Yonder Tomb

Depths
In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages — invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation — to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington.

The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression. And their source is surprising. The effort is being led by national Democrats and their state party organizations — not, in most instances, by the shadowy and often untraceable political action committees that typically employ such provocative messages. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

There is nothing that Democrats will not stoop to in order to win elections. They are a despicable and disgraceful party.


Eat More Pot
Since recreational marijuana sales began here in January, edible pot has become a top seller at dispensaries across Colorado, a sweet and tasty way for wary first-timers to sample marijuana, or for people to get high without coughing and reeking of smoke. But a spate of accidental ingestions by children and adults, and two deaths tied to edibles this year, have prompted widespread calls to clamp down on the edible corner of the marijuana market. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

Liberals have unleashed the genie. Society will pay the price. And then there is this deranged moonbat:

“They clearly did not consider why we created edibles in the first place,” she said. “We believe wholeheartedly that this is a medicine.”


This is a Liberal's Brain on Drugs
But it has long been known that, with the brain developing into the mid-20s, young people who smoke early and often are more likely to have learning and mental health problems. Now researchers suggest existing studies are no longer sufficient. Much of what’s known is based on studies conducted years ago with much less powerful pot. 
....
High-THC marijuana is associated with paranoia and psychosis, according to a June article in The New England Journal of Medicine. 
....
Emergency room visits related to marijuana have nearly doubled, from 66,000 in 2004 to 129,000 in 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
....
What is already known is that in casual users, THC can disrupt focus, working memory, decision making and motivation for about 24 hours. “The fact that we can see these structural effects in the brain could indicate that the effects of THC are longer lasting than we previously thought,” said Dr. Gilman, an instructor in psychology at Harvard’s medical school. (New York Times, 10/30/2014)

Mere weeks after the New York Times goes on a week-long high touting marijuana they give us this sober report. Perhaps the editors forgot their previous glorification of dope. That is what happens with dope. 


Every
Foreign-policy planners and national leaders in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing get up every day and do one thing: think about how they can diminish or destabilize the U.S. Our leadership got up every day for six years and thought about . . . wind farms. (Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 10/29/2014)

Exactly right. Liberals cannot be trusted with keeping the country safe. 

Forget About Your Women and That Water Can

The Game
It has been a decade since he (Obama) confidently declared, hours before his Democratic National Convention debut, “I’m LeBron, baby. ... I got some game.” (New York Times, 10/26/2014)

Note to the President: Stop using basketball references. Everyone remembers them and they usually backfire on you. 


Rarely
Despite Mr. Sharpton’s current mainstream patina, his stock-in-trade has changed little from his Tawana Brawley-Crown Heights days, as the disintegration of his inflammatory narrative about the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., demonstrates. Apart from rare forays into the rhetoric of personal responsibility, he still peddles the dangerous lie that police officers are the greatest threat facing young black men and that racial discrimination is the main force holding blacks back. (Heather MacDonald, Wall Street Journal, 10/24/2014)

Thanks to MacDonald for a stroll down the lane of Al Sharpton's most ignominious moments. And a reminder that the buffoonish reverend is held in high esteem by Obama and the Democrat party. A party whose senior statesman is an adulterer who lost his law license after committing perjury and whose leading candidate for president in 2016 is the aforementioned adulterer's wife. Also possibly contending for top honors is a millionaire lawyer who rails against the 1% and whose personal history narrative falsely asserts that she is a native American. With an honest media this party would be defunct. 


Telling
"Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs."

"I shorthanded this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out—not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas..."

Hillary Clinton. 

Perfectly clear.


Without Regard
When asked whether they would vote for Mrs. Clinton or the Republican nominee for president in 2016, regardless of who that is, 63 percent of Latinos ages 18 to 34 said they would vote for Mrs. Clinton, according to a poll conducted in September by Bendixen and Amandi International for Fusion, the fledgling network owned by ABC and Univision. (New York Times, 10/27/2014)

Why Obama and the Democrats support immigration reform (a.k.a. unilateral rebadging of "illegals" as "legals"). 


Viral
On Sept. 16, Obama promised Americans that his administration was “taking the necessary precautions . . . so that someone with the virus doesn’t get on a plane for the United States.” Four days later, on Sept. 20, an Ebola-infected Liberian national, Thomas Eric Duncan, flew to Dallas, where he later died in a Texas hospital.

