President and Mrs. Obama plan to wing their way to Copenhagen in hopes of convincing the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to the corrupt city of Al Capone – Chicago. They won’t be the only Chicagoans in attendance. A group calling itself “No Games Chicago” is opposing the president and first lady’s pitch. “Our goal,” says the organization’s website, “remains the same – to convince the International Olympic Committee that the 2016 Olympics for Chicago is the wrong project for the wrong city at the wrong time.” Their worries are well founded. The City of Montreal, Canada, only recently paid off the tremendous debt it incurred for hosting the 1976 Olympic Games. London, which hosts the 2012 summer games, is already $9 billion over budget. Rather than serving as an economic boon, the Olympic Games are a bust for the host city’s taxpayers who must pay the tab and clean up the mess.

In an open letter to the president, “No Games Chicago” pleaded:

Chicago is broke. We cannot afford to fix potholes, to repair sewers, to upgrade public transportation, to bring our schools up to standard, or to keep mental health clinics open.

… Olympic Games held in Chicago would disrupt and even displace communities in the very city where you worked as a community organizer. The grassroots that supported your election are the very people who would be most hurt by this effort, while the benefits will go to the developers and politically connected.

It’s doubtful Obama would make a personal appearance in Copenhagen unless there was a “politically connected” constituency to serve. The “community organizer” is using the Olympics as a cover to funnel billions in government funds to his Chicago-based network of cronies. If the president is successful and Chicago gets the Olympic Games, don’t be surprised if the person firing the starter pistol at track and field events is an ACORN organizer. The pistol may even belong to the pimp whose taxes ACORN helped evade.

–Mr. Curmudgeon

By Mr. Curmudgeon

One day, while walking down Manhattan’s Park Avenue, CBS News anchorman Dan Rather was pummeled by two assailants. One mugger repeatedly asked, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” The incident remains one of America’s great unsolved mysteries.

In another bazaar episode in the life of Rather, Gene Phillips, a Chicago cab driver, refused to let Rather out of his cab and continued driving. Rather, hanging out the window, waved his arms wildly and screamed, “I’m being kidnapped.” A police car eventually pulled along side the cab and motioned the driver to pull over. Cabbie Phillips told the Associated Press that after driving the newsman to his Chicago destination, Rather refused to pay his cab fair because Phillips could not produce his hack license. Enraged, Phillips hit the gas,  taking Rather on an impromptu tour through the streets of the Windy City. Rather, who at the time was earning millions of dollars a year, tried to get out of paying a $12.55 fair. Much to Rather’s credit, he successfully kept his carnival existence far from the vaunted CBS newsroom and the eyes of his long-suffering viewers. That is, until President George W. Bush sought reelection in 2004. That’s when the wheels finally popped off the wagon.

Rather, then reporting for CBS’s Sunday news program 60 Minutes, and his producer Mary Mapes, thought they had a story that would destroy Bush’s reelection hopes and put their man (at least I think he’s a man) Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in the White House.

The story concerned a long floated rumor that the young Bush received preferential treatment getting out of combat duty during the Vietnam War by skating his way into the Texas Air National Guard. His father, then a congressman, supposedly pulled a few strings. Rather and Mapes got their hands on documents that purportedly substantiated the claim that Bush was a war wimp. That was until the documents were posted on the CBS News website. Document expert Peter Tytell found that the type font on the documents were not produced on a typewriter but created using Microsoft Word and outputted on a modern printer. The “unimpeachable source” that provided the clumsy forgeries was one Bill Burkett, a troubled man with a history of mental illness and an unhinged grudge, like Rather’s, against Bush.

Rather and his 60 Minutes producer never thought they would get caught in their lie. But the Internet proved their undoing. It was the guys at Powerline.com that uncovered the fraud and released their findings to the world. At first, CBS boldly denied any wrong doing and stood by Rather and his story. When every network examined the documents, they too were convinced the story was the product of disturbed minds. CBS eventually handed Rather and producer Mapes their walking papers. But that didn’t stop old Dan. He filed a $70 million lawsuit against his old network, claiming he never had a chance to properly defend his actions to the CBS top brass. He further claimed that CBS’s parent company, Viacom, fired him as a means of kowtowing to the Bush administration in order to protect its business interests.

