just to take a random example, we know that both BP and Goldman Sachs made significant financial contributions to……President Obama!
On the agenda over espressos and lattes, according to more than a dozen lobbyists and political operatives who have taken part in the sessions, have been front-burner issues like Wall Street regulation, health care rules, federal stimulus money, energy policy and climate control — and their impact on the lobbyists’ corporate clients.
But because the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors’ log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the “most transparent presidential administration in history.”
The off-site meetings, lobbyists say, reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ “battalions” of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Remember the endless caterwauling by President Obama about the pernicious effects of lobbyists? Along with the sanctimonious declarations that he would change the way business gets done in Washington? Chalk it up to another Obama failed promise.
Quite frankly, RedStateVT has never had a problem with lobbyists. For heaven’s sake, that is what a representative government is all about. You get access to plead your case. We don’t see that happening in Cuba, Iran or North Korea to name a few places. All we would ask is that there be disclosure about who is getting the access and writing the checks. Just to take a random example, we know that both BP and Goldman Sachs made significant financial contributions to……President Obama!
Friday, June 25, 2010
All Worked Up
Nice Try
For Obama, then, the crisis created by McChrystal's baffling -- at best -- comments in a Rolling Stone profile actually affords something of an opportunity to bend public perception back in his favor. (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, 6/24/10)
Obama fires an insubordinate general who he hand-picked and who voted for him and this is going to make us forget the backroom health care deals, high unemployment, appeasement of the country’s enemies, the oil spill, etc. What do you think?
Maybe now we can stop talking about Joe Barton!
A Democratic congressman has found himself the target of conservative criticism after an inartful description of who will be helped by the financial reform bill currently working its way through Congress. The conservative website Human Events reported that Rep. Paul Kanjorski's (D-Pa.) appeared to say during Wednesday's financial reform conference committee meeting that the financial overhaul will help "average, good American people" -- but not minorities or "the defective." (Washington Post, 6/24/10)
Isn’t it amazing how the Washington Post’s description of the Barton and Kanjorski blunders are eerily similar?
“A Republican congressman found himself the target of liberal criticism after inartfully apologizing to the chairman of BP. The liberal Washington Post reported.....”
Just kidding! The Washington Post would never use the term “liberal criticism” as all criticism of Republicans is mainstream and unbiased.
Whatever
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said legislators were still uncertain how the bill will work until it is in place. “But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time,” he said. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Kind of reminds RedStateVT of Nancy Pelosi’s comment that the health care bill has to be passed in order to find out what is in it. Here we have Christopher Dodd saying of the financial reform bill that he doesn’t know what the impact of the bill will be. What is it with these Democrats?
For Obama, then, the crisis created by McChrystal's baffling -- at best -- comments in a Rolling Stone profile actually affords something of an opportunity to bend public perception back in his favor. (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, 6/24/10)
Obama fires an insubordinate general who he hand-picked and who voted for him and this is going to make us forget the backroom health care deals, high unemployment, appeasement of the country’s enemies, the oil spill, etc. What do you think?
Maybe now we can stop talking about Joe Barton!
A Democratic congressman has found himself the target of conservative criticism after an inartful description of who will be helped by the financial reform bill currently working its way through Congress. The conservative website Human Events reported that Rep. Paul Kanjorski's (D-Pa.) appeared to say during Wednesday's financial reform conference committee meeting that the financial overhaul will help "average, good American people" -- but not minorities or "the defective." (Washington Post, 6/24/10)
Isn’t it amazing how the Washington Post’s description of the Barton and Kanjorski blunders are eerily similar?
“A Republican congressman found himself the target of liberal criticism after inartfully apologizing to the chairman of BP. The liberal Washington Post reported.....”
Just kidding! The Washington Post would never use the term “liberal criticism” as all criticism of Republicans is mainstream and unbiased.
Whatever
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said legislators were still uncertain how the bill will work until it is in place. “But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time,” he said. (NYT, 6/25/10)
Kind of reminds RedStateVT of Nancy Pelosi’s comment that the health care bill has to be passed in order to find out what is in it. Here we have Christopher Dodd saying of the financial reform bill that he doesn’t know what the impact of the bill will be. What is it with these Democrats?
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Sound Bites
RedStateVT agrees that General Stanley McChrystal had to go. His lack of judgment is frankly, unfathomable. President Obama handled the situation well. Yes, you read that correctly.
When things go wrong, they often go really wrong. First Al Gore’s global warming agenda gets derailed by Climategate. Then his marriage ends. And now he is accused of lascivious behavior. We wish him no ill will. Except on the global warming thing.
“Virtue was the way that free people used to deal with their necessities. It took industry, frugality, and responsibility, for example, to go to work every morning to provide for your family. It took courage to handle the fears that inevitably come with life, especially in old age. But the new social and economic rights tended to undercut such virtues, subtly encouraging men and women to look to the government to provide for their needs and then to celebrate that dependency as if it were true freedom.” (Charles R. Kesler, Imprimis, May/June 2010)
When things go wrong, they often go really wrong. First Al Gore’s global warming agenda gets derailed by Climategate. Then his marriage ends. And now he is accused of lascivious behavior. We wish him no ill will. Except on the global warming thing.
“Virtue was the way that free people used to deal with their necessities. It took industry, frugality, and responsibility, for example, to go to work every morning to provide for your family. It took courage to handle the fears that inevitably come with life, especially in old age. But the new social and economic rights tended to undercut such virtues, subtly encouraging men and women to look to the government to provide for their needs and then to celebrate that dependency as if it were true freedom.” (Charles R. Kesler, Imprimis, May/June 2010)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)