By Mr. Curmudgeon

Built in 1824, Blair House – across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – has served as the president’s guesthouse for visiting foreign dignitaries since 1942. Recently, President Obama announced his intention to use the venue for a bipartisan summit on ObamaCare. The unanimous (at least for now) Republican opposition to the president’s take-over of the nation’s health care system has obviously perplexed the administration to the point that they view the Party of Lincoln as sufficiently foreign – if not outright extraterrestrial – as to accord them a half-day stay at Blair House. Unlike past health care negotiations, these proceedings will be televised.

In a CBS Super Bowl pre-game interview with Katie Couric, Obama said, “If we can go, step by step, through a series of these [ObamaCare] issues and arrive at some agreements, then, procedurally, there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster than the process took last year.” The president, no longer able to count on frightened Democrats to pass his totalitarian monstrosity, is hoping to sweat squishy Republicans – under the glare of television lights – to cave, providing the president the fig leaf of bipartisan support. If Republicans were smart (and that’s a big if), they would use the half-day summit, in the words of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to provide the nation with a “teachable moment.”

This will require bringing in Tea Party consultants. Principle-free Republicans are a little rusty – if not completely oblivious - to making cogent Constitutional arguments against an overreaching government. It would be nice to see Obama’s minions put on the spot, requiring Pelosi Democrats to provide a Constitutional defense of the indefensible. They can’t, of course, but their dismissal of Constitutional restraints on government power would provide a very powerful and very public moment for Americans already suspicious of the totalitarian motives of Obama’s personality cult.

It might help generate a discussion; not between politicians – Republican and Democrat – arguing the fine points of totalitarian minutia, but between today’s Americans and those who founded the nation. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provide windows into the hearts and minds of our predecessors. Today’s Republican Party may not hold to the conservative principles of Ronald Reagan or the Tea Party, but they ought to be concerned with conserving the Constitutional arrangement between the people and its government - a contract Obama’s dangerous initiatives threaten to erase.

“Do not separate text from historical background,” James Madison said of our founding document. “If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.” Republicans, are you listening?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“Great ideology creates great times,” said North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. The Tea Partiers at convention in Nashville, Tennessee, would disagree. What Democrats and their coat holders among the Republican Party establishment and the mainstream media fail to recognize is that the Tea Party rejects gangster ideologies in favor of individual freedom. It refuses to sit still while the government uses its muscle to reward its few friends at the expense of its many victims. The Tea Party would restore the Constitutional shackles to government power the way federal prosecutors once restrained mafia kingpin John Gotti. It would bring government of the people in compliance with the law of the land. That is not an ideological expression of as much as it’s an act of self-preservation.

Speaking before the convention, Gov. Sarah Palin said, “The Tea Party movement is not a top down operation. It’s a ground up call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way they are doing business, and that’s beautiful…the soul of this movement is the people; everyday Americans who grow our food and run our small businesses, teach our kids and fight our wars. They’re folks in small towns and cities across this great nation who saw what was happening…and got involved.”

Palin simply and articulately made the economic and political argument against the freedom-killing agenda of Obama’s personality cult. “This week, they unveiled a record-busting, mind-boggling $3.8 trillion dollar federal budget…they keep making us take these steps towards insolvency. Now, what they are doing in proposing these big new programs with giant price tags, they’re sticking our kids with the bill, and that’s immoral, that’s generational theft. We’re stealing the opportunities from our children. And freedom-lovers around this country need to be aware that all of this makes us more beholden to other countries, it makes us less secure, it makes us less free and that should tick us off.”

In the absence of a functioning opposition party to Obama’s personality cult, Palin accurately described what the Tea Party has evolved into, “…When the work of Washington violates our conscience, and when the work and efforts in Washington, D.C. violate our Constitution, then we will stand up and we will be counted, because we are the loyal opposition. And we have a vision for the future of our country, too. And it is a vision anchored in time-tested truths – that the government that governs least, governs best. And that the Constitution provides the best road map towards a more perfect union.”

