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

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

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

Of the health care summit assembled at Blair House last Thursday, the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson said it best. “…Democrats carried a burden into the meeting. On the wrong side of political momentum, they needed a breakthrough of some sort. They didn’t get it.” When House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to ObamaCare as a “dangerous experiment” that would “bankrupt our country,” Obama waved-off these obvious truths by saying, “John, every so often, we have a pretty good conversation trying to get on some specifics, and then we go back to, you know, the standard talking points.”

Poor Rep. Boehner, he just cannot suspend his belief in tangible, three-dimensional reality long enough to consider that anything run by government will drive down costs and improve services. It may never have happened at any time in history, but if we click the heals of our ruby red slippers three times and say, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” we’ll find ourselves back in Kansas with Toto. Dorothy ended up in a kind of Obama reality – back in dreary, Depression-era, Dust Bowl Kansas. And Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are determined roll over the will of the majority of Americans like a Kansas twister.

Sensing that this may be the last time Democrats ever have this kind of power again, Speaker Pelosi is determined to pass ObamaCare by whatever means available. According to CNN, “The House speaker called the legislative tool known as reconciliation ‘a simple majority’ and said, ‘that’s what we’re asking the Senate to act upon.’” However, CNN reminds us, “Democrats passed their version of health care with a slim majority and will be missing several votes because of vacancies…Another major obstacle in passing the Senate health bill in the House and getting it to the president’s desk is abortion. By some estimates, close to a dozen anti-abortion Democrats may vote against the bill because they say it’s not strict enough in making sure taxpayer dollars are not spent on the procedure.” It’s humbling to think that the silenced voice of millions of the unborn is more eloquent in its opposition to ObamaCare than the Tea Party or the confused and tongue-tied Republican leadership in Congress.

Urging on Obama, Pelosi and Reid, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes, “…Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do – and they have the power to do it – is finish the job, and enact health reform.” Actually, the voters will have the last laugh in 2010 and 2012.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Days after a Justice Department report exonerated Bush-era lawyers for giving the previous administration a legal thumbs-up on the issue of waterboarding, Attorney General Eric Holder – after much stonewalling – admitted to hiring at least nine lawyers who previously represented Islamic terrorists. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, last November, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Holder, “I want to know more about who is advising the Attorney General. I understand that there are attorneys at the Justice Department working on this issues [trying terrorists in U.S. criminal courts] who either represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups who advocated for them…My request is about establishing transparency and holding the administration to its word to make the Government’s business public.” In response, Holder said, “I will consider that request.” He went on to defend all Obama’s appointees as “patriots” with “national security uppermost in their minds.”

One Justice lawyer with a soft spot in his heart for terror detainees is “patriot” Neal Katyal. Katyal “…is now Principal Deputy Solicitor General…formerly a law professor at Georgetown University, who worked on legal challenges to the Military Commission Act – he represented Osama bin Laden’s driver – and is reportedly still working on detainee questions at the Justice Department,” reports the Washington Examiner.

The Examiner’s Byron York reported that, attorney Jennifer Daskal, “previously advocated for detainees while at Human Rights Watch.” She currently holds a position at the Justice Department’s National Security Division. No wonder Holder was reluctant to tell Sen. Grassley how many ACLU types were advising Justice on detainee issues.

It’s becoming clear what Eric Holder means when he calls Obama’s lawyers patriots. Holder’s men and women are so on fire with patriotic zeal they want to bequeath the blessings of our Constitution on foreign enemies captured in battle. In granting Gitmo detainees civilian criminal trials here at home, Holders Heroes believe they’re adding to the great melting pot of America — it’s part of Obama’s twisted transformative vision for America.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman fears for President Obama. He sees his presidency, after only one short year, transforming into that of a lame duck. “…Instead of making nation-building in America his overarching narrative and then fitting health care, energy, educational reform, infrastructure, competitiveness and deficit reduction under that rubric, the president has pursued each separately. This made each initiative appear to be just some stand-alone liberal obsession to pay off a Democratic constituency…” Whether bundled together under the rubric of “nation-building” or released drop by painful drop – like Chinese water torture – Obama’s initiatives are nothing more than obsessive payoffs to Democratic constituencies. Administration payoffs to ACORN and other fringe groups in the early days of the Obama presidency cemented that perception.

