By Mr. Curmudgeon

And another R-I-N-O bites the dust. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who during the ObamaCare debate said she did not have a problem with a government run health care scheme, was denied the Republican nomination to serve another six years as Alaska’s Senator. Instead, Tea Party and Sarah Palin-supported challenger Joe Miller will face down the Democratic challenger this November.

When Murkowski realized defeat was in the cards, she let it be known she would like to run as the Libertarian candidate, which was news to the Libertarians. The five-member executive committee of the Libertarian Party hastily convened an emergency meeting to decide the issue. Emerging from the powwow, Alaska’s Libertarian Party Chairman Scott Kohlhass said, “Let’s put this to rest; it’s not happening.”

How brain dead does one have to be to believe Libertarians would allow a big-government Republican to highjack a political party that takes its small government principles seriously? What did she take them for, Republicans?

Murkowski’s desperation is understandable. She first landed the Senate seat when appointed to it by her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, in 2002. She just hated giving back the gift daddy so graciously awarded his precious little princess. It was Murkowski’s sense of entitlement that drove her to seek another political party to front her ambitions. There’s always Alaska’s Green Party.

Here in Florida, milquetoast Gov. Charlie Crist is equally clueless. When it became clear Florida voters would reject Crist’s Obama-friendly bid for the Republican Senate nomination, he bolted his party to run as an independent. The latest Rasmussen poll reports the Tea Party-supported Republican Marco Rubio leads Crist by 10 points (40 to 30 percent). Of Crist’s “supporters,” Rasmussen finds only 45% are certain to cast their vote for him. Wow, now that’s what I call “leadership we can believe in.”

This begs the question: “Will these Republican milquetoasts ever go away?” It appears not. So, it remains for us – the long-suffering Republican voter – to relentlessly sucker-punch these gutless hangers-on at the polls.

Go Tea Party!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

They tried calling them Astroturf. They tried calling them racists. But the Tea Party continues to grow as does the country’s admiration for them. The left, and their mouthpiece the New York Times, is elbow deep in their bag of tricks to find just the right slur that will stick to the growing small-government cross-party coalition, and think they have it. We all must hate the Tea Party because – are you ready – they are rich. No, really.

“Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich,” says the desperate and wild-eyed Paul Krugman.

And there’s even a conspiracy theory to go along with the charge. “Three heavy hitters rule [the Tea Party]. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans,” says New York Times theater critic turned political commentator Frank Rich.

“And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far?” asks Krugman. They are losing their Congressional seats in Republican Party state conventions and in the primaries to Tea Party-friendly candidates. The rest, like the milquetoast John McCain, will remain mum until after the elections. By then, it will be too late for even the media-loved Arizona maverick to be of much help to his “friends across the aisle.”

If, as the Times suggests, we wealthy Tea Partiers (I for one am still waiting for my check from Rupert Murdoch) pose such a threat to our new and improved hope-and-change nation, why not form a counter Tea Party?

The aforementioned multi-zillionaire Warren Buffett backed Hillary Clinton before switching to Obama. If all it takes is a little cash to start a game-changing mass movement, why not lean on the “Oracle of Omaha” for some scratch?

Soulless materialists on the left can’t believe people are moved more by principle than money. In the Chicago mindset of community organizer Obama and his personality cult, everyone is on the take. It’s just the way business is done. And that has turned out to be their Achilles heel.

They cannot fathom why any American would not wish to have his life (and death if Obama’s health care monstrosity is allowed to survive) micromanaged by Washington Czars and bureaucrats. And that Americans should fear that Obama’s phenomenal debt threatens generations yet unborn, is beyond their comprehension.

That the citizenry should be up in arms just because Obama’s Justice Department is suing Arizona for attempting to prevent Mexico’s millions from becoming the nation’s largest welfare dependent is beyond them.

And they are still scratching their heads at the full-throated opposition to a 13-story Muslim monument to mass-murder two blocks from Ground Zero.

In their minds, the $800 billion in “stimulus” was a payoff for us to look the other way. And it’s the left’s obsession with money (mostly yours) that goes to the heart of the problem.

The crowd at the Glenn Beck “Restore Honor” rally totaled over 500,000 because the cause they gathered for involved God and Honor, two intangibles. You can’t put a price on invisible realities.

