Today’s Day 1.

Yes, I feel a second post today is needed, since:

From The Hill:

President Obama’s signature domestic achievement — and, with it, a big part of his political legacy — is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

The nine justices on Monday will begin hearing three consecutive days of oral arguments about whether the healthcare law is unconstitutional. The landmark legal challenge threatens to overturn an historic legislative victory, raising the stakes once again in a debate that will help define Obama’s presidency.

No matter what the Pelosis, Obamas and Reids of this world tell us, ObamaCare is as blatantly unconstitutional as most of the other agendas the “progressive” elements within the government are constantly trying to foist on us, though when many such issues fail to pass congressional muster, they are somehow “passed” via rulings by liberal activist judges.

That won’t be the case in this particular incident, hopefully, and the Supreme Court will rule via the Constitution rather than said political activism.

Legal experts agree the healthcare case is already in the same league as the court’s most famous decisions, including rulings on abortion and civil rights. Some argue it’s more important than Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election, because of its sweeping implications for the role of government.

“It has the potential to fundamentally alter our concept of limited government,” said Robert Alt, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

So we’ll watch the proceedings and, as they say, travel hopefully: Hopeful that our cherished Constituion will prevail…

And here I thought Mayor Bloomberg’s despotic administration in New York was beyond the pale.

Well, it appears that KingImamHis Excellency President — that’s it, President (or unrerasonable facsimile thereof) Obama has outdone Bloomberg the Weasel by bestowing upon himself the power to enact an all-encompassing martial law over we, the people and all our assets as he sees fit.

From the Washington Times:

President Obama has given himself the powers to declare martial law — especially in the event of a war with Iran. It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American.

On March 16, the White House released an executive order, “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” The document is stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution. It states that, in case of a war or national emergency, the federal government has the authority to take over almost every aspect of American society. Food, livestock, farming equipment, manufacturing, industry, energy, transportation, hospitals, health care facilities, water resources, defense and construction — all of it could fall under the full control of Mr. Obama. The order empowers the president to dispense these vast resources as he sees fit during a national crisis.

{Emphasis mine, contempt for the Constitution Mr. Obama’s}

More:

In short, the order gives Mr. Obama the ability to impose martial law. He now possesses the potential powers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional. The executive branch is arrogating responsibilities precluded by the Constitution without even asking the permission of Congress. The order gives Mr. Obama a blank check to erect a centralized authoritarian state. This is a law one would expect to find in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sure, His Majesty uses the possibility of looming conflict with Iran (over their nukes) as a reason to somehow justify this extreme measure, but that is just an excuse, like his moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in response to the BP oil spill or his and his fellow leftists’ use of any firearm incident as an excuse to pursue their anti-2nd Amendment agenda.

Would that tempt Mr. Obama to claim a state of emergency and thereby implement his executive order? No one knows the answer. And we shouldn’t have to find out. The president does not — and should not - have the authority to subordinate the entire private economy to the government, especially without the consent of Congress and the American people. It is national socialism masquerading as military security.

Amen to that!

Read the entire article here.

This one is somewhat close to home (or ex-home, thank God, as it were).

From Patriot Update:

If you go to Calle Ocho in Miami, and in particular the restaurant Versailles, at certain times in the day you can find a large group of Cubans passionately discussing politics. They lived communism first hand. Many were jailed fighting Castro. Many have friends and relatives who were killed and persecuted. Their stories need to be heard.

Unlike the linked article’s author, Victoria Jackson, who grew up in Miami, I didn’t leave Cuba until my late teens, and the information imparted in the short video interviews as well as the narrative is truly on point.

Here are the first of a series I will be presenting to you. Miami is my hometown and I was born in 1959, right when communism invaded Cuba. My childhood was saturated with the knowledge that my friends and neighbors came to my free country to escape the terror of communism. These Cuban friends see this freedom they risked their lives for disappearing, with the growth of government, especially in the Obama administration. I share their concern. This evil must be stopped.

The article is here.

