By Mr. Curmudgeon

The new Pew Research Center poll that found 18% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim (up from 11% in 2008), has the administration in a panic. “The White House said on Thursday that President Obama is a Christian who prays daily as it looked to tamp down growing doubts among Americans about the president’s religion,” the New York Times reported. During the president’s flight to Martha’s Vineyard for a little R&R, presidential spokesman Bill Burton told reporters, “…They [the American people] are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is.” Burton then attempted to cover his bases, “The president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day.”

And the president and his party need all the prayers they can get. According to the Pew poll, “…even among many of his [Obama's] supporters and allies, less than half now say Obama is Christian. Among Democrats, for instance, 46% say Obama is a Christian, down from 55% in March 2009.” This must cause the secular populations of Europe and our media elites to scratch their heads.

After the president gave his unqualified support for the construction of New York’s Ground Zero mosque, Time magazine conducted its own poll. “24% said they [Americans] think he is Muslim,” Time found.

The Democrats thought America was ready for change; that, as a nation, we were geared up to make the transformation into a secular socialist state. Stalin thought the same of Poland. He never thought the Polish people’s Christian faith would give them strength to withstand the onslaught of dehumanizing socialism for over half a century. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin once quipped. The Solidarity movement proved that number to be in the millions.

Obama doesn’t have a Muslim identity crisis. He has a secular socialist crisis. But America is still a religious country, and the smoldering Judeo-Christian collective consciousness obliges them to view the world in moral and not political terms. Therefore, Americans have pegged Obama’s “otherness” (the New York Times’ description) as Islamic.

This is the worst kind of news for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Having risen to power on the coattails of Chicago’s Islamic scourge of God, they are seen as The Prophet’s imams. And the draconian methods they employed to pass The Prophet’s stimulus and health care bills were as unyielding as any fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Then Imam Pelosi made things worse for Democrats by announcing her intention to investigate opponents of New York’s Ground Zero mosque – many of whom are survivors of the 3,000 victims who perished on 9/11.

The upshot of all this is that the Democratic Party has shown itself to be so dramatically outside the mainstream of American thought and tradition that a growing number of citizens see them as foreign and as hostile as Osama bin Laden.

And the Tea Parties are proving themselves to be the noble Crusaders who can sweep the scourge from our lands.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

And America begins its slide down the chute to moral decay. The death panels Democrats assured us were a scare tactic by right-wingers on the payroll of big pharma and the evil insurance industry have begun. The world’s best selling cancer drug, Avastin (used in the treatment of breast cancer), was dropped by the FDA as an approved treatment do to the drug’s lack of “effectiveness.” The reason, of course, was cost. The cancer treatment averages $8,000 a month. The FDA’s action removes the requirement for insurers to reimburse the medical community for the treatments.

According to the London<em> Daily Mail</em>, “During the [ObamaCare] debate, those opposed to the reforms cited Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which decides whether new treatments should be made available on the NHS on the basis of cