By Mr. Curmudgeon

Former Vice President Al Gore, groundhog like, has come out of hiding. Unlike old Punxsutawney Phil, whose shadow predicted six more weeks of winter – one of the worst on record – Gore insists we ignore the obvious and continue believing in his invisible friend global warming. Writing in the New York Times, Gore says, “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” First, there is no such thing as “the science of global warming.” There is the science of climatology, which has a pseudo scientific fringe that programs end-of-the-world computer simulations, but prominent members of this fringe have resigned in disgrace in recent days. You see, Al Gore’s so-called science needs a lot more help than facts can support.

Last Thanksgiving, computer hackers discovered e-mail exchanges between Gore’s global warming scientists that showed they manufactured data to support their hysterical claims. It also showed efforts by warmers to prevent the publication of studies by climatology’s global warming skeptics in leading scientific journals. No wonder Gore insisted the debate on global warming was over; it wasn’t allowed to begin. Even England’s leftist Manchester Guardian, which released a manifesto published in many of the world’s newspapers urging governments to sign the Copenhagen climate change treaty, is beside itself over the scandal. “It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them,” wrote the Guardian’s George Monbiot.

Dr. Phil Jones, who was a leading global warming scientist with the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), resigned due to the scandal. The London Daily Mail reported that Jones “also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.” Even the U.N.’s global warming Czar, Dutch diplomat Yvo de Boer, resigned in disgrace. But Gore, unnerved by his 2000 election defeat at the hands of 300 Florida voters, declared himself a member of the global warming priesthood to save the world at the expense (carbon taxes) of the nation that rejected him.

In his New York Times piece, Gore admits the damage done to his cause by climategate. “It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law. But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes.” In other words, data manufactured by Gore’s global warming scientists should continue to disrupt the lives of billions human beings, costing Americans their jobs and tax dollars. Proving that a broken clock is right at least twice a day, Gore concludes, “Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so — or must replace them.” Tea Party Americans intend to do just that. Unfortunately, for Gore’s Democrats, they will be on the receiving end of the public’s very cold shoulder.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Americans are unanimous in there distrust of Obamanomics. Three recent Rasmussen polls come to mind. 51% of Americans “believe decisions made by U.S. business leaders to help their own businesses grow will do more for the economy than decisions made by the government.” 83% of Americans believe the obscene federal deficit “is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes,” which is an overwhelming rejection of Obama’s hyperactive Keynesian economic plan. And as for Obama’s attempt to demonize health insurance companies to gain public support for ObamaCare, 51% of Americans “fear the federal government most when it comes to such [health care] decisions.” It appears that the efforts of Obama the community organizer to turn America into a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN has fallen flat with We the People.

The great Sage from Delaware, Vice President Joe Biden, dismisses the gloom building in the country over the administration’s destructive economic programs. Economic reality, which the bankrupt nations of Portugal, Ireland and Greece face due to overwhelming government debt, he believes, somehow does not apply to America. “So many people have bet on our demise that it absolutely drives me crazy,” Biden told the Washington Post. “There’s sort of an attitude that is both politically directed by our Republican friends but also believed by a fair number of people that we just can’t make this transition in the 21st century. We will continue to be the most significant and dominant influence in the world as long as our economy is strong, growing and responsive to 21st-century needs. And they relate to education, they relate to energy, and they relate to health care.”

Niall Ferguson at the London Financial Times begs to differ with the Sage:

. “…Even a casual look at the fiscal position of the federal government (not to mention the states) makes a nonsense of the phrase ‘safe haven.’ US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941.

“Even according to the White House’s new budget projections, the gross federal debt will exceed 100 percent of GDP in just two years’ time. This year, like last year, the federal deficit will be around 10 percent of GDP. The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That’s right, never.”

The Sage believes, mistakenly, that the world has nowhere else to invest but here in “safe haven” America. He also makes the mistake (like most Democrats) of believing that debt is an “investment.” China, the largest buyer of US Treasuries (government debt), reduced its purchases from 47 percent of Treasuries issued in 2006 to 20 percent in ’08. It dropped again in 2009 to just 5 percent.

When Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, was working for D.E. Shaw & Company (one of the world’s largest investment firms), he asked a very good question. “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?” The American people seem to know the answer to that question at long last. But Biden and his boss desperately insist on drawing us into their Keynesian nightmare.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“I have not yet heard people in the Republican Party admit they have a problem. I have not seen a come-to-Jesus meeting. . . . ‘Hello, my name is the Republican Party and I’ve got a problem. I’m addicted to spending and big government.’ . . . They need that moment,” said radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck in a speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention. As hard as it may be to fathom, many mainstream Republicans seem unwilling to acknowledge how accommodating big-spending, liberty-quashing Democrats nearly obliterated the Republican Party, which even in the age of Obama is still viewed with suspicion by election-deciding independent voters. But, as Beck observed, McCain Republicans can’t quite “admit they have a problem.”

The Los Angeles Times reports, “More than half of (CPAC) respondents believe Republicans are within striking distance of taking back Congress, pollster Tony Fabrizio said, but participants are not necessarily happy with Republican Party leadership nor thrilled with the bench of presidential candidates.” The problem is the Republican leadership’s inability to think outside the box (coffin, really) in which they’ve locked their party. According to the Times, “…when hosts announced the results of the conference’s presidential straw poll late Saturday, the audience went wild to hear the name of the winner: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former GOP candidate for the White House and prominent leader of the grass-roots libertarian movement.” It’s not a promising sign when the Republican base has nowhere to go but into the arms of a Libertarian or his runner-up: compassionate conservative Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts. No wonder conservatives and independents formed the insurgent Tea Party.

It remains to be seen if, as Glenn Beck says, McCain Republicans ever realize they’ve hit bottom and begin a twelve step rehabilitation program. Their party’s political fortunes depend on it if they expect to rout Obama’s Czarist government in 2010 and beyond.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“Moderation in the pursuit of justice,” said Barry Goldwater “is no virtue.” Moderate Indiana Democrat, Evan Bayh, announced he will not seek a third term as Indian’s representative in the U.S. Senate. “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done.” That sounds eerily like Sen. John McCain’s losing 2008 campaign mantra. As President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid attempt to transform the United States into an impoverished leftist banana republic, moderates of both parties have become irrelevant. Instead of rallying around those who wish to accommodate Obama and his Czars, the nation’s independents are rallying around the Tea Party, which calls for Washington to obey the Constitution’s extreme restraint on government power. “Extremism in the defense of liberty,” as Goldwater once said, “is no vice.”

Even the New York Times is starting to notice the shift in the country’s mood. Times reporter By David Barstow interviewed Pam Stout, a retired federal worker who “awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated – even manufactured – by both parties to grab power,” writes Barstow.

According to the Times:

“The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.

“…Loose alliances like Friends for Liberty are popping up in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties…These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal — a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain.”

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele is holding meetings with Tea Party activists, hoping to form an alliance to help his party’s electoral prospects in 2010. But he might get an ear full. According to Fox News, “…One Tea Party activist who traveled hundreds of miles to attend the meeting at RNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., said sparks could fly. ‘Steele wants to try to co-opt us, but we’re coming to tell him he doesn’t get it. We want to return the Republican Party to its roots. We’re expecting some fireworks.’”

The revolution has started. Not among status quo politicians but in the hearts and minds of the nation’s centrist majority frightened by Obama’s unrelenting attempts to push the country hard left. In this revolution, there is no room for bloodless moderates offering “practical problem-solving.” Their problem solving helped get us in the mess we now find ourselves. Bye-bye Evan Bayh.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

David Broder at the Washington Post gets it. Of Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech before the Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Broder observes, “What stood out in the eyes of TV-watching pols of both parties was the skill with which she drew a self-portrait that fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate.” Polls have been broadcasting the fact that the mood in the country is decidedly frosty concerning President Obama’s hope and change. Mainstream media pundits, like Broder, are concerned by Obama’s seeming unwillingness to abandon his Bill Ayers radical baggage in order to save his presidency and the Democratic majority in Congress. Is it any wonder, then, that Sarah Palin is a rising star?

Broder then praises Palin for her answer to a question posed by Fox News host Chris Wallace. When asked what she envisioned for her future, Palin said, “First and foremost, I want to be a good mom, and I want to raise happy, healthy, independent children. And I want them to be good citizens of this country.” Then she got to politics in a decidedly non-political way. “And then I do want to be a voice for some common-sense solutions.”

