Obama and His Executive Orders

According to news reports, Obama is planning to announce a long list of executive orders, most notably raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, tonight in his State of the Union Address.  This is not the first time we've seen this president decide to unilaterally act when he can't get his way in Congress.  Obama has used executive orders on major issues such as environmental policy, gun control, and now the minimum wage.  I don't have an issue with the use of executive orders by Presidents; all presidents issue executive orders.  However, I can't remember a president who uses executive orders as a way to go around Congress like Obama is wont to do.  As we have come to expect with him, when he doesn't get his way, he blames others, stomps his foot and in many cases, decides to ignore the Constitution.  Obama has twice stood up in front of the American people, put his hand on a Bible, and sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The last time I checked, the Constitution gives the power to write laws to the legislative branch, aka Congress, not the executive branch.  However, Obama continues to show his contempt for the Constitution, and he continues to get away with it.  Oftentimes I think Obama considers himself King Obama rather than President Obama.  King Obama does whatever it takes to get what he wants and gives little regard to the Constitutional limits on his office.  

I'm tired of Obama's contempt for the Constitution.  I'm tired of Obama blaming republicans in Congress for not just rolling over and give in to all his demands.  I'm tired of Obama telling Congress and the American people that he will not negotiate. I'm tired of the media giving Obama a free pass on his actions.  Can you imagine the outrage and gnashing of teeth that would have occurred if President Bush had acted like this?  Senator Obama would have been the first one to cry foul if President Bush had tried this. 

Rather than ignore and circumvent Congress, the president needs to step up and be a leader.  He needs to lead by example and show a willingness to compromise rather than insist on his way or the highway.  Sadly, Obama continues to prove that he is anything but a leader.  A leader works with the opposition party and is willing to give and take in order to get bipartisan legislation passed.  A leader takes responsibility rather than assigning blame.  A leader engages in good faith negotiations.  A leader does not abjectly refuse to negotiate and threaten the opposition.  President Obama needs to learn that he is the leader of the entire country, not just the democratic party, and half this country does not want blanket approval of his policies.  Half the country wants him to engage with republicans, meet in the middle and develop compromise legislation that actually works for this country. 

Unfortunately based on his first 5 years, I don't think we'll be seeing any leadership from this president.  We'll continue to see more the of same blame game, Constitutional contempt, and executive orders when he doesn't get his way. The question is how long are we going to let him get away with it before "we the people" demand that he honor, uphold and adhere to the Constitution? 

The Media Loves a Good Scandal...Or Do They?

Since last Thursday, I can't turn on any news channel without hearing about Chris Christie and "Bridgegate".  Last week, Chris Christie held an almost two hour press conference answering questions about the lane closures on the GW bridge.  Christie fired his deputy chief of staff and his advisor last Wednesday when he found out that the lane closures were in fact political payback against the Fort Lee mayor.  Christie firmly denied that he was involved in the lane closure decision and that his staff told him that the lanes were closed for a traffic study.  Unlike most politicians, Christie actually took responsibility for the actions of his staff, and I can't remember any time in recent history where any politician dealing with the fallout from a scandal actually stayed in a press conference until every question was answered.  CNN apparently reviewed hundreds of pages of documents related to Bridgegate, and apparently they have not found any indication that Christie was involved in this.  However, the media and many of the democrat cohorts just will not let this go.  There's talk of a federal investigation into the matter and now the feds are also investigating whether he misused Super Storm Sandy funds. It just seems like the media can't go a day without reminding the public that Governor Christie, a potential GOP frontrunner in 2016, is embroiled in multiple scandals.  

But there's nothing wrong with this, right?  After all, doesn't the media loves talking about scandals that involve politicians on both sides of the aisle?  We hear all about the potential scandals involving governors of all 50 states, democrat or republican, don't we?  I can guarantee you that if Governor Christie was not consistently polling well in the meaningless polls run by the media outlets that they would have moved on from this a few days ago.  But no, since he's a republican and he might run for president in 2016, the media is going to try their best to derail his candidacy before he even decides to run.  This shows how afraid they are of Christie and his decisive reelection in November thanks to broad support across many traditional democratic constituencies.  It also shows how hypocritical they are to beat this issue to death while discussing the potential for impeachment.  They sure didn't hold Obama or Eric Holder accountable for the gun smuggling disaster that was Fast and Furious.  They barely covered the attacks in Benghazi because it was way too close to the election to give much air time to a major failure and blatant lies by the administration.  They really didn't want to talk much about the IRS's targeting of tea party and other conservative groups, either.  Finally there's the health care rollout debacle.  The media hated having to talk about the failure of the website after spending months hyping it up.  However, I will give a little credit where credit is due- they finally started being harder on Obama after his "if you like you can keep it" lie was exposed.  But I think we get the picture here: democrats, particularly Obama, get treated with kid gloves while they do everything they can to ruin a republican.  Think back to how the media treated President George W. Bush.  Does anyone think they wouldn't have been calling for his impeachment after even just one of the scandals that have hit the Obama administration?  The other irony about their coverage of Governor Christie is that they aren't even giving him credit for taking swift action against those who were involved in "Bridgegate".  Does anyone remember Obama taking responsibility for ANY part of the scandals listed above?  No, he took no responsibility nor did he even bother to fire anyone involved in even one of these issues.  The best that the American people got was the resignation of a few people at the IRS.  

So let me get this straight.  Obama has at least 4 major scandals in two years, takes no responsibility for any of them but rather just blames others. He claims complete ignorance in all of those situations yet he doesn't actually fire any of the people he blamed?  Governor Christie immediately fires both people who were involved, stands up in front of the media and the American people and accepts ultimate responsibility for the actions of his staff, and stays there for almost 2 hours until he has answered every single question from the press corps and he is still getting crucified by the media.  If it is proven that Governor Christie was involved in the political retribution against Fort Lee's mayor, then he deserves all of this criticism.  However, at this point there is no evidence to support that, and frankly the media needs to back off and let him do his job.  They need to treat every public official the same instead of helping Obama and other democrats sweep their scandals under the rug. If anyone was still living under the delusion that the mainstream media is not completely in bed with the democratic party, their coverage of Governor Christie these last few days should shatter that fantasy.