By Mr. Curmudgeon

Dr. Amy Bishop is a bright scientist and inventor who believed her application for tenure (job security) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she taught for eight years, was a done deal. Unfortunately, Bishop’s application was denied because, according to a fellow faculty member, she was “not able to deal with reality” and was “not as good [a teacher] as she thought she was.” In response, Bishop allegedly fired a weapon at her deniers, killing three fellow faculty members and wounding three others. To say Bishop has a strong sense of entitlement is an understatement. But then again, Bishop has a degree from Harvard.

According to the Huntsville Times, Dick Reeves, a business associate of Bishop, said, “She was one of those very opinionated, bright people.” Jody Smith, a student that took a class taught by Bishop, described the professor as “fairly vocal” in her criticism of the University’s administration and believed UAH wasn’t “doing things she wanted for the students, offering the classes they deserved.” And who are we to disagree? After all, Bishop has a degree from Harvard.

Bertrand Russell, who interviewed Russia’s Vladimir Lenin in 1920, said, “If I had met [Lenin] without knowing who he was I should not have guessed that he was a great man but should have thought him an opinionated professor.” Lenin may have murdered millions in cold-blood, but he graduated with honors from the University of St. Petersburg.

“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University,” William F. Buckley once said. I’m sure Dr. Amy Bishop would disagree. And she has a degree from Harvard.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

There was a lot of hysteria leading up to last Sunday’s Super Bowl contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. And it had nothing to do with football. Horrified that the Christian organization Focus on the Family paid $3 million dollars to air a commercial promoting its website and pro-family message, angry feminists at the National Organization for Women were outraged, which, for its members, is a perpetual state of mind. “Make no mistake about this ad,” read the warning on NOW’s website leading up to Sunday’s game, “it’s offensive to women. Yes, it features Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother, who had been advised to have an abortion after a serious illness. Standing alone, it sends the message that all women who give birth are heroes; it sends a message that abortion is always a mistake; and it is insulting to the one in three women in this country who have abortions.”

Terry O’Neill, president of NOW, expressed her personal perpetual outrage at CBS for airing Tebow’s sweet and playful expression of love and gratitude for his mother, “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it. That’s what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don’t find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself.”

An organization that promotes the mass killing of millions upon millions of the unborn is horrified by a vaudeville sight gag. There is no better illustration of the upside down world of the left - where the trivial is magnified and monstrous horrors are trivialized. And there’s no better definition of evil. Thank you NOW.

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

Back in 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Art sponsored the exhibit “Sensation.” And it certainly lived up to its billing. New York Times art critic Robert Smith observed, “…English painter Chris Ofili, famous at the moment for attaching spheres of shellacked and decorated elephant dung to his canvases…affirms his seriousness and talent as an artist and reflects an expanding vision.” His dung covered “painting” was titled “The Holy Virgin Mary.” In the exhibit’s audio commentary, rock singer David Bowie intoned, “On a damp day its rich, earthy sent wafts elusively around Mr. Ofili’s works.” It is important to remember that the comments referring to the overpowering stench of Ofili’s masterworks are meant as a compliment.

Reviewing a 2009 exhibition of 40 works by American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, Times critic Benjamin Genocchio wrote, “No doubt some viewers find this innocent, even charming. But the more I looked at the works in this show, the more I began to get a sense of something off and possibly even sinister in the Rockwell universe. The artist always seems to be selling something, be it optimism during a time of hardship, patriotism in wartime, or any number of products for which he created seductive illustrations for magazine advertisements.” Fellow Times critic John Canaday simply described Rockwell as “the Rembrandt of Punkin’ Crick.” Rockwell’s first mistake, apparently, was his use of oils and not elephant dung. His second was refusing to use his art, suicide bomber-like, to blow up Judeo/Christian moral order to replace it with…well, nihilists have not quite figured that out yet.

I write this having just returned from “American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell” showing at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The forty-two original works encompass a career that stretched form 1916 to the 1970s.