This perfectly exemplifies why the media and most politicians, Democrat and Republican, are mystified by Palin’s appeal. The media, especially Broder’s Washington Post colleague E. J. Dionne Jr., believes Tea Party opposition to Obama’s policies is due to a “reaction among some whites against the multiracial, multicultural political coalition he has brought together…So, yes, parts of this movement do seem to be motivated by a new nativism and by racism.” Tell that to Scott Brown’s liberal Massachusetts. For white liberal pundits to play the race card further alienates a disgusted electorate fed up with political correctness, disastrous government spending and the heavy-handed imperial arrogance of a Czarist administration.

What the left and its friends among the mainstream media fail to understand is that Palin’s appeal is only partially political. As she was quick to tell Fox’s Chris Wallace, she is first and foremost a wife and mother. While the left sees ACORN and Organizing for America as shepherds to create “a more perfect union,” Palin sees the family as the engine for making healthy and well-balanced human beings. This is as stark a comparison as between the picture of a happy family sitting down to dinner and a miserable crowd waiting in a long line at the DMV.

“Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand,” writes Broder. “The lady is good.”

While Obama takes on such weighty issues as gays in the military, civilian trials for foreign terrorists and Al Gore’s global warming, Palin talks of family and common sense. The left’s rabid hatred of Palin – a condition it can’t quite explain – is not over her politics. It’s that when compared to the left’s many misfits, Palin is just so normal.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The muddle-minded moneyman made Manhattan mayor, Michael Bloomberg, reversed his initial support for President Obama’s decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed mere blocks from New York City’s Ground Zero. When Attorney General Eric Holder first informed Bloomberg that his city’s courts would try enemy combatants as common criminals, Bloomberg announced, “…New York City stands ready to assist the federal court in the administration of justice in any way necessary. I have great confidence the New York Police Department and federal authorities will handle security expertly.”

Then his honor the mayor got an ear-full of complaints from angry and nervous constituents that caused Bloomberg to change his muddled mind in a New York minute. “It’s going to cost an awful lot of money and disturb an awful lot of people. Can we provide security? Yes. Could you provide security elsewhere? Yeah, and I mean — the suggestion of a military base is probably a reasonably good one. Relatively easy to supply — to provide security. They tend to be outside of cities so that they don’t disrupt other people.” Here’s a suggestion, your honor: how’s about Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

It appears the Obama Administration is getting the message that trying holy warriors as common criminals was a big mistake. “I think I can acknowledge the obvious,” an administration source told the New York Times, “We’re considering other options.”

Obama and Mayor Bloomberg aren’t the only ones attempting to repair their image. In a newly released audio message purported to be from 9/11 instigator Osama bin Laden, the cave dwelling knuckle-dragger claims he is not only fighting for Allah but to prevent global warming. He joins with President Obama in castigating the person he feels is at the root of the world’s – if not the universe’s - collapse:

“The talk about climate change is not an intellectual indulgence. Rather, it is a reality. All of the industrialized countries, and especially the large ones, bear the responsibility for the crisis of the greenhouse effect. Most of them, though, rallied around the Kyoto accords, and agreed to limits on emissions of harmful gases. However, Bush Jr., and Congress before him, rejected this accord in order to please the large corporations, which are themselves the ones responsible for speculation, monopolies, and the rise in the cost of living. And they are behind globalization and its tragic consequences. Then, when these criminals’ own evil deeds did them in, the heads of state rush to rescue them with public funds…They are the true terrorists.”

And you thought bin Laden couldn’t receive MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann’s talking points from his cave in Waziristan. Bin Laden obviously prepared for his message having viewed a pirated DVD of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Whether it’s Al Gore, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Michael Bloomberg or Osama bin Laden, ideology is not the glue that holds these misfits together. It’s utopian lunacy.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“Beneath the surface of their formally polite, if aloof, reserve bubbled resentment that their one-time foe was now a general. To them, he was a double traitor who had rebelled against the mother country before turning on his fellow Americans,” writes historian Dave Richard Palmer of Benedict Arnold. “No one trusts – or for that matter, likes – a traitor.” Sen. Arlen Specter knows the feeling. “Senator Arlen Specter left the Republican Party last year and became a Democrat to save his political career,” reports the New York Times. “Now at 79, he suddenly finds that the party he switched into may not provide a safe haven.”