The counter gathering held by the race hustler and shakedown artist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, only mustered a few hundred. His “Reclaim the Dream” rally was more about reclaiming the momentum for Obama’s graft-laden dream than Martin Luther King’s. After all, King said men should not be “judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Rev. Al is unfamiliar with the concept of character because there’s no money in it.

Over 200 years ago, American’s declared their independence based on intangible truths; the Unalienable Right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

They pledged their fortunes to win our freedom; an intangible truth they felt was worth the price to secure their greatest possession, and what the impoverished materialistic left so desperately lacks – “sacred Honor.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

While we were distracted by President Obama’s domestic transformative changes for America, a little known international project was underway in the nation. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent functionaries around the country to compile information for a report meeting the guidelines of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

According to the State Department report, “This document gives a partial snapshot of the current human rights situation in the United States, including some of the areas where problems persist in our society.”

This, of course, begs the question: who were the UPR consultants that met with Hillary’s State Department minions? Here’s a partial list:

* Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, host organization…the ACLU
* National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Urban Justice Center
* American Indian Law Center, Navajo Nation
* NAACP
* American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
* Housing Action Illinois, John Marshal Law School
* Human Rights Watch
* Open Society Institute

In other words, the US is being accused of human rights abuses by every domestic crackpot organization demanding more redistribution of your income or a kinder, gentler approach in dealing with international Islamic jihad. And that’s not all.

According to the State Department report, “A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.”

And so, the Obama administration has presented a report, the first the US has ever submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Commission, admitting to an international human rights violation – the State of Arizona’s attempt to secure its southern border with Mexico.

And who sits on the United Nations Human Rights Commission? Cuba, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Pakistan, Angola and China are but a few. And Obama hopes they are gracious enough to accept his apology on our behalf and his promise to force all fifty US states to live up to the high expectations of Cuba and other UN dictatorial member states.

Now that Obama has recognized the UN as the guarantor of human rights, something no past US president was ever so deranged to do, what will happen should “We the People” violate Cuba or China’s interpretation of human rights?

There are always sanctions and embargos – even military action in extreme cases.

When I was a kid, there was a local restaurant whose owner placed a large billboard facing a busy boulevard. The sign read “Get the US out of the UN.”

When will Republicans get it through their thick skulls that another winning plank for their party is our nation’s withdrawal from the world body?

The left will accuse the GOP of turning the US into a rogue state. The opposite is true. America would assert its independence for a second time in world history by refusing to be subject to an organization comprised of corrupt and evil rogue states.

I have always believed that there is only one act for which the US owes the world a sincere apology – the establishment of the United Nations.

But that’s one apology Obama will never make.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

In Tuesday’s primary, hapless Arizona rank-and-file Republican voters elected the pea-brained brontosaur John McCain to lead the GOP charge in November. Pathetic. What were they thinking?

McCain spent much of the primary campaign telling Arizonans he wasn’t that “maverick” so loved and admired by the New York Times. As Michael Stickings wrote at the HuffingtonPost, “I mean, the guy must be losing his mind, or must have lost a good chunk of it already. Either that, or he’s so stupid or arrogant as to think that no one actually remembers all the maverick talk during the ‘08 campaign.” John McCain certainly knows his constituents.

“I’m convinced that Republicans will win in November and we will regain the majorities in both the Senate and the House,” McCain said in his victory speech. “And when we do, we will stop the out of control spending and tax increases and repeal and replace ObamaCare.”

McCain uses the phrase “repeal” to give hope to a majority of Americans angry over Obama’s totalitarian health care monstrosity. But it’s the “replace” portion of McCain’s statement that should send a shiver up the spine of every freedom-loving American. McCainCare can only mean ObamaCare-Lite.

If Republicans win a majority of seats in the United States Senate, it will be the task of conservatives and Tea Party members to marginalize the brontosaur.

The McCain victory signals a more ominous trend within the GOP. It’s a sign that moderate Democrats, having bolted their party over the decades because of its hard-left lurch, are diluting what little conservative testosterone remains in the Grand Old Party.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Obama recovery isn’t all the mainstream media assured us it’s cracked up to be. “The Federal Reserve will meet on Tuesday faced with a pivotal decision about whether to abandon its presumption that the economy is gradually picking up steam and begin to consider new steps to keep the recovery from sputtering out,” reports the New York Times.

