By Mr. Curmudgeon

“There is no question that there’s a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero mosque. She then added ominously, “I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.” Interesting that Madam Speaker isn’t all that interested in who is behind the funding of the mosque at Ground Zero.

Forget for the moment the issue of a triumphal 13-story Islamic monument built to shadow over Ground Zero, the Democratic majority is concerned with all the opposition to their rule in our democratic republic. Leaders such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro don’t have such concerns, making all their community organizing simpler and more streamlined.

The debate over the mosque is not a question of totalitarian Islamic ideology at odds with a pluralistic and free society. Its merely “a zoning issue in New York City.” And isn’t that a matter best left to an unelected zoning commission? Nancy didn’t like being confronted by questions concerning zoning. It’s beneath her.

Democrats have had to deal with a lot of uncomfortable questions: at health care town hall meetings and at anti-ObamaCare rallies outside the Capitol Building. Average Americans can’t possibly be that jealous of their liberties, can they? There must be some evil agency working against our betters. Hillary Clinton once called them the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” And every counter revolution has a leader and financiers, don’t they?

The millions of Americans turning out for Tea Party rallies across the country, says Nancy, are nothing but Astroturf – paid agitators like ACORN activists. When reporters ask Nancy uncomfortable questions concerning her Constitutional authority to micromanage our lives, she asks back, “Are you kidding, are you kidding?”

Nancy doesn’t know anybody in San Francisco who disagrees with her.

Opposition to Democratic rule must be the work of racists, right-wing domestic terrorists or wild-eyed crazies, right? And Nancy must save sane San Franciscans, er, Americans from the millions of mentally challenged opponents of America’s transformation into a bankrupt Castroite paradise.

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

Andrew Breitbart posted a video on his website that has gone viral. In it, angry members of the Obama media confront African-American conservatives defending the Tea Party against the NAACP’s declaration that the grass-roots movement is racist.

A question concerning an incident alleged to have occurred last March 20th, the day the House passed ObamaCare, was asked. On that day, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House members went among the anti-ObamaCare “Code Red” rally outside the Capitol Building to rub ObamaCare stink in the face of the crowd. Rep John Luis (D-Ga) claimed demonstrators spat on him and yelled the “N” word.

Joyce Jones of Black Enterprise asked, “John Luis put his life in considerable risk and danger so that you could stand here and talk about freedoms. And I want to know why it’s so impossible for you to think that…somebody actually did spit on him or call him the ‘N’ word. Why would he lie about that when he’s experienced so much worse?”

Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, replied, “John Luis is a hero, okay, I may disagree with him on a verity of ideological questions…he refused to press charges. Why? Because it is a fraudulent issue. Stop playing with racism. A man in Connecticut just killed nine people playing the victim card and alleged racism. It’s a powder keg, folks. And you should not play games with it in our country. We’ve come a long way and we don’t want to look back.”

Innis was referring to the murder-suicide in Manchester, Connecticut, on August 8th. Omar Thornton, an African-American employee at a Manchester beer distributorship, had just left a hearing where video footage proved he had stolen beer from the company, and was told to quit or he would be fired. Instead, Thornton pulled a handgun and shot eight fellow employees dead before turning the weapon on himself.

According to the Associated Press, Thornton “had complained of racial harassment…but a union official said Thornton had not filed a complaint of racism to the union or any government agency.” A Teamster official told the AP, “It’s got nothing to do with race. This is a disgruntled employee who shot a bunch of people.”

When ObamaCare passed, it’s obvious that Nancy Pelosi hoped against hope for a racial incident when she marched Rep. Luis, her sacrificial lamb, before the Tea Party protestors. And there’s no doubt that a friendly Obama media was alerted to Pelosi’s stunt to capture the moment on video and photos. Instead, the triumphant Democrats were met with jeers and justifiable shouts of condemnation, but to Nancy’s disappointment, no racial slurs.

On Pelosi’s orders, Luis made the charge anyway.

The race card, in other words, was cynically played by a White Liberal to discredit the only credible movement opposed to what she sees as big government’s “essentially unlimited” power. That Luis, a man who was beaten during the civil rights struggle, should stoop so low is breathtaking.

But the race card is wearing thin with most Americans because it is used to excuse a multitude of sins — from the monstrosity of totalitarian ObamaCare to an angry man’s thirst for free beer and his willingness to kill for it.

