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

Of the health care summit assembled at Blair House last Thursday, the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson said it best. “…Democrats carried a burden into the meeting. On the wrong side of political momentum, they needed a breakthrough of some sort. They didn’t get it.” When House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to ObamaCare as a “dangerous experiment” that would “bankrupt our country,” Obama waved-off these obvious truths by saying, “John, every so often, we have a pretty good conversation trying to get on some specifics, and then we go back to, you know, the standard talking points.”

Poor Rep. Boehner, he just cannot suspend his belief in tangible, three-dimensional reality long enough to consider that anything run by government will drive down costs and improve services. It may never have happened at any time in history, but if we click the heals of our ruby red slippers three times and say, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” we’ll find ourselves back in Kansas with Toto. Dorothy ended up in a kind of Obama reality – back in dreary, Depression-era, Dust Bowl Kansas. And Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are determined roll over the will of the majority of Americans like a Kansas twister.

Sensing that this may be the last time Democrats ever have this kind of power again, Speaker Pelosi is determined to pass ObamaCare by whatever means available. According to CNN, “The House speaker called the legislative tool known as reconciliation ‘a simple majority’ and said, ‘that’s what we’re asking the Senate to act upon.’” However, CNN reminds us, “Democrats passed their version of health care with a slim majority and will be missing several votes because of vacancies…Another major obstacle in passing the Senate health bill in the House and getting it to the president’s desk is abortion. By some estimates, close to a dozen anti-abortion Democrats may vote against the bill because they say it’s not strict enough in making sure taxpayer dollars are not spent on the procedure.” It’s humbling to think that the silenced voice of millions of the unborn is more eloquent in its opposition to ObamaCare than the Tea Party or the confused and tongue-tied Republican leadership in Congress.

Urging on Obama, Pelosi and Reid, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes, “…Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do – and they have the power to do it – is finish the job, and enact health reform.” Actually, the voters will have the last laugh in 2010 and 2012.

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

Days after a Justice Department report exonerated Bush-era lawyers for giving the previous administration a legal thumbs-up on the issue of waterboarding, Attorney General Eric Holder – after much stonewalling – admitted to hiring at least nine lawyers who previously represented Islamic terrorists. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, last November, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Holder, “I want to know more about who is advising the Attorney General. I understand that there are attorneys at the Justice Department working on this issues [trying terrorists in U.S. criminal courts] who either represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups who advocated for them…My request is about establishing transparency and holding the administration to its word to make the Government’s business public.” In response, Holder said, “I will consider that request.” He went on to defend all Obama’s appointees as “patriots” with “national security uppermost in their minds.”

One Justice lawyer with a soft spot in his heart for terror detainees is “patriot” Neal Katyal. Katyal “…is now Principal Deputy Solicitor General…formerly a law professor at Georgetown University, who worked on legal challenges to the Military Commission Act – he represented Osama bin Laden’s driver – and is reportedly still working on detainee questions at the Justice Department,” reports the Washington Examiner.

The Examiner’s Byron York reported that, attorney Jennifer Daskal, “previously advocated for detainees while at Human Rights Watch.” She currently holds a position at the Justice Department’s National Security Division. No wonder Holder was reluctant to tell Sen. Grassley how many ACLU types were advising Justice on detainee issues.

It’s becoming clear what Eric Holder means when he calls Obama’s lawyers patriots. Holder’s men and women are so on fire with patriotic zeal they want to bequeath the blessings of our Constitution on foreign enemies captured in battle. In granting Gitmo detainees civilian criminal trials here at home, Holders Heroes believe they’re adding to the great melting pot of America — it’s part of Obama’s twisted transformative vision for America.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Dim bulb Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is concerned about domestic violence. “I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don’t have jobs…Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive.” Reid made these claims to justify the $15 billion dollar Senate “jobs bill.” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi included domestic violence as a “pre-existing condition” covered under ObamaCare. “You’ve survived domestic violence, and now you are discriminated [against] in the insurance market because you have a pre-existing medical condition. Well, that will all be gone,” said Pelosi.

Reid’s comments seem like a not so veiled threat. With Nevadans unlikely to return Reid to the United States Senate, Reid will join the unemployed later this year, increasing his tendency “to become abusive.” Reid seems to be saying, “reelect me or I’ll go Neanderthal.”

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

“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

The extraordinary times in the early days of America’s war of terror called for extraordinary measures, which included building holding cells for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and waterboarding Al Qaeda terrorists for intelligence to help disrupt plots following 9/11 that may have inflicted further harm on the people of the United States. Today, in the age of Obama, extraordinary measures protect unworkable and dangerous political correctness. President Obama’s Justice Department released a report detailing efforts to charge Bush administration lawyers for advising the president on the legality of using intensified interrogation methods (some say torture) on captured jihadist detainees. The executive branch sought legal advice, as CIA lawyer John Rizzo said, to seek “maximum legal protection for its officers.” Though the report absolves Bush lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo of criminal wrongdoing, it labels their legal opinion as “professional misconduct.”

The Office of Professional Conduct, which issued the report, criticized councilor Yoo for veering away from political correctness in a time of war, declaring “situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective, and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the clients want to hear.” Translation: “You acted in good faith. You did nothing illegal. But your views differ from ours and the ACLU.”

One government official with the correct ACLU worldview is John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism chief. He is so infected by political correctness, he even refuses to call Islamic killers jihadists. “They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan said. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and many, many others must not have gotten Brennan’s memo.

