By Mr. Curmudgeon

Just when you think things couldn’t get anymore absurd in Obama’s “summer of recovery,” it does. Suspected “Grim Sleeper” serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr., currently standing trial for the murder of 10 Los Angeles women, is the beneficiary of a generous L.A. city pension. As a retired garbage collector (9 years), Franklin “will be paid…until he dies,” reports the LA Weekly, providing “an unsettling new chapter about the ways taxpayer money is spent on municipal retirees.” And as the bloated salaries of Bell, California, city officials attest (retired City Manager Bob Rizzo made $800,000 a year), Golden State taxpayers are the indentured servants of the state’s powerful public employee unions.

Back when Franklin first retired on a disability pension in 1991 (he claimed to have injured his right rotator cuff), he received less than $900 a month. Today, thanks to a formula tied to inflation, his monthly government take is $1,658.54. It’s estimated that Franklin has collected about $300,000 so far. “According to the Office of the City Attorney, Franklin cannot be cut off, even if convicted and sent to death row. He or his family will be paid until he dies,” says the LA Weekly.

As sinister as this is, it gets a lot worse. During his time with L.A.’s Sanitation Department, Franklin filed several IODs (Injured on Duty) claims with the city for the months he allegedly committed his murders. Injuries received while lifting and disposing of his victims may have earned Franklin a city-approved “Injured on Duty” sick leave, which translated into a $2,200 monthly salary to stay home – at least during daylight hours.

Is it beginning to dawn on you yet? Government protects its own. It appears the real Grim Sleepers are California taxpayers who allow corrupt government – state, county and city – to hold sway over their lives. And – as may be proved in one case – end them.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Those familiar with history may have thought the Frankish warrior and king, Charles (The Hammer) Martel, saved Christendom and Western Civilization from the invading Muslim hoards at the battle of Tours in AD 732. For centuries, Martel’s victory served as a source of pride considered worthy of passing along to children. That may change. Muslim sensibilities are priority number one in today’s dying Europe.

According to the London Daily Mail, “Schools [in England] are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose belief include Holocaust denial.”

That being the case, how long before the anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which claims Jews use the blood of children during the Passover Feast, is a required part of school curriculum for Great Britain’s children? After all, the poisonous slander is pervasive throughout the Islamic world – the focus of documentaries and multi-part television programs.

The government report went on to say that some schools avoid teaching the Crusades because “the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

England, which for a time stood alone against Hitler, cowers in the face of Islamic denials of reality to appease 6th Century totalitarian throwbacks.

The great Winston Churchill once said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” In today’s Britain, a dangerous cowardice masquerades as cultural sensitivity.

Churchill also said, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

And the greatest quality of courage is survival.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Chicago jury in the trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was finally able to agree on something: that Blago lied to federal agents about his involvement in political fundraising. The other 23 counts in the indictment are less clear to them. After all, it’s not like they had thousands of hours of taped telephone conversations proving Blago used the power of his executive position to muscle political contributions. Oh, wait…they did.

One such conversation had Blago threatening to stall a state increase in Medicaid reimbursements to an Illinois children’s hospital unless a $50,000 contribution was put in the mail…immediately, if not sooner. That’s a tough call for this Chicago jury. Is it really a bribe if, well, you put the guy receiving it in the executive mansion? Think of all the good he can accomplish with that extorted money. And, they think, “it isn’t my money he’s extorting.”

Before you judge the jury, it’s worth reflecting on their dilemma. Swimming in the shark tank that is Chicago, they have learned from experience that the only way to make it in life is at another’s expense. It’s a kind of political Darwinism. Unlike Darwin’s theory that claims man evolved from the lower primates, in the Chicago version man evolved to spend trillions of tax dollars in a vain attempt to stimulate the American economy. Some of that stimulus money makes its way to labs where lower primates are fed cocaine. It doesn’t need to make sense because it’s not about results. It’s about spreading other’s wealth around.

After all, Al Capone used some of the profits from his criminal enterprise to establish soup kitchens in Depression-era Chicago. Hamas does likewise in the Gaza Strip, because hypocrisy is the compliment evil pays good.

Obama took Capone’s hypocrisy national. There was only one problem: There still exists a kernel of Judeo-Christian morality in the heartland where more evolved creatures are appalled by the kind of organized theft a Chicago jury finds acceptable and every day.