Whether his paintings depict children at play or a young veteran returning home to the happy faces and open arms of his family and friends, Rockwell rendered an idealized picture of what America was at its innocent best. Rockwell used the mass market provided by print publications to portray family life, fair play and common decency – quiet sentiments he thought Americans should aspire to. For his modern critics, Rockwell’s crime is that with paint on canvas he managed to render, simply and powerfully, a moral universe. That Times critics believe optimism and patriotism are mere commercial commodities says more about their limited nihilistic materialism, where everything is for sale (just ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid). The truths revealed in Rockwell’s paintings are not tangible comities that stack neatly in rows on a supermarket shelf. They are part of the invisible universe the nihilist says does not exist – yet tirelessly works to overturn. Love, honor, faith are the invisible and powerful forces that move men and women to transcend mere materialism. Images of an American soldier facing death for love of country, the grandmother and child at a diner saying grace or a pair of teenagers experiencing the first pangs of love while sharing milkshake cannot be erased by all the dung-covered parodies of art the nihilist can summon. This drives the crazed nihilist crazy. Rockwell, therefore, is the ultimate artistic provocateur. For bizarre nihilists, Rockwell’s art arouses the very reaction dung-smeared religious icons provoke among the normal and well adjusted.

Of the turbulent early part of the 20th Century, Rockwell recalled, “The 20s ended in an era of extravagance…There was a big crash, but then the country picked itself up again, and we had some great years. Those were the days when America believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The media was obsessed with analyzing the first decade of the new century. The most instructive year, however, was its last, 2009 - a year that marked the triumph of the utopians. The global economic calamity shook the American public’s faith in economic prudence and Constitutional restraints on government power – maybe even the law of gravity. They voted in a political party and president that promised to force the real world into conformity with the alternate universe of their imagination. They would heal the economy, join the United Nations in reversing global warming, speak soothingly of “mutual respect” to the Islamic world and throw a conciliatory bone to Al Qaeda by closing the Guantanamo Bay prison – granting holy warriors de facto American citizenship and the presumption of innocence before our courts. Utopians would “change” America into a transatlantic mirror images of a dying Europe by nationalizing health care as penance for two hundred years of American exceptionalism. And for their efforts, America would be prosperous, safe and the world would love us.

Reality has been less than accommodating. The Associated Press reports that Obama’s $790 billion “stimulus” package is a failure. Promising that “shovel-ready” road constructions projects were a quick way to save jobs and stimulate the economy, billions of dollars were shoveled into infrastructure projects. “…The AP’s analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program. The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it.” And what is the Obama administration’s answer to this costly failure? Plans are in the works for a second stimulus.

Attending the United Nations global warming conference in Copenhagen last December, President Obama said, “…it’s better for us to choose action over inaction; the future over the past — and with courage and faith, I believe that we can meet our responsibility to our people, and the future of our planet.” Now the world is in the grip in one of the coldest winters on record. According to the London Daily Telegraphic, “Summers and winters will be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be ‘paused’ or even reversed, it was claimed. The predictions are based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They are the work of respected climate scientists and not those routinely dismissed by environmentalists as ‘global warming deniers.’”

Last June, Obama reached out to the Muslim world in a speech delivered in Cairo, Egypt. “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” the president said, “one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Then an Al Qaeda operative tried but failed to detonate a bomb on a passenger airliner bound for Detroit. In taking credit for the failed attack, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said the terror attempt was revenge for “the savage bombardment of cluster bombs and cruise missiles launched from US ships occupying the Gulf of Aden against the courageous Yemeni tribes in Abyan, Arhab, and finally, Shabwah, where they killed dozens of Muslim women, children, and entire families.” Not once did Al Qaeda make reference to Guantanamo Bay – only Obama’s air campaign against Yemeni terrorist camps.

Saudi Arabia’s government controlled Arab News said of Obama:

“Unlike his predecessor, our hero believes in what he says: From America’s place in the world to the noble ideals and guiding principles that inspired its founding fathers. I don’t have to quote from Obama’s heart-warming speeches, full of sublime rhetoric, to make my point. Unlike Bush, America’s first nonwhite president clearly believes in dialogue and reconciliation with the world, rather than conflict and confrontation. This has been made repeatedly apparent in his reaching out to the world, including Muslims

“…However, if you pause for a moment and look beyond what Obama says, we are still stuck where W. had left us a year ago. The chasm between this Cicero-like president’s rhetoric and reality of America’s policies and actions is as breathtaking as ever.