The Tea Party rejects Obama’s ideologues and their intellectually and morally spent abettors across the aisle who mistakenly think it is the inescapable evolution of the state to grow in power while eclipsing the sovereignty of We the People. Obama would have us believe that Tea Party anger is residual resentment at George W. Bush. The media would have us believe the Tea Party is made up of right-wing Republican crazies. In reality, the Tea Party fits neither description. They reject gangster government and will play big government functionaries against one another until Constitutional order is restored in America. The Tea Party knows what most establishment Republicans forgot long ago, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” —Thomas Paine

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Al Gore once denounced all who disagreed with the “scientific consensus” that the globe is warming and it’s all our fault. Then hackers (not all are bad) broke into the computers at England’s University of East Anglia and discovered e-mail correspondence between the world’s climatologists  suggesting Gore’s cherished consensus was manufactured. Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who published a paper in the British medical journal Lancet, claimed a link existed between the MMR vaccine (for mumps, rubella and measles) and autism. The number of vaccinations plummeted in the United Kingdom and the U.S. and occurrences of the dreaded childhood diseases rose. News reports later revealed that Wakefield was paid nearly one million dollars for his fraudulent study by lawyers wanting to sue vaccine manufacturers. Currently, 18 European countries have governing bodies to investigate science fraud. In the U.S., the National Science Foundation and other government bodies have subpoena powers. According to Science Daily, “offenders can be required to take a course in scientific ethics or, in the most serious cases, banned from receiving any federal research funding for up to five years.” That’s a slap on the wrist considering the enormous sway so-called experts have over our lives – cap-and-trade and the Copenhagen climate change treaty.

All one has to do to see the insidious effect experts have on our way of life is to watch C-SPAN. Nine times out of ten, there is some bloodless technocrat peering over his readers and telling eager lawmakers how best to manage our lives. And there is a pre-existing relationship between these so-called experts and Congress; much of their research is funded by the very government that uses their findings as an justification to increase imperial federal power. In other words, the educated class of experts feeds the government’s appetite for power. This is why the left condemns the anti big-government Tea Party movement as anti-intellectual.

“The educated class believes in global warming,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks. “The educated class supports abortion rights…The educated class supports gun control…The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high…The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should ‘go our own way’ has risen sharply.” Brooks then adds, “In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction…” Brooks, a Republican establishmentarian, misses the point completely.

Today’s Tea Party is as horrified at being ruled by an educated class of “experts” as the original Tea Party was at being ruled by a deluded English king who believed he governed by  “divine right.” The outrage over “climategate” and ObamaCare represents a revolution against the rulers by the ruled, not the uneducated against the “educated class.” Free men and women bow to no one. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have a hard time dealing with this revolutionary idea.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, can’t seem to make up his mind. As public confidence in the president’s terror fighting capabilities continues to slide, and his administration grapples with a face-saving venue change for the criminal trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Washington Post reports a prickly inconsistency between what the president says and what he does. His ACLU buddies will not be pleased. The Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, testified before Congress that the administration is specifically targeting American citizens for death – the president being a one-man death panel.

Blaire said the criteria for terminating – with extreme prejudice – Americans fighting for Islamic terror organizations overseas is “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans.” And there is only one way that could happen, ladies and gentlemen – CIA hit teams must first receive a signed presidential finding.

Similar to, but far more bloody than Obama’s executive order granting mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie unlimited funds, presidential findings are classified executive orders granting presidential authority to kill. Under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, intelligence committees of Congress must be made aware “before the initiation of a covert action authorized by the finding.” In other words, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are also in on it. That then begs the question: if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is worthy of a trial with all the privileges and immunities granted by our Constitution, why not bonafied Americans fighting for the religion of peace? Obama may have a blind spot when it comes to seeing Al Qaeda foreign fighters as enemy combatants but he has no such qualms when it comes to Americans.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“With God’s help,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “[Iranian] scientists will be sent into space and will observe the universe from there.” He described the suborbital flight of the Kavoshgar-3 – that contained a capsule holding one rat, two turtles and several worms – as an “unparallel” technological achievement. It’s clear Ahmadinejad needs to read more than the Koran. All the critters mentioned above (with the exception of Ahmadinejad) were sent into space over forty years ago.

With America scheduled to halt all manned space flight missions when the Space Shuttle fleet is retired this spring, the field of space exploration is left wide open. President Obama doesn’t believe America needs to maintain a presence in the high frontier of outer space when stimulus tax dollars are so desperately needed elsewhere – like ACORN or CounterPULSE, a gay-lesbian organization producing weekly events called “Perverts Put Out.”

