All Nines

Unexplained
But beyond these problems, the failure to intervene early in Syria (when "leading from behind" might well have worked) has handed important victories to both the terrorists and the Russia-Iran axis, and has seriously eroded the Obama administration's standing with important allies. Russia and Iran backed Bashar al-Assad; the president called for his overthrow—and failed to achieve it. To hardened realists in Middle Eastern capitals, this is conclusive proof that the American president is irredeemably weak. His failure to seize the opportunity for what the Russians and Iranians fear would have been an easy win in Syria cannot be explained by them in any other way.

This is dangerous. Just as Nikita Khrushchev concluded that President Kennedy was weak and incompetent after the Bay of Pigs failure and the botched Vienna summit, and then proceeded to test the American president from Cuba to Berlin, so President Vladimir Putin and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei now believe they are dealing with a dithering and indecisive American leader, and are calibrating their policies accordingly. Khrushchev was wrong about Kennedy, and President Obama's enemies are also underestimating him, but those underestimates can create dangerous crises before they are corrected. (Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 8/23/2013)

Outstanding article in the Journal by a former Obama supporter that deserves to be read in its entirety. It provides details and analysis to support the claim - one that RedStateVT has made repeatedly - that Obama's foreign policy approach is disastrous and it is dangerous. A docile America does not make the world safer. It makes it more perilous.


Changes
But there have been other changes, particularly in black family life, that are not so clearly positive. The percentage of blacks who had never married rose to 49 percent in 2011, from 23 percent in 1963, a jump that far outstrips the rise in that category among whites. Black households headed by a woman jumped by nearly 12 percentage points at a time when similar households for whites rose just under 4 percentage points. (NYT, 8/23/2013)

The Times writes about the many positive changes in American society for blacks fifty years after Martin Luther King's march in Washington. And then we get this paragraph on the black family with absolutely no analysis as to why these things occur. The Times would have you believe that it is because of lingering racism or perhaps the legacy of slavery. Honest black leaders like Bill Cosby and Herman Cain will tell you that it is because of dysfunction in many black communities including glorification of thug culture and a declining influence of the black church.


Wizardly
“But,” he (Obama) added, “let’s assume that we eliminated all discrimination magically with a wand, and everybody had goodness in their heart, you’d still have a situation in which there are a lot of folks who are poor, and whose families have become dysfunctional, because of a long legacy of poverty, and live in neighborhoods that are run-down and schools that are underfunded and don’t have a strong property tax base.”

His solution, he continued, was to promote programs like an expansion of early childhood education and his latest effort to make college more affordable — including, he said, making law school two years instead of three. Such policies, he said, “help lift everybody,” and therefore “everybody will be better off.” (NYT, 8/23/2013)

And - providing a wonderful contrast with Cosby and Cain - we get President Clueless. His answer to black poverty is apparently to graduate lawyers in two years instead of three. You cannot make up the nonsense that comes out of his mouth.


Kiss Off
Coupled with BT’s debt of about $17 million to the city that was secretly loaned during the administration of former Mayor Bob Kiss, the utility’s fiscal challenges partly account for Burlington’s recent series of credit downgrades, according to Moody’s Investors Service, a New York based rating firm. (Burlington Free Press, 8/24/2013)

Oh, yeah. Whatever happened about the crimes committed involving Burlington Telecom during the Kiss administration? Progressive misconduct is buried in Vermont.

Covert Action

Intentions
Mayor Bob Filner of San Diego agreed to resign on Friday under a barrage of sexual harassment complaints, offering an apology to his accusers while still denying the allegations and blaming his downfall on “a combination of awkwardness and hubris.”  “I never intended to be a mayor who went out like this,” Mr. Filner said before a packed City Council chamber, drawing sporadic applause from some supporters in the audience. (NYT, 8/23/2013)

Prediction: Filner will be back on the political scene in nine months; first with a show on MSNBC, then with a new run for mayor of San Diego. In 2016 he will make the keynote address at the Democrat National Convention. 


Zeroed Out
Egypt today is a zero-sum game. We’d have preferred there be a democratic alternative. Unfortunately, there is none. The choice is binary: the country will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood or by the military. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 8/22/2013)

Krauthammer gets it exactly right. 


Sued Up
Currently, the U.S. Army doesn't provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery. But David Coombs, Pfc. Manning's attorney, indicated that he will sue the military if they don't make it available to his client at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. (WSJ, 8/22/2013)

Of course Chelsea's attorney will sue. He'll probably even win. The military is no longer the military of the Greatest Generation. Now - thanks to Liberals - it is a traveling circus. The Islamists don't even have to fight us anymore. All they have to do is wait. 


Rush to Judgment
During President Obama's wide-ranging interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo Friday, the president responded to a question about the "lack of action in Washington" with the claim that when it comes to shutting down the government to kill ObamaCare, his "Republican friends" tell him "privately" that they agree with him but are afraid of Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party. (Breitbart.com, 8/23/2013)

Rush actually talks about this a lot on his show: Obama's total obsession with him. Nary a week goes by but that Obama doesn't mention Limbaugh. To what end we cannot fathom.