“…While Iraq and Afghanistan are still burning and Pakistan is hurtling down the precipice, the hawks at Pentagon and Capitol Hill are sharpening their claws for Yemen and Somalia.”

Islam’s problem with the United States does not derive from Gitmo, but that “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” will not submit to Allah.

Then, the supposed crowning achievement of his administration, ObamaCare, turned into a nightmare for Democrats, a cause for muscular Tea Party conservatives and an unexpected political windfall for doddering Republicans. The process was rife with corruption, with billions of dollars given to Democratic senators skeptical of the plan’s benefits. The legislation’s final crafting continues behind closed doors…away from the prying eyes of We the People. The utopians say the authoritarian powers the plan gives the government to force supposed free citizens into compliance will drive down health care costs and insure more Americans. Yet the utopians have never adequately explained just how this behemoth new entitlement program will fare any better at curbing costs than the Medicare program, which is near bankruptcy.

Ultimately, reality is the greatest enemy of the utopian. Even that, however, does not impede them. Apologists for the failures of utopia’s make-believe world, like Janet Napolitano, just look you in the eye and say, “the system worked.”

“…Whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

Abraham Lincoln – Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15th October 1858

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“…A lot of members of Congress have said I won’t vote for this bill unless it’s deficit neutral. It’s not deficit neutral. It will add to the debt. That’s clear today,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-ALA). Sessions was referring to an accounting trick used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that counted cuts to Medicare twice in an effort to prove that ObamaCare would not add to the budget deficit. Describing the dishonest numbers crunching as “Bernie Madoff accounting,” Sessions boldly stated, “I think it’s a potential game changer.” The Senate passed their version of ObamaCare 60 to 39.

For Sessions and his fellow Republicans, the CBO accounting trick was the “smoking gun.” They thought the accounting error was all the ammunition they needed to scuttle the Democratic Party’s takeover of the nation’s health care system. Republican accounting, like that of the CBO, proved equally flawed. Their inability to see and articulate ObamaCare’s dark evil proves that, unlike Lincoln, the Party of Lincoln couldn’t frame an argument if our lives depended on it – which, in this case, they literally do.

The American people are equally befuddled. A December 21st Rasmussen poll found that 55% of Americans are opposed to ObamaCare, while 41% are in favor. 14% are too busy deciphering the TV’s universal remote to give the issue much thought. In a citizenry with a pedigree stemming from musket toting, “Don’t Tread on me” fore bearers, the opposition to ObamaCare should be closer to 100%. The new anemic “Tread on me, please” unisex specimen has replaced the hairy-chested “give me liberty or give me death” Robustus Americanus. Sen. Sessions can’t make the case against ObamaCare because a good portion of the American people - who elect these tongue-tied fools - have lost their souls as well as their voice. Stammering Republicans only mirror the moral confusion at large in the nation.

The argument against ObamaCare is that the measure impresses Americans into chattel servitude by enacting an “individual mandate,” which forces us to pay for the cost of our enslavement. Washington’s Democratic overseers add insult to the grievous injury by exacting a financial penalty on those who attempt to escape the master’s tight grasp.

Abraham Lincoln understood that the fruit of our labor is a residual expression of a higher metaphysical reality. Freedom can’t be seen, measured or weighed. The life force of American Liberty is seen indirectly through the activity of our nation’s people. These fruits stem from the creative energy unleashed by free men and women utilizing their talents and intellects in what Jefferson described as the “pursuit of happiness.” That unhappy and evil institution of slavery deprived the chained African of more than the fruits of his labor. It robbed him of that endowment made by his Creator of “Life” and “Liberty” bestowed to “All Men” equally. It is more than ironic that the nation’s first African American president, who hails from the Land of Lincoln, should perpetrate such an evil.

