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.

 

 Sen. Bunning Cracks, Too Bad [3:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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.

 

 Merchants of Death Panels [3:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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.

 

 Lose Your Chains [2:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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

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

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

If it walks, talks and attempts to act a like a Tea Party, is it? No, it’s the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Conservative Republican leaders gathered in Washington one day prior to the conference’s opening to sign the Mount Vernon Statement; a list of conservative principles they hope will endear the Republican Party to suspicious Tea Partiers. Better late than never.

As the New York Times put it, “This gathering of establishment leaders of conservatism — some of them the remaining elder statesmen of the Reagan era — is occurring against a backdrop of splintering conservative and Republican bases, with right-leaning activists like those in the Tea Party movement tugging against moderates over adherence to core party values and vying for candidates representing the ‘real deal.’” The problem for Republican conservatives has always been their adherence to what party loyalists refer to as the “eleventh commandment,” thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It was this self-imposed decree that kept many conservatives mum while accommodationists like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, George Bush the elder and younger and John McCain worked with Democrats, undermining conservative principles and the party’s credibility.

Conceived after Barry Goldwater’s defeat to Lyndon Johnson in 1964, California Republican Chairman Gaylord Parkinson devised the eleventh commandment to end the intra-party bickering seen when liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller provided ammunition for Democrats by labeling Goldwater an “extremist.” However, the new code never did apply to liberal or moderate Republicans. In 1979, George H. Bush referred to Ronald Reagan’s plan allowing Americans to keep more of what they earned as “voodoo economics.” The phrase became a mantra for the left throughout Reagan’s eight years in office.

In New York’s 23rd Congressional District special election last November, conservative heavyweight Newt Gingrich threw his support behind liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava. “Our best chance to put responsible and principled leaders in Washington starts here,” said Gingrich. He justified his support by describing the contest as “the first election of the new Republican Revolution.” Disgusted conservative Tea Partiers threw their support to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who lost by a narrow 3,000 votes.

Thankfully, what separates the Tea Party from CPAC Republicans is their loyalty to principle and not party. For them “thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican” has been replaced by “thou shalt defend Constitutional limits on government and not carry water for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.”

Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) warned fellow Republicans who refuse to sign CPAC’s vague Mount Vernon Statement “…are part of the problem and should be replaced.” The Tea Party has already launched a process to unseat Republicans for failing to live up to a previous document designed to “…secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” But, better late than never.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

What to do about the Tea Party? That seems to be the question asked by Republicans and Democrats alike. New York Times columnist Frank Rich is exasperated by how the populist Tea Party is helping to brighten the political fortunes of previously flat-lined Republicans in advance of the 2010 midterm elections. “This G.O.P. populism is all bunk, of course,” complains Rich, “Republicans in office now, as well as Palin during her furtive public service in Alaska, have feasted on federal pork, catered to special interests, and pursued policies indifferent to recession-battered Americans. And yet they’re getting away with their populist masquerade — not just with a considerable swath of voters but even with certain elements in the “liberal media.” Rich, of course, is right in condemning big-government accommodationist Republicans, but he fails to acknowledge the Tea Party’s rehabilitative powers.

Florida Gov. Charlie Christ, considered a shoe-in to win his party’s U.S. Senate slot, trails his Tea Party-supported nemesis Marco Rubio by 12 points. Former Republican-turned-Obama-Democrat, Arlen Specter, trails his likely Tea Party-endorsed challenger Pat Toomey by 9 points. Weak Republicans, scared straight by muscular Tea Partiers, are positioned to hammer unrepentant big spending, liberty-stomping Democrats next November. “…The [Republican] party is exploiting the Tea Party movement to rebrand itself as un-Washington…” says Rich. Sorry Frank, it’s the other way around. And Republicans had better get a clue.

For now, Tea Partiers are attempting to see if Republicans can change their Democrat-Lite ways and become an opposition party to Obama’s Czarist personality cult. Only by dedicating themselves to reversing every plank of Obama’s “hope and change” will they ever have a hope of becoming the majority party in Washington. This may be the last chance Republicans have to prevent what can be their party’s death knell – the formation of a potent conservative third party. A Rasmussen poll finds that 35% of Americans reject our dysfunctional two-party system in favor of a new political party. Comically, 81% of politicians polled reject the need for a new party. This means nearly 20% of them are waking up to reality.

One pol that seems to get it is Republican Party Chairman Michael Steel. He’s scheduling meetings with various Tea Party organizers to form a coalition leading up to the November election. However, the Tea Party is a little dubious in associating itself too directly with the GOP. According to POLITICO.com, “Some have welcomed the attention, forging tentative alliances or at least opening channels of communication, usually to intense criticism from fellow tea partiers. But most have either proudly spurned Republican advances or approached their suitors apprehensively, keenly aware that while Republican resources and infrastructure could both boost the Tea Party movement to a new level of effectiveness, the GOP’s tainted brand could also jeopardize the independence that is part of their populist appeal.” If Republicans thinks they can co-opt them, they’re whistling past the graveyard.

The assumption of the mainstream media, and the politicians that slavish follow their editorial advice, is that the Tea Party is leaderless. Lost on the New York Times and John McCain Republicans is that the Constitution and the drive to preserve and defend it is what leads the Tea Party forward.

The mechanism preventing the United States from degenerating into a dictatorship, wrote Hamilton, Madison and Jay in the Federalist Papers, is that “the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them. The natural strength of the people in a large community, in proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater than in a small, and of course more competent to a struggle with the attempts of the government to establish a tyranny.”

The founders seem to have directed some of their more stinging insights for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “If I be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discrimination in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America – a spirit which nourishes freedom and in return is nourished by it.”

The Tea Party may still drive the Party of Lincoln to remember the words of Lincoln. Looking back to the founding of the nation, Lincoln said:

“As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; –let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap –let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; –let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; –let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

If the media and their legislative thralls don’t get what the Tea Party is about, it’s because they don’t speak the language of 1776.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

At a time when energy costs are starting to rise, President Obama is struggling to see that his Chinese partner, who imports 11 percent of its oil from Iran, is well supplied in the event China joins the West in placing economic sanctions on Persia’s mullahs. Obama is hoping and praying the economic giant will help his bankrupt country prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The question then arises: If China didn’t prevent its North Korea ally from developing nukes, what makes Obama think they’ll lift a finger to stop Iran? If anything, China reasons for helping Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are less craven and more threatening than the spineless weak sisters of the European Union.

Under pressure from the U.S., Saudi Arabia agreed to make up the loss to China in oil imports resulting from sanctions placed on Iran. Of America’s recent $6.5 billion dollar arms deal with Taiwan – which was arranged during the Bush administration – Obama nixed the sale of F-18 fighter jets and diesel-operated submarines. Obama, I’m sure, was surprised this bow to China didn’t curry much favor with our Asian “partner.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Nixon, the U.S. State Department and American industry believed material wealth would convert China from an aggressive totalitarian beast into a docile materialistic giant. It never occurred to them That China was nimble enough to be both. Like the old saying goes, “Fame and riches are fleeting. Stupidity is eternal.”