Create Your Own Foreign Policy Reality

Declare Victory 
“This is an attempt to come up with an Obama doctrine that looks at how do we think about the world now that the war against the Taliban and its allies is won,” said Peter L. Bergen, a national security scholar at the New America Foundation and one of several foreign policy specialists invited to lunch with Mr. Obama this week. (New York Times, 5/29/2014)

Someone should get the news to the Islamofacists that they have been defeated. Apparently they do not know and hence, continue to blow things up and kill innocents.


The Veteo-er
And Mr. Brown, a Democrat and gun owner himself, has vetoed gun control legislation in the past, including bills last year that would have done more to limit the sale of semiautomatic rifles and further limited gun ownership. (New York Times, 5/29/2014)

Who would have thought it? Governor Jerry Brown, the original moonbat, is packing heat!


Considerations
Edward J. Snowden said that he still considered himself to be an American patriot even after leaking thousands of classified documents, and that he was frustrated to be “stuck in a place” — Russia — that did so little to protect individual rights when he was trying to help protect American freedoms. (New York Times, 5/28/2014)

Finding Russia to be less the free and open country that he imagined, Snowden longs to return home. Humbly he says “I’m not going to give myself a parade.” So here is a perfect opportunity for Obama to patch up his rift with Vlad "the Impaler" Putin. He should convince Putin to relocate Snowden to Siberia for say, five years, before returning this "American patriot" back to face justice in the country he claims to love. 

Thank You for Your Service

Say What?
It is important to recognize that not everyone experiences the types of threat responses Cuban does based on race, attire and tattoos — and as far as we can tell from his comment, without articulated attitudes or demonstrated hostility. This casual ascribing of intention, based solely on appearance, draws on deep-seated suspicions constructed over a lifetime of subtle and sometimes overt racial conditioning. This, too, must be acknowledged and accounted for. It is the same sort of suspicion that set in motion the events that led George Zimmerman to shoot Trayvon Martin. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times, 5/26/2014)

Deep thinker Blow weighs in on the Mark Cuban brouhaha to explain....well, we are not sure. "Casual ascribing of intention, based solely on appearance?" Well maybe when every single criminal on the 6 o'clock news is either a gang-banger wearing a hoodie and jeans hanging about his ankles or a skinhead with neck tattoos than there is something more than "casual" going on. And before Blow says what we know he is going to say we will answer. Yes, middle class black and white kids emulate criminal attire. So society is then supposed to differentiate between the kid making a fashion statement and the criminal? Sorry, if there is doubt, just to be safe we are thinking criminal. You want to dress like a criminal, you take your chances. 


No Show
CNN’s John King said the tone among Democrats behind closed doors on President Obama’s handling of the V.A. scandal is “scathing.”

“Forget for a moment that Republican outrage,” he said Sunday morning. “More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary. And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat footed, even incompetent.”

King then turned to Politico panelist Maggie Haberman and said “what strikes me, what Democrats are saying privately in the wakes of the healthcare.gov problems, they see a president who doesn’t want to take command, doesn’t want to act fast – raising the competence question. Some Democrats, who believe in government, [are saying] this White House doesn’t appear to have its hand on the lever.”

Haberman agreed, citing several other mishaps including President Obama purportedly missing a Senate foreign policy meeting many expected him to attend. “All of this adds up to somebody who just doesn’t seem at all involved,” she said. (Washington Free Beacon, 5/26/2014)

We quote this at length because it is so much fun to read.

Valerie Jarrett once talked about Obama being so brilliant that he gets bored with the job. We agree with the second part.


Stashed
Even in California, with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, Elliot O. Rodger was able to amass a stash of weapons and ammunition, despite having struggled with mental health issues for years. (New York Times, 5/26/2014)

Why are we hearing less Liberal outrage about the latest horrific shooting? Could it be that it happened in Liberal land where the gun laws are already tough? Is there a thought perhaps that the issue is less about guns and more about mental illness? We refer to the Ann Coulter quote: "After every one of these shootings you will find someone who said beforehand, trust me, this guy is nuts."

Mark Cuban: Truth Teller

Viva La Cuban
“If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street,” he said in a video interview for Inc.’s GrowCo Conference in Nashville. “And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street.”

