The Other New Normal

I guess getting used to having gas prices consistently hovering around 3 dollars a gallon isn't enough. We also have gotten used to unemployment hanging at 7.6% or more.

54 Months: Record Stretch of 7.5%+ Unemployment Continues

(CNSNews.com) - Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.
Today, BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for June was 7.6 percent, the same it was in May.
In December 2008, the month after Obama was first elected and the month before he was inaugurated, unemployment was 7.3 percent. In January 2009, it climbed to 7.8 percent. In February, the month Obama signed what the Congressional Budget Office would later determine was an $830 billion economic stimulus law, the unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent.
In the Obama era, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2010. It did not dip below 9 percent until October 2011, when it hit 8.9 percent.  From August to September 2012, it dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent—the first time during Obama’s tenure it went under 8 percent.
Since then, the lowest it has gone has been 7.5 percent—the rate it hit in April. But after April, it ticked back up to 7.6 percent in May and stayed at 7.6 percent in June.~snip~

Add to that number of workers at involuntary part time as opposed to full time and we have a shift in wealth all right as our middle class shrinks. All thanks to Obamacare as employers try to avoid the penalties mandated by it.
It's a shame that the war on the middle class doesn't get the same amount of press as the "war on women" or even the george Zimmerman trial.

Gas Prices and the New Normal

Some good news, gas prices are going down some. The bad news is on average they're about 15 cents more than last year.

Gasoline prices begin summer slide

While analysts are not expecting a resulting surge in gasoline prices, they could rise quickly if the Mideast unrest does disrupt oil supplies. Gas could also climb if a hurricane threatens the heart of the refining industry along the Gulf Coast.
This year's early summer decline, while welcome, is smaller than the seasonal drops of the last two years, when gas prices also fell between Memorial Day and Independence Day. Gasoline is 15 cents more expensive than it was last year at this time.
Gas prices typically rise in late winter or early spring when refineries perform maintenance and switch from making winter gasoline blends to the more complex summer blends required for clean-air rules. When the nation's refineries aren't operating at full strength, supplies drop and prices rise. Once the maintenance is done, output rises and prices fall.
"When refineries go down it can create immediate and severe havoc," Kloza said. "It's a very shallow distribution system, quick to fill and quick to empty."~snip~

There's been a decline in the number of refineries but the ones still operational have been fitted to refine more. But when one goes down it really creates havoc.
On top of the fact that we depend on oil from a region of the world that is, to say the least, pretty unstable. Whatever happens there affects the price of oil here.

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That could be softened by the Keystone XL pipeline that the enviro-nazis are so up in arms about.....aided and abetted by Obama and various commie/democrats of course because whatever might be good for the middle class they're against.
Of course the government, local,state and federal has to have their cut.

Some U.S. drivers will be paying a little more because of higher gasoline taxes that went into effect July 1. California and Maryland taxes rose 3.5 cents per gallon, Connecticut's climbed 4 cents, and Wyoming's 10 cents. Virginia drivers are getting a break — gas taxes there are falling 6.4 cents.
Gasoline taxes account for the biggest difference in pump prices for U.S. drivers. Local, state and federal taxes vary from nearly 70 cents per gallon in New York, California and Hawaii to half that in Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia, according to the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's chief lobbying group.

Which would be alright if they actually used those taxes for road and highway improvement instead of putting into their general operating fund to spread the wealth around.
There's so many ways gas prices are manipulated to soak the middle class in this country that it's shameful, and we pay the price in higher fuel taxes and the cost of goods and services.
So when you're looking at the price at the pump and thinking you're getting a break paying 15 cents less this week than you were last week, remember how the government is getting richer and pandering to enviro-wackos for political gain and donations to their campaigns, while making you poorer and shortening the distance that a dollar will go just to get you to work and the grocery store.

We work for the government now, not the other way around.

Muslim Brotherhood Purge?

 I was looking at twitchy and found this thread where they're talking about the Egyptian army taking "revenge" against the Muslim Brotherhood whose motto happens to be:

  'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way;  dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The rhetoric on the Egyptian Police Facebook against Muslim Brotherhood is shocking! It feels theyre about to launch a campaign of revenge
— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) July 3, 2013

It almost seems like they're feeling sorry for the misunderstood lads.
There was actually a reason that Hosni Mubarak outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood while he was in charge of Egypt.
The best one I could think of is because they were behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat because of the Camp David accord and peace treaty he signed with Israel in 1979.
Regardless of what the Obama administration and the liberal/commie democrats want you to believe, the Muslim Brotherhood isn't a civic or social organization. It exists for the sole purpose of spreading jihad in the name of Allah worldwide.
The truth is Egypt, and all other countries, would be better off if the Muslim Brotherhood was marginalized the same way the KKK is in the United States.

