Growing up, my Uncle Bill Harmon used to say that you can tell the greatness of the man by the type of people he surrounds himself with. He was referring to college football coaches. The really great coaches always surrounded themselves with great assistants. I believe there is a lot of truth to that. Your character and who you is revealed in the type of company you keep.

This is why I cannot get away from this article by Michelle Malkin which shows that BHO has aligned himself with AFL/CIO President Richard Trumka. The man is clearly a thug of the first order. He will use violence at the drop of a hat and he is running the largest union in the country. That doesn’t bode well for the unions or BHO. I will admit up front that I am opposed to unions. Yes, you can make the argument that they started out in order to give the workers a better living. That is always the argument put forth in defense of unions. The problem with this is that unions are born out of violence, fear and intimidation. They survive on violence, fear and intimidation and grow using the same tactics. Exactly what biblical principle can we find to support such a tactic? We cannot. Violence is not the way of the gospel and unions are clearly opposed to solid, biblical teaching.

Here is Malkin describing the man BHO has aligned himself with:

The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of Tea Party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” workers.

Trumka and Obama will cast Big Labor as an unassailable force for good in American history. But when it comes to terrorizing workers, Trumka knows whereof he speaks.

Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?

A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”

In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the s**t out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation, the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”

Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka’s violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles and fists.

BHO is once again demonstrating his lack of character in that he aligning himself with the thugs of the AFL/CIO. At every turn he makes, he lacks wisdom and discernment(see the article by Ken Blackwell). He has yet to do anything in the best interest of the country. All his moves and actions have been solely for the purpose of advancing a leftist agenda that is contrary to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He could not even use the word “victory” in his concession speech earlier this week that the Bush Surge finally paid off in Iraq.

Given also that his administration is on the attack against those who stand for righteousness and upholding the law, we can safely say that BHO has no problems of hanging out with thugs because he is a thug. All the more reason we need to curtail his power in November. By voting for conservative Republicans, we can end his unchecked reign as President. Yes, he will remain in power for 2 more years. But without a boot-licking Congress to follow him around, he will not be able to continue to push forth the tyranny of socialism.

In fact, I read this week that if those conservatives take over the House in November, they will likely follow up their victory by starting to investigate the Obama Administration.

From the Politico:

If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.

Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.

Republican staffers say there won’t be any self-destructive witch hunts, but they clearly are relishing the prospect of extracting information from an administration that touts transparency.

And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.

Issa would like Obama’s cooperation, says Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But it’s not essential.

“How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Bardella, who refers to his boss as “questioner-in-chief.’

That’s feeding anxieties within the West Wing — even if administration officials won’t admit it publicly.

He needs to be investigated. Remember, the Constitution does not give him the power to take over General Motors, to demand we buy health insurance, to demand that we come under the care of Obamacare. Those are not powers granted to him in the Constitution and if those on our side of the aisle regain control of Congress, they will seek to right the ship through investigating the Chief Thug and His operations.

That cannot come soon enough. I know many don’t want to hear the word “investigate.” But given BHO’s friends and policies of thuggery, it’s the best news around in a long time.