By Mr. Curmudgeon

In a debate with Sen. John McCain during the 2008 campaign, then candidate Obama said of his plan to transform environmentalism into a jobs mega maker for America, “…If we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades.” Tell that to James Sikes of San Diego, California. The environmentally friendly onboard computer of his Toyota Prius hybrid nearly drove him off a cliff. When his “green” automobile accelerated to 94-miles-an-hour, and his efforts to reduce the vehicle’s speed failed, Sikes called 911 for help. A police officer eventually drove his patrol car in front of the out-of-control green vehicle, slowing the Prius lodged against the police car’s rear bumper to a stop. Sikes was lucky. Thanks to the police, he avoided joining the estimated 30 people believed killed by the faulty hybrid vehicle in America. The problem appears to be related to a glitch in the vehicle’s computer program.

Liz Pulliam Weston at MSN Money writes that the high cost of hybrids undercuts its value to the consumer. “Assuming you drive 15,000 miles a year and gas averages $2.50 a gallon (we can hope), you’d be saving $391 a year on fuel. That means it would take you about eight years to break even.” That’s a high price to pay for feeling good about yourself, and that price may include your life.

Academy Award-winning director James Cameron’s career took off with the release of his sci-fi Terminator film series. The premise of Cameron’s story concerned a war to annihilate humanity by conscious computer-operated machines. According to the plot, the Terminators were the unintended consequences of research conducted by the evil U.S. military industrial complex. Who would have thought the softheaded fantasy to “save the planet” would be the catalyst for the creation of deadly man-killing technology…and that affluent Americans would be willing to pay more for an early termination.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

For the party in power, fighting the war on terror has not proved one of their strong suits. Unwilling to adopt a muscular approach in dealing with Islamic crazies determined to kill us, vulnerable Democrats have hit on a novel approach to combat Republican opponents this election season – go back to school. “To combat the problem,” reports POLITICO.com, “House Democrats have asked Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, and California Rep. Jane Harman, a leader on intelligence issues in the House, to help lead training session on the issue.” Translation: when you can’t argue the facts, hire advertising hucksters to help spin your way out of trouble.

It will be interesting how Democrats spin granting enemy combatants Constitutional rights and criminal trails. We never did this for Japanese and German prisoners of war. So, what makes Gitmo jihadists so special?

Rep. Gerry Connolly told POLITICO, Democrats have to “avoid the trap of looking soft and weak.” Connolly believes strength in the face of suicidal mass murders is all in the way Democrats construct their sentences, “There are strong adverbs, adjectives and verbs as opposed to weak.” He offers this example: “I’m going to fight for American interests abroad,” and not “I’m going to defend American values.” “Not that one is better than the other, but in language, one is more assertive and one’s stronger. That’s where we need to be. Words matter.”

As voters, we need to ask ourselves this question: what keeps Osama bin Laden up at night? The thought of U.S. Daisy Cutters exploding over his Al Qaeda bat cave or Rep. Connolly’s “strong adverbs, adjectives and verbs?” As Dick Cheney said, “I’m absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it.” Democratic demagogy may trip up the occasional tongue-tied Republican, but will do nothing to stop jihadist suicide bombers from unleashing hell on American soil. Sticks and stones and Predator drones may break their bones, but words will never hurt them.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Health problems may have temporarily sidelined former Vice President Dick Cheney from continuing his attacks on the Obama administration’s trivialization of the war on terror, but Cheney certainly has had a profound effect. According to the New York Daily News, “Feds involved in security preparations for lower Manhattan’s Foley Square courthouse have been quietly ordered to cease all preparations for a 9/11 trial blocks from where the twin towers fell. Senior aids will soon urge President Obama to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder and prosecute the terrorists in a military courtroom.” Granting foreign fighters civilian criminal trials and Constitutional rights was a tough sell for Eric Holder, but when it was discovered that at least nine Justice Department lawyers who helped him devise the aforementioned policy previously represented jihadist detainees in court, that’s when the feathers hit the fan. And the administration’s contrite reversal isn’t sitting well with the lunatic fringe of Obama’s personality cult.