The fact that the Egyptian army knows enough to purge a failed ideology from their country is a lesson all aspiring democracies in the middle east should emulate.

MSM Moment of Clarity?

From CBS no less.
CBS' John Dickerson: Obamacare Roll Out Appears "Barely Operational".

Here you got the administration running around trying to get sports teams, librarians and anyone else he can find to sell it and CBS let it slip that government is pretty much incompetent on the roll out of the law.
Or are they.
It seems pretty convenient that the penalty for businesses has been delayed until after the 2014 elections. In other words they want to delay it just long enough to try and insure that it won't impact democrats getting re-elected. Since they're the ones who voted for it they don't seem to want to own it.
Pretty sneaky huh?

Rubio Tries Sucking Up

Rubio the RINO basically went out of his way to marginalize conservatives on the issue of illegal immigration.
In essence he's for the invasion of America by people who flout our laws and then expect a legal ticket to stay.

So in order to "make it up to us" he wants to be the sponsor of a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks.

Rubio to Introduce Senate Bill to Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) today agreed to be the lead sponsor of a Senate bill to ban abortion after an unborn child is 20 weeks old.  A similar measure passed the House last month and a state version is now being debated in the Texas legislature, where it is likely to be approved.
With Rubio’s presence, the bill is certain to gain enormous media attention and thus more national visibility for the issue of limiting late term abortions. Right-to-life groups have urged Rubio to take the lead on the issue, believing he would be the strongest possible advocate in the Senate. Several sources confirmed he’d agreed.
The bill faces an uphill fight in the Democrat-controlled Senate and a veto threat by President Obama.  But win or lose, Republicans and the leaders of the pro-life movement regard the 20-week ban as an especially favorable issue for their cause – and one that might strengthen GOP candidates in the 2014 midterm election.~snip~

As the article states, with a democrat-controlled Senate, it would be pretty much dead on arrival but obviously just sponsoring it Rubio hopes to rehabilitate his already tarnished image for attempting to open the floodgates for illegal immigration.
In other words he expects conservatives to compromise their values again when he attempts to run in 2016.
The question is, after all the lesser of 2 evils we've held our noses over and voted for anyway, are conservatives going to fall for it again?
I ain't.

How to Win Friends.....

....on the abortion debate?
Call on Satan!!

Or you could just exploit little children in an attempt to push your ghoulish agenda.

I'm really interested to see how they are going to spin "abortion rights" as being "for the children".

I can't really understand what the big deal is with the pro-murder a child in the womb groups, all this bill does is limit abortions to 20 weeks and lays out a few requirements to make abortion a little safer.
Isn't that what Roe vs. Wade was supposed to do?
Make abortion clean and safe, for the woman anyway.
I find it amazing that not even Kermit Gosnell wasn't enough to make some women take a pause for a moment and consider what is really at stake here.

Check out the "Hail Satan!!" video here. Cahnman's Musings

Obama Backed Despot Morsi on his way out?

I've been kind of keeping an eye on what's been going on over in Egypt what with all the protests rejecting Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and can't help thinking that this is the guy that our fearless leader has been propping up since Mubarak was ousted.

The Obama administration fell all over itself to help this guy try and establish an Islamic state and the Egyptian people don't seem to want any of it....or they want something closer to a more secular government like they had before.
Obama sat back on his hands and let Libya be taken over by radical Islam allowing an American Ambassador and others to become trapped and then killed and is arming Syrian "rebels" who are closely aligned with Al Qaeda that do stuff like slaughter Christians and behead priests or cut out hearts and livers to eat.
Al Qaeda?
Wasn't that the group that trained and sent terrorists to crash planes into the world trade center and possibly elsewhere if one plane hadn't crashed into a Pennsylvania field?

Anyway the Egyptian military is threatening to intervene and Morsi is pretty defiant about it claiming he was democratically elected and gathering Islamists and members of the brotherhood to rally to his defense. Even as cabinet officials resign.
The military don't seem to be backing down either.

I don't believe that this will end pretty at all and of course Obama is still trying to prop up the Muslim Brotherhoods pick because that's what he does. Pander to terrorists.

I wonder what would happen if the Egyptian military starts to move against Morsi and all of a sudden  his supporters started showing up with weapons?

This can turn into a raging civil war, one that we need to stay out of and let the Egyptian military oust a possible Islamist despot and call for new elections. Because at this point any interference from the US would damage our reputation even further in the middle east.

Obama needs to quit turning over these countries to radical Islamic terrorists, for our security and theirs.