At a business conference in Nashville on Wednesday, Mark Cuban admitted to being less than enlightened. “I know I’m prejudiced and I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways.” It is one thing to initiate a dialogue about racism but something else to spew tone deaf ignorance in an interview. The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the miscarriage of justice that the not-guilty verdict represented are wounds that, for many, have not healed. (New York Times, 5/24/2014)

Being a self-made billionaire is not enough to insulate you against political correctness as Mark Cuban recently discovered. Cuban incorrectly confessed to bigotry because he admitted to being wary of black gang-bangers wearing hoodies and white, skin-head, neck-tatooed neo-Nazis. We'd call Cuban sensible, not prejudiced. His sin apparently was using the word "hoodie" which opened the door to relitigating the whole Trayvon Martin tragedy. (Note that the New York Times news department has officially concluded that the Zimmerman not guilty verdict was a "miscarriage of justice." This is how the Liberal media creates history, by the way. Climate change is fact; Bill Clinton is a senior statesman; and George Zimmerman got away with murder.)

Quick! What is the natural reaction that anyone would have to seeing youths in hoodies or with shaved heads? Answer: concern for one's own personal safety. In a stunning admission many years ago, no less of an authority on the subject of race than Jesse Jackson confessed to feeling relief when realizing that the people walking behind him on a city street at night were white not black. 

Is Cuban is wrong? We don't think so. He has nothing to apologize for.


Fractionally
As of Friday, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.66, a fraction of a cent lower than last year. (New York Times, 5/24/2014)

One of the wonderful things about the Obama presidency is the endless list of things that - whenever we next have a Republican president - can no longer be blamed on that president or even discussed. A partial list includes the following:

- the price of gasoline
- that president's past drug use
- the president's foreign policy experience
- the number of war dead
- the unemployment rate
- the economy in general 
- the president's golf outings

How to Waterboard a Terrorist

Despicable Him
Sanders, who chairs the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, has been one of the most outspoken defenders of the VA against allegations of misconduct. When asked about reports of multiple deaths related to long wait times at the VA healthcare system, Sanders told CNN: “People die every day.” (Freebeacon.com, 5/23/2014)

Thanks to the Washington Free Beacon for reminding us of this despicable comment by 2016 presidential candidate - and Vermont's own disgrace - Colonel (Bernie) Sanders. Of course, no Vermont media is reporting the Colonel's remarks. This is why you have RedStateVT. 

Here are a couple other of our favorite recent comments about the Obama administration's V.A. scandal:

This is precisely why President Obama’s VA scandal is the most serious and damaging of his presidency. It is the Obama administration in sum and in miniature: incompetent management of a health system, defended by crude media manipulation. (Michael Gerson, Washington Post, 5/22/2014)

As recently as November 2011, Paul Krugman praised the VA as a triumph of "socialized medicine," as he put it: "What's behind this success? Crucially, the V.H.A. is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it's free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense." Ah, yes, the VA lacks the evil profit motive. (Wall Street Journal, 5/23/2014)


GM is Alive and Osama bin Laden is Dead
"We just went through the opening of the 9/11 museum. I know they will come after us if they can. I see the intelligence. Terror is not down in the world. It is up. Both deaths, injuries in many, many different places. Al Qaeda has metastasized. The question becomes how do we prevent an attack in this country." 

Guess who said this?

Give up?

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein!  (As quoted in Daniel Henninger's column in the Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2014) 

And from the same column, there is this:

Here's a save-our-girls conundrum. If you asked their parents if they would waterboard a Boko Haram captive to find where the girls are, what do you think they'd say?

Here's an idea. Let's ask Bernie Sanders!

Secrets of Obama's Choom Gang Revealed!

Rarely
The requirement that doctors have admitting privileges has emerged as a new tactic of the anti-abortion movement, which says it is intended to protect women’s health. But major medical groups have said that the rule has no bearing on safety since, in the rare cases of emergency, hospitals will accept and treat women experiencing complications from abortion regardless. Abortion providers and many medical experts call the requirement a thinly disguised effort to shut down clinics and undermine the right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. (New York Times, 5/22/2014)

Other "rare cases" include pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, but the pro-abortion crowd screams about that every time that someone tries to place any restrictions whatsoever on abortion. Of course, it is not rape and incest that they are really concerned about. What they are obsessed with is free and unfettered access to abortion for any women at any stage of her pregnancy whether she can pay for it or not.


Nobody is Madder Than Him
The White House fought on Tuesday to contain the growing political furor over allegations of misconduct at the nation’s veterans hospitals as Republicans, eager to use the issue in the midterm elections, seized on the reports as new evidence that President Obama is unable to govern effectively. (New York Times, 5/20/2014)

Of all the myriad of scandals surrounding Obama, we were inclined to give him a pass on this one. Until we read this:

As a candidate for president, Mr. Obama denounced delays and poor care for veterans at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs and vowed that his administration would address the backlogs and greatly improve care. He pledged in a 2008 campaign speech to build “a 21st-century V.A.” and to confront what he called “the broken bureaucracy of the V.A.”