In the late 1950s, the Brookings Institution produced a study that resulted in NASA’s founding. A portion of that report touched on the sociological implications that might result from humans coming in contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life:

“Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.”

Little did we know that “hope and change” would do to America what scientists once feared from E.T. On the other hand, can you imagine the damaging effect a face-to-face meeting between Ahmadinejad and advanced beings from Alpha Centauri might have? They’d annihilate life on Earth – with the exception of rats, turtles and worms.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

It’s been more than a month since a Nigerian working for Al Qaeda nearly brought down an airliner from the sky over Detroit on Christmas Day. After much soul searching and deliberation, the Justice Department unveiled the Obama administration’s new anti-terror replacement policy to Dick Cheney’s waterboarding – terrorists will cooperate or we’ll tell their daddy.

“Investigators flew to the suspect’s home country of Nigeria,” the Washington Post reports, “bringing back members of the suspect’s family Jan. 17 and using them to help encourage Abdulmutallab to talk.” The Obama administration is smarting after weeks of unrelenting criticism unleashed by Republicans unhappy with President Obama’s decision to treat enemy combatants as common criminals. Even rhino (Republican in name only) Sen. Susan Collins accused the administration of having a “blind spot” to terror in the Republican response to the president’s weekly radio address.

But it was the election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat that got the administration’s attention. Brown not only hammered his Democratic opponent for her support of ObamaCare but for supporting Obama’s trying terrorist in U.S. criminal courts. In his victory speech, Brown said, “tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.”

“No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, attempting to pass the buck, “and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued.” That’s not the job of agencies but of the President of the United States. So, who’s daddy do we have to talk to in order to change this administration’s idiotic terror policies?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Robert Wright at the New York Times knows who’s to blame for ObamaCare’s political problems – bloggers like me. I’ve never been so proud. Of bloggers, Wright says, “The personal computer, the Internet and allied technologies have given a new fluidity to political opposition, spawning interest groups almost overnight in response to policy initiatives.” Wright, like all on the left, believes the purpose of government is to grow in power and to manage the messy requirement of personal responsibility of otherwise free individuals. Write laments how effective the internet is at informing the electorate, threatening the separation of our rulers from their subjects. “I don’t see a miracle cure here. It would be hard to restore much of the insulation without tampering with the First Amendment.” President Obama is less timid in supporting bipartisan attempts by Congress to curtail First Amendment protections. He took time during his recent State of the Union address to slam the Supreme Court for striking down the McCain-Feingold campaign law’s anti-free speech provisions.

The solution, according to Wright, is to increase the “insulation” of politicians by changing the Constitution’s mandate on terms served by the nation’s lawmakers. “If we lengthened legislative terms and then capped the number of terms, more people in Congress could spend more time worrying about something other than getting re-elected next year, and this could leave them productively indifferent to the most recently manufactured views of their constituents.” It would be hard to convince Martha Coakely that Scott Brown’s big win in Massachusetts’ special election was “manufactured.” It’s difficult to “fundamentally change America” when the victims of that change are anything but indifferent and organize in opposition to target the Democrat “agents of change” and their feeble Republican abettors in the upcoming midterm elections.

A profound good to come out of Obama and his party’s power-grabbing agenda is that the near-death experience of “hope and change” has focused the minds of easily distracted Americans. Tea Partiers are swaying independent swing voters, removing a politician’s best form of political insulation – voter indifference.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

If President Obama’s Nerf Pentagon is looking for a new slogan for its wartime air force in Afghanistan, it won’t be “death from above.” Nancy A. Youssef, reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, says, “Instead of airstrikes, airmen increasingly are searching for places they can drop bombs that can be heard and felt, but where they’re unlikely to damage buildings or hurt people.” Vietnam may have provided the textbook for America’s no-win-wars, but Obama and General Stanley McChrystal seem determined to make Afghanistan a pain and damage-free (at least for the Taliban and Al Qaeda) pyrotechnic show with all the no-win-war aspects still reserved for the good old U.S. of A.

