Bits and Pieces

An often used remark to describe Barack Obama by those whose frustration is, “Obama’s just so stupid!” To which the response often is “Well, you don’t get to be President by being stupid!” That could be easily refuted with ” You do if enough of the VOTERS are stupid!” I think you can’t dispute that!

 

“These suckers around the country don’t have a damned clue about what REALLY goes on…”

Various and sundry items out there today…

Seems Mr. Obama is off, yet again!…on another fundraising trip. Is this man EVER in the Oval Office? It’s all part of the game when you are the continually campaigning President. When you are the uncommitted, unprincipled, and unreliable President! We all know Barack Obama has never and will never attach himself to any issue, take a stand on any matter of national interest, or allow himself to be honest with the American people. He is a man who lacks dignity and courage to stand with any conviction whatsoever!

 

 

“I’ll be happy to answer that as long as you don’t expect it to be the truth..”

In other stuff, stories abound about whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself in testimony before Congress. “WHETHER” he did???? There’s no doubt about it! Evasive answers and feigning ignorance do not support the contention that the head of the Justice Department has been honest about ANY matter!

 

“I intend to make it LOOK like I’m actually doing something at Apple..when I’m really not..Sort of like when I was head of the EPA..my job now, will be to apologize for Apple publicly…”

After last weeks scolding by dim wits in Congress, Apple has apparently decided it might be a good idea to establish ties with governmental Washington. Who didn’t see THAT coming?! Here’s an American success story in about every aspect of business and Congress thought it best to bring those guys down! Whatever looks good in the eyes of the ignorant masses who know NOTHING more than what’s spewed from the mouth of slovenly morons like Carl Levin (D-MI). So now, Apple has hired former EPA head, Lisa Jackson, to work with their environmental program. No doubt we can expect Ms Jackson to do no more than collect a hefty salary and juicy benefits package. That’s about it. Forbes columnist Tim Worstall has this take…

“We could think that this means that Apple wants to take matters environmental more seriously. Which would be true in a way but perhaps not in the sense that most would take that. My hunch is that what this is really about is providing an interface to the environmental bureaucracy in Washington DC: nothing to do with actually changing the way that Apple operates.”

 

“I know I’m lacking in personal integrity..I’m more about what works for ME..and I should fit in perfectly with the rest of the idiotic Democrats…”

Seems Rhode Island finds itself saddled with another opportunistic coward in the form of Lincoln Chafee. The governor decided he will run for re-election as a Democrat. The question could be asked “was he EVER a Republican?” …From The Inquisitr:

“Lincoln Chafee had been a Republican Senator from Rhode Island between 1999 and 2007 when he lost re-election to Sheldon Whitehouse. Even though he caucused with Republicans, Chafee often voted with Democrats and ranked as the most liberal Republican in the Senate.

He was one of only a handful of Senators — Democratic or otherwise — to vote against the Iraq War in 2003. He also endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012.”

Governor Chafee is yet another example of a man lacking conviction. He should fit right in with the lunacy of today’s Democrat party. Not that he was ever excluded from it. He takes advantage of what he perceives as the direction the political wind blows in his vicinity. Nothing more.

 

 

In the meantime, life goes on. The economy struggles. Cruise ships continue to catch on fire. And idiotic celebrities..and I use that term loosely…continue to show up in court wearing wigs. It’s enough drive anyone crazy! But, in the end, we don’t let it get to us. We do what must be done. We commit ourselves to someone or something. Day in and day out. A premise those like the above mentioned have no clue about at all!

 

 

The War at Home…

As Barack Obama continues to coast through the scandal gauntlet, it could be sadly reported the President’s “fundamental change” notion has firmly taken root. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have successfully managed to change the rules from ideas and debating the issues to simply demonizing ANY opposition as evil, hateful, and downright demonic. That practice has convinced the ever shrinking minds of so many Americans on practically any concern. An alliance with the media has been the largest component in convincing the weak and the willing that THIS President can do no wrong. Despite the reality of just how WRONG his administration is on so many fronts.

Barack Obama’s disdain and disregard for what used to be worthy aspirations of the nation as a whole is propped up by his claim that those values are so yesterday..so old fashioned..so close minded…so discriminatory.