Backed by President Obama and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Specter is expected to win against his Democratic challenger Joe Sestak, who described Specter as a “flight risk.” According to state Democratic chairman T. J. Rooney, Specter is “more true to the base.” That’s hardly news. Specter has always derived strength from the support of the lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party.

Former Republican Representative Patrick Toomey, who narrowly lost to Specter in Pennsylvania’s 2004 primary election, is the likely standard bearer for the Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. He is positioned perfectly to garner support from the well-organized forces of the Tea Party, and is greatly encouraged by the recent Massachusetts election of Scott Brown. “And Pennsylvania is a lot more conservative than Massachusetts,” assures Toomey. As Dante said in his Divine Comedy, “And now, I said, you traitor bent on evil, I do not need your talk, for I shall carry true news of you, and that will bring you shame.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

In a display of just how tone deaf Democrats are to the outrage and anger building in America over totalitarian ObamaCare, its author boarded Air Force One and winged his way to Massachusetts to demand its voters elect ObamaCare’s sixtieth vote. “If you were fired up in the last election,” said the president, “I need you more fired up in this election.” Republican Scott Brown and the Tea Party could not agree more.

The polls are mixed. Rasmussen calculates that Democrat Martha Coakely has a slight lead, 49% to Brown’s 47%. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says Coakely leads by 14 points. Conservative website Pajamas Media gives Brown a 15 point lead. Mark Blumenthal, editor at pollster.com, told the Boston Globe, “No one really knows anything about the electorate that is going to show up. We don’t have any experience with special elections held in Massachusetts in early January.”

I could be wrong, but I have a theory. I call it Vegas remorse. I think the single biggest deciding feature in the Massachusetts special election is ObamaCare. The carefree citizens of Massachusetts kept sending the pie-eyed Teddy to Washington for forty-seven years. But Kennedy’s harebrained schemes to socialize America were always held in check by his slightly more sober Senate colleagues. The nation, however, threw sobriety to the wind last November. Now Massachusetts’s voters feel the same hung-over remorse as a Las Vegas high roller who awakes to find himself married to an ugly stranger that once looked so good – after the 12th Mojito. It’s understandable if Vegas remorse makes Massachusetts’s poll respondents less than honest in their answers. They want the divorce to be handled quietly and discretely – within the confines of the voting booth.

By showing up in Massachusetts, President Obama is like the quickie wedding chapel minister who runs into one of his regretful clients and asks, “how’s the wife?”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

In one of the greatest left-handed political endorsements to come out of the Massachusetts’ special election for Teddy Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) said of the Republican candidate, “If Scott Brown wins, it’ll kill the health bill.” Barney the dinosaur couldn’t be more right. That’s why I went to www.brownforussenate.com and made a financial contribution to Brown’s campaign. The delicious Irony of all this is that the citizens of “Taxachusetts” could be the first to fire a fatal shot into the heart of Obama’s socialist agenda…handing the sagging U.S. Senate seat of the Lyon of Chappaquiddick to a Tea Party endorsed Republican. Should it happen this Tuesday, a certain somebody will definitely be spinning in his grave.

Democrats are so frightened at the signal a Brown victory would send to the rest of the country that they have embarked on a desperate last minute drive to push the daffy Coakley first across the finish line. Scott Brown’s potential Senate colleague, Sen. John Kerry, dashed off a desperate solicitation letter to fellow limousine liberals urging them to give to the Coakley campaign until Ça fait mal beaucoup!

The Rasmussen polling organization says that although Coakley leads Brown 49% to 47% when polling registered Democrats and Republicans, “among voters not affiliated with either major party, Brown leads 71% to 23%.” In other words, the second Massachusetts Tea Party seems poised to throw Obama and his political party into Boston Harbor.

