Well, let’s get the ball rolling on another broken promise from The One, Barack Hussein Obama, shall we? I mean, every time we think we are done chronicling his broken promises we have to do a reset. He’s had so many gutter balls on this that it is hard to keep them straight. His record has had strike after strike in the lies column. He’s the veritable kingpin of broken promises.

Let’s take this one from 2008:

I have sworn that we’re taking out the bowling alley in the White House and we’re putting in a basketball court.

Three years later, he hasn’t. More on that below.

The anti-bowler in chief, you might recall, has had a few bowling problems both in his march to the White House, not to mention once he got fairly in office.

During that late campaign for president, our bad Brunswickian proved to be a rotten bowler. Not only did he throw several gutter balls but he only got a horrid 37 score. A ten-year-old could do better than that.

Of that momentous score, late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel said, “I bowled a 37 when I was a baby. And I was drunk, by the way.”

Our Prez to be turned out to be a guttersnipe, it appeared.

Then, in 2009 you might recall Obama’s other bowling handicap. In an appearance on the Leno show, the gutter-baller in chief really went into the gutter with a bad joke about mentally challenged, Special Olympics participants.

The exchange went like this:

“I bowled a 129,” he told Leno.

“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.

But then came the foot-in-mouth moment: “It’s like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.

Obama was forced to apologize for his comments before the show even aired!

So, what is his latest Bowling Bash? Well, harken back to our first part where the Presidential Pin Head promised to take out the bowling alley that Harry Truman built in the basement of the White House? Yeah, well he never did.

In fact, he’s been using it for fundraising!

As Devin Dwyer of ABC News reports:

Just over three years later, the basement bowling alley President Truman installed in 1947 is still there -– and apparently being put to good use.

At least 230 visitors to the White House during May came for the express purpose of bowling, according to visitor logs released today.

In fact, the underground alley was used every day of the month, except five – May 14, 16, 18, 21 and 22.

On two days, May 15 and 23, the visitor entries indicate “bowling party.”

Yep, just another broken promise. Even as he’s leading from the back of the bench on this he’s breaking promises.

Good thing he’s made good on so many other promises though. Why he’s shut down Guantanamo, repealed the Bush tax rates, signed the Employee Free Choice Act, allowed importation of prescription drugs, converted the entire White House auto fleet to electric vehicles, he’s doubled the size of the Peace Corps, He’s prevented lobbyists from joining his administration, instituted cap and trade and….

Oh, wait. He didn’t fulfill any of those promises, either.

Ooops.

Since Obama began his run for the White House he has been Big Labor’s best friend. And they loved him for it, too. As Obama ran and as soon as he got into office the unions had stars in their eyes. They thought that with a bought and paid for president in their hip pocket, every long dreamed of union wish was about to be fulfilled.

You can’t really blame them, of course. Obama did nothing but work to let them believe he’d do everything they wanted once safely in the White House. They gave him millions of dollars and he gave them rosy promises. But they are starting to feel duped.

To be sure Obama has done more for Big Labor than any other president in American history. He’s stocked his entire regulatory edifice with union hacks, he’s issued executive orders to force federal contractors to pay union dues, wages, pensions and to work under union rules even when said companies aren’t unionized, and he’s used his powers to regulate to attack companies that dare to cross swords with Big Labor.

That seems like quite a lot of chips being cashed in, doesn’t it? It sure seems like Big Labor is riding high in the era of Obama, right?

While from the outside we can look at all the favors that Obama has doled out to Big Labor and imagine that unions have been given so very much, one has only to read what Big Labor itself has said about the Obama administration and you’ll find that all is not honey and roses in the land of Big Labor.

Take for instance the recent piece written by union author Randy Shaw. After scolding Big Labor for not putting any effort into fighting Obama’s signing of the debt deal, union writer Shaw lamented that the unions are so sold to the Democrat Party that they wont activate their members when the Democrats are pursuing policies bad for unions.

Shaw correctly notes that Big Labor has “lost” the big agenda that it went into the age of Obama expecting to see to fruition, namely the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Lamented Shaw, “EFCA died in 2009, immigration reform is off the political radar screen, and passage of job-killing free-trade deals candidate Obama once criticized will soon be the President’s next priority.”

Shaw also grumbles about Obama’s promotion of cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and his support of extending the Bush tax cuts, all issues that Big Labor generally opposed.