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

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?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

As Republicans were heading into the presidential primary season of 2008, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol advised conservatives to keep their expectations low, which was the standard Republican state of mind pre and post Ronald Reagan:

“Beyond the normal human frailties that affect all of us, including undoubtedly the commentators at this journal, there is one error that is distorting much conservative discussion of the presidential race. It’s -Reagan nostalgia.

“It’s foolish to wait for another Ronald Reagan. But not just because his political gifts are rare. There’s a particular way in which Reagan was exceptional that many of us fail to appreciate: He was the only president of the last century who came to the office as the leader of an ideological movement.”

And small-thinking Republican voters gave small-thinking John McCain the Republican presidential nomination. Painfully aware of the cosmic ideological void in his soul, McCain managed to pull one idea from the still-pulsing reptilian portion of his brain: he turned to Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin to breathe life into an otherwise dead campaign. To the extent that McCain elicited any stirring in men’s souls was clearly do to Palin’s conservative message and passion.

Contrary to what the New York Times would have us believe, conservatives don’t take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. The grass-roots Tea Party movement that coalesced during the battle over ObamaCare, came seemingly out of nowhere, taking Obama, conservative talk-radio and the Republican establishment by surprise. Beltway Republicans (and Limbaugh for that matter) were horrified that the Tea Party was equal in its contempt of big-government Republicans as Democrats. One Republican recognized the importance of the Tea Party and gave it support…Sarah Palin.

Speaking at the first Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, last February Palin said, “…I will live, I will die for the people of America. Whatever I can do to help. This movement is the future of politics in America….Put your faith in ideas. I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by one leader or operation. This is about the people.”

The media, of course, dismissed Palin’s significance. A.C. Klienheider at Nashvillepost.com reported on the Palin’s speech with the usual dose of venom mingled with a heavy dollop of wishful thinking. “The Tea Party movement is dead,” wrote Klienheider. “The one I was familiar with anyway…Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span…She gave a partisan Republican address.” And, as we now know, it was all part of a JournoList smear campaign against Palin that continues to this day.

With Palin closely identified with the Tea Party, the media would portray the movement as phony “Astroturf” created by Macivalian Republican strategists such as…uh….uh…well, you get the picture.

Then came the Republican primaries. Palin’s endorsements began unseating the very Republican incumbents the media cabal said were the driving force behind the Tea Party. Stranger still, only 28 of 178 House Republican incumbents joined the new House Tea Party Caucus, with the Beltway Republican leadership running from the caucus as fast as their little feet could take them. The American people see through the media lies and steadily identify with the Tea Party’s stated goal of rational Constitutional restraints on government that have all but vanished under Obama.

As the taxpayer-supported mouthpiece of big-government, National Public Radio, admitted, “…Palin’s endorsements in Republican primaries – her most significant political initiative since resigning her post in Alaska last year – have been more adventurous and more successful than her critics (and some of her allies) choose to imagine.”

Today, the Economist magazine published a poll that shows Republicans leaning toward a “leader of an ideological movement” than the usual and tired McCain-like Republican retreads: Sara Palin 28%, Mitt Romney 18%, Newt Gingrich 17%, Mitch Daniels 4%, Tim Pawlenty 1%, Mike Pence 1%, Haley Barbour 1%, John Thune 1%, No preference 17%.

The “no preference” 17%, those independents souls, are most likely to move to the Palin column as her political momentum grows in our increasingly Tea Party America.

As Palin’s star rises, another politician’s is dimming. President Obama now enjoys 34% diehard support among the nation’s desperate hope-and-changers. If that isn’t bad enough, a Quinnipiac poll found that a generic Republican candidate would beat Obama 48% to 40% if the election were held today.

This thought experiment may be a little taxing for Beltway Republicans, but I hope the rest of you will bear with me. Imagine that Republican voters nominate a Reaganesque “leader of an ideological movement” to head the Republican ticket in 2012…instead of the usual generic John McCain-like Republican? If your brain synapses are firing on all cylinders, you know the fate that awaits Obama’s hope and change.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can testify, his friend, former parishioner and fellow damner of America, Barrack Hussein Obama, isn’t all that reluctant to throw those close to him under the wheels of an on-coming bus.