Obama further assured Americans that “In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home.” A few weeks later, two Dallas nurses contracted Ebola because, as a nurses union put it, there was “no advance preparedness on what to do with the patient, there was no protocol, there was no system.” And now, a month later, an American doctor with Ebola was taking the subway and bowling in New York — all while following federal safety guidelines. (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 10/27/2014)

We quote extensively from Thiessen's piece...because it is fun to do so. 


Swept Away
It is time for President Obama to offer clemency to Edward Snowden, the courageous U.S. citizen who revealed the Orwellian reach of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of Americans. His actions may have broken the law, but his act, as the New York Times editorialized, did the nation “a great service.” (Katrina vanden heuvel, Washington Post, 10/27/2014)

So when Republicans say that Democrats cannot be trusted with national defense and when Republicans say that Democrats are soft on crime, now you know why. 

Report: In Reversal Obama to Name ISIS a Varsity Team

Missing You
Missing from both Republican lists are two pillars of Mr. Obama’s agenda that many economists consider important for expanding the labor force and promoting long-run growth.

One is significantly higher spending for infrastructure. The International Monetary Fund recently called for such spending, saying it would pay off in broader economic growth.

The other is an overhaul of immigration laws. Despite business pressure to provide a path to citizenship for the millions here illegally, and to admit more foreigners with skills, Republicans’ opposition has only hardened in this campaign. (New York Times, 10/22/2014)

This would be hilarious if it were not so utterly dishonest. Does the Times think that Republicans are against economic growth and putting people back to work? They have been talking about these things for six years while Democrats have been talking about climate change and birth control. Infrastructure spending? First of all, that is nothing more than funneling money to labor unions who then rebate via political contributions to Democrats. Second, even Obama admitted that his "shovel-ready" jobs were a joke. 


Sunk Cost
According to one Democrat strategist quoted in this report, "The ineptitude of the White House political operation has sunk from annoying to embarrassing." (Breitbart.com, 10/22/2014)

Dems said it. 


Another First
A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus Thursday, setting off a search for anyone who might have come into contact with him. (New York Times, 10/24/2014)

Still no flight bans from Africa. Not to worry... the doc only went bowling and took the NYC subway. 


Bad Chemistry
American security officials said Thursday that they were looking into a new report that Islamic State militants had used chlorine gas as a weapon against Iraqi police officers last month near Balad, north of Baghdad. (New York Times, 10/24/2014)

Will Obama issue (and ignore) another "red line?" Stay tuned for the answer. 

Disregard The Cost

RedStateVT's Thought for the Day
Liberals shout at Conservatives to get out of private bedrooms on issues like homosexuality and birth control. Making it somewhat ironic - actually making it enormously ironic - that Liberals in California (and now elsewhere) have come up with the bizarre rules for consensual sex on college campuses. 


Historical
Before his 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama had little history of managing anything larger than a Senate office. To his critics, the breakdowns in various agencies are the natural result of that inexperience, a conclusion that really began taking hold with the botched rollout of his own health care program last year. (New York Times, 10/22/2014)

Six years in, the New York Times finally admits what many of us have said all along: Obama was not qualified to be president.


The Best Thing You Will Read Today on the Minimum Wage
Entry-level fast-food jobs have never been intended to support an entire family. So-called quick-service restaurants provide opportunities to lots of young people with few skills and limited experience. (Wall Street Journal, 10/21/2014)

Second best is this from Chris Christie (quoted in the New York Times): “I don’t think there is a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know, honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, all our dreams would be realized.’ ”


Remains of the Day
There are 149 prisoners remaining at Guantánamo. As a result of Mr. Zahrani’s change in status, 80 are now recommended for transfer if security conditions can be met, the majority of whom are from Yemen; 59 are recommended for continued indefinite detention without trial as wartime prisoners; and 10 have either been charged or convicted before the military commissions system.

Ten low-level prisoners were transferred in late 2013. But the process appears to be faltering again; it has transferred just one low-level prisoner in 2014. (New York Times, 10/21/2014)

There is something the New York Times is neglecting to mention in this article on prisoner transfers from Gitmo. What could it be? Oh, now we remember... Obama's release of five high risk Taliban prisoners! Probably an honest omission.


Excess
Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder who has pledged to spend $50 million of his own money to defeat Republican candidates in Senate and governor’s races this campaign cycle, exceeded that mark in September.

Mr. Steyer’s “super PAC,” NextGen Climate Action Committee, reported on Monday night that it received $15 million from him last month, putting his total contributions to the committee since June 2013 at $55 million.

