Obama Thrashes Constitution

Awesome post over at Director Blue showing how much our current is treading on the Constitution.
Here are a few examples:

First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States government.

First President to violate the War Powers Act.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.

The first President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

There are about more than two dozen other examples of Obama’s thrashing of the Constitution with links to back it all up. If you have a few minutes, please take a gander.

Will MSM Investigate Media Matters?

Not sure if any of you have seen this, but it is sure worth a read. The corruption of the Obama White House has been well chronicled across the right-leaning blogosphere as well has the disgusting hero worship of “The Chosen One” by the lame stream media. In the post linked here, Nice Deb provides some comparisons between Nixon’s Watergate, which forced him to resign in shame, and the ties between Media Matters and the Obama Administration.

What are the striking similarities between Nixon’s Watergate and what might be called, inevitably, Obama’s Media Mattersgate?

- The use of Private investigators to investigate the private lives off opponents: In the Nixon era, hiring a private investigator (Tony Ulasewicz) to investigate the private lives of opponents was the brainchild of John Ehrlichman. In the Obama era, hiring private investigators appears as a Media Matters recommendation in a memo by Karl Frisch. (Source: Nice Deb)

Deb points out a little later in her post that Frisch wrote in a memo:

“We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff.”

Make sure you click on the link to the full account, provided by Nice Deb.

Obama Shafts Military Again

As part of a military retirement ceremony, one of the presentos given to the retiree is a letter “signed” by the Commander in Chief (President). Since I retired in 2010, my Commander in Chief was President Barack Obama. Because of his record towards the military, both as president and as a Senator, I decided not to have the letter presented to me as part of the ceremony. I do have it, but having a letter from him read aloud, thanking me for my service, kind of rang a bit hollow to me. I do have it, but it will never be displayed.

Now Obama has yet again confirmed this decision.

President Obama’s latest policy outrage makes no attempt to hide his contempt for our military, as he is ordering that our troops serving overseas in war zones overseas are no to receive combat pay unless they are being shot at, or at risk of being injured by hostile aggression. A Marine who lives in Florida (also currently serving in Afghanistan) has just posted a note on facebook which stated that he received a letter from his MyPay account that he would only be receiving his Hazard pay (Imminent Danger Pay) if he actually in a hostile area and at the risk of being shot at.

“So I just got a letter from MyPay (the way we get paid in the military), saying that I will only receive Combat Pay while deployed for the days that I take fire or am in a hostile area. Now, as an Infantry Marine, I’m constantly in a combat zone…it may not always be popping off, but for them to take that away from us is bull----. Now the aviation tech who sits on Camp Leatherneck, sure, I can see him not getting Combat Pay, but to take it away from the grunts, that ground pounders, the front line of defense…come on, Uncle Sam. You let the Liberals win a big one here…Marine from Florida” (Name redacted) (Source (Conservative Action Alerts)

The Marine make a very a couple of valid points. While you are “outside the wire” you are in constant danger of getting hit. It could be a sniper taking potshots at your convoy; it could be that improvised explosive device cooking off while on a dismounted patrol; or it could be a group of combatants firing AK’s at helicopters as they fly overhead.

8.3%: Is This Really Good News?

Today the President Obama and his administration received some good news. Job creation was way ahead of expectations and the unemployment rate dropped. The labor department had expected the economy to create about 150,000 new jobs; however, more than 200,000 new jobs were created. Couple that with the decrease of the unemployment rate to 8.3%, all in all, this is good news for Obama.

Of course, the lame stream media is not going to report that dark cloud that this silver lining surrounds. While 200,000 thousand new jobs really does sound good, that these new jobs are mostly low paying service industry jobs kind of puts a damper on things. (More on this in a moment)

Also lost in the hubbub over the unemployment rate decrease is really how this came about. It really isn’t about how many jobs were created but rather how many people have decided to no longer search for jobs.

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. (Source: Zero Hedge)

If I remember my statistics correctly, to get the unemployment rate to drop one tenth of a percent, monthly job creation has to be somewhere north of 340,000. The unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percent, which should mean about 680,000 jobs were created. Something is not adding up. And my brain is beginning to hurt thinking about it.

As I mentioned above, it looks like many of these new jobs created are of the lower paying service industry type jobs. These are the jobs that pay at or just above minimum wage. Federal minimum wage is currently at $7.25 an hour. While it is true that few employers actually pay minimum wage, especially to adult workers with experience, the wage paid is not all that high. It certainly is not enough to cover household expenses, especially for those who were earning considerably higher before the recession took hold.

Before you think I am going on a rant about how the minimum wage needs to increase to a “living wage” I do want to stomp that idea down. I believe that minimum wage jobs are for entry level positions, for people getting their first-ever job, or for folks who want to supplement the family income. This is more to point out that while unemployment might have seen a decrease, it isn’t all wine and roses.

Let’s say you were earning $45,000 a year before you got laid off. Not a particularly high wage, but decent enough to get the bills paid. After struggling to find work, you finally land that job working at Sears or K-Mart earning $12.00 an hour (this is high end for retail). Your annual income is now just short of $25,000 a year if you are lucky enough to get on full time. I am not including overtime because retail is notorious for highly discouraging overtime for its employees on wages. Retail also isn’t known for hiring full time employees.

So now you have this job and are no longer considered unemployed. BUT, you are now earning $20,000 less than what you were earning a year or two ago. There goes the family life style. Kids removed from soccer programs, phones cut off to a bare minimum, evenings out with the family or your significant other are reduced to nothing, improvements to the home and repairs put off, and other things you had enjoyed before are reduced or eliminated.

When you look at it closer, you see that this is $20,000 less each year that is entering the economy. For the sake of argument let us use the 200,000 jobs created as a baseline. If all of these people hired had the same story as the scenario developed above we are talking about $4,000,000,000 less in the economy than before all the layoffs and job cuts happened. Now I realize this is over simplifying the issue a considerable amount. I am sure there have been people hired at wage levels higher than $12 an hour, but on the flip side there were many people who were earning way more than $45,000 a year who have struggled to find work.

Maybe some people can get excited about the drop in the unemployment rate (like the Obama supporters in the Lame Stream Media) but I can’t. Where are the high paying jobs? They are not being created fast enough to help this economy recover robustly.

Does Obama Care Violate the 1st Amendment?

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment or religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.

In the three years that President Barack Obama has held office, he and his minions have done a great job of trampling the Constitution of the United States. He has consolidated much power in a few executive offices, bypassing and hamstringing Congress; he has given carte blanche to the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pretty much every facet of our lives (pollutants released, vehicle MPG, light bulbs, etc.); passed a health care bill that many traditional Constitution scholars consider illegal; and has usurped immigration policy with little to no consent of Congress.

Up to this point, he and his gang of left-wing ideologues have pretty much left religion alone. Some of the more far-left have nibbled at the edges (Gay Marriage), but basic freedoms have been left untouched.

No longer is this the case.

And They Call Conservatives Racist

As many of you are aware, the left has beaten the drum about how racist and bigoted folks in the Tea Party, conservatives and Republicans are. Maybe they need to take a deeper look at their own party. The video at this link provided is a must see.

Normally I would embed the video, but the language is quite strong.

If there are any liberal or progressives readers of this blog, could you explain why folks who have a conservative leaning in their politics are routinely blanketed with the racist charge yet when one of their own goes on a tirade like this, no one calls them on the carpet.