So, we have yet another Obama screw-up. But we wanted to know why...and then we found the answer:

The president is also sending Denis R. McDonough, his chief of staff, to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to consult with the chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont. 

Obama puts Colonel Bernie Sanders, the pride of Vermont and the least competent person in the Senate in charge. No wonder the V.A. is a mess.

The Perplexing Search for Proof of Obama's Brilliance

Possibilities
But while it sure is possible to move those 1700 unsold ELRs, Cadillac will need about two years to finish the job if it can’t find more than 60 people a month who want a $76,000 two-door plug-in hybrid. Cadillac, in the AN report, attributes the inventory buildup to a heavy production cycle ahead of a summer and fall slowdown. (Caranddriver.com, 5/19/2014)

We recently wrote about the Cadillac ELR, extolling its ability to travel a full 37 miles on a single charge. Others have taken notice which explains the fact that GM now has only a two year backlog. Go green!


The Hype
“This is not a hypothetical thing for governors on the West Coast — this is fire alarms and floods,” Mr. Inslee said Monday in a telephone interview. “It’s not a next-century issue. This is a next half-hour issue.” (New York Times, 5/20/2014)

Liberal sages such as Al Gore have - in the past - told us that we have only (fill in the blank) years to save the planet. Now things have apparently reached crisis proportions. We are down to mere hours. If RedStateVT does not publish again, you will know that it is because time has run out. Go green!

Lamentations

Histrionics
Mr. Baquet becomes the first African-American to serve as The Times’s executive editor. Ms. Abramson’s hiring also made history — she was the first woman to run the newspaper. Her dismissal, after less than three years in the job, was met with disappointment by some women in the newsroom, and could be perceived as a step backward in the cause of female leadership at The Times and elsewhere in the industry. (New York Times, 5/15/2014)

At the Times, the recent management change is all about checking off the boxes to prove how open minded they are. The first lesbian is replaced by the first African-American, presumably to be eventually replaced by the first transgendered individual. Only then will we know that the Times is serious about equality!

We will know that the Times is serious about running their business as a business when they announce that they have hired "the most qualified person for the job."


College Daze
In a story that only a Liberal newspaper could or would write about higher education in America, the New York Times asks the question: Who Gets to Graduate? Yes, who GETS to graduate, as though graduating from college is not the result of hard work, but rather of privilege. Helpfully, the Times tells us this: 

"...whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t." (New York Times, 5/15/2014)

We are not sure how that works. Rich kids buy their diplomas maybe? Helpfully, the Times presents us with a poor victim, Vanessa. Here are a few facts about Vanessa:

....Vanessa’s mother, then a high-achieving high-school senior in a small town in Arkansas, became pregnant with Vanessa.....Vanessa’s parents divorced when she was 12.....And then, a month into the school year, Vanessa stumbled. She failed her first test in statistics, a prerequisite for admission to the nursing program. 

Call us crazy, but maybe there is something else besides wealth going on here. 


Liberal Contributions to Culture
Speaking of higher education, read below what one Professor Victor Corona of FIT has to say about one Michael Alig who was released from prison:

Victor P. Corona, a sociology professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said that Mr. (Michael) Alig is a bona fide fashion icon, one who paid his debt to society and made a lasting contribution to culture. In a planned book, “Downtown Superstars: Inside Three Generations of New York Fame,” he makes the case that Mr. Alig is a bridge between Andy Warhol’s Factory and Lady’s Gaga’s fashion and music. (New York Times, 5/15/2014)

Wow, a bridge between Andy Warhol and Lady Gaga! But, we are still skeptical, what exactly did this cultural icon do to land himself in prison? Oh, this:

On a Sunday night in March 1996, Mr. Alig and Robert Riggs, known as Freeze, killed Mr. Melendez during an argument over money and drugs in Mr. Alig’s apartment on West 43rd Street. During a scuffle, Mr. Riggs hit Melendez with a hammer. Mr. Alig then suffocated him with a sweatshirt and poured Drano down his throat, he said, before dumping the body in the bathtub, pouring ice over it and abandoning the apartment for the next nine days. Then, high on heroin, Mr. Alig dismembered the corpse to get rid of it.

Got it. 

Maybe Vanessa and others are better off NOT going to college....