Worse still, the crisis Obama didn’t want to go to waste seems to be worsening. “A string of developments, including the weak jobs report last Friday, has altered the sentiment within the central bank, leading Fed policy makers to stop worrying for the moment about the increasingly remote prospect of inflation. Instead, they are increasingly focused on the potential for the economy to slip into a deflationary spiral of declining demand, prices and wages.” In other words, hello Great Depression II.

As the nation completes the initial two year shock of what is shaping up to be another economic depression, the Fed needs to re-examine the Keynesian presumptions that said massive government intervention in the economy is what got us out of the last one. Bush and Obama’s bailouts and “stimulus” didn’t jumpstart the economy, stop the loss of jobs or stabilize the housing market. The reason? Because the economic ills now besetting us are the result of government interventions.

Obama would have us believe “Bush policies” alone caused the crash. The reality of our situation is that our two-party political system failed the nation by burdening society and the economy with entitlements. The housing bubble, and the financial crisis that resulted from the bust, occurred because of a government policy that declared home ownership an entitlement. Isn’t that why banks were forced to make sub-prime loans? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought those sub-prime loans in order to keep the Ponzi scheme rolling.

When the crisis hit, Rep. Barney Frank – who kept telling us Freddie and Fannie were solvent – blamed capitalism and championed financial reform so government could increase the scope of its economic intervention.

A year ago last June, President Obama held the first in a series of White House summits on health care reform…the same day the trustees for Social Security and Medicare announce the federal entitlement programs were nearing bankruptcy. Now, the Congressional Budget Office warns us that the nation’s entitlement spending is “unsustainable.” Gee, you think?

Thank you two-party system.

As the economic crisis deepens, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called Congress back from recess to pass a $26-billion “jobs bill” to bailout teacher and state public employee unions. Big government sure takes care of the little guy…big-government little guys. More insidiously, it signals that our big government ruling class is circling the wagons. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Olympia Snowe and others among Washington’s bipartisan big-government establishment seem to be consolidating their political base in advance of our worsening depression. And that base is not “We the People” but the bureaucratic class…America’s permanent and unelected rulers.

Abraham Lincoln said, “…as a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.” Free men, it appears, chose suicide.

Americans may not be able to articulate why they are angry with Washington or why they have an especially strong anti-incumbent rage this election season. But they need reminding that our melting entitlement nation is all their doing…no one in big-government Washington, Republican or Democrat, shot their way to power. You put them there.

However, in the elections to come, the nation has a chance to redeem itself and start to dig out of the financial and political hole we find ourselves. Americans need to wake up to the disaster we face and remedy it by rejecting the destructive status quo with the Constitutional tools the Founders gave a free and not dependent people.

Tea Party! Tea Party! Tea Party!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The New York Times is very worried. The “impartial” flagship of the mainstream media is concerned by the impending doom awaiting Democrats and the effect their political demise will have on the progress of Obama’s socialist hope and change. “Put most broadly,” said Sunday’s Times editorial, “the Democrats have been failing to delineate the differences between themselves and Republicans, to remind voters what Republicans would do if returned to power and how little their policies have changed from those during the two terms of President George W Bush.” Wow! That’s quite an admission, and something the Tea Party has been saying for nearly two years.

As upsetting as it is for most Republicans-first-conservatives-second to hear, Obama took “compassionate conservatism” to its logical conclusion, and in a big way. This election in many ways is a contest between those who believe government is the god-like instrument of compassion (Pelosi Democrats and George W Bush Republicans) and the much-hated Tea Party, which believes that a government that “gives” must “take.” And that today’s dangerous level of taking requires the kind of unbridled power that violates the spirit and letter of the Constitution.

Under the heading “A few suggestions,” the Times advises Democrats to use “the revenue from reinstating taxes on the rich to put people back to work, rebuilding and repairing the country. Providing robust support for state and local governments, many of which have cut past the bone. Repairing the unemployment system so that it is a real safety net and not a political tool.”

The left – and its mouthpiece the New York Times – are too dense to realize all above arguments are an admission of government failures. The New Deal, The Great Society and Republican compassionate conservative programs have already redistributed much of the nation’s wealth. Obama has doubled the national debt in less than two years and the jobless rate, even by the administration’s own admission, will rise above its current 9.5%.