The panel of judges on the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division not only dismissed Rather’s case against CBS but admonished the lower court for furthering Dan’s descent into madness by allowing the case to proceed up the legal food chain.

No one better described the interesting and colorful life of Dan Rather than Dan himself:

I’ve tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I’ve never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas.

The next area of interest for Dan may very well be a padded cell.

“Sometimes, the American justice system shows an excess of formalism, like an infernal machine that advances inexorably and blindly,” said Jack Lang, former French Minister of Culture, on hearing of director Roman Polanski’s recent arrest in Switzerland. Yes, that “infernal machine” advancing toward Polanski is American blind justice. The marble lady holding the scales and wearing a blindfold doesn’t care how many awards the filmmaker has to his credit, she seeks justice for the 13-year-old girl Polanski drugged and then raped.

What upsets and confuses the child molester and his supporters is that he has traveled to Switzerland many times since his 1977 rape conviction by a Los Angeles jury. What’s behind the sudden interest in arresting Polanski for extradition to America? It may boil down to money. Recently, the U.S. Justice Department threatened to burry Swiss banking giant USB under an avalanche of litigation if it didn’t hand over the names of wealthy Americans hiding untaxed millions in secret bank accounts. Polanski’s arrest may be Switzerland’s way of throwing a bone to American prosecutors, showing that Europeans don’t always sell themselves to the highest bidder (e.g., Hitler, Saddam and Gaddafi).

While working on his latest film “The Ghost” in Germany, Polanski “occasionally avoided the set, directing through a remote communications setup and leading some members of the cast and crew to believe that he was trying to make apprehension more difficult…,” the New York Times reported. If Polanski is extradited to America and deposited in San Quentin, his remote control filmmaking skills should come in handy.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

The New York Times sees a trend and is grief-stricken. In spite of the current economic crisis, European populations are rejecting socialistic political parties and are running into the open arms of the right – in some cases, the far right. “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse. Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to ‘irrational exuberance,’ greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures. Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism…” Gee, that’s a shame.

While America has had its share of turmoil since declaring its independence in 1776, the Euro-weenies have suffered through Bonapartism, International Socialism and National Socialism, in all their various shades of gray. For the Europeans, beating their tinny heads against reality’s brick wall is starting to hurt. Waiting for the free lunch that never comes is like waiting for Godot. The Europeans are starting to wise up to the fact that the alchemy of socialism is very successful at transforming gold into lead. What escapes the New York Times, but is starting to dawn on our Euro-weenie cousins, is that the fairest, most efficient system for redistributing wealth is capitalism – a.k.a., a job. As was the case with the Soviet Union and continues in Castro’s Cuba, redistributing poverty is socialism’s only virtue. Obama is behind the curve on this reality.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Everyone has read the horrendous events surrounding the Manson Family slayings. The History Channel recently told the story of the Tate-Labianca murders through interviews with those who were willing members of Manson’s clan. Central to the program was Linda Kasabian, the lookout during the Tate murders – who has been in hiding since her testimony sent Charlie Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles “Tex” Watson to prison in 1969. Her’s is a cautionary tail for weak-minded souls drawn into personality cults.

Kasabian’s friend Catherine “Gypsy” Share invited Linda to join the Manson cult when Kasabina’s marriage fell apart:

I told Linda that we were a group of people that took care of each other, and loved each other, and we were one…Linda was very quick and open to coming to the ranch..being with people who would love her and take care of her and Tonya (Kasabian’s baby daughter).

Spahn Ranch was very peaceful. Everyone was very loving to each other. Everyone was trying to get away from the cities and society.