Besides Cheney, another lightning rod for the lunatic left is former U.S. Attorney and National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy. Famous for successfully prosecuting the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center, McCarthy is relentless in railing against the Justice Department’s decision to treat enemy combatants as common criminals. New York Time reporter Tobin Harshaw wrote, “McCarthy… blamed the ‘al-Qaeda bar’ — the attorneys who secured due process rights for detainees — for Bush-era setbacks… McCarthy wields a great deal of influence in conservative circles on national-security matters. When Attorney General Eric Holder testified in front of the Senate regarding his decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts, Sen. John Kyl read aloud from an op-ed McCarthy had published just the day before, in which McCarthy alleges that ‘leftist lawyers’ actively sought to aid ‘America’s enemies.’”

The outing of Justice Department jihadist sympathizers drove Ken Gude at the Center for American Progress to conclude, “This is exactly what Joe McCarthy did…Not kind of like McCarthyism; this is exactly McCarthyism.” Then Harshaw plays the tired leftist trump card. “Andrew McCarthy’s last name no doubt makes that comparison all too tempting…”

That’s an interesting comparison that Gude and Harshaw insist upon. Sen. Joseph McCarthy was dismissed as a lunatic for insisting Soviet sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. When the Soviet KGB files were opened to historians after the collapse of the evil empire, Joe McCarthy and other Cold Warriors were proved right.

By declaring Dick Cheney, Andrew McCarthy and others McCarthyites for warning the country of pro jihadists elements within the Justice Department, Gude pays them the highest of compliments. In his famous Wheeling, West Virginia, speech of 1950, Joseph McCarthy condemned “those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer . . . the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.” Ouch! No wonder Gude sees shades of McCarthy in the former vice president and Andrew McCarthy – They’re hitting a little too close to the mark.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

If all you hear is the Democratic leadership, and their mouthpieces in the media, you’d think Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) wants to eat your kids. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Bunning of “standing between these…families and the help they need while these benefits expire…” Reid was speaking of a Senate measure to extend funding for unemployment benefits and government make-work infrastructure projects. In reality, all Bunning did was object to a Senate unanimous consent order, which allowed the Senate to increase the nation’s debt by 10 billion dollars – breaking a pay-as-you-go law recently passed by the Senate at President Obama’s request. When confronted with this fact, Reid accused Bunning of “lecturing the country on pay-go, something he didn’t vote for.” That may be so, but Reid and his Democratic majority certainly did. But they won’t let the laws they pass get in the way of buying votes.

Not to be outdone by her Democratic colleagues, the Rhino Republican from Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, pleaded on behalf of adding to the nation’s crushing debt. “I want to emphasize that this issue is so important on senators on both side of the aisle. Many of my colleagues have expressed concerns to me that this was not done last week…”

Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) told the New York Times, “We have to quit complaining about unsustainable debt and passing new spending programs every week.”

In the end, Sen. Bunning, pressured by big-spending compassionate conservative Republicans, relented to allow billions more to be heaped on our mountainous national debt.

It’s disingenuous for Democrats to claim they couldn’t have found $10 billion dollars to siphon away from Obama’s pork-filled $3.5 trillion dollar budget. ACRON can certainly do without funding from sugar daddy Washington. And the aren’t the only ones.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

In an ObamaCare speech given at the White House, replete with white-smocked death panel ghouls serving as a backdrop, the president crystallized his administration and political party’s style of governing. “Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it. So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care…” Or, as the New York Times put it, “In his remarks, the president refrained from using the word ‘reconciliation,’ the parliamentary tactic that Democrats are expected to employ to avoid a Republican filibuster and win passage with a simple majority.” Translation: “Shut up, America, and do what your betters command.”

“They’re making a vigorous effort to try and jam this down the throats of the American people, who don’t’ want it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “…and we think resorting to these kind of tactics, to thumb your nose at the American people, is something that ought to be resisted.” Funny, resisting ObamaCare is what Tea Partiers have been doing since last August’s health care town hall meetings. Republicans are a day late and a dollar short where opposing Obama is concerned. But what do you expect when its standard-barer, John McCain, established the tone of Republican surrender in 2008.

The Party of Lincoln owes the American people big time. And one sure way to make amends is clearly and unapologetically to state that the aim of the Republican congressional campaign later this year is to elect a real opposition party intent on repealing ObamaCare if passed. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s defeat in the Texas governor’s race clearly shows that the age of Republican Democrat-Lite accommodation is over. And if Republicans think Tea Party-Lite will suffice, they better think again.

Obama’s transformative effect on the country is not quite what his worshiping personality cult imagined it would be. America has transformed into an anti-Keynesian, anti-bailout, anti-tax and anti-death panel nation. It would be nice if there were a political party to represent these views.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

What do evolving apes and melting glaciers have in common? Darwin’s ideas on evolution and the hot and bothered fears of Al Gore over global warming are not facts, merely theories. And both religious dogmas are hotly defended by the high priests of secular humanism. According to the New York Times, “Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.” The “climategate” scandal, which proved global warming “scientists” manufactured data to support the claim that manmade carbon emissions are dangerously warming the planet, has had the unintended effect of leveling the playing field in the marketplace of ideas. Several state legislatures are taking advantage of the discredited global warming theory to give students an opportunity to hear the ideas of competing creators – earthly and heavenly.

“The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy,” the Times reports, “courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general. Yet they are also capitalizing on rising public resistance in some quarters to accepting the science of global warming…” It appears that Gore’s discredited claim that unanimous consensus on the question of global warming should end debate is now spilling over into other areas of scientific “consensus.”

Of Darwin’s human origins theory, Dr. Fazale Rana at Reasons to Believe writes, “Amazingly, studies using mitochondrial and Y chromosomal DNA markers trace humanity’s origin back to a single man and woman. These studies also indicate that humanity’s migration around the world began at or near the Middle East. Though often presented and discussed within the context of the evolutionary paradigm, this model has profound biblical implications. In some respects, the Out-of-Africa hypothesis appears to be the biblical model awkwardly forced into the evolutionary framework…” The debate, then, is not so much over credible scientific data but who gets to present it…and take the credit.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

California, long considered a political laboratory for the rest of the country, is witnessing its state Republican Party attempt to find its lost soul. Like most states that trend heavily Democratic, Republicans in the Golden State traditionally employ a knee-jerk strategy to win votes from members of the opposition party – pose as Democrats. Take Arnold Schwarzenegger…please. But we now find ourselves in an economic depression (though the media and politicians refer to it as a recession), and voters, even perpetually comatose Californians, find themselves questioning the bipartisan spending and taxing ways of their elected officials. A case in point is California’s three-term U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. A January Rasmussen poll found Tea Party-supported conservative Republican Charles S. DeVore trailing close behind Boxer 47% to 42%. And the California senate race may prove pivotal in the Republican plan to take control of the U.S. Senate.

“It is hard to see how Republicans can win control of the Senate without toppling Mrs. Boxer,” reports the New York Times. “Democrats control the chamber 59 to 41; Republicans need 10 seats to take control, since in an evenly divided Senate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. would cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats.” There can be no better reason for unseating Boxer than preventing the bumbling Biden from having such power. Californians, the near-term survival of the nation is in your hands.

In a state whose mightiest politician-buying public employee union represents prison guards, it’s time Californians stage a political prison riot. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Texas Republican primary for governor is a shadow of things to come. Incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry defeated Bush-supported, McCain-like, compassionate conservative Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in a four-way primary race. “The message is pretty clear,” said Perry in his victory speech. “Conservatism has never been stronger than it is today. And we’re taking our country back — one vote at a time, one election at a time! It is clear that the Obama administration and its allies has Texas in its crosshairs,” Perry told the crowd of supporters. Their response? “Bring it on!”

Meanwhile, in Arizona, McCain-like McCain is pulling out all the stops to insure he does not suffer the same fate as McCain-like Hutchison. According to POLITICO.com, “McCain is racking up endorsements despite the considerable animus toward him that exists in some GOP quarters. One reason is that his two presidential campaigns have enabled him to dole out favors and collect chits, and his campaign recognizes that now is the time to cash in on his wealth of high-level contacts.”

McCain’s un-McCain-like challenger, J.D. Hayworth, responded by saying, “There is a clear fault line that McCain’s endorsements suggest: the Washington establishment vs. the conservatives of Arizona and across the country. And in this election year, I’ll take our people-based endorsements of Tea Party patriots, gun owners and illegal-immigration fighters over the 24-year incumbent’s.”

It’s clear McCain is frightened. Instead of building bridges with disgruntled Tea Partiers, he halls in the usual McCain-like establishment empty suits (Mitt Romney) to save his political bacon. Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant, told POLITICO, “He’s running scared, and it’s stupid.” But as McCain-like Forest Gump would say, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

If you think the battle over ObamaCare is over, think again. Last weekend, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she intends to pass the behemoth health care plan using House parliamentary procedures over the objections of a majority of Americans. That doing so endangers Democrats standing for reelection, doesn’t bother her in the least. “We’re not here just to self perpetuate our service in Congress,” Pelosi said of politically vulnerable Democrats. “They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare.” She makes a valid point. The very government programs that now teeter on the verge of bankruptcy were unpopular with Americans when lawmakers first debated the measures in Congress years ago. But like the schoolyard drug pusher, Pelosi knows once the customer is hooked, they learn to love their addiction and will pay any price to maintain it.