Civil servant Shirley Sherrod, formally with the Agriculture Department’s rural development office in Georgia, was fired after a video surfaced in which she recounted to a meeting of NAACP members how she stuck it to white farmer seeking financial assistance from a big-government bureaucrat. Ms. Sherrod was put off by what she perceived as a taxpayer “trying to show me he was superior to me.” She recounted, with pride, how big government deals with petulant citizens. “…I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough,” said Sherrod, much to the approval of the NAACP gathering.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The NAACP’s national convention in Kansas City, Missouri, was intended to put the president’s most potent political threat – the Tea Party – on the defensive. The organization even passed a resolution proclaiming the Tea Party a danger to “human rights” unless and until it publicly purged its ranks of “racist elements.” Instead, the NAACP was forced to explain – excuse, really – the comments of its prized member Shirley Sherrod.

Now that we’ve established that stupid “racist elements” exist within all groups and walks of life, can we please move on to what’s really threatening America…big government and the imperious federal bureaucrats that spend trillions while withholding their so-called public service?

The Tea Party and Sherrod share one important goal. Both want to reduce “the full force” of our bloated federal government on American citizens. The Tea Party just wants to take it an important step further by reducing the extreme power, cost and size of our bloated federal bureaucracy to match Shirley Sherrod’s lack of enthusiasm.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

During the health care debate, a reporter asked Nancy Pelosi, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” The stunned Pelosi shook her head and answered with a question of her own, “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Later that same day, Nadeam Elshami, a press spokesman for Pelosi told the same reporter, “You can put this on the record: that is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

Eventually, the Speaker’s office did release a statement. “…The Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life…Since virtually every aspect of the health care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.”

Did you get that? By Pelosi’s definition, her power is “unlimited.” The Constitution’s Commerce Clause, granting lawmaker’s power to regulate the commercial activities between the states, in Pelosi’s view, gives big government power to regulate the lives of all individuals who buy the products and services Pelosi regulates. Unless you are willing to live like Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) in a mountain shack of your own making, we’re all pretty much Pelosi’s slaves.

And no one is more in love with that idea than the New York Times. In an editorial titled “The Republicans and the Constitution,” the Old Gray Lady said, “At her [Supreme Court] confirmation hearings, Ms. [Elena] Kagan refused to take Republican bait and agree to suggest limits on the clause’s meaning. This infuriated the conservatives on the Senate Judiciary Committee because it has been that clause, more than any other, that has been at the heart of the expansion of government power since the New Deal.”

Limits on Pelosi’s “unlimited” power? Are you serious? Are you serious?

The Times then gets to the real problem the left has with the Tea Party…and, amazingly, it has nothing to do with race. “Because it can be so broadly interpreted, the [Commerce] clause has been a target for legal conservatives for decades, all the way up to the current Tea Party diatribes against it. Some conservatives have even proposed that the Tea Party push a constitutional amendment to limit its interpretation.”

And there you have it.

As much as the Tea Party threatens the Democrat’s ruling majority this November, their minds (and that of big-government Beltway Republicans) rest easy in the knowledge that the Commerce Clause will remain safely stored in the big-government tool shed to prune away our liberties another day.

But the Times has provided a public service in broaching the subject of amending the Constitution as a means to rain-in Pelosi’s “unlimited” power. “But,” you say, “don’t Constitutional Amendments first originate with Congress to then be decided by two-thirds of the state legislatures?” For all of our nation’s history this has been the case, but that is a mere accident of history.

According to Article V of the U.S. Constitution, “…Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution.”

“Taking the country back” is an often-heard cry at boisterous Tea Party rallies. The sad fact is that until the Commerce Clause is amended to limit Pelosi’s “unlimited” power, taking back the House, Senate and, eventually, the White House is a Pyrrhic victory.

The Tea Party’s strength is at the state level. After the midterm elections, the various state Tea Party’s need to push hard to pressure two-thirds of the nation’s state legislatures to call for a Constitutional Convention to limit Pelosi’s “unlimited” power before we are all rendered federal serfs.

Of course, there are those who fear what amendments might result from such a convention. My answer is simple: “Who do you trust to amend the Constitution? The nation’s sovereign “We the People,” or Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan?” And who do you think Nancy Pelosi trusts?

“A vote against the commerce clause,” said the New York Times editorial “is a vote against some of the best things that government has done for the better part of a century, and some of the best things that lie ahead.”

What the editorial writers at the Times saw as an uplifting closing line to their editorial is actually a frightening warning. For who knows what horrible things “lie ahead” for Americans at the tender mercy of government’s “unlimited” power.