Kasabian recalls Gypsy’s build up to meeting Manson:

She did mention that Charlie Manson…he was a man that everybody looked up to. She told me he was beautiful…and ‘he would take care of you and your daughter.’ It would just be lovely.

Linda Kasabina’s first act on behalf of her new family was to steal money from her husband:

I was willing to take money – I didn’t do it to hurt my husband – but for acceptance within the family. Stealing $5,000 from somebody was a major thing. It wasn’t like taking, you know, five dollars or stealing cigarettes out of your mom’s purse.

After I had brought the money back to the ranch, I finally got to meet him. Meeting Charlie for the first time was very exciting.

There was a magnetism about him – charisma, charm, power. He gave me the feeling that I would be cared for.

Linda Kasabian was a desperate person looking for someone to care for her and her child. She found a community that offered the trappings of a traditional family. It was a small step to pinch others money to deepen the acceptance of her new “family” and its leader. Such is the nature of personality cults. Unlike traditional families, where love is freely given, counterfeit families charge admission. It includes abandoning any sense of individuality to advance the interests of the group. The price that is paid is usually at someone else’s expense. Does any or all of the above have a familiar ring to it?

Nowhere is this desperate need for a counterfeit family more on display than at Obama’s Organize for America website:

The American People Are on the same page, and We all want better lives, healthcare, peace prosperity, and security. The American people are unified and are walking in complete solidarity when it comes to the Great People of the United States of America Advancing to greatness and prominence.

That’s quite a declaration. The assumption that everyone agrees unquestioningly with Charlie…err, Obama, is nothing short of stunning.

Of Manson, former Los Angeles assistant district attorney Vincent Bugliosi said:

He was a very…sophisticated con man…but he tried to cleverly masquerade behind the common image of a hippie.

Manson’s strength was his ability to attract the weak to his family in order to dismantle what little remained of their individuality. He could then exploit them for his purposes. A community willing to be “organized” by definition isn’t comprised of people willing to think for themselves. Linda Kasabian said of Manson:

I eventually felt very safe and protected. We were like his children…we were his children.

That “safe and protected” family was willing to perform unspeakable acts at the bidding of its counterfeit father. For the soulless thralls at Organize for America, the United States of America  is nothing more than a transcontinental Spahn Ranch.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

After Iran successfully tested a multiple mobile missile launcher, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard spokesman said, “The message of the war game for some arrogant countries which intend to intimidate is that we are able to give a proper, strong answer to their hostility quickly.” Iran must have heard President Obama intends to scrap missile defense for our European partner Poland. Our president is turning out to be something of a comfort to his mutually “respected” friends in Tehran.

Two days ago, the U.S., France and Britain announced the existence of a secret nuclear research facility near Iran’s holy city of Qom. As a shocked foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times reported, “Nuclear experts said the details that have emerged about the site and the fact it was being developed secretly are strong indications that Iran’s nuclear program is not only for peaceful purposes, as the country has long maintained.” Gee, you think? Former U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton has been saying this for years. But poor Bolton’s warnings didn’t carry as much weight as the word of a former ACORN community organizer from Chicago and his timid allies from crumbling European states.

However, the Times assures us that U.S. intelligence, which didn’t see 9/11 coming, “believes that Iranian leaders have not yet made the decision to build a weapon.” I’m sure after spending added billions of dollars to build an attack-proof underground nuclear weapons laboratory, Iran’s mullahs will say, “on second thought, forget it.”

An aid to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, didn’t get the CIA memo. “This new facility, God willing, will become operational soon and will blind the eyes of the enemies,” Golpayegani told the press. The crackpots in Iran don’t need the blinding flash of an atomic bomb to close the eyes of the willfully blind Obama administration.