Because of these major failures, Shaw pointedly notes that if Big Labor began to note that the Democrats were failing them, it would begin a far reaching debate on whether labor should continue to support the Democrat Party.

So, why are labor’s most powerful leaders desperate to quash any dissent against the Democrats?

Labor stays loyal to Obama and Senate Democrats out of fear that what happened in Wisconsin could occur nationally if unions stay on the electoral sidelines and Republicans seize control of all three branches of government. Further, the Obama White House gives union leaders like Andy Stern and Richard Trumka “access,” which these officials confuse with actual power (to this end, Obama met with leaders of the AFL-CIO Executive Board on August 2 to reassure them that he is “the workers’ president.” The union leaders did not attack Obama’s anti-worker stances at the meeting).

Somewhat like a battered wife, unions come back again and again to the Democrats, smiling and asking for more.

This policy of sticking with Democrats no matter what is a “failed” strategy, Shaw says. Shaw urges Big Labor to abandon the Democrats-or-die policy and advises labor to campaign on issues and concentrate on organizing and growing their mightily depleted ranks.

Shaw is not alone in his feeling that Big Labor has lost its way. Long-time socialist and black activist Bill Fletcher has also been heard to slam the labor movement’s failings. During the height of the Service Employees International Union’s internal strife in California, Fletcher was unsparing in his criticism of SEIU leadership.

Shaw and Fletcher aren’t the only voices of complaint though. Despite his claim that Big Labor has refused to criticize Obama and the Democrats, some labor complaints have indeed reached the Old Media and some labor unions have acted on their displeasure.

In 2010 in North Carolina, for instance, the SEIU tried to start its own political party because it was upset at the failure of the Democrats to toe the union line. Also in 2010 The New York Times noted that labor was having major problems getting members out to rally for Democrats.

Not long ago, Bloomberg reported that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that his ardor for Obama’s re-election was fading. Trumka was also reported as pleading for unions to support Democrats in the late 2010 midterm elections knowing all along that it was a tough sell. And Trumka hasn’t been the only top labor leader decrying the failures under Obama and the Democrats.

So, despite all that Obama has done for labor, there are quite a lot of unhappy workers over on the far left. Quite a lot, indeed. Of course, it all tends to show another thing, too. It tends to show how voracious, how insatiable, and how ungrateful Big Labor really is.

We’ve been talking for the better part of the year about how the Obama administration is using its powers to regulate labor and business relations to attack Boeing aircraft manufacturer for attempting to open a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Fortunately, there is one proposed law floating around in congress that would stop some of the abuse of power that Obama is indulging at the behest of big labor unions. It is called the Secret Ballot Protection Act. We need to urge congress to pass it.

To briefly recap, Obama has been trying to punish Boeing — and by extension sending a warning to all American businesses — for having the gall to want to build a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Even though Boeing would be bringing thousands of jobs to North Carolina, Obama wants Boeing to be prevented from doing so and he wants to punish the southern states, as well.

This may sound incongruous, an American president trying to destroy jobs and business alike, but when the reason is discovered it reveals many things, this most especially: Obama has gotten his marching orders from unions and he is misusing his powers to regulate to fulfill the desires of Big Labor.

You see, Boeing is closing a plant in Washington State because unions there have launched so many strikes, have sabotaged manufacturing, and made the cost of business so expensive that Boeing wanted to give North Carolina, a right-to-work state, a shot at the business.

But then comes Big Labor’s bought and paid for president who decided that he could use his powers to regulate labor to prevent an American business from opening a new branch of its business in one of our own states.

Because Big Labor would lose a handful of jobs in Washington State (only to gain some in North Carolina), Obama decided that an American business wasn’t “allowed” to open a new plant at any location in this country that it wants to open a business. This assumed power is unprecedented and certainly quite un-American.

This isn’t the only illicit use of labor regulations that Obama is perpetrating. He is also using his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to prevent business and employees alike from having enough time to fully explore the offerings of unions and business when employees are considering whether or not they wish to unionize their workplace.

The NLRB wants to severely shorten the time period between when a union confronts employees and they have to vote upon whether or not they will accept unionization. It currently takes up to 38 days for unions and employers to have the time to inform employees about what they are offering before the employees have to vote. Obama’s NLRB wants to slash that to 21 days.