Deep in the Purse

Red Letter Day
As Western powers pressed the Syrian authorities to permit United Nations inspectors to examine the site of a claimed poison gas attack outside Damascus, France said on Thursday that outside powers should respond “with force” if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed.
...
The notion of “red lines” was initially introduced last August by President Obama, who said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would radically alter American calculations about the war.

At the time, Mr. Obama declared that the use or deployment of chemical or biological weapons would “change my calculus” and “change my equation.” (NYT, 8/22/2013)

The Middle East is a cesspool. Bush went in because of 9/11. We get that. Beyond that, however, we believe that the U.S. should stay out other than to back Israel, the only democracy in the region. Obama's hesitancy to get involved is understandable. Give weapons to the "freedom fighters" and they will turn around and kill Americans at the first opportunity. But Obama was the one who said "red line." He created the current problem which has America looking weak because he will not enforce a line that he himself drew in the sand. He is a foreign policy rube.


Soiled
A federal judge sharply rebuked the National Security Agency in 2011 for repeatedly misleading the court that oversees its surveillance on domestic soil, including a program that is collecting tens of thousands of domestic e-mails and other Internet communications of Americans each year, according to a secret ruling made public on Wednesday. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

Let's play a game. Substitute 2007 for 2011 in the above excerpt. How many times would the name of President George Bush appear in this article? If you guessed "more than five times" you would probably be right. 

Now guess how many times the name President Barack Obama appears. 

Correct. Zero.


Chelsea Mourning
Bradley Manning, sentenced to 35 years in military prison for the biggest breach of classified U.S. documents in U.S. history, said in a statement on Thursday he is female and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea.

"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female," Manning, 25, said in the statement read on NBC News' "Today" show.

"Given the way that I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible," Manning said. "I also request that starting today you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun."

Manning's lawyer David Coombs said on the program that he expected Manning to get a pardon from President Barack Obama. (NYT,8/22/2013)

Where to begin? First, perhaps, a rare RedStateVT correction, albeit provisional. Yesterday, we predicted a pardon of Chelsea Manning by President Hillary Clinton. Turns out that Obama might beat her to it.

Next we wonder how taxpayers feel about the fact that they will now be on the hook for Manning's hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. (That's what they call it, right?)

The world is upside down, my friends. Upside down. 


Usual Suspects
In the past, for example, Mr. Spitzer has railed against offshore tax shelters, portraying them as dubious practices of the financial elite.

On his Current TV news talk show last fall, he wagged his finger at “offshore shelters and other games that are suspect,” as he questioned the personal finances of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate.

But as of 2011, the last year for which public documents are available, the Spitzer family trust invested in at least four funds that are incorporated offshore.

That strategy has insulated the trust from taxes it would have owed for investing in certain kinds of domestic funds. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

Proof (once again) that there are two sets of Liberal standards. 

Like It or Not

Born Again
But even in Dallas, Mr. Cruz could not escape questions stemming from a report in The Dallas Morning News on Monday that because he was born in Calgary, Alberta, he held both Canadian and American citizenship. He was forced before the rally to reiterate to reporters eager to discuss the matter that he had “been an American since birth.”

On Monday, Mr. Cruz — the child of an American mother and a Cuban-born father who moved to Texas from Canada when he was 4 — renounced his Canadian citizenship. “Nothing against Canada,” he said. But as a United States senator, he added, “I believe I should be only an American.” It may not be quite the same as printing up signs or fashioning a presidential campaign Web site, but the announcement was widely seen by analysts as another step leading to his entry in the 2016 Republican primary race.

It is a novel episode in the annals of presidential politics. Looming over his prospects are questions about his eligibility to run, given his place of birth. (NYT, 8/21/2013)

The New York Times suddenly and curiously develops an interest in where a prospective presidential candidate was born. Cynical yet?


Implausible Denial
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson denied Tuesday that her paper has a liberal bias, despite the fact that her current and former public editors both criticized the paper’s left-leaning viewpoint. (Dailycaller.com, 8/20/2013)

RedStateVT has a conservative bent. Strongly conservative. Maybe even fanatically conservative.

There, that wasn't so hard. Why does the Times refuse to come clean?


Leaky
The Army soldier who leaked more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and diplomatic cables while working as an intelligence analyst was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, 25, who gave reams of classified information to WikiLeaks, faced up to 90 years in prison. He was credited with 1,294 days already served and was and be dishonorably discharged (sic). He could be eligible for parole before he reaches the age of 40. (Foxnews.com, 8/21/2013)

Admittedly we lost interest in the Manning case once the death penalty was taken off the table. But here's a prediction. President Hillary Clinton will find a way to get Manning out on parole during her first term. At the end of her second term, she will award him the Presidential Medal of Honor.

Don't doubt RedStateVT.

(And we sincerely hope that Manning uses his time productively. Like perhaps by working out his gender identity issues.)