With such perceptions center in the minds of a majority of Americans, Democrats have stalled in passing the centerpiece of the president’s domestic policy, ObamaCare, until after a televised summit later this week with Republican lawmakers. The president and the media need their help. “…The Republican Party has never been more irresponsible,” laments Friedman. “Having helped run the deficit to new heights during the recent Bush years, the G.O.P. is now unwilling to take any responsibility for dealing with it if it involves raising taxes.” As big a spender as compassionate conservative George W. Bush was, his budget deficit before leaving office totaled $410 billion dollars. Obama’s 2009 deficit totaled $1.8 trillion dollars. Obama took the “new heights” of Bush’s deficit to higher orbital heights.

Scared straight by Tea Party fury, Republicans have been strangely unanimous in their refusal to walk the plank for their friends across the legislative aisle. Even Maine’s Olympia Snow doesn’t seem to be making her usual visits to the White House for dinner with Obama. And when was the last time you saw John McCain rush before the cameras to announce his willingness to help the president “get things done for the country?” Democrats are not used to this. If Democrats are going to drive the country over a fiscal cliff, Republicans – at least for now – aren’t willing to take their turn at the wheel.

Friedman fears the old Obama magic has warn so thin with Americans, his honeyed words can no longer move them down the road to self destruction. “I am under no illusion that this alone would solve all his problems…If Obama fails, we all fail.”

This nation has a history of failed presidencies. And in spite of them, the nation goes on. The worlds of Friedman and the rest of the Obama media may end when voters force Obama from the White House in 2012. Then Friedman and all the others will hate us for taking the country back and making it a stunning success, proving we didn’t need Obama after all. For that, they will never forgive us.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The extraordinary times in the early days of America’s war of terror called for extraordinary measures, which included building holding cells for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and waterboarding Al Qaeda terrorists for intelligence to help disrupt plots following 9/11 that may have inflicted further harm on the people of the United States. Today, in the age of Obama, extraordinary measures protect unworkable and dangerous political correctness. President Obama’s Justice Department released a report detailing efforts to charge Bush administration lawyers for advising the president on the legality of using intensified interrogation methods (some say torture) on captured jihadist detainees. The executive branch sought legal advice, as CIA lawyer John Rizzo said, to seek “maximum legal protection for its officers.” Though the report absolves Bush lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo of criminal wrongdoing, it labels their legal opinion as “professional misconduct.”

The Office of Professional Conduct, which issued the report, criticized councilor Yoo for veering away from political correctness in a time of war, declaring “situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective, and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the clients want to hear.” Translation: “You acted in good faith. You did nothing illegal. But your views differ from ours and the ACLU.”

One government official with the correct ACLU worldview is John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism chief. He is so infected by political correctness, he even refuses to call Islamic killers jihadists. “They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan said. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and many, many others must not have gotten Brennan’s memo.

Of the 9/11 hijackers, Osama bin Laden said:

“These young men refused to stay behind and engage in unimportant things. They set out on jihad and hastened to uphold the cause of God and the call of monotheism: ‘There is no god except God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God,” They engaged in jihad against the infidels…

“Each and every matter has its own reality. The reality of this hero, Saeed al-Ghamidi and his brothers is that they showed the truthfulness of their faith by offering themselves and their souls for the sake of God. Thus, they gained a status that greatly angered the infidels, and will continue to anger them for a long time, God willing.”