Such a short period of time hurts business, union and employee alike as less time until a called vote prevents more informed employees.

One other thing that Big Labor wants Obama to install on our work force is something called Card Check (The Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA). This card check provision would take away from employees the centuries old right to a secret election when they are voting for unionization of their workplace.

Taking away the secret ballot means that employees have to vote in a form that allows everyone to see how they voted. This leaves employees open for harassment from union thugs and employers alike.

One way to prevent the loss of the secret election is to get congress to vote in the Secret Ballot Protection Act [H.R. 972 and S. 217].

There needs to be a slight change to this bill, though. LaborUnionReport talks about that change.

Introduced in the Senate back in January by Jim DeMint [R-SC] and the House in March by Rep. Phil Roe [R-TN], the Secret Ballot Protection Act would ensure that employees have a right to decide on the question of unionization through a secret ballot. More importantly, it would end, once and for all, the deceptive practice of card check which gives union organizers the ability to trick workers into signing their rights over to a union.

Given the current debate over the NLRB’s proposed rules to hold ambush elections, a simple sentence can be added to the bill that states: No election shall take place within 35 days following the filing of a petition, nor on a date to exceed 56 days following the filing of a petition.

By inserting a sentence into the Secret Ballot Protection Act that establishes specific timetables, this would negate management’s alleged stalling during certification elections, as well as negate union stalling during decertification elections.

Things like this can stymie Obama’s misuse of his power to regulate business and labor and prevent his payback to the unions that paid for him to win election.

In this horrid economy, in a day when job loss is endemic, these common sense limits of the jobs-killing effects of unions is something this country sorely needs.

With one regulatory decision after another, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has repeatedly abused its position and lent its powers to come to the material aid of Big Labor. This week we see the NLRB coming to the aid of unions yet again by changing rules to fast track union votes in businesses not yet suffering under union control.

The NLRB has ruled that unions trying to strong arm their way into businesses will now be afforded a sort of fast tracked voting process meant to give both businesses and employees far, far less time to learn about and understand the issues surrounding a vote in favor of unionization.

Currently when a union wants to get itself certified in a new company the NLRB takes between five and six weeks to conduct the elections. Under the NLRB’s new rules that time period will be shorted to a scant 10 to 21 days.

Now why is this a big deal? Former Chairman and NLRB member Peter Schaumber, appointed in 2001 by George W. Bush, says that this shortened time will harm businesses, especially small and mid-sized businesses that have little knowledge about unions and no attorneys with specialized union experience with which to protect themselves.

Schaumber recently told reporters to imagine if you were a small business and you had never heard of the NLRB and had no expertise in its arcane practices. He then laid out a scenario by which an employer could become a target of the union after the elections for all sorts of violations that he, the employer, didn’t even know existed.

This is precisely the sort of trap that the NLRB hopes to set for the business community.

In light of this, imagine how much damage that these fast tracked elections could do to business. It should be remembered that the teams that unions send out to implement certification elections are essentially salesmen and are not really interested in impartially representing employees. They most certainly are not there to help employers understand the process and what might happen after certification.

This new rule is also bad for employees. Employees are badly served by a fast track process that prevents them from hearing all parties concerned in a certification election. But Big Labor wants to make sure that employees only hear the union side of the story. There is something distinctly un-American in this refusal by unions to allow employees to hear all sides of the story so that they can make an informed decision about certifying a union.

As labor expert James Sherk says, “Workers’ deserve the right to hear from both sides and have time for reflection. The NLRB’s proposed rule directly attacks their right to make an informed choice. It is the latest example of the Administration putting unions’ institutional interests above the rights of workers.”

So what exactly is wrong with allowing employees the right to hear all sides and to become informed voters? What are the unions afraid of?

Perhaps the fact that union membership is lower than it has ever been tells that story?

Barack Obama has given more payoffs, sweetheart deals, and new favorable regulations to Big Labor than any president in history. They should love him for his incredible largess. Next, in his never ending quest to harm the business community, defy the will of the voters, and give his pals in Big Labor paybacks, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — a federal labor regulatory agency — is about to sue any state that dares attempt to protect the right of workers to have secret ballots in their workplace elections. The states have made the mistake of sponsoring worker’s ballot protection laws.