The facility near Qom is estimated to have 3,000 centrifuges to process the nuclear isotopes needed to fuel an atomic weapon. Iran’s Natanz facility possesses 8,000 centrifuges. But you shouldn’t worry, the Times assures us “Washington has been pushing for heavier sanctions if Iran does not agree to end enrichment.” Many experts estimate Iran will have a nuclear weapon in about one year. Tic, tic, tic…

By Mr. Curmudgeon

As often stated on this blog, the Republican Party and conservatism are mutually exclusive things. Now, the media (who tend to lump the two together) is starting recognize the Grand Canyon gulf between the two. The Tea Party is having the effect of showing establishment go-along-to-get-along Republicans that carrying water for the Democrats is not a politically safe policy heading into the primary season. The New York Times reported:

…pushback on national Republicans is striking because it comes at a time when many in the party believe the political environment is rapidly improving for them and after party strategists were initially keen on the early effort to single out Senate choices.

Yet in Florida, the former House speaker, Marco Rubio, has refused to abandon his quest for the Republican Senate nomination despite the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s quick blessing of the candidacy of Gov. Charlie Crist. The perception that the national party was going to meddle in the Colorado primary on behalf of Jane Norton, the former lieutenant governor, upset people there.

In Illinois, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a man party leaders wanted in the race, is seeing his conservative credentials challenged. Republican contenders in Missouri, Ohio and California who are seen as the establishment choice have also encountered turbulence.

To some, the resistance is an extension of the grass-roots distrust of the government that was on vivid display during town-hall-style meetings this summer and at the recent conservative protest on the National Mall. Though much of the antipathy was aimed at Democrats, there is unhappiness with Republicans at the national level as well, with home-grown conservatives citing them as part of the overall problem.

And it’s about time. What good is having a Republican majority in both houses of congress if the same do-nothing Republicrats return to power? They were in control for twelve years and left very little to show for it. The up coming mid-term elections are important in one profound respect: it will show whether the Republican Party is to be taken seriously as a principled conservative opposition party to Obama’s socialism or whether the Tea Party needs to field its own candidates. The question is whether the Republican Party leadership is smart enough to stay out of the conservative’s way. What Sen. Barry Goldwater said in his acceptance speech upon winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 is applicable to Obama’s lust for power:

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

As to the charge that today’s Tea Party conservative activists are dangerous extremists – a charge leveled by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – Goldwater also provided an answer:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Political geldings like George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain have emasculated the label “conservative”. I would rather be labeled an extremist than a squishy “compassionate conservative.” It is time for these “reach-across-the-aisle Republicans to step aside so better men and women – those with spines – might reestablish that justice the timid will not defend.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Workers continue to be laid-off at nearly half-a-million a month. And the future prospects for a growing job market are bleak. According to the U.S. Labor Department, since the end of 2008 jobs in manufacturing are down 47%; jobs in construction are off 22%; in education and health care, jobs are down 21%. Even jobs that generate no national wealth – in state and local government – are down 17%. The cure for what ails the economy is capital formation. President Obama is determined that government takes that capital and future monies to drive up government debt, which denies the unemployed hope for the future.

“Workers of the world unite” was the tired cry to rise from the throat of every crackpot revolutionary of the 20th Century. Obama just modified it to fit on a bumper sticker – “hope and change.” As America revisits unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, unemployed workers of America unite – you have nothing to lose but Obama’s “change.”

When Islamic terrorists need more ammo or a rocket propelled grenade, they know where to go – the arsenal, also known as a mosque. Jihadists know the Western World is too squeamish to enter the hallowed confines of hate. George W. Bush refused to provide U.S. Marines cover by first bombarding the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. In the good old days of World War II, cities held by the enemy were bombed from the air before U.S. troops were sent into harm’s way; it gave them a fighting chance. Not so today, multicultural sensitivity is the weapon the morally confused West uses against itself. And no one knows this better than Iran.

According to the Times of London, “Britain, France and the United States set the stage for a dramatic confrontation with Iran when they revealed the existence of a secret nuclear site inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom as evidence of Tehran’s efforts to deceive the international community.” Now, Iran hides its nuclear research facilities near mosques like its terrorist minions hide their conventional weapons. In Obama’s Cairo speech last June, the president said of Iran, “There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.” Is it likely Britain, France and the United State will get past their “mutual respect” for Iran in time to bomb its nuclear facilities before an atomic weapon is produced? Not if they take the usual route of relying on pointless United Nation’s resolutions.