Then there are the Republicans. Congressional accountants, Sen. Sessions, are incapable of measuring the cost Americans will pay for our lost freedoms. Sessions is living proof that the Republican Party needs better politicians. But that masks an ugly truth – that would first require having better Americans.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got – a Republic or a Monarchy?” asked a citizen of Benjamin Franklin outside Constitutional Hall. “A Republic,” replied Franklin, “if you can keep it.” The Republic is no more. It ended in the wee small hours last Monday morning. The United States is officially a Cleptocracy. Moreover, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) personifies that new America. Described as a Democratic “moderate,” an immoderate bribe from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid removed the impediment of Nelson’s moderation. The bribe consisted of a guarantee that Nebraska won’t have to pay the added Medicare costs necessary to cover the price of ObamaCare. Forty-nine states of our Union will pay Nebraska’s Medicare bill in perpetuity. Unlike conventional bribery, Democrats bribe other Democrats with taxpayer money.

Democrat-light “compassionate conservative” Republicans are no better. Remember former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)? His “bridge to nowhere” cost an estimated $1.5 billion. President George W. Bush could not wait to indorse spending measures introduced by the late “Lion of the Senate” Ted Kennedy. This explains the small 28% favorability rating for the Republican Party. “Compassionate conservatism” destroyed any credibility of Republican calls for fiscal responsibility.

President Obama’s campaign promise to “spread the wealth around” is in full swing. Democrats dig the nation’s debt pit deeper with trillions of dollars in payoffs to targeted constituencies and a massive new health care entitlement program.

It’s all too easy to blame the thieves currently sitting in Washington. The disheartening reality is, until the politicians of both parties shoot their way to power, we are the authors and finishers of the disaster now unfolding in our country - we elected them all. Modern America’s response to Benjamin Franklin is, “keep your Republic, Doctor. We want our Cleptocracy.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“I think it’s a political witch hunt,” said the man in the snappy jumpsuit and black beret, “part of the overall war that the Republicans are waging against Eric Holder in general.” With friends like Malik Zulu Shabazz, party chairman of the New Black Panther Party, Attorney General Holder doesn’t need enemies. Mr. Shabazz was referring to the controversy surrounding Holder’s decision not to prosecute Panther members who hurled racial epithets and generally intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place. Shabazz insists his goons carried bludgeons in response to a possible threat posed by neo-Nazis lurking in a nearby parking lot. One of the Panthers, Jerry Jackson, is a credentialed poll watcher for Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee.

Though the incident was video taped and posted on YouTube, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch explained in a letter to Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) that Justice’s decision not to prosecute was due to a lack of “evidentiary support” indicating “directed” intimidation.

Rep. Wolf sent a follow-up letter to Holder. One of the many questions Wolf asked was if Justice contacted “the Southern Poverty Law Center and/or Anti-Defamation League, which list the New Black Panther Party as a hate group along with the KKK and American Nazi Party…” Wolf’s questions remain unanswered.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is equally perplexed. In a letter to Justice sent last August, the commission admonished Holder, saying, “We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law.”

During the hotly contested Florida vote in 2000, where charges of black voter intimidation were leveled, Eric Holder told Salon.com the allegations should be investigated to put “things in place so you don’t have a repeat of the problems that you’ve discovered.” Both Holder and chairman Shabazz don’t believe the same holds true for the Black Panthers.

The Justice Department order dismissing the case reads:

“The Defendants New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Malik Zulu Shabass, and Jerry Jackson have not filed an answer or motion for summary judgment. These same Defendants have made no appearance and have filed no pleadings with the Court. Nor have they otherwise raised any other defenses to this action. Therefore, the United States has the right under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41 (a)(1)(A) to dismiss voluntarily this action against the Defendants: New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Malik Zulu Shabazz, and Jerry Jackson. The United States dismisses the claim against these Defendants without prejudice.”

That’s quite a novel prosecutorial approach. If defendants won’t defend, prosecutors won’t prosecute. Had Al Capone only known, he wouldn’t have wasted so much money on lawyers or spent so much time in Alcatraz.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have gone a little flabby since his Mr. Olympia days, but one muscle remains robust…the one between his ears. The exemplar of all that is wrong with the “big tent” circus of Republican Party politics is in Copenhagen to lend his voice to the chorus of over 15,000 hysterical global warmers at the UN climate conference.

“The world’s governments alone cannot make the progress that is needed on global climate change,” Schwarzenegger told the London Financial Times, “they need the cities, the states, the provinces, the regions. California is the eighth largest economy in the world and also America’s trendsetter, so what we do has consequences.”