Recently the NLRB announced its intentions to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah because those states had the gall to implement constitutional amendments to their state constitutions guaranteeing that workers have a right to a secret ballot in union elections.

With this the Obama administration is moving to deny workers their right to a secret ballot, a right that has been sacrosanct in democracies for hundreds if not thousands of years. Why does Barack Obama want to take away the right to a secret ballot? Because his union pals don’t want workers to feel safe voting against a union.

How can the Obama administration justify its efforts to eliminate the centuries old right to a secret ballot election? Why, because Obama’s regulatory agency wrote a new “rule” that says so, of course.

You see the problem as Obama sees it is that Congress has not passed the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would take away by law the right to a secret ballot. The reason Congress won’t pass it is because our representatives and senators know that their voters don’t support this idea.

The failure of the EFCA to pass is the one plum that the Obama administration has not been able to give to its funders in Big Labor. So, because Congress won’t act, Obama used his power to simply write new regulations to just take away the secret ballot by presidential fiat. And now his NLRB is about to start suing states to push his anti-democratic ideas.

So what can we lovers of democracy do?

We can call our representatives and tell them to support HR 1176, the Secret Ballot Protection Act. This bill would stop Obama’s NLRB from taking way worker’s right to a secret ballot.

If you want to protect the ages old right to a secret ballot, tell your congressmen to support HR 1176. Don’t Let Obama take away workers’ rights just to give a payoff to greedy, Big Labor thugs.

On Tuesday, President Obama had an op ed published in the Wall Street Journal. In it Obama insisted that our economy has been hurt by “unreasonable burdens on business” and that the regulatory sector had “gotten out of balance.” He promised that he’d make efforts to trim away regulations costly to business. While the sentiment is certainly a good one, it strains credulity to imagine that Barack Obama would be the one to make those cuts especially in light of the huge regulatory state that Obama has spent enlarging at every opportunity over the last two years.

To be sure Obama needs to gain the confidence of the business community. After all, as far as the business sector is concerned Obama has considered them his number one enemy since he began running for president back in 2006. The economy has stalled precisely because everyone is afraid of what punishment via his regulatory powers that Obama will next mete out to them.

But Obama claims he’s going to change all that and just in time for him to ramp up his 2012 reelection campaign, too. He’s signed an Executive Order, he says, in order to “strike the right balance” between regulation and business success.

This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth. And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. It’s a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.

And if you believe that Obama is serious about this I do believe that there is a certain bridge in Brooklyn you might be able purchase.

Many assume that new Chief of Staff Bill Daley had a lot to do with this new direction, but regardless of Daley’s influence Obama has been forced to appear to be driving to the center due to the shellacking he and his party took in November. But whatever his electoral motives it is pretty clear by his actions that he simply isn’t serious about trimming regulations to help business. To get a better idea of his actual desires one has but to look at his use of his power to regulate.

Since he took office President Obama has relied heavily on his powers to create regulations to push his left-wing agenda. In fact, one of his very first actions was to sign an Executive Order that forced all federal construction projects to suffer under union rules, union pay scales, and union benefit whether the companies involved in the projects were unionized or not — the order forced called Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on all federal contracts.

In fact, just looking over the regulatory changes and the threats to do so implemented by the Obama Dept. of Labor alone reveals quite the opposite direction that Obama claimed he’d undertake with regulations in his Wall Street Journal op ed. In two short years Obama has signed orders to force PLAs (as mentioned above), put limits on what business owners can say to employees about union elections, made it harder to fire incompetent government employees belonging to unions, forced business to hand out union information to employees, nullified union financial reporting rules to allow unions to more easily hide fraudulent expenditures, and just recently has insisted that the Dept. of Labor can sue any state that makes laws protecting the right of workers to have a secret ballot in union elections.

But we don’t have to restrict ourselves to Obama’s Dept. of Labor. Obama has used his powers to regulate, to rewrite financial rules, banking regulations, forced General Motors into bankruptcy then imposed pennies-on-the-dollar settlements on its creditors while giving preference to the UAW, has used the Federal Communications Commission to take over the Internet, has used his Federal Drug Administration to eliminate certain drugs, and has pushed his Environmental Protection Agency to implement extreme environmental rules to emulate the sort of Cap and Trade laws he couldn’t get Congress to pass. And this is not to mention the 150 new federal regulatory agencies he created out of whole cloth with Obamacare.