That makes Mr. Steyer the largest super PAC donor, putting him ahead of the casino magnate Sheldon G. Adelson, who gave $49.8 million to super PACs during the 2012 campaign. (New York Times, 10/20/2014)

Liberal hedge fund fossil fuel 1%er gives millions to Dems. Elizabeth Warren silent. Speaking of Liz:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she isn’t running for president. At this rate, however, she may have to. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 10/20/2014)

Run Liz, Run! As we have said many times, it is only on a national stage where the moonbat ideas and multiple hypocrisies of Warren and Vermont's Colonel Bernie Sanders can really get the attention they deserve.


Unseen
Obama is President Pariah in these final weeks of the 2014 midterms. Vulnerable Democratic candidates don’t want to be seen with him. Three Democratic senators have run ads distancing themselves from him, and Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kentucky, has refused — absurdly — to say whether she voted for Obama. Obama’s support is 40 percent nationally and lower in the Republican states where many of this year’s competitive races are taking place. (Washington Post, 10/20/2014)

Tough column by Charles Krauthammer on Obama. Oh wait. It's not Krauthammer, it's Liberal Dana Milbank!


At Least
Democrats accuse the opposition of mindless obstructionism, deliberately sabotaging government, or at least tearing down belief in it, out of ideological fervor and political ambition. (New York Times, 10/22/2014)

Mindless obstructionism, ignoring, of course, Harry Reid's refusal to bring ANYTHING up for a Senate vote. Now that is some kind of obstructionism!


Instinctual
Although we believe that the president has many progressive instincts, he has shown an inclination to seek consensus rather than to fight. (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post, 10/21/2014)

Kat is disturbed that Obama sometimes seeks consensus. Funny, when Republicans are in charge all Liberals can talk about is the need for consensus. 

E. J. Dionne Jr.: Liar at the Washington Post

Dainty Boy
There is no reason to be dainty or evasive in saying that racism and racial resentment are part of the equation, and it’s not just that Obama is our first African American president. Racial politics has been helping Republicans since the 1960s when much of the white South realigned toward the GOP in reaction to the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 10/19/2014)

Dionne thinks that no one knows how Democrats and Republicans voted on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wrong, E.J. This from Wikipedia:

The Senate version:
Democratic Party: 46–21   (69–31%)
Republican Party: 27–6   (82–18%)

The Senate version, voted on by the House:
Democratic Party: 153–91   (63–37%)
Republican Party: 136–35   (80–20%)

So, Dainty Boy, turns out that Republican supported civil rights by A HIGHER PERCENTAGE than Democrats. We will await your apology. Our guess is that - as with all things Democrat - it will come AFTER the election. 


Instability
A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous. (New York Times, 10/19/2014)

Of course, when one of these crazies goes on a killing spree Liberals will bemoan the country's lax firearm laws.


Wonderful
One of the wonders of this political moment is feminist contentment about the infantilization of women in the name of progressive politics. Government, encouraging academic administrations to micromanage campus sexual interactions, now assumes that, absent a script, women cannot cope. And the Democrats’ trope about the Republicans’ “war on women” clearly assumes that women are civic illiterates.

Access to contraception has been a constitutional right for 49 years (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The judiciary has controlled abortion policy for 41 years (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Yet the Democratic Party thinks women can be panicked into voting about mythical menaces to these things. (George Will, Washington Post, 10/17/2014)

Great column by Will reminding us (yet again) that Democrats are the Party of Grievances, Real or Imagined. 


Little Man
Bernie’s annual average growth rate in net worth 2004-2012 was 29%.  The average American’s growth rate for the same period?  -0.94%.  So when Bernie’s telling you he’s working for the little guy, remember that in Berniespeak, little guy means “Bernie Sanders”. (Chris Campion, ethanallen.org, 10/13/2014)

Colonel Bernie Sanders: Vermont's Millionaire Socialist. 


Strike Out
No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it. (New York Times, 10/20/2014)

Choose your response:

-Gwyneth Paltrow will be just so pleased.

-Democracy in action.

-What Imperial Presidency?