This definitely sounds like something Obama and his ilk would arrange:

My Cuban friend told me that when Castro took over, religion was outlawed, Christians were jailed, freedom of speech - gone, and this is how the kindergarten children were brainwashed: they were told to bow their heads, close their eyes and ask God for candy, when they opened their eyes, there was no candy there, then they were told to bow their heads and ask Castro for candy, when they opened their eyes there was candy there.

Who? Fidel Obama? Barack Hussein Castro (now that’s a frightening thought, triple indemnity!)? Hmmm….

Considering that we are in America, THIS is just plain unbelievable:

The Senate on Thursday passed legislation barring lawmakers from using insider information for personal profit, sending the bill to the White House.

Ahem.

Congress passing a law prohibiting themselves from commiting felonies!

Come on, now… They need to pass a law making it illegal for them to break the law?

We’ve all known about the insider trading for awhile, and many of us condemned them for it, but are they such natural crooks that they need a law requiring them to obey an existing law in order to keep themselves “honest”?

Sheesh! These people really need to be voted out, every last one of them, at the first available opportunity…

Pitiful.

Oh, and in the area of transparency:

How about this?

“I appreciate [my colleague's] leadership on helping us honor what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Pelosi told her colleagues, citing the Declaration of Independence. “And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee.”

Who says the Democrats are not being transparent as advertised? I’d say Pelosi’s speech in the video makes it quite transparent that she and her liberal elitist ilk believe we are all very, very stupid.

After 236 years as the greatest nation in history, is this what our government’s leadership comes down to?

But of course.

After all, these organisms called liberals won’t have it any other way, especially, it seems, those in and around the education system whose PC contributions help revise history so as to raise the next generation(s) in their dubious “image”.

in discussing the 9/11 attacks, the textbooks typically fail to mention the perpetrators were Muslims or that they acted in the cause of Islamic jihad. In one book the terrorists are portrayed as people fighting for a cause.

Read on.

What a sad state of affairs!

Of course, mentioning Islam in the same breath as 9/11, despite the religion’s prominence in the attacks on WTC and the Pentagon using hijacked airplanes full of innocent passengers would be (shudder!) Racism!

Can we blame them?

I certainly can’t, and I know what my Big Bad Wolf would have to say on the subject (I won’t say it here, since there would undoubtedly be a large quantity of expletives)!

Just imagine the gall, though of course we are talking about today’s liberal controlled Democrats, who have no reverence whatsoever when it comes to the American flag or any other symbols of this great nation, whose very existence in its constitutional state, with its freedoms, encouragements of citizens’ independence and the convention of its collective moralities evidently offend them.

An American flag featuring an image of President Barack Obama’s face was removed from outside a local Florida Democratic Party headquarters Tuesday after several veterans called it “despicable” and a “desecration,” the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Veterans gathered Tuesday afternoon to protest in front of the Lake County Democratic Party headquarters, where the flag — featuring Obama’s face in the blue section where the stars normally go — was flying beneath a traditional American flag. The confrontation ended after party chairwoman Nancy Hurlbert took the flag down, according to the Sentinel.

The protest started after Don Van Beck, a Korean war veteran and executive director of the Veterans Memorial at Fountain Park in Leesburg, Fla., snapped several pictures of the flag and distributed them to others. He told WFTV-TV seeing it made his blood boil.

“I can‘t describe how upset was because you just don’t do that to the American flag,” he told the station.

What collossal moxi these “portsiders” have!

This is the kind of thing you can expect when we (not us here at Hard Astarboard, no siree! We love America too much!) elect an administration like the one we are cursed with now.

In our “Red Tape Rising: Obama-Era Regulation at the Three Year Mark” report, James Gattuso and Diane Katz detail how the Obama Administration has imposed new regulations costing $46 billion annually, with nearly $11 billion more in one-time implementation costs. That is about five times the cost of regulations imposed during the first three years of President George W. Bush’s administration, but the burden is even higher. The red tape of the past three years helps explain why the economic recovery has been so slow and job creation so anemic.

Don’t take our word for it, but those of President Obama himself. In January 2011, he said that “rules have gotten out of balance” and “have a chilling effect on growth and jobs.” And he’s right. Where the President breaks with reality is his pledge for a get-tough policy on overregulation and a comprehensive review of regulations imposed by Washington. In fact, to hear President Obama tell the story, you would think he’s a champion of slashing red tape and that his Administration has set its sights on slashing overregulation.