Yet, with this extremely high volume of new regulations constantly churning out of the Obama administration — something that commentator David Limbaugh has called an administrative tyranny — we are now expected to believe that he intends to cut back on them?

Of course, the idea in and of itself is a good one. For years pro-growth, business friendly advocates have been saying that our regulatory scheme is oppressive and is destroying our ability to compete internationally. Senator Mark Warner has added his voice to approval for this idea though Senator Warner insists we can go further.

“I spent 20 years in the business world, and I know that any company that does not periodically review its operations or look for ways to improve its procedures will not survive very long. Efforts to apply more common-sense to our regulatory approach can go a long way toward addressing the uncertainty that has kept the U.S. business community from participating more fully in our nation’s economic recovery,” Senator Warner said.

“The regulatory framework announced by the White House today is a promising first step to adopt a more rational approach to government oversight, but we can and should go even further. I have spoken with OMB Director Jack Lew about these proposals, and he shares my view that existing regulations must be reviewed from time-to-time to determine if they are still necessary and crafted effectively. If they are not, they should be changed or repealed.

William O’Keefe agrees and offers a first step toward progress.

As a first step, the President could direct the Department of Interior to expedite issuance of permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to remove the recently issued ban on offshore drilling off of the East Coast. That action would have a big impact on unemployment in Gulf coast states and would send a signal that the U.S. plans to exercise more control over its energy future. Although the White House is a big proponent of “green” energy, it needs to acknowledge that since these fuels are a long way from being commercially viable, fossil energy will continue to provide the main source of power for our economy for decades to come.

While all agencies need to do a better job of avoiding regulatory overkill, EPA currently threatens to have the biggest impact on our economic recovery and job creation. Its proposed rules on boilers, stationary sources, and ambient air quality standards offer compelling evidence that it is out of control and pursuing an ideological agenda without regard to economic consequences. Those proposals are already having a chilling effect on investments. President Obama should direct EPA to suspend all pending actions to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, including plans to issue another set of CAFE regulations to mandate a fleet average of 45-62 miles per gallon.

These moves and others should be taken but no one should go into this deal assuming that President Obama has good intentions. It is far more likely that his only real goal is to get reelected. It is highly doubtful that Obama has any real desire to help the business sector. After all, his entire history has been as an enemy to business. From his earliest days until Monday, Barack Obama has been the antitheses of a business friendly politician.

Is card check dead? Not completely, but if the recent votes on various state ballot initiatives of four states is any indication it sure seems to be on its last legs.

Little noticed by the Old Media, the ballot initiatives of these four states is an important bellwether of how little support Big Labor’s favorite law will have going forward. On November 2 four states voted by great margins to protect the secret ballot and these reasserted protections would tend to deliver a blow to one of the Democrat’s important provisions of card check, a provision that would eliminate the secret ballot for prospective union members.

Card check is one of the main parts of Big Labor’s Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The provision would eliminate a secret ballot for prospective union members as they decide on representation. Under the EFCA, votes for union representation would be an open issue. Every employee’s vote would be clearly known by all involved. This open voting (or the public checking of a vote card or ballot) would clearly leave employees open for harassment by union officials who would be fully aware of each employees individual votes, if they voted for or against the union. For that matter, even the employer would have knowledge of who voted for what under the EFCA.

But these ballot initiatives seem to bode ill will for card check. The Wall Street Journal reports the lopsided support for secret ballot protections (Subscription required).

Four states — Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah — voted on “save our secret ballot” measures that would require secret elections and effectively outlaw card check as a means to certify a union. In Arizona and Utah the measures passed with 60% of the vote. In South Dakota the margin of victory was 79% and in South Carolina it was 86%.

Democrats are still telling Big Labor that they intend to push the EFCA to the floor for a vote and are promising that they’ll do so in the upcoming lame duck (or zombie) session of congress. But if they do, they seem destined to lose the issue. The prevailing winds among the voters is running against the EFCA.

This won’t stop President Obama from trying to push through a stealth card check by altering federal labor regulations, though. Members of his administration have already made noises that they would like to do this.

Still, as each month passes the EFCA looks like it has less support all the time.

Leave it to an Obama appointee to the National Labor Rights Board (NLRB) to want to push votes to install unions in the workplace on an accelerated schedule. I guess all the payoffs and special favors that Obama and his cohorts have given to labor unions in these two of the longest years any president ever had have not been enough.

On Oct. 21, NLRB Member Mark Gaston Pearce said that the time period between filing and the holding of elections for new union representation in a company should be “as brief as possible.”

Of course, this shortened election period is nothing but a sop to Big Labor and intended to hurt businesses that might try to put up a fight against the encroachment of unions. As “>Jay Summer of the Labor Relations Counsel website says:

Regardless of Pearce’s stated rationale for interest in a shortened election period, if implemented, the shorter the election period, the less opportunity an employer has to exercise free speech rights and educate employees. The result would be a workforce making a decision whether or not to unionize relying only on what facts the union organizing them chooses to disclose, even if misleading or incomplete. Combined with electronic voting which would almost certainly depress voter participation, the almost certain result is a dramatic increase in unionization. This, of course, was the primary goal of EFCA’s card check proposal.

Naturally it’s all just a piece with Obama’s campaign to give unions paybacks, payoffs, and special favors to pay them back for the millions that they gave to him to run for president. It is also another example of Obama’s essential anti-business ideology.

Pearce was a recess appointment made by President Obama in March of 2010. His appointment expires in 2013.

Meanwhile, in yet another example of Obama’s war against business (and subsequent helping hand to jobs-killing unions), Obama’s Dept. of Labor announced that the Bush “culture of noncompliance” is over and Obama plans to crack down on those evil businesses that have gotten away with things for so long.

Obama Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith told attendees of a conference at Suffolk University Law School that the Labor Department would launch a new era of tougher enforcement of labor laws.

Smith heaped scorn on the pro-business Bush practices.

They relied on trickle-down enforcement; it doesn’t work any better than trickle-down economics. [As a result of reduced enforcement] many employers developed a “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude. Our challenge is to change that attitude.

You can just hear the left-wing ideology underpinning her rhetoric, can’t you?

Smith said that the Obama Labor Dept. intended to increase criminal prosecutions of businesses for perceived violations of labor law.

As we can see Obama’s anti-business crusade continues a pace with his other left-wing policies.

Riding a nationwide wave of voter discontent, state Republican leaders said Tuesday that the party had seized control of the state General Assembly for the first time in more than a century.

Many races remained too close to call late Tuesday, but GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer predicted that Republicans would pick up 14 to 16 House seats and 10 Senate seats. That would give the party 66 to 68 seats in the 120-member House and 30 seats in the 50-member Senate.

The GOP last had a majority in the state Senate in 1898. They controlled the state House as recently as 12 years ago.

Yes, we still have to wait for the full results, but, Fetzer is not pulling a Pelosi, claiming victory where there is none to be had (actually, Pelosi was more like Baghdad Bob). It is huge that the GOP can claim to to have won total control of the NC GA, and, based on the last paragraph of the WRAL story, where Dems pretty much gave up the partying, the GOP did pull it out. Now it is time to turn the GA around, move it from its resemblance to the corrupt NJ state legislature, and do the bidding of the People of NC.

Also, while it may be simply a moral victory, it should be noted that Bill Randall took 45% of the vote in NC13 against Brad Miller. NC13, my district, comprises Raleigh and several other heavily Democrat areas. It’s also where quite a few Damnyankees (always pronounced as one word) have moved from up North. In his last two elections, he took 66% and 64% of the vote. This time, only 55%.

Anyhow

The surge that gave Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday also hit state legislatures, giving Republicans power to potentially cement their hold in Congress for the next decade.

Republicans took control of at least state 18 chambers from Democrats, according to Tim Storey, an elections analyst at the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

Republicans saw a net gain of at least 500 seats, giving them control of chambers in states including Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the NCSL reported.

Storey said probably five more chambers remain in play, including the New York Senate.

Remember, control of the state legislatures is about more than simply governance: being a Census year, they will have control over redistricting (psst, NC GOP, make sure Brad Miller loses next time, OK?). Here’s an idea: split the big cities in half.

A few other tidbits:

• In California, making pot legal failed
• In Arizona, South Carolina, Utah, and South Dakota, the People said screw you, Card Check, and made sure that the secret ballot would remain regarding unionization
• Oklahoma has banned Sharia Law
  
• Arizona voted against ObamaCare insurance mandate 55-45%
• Kansas voted for the Right to Bear arms
• Oklahoma voted against ObamaCare mandate
• Bye Bye, Nutty Alan Grayson
• California voted against Prop 23, which would suspend their insane globull warming legislation. Now they can watch their economy collapse even further, as 3,000 people a day move from the State

Now we’re just waiting for the final tallies, to see what the overall federal and state numbers are.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. sit back and Relax. we’ll dRive!