Two Beaten Swords

Behavior Modification
Sixteen women, the latest a great-grandmother, have now stepped forward to accuse Mr. Filner, 70, a Democratic former congressman, of inappropriate behavior. Calls for his resignation have been piling up, including demands from national Democratic leaders and the entire City Council. (NYT, 8/19/2013)

So how does this work exactly? Is the Filner story part of the "War on Women?" Or is that strictly a Republican thing?


Nearly
An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. (NYT, 8/19/2013)

All scientists who support the finding of climate change caused by human activity vote Democrat and receive government funding. (RedStateVT, 8/19/2013)

(Readers are referred to Marc Morano's wonderful website ClimateDepot.com for the other side of the "settled science" of climate change.) 


Undeserving
Secretary of State John Kerry has "determined that the four State Department officials placed on administrative leave by Hillary Clinton" after Benghazi "do not deserve formal disciplinary action" and he has asked them to come back to work. (Breitbart.com, 8/20/2013)

Cynical yet? There are no consequences - none - in Liberal Land. 


Keyhole
The key political asset is the ability to sit in a room with four or five other people and have them accept your leadership.....Obama doesn’t have that. (Chris Matthews quoted in WashingtonFreeBeacon.com, 8/20/2013)

RedStateVT agrees with Chris Matthews. RedStateVT agrees with Chris Matthews? Is it Backwards Day?

By the way, does Matthews now agree that Mitt Romney, a former governor, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and CEO, would have been a more effective leader than BHO? Just wondering. 

Slow Burn

Thanks to our loyal readers for 15,000 pageviews. Get the word out on RedStateVT and let's get to 20,000!


Our Long-Suffering Government Agencies
Most government travel budgets have been cut this year by 30 percent, the result of an administration directive forcing managers to make difficult policy decisions about whom to send, where to send them and for how long. The result, agency officials say, is a government that cannot conduct essential business and is embarrassing itself abroad. (NYT, 8/18/2013)

Nice try by the Times, but we are not buying it. Whenever revenues are down at private corporations the travel budget is one of the first things to get cut. Until sequestration, the government never had to act responsibly because it would just order up more money...from taxpayers. That game is over, at least for now. 


Rejection
The state appeals court ruled 2 to 1 on Thursday that the state’s right-to-work law applies to 35,000 unionized state employees, rejecting a lawsuit filed by labor unions. The measure went to court after questions were raised because the Michigan Civil Service Commission, which sets compensation for state employees, has separate powers under the state Constitution. The law prohibits forcing public and private workers to pay union dues or fees. (NYT, 8/15/2013)

Exciting stuff! We know what happens when workers who are forced to join unions and pay union dues are no longer forced to pay union dues. They don't pay union dues, thus starving Democrats of campaign contributions. It's all good. 


Belief System
Biden allies believe he could run on some of the accomplishments Mr. Obama notched over two terms. If the economic recovery continues, Mr. Biden could run on the basis that he was a partner in combating the recession. Unemployment hit 10% in the first year of Mr. Obama's term and as of July was down to 7.4%. (WSJ, 8/18/2013)

Sit down for this one. Biden may run on the Obama economy. Where is that sharp knife we keep around here?

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Persuasion
The court found that states are “pre-empted” from regulating safety by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which made safety a federal responsibility. The Legislature had sought to shut the plant by denying Entergy a “certificate of public good” that is required for all power plants. But the court said Vermont was unpersuasive when it said that the reasons for the denial were that the reactor was too costly and unreliable, and that closing it would encourage the development of renewable energy from wind or wood. (NYT, 8/14/2013)

Reliable, cheap power survives in Vermont...at least for the present. Do not underestimate the desire and creativity of moonbats when it comes to returning humanity to the Stone Age. 


Ideology
Do liberals have any arguments for their idiotic ideas besides calling their opponents "racist"? 

The two big public policies under attack by the left this week are "stop-and-frisk" policing and voter ID laws. Democrats denounce both policies as racist. I'm beginning to suspect they're getting lazy in their arguments. 
...
Yes, Democrat Bob Filner can pat down his female employees, but cops can't pat down suspected criminals. (AnnCoulter.com, 8/14/2013)

RedStateVT had the best line about Filner: He should issue a ringing endorsement of abortion in all its permutations in order to save his career. Coulter is a close second. 


Obamacare Lies
This fall, Indiana's new online health-insurance marketplace will present some tough choices for consumers like John Nowak, who will be able to pick a plan from his current insurer—or go for one that includes his primary-care doctor.

That is because Mr. Nowak's current insurer won't include Indiana's biggest health-care provider, 19-hospital Indiana University Health, in the plans it sells on the consumer exchange. If Mr. Nowak buys a new exchange plan from WellPoint Inc.'s WLP -0.51% Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, he will generally have to pay the cost out of his own pocket if he sees the system's doctors, because they aren't in the network. (WSJ, 8/14/2013)

"If you like your current insurance coverage you can keep it." 
President Barack H. Obama