The Blago jury is deadlocked, with the judge likely to declare a mistrial for the remainder of the charges. That deadlock stems from moral confusion. In Chicago, theft is good as long as you get a cut. That’s how it works in political machines that call themselves cities.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The poster boy for the Democratic Party’s big-government culture of corruption, Dan Rostenkowski, is dead. His 36-year stint in the House of Representatives (thirteen of which he served as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee) came to an end when his mail fraud activities landed him in prison. He served 15-months.

Rostenkowski’s Los Angeles Times obituary was touching enough to bring a lump to the throat. “He was indicted in 1994 on 17 counts charging him with a range of offenses from mail and wire fraud to obstruction of justice. Rostenkowski was accused of hiring ghost employees, keeping office slush funds and showering gifts on political supporters and friends – time-honored methods of conducting political business in Chicago.”

While cooling his heals in Wisconsin’s Oxford federal penitentiary, Rostenkowski worked as a landscaper for a well deserved 12 cents an hour. Oxford penitentiary was a home-away-from-home for many a corrupt Chicago politician. According to the Chicago Tribune, “In Oxford, home to fewer than 600, people have grown accustomed to strangers arriving in limousines and fancy cars with Illinois license plates. They are usually weekend visitors to the prison and are allowed to see an inmate up to 35 hours per month.” Local townsfolk refer to the institution as “the university.”

Meanwhile in Washington, embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel (having also served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee) appears to have filled Rostenkowski’s big corrupt shoes. He stands accused of violating 13 House ethics rules, which may eventually lead to a federal criminal charge of wire fraud – a felony.

“You’re not going to tell me to resign to make you feel comfortable,” thundered Rangel from the House floor. “If I can’t get my dignity back here, then fire your best shot and get rid of me through expulsion.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who prides herself on having drained the Congressional swamp, sheepishly said, “As I have repeatedly stated, the independent, bipartisan ethics committee is the proper arena for ethics matters to be discussed.”

Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Will the example set by our elected leaders ever teach this country’s sleepy electorate this lesson?

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The left likes to give catchy titles to movements with which it disagrees. Tea Partiers are “teabaggers” and those who question President Obama’s place of birth are “birthers.” A New CNN poll finds that 6 out of 10 Americans believe Obama was born outside the United States and therefore question the legitimacy of his presidency. Worst of all for the president, many of those polled were Democrats. America is now a birther nation.

I personally believe we will never get to the bottom of the issue. The power of incumbency weighs heavily in Obama’s favor – with state bureaucrats unwilling to bite the “stimulus” hand that feeds them.

Putting aside whether you believe Obama was born in Indonesia, Kenya or on Zeta Reticuli, a creeping realization is growing in the country that Barrack Husain Obama is not one of us; that his transformation of America is foreign, if not downright otherworldly.

He refuses to name the enemy that America has been at war with since 9/11 – yet seems to be testing a new policy (his Overseas Contingency Operation) that kills Afghan and Pakistani test subjects using remote pod-like flying drones. His economic programs seem designed to sap the strength of our industrial, high technology economy in favor of primitive and easily overwhelmed solar and wind. And gobs of Tax dollars get diverted into strange and unusual scientific experiments, like testing the effects of “stimulus” cocaine on monkeys. And Obama’s dark lords of transformation are given a title we Earthlings can understand…czars.

Is it any wonder Americans are experiencing that same creepy feeling they used to get watching the X-Files? Remember the warning issued by MSNBC’s Chris Mathews? After listening to an Obama campaign speech, Matthews said, “I felt this thrill going up my leg…”

We just laughed.

Like the Kevin McCarthy character in the 50s science fiction classic “Invasion of the body snatchers,” we know something is not right and that the creeping terror flowing into every corner of America is not homegrown or familiar.

We all fell asleep in 2008. Now, against our will, our essence is transferring into compliant hope and change pods growing quietly in our back yard tool sheds.

Whether Obama was born in Indonesia, Kenya or on Zeta Reticuli, a silver spaceship didn’t land on the Capitol Mall, and Obama and his robot Gort didn’t use extraterrestrial powers to force their way into the White House. Obama sold a majority of Americans on an ACORN-like program to re-order our society (he was a community organizer after all), powered by the redistribution of our incomes.