Remember Saddam Hussein? He got past U.N. resolutions using his nation’s petro billions to buy U.N. officials in what became known as the food for oil scandal. Last time I looked, Iran’s chief export was oil.

The terminally useless Jimmy Carter began America’s feeble dance with Iran, when the Ayatollah Khomeini took 53 U.S. embassy personnel hostage in1979. Twenty years later, Jimmy Carter’s old and discredited weakness is seen as strength by a new and equally feeble administration. Obama looks to the French and British (bought by oil money – Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s) to help rein-in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Based on recent history, the smart money is betting on Iran. It won’t be long before Cold War fallout shelters are back in vogue.

Addressing the San Francisco Closing Session of the United Nations Conference on June 26, 1945, President Harry S Truman said, “All Fascism did not die with Mussolini. Hitler is finished–but the seeds spread by his disordered mind have firm root in too many fanatical brains. It is easier to remove tyrants and destroy concentration camps than it is to kill the ideas which gave them birth and strength. Victory on the battlefield was essential, but it was not enough. For a good peace, a lasting peace, the decent peoples of the earth must remain determined to strike down the evil spirit which has hung over the world for the last decade.” On the podium next to the president was the U.N. conference’s secretary-general Alger Hiss – U.S. State Department functionary and, as it happens, Soviet spy. If the United States owes a corrupt world an apology for anything, it is for having created such a hive of scum and villainy.

President Obama used all his rhetorical skills to meet the low expectations of the crackpots seated in the U.N. General Assembly. “We have set a clear and focused goal: to work with all members of this body to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies — a network that has killed thousands of people of many faiths and nations, and that plotted to blow up this very building.” How fortunate for the assembled delegates that on 9/11 New York’s Twin Towers, and the nearly 3,000 Americans in and around the structures, took the brunt of al Qaeda’s attack so the U.N. might live. The president continued with his usual gibberish about disarming America in the face of growing nuclear threats from abroad, urging the world to unite against the real common enemy – non-existent global warming – and pushing hard for the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist nation state. He received more applause from the U.N. than he got during his recent address before a joint session of congress.

Snappy dresser and Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, provided Obama’s closing act:

I congratulate our son the president, Obama, because for the first time to attend our General Meeting as President of the United States, and commend him because he is the host country.

Do not disagree at all with his speech Obama before me, is entirely different speech from speech that any American president we ever had, the previous American presidents have been terrorizing the world and they stand on this podium, and that they will lead the world and threatened of differences…

The young black Kenyan African does not have my support. He is only a puppet and the world knows it…

His personal translator mangled Gaddafi’s speech, which was a mixture of conspiracy theories and just plain insanity, coupled with stage fright. The speech went on for an hour and a half. Back in Libya, the al-Jamahiriya newspaper hailed (in a Hitler sort of way) the great leader’s mesmerizing speech:

Today, the voice of Gaddafi is heard all over the world… Today, his thoughts shook the old building of the United Nations and blow up the old minds of a world that lives in the shadows of WWII’s outcomes. For the first time, people throughout the world can breathe after leader Muammer Gaddafi’s speech in the UN.

At America’s al-Jamahiriya, the New York Times, Obama was similarly hailed:

President Obama, in his first visit to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb nuclear weapons. The successes came as Mr. Obama told leaders that the United States intended to begin a new era of engagement with the world in a sweeping address to the General Assembly in which he sought to clearly delineate differences between himself and the administration of President George W. Bush.

The differences between the two men couldn’t be more stark. It was a rare, lucid, non-vegetarian moment for the mostly mutton-headed Bush to proceed with Reagan’s strategic missile defense. Obama gave it away for a Russian promise to “consider” drafting a worthless U.N. resolution against Iran. Today, Alger Hiss is having a good laugh in hell.