The Best of Ebola News

The Real Reason That Obama Won't Halt Flights To The U.S. From Liberia
The hearing thrust the Ebola virus and the government’s halting management of it into the realm of politics in the midst of a national election season. (New York Times, 10/17/2014)


Ebola isn't Obama's Katrina, the growing pile of his unprecedented incompetence is. After the ObamaCare rollout, the IRS, NSA, VA, ISIS, and the economy that wouldn't recover, the Obama Administration's arrogant, ignorant, and deadly mishandling of Ebola could finally tip the pile over. (John Nolte, Beitbart.com, 10/16/2014)


Fear of Ebola is spreading faster than the disease itself, and the growing paranoia in the United States is fueling calls to impose a travel ban on people coming from the three West African nations struggling with the outbreak.
...
Ultimately, health specialists said, a ban would do more harm than good because it would isolate impoverished nations that are barely able to cope with the outbreak, and possibly cut them off from the international aid workers who provide critical help to contain the disease.

The White House on Thursday repeated its opposition to such a ban. President Obama said that he was following the advice of health experts and that “a travel ban is less effective than the measures that we are currently instituting.” (New York Times, 10/17/2014)

So the nitwits in the White House will not institute a travel ban because that would isolate the countries where Ebola is found. Isn't that exactly the point?

And the real reason that Obama is against a travel ban? As a Kenyan-American, the optics of such a ban would destroy what is left of his presidency. The only continent where he is stilled liked is Africa and the only remaining constituency in the U.S. that supports him overwhelmingly are African-Americans. A ban would erode this support.


Hooked
About 7.3 million Americans are enrolled in private coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and more than 80 percent qualified for federal subsidies to help with the cost of their monthly premiums. But many are still on the hook for deductibles that can top $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for families — the trade-off, insurers say, for keeping premiums for the marketplace plans relatively low. The result is that some people — no firm data exists on how many — say they hesitate to use their new insurance because of the high out-of-pocket costs. (New York Times, 10/18/2014)

Actually it is even worse than the Times lets on. For those who DO NOT get federal subsidies, Obamacare has delivered high deductibles AND high premiums. 

Yet another Liberal-conceived federal entitlement program screw-up. 


Oddly
In an odd moment in the trial of Robel Phillipos, a friend of the man accused of the Boston Marathon bombings, Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, testified Thursday for the defense. Mr. Phillipos, 20, a friend of the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is charged with lying to the authorities about his movements days after the attack. (New York Times, 10/16/2014)

The country sure dodged a bullet in 1988 by not electing Dukakis.

Broken Ties

Vermont Healthcare Efficiency
From Vermont Health Connect October 6, 2014:
Hello! We are writing to let you know that you have a new notice regarding your bill for health care benefits from Vermont Health Connect. To view your notice, please click on the link below and log in to your account.

From Vermont Health Connect October 7, 2014:
Hello! We are writing to let you know that you have a new notice regarding your bill for health care benefits from Vermont Health Connect. To view your notice, please click on the link below and log in to your account.

From Vermont Health Connect later in the day on October 7, 2014:
Hello! Earlier today and yesterday, some Vermont Health Connect customers received an email that referenced invoices and online payments. We apologize for this incorrect email and any confusion or inconvenience that it caused. 

We have mailed you a paper invoice this week that correctly describes your two current payment options:

1)    Phone...  

2)    Mail... 

Not to worry, all will be better when Vermont adopts single payer!


Weakly
A corollary point, surely not lost on Mr. Putin, Ayatollah Khamenei and other rogues is that they have a free hand at least until January 2017. The conclusion: If ever there was a time to revise their regional orders in ways more to their liking, better to do so now, when there’s a self-infatuated weakling in the White House. (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 10/13/2014)

Obama's withdrawal creates a vacuum that the bad guys willingly exploit.


Obviously
It’s not too soon to state the obvious: At this point, the war against the Islamic State can be seen only as failing. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 10/13/2014)

When Obama loses Eugene Robinson you know it is over for our novelty president. 


Measured
(The Iranians) have taken the measure of Obama. He lacks menace. Menace is essential in a world leader if he (or she) is going to be feared as well as admired. (Richard Cohen, Washington Post, 10/13/2014)

Liberals are finally catching on: the world's bad actors will only behave if they fear America's power. Unfortunately, no one fears Obama.  


Safety
He’s called America a country founded on guns, and explained that firearms are just in the nation’s DNA. The 50-year-old also said he doesn’t feel safe without a gun in his house when he’s home with his wife and children. (Dailycaller.com, 10/14/2014)

Who is this fifty year old gun advocate? Why it's none other than Hollywood uber Liberal Brad Pitt! Proving again that when Liberals are threatened they turn to automatic weapons...which they would deny to others!