In the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man,” a spacecraft lands in New York City, its alien visitor offering the United Nations solutions for ending hunger, disease and warfare. He leaves a book behind that is written in an alien tongue. The book winds up in the hands of America’s top code-breakers. At first, they are only able to decipher its title, “To Serve Man.”

As world conflicts end and hunger is eradicated, the aliens begin a cultural exchange program, flying Earthlings to the Kanamit home planet – without preconditions and in a spirit of mutual respect. One eager passenger, the story’s code-breaker Michael Chambers, discovers too late, “…the book—It’s a cookbook!”

Rod Serling’s epilogue is a poignant rebuke to gullible and dazed Americans. “…Simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone’s soup. It’s tonight’s ‘bill of fare,’ from the Twilight Zone.”

We, all of us, are the savory ingredients in Obama’s transformative soup. And Nancy Pelosi just asked Harry Reid to pass the salt.

And that’s what’s really eating Americans about our scary alien president.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

In defending the proposed 15-story Cordoba House Islamic center, the afternoon shadow of which will point approvingly toward al-Qaed’s handiwork at Ground Zero, go-along-to-get-along Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists — and we should not stand for that.” In the infected minds of the politically correct, blaming the victim is priority number one. And in this case, Bloomberg blamed all 3,000 of them.

Allowing an Islamic structure to tower over Ground Zero in celebration of an intolerant totalitarian faith that views the mass slaughter of defiant non-believers as a fast track to paradise is not, as Bloomberg and others would have us believe, an act of tolerance. It is an Islamic act. For the word Islam, translated from the Arabic, means “submission.”

Building triumphal monuments to conquest is nothing new. Any sightseer to Rome can visit the triumphal arch of Titus, commemorating the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the ransacking of the Jewish Temple’s sacred articles by Rome’s victorious legions.

And it is no accident that New York’s proposed Islamic center should bear the name Cordoba. The Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula saw the rapid building of mosques throughout vanquished Christian Spain. Construction of the great Cordoba mosque began in earnest in AD 784 on the site of Saint Vincent’s church. It was meant to serve as a symbol of conquest and power. The mosque was reconverted into a Catholic church when King Ferdinand III of Castile seized Cordoba in 1236.

However, not everyone is happy about that. According to Turkey’s World Bulletin, last April, “Spanish guards, employed by the Roman Catholic bishop, harshly reacted to Muslims, who wanted to pray at the world-famous Cordoba mosque.” The story says police were summoned to break up an unruly crowd of 100 Muslims insisting the Catholic venue double as a mosque. “The building is very big and the main cathedral occupies only a part of it,” said Mansur Escudero, a Muslim convert and member of a group calling itself Junta Islamica. “They publicize the building as a mosque,” he complained, “because that brings in tourists, but they do not allow the Muslims who pay money to go inside to pray.” In other words, Muslims would like their triumphal monument back. Luckily for Cordoba’s Catholics, Bishop Demetrio Fernández isn’t submissive, er, tolerant.

The contrast between Bishop Fernández and Mayor Bloomberg is worth noting. It marks the difference between a man who believes in something and one who believes in nothing. Bloomberg’s bottomless pit of cowardice has a nice sounding name that excuses inaction in the face of unspeakable evil…tolerance.

The heroic burden of Bishop Fernández, on the other hand, is building a church to stand as a moral force against which “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

That moral imperative compelled King Ferdinand to push the Muslim invader from Cordoba to begin a golden age that would lead to Columbus’ discovery of America.

Michael Bloomberg, on the other hand, takes the sniveling coward’s way out and welcomes the invader with open arms.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“Drain the swamp we did,” said Nancy Pelosi of her work to rid the Congress of Republican rascals. “We made a tremendous difference, and I take great pride in that.” Representatives Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA), to name just a few, are proof that the US Swamp of Representatives is an ethical bog not even the Army Corps of Engineers could drain for reclamation, least of all the clueless and corrupt Nancy Pelosi. Both Rangel and Waters will face ethics trials that put the lie to Pelosi’s pledge to preside over “the most ethical Congress in history.”

The 13-count charge against Rangel center mostly on tax evasion, those against Water’s center on pressuring the Treasury to pony-up taxpayer bailout dollars for a bank in which her husband owned a stake.