Now the Times argues that Democrats need to break from the past by pushing ahead with Obama’s transformation of a free America into an authoritarian socialist state, securing its power base by restructuring the unemployment benefits system as a political tool to create a new permanent dependent class to secure the Democratic Party’s power base – ala Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

And Democrats, the Obama media and Beltway Republicans say the Tea Party is extremist for demanding that government be “bound by the chains of the Constitution.” The Tea Party’s very existance is an indictment of our failed two-party system, and why the Tea Party works tirelessly to convince sleepy Republican rank-and-file voters how important it is to the future of a free America that the GOP be purged this primary season of the incumbent Beltway Republicans who paved the way for Obama’s hope and change. They can’t be trusted to repeal any part of Obama’s agenda if they are part of a new Republican majority in Congress.

Tea Party! Tea Party! Tea Party!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Maxine Waters is in trouble. The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to hand down an indictment of sorts for alleged violations of House ethics rules by the 20-year member of Congress sometime in September. According to the Los Angeles Times, Waters is said to have met with then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, urging him to speed taxpayer bailouts to minority-owned banks on the verge of collapse. According to Paulson, Waters failed to mention that her hubby, Sidney, had a financial stake in one of these minority-owned banks (OneUnited) estimated to be between $500,000 and $1 million. At least we can now put a name to one beneficiary of the Bush bailouts.

And the Bush administration weren’t the only ones helping Waters through her personal financial crisis. “According to a memo summarizing an interview with [Barney] Frank, investigators wrote that Waters told him she was ‘in a predicament because Sidney had been involved in the bank, but OneUnited people were coming to her for help. She knew she should say no, but it bothered her.’ Since the bank was based in Frank’s home state [Massachusetts], he offered to have his staff look into the institution’s problems. Waters’ spokesman said the conversations with Frank took place weeks after the meeting with Treasury Department officials.”

The House Ethics Committee tried to spare Barney embarrassment by not specifically identifying him in their report. So they referred to him as “Representative A.” But the report let the cat out of the bag by describing “Representative A” as the “chairman of the House Financial Services Committee”…a post Barney has held since 2006.

According to a 2004 Los Angeles Times story, Congresswoman Waters has used her public office for her family’s private profit. Daughter Karen Waters started a company that prints sample ballots mailed to her mother’s softheaded constituents called the “slate mailer,” which prints voting suggestions.

“She [Karen Waters] also has been paid by a nonprofit organization she and her mother set up, funded in part by special interests her mother helps in Washington, that throws parties her mother hosts at Democratic conventions. Waters’ husband has collected fees for opening doors with his wife’s political allies on behalf of a bond firm seeking government business. Son Edward Waters has shared in the slate mailer proceeds and has occasionally worked as a consultant to campaigns his mother supported.”

Aren’t you happy your tax dollars have played such an important role in the Waters family success? And as the Times reported back in 2004, “The practice has accelerated as tougher ethics laws make it harder to offer favors directly to members of Congress.”

Oh, just in passing. That old Times story also mentioned another familiar name. “The Times has identified five House members and seven senators whose family members have worked for clients that benefited from the lawmakers’ official actions. They included two sons and a son-in-law of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the newly named minority leader, who in 2002 introduced legislation to free up public land in Nevada that benefited their lobbying clients.”

So, that’s what Democrats mean when they say government should go all-out to help “working families.”

At a 2005 pro-abortion rally held in DC, Rep. Maxine Waters yelled, “George W. Bush, go to hell!” But in her hour of financial need, Waters knew who to turn to…a compassionate conservative administration with a perpetual “kick me” sign taped to its back.

Waters hasn’t the class to say it, so it’s left to us overburdened taxpayers…thanks George!

By Mr. Curmudgeon

You have to give Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) points for trying. When she formed the House Tea Party Caucus, she thought she and her measly 28 House Republicans distanced themselves from the incumbency that taints every member of Congress…no matter their party affiliation. It doesn’t seem to be working.

Campaigning for Missouri’s Republican Roy Blunt, Bachmann’s cheerleading met with Tea Party resistance. “’Roy Blunt voted for TARP and Cash for Clunkers. For Michele Bachmann to come to Missouri and give the impression that all the Missouri Tea Parties support Roy Blunt is an abomination of everything we have been standing up for,” said Franklin County Tea Party leader Jedidiah Smith.