The consequences of environmental initiatives championed by the Left Coast’s movie idol governor will present a microcosm for the rest of the nation, if not the world, of the economic and human toll resulting from legislation to combat an unproven threat.

At Schwarzenegger’s urging, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 32, or the “Global Warming Solutions Act.” The State’s euphoria quickly evaporated as the nation slipped into an economic depression, with California suffering one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates (12.3%) due to its big-spending Democratic legislature and “reach-across-the-aisle” Republican Governator.

Sanjay Varshney, the business school dean at California State University, Sacramento, released a study estimating that California’s global warming law will cost the average household $3,857 annually, eliminate 1.1 million jobs and reduce the size of the state’s economy by 10 percent. The state measure’s draconian greenhouse gas reduction provisions will increase the costs of food, fuel and electricity to such an extent that it will drive down consumer discretionary spending by a whopping 26 percent.

Roger Sowell, a California attorney who represents individuals and companies in civil matters related to climate change, writes:

“It is hypocritical of government, in my view, to pass strict regulations to reduce tiny amounts of air pollutants with a goal of preventing a very small number of illnesses or deaths, but then to pass Carbon Dioxide reduction laws that will increase costs of electric power and transportation fuels, thus forcing millions of people to choose between paying for electric power, medication, food, transportation fuel, or rent.”

Sowell further states that the law’s “carbon capture” requirement for industry is a costly enterprise that will add 4 to 8 cents per kilowatt-hour to the price of electricity. “That is roughly a 30 to 80 percent increase over current prices,” says Sowell, “Higher costs of electricity are deadly to the vulnerable groups in our society. Carbon reduction laws are wrong for that reason alone, if for no others.”

And there is no better evidence of the deadly consequences of softheaded environmental initiatives than the attempt to move from fossil to bio fuels. Ironically, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reported an overall 56 percent rise in the price of food for poor countries in 2008 – with a 74% increase for Africa.

According to Richard Walden, writing for the Huffington Post:

“Ethanol production using maize (corn) is growing rapidly at the expense of setting aside adequate amounts of maize for human consumption. This creates shortages and a spike in prices for a wide range of food products.

“…The displacement of petroleum by ethanol is a good thing but it won’t lower air pollution and may just kill people from the resulting riots and hunger caused by food shortages.”

This was born out in 2008 when Bangladesh, Egypt and Haiti erupted in riots due to surging food prices. World Bank President Robert Zoellick told CNN, “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs…”

Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs, said, “We’ve been putting our food into the gas tank – this corn-to-ethanol subsidy which our [US] government is doing really makes little sense.”

California may be, in Schwarzenegger’s words, “a trendsetter.” But the question is whether that trend is to the betterment or detriment of human beings. Arnold’s inability to make that distinction proves his skull is thicker than his Austrian accent.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

While the nation’s unemployment rate hovers a mere 3 percent shy of Great Depression levels, the bloodless automatons populating our bloated federal mis-government have little to worry about. According to USA TODAY, “The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession…Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months – and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.” Luckily for our well-compensated “public servants,” President Obama has no Pay Czar breathing down his lackey’s necks.

Government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, Jessica Klement, told USA TODAY that federal salaries are a mere 26% of those received in the private sector. In the words of Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, “you lie.” According to the article:

“The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker’s pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.”

Before you get hot under the collar about Obama’s “spread the wealth” tendencies, the federal wage increase was the brainchild of “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush in 2008 – a fitting farewell by a spend-happy and confused Republican administration. USA TODAY reports that, “When the Federal Aviation Administration chief’s salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees’ had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too.”

Despite the phony Republican-Democrat debate, both political parties believe that the larger our government becomes, a happier and more prosperous our nation we will have. The dysfunctional two-party system that produced our current economic calamity, uses the crisis to build a  modern-day 18th Century French aristocracy in Washington.

Our rulers busy themselves with health care takeovers costing trillions of dollars, while planning even more stimulus spending. And, why shouldn’t they? Many Americans believe that something-for-nothing government only costs us money. As the wise Edmund Burke said, “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” “Compassionate conservatism” and “hope and change” are manifestations of an illusion that only reinforces Washington’s royal contempt for the deluded commoners – We The People.