It’s hard be believe that jihadists willing to fly hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers and detonate explosives strapped to their bodies will be shaken by American ordnance exploding on vacant lots. Why not just bring home the troops and broadcast recordings of Nancy Pelosi’s grating voice at the Taliban. If that doesn’t drive them to blow themselves up where they stand, nothing will.

International jihad’s chief terror exporter, Iran, is nearly finished building a nuclear weapon. According to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, “Experts believe that Iran’s scientists could produce a primitive, truck-sized version of the bomb this year, but that it would have to be compressed to a size that would fit into a nuclear warhead to yield the strategic threat potential that has Israel and the West so alarmed — and that they could reach that stage by sometime between 2012 and 2014.”

Meanwhile, the Reuters News Service reports, “A U.S. attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile mimicking an attack from Iran failed after a malfunction in a radar built by Raytheon Co…” We’re still awaiting Janet Napolitano’s announcement that “the system worked.”

President Obama’s 2011 $3.8 trillion dollar budget increases government funding for education and “clean energy technology,” says the New York Times, but “shows some restraint on the defense budget…” That Obama and his Nerf Pentagon’s plan to drop expensive smart bombs on empty Afghan fields is nothing short of dumb. When will Americans get serious by electing representatives that take the Islamic threat seriously?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

What do you do if once you are elected to power you want to stay there? With the mood in the country turning decidedly against the current crop of utopians in Washington, billionaire leftist loon George Soros had a solution: control those who certify elections. A Soros sponsored group with the Orwellian name The Democracy Alliance has been throwing support and money at Sorosians running for the office of Secretary of State for several years.

Back in 2006, under the headline “Top vote counter becomes prize job,” USA Today reported that, “…the new San Francisco-based Secretary of State (SOS) Project [is] focused on swing states, where close races pose ‘the greatest likelihood of abuse and the greatest consequences,’ SOS strategist James Rucker says. His project aims to raise several hundred thousand dollars from liberals online for candidates…”

Today, 18 states have Sorosians insuring the “integrity” of the voting and counting process. In fact, comedian Al Franken (now in the U.S. Senate) owes his election to Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat supported by SOS. As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time of the Minnesota recount, “Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as ‘duplicate’ and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals.” It took several months, but Al Franken’s 215-vote loss to Republican incumbent Norm Coleman tuned into a 312-vote victory for Franken. 100 of these votes came from the Democratic Party stronghold of Iron Range, Minnesota. One precinct ballot machine in question “carried a date of Nov. 2, two days before the election,” the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.

Speaking to Soros and fellow billionaires working hard for us “the little guy,” the Secretary of State Project website states, “With your support, we have made a major difference. We can be sure that the Republicans and the opponents of honest elections will try triply hard to regain lost seats and capture seats held by reformers.” In other words, George Soros will use his considerable money and power to insure his “reformers” are not subject to the vagaries of the electoral process. He won’t have We the People getting in his way. The Tea Party and her allies would be wise to focus attention on upcoming Secretary of State races least the batty Soros becomes Americas next King George - with a Napoleonic Complex.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Our Chinese “partners” are angry with us. Smoke is pouring from the nostrils of the Giant Panda over a $6.5 billion dollar U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, which includes Patriot missiles, Black Hawk helicopters and minesweepers. On the other hand, Beijing (the buyer of so much of Uncle Sam’s massive debt) is grateful for one small favor from Obama, “…by not including the F-16 fighters in the sale package this time, which concerns Beijing most, the U.S. shows that it did not intend to irritate China beyond redemption,” says the China Daily.

Back in 1972, President Richard Nixon flew to Beijing and met Mao Tse Tung in the belief “that an indispensable element of any successful peace initiative in Vietnam was to enlist, if possible, the help of the Soviets…At worst, Hanoi was bound to feel less confident if Washington was dealing with Moscow and Beijing. At best, if the two major Communist powers decided that they had bigger fish to fry, Hanoi would be pressured into negotiating a settlement we could accept,” said Nixon. We lost the war in Vietnam and now China owns us. And China is intent on using its considerable clout to bolster Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Ambrose Bierce described debt as “an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.” Obama’s “stimulus,” and the Chinese trade dollars he needs to sustain it, makes it ever more likely the U.S. will soon feel the sting of China’s whip.