A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times – Dispatch outlines how the President has declared war on the Constitution. You know..that document which WAS the basis for law in what USED to be a nation of laws…

OBAMA’S WAR ON THE CONSTITUTION

The President, who first campaigned on a claim to constitutional expertise, is now the document’s biggest threat.

“A physician’s expertise makes him capable of inflicting great harm, noted Plato a couple thousand years ago, and no one is better positioned to steal than a guard. So perhaps we should not be surprised that the most conspicuous foe of liberty and the Bill of Rights turns out to be a former professor of constitutional law.

As a general rule, politicians tend to whipsaw between two poles. Conservatives try to increase economic liberty but show less regard for civil liberties. Liberals care deeply about civil liberties while trying to restrict the economic kind.

But the Obama administration is remarkable for its degree of disdain for both.

The president’s principal first-term achievement was the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The law greatly increases government’s role in health care and includes an expansion of government power unprecedented in American history: a requirement that all citizens purchase a consumer good irrespective of their personal behavior.

The administration also has pressed relentlessly – and successfully – for tax hikes, which shift control over economic resources from private hands to government. It also has indulged a regulatory binge, which shifts control indirectly, by cranking out burdensome new rules at a rate far faster than the Bush administration ever did. (This holds true even if you count only “economically significant” rules – those costing $100 million or more – and rely only on administration-friendly accounts.)

The result: Government not only is taking more of your money, it increasingly is telling you how to spend what’s left. A recent study estimates the cost of regulation at nearly $15,000 per household. This means the three principal drains on the family checkbook, in order, are: (1) taxes, (2) housing, and (3) regulation. And Washington is working hard to move regulation into the second slot.

While trends like these drive conservatives nuts, they gladden liberal hearts. Yet liberals are not happy with the Obama administration these days – for exceptionally good reasons.

Most saliently, the Justice Department has been trolling through the phone records of reporters for the Associated Press and, even worse, has accused a reporter (Fox News’ James Rosen) of acting as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the unlawful leaking of classified materials. Rosen’s offense was to do what reporters are supposed to do: break a story. This, too, is unprecedented, and it goes too far even for Obama’s most knee-jerk defenders. The New York Times views the investigation as “threatening fundamental freedoms of the press.”

The Rosen matter alone would suffice to disqualify the administration from any Friends-of-the-First Amendment society. Yet it is only one of several such assaults. Others include the administration’s campaign, through its insistence on a contraception mandate underObamacare, against religious liberty, and the president’s suggestion after Citizens United that “we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process” to limit the free-speech rights of persons who incorporate their social organizations; and its thuggish targeting of its political opponents.

If the IRS’ treatment of tea-party groups were an isolated story, you could swallow the explanation that a few low-level bureaucrats went rogue. But that account does not explain why the EPA has been far more generous to freedom-of-information requests from liberal groups than from conservatives. Or why, shortly after the Obama campaign slimed Romney supporter Frank Vander Sloot as a disreputable fellow, he was audited three times – twice by the IRS and once by the Labor Department. Or why, after Texas resident CatherineEngelbrecht started a Tea Party group, she received scrutiny not just from the IRS but also from the FBI. And OSHA. And, just for good measure, the ATF. Or why the IRS took 17 months to respond to an initial tax-exempt status from the conservative Wyoming Policy Institute. Or why it shared confidential files from conservative groups with the liberal ProPublica. Or why. . .

Enough on the First Amendment. The president also has tried with considerable vigor to undermine the Second, and has succeeded in subverting the Fourth: Under Obama, who has gone to court to defend warrantless wiretaps he once condemned, warrantless “pen register” and “trap-and-trace” monitoring has soared to unprecedented heights.

In 2011 the president signed a reauthorization of the Patriot Act with just one regret: Congress approved an extension of only one year, while Obama wanted three. He signed into law a defense reauthorization bill allowing the indefinite detention, without charge, of American citizens, thereby gutting the principle of habeas corpus. Granted, he issued an executive order promising not to exercise that power. But the order does not constrain future presidents or, technically, even him.

From a civil-liberties perspective, Obama has carried forward nearly every one of the war-on-terror powers that led liberals to denounce George W. Bush as a goose-stepping fascist, and in fact has made many of them worse. When he retires from public life, perhaps he will return to teaching the Constitution. That should be much easier work – given how little of it there will be left.

This article originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

A. Barton Hinkle is senior editorial writer and a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.