John Brennan is one of many infidels in the Obama administration incapable of righteous anger for jihadists – political correctness prevents them from believing they even exist. And you can’t waterboard what you don’t see. That presents them with a problem. What do you do with the bearded Koran-readers cooling their heels at Gitmo? Easy, redefine them as American criminals and try them in our courts…problem solved.

If Obama can’t criminalize opposition to his twisted worldview, he will use the Justice Department’s investigative powers to harass you into submission. There is no god except political correctness, and Obama is its messenger.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

With nearly one trillion dollars spent to “stimulate” the economy, and nothing to show for it but a 9.7 percent unemployment rate, the president is suddenly interested in dealing with his massive budget deficit. And President Obama would like Republicans, in the spirit of “reaching across the aisle,” to lend a hand in fleecing the American public for more cash to spread around. “There are some on the right who won’t enter into serious discussions about deficits without preconditions. But those who preach fiscal discipline have to be willing to take the hard steps necessary to achieve it.” That’s Democrat-speak for, “we’ve ordered the meal and finished the dessert, now help us find some poor stiff to stick with the bill.”

Obama found just the Republican to provide cover for big-spending Democrats: accommodationist Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming. Both in 1982 and again in 1990, Simpson joined with Democrats in efforts that were supposed to reduce the federal budget deficit. In the 1990 deal negotiated at Andrews Air Force Base, the agreement called for $2 dollars in spending cuts for every $1 dollar in tax hikes. The Democrats kept the tax hikes and nixed the spending cuts. Simpson is just the kind of Republican Obama needs to co-chair his debt commission. Simpson was easy to distinguish at Obama’s White House ceremony to kick off the creation of the debt commission. He was the guy with the word “chump” written on his forehead with indelible felt marker and a “kick me” sign taped to his back.

Sandra Fabry at Americans for Tax Reform said of the former Senator, “Alan Simpson has a history of walking into a room with the stated goal of reform – and in both cases he voted for higher taxes and higher spending, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. There is no reason to believe that things would be different this time around – when you put everything on the table, including damaging tax hikes, taxpayers will more than likely be sold out.” Fabry is obviously not in tune with Washington terminology. Simpson isn’t “selling out,” he – like Sen. John McCain – just wants to “get things done for the country.” The term selling out sounds so harsh. Obama, Pelosi and Reid would rather we use “bipartisan compromise.” The honeyed words will lesson the sting of the dagger’s blade as they plunge it in our backs.

Gee, I wonder what term Joe-The-Plumber would use to describe Obama’s bipartisan debt commission, and if it’s appropriate to repeat in polite company?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, is proving his job title to be an oxymoron. Speaking before the Islamic Center at New York University, Brennan told the gathering of Muslim law students it’s no big deal that 20 percent of terrorist detainees continue their murdering ways once released upon the world, “People sometimes use that figure, 20 percent, say ‘Oh my goodness, one out of five detainees returned to some type of extremist activity.’ You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to something about 50 percent or so, as far as return to crime. Twenty percent isn’t that bad.” As the 9/11 hijackers and the Christmas Day underpants bomber illustrate, a hand-full of jihadists can ruin your whole day.

And speaking of the underpants bomber, he was recruited by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The leadership of that little Al Qaeda splinter group is made almost exclusively of recidivists from Saudi Arabia’s jihadist rehabilitation program.

Of the hurtles the administration continues to encounter in its attempt to find some small corner of American willing to house Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for trial, Brennan complained, “We are trying to push this forward as best we can, but we also need nonobstruction from certain forces in our government. … There are stiff winds delaying us from bringing this man to justice.” The obstructionists Brennan denounces are Congressional representatives who are, well, representing. It’s the people of the United States that are the administration’s staunchest obstructionists.

No matter. Once Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder move Gitmo detainees to Illinois for trial as common criminals, the courts will see to it that the recidivist rate among jihadists climbs, as Brennan observed, from 20 to 50 percent. That’s enough to make Osama bin Laden say, “You know, 50 percent isn’t that bad.”