Branson, Missouri, Tea Party leader Eric Farris bluntly stated the principles that separate his members from Beltway Republicans, “We encourage all voters to examine the voting records, positions, and values of all candidates, to determine whether they promote the core values of the Tea Party Movement: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally-limited government, and free markets.” Old Eric is setting the bar much too high for many of Washington’s Republican accommodators.

The Jefferson County Tea Party hit the Beltway boys below the belt…deservedly so, “Big spending Republicans that voted to increase the size and scope of Government during the Bush years are part of the problem, not the solution…If posing as a fiscal conservative were a crime, Roy Blunt would be on the top 10 wanted list.”

The Washington Post reports that a main strategy for desperate incumbent Democrats this election season is to “link the Republican Party to some of the most extreme elements of the ‘Tea Party’ movement…”

Stumblebum Beltway Republican’s should be so lucky.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“John Kerry knows that the power of America is our values and ideals,” said Gen. Wesley Clark at the 2003 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. “John Kerry knows that our soldiers embody the best of America’s values: Service. Sacrifice. Courage. Compassion.”

When Democrats speak of compassion, of course, they mean the act of taking your money and giving it to targeted constituent groups to buy votes. In fact, there was no better proof of this than in Sen. Kerry’s own tax returns.

From 1992 to 1995, Kerry’s charitable contributions totaled $3,034. George W. Bush and his wife Laura, on the other hand, contributed a total of $91,442 from 1991 to 1993. When Kerry and his fellow Democrats open their hearts, they don’t necessarily open their wallets. However, you wallets are a different matter all together.

That point was driven home when the Boston Herald reported that Kerry is docking his $7-million yacht, the 75-foot New Zealand-built sloop Isabel, in neighboring Rhode Island. In doing so, Kerry saves $70,000 a year in excise tax compassion.

When confronted by local media, Kerry said, “There is nothing more to say about it… Let’s get this very straight. I’ve said consistently that we will pay our taxes. We’ve always paid our taxes. It is not an issue. Period. We’ve always paid our taxes, we’ll pay our taxes. Can I get out of here please?”

And that’s the plea of those of us trapped by Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and compassionate Republican’s authoritarian big-government. “Can we get out of here please?” Their answer, of course, is a hardy “No!” Because, in the age of Obama, the price of compassion has gone way up.

Speaking to the Netroots Nation convention (a collection of lefty blogers and activists) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Nancy Pelosi tried to calm the frustration of conventioneers upset that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi nexus hasn’t yet pushed America into matching the compassion of Castro’s Cuba, “We can do only so much maneuvering, but we really do need outside persuasion. Just ourselves alone can’t make this happen. If you want these changes to come, make us do it.”

And this November, the Tea Party hopes to stop her “maneuvering” and those who make her “do it.” Love of country, freedom and real compassion compels them.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat paid America’s conservative movement (read Tea Party) the ultimate compliment. Regarding Harry Reid’s admission that cap-and-trade carbon emissions legislation is dead, Douthat writes, “If their bill is dead, it was the American conservative movement that ultimately killed it. Climate legislation wasn’t like health care, with Democrats voting ‘yes’ in lockstep. There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there’s a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.”

In what has to be a major blow to the New York Times, Beltway Republicans appear to be more frightened of the Tea Party than a verbal knuckle-wrapping by columnists at the Times. Environmental supporters of the legislation blame “…figures like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, erstwhile supporters of cap-and-trade who have steadily backpedaled away from it.” It just underscores the importance to the Republican cause for voters to “backpedal” from accomodationist Beltway Republicans in the primaries.

Douthat makes the usual mainstream media claim that to be a Republican automatically makes you a conservative. John McCain? Lindsey Graham? Conservatives? Really? Mavericks, certainly. And by mavericks, I mean the kind of Republican that has compromised with every damaging big-government enterprise that now brings our once great country to the brink of collapse. This brand of Republican conservatism hasn’t the stones to perform the duty implied by its very name…to conserve. They are too busy helping Obama’s Democrats deconstruct America into a leftist banana republic.

It’s bad enough that Beltway Republicans let the New York Times define conservatism. The question that puzzles me is – why do Republican voters?