Just two months ago, in his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama claimed that “I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.” But looking at the sheer number of regulations doesn’t begin to tell the story. While it’s true that the Obama Administration approved 10,215 regulations in its first three years, just slightly less than Bush’s 10,674, it’s important to look at what those regulations are and their impact on the American people and industry — and how their costs have vastly overshadowed those of the prior administration.

Over just the last year, the Obama Administration has added 32 regulations that together impose more than $10 billion in annual costs and $6.6 billion in one-time implementation costs. Those regulations include mandates covering a broad range of activities and products, ranging from refrigerators and freezers to clothes driers to air conditioners, limits on automotive emissions, employer requirements for posting federal labor rules, product labeling, health plan eligibility under Obamacare, and higher minimum wages for foreign workers. The most expensive regulation came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which added five major rules at a cost of more than $4 billion annually.

Yes, the Obama Administration, the same people who have been so maudlin where using the Constitution for a floor mat is concerned.

In much the same way that high taxes hamper investment and innovation, escalating regulatory costs undermine the American economy. Small businesses in particular are under siege. When surveyed in December 2011 about their single biggest problem, 19 percent of respondents cited regulations and red tape, up from 15 percent a year ago, and more than any other category except for “poor sales.”

But regulations are not just a problem for entrepreneurs. American workers and their families have been hit hard by the persistent lack of job creation that results, in part, from regulatory excess. Meanwhile, regulatory costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices and limited product choices.

We really need to get Obama and his retinue out of office, out of Washington and get America out of the “harm’s way” these people have us in before we are transformed, much to the delight of our political left, into a bona fide, gen-yoo-ine Third World country!

Yeah, that travesty we call Obamacare.

Despite all the stuff we read about how this state’s fighting Obamacare in the courts, that state’s doing this, the other state’s doing something else, it appears that the miscarriage of government authority is still a done deal, one which, like everything else the politicians want to foist on us that most of us aren’t up for, has been gradually eased out of the spotlight the last couple of years until now it’s apparently “yesterday’s news”, its various aspects scheduled to go into effect as scheduled.

In Heritage’s The Foundry yesterday, Alyene Senger featured a column titled The 10 Terrible Provisions of Obamacare You May Not Have Heard Of.

These are just the first four (the rest are in the column linked immediately above):

It increases taxes on families earning over $250,000. In 2013, the employee portion of the Medicare payroll tax will increase from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent for families earning $250,000 or more and individuals earning $200,000 or more. The income threshold is not indexed for inflation, so more and more middle-income families will be hit by the tax hike as time goes on.

It adds a new tax to investment income. The increased payroll tax rate is also applied to high-earners’ investment income for the first time beginning in 2013. It will hit capital gains, dividends, rents, and royalties, discouraging investment and harming economic growth.

It puts new limitations on those with HSAs and FSAs. Starting in 2012, Obamacare restricts the products that consumers may purchase with a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Savings Account (FSA)—such as over-the-counter medications—and increases the penalty for such non-qualified uses of HSAs. It also limits the amount taxpayers may deposit into an FSA to $2,500 a year in 2013.

It adds a new tax on those who purchase medical devices. In 2013, a 2.3 percent excise tax will be applied to medical devices, causing a $28.5 billion tax hike on medical device manufacturers. The industry will pay for this tax by reducing jobs and passing additional costs on to consumers.

It has been my understanding since becoming an American going on four (4) decades ago that we, the people run this country and the politicians are supposed to be working for us. It is also my understanding that we Americans are generally not stupid, certainly not dumb enough to want to be subjected to anything like the Patient “Protection” and “Affordable” Care Act. Having said that, I wonder how it is that this country’s fallen so far that we seem to have to stomach such insubordinate malfeasance on the part of those we have elected to govern our country, the will of the people notwithstanding….

Ah, New Yawk City.

First, there’s this:

Nothing beats the New York Daily News headline here: “Her agony of de-feet!” Ah, puns.