But let’s be fair. Today’s Democratic scandals mostly involve money. The most sensational Republican scandals centered on sex. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) sent sexually explicit instant messages to male teenage Congressional pages…for ten years! When Republicans were the majority party, Foley served as the Chairman of the House committee on Missing and Exploited Children.

And who could forget Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID)? Certainly not the undercover cop Craig solicited for restroom sex at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

And, continuing down the path of fairness, there are the nation’s founders. Alexander Hamilton had an illicit affair he eventually owned up to and apologized for in a published article. Modern DNA analysis indicates that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemmings. And our beloved Benjamin Franklin admitted in his autobiography to having extramarital relations “with women of low character.”

In other words, the swamp – dear Nancy and America – can never be drained as long as men and women, in the words of Super Man’s archenemy Lex Luthor, “are no damned good.”

What separates Pelosi from Hamilton, Jefferson and Franklin is important and profound. Pelosi believes ethics is a commodity best managed by a Congressional committee. Our Founders knew that human beings were fallen creatures and incapable of decency outside the view of a policing, moral, church-going society. Aware of man’s limitless capacity to do evil, our wise Founders established a government devised to “bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

The problem with today’s government is not ethical. It’s the persistent utopian superstition in the American mind that government can make better human beings through legislation and control the dark-hearted inclinations of our legislators by committee.

For over half a century, Americans have elected leaders at war with the Constitution’s restraints on government power and its capacity to do evil. We’re shocked at Rangel, Waters, Foley and Craig. We rail against Obama’s imperial czars and his secretive transformative government. But isn’t this what you wanted? When Obama delivered his victory speech before a massive crowd in Chicago, didn’t the crowd respond in unison, Nuremburg-rally like, “yes we can!”

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited,” said President Ronald Reagan. The election of Obama proves otherwise.

Unfortunately, today’s arguments for and against limited government are confined to the realm of materialism: the kleptomaniacal left wants the power to redistribute our money; Beltway Republicans would like us to keep some of our hard earned cash – what is leftover after a few Wall Street bailouts.

The Founders, on the other hand, made the argument for limited government based on moral grounds. This explains why the pleadings of the Tea Party, which believes the Founder’s wisdom should be followed, falls on deaf ears. To believe limits on government power is the best means for stopping evil in high places does not get much traction in today’s America.

And the effects on our society by the unrestrained super-nanny state are breathtaking. It threatens the security of lowly Congressional pages and the international financial system, the wellbeing of every citizen by its ruthless takeover of health care and the safety of Americans living along our porous, unprotected southern border. All this is possible because we forgot that to secure our individual right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…governments are instituted among men…”

In the view of Washington’s unholy trinity, Obama-Pelosi-Reid, men are instituted for the purposes of government. The arrogance of Rangel and Waters is a minor symptom of the greater disease of unchecked power over corrupt, mortal men. Restrain their power and let Pelosi waste time in her futile attempt to transform Congressional swamp creatures into angels.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The Democrats were looking for House Republicans to provide them political cover. They didn’t. That got Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) hopping mad. Beltway Republicans are not supposed to do this.

The legislation in question would have provided New York City $7.4 billion over ten years to pay 9/11 emergency response workers who have developed health problems they claim resulted from working in and around the fallen World Trade Center.

“This is not something that got rushed through,” Wiener yelled from the House well. “This is nine years in the making. Nine years worth of people getting sick and dying when the only thing they did wrong, so to speak, was to come to Ground Zero and helping dig out neighbors. Unfortunately, the ‘Party of No’ hit a new low last night.”

There is only one problem with Weiner’s girlish screeching. “A simple majority goes through,” said Rep. Peter King (R-NY). And, of course, King is right. Until November, Democrats are the majority. The problem with the legislation was that Democrats included a provision to grab taxes from foreign corporations earning profits and creating jobs in New York. Imbued with a rare case of fiscal sanity, a majority of Republicans (not all) voted against the measure.

You see, Nancy Pelosi didn’t want a tax hike and job-killing measure to pass on a simple Democratic majority vote, so she raised the stakes by requiring a two-thirds majority vote to pass the measure. It was a win-win for Democrats.