Of the 9/11 hijackers, Osama bin Laden said:

“These young men refused to stay behind and engage in unimportant things. They set out on jihad and hastened to uphold the cause of God and the call of monotheism: ‘There is no god except God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God,” They engaged in jihad against the infidels…

“Each and every matter has its own reality. The reality of this hero, Saeed al-Ghamidi and his brothers is that they showed the truthfulness of their faith by offering themselves and their souls for the sake of God. Thus, they gained a status that greatly angered the infidels, and will continue to anger them for a long time, God willing.”

John Brennan is one of many infidels in the Obama administration incapable of righteous anger for jihadists – political correctness prevents them from believing they even exist. And you can’t waterboard what you don’t see. That presents them with a problem. What do you do with the bearded Koran-readers cooling their heels at Gitmo? Easy, redefine them as American criminals and try them in our courts…problem solved.

If Obama can’t criminalize opposition to his twisted worldview, he will use the Justice Department’s investigative powers to harass you into submission. There is no god except political correctness, and Obama is its messenger.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

With nearly one trillion dollars spent to “stimulate” the economy, and nothing to show for it but a 9.7 percent unemployment rate, the president is suddenly interested in dealing with his massive budget deficit. And President Obama would like Republicans, in the spirit of “reaching across the aisle,” to lend a hand in fleecing the American public for more cash to spread around. “There are some on the right who won’t enter into serious discussions about deficits without preconditions. But those who preach fiscal discipline have to be willing to take the hard steps necessary to achieve it.” That’s Democrat-speak for, “we’ve ordered the meal and finished the dessert, now help us find some poor stiff to stick with the bill.”

Obama found just the Republican to provide cover for big-spending Democrats: accommodationist Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming. Both in 1982 and again in 1990, Simpson joined with Democrats in efforts that were supposed to reduce the federal budget deficit. In the 1990 deal negotiated at Andrews Air Force Base, the agreement called for $2 dollars in spending cuts for every $1 dollar in tax hikes. The Democrats kept the tax hikes and nixed the spending cuts. Simpson is just the kind of Republican Obama needs to co-chair his debt commission. Simpson was easy to distinguish at Obama’s White House ceremony to kick off the creation of the debt commission. He was the guy with the word “chump” written on his forehead with indelible felt marker and a “kick me” sign taped to his back.

Sandra Fabry at Americans for Tax Reform said of the former Senator, “Alan Simpson has a history of walking into a room with the stated goal of reform – and in both cases he voted for higher taxes and higher spending, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. There is no reason to believe that things would be different this time around – when you put everything on the table, including damaging tax hikes, taxpayers will more than likely be sold out.” Fabry is obviously not in tune with Washington terminology. Simpson isn’t “selling out,” he – like Sen. John McCain – just wants to “get things done for the country.” The term selling out sounds so harsh. Obama, Pelosi and Reid would rather we use “bipartisan compromise.” The honeyed words will lesson the sting of the dagger’s blade as they plunge it in our backs.

Gee, I wonder what term Joe-The-Plumber would use to describe Obama’s bipartisan debt commission, and if it’s appropriate to repeat in polite company?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Back in 2007, during the bad old days of the Bush administration, many around the world – including the left here at home – worried after reading press reports that warned of an impending Bush attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups,” wrote Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine. “The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.”

As if by magic, members of America’s crack intelligence community leaked portions of a National Intelligence Estimate, parts of which were later declassified. “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” said the report. Democrats in Congress used the report to rein in any attempt by Bush to needlessly confront Iran on its nonexistent nuclear program. ABC News described the NIE report as creating an “embarrassing situation for the United States as it pushes for a third United Nations resolution against Iran for its nuclear activities.”

The insightful neocon Norman Podhoretz made an interesting point during the controversy regarding the CIA leak. “…I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.”

Today, the New York Times reports, “The United Nation’s nuclear inspectors declared for the first time on Thursday that extensive information they have collected raised concerns about ‘past or current undisclosed activities’ by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear weapon. The unusually strongly worded conclusion seems certain to accelerate Iran’s confrontation with much of the rest of the world.” However, the Times offered a glimmer of hope to Obama’s supporters on the radical fringe, assuring them that “several of President Obama’s top national security advisers have questioned it.”

The Times continued, “Perhaps the most startling revelation in the report is that for the first time Iran told inspectors it was preparing to make its uranium into a metallic form — a step that can be explained by some civilian applications, but is widely viewed as necessary for making the core of an atom bomb.”

If our CIA wasn’t so secretive (that is, when it isn’t leaking misinformation to the New York Times) it would offer a one-word statement in response to the U.N. report, “Oops.”

Back in the 1980s, President Reagan was roundly criticized for running a secret intelligence network from the White House basement. The effort, you may recall, was to overthrow the socialist Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua. Reagan understood what Republican administrations that followed him never figured out: that the CIA is a worthless intelligence gathering body with a leftist and subversive contingent working to undermine American efforts against dangerous external enemies.

Nearly a decade has passed since 9/11, and the paper-shuffling hacks at the CIA still can’t get it right. That intelligence failure cost 3,000 Americans their lives. Will it take the destruction of an entire U.S. city before we wake up to the dangerous inadequacies of the CIA?

We can only hope that when President Obama leaves office in 2012, the Palin administration will do away with the CIA and the Tea Party Congress will charter a new intelligence agency – with Dick Cheney as its director. Hey, if Massachusetts can elect a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, anything is possible.