Afraid the new Son’s of Liberty may prevail, the Democratic political machines in Washington and Massachusetts are designing plans to delay Brown’s taking office should he win. One such tactic is from the playbook of former Vice President – and global warming nut – Al Gore: Coakley Democrats will hire lawyers to challenge the consent of the governed in court, putting the election in the hands of one Democrat-appointed judge. Another approach calls for the Massachusetts governor and Secretary of the Commonwealth to delay certification of Brown’s election. This way the Secretary of the Senate could not seat Brown. This would buy time for Teddy Kennedy’s replacement hack to cast a vote in favor of ObamaCare. Either way, it shows what many of us have known for years – the Democratic Party hates the fundamental operating principle of our democratic republic…We the People rule ourselves. The Democratic Party now offers a racially neutral twist to its pro-slavery, Jim Crow and segregationist policies of the past. America will be comprised of Czars and serfs. But I’m being unfair to the Russian Czars.

Upon hearing the news he was to be named Czar, Nicholas II had the humility to say, “I am not yet ready to be Czar. I know nothing of the business of ruling.” This is not the case for the arrogant Obama, Pelosi or Czarina Barney Frank.

Mr. Curmudgeon

Despite the herculean efforts of the Obama administration to put the war on terror behind us, jihadists haven’t yet gotten the word. Farouk Abdulmutallab, a passenger aboard Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, attempted to set off an explosive device taped to his leg. Passengers reported hearing several popping sounds, followed by panicked screams of nearby passages. Jasper Shuringa, an Amsterdam filmmaker sitting across the aisle from the would-be bomber, hurled himself across the aisle and grappled with Abjulmatallab. Flight attendants aided Shuringa in subduing the terrorist.

When Scotland Yard announced that Farouk Abdulmutallab studied mechanical engineering at University College, London, this triggered the usual response from the nation’s great disseminator of nihilism, the New York Times:

“What led a worldly young man, who had studied at an elite British university, to choose suicidal violence?”

Materialists reading the Times will no doubt shake their heads, disappointed that the “worldly” Abdulmutallab threw away a promising future in a high-paying career to pursue jihad’s literal dead end. The materialist will never understand that Abdulmutallab believes there is something greater than a university education and a fat paycheck. Possessing that stylish BMW or the newest iPod aren’t ends in themselves. A deep, unseen metaphysical reality is what motivates him – not money. The question then arises: does Abdulmutallab’s unseen reality represent good or evil? The editorial board and staff writers at the New York Times won’t answer that question. They can’t get past the BMWs and the iPods. The moral confusion  engendered by their materialism also explains the nihilist’s contempt for our military. Our military men and women are also motivated by an unseen reality.

One case in point surrounds the late U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman, tragically killed in a friendly fire incident while serving in Afghanistan. As you may recall, Tillman walked away from a lucrative NFL career to serve in the U.S. military shortly after America was attacked on 9/11. In a piece written for the left-wing Aztlan Communications Network, Rene Gonzalez fleshed out the nihilist’s inability to see the world beyond the paycheck:

“Tillman got himself killed in a country other than his own without having been forced to go over to that country…After all, whether we like them or not, the Taliban is more Afghani than we are. Their resistance is more legitimate than our invasion, regardless of the fact that our social values are probably more enlightened than theirs….he should be used as a poster boy for the dangerous consequences of too much ‘America is #1,’ frat boy, propaganda bull. It might just make a regular man irrationally drop $3.6 million to go fight in a conflict that was anything but ‘self-defense.’”

Gonzalez and the reporters at the New York Times will never understand shoe-bomber Abdulmutallab or Army Ranger Tillman. Abdulmutallab attempted to kill, not for money, but to advance the evil totalitarian aims of his Islamic faith. Tillman killed to fight that totalitarian evil as his duty of love – to family and country. The materialist simply sees both men as nonprofit killers, but grant Islamic fanatics a dispensation due to their home field advantage. For them, Abdulmutallab does not work for evil. He is merely a misguided university student who foolishly walked away from a bright future as a mechanical engineer. They see Tillman’s sacrifice as misguided because he walked away from a $3.6 million football career to trespass on hell’s little acre in Afghanistan.

Gonzalez and the typists at the New York Times take the coward’s way out. They refuse to take a stand for good against evil because they see no financial gain in it. A key strategy of President Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan is to funnel U.S. dollars into that country’s educational system. A fine university education certainly increased shoe-bomber Abdulmutallab’s future job prospects and earning potential, but did little to assuage the unseen reality of evil within him. This is something the educated moral idiot will never understand.