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

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

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. Crumudgeon

2010 is turning out to be a bad year for Nobel Prize winners. First, Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted their claim that Himalayan glaciers will disappear in thirty years is a laughable exaggeration. Then Massachusetts voters put a Republican in Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, threatening the legislative health care centerpiece of our Nobel Peace Prize winning “hope and change,” community organizing president. Now, Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is beside himself with grief. Of ObamaCare Krugman laments, “…some Democrats want to just give up on the whole thing.”

In Krugman beats the totalitarian heart that exists in all utopians. “…politics is supposed to be about achieving something more than your own re-election. America desperately needs health care reform; it would be a betrayal of trust if Democrats fold simply because they hope (wrongly) that this would slightly reduce their losses in the midterm elections.” Scott Brown’s election to the United State Senate occurred because Democrats in Congress betrayed the public trust by trying to pass totalitarian health care legislation that ran counter to the public will. Krugman, however, is worried more about Democrats betraying the tyrannical idea that government is most noble when subverting the consent of the governed.

Krugman makes an interesting observation that abandoning ObamaCare “wouldn’t protect Democrats from charges that they voted for ‘socialist’ health care – remember, both houses of Congress have already passed reform.” It is only right that Republican Chairman Michael Steele send Krugman a dozen roses, a box of candy and thank you card for providing a powerful quote for Republican political ads in 2010. “And remember folks,” the ads should say in conclusion, “Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

During the 2008 presidential election, 495 publications endorsed Barack Obama while only 215 endorsed John McCain. Many believe newspaper support for politicians accounts for little. However, that does not seem to be the case for the endorsers…the mainstream media. President Obama told the New York Times that last election the “Fox effect” cost him three points in the polls. Obama, of course, was referring to Fox News. The Times is frightened that with the growth of the Fox News audience and revenues, a Fox tsunami effect threatens to take out Democrats in 2010 and 2012.

Strangely, the Times also worries about the effect Fox may have on Republicans. According to the New York Times, “…Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have been riding a wave of discontent that sometimes puts them at odds with the Republican Party’s establishment, most recently with Fox News’s advocacy of an independent candidate in the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. The Republican candidate eventually withdrew.” In other words, Fox News director Roger Ailes, unlike the movers and shakers running mainstream media newsrooms, understands that America’s two party system is in its death throws.

The Tea Party, as its name implies, believes in a return to Constitutional restraint on the power of government to maximize the freedom of the individual citizen. According to legend, when members of the Continental Congress advanced the idea of crowning the victorious George Washington King of Independent America, General Washington is supposed to have refused, saying, “No kings here.” Today, a president appoints Czars as ministers to carry out his royal decrees.

The mainstream media, the Obama administration and many prominent Republicans hate Fox News not only because it is conservative, but also because by covering the Tea Party on its cable news station Fox threatens to upset the bipartisan continuity of ever encroaching government – from FDR to Obama.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Obama Media is beside itself over the failed Christmas Day Al Qaeda attempt to bring down a Northwest airliner bound for Detroit. As much as it breaks their hearts, they feel compelled to report, no matter how painful, the failings of their favorite administration. At first, they hoped to make Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano the lightening rod for the administration’s intelligence failures. 72 hours after the Detroit incident, President Obama begrudgingly dragged himself away from a Hawaiian golf course to address the glaring U.S. intelligence breakdown. “A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable.” He gravely informed his adoring press corps that he would “insist on accountability at every level.” As the New York Times noted, crest fallen, “he did not elaborate.” After narrowly escaping another bloody terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President Obama attempted to distance himself from his own administration.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd lamented, “One thrilling thing about moving from W. to Barack Obama was that Obama seemed like an avatar of modernity. W., Dick Cheney and Rummy kept ceaselessly dragging us back into the past. America seemed to have lost her ingenuity, her quickness, her man-on-the-moon bravura, her Bugs Bunny panache.” No doubt in tears, Dowd continued using child-like pop-culture references to express her disappointment in Obama’s lack of cartoon rabbit competence, “Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared. Heck of a job, Barry.”

Meanwhile, America’s number one grownup, former Vice President Dick Cheney, told POLITICO.com:

“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war?…”

Then, Cheney brilliantly and insightfully answered his own question:

“…It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation—the restructuring of American society.”