Anyway, Brooklyn woman Kate Wilson is fighting a $50 summons she got for putting her injured leg up on the subway seats next to her. During rush hour, this would be a different issue, but Wilson insists there were empty seats all over the car. Also, her leg really hurt.

As one cop began to write her a summons for obstructing seating, Wilson tried to reason with the officers and told them she ran 4 miles through Prospect Park the day before.

It’s unclear if Wilson cares about the fine, or is just concerned with the principle of the matter. Either way, she did her best to talk her way out of the summons — and failed.

“I asked them if they had bigger fish to fry,” she recalled. “The police officer said, ‘Yeah, but we’re frying this one now.’ ”

Wilson, who works as an administrative assistant in the city, said she finally just bit her lip.

“It was a waste of resources,” she said. “I can’t help but believe this is happening to other people, but nobody comes forward.”

There’s a lot of this kind of thing going around under the auspices of the Bloomberg Administration, whose first priority seems to be to wrest every dime posible from the grip of the New York resident-at-large through penalties, fines, taxes, permit fees, etc.

Personally, I think any cop who would enforce a law such as that described in the above linked article under those circumstances (an almost empty subway car in which the “victim” is interfering with no one by putting her foot up) would be well suited to serve a more totalitarian regime, such as that of Fidel, or maybe Chavez. Such fascistic policemen certainly don’t belong in a free country, but I suppose that’s just one gal’s opinion.

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Recently, a friend and I, out for dinner in Manhattan, were strolling past Carnegie Hall and, near a corner, we espied a homeless person bundled beneath a heavy coat and a hat against the cold with a large cup in front of him/her for “donations”.

The figure was so pitiful, I couldn’t help but drop a ten dollar bill into the cup.

As we walked on, my friend remarked that between the hat and coat, we couldn’t even see the homeless person underneath, and amused by a sudden thought whose zaniness probably comes from too many years, on and off, of exposure to Seth’s peculiar sense of humor.

“There’s a way we could make a pile of easy money,” I quipped, “we could buy a whole bunch of hats and large baggy coats at a thrift store and set them up around Manhattan, to look just like our undomiciled friend back there, each with a “homeless & hungry” sign and a cup in front of it. Passersby will assume there’s a needy person underneath each one and put money in the cups, and all we’d have to do is go around periodically and collect the money from each cup!”

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And then there’s this one from the N.Y. Post:

It’s the job that keeps on giving.

Area longshoremen — including as many as 10 relatives of the late Vincent “The Chin” Gigante — pocket huge bonuses on top of their already overtime-bloated paychecks, according to Waterfront Commission records.

Those bonuses are guaranteed by union contracts — and were as high as $20,000 per worker last year, the commission said.

Ralph Gigante — The Chin’s highly paid dockworker nephew — somehow scored a deal with his employer to get an annual bonus worth 8 percent of his previous year’s gross pay, according to his testimony to the commission in 2010.

Not bad for a guy who — in another back-door dream deal reported by The Post yesterday — is paid pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long.

Gigante, whose hourly rate is $36, made $406,659 in 2011, including bonuses.

He’s not the only Gigante getting paid handsomely to work on the New York waterfront, which receives billions in public money for infrastructure upgrades from the Port Authority.

Nice work if you can get it.

….Included in that number is Robert Fyfe, one of The Chin’s sons-in-law.

Like Ralph Gigante — one of the highest-paid employees at the port — Fyfe is a union shop steward, according to testimony in commission hearings.

Fyfe’s wife — The Chin’s daughter — Yolanda insisted to The Post her husband makes an honest living.

“Like everyone else, we are living paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “It’s not like we have any connection to anything.”

Right, of course.

There are similar stories on an almost regular basis of such “quite fortunate” individuals in New York in a wide variety of areas in both the public and private sectors.

Paycheck to paycheck, honest living, heh heh heh…

Hard Astarboard has always been, and always will, be a blog that stands beside Israel.

That said;

This video speaks for itself.

Yeah, Barack Hussein terrorist sympathizing, lying miscarriage of a president Obama has their back, alright…