If the measure passed, New York City got a bailout from US taxpayers with a sizable number of Republicans onboard to provide cover. If it failed, a New York Democratic he-man named Weiner could shriek that mean old Republicans were denying another Democratic special interest a taxpayer provided payoff.

The problem for Democrats is that today’s taxpayer – you know, the ones showing up at huge Tea Party rallies – aren’t falling for the usual class warfare drivel uttered by Democrats desperately clawing to maintain power. That’s because, thanks to big government, Americans now belong to one social class…the screwed.

Just in passing, the Democrats hid a tax hike behind a measure claiming to aid sick and dying 9/11 workers so as to make it harder for soft-headed Republicans to say no to more spending. The measure was called “H.R. 847: James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010.”

A quick synopsis in the New York Times reads, “…New York City Detective James Zadroga died as result of inhaling dust from Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on World Trade Center while working as rescuer.”

However, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, reported that Zadroga’s lung condition was the result of “prescription drug abuse” and not terrorist dust.

Not to worry, Democrats will find some other way to squeeze more money out of us. Where there’s a Weiner, there’s a way.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

When the city manager of sleepy Bell, California, Bob Rizzo, was reported to earn a hefty $800,000 a year, with the part-time city council pulling in a tidy $100,000 annual salary, Bell’s residents awoke from their California dreaming and literally mobbed city hall, demanding answers…and blood.

In the end, old Bobby Rizzo boxed his Pez dispensers, finished the last swig of bourbon from the hidden bottle in his desk drawer, and put in for early retirement.

And that’s when things got interesting.

You see, Bob is a public employee…and the public in beautiful sun-drenched California – a.k.a., taxpayers – pay handsome pensions to retired public servants such as Bob.

In fact, Bob’s pension was so handsome it even got the attention of California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown…because it’s a whopping $600,000 a year…for life.

Sweet!

A spokesman for the California Public Employee’s Retirement System told the Los Angeles Times they are “working closely with the attorney general on this matter and not a dollar will be paid until we have the full and complete picture.”

What do you want to bet that when the smoke clears old Bob gets his pension? After all, he just followed the time-tested W.C. Fields dictum, “never give a sucker an even break.”

At every university commencement speech, President Obama urges rosy-cheeked graduates to put aside entering the grubby private sector in favor of noble public service. And Bob would agree.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Bell’s citizens. They were too busy and didn’t take the time to see how Bob was managing as city manager. And Bob took their lack of interest to mean he could manage their tax dollars into his bank account. Bob’s public employee union did not raise an eyebrow when they saw what Bob’s lifetime pension payout would be when he stopped all his managing and entered quiet retirement.

Bob used to be Bell’s problem. As the highest paid public employee pensioner, Bob is now bankrupt California’s problem.

Is there a moral to Bob’s story? You bet: “Manage your government or it’s Bobs will surely manage you.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Hey, it was all about love. At least that is how it was billed. Instead, at least 18 people are dead and hundreds injured. It happened at the Love Parade held this year in Duisburg, Germany. The music/dance festival has been an eagerly anticipated occurrence among European youth since 1989, though some cities have refused to host the affair due to their meager police forces and Love Parade’s large crowds. The deaths and injuries were the result of an out-of-control stampede.

“Out of respect for the victims,” said event organizer Rainer Schaller, “… we are going to discontinue the event in the future, and that means the end of Love Parade.” Love, it appears, does not conquer all. And so it seems with all mass movements.

Eric Hoffer, the dock-working stevedore and American philosopher, said in his book “The True Believer”:

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence.”

In other words, mass movements, even those built around something as empty as bumping heads in a rhythmic musical ritual, appeals to those without a strong sense of self.

The Website over at Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, claims it is “building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering communities across the country to bring about our agenda of change…Now it’s time for our movement to rise again, stand with President Obama, and make that promise a reality.”

And like the Love Parade, hope and change has been catastrophic: the national debt now stands at $13-trillion; the annual deficit stands at $1-trillion; the cancer of ObamaCare shortly begins to eat away at our freedom, economy and health; and we have no idea what a lame-duck hope-and-change Congress will do to the country before sailing off into the sunset. All because Americans lost their sense of self, sought refuge in a shiny mass movement and, instead, got stampeded.

But, hey, it was all about love.