And there you have it. Transforming a Constitutional Republic into an impoverished Left-Wing banana republic can be very distracting. Democrats have their hands full herding over 300 million Americans down the death-march road to government-run health care. The bribes to Democratic senators alone required hours of backroom negotiations and thousands of pages of byzantine legislation. The mainstream media is red-faced over Obama’s incompetence and fear Al Qaeda is exploiting cracks in America’s security programs. That crack is the distraction inherent in Obama’s attempt to remake America into something it was never meant to be; to “change” it from the “shining city upon a hill,” which made it a worthy target of Al Qaeda’s dark evil and a noble avenger after 9/11.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is in hot seat after assuring the American people that anti-terror security measures “worked.” What exactly was it about her Homeland Security measures that saved 289 passengers abroad Northwest Flight 253? “Everybody played an important role here.” Napolitano told ABC’s “This Week,” “The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action …” Jasper Schuringa, the brave Northwest passenger who suffered burns to his hands fighting the terrorist while simultaneously patting out the Nigerian’s flaming pants, is certainly a hero, but there isn’t enough of him to go around. Moreover, it must be remembered that the terrorist’s ineptitude in setting off his explosive device was a stroke of good luck for his fellow passengers. In other words, after billions of dollars allocated by Congress for the creation of a multi-layered behemoth Homeland Security Department, alert passengers from Amsterdam and incompetent Al Qaeda pants bombers form the cornerstone of Janet Napolitano’s working “system.” That means we are all in grave danger.

Even the Washington Post is less than thrilled with Obama’s Homeland Security chief, “Her [Napolitano's] claim neither passed the laugh test nor was remotely true. Ms. Napolitano’s acknowledgement Monday that the system “failed miserably” is the first step on the long road to plugging the troubling security gaps that have been exposed.”

A Washington Times editorial stated, “It is hardly obvious why the actions taken after the attempted attack should assure us that travelers should be ‘confident’ that air travel is ‘safe.’ Nor is it obvious that the heroic actions taken by a passenger, Jasper Schuringa, who stopped the bombing, were part of some grand government design. Mr. Schuringa put out the fire with his bare hands while he was screaming for someone to give him water.”

The New York Times is trying to get their man Obama to straighten up. “Ms. Napolitano’s statement was just one of the targets for criticism after the botched Christmas Day bombing…Critics also took aim at Mr. Obama for continuing his Hawaii vacation for three days before appearing in public to address the threat, and they cast the incident as part of a broader assertion that he is not serious enough about terrorism.”

Obama’s appointee to head the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), Erroll Southers, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans have understandably held up Southers’ appointment because he intends to turn the TSA into a Democratic Party constituency. Napolitano and Southers would allow the nation’s airport security employees to unionize. The lives of American citizens would become just another collective bargaining chip.

Since the Obama administration is not serious about preempting terror, only prosecuting in its bloody aftermath, Napolitano needs to upgrade the Homeland Security system by hiring Dutchmen like Jasper Schuringa to defend American air passengers. They can call them The Flying Dutchmen.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Catty New York Times fluff columnist, Maureen Dowd, is disappointed in Arizona’s Sen. John McCain. “The man used to be such a constructive independent that some of his Republican Senate colleagues called him a traitor. Now he’s such a predictable obstructionist that he’s in the just-say-no vanguard with the same conservatives who used to despise him.” That’s a marked change in tone for the newspaper that endorsed McCain in New York’s presidential primary, describing him as “the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe.” What the Times calls “constructive independent,” McCain dubbed “reaching across the aisle.” But accommodating the party of ACORN, Cash-for-Clunkers and death panels has energized Dowd’s “angry fringe,” which consists of conservatives, moderates and independents – the ones who either stayed home last election or voted for President Obama.

While appearing on Fox New Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked, “Does the fact — you may argue whether it is a fact, but does the perception that you have moved to the right this year have anything to do with the fact that you might face a possible primary challenge from former conservative congressman J.D. Hayworth next year?”

McCain squirmed a bit in his chair and answered. “I have always taken every race that I’m in seriously, no matter who’s running against me. But the fact is that I have gotten back in the arena. I have fought for the things that I believe in. I’ve worked with the administration on defense acquisition reform, on a whole variety of issues.”

“I will continue. I believe the job of the loyal opposition is to work with the president and the Democrats where you can. But where it’s philosophically fundamentally different, do everything you can to see that your point of view prevails.”

“And I’ve been very happy to have the teamwork with my colleagues and the Republicans in the Senate and the work they’ve been doing, and I’m proud of every one of them.”

Bad answer, John. It may help to smooth the ruffled feathers of your friends on the editorial board at the New York Times, but patting yourself and your Republican colleagues on the back for working with “the president and the Democrats where you can” isn’t making you any friends among the angry and growing “fringe.”

Columnist Dowd and her fellow Democrats may condemn McCain and his fellow Republicans for not casting one vote for ObamaCare, but just saying no to the Democrat’s modern equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act is not enough. Conflicted Republican “mavericks” must articulate what they stand for. Unfortunately, that is a quality beyond the capabilities of McCain and his confused fellow Republican squishes. This makes McCain vulnerable in his upcoming primary battle with the articulate and conservative J.D. Hayworth. Go get him J.D. Freedom loving people and the Tea Party (a.k.a., “the angry fringe”) are depending on you.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The saying goes that a man is distinguished by his enemies. The same holds true for some woman – especially where Gov. Sarah Palin is concerned. House Democrats - tone deaf to the outrage building in the country over health care, multi-trillion dollar deficits, bailouts and wasteful stimulus – have decided to assail Palin for her Washington Post Op-Ed piece attacking the global warming fraud known as “climategate.” “Ex-Governor Palin is at it again,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). “There is no there,” Rep. Blumenauer said of e-mails proving fraud by climate scientists, “And the ex-governor’s state has [endured] the greatest impact in terms of global warming of any state in the nation…”

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House climate change panel, grudgingly agreed to hold hearing into the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia – responsible for manipulating climate data. Rep. Markey assures fellow Democrats that the hearings will continue to promote the fiction that the tainted climate data does not undermine the claim that the world is growing hotter due to human activity.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, the American people are evenly split on the question of global warming, 43% believe global warming is a real danger, while 43% believe it’s a load of eyewash. Eighteen percent of Americans, those easily distracted by shiny objects, have no opinion one way or another.

More Americans are less distracted on the question of America’s direction. Rasmussen reports that a whopping 65% of Americans believe the country’s affairs have been horribly mismanaged under Democratic Party rule. Republicans agree by 92%. Among independents, that number is 80%. The mainstream media refuses the report the obvious – that the aloof Democratic Party aristocracy is heading for electoral disasters in 2010 and 2012.

The Washington Post gives Sarah Palin a soapbox to voice her views believing that, in doing so, the country will reject her analysis and, should she run for president, her. The Post and leading Democrats miscalculate, failing to see the obvious: that their ridicule and distain for Palin is identical to that displayed toward the overwhelming number of Americans in regard to ObamaCare and the president’s crushing federal debt. In doing so, they fail to grasp that they are painting Alaska’s former governor as one of us.

The summit on so-called “climate change” kicked-off in Copenhagen despite damning evidence of fraud uncovered by computer hackers a short two weeks ago. The controversy involves 13-years worth of e-mail exchanges between members of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which has compiled climate data for use in computer models predicting Nostradamus-like end-of-the-world catastrophes, and like-minded climatologists around the world. Not to worry, the U.N. Environment Program director Achim Steiner tells us to pay no attention to the climate data manipulators behind the curtain:

“It doesn’t change anything in the…conclusions — it’s only one line of evidence out of dozens of lines of evidence. This is not ‘climategate’, it’s ‘hackergate.’ Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.”

According to the Times of London, Britain’s Met Office (the National Weather Service of the United Kingdom), “will release temperature data from 1,000 weather stations around the world in an attempt to shore up public confidence in its statements about the dangers of climate change. The raw data will be impossible for any non-expert to interpret.” Gee, now we can play along by manipulating the data as well.

The New York Times assures us that evidence of scientific fraud shouldn’t stand in the way of equally fraudulent solutions to climate change:

“It is important that scientists behave professionally and openly. It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.”

An editorial in the journal Nature attempted to explain away an especially incriminating e-mail detailing one climatetologist’s “trick” to push data into conforming with his predetermined outcome:

“One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.”

Or, to paraphrase that nihilistic wordsmith Bill Clinton, “it depends what your definition of the word ‘trick’ is.”

Deconstructing words and their definitions has been a trusted tool of social revolutionaries. Abortion was twisted into a woman’s “right to privacy,” tax hikes are re-defined as “investments,” and unsustainable entitlement programs are “cost-cutting reforms.” If words and their meanings are as transitory as, say, the weather, the public shouldn’t be blamed for its plummeting confidence in the ravings of global warming advocates. If nothing is true, how can we be certain of anything, including climate data?

– Mr. Curmudgeon