Politico has a delicious story detailing how lefty bloggers seem to be on the outs with the Obama administration over their constant stream of complaints unleashed about the president’s lack of supplication to the most extreme left-wing policies.

Politico found Peter Daou, another “progressive” blogger, who thinks he knows why Deputy White House Press Sec. Bill Burton didn’t name any left-wing bloggers along with his absolving of some of MSNBC’s hectoring on-air talkers.

Daou recently wrote a post hyperbolically titled, “How a Handful of Liberal Bloggers Are Bringing Down the Obama Presidency” exploring the idea. In it the blogger slams his own, claims that other lefty bloggers are tearing down the president among the progressives, and says it is damaging the administration.

“With each passing day, I’m beginning to realize that the crux of the problem for Obama is a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, among them Glenn Greenwald, John Aravosis, Digby, Marcy Wheeler and Jane Hamsher.”

I find it highly doubtful that these few bloggers have enough reach to destroy the Obama administration, but Daou isn’t completely wrong in his criticism of the left.

Daou notes that these bloggers, some of whom used to be at the top of the list that White House officials were worried about courting, have gotten so pointed in their criticism that the administration is beginning to tune them out.

So what are these lefty bloggers complaining about?

Most of the bloggers on Daou’s list focus on civil liberties, a topic that they admit falls outside mainstream political discourse. Most recently, they have been united in criticism of the Obama administration’s attempts to target for assassination a U.S.-born Muslim cleric alleged to be leading a brand of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Previously, they have been angered by moves like Obama’s decision to preserve President George W. Bush’s military commission for Guantanamo detainees, rather than try them in civilian court or in courts-martial.

Famed left-wing blogger Glenn Greenwald thinks that the administration is setting the far left up to be the fall guy on which to blame the loss of the coming midterm elections. With the president and vice president both recently telling the left to stop whining, who can blame Greenwald for thinking as he does?

I feel their pain. But I am still giggling at it all.

I have to say, though, that whether my righty friends know it or not, there is indeed a lot of truth to this report. I monitor the lefty blogs myself and they really have been raging for months. While conservatives have been aghast at how far to the extreme left the Obama administration has gone, the real leftists out there feel he hasn’t gone far left enough.

I recently participated in a radio program with a lefty and he was incensed at the failures of the Obama administration. Not closing Gitmo, the recent decision to OK an overseas assassination of an American citizen who is a terror suspect and other civil liberty failings, not to mention the left’s feeling that Obama hasn’t gone far enough to take down the financial sector, the stalling of both cap and trade and card check, and his inability to get a single payer healthcare system all have tried the patience of the extreme left.

So, even as we think this president is the most socialist president ever to sit in the Oval Office the left is still mad because he isn’t left enough. This hectoring being ladled out by the left-wing blogosphere has been virulent enough to turn the administration off, apparently.

So, what is the upshot of this report? The upshot is that the left is not only being dismissed by this administration, it is being ignored and perhaps even set up as a fall guy. This is not to say that the administration is pursuing centrist or moderate policies because it is not. But it does mean that a lefty blogosphere that once had the ear of the president of the United States of America is now on the outside looking in.

Like I said, I feel their pain.

I want to stress again that this deaf ear turned to the lefty bloggers does not mean that the Obama administration is drifting to the center. What this does reveal, though, is that the political climate amenable to far left policies has passed. For nearly a year now the people have been telling their senators and representatives that they don’t want Obamacare, they don’t want the government to take control of the Internet, they don’t want any more Government Motors, any more bailouts, or unions to get big payoffs. Further the people don’t want global warming laws and the continued destruction of the business sector. The left’s window to push through just any old thing is gone.

The truth is that the Obama administration isn’t failing the far left because he does not agree with them. He is failing them because he is simply politically unable to assuage them. His political capital is spent. Obama is just as far left as the most whacked out lefty blogger out there but the political reality is that his extremism has been curbed to some degree by the outrage of the people.

Now we need to send that message home in November!