Pelosi has proven political pundits wrong. Many assumed that when President Obama moved into the White House, corrupt Chicago-style politics would follow in his wake. Instead, the colorful lunatic fringe of Pelosi’s San Francisco Bay Area has become the nation’s political center of gravity.

Representing a hard-left district, Pelosi knows that by thwarting the will of a majority of Americans, she has little to fear from her like-minded constituents. Pelosi also knows her so-called Republican opposition. As columnist Mark Steyn noted in a blog post on nationalreview.com:

“The Dems will be punished; the Republicans will take over the committee chairmanships and be content, as they often are, to be in office rather than in power; and after a brief time out the Democrats will return to find their new statist behemoth still in place. From their point of view, it makes perfect sense.

“The question is: What are Republicans willing to do about it?”

That’s a great question.

That even one Republican showed up to Obama’s Blair House health care summit was a bad sign. Democratic pushers asked Republicans to get onboard by lacing the ObamaCare narcotic with their own ingredients. The Republican argument, so far, is not against the idea of nationalized health care, just the best way to achieve it. The mantra from Republicans is “let’s start health care reform from scratch.” Not “let’s scratch health care reform forever.” Democrats may be tone deaf to public outrage over ObamaCare, but Republicans seem utterly clueless.

After the 2010-midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi may be relegated to the backbenches of Congress, but she’s okay with that. History tells her that when Democrats are out of power, Republicans make good nanny-state caretakers.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said, “Washington will be consumed with the Democrats trying to jam this through in a very messy procedure…and then for the rest of the year, we’re going to be involved in a campaign to repeal it. And every Democratic candidate in the country is going to be defined by this unpopular health care bill at a time when the real issues are jobs, terror and debt.” As of today, Alexander is the only Republican to publicly mention the idea of repealing ObamaCare if passed. That leaves just 218 of his fellow House and Senate nanny-state Republicans to gather their wits and develop a spine.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Former Vice President Al Gore, groundhog like, has come out of hiding. Unlike old Punxsutawney Phil, whose shadow predicted six more weeks of winter – one of the worst on record – Gore insists we ignore the obvious and continue believing in his invisible friend global warming. Writing in the New York Times, Gore says, “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” First, there is no such thing as “the science of global warming.” There is the science of climatology, which has a pseudo scientific fringe that programs end-of-the-world computer simulations, but prominent members of this fringe have resigned in disgrace in recent days. You see, Al Gore’s so-called science needs a lot more help than facts can support.

Last Thanksgiving, computer hackers discovered e-mail exchanges between Gore’s global warming scientists that showed they manufactured data to support their hysterical claims. It also showed efforts by warmers to prevent the publication of studies by climatology’s global warming skeptics in leading scientific journals. No wonder Gore insisted the debate on global warming was over; it wasn’t allowed to begin. Even England’s leftist Manchester Guardian, which released a manifesto published in many of the world’s newspapers urging governments to sign the Copenhagen climate change treaty, is beside itself over the scandal. “It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them,” wrote the Guardian’s George Monbiot.

Dr. Phil Jones, who was a leading global warming scientist with the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), resigned due to the scandal. The London Daily Mail reported that Jones “also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.” Even the U.N.’s global warming Czar, Dutch diplomat Yvo de Boer, resigned in disgrace. But Gore, unnerved by his 2000 election defeat at the hands of 300 Florida voters, declared himself a member of the global warming priesthood to save the world at the expense (carbon taxes) of the nation that rejected him.

In his New York Times piece, Gore admits the damage done to his cause by climategate. “It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law. But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes.” In other words, data manufactured by Gore’s global warming scientists should continue to disrupt the lives of billions human beings, costing Americans their jobs and tax dollars. Proving that a broken clock is right at least twice a day, Gore concludes, “Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so — or must replace them.” Tea Party Americans intend to do just that. Unfortunately, for Gore’s Democrats, they will be on the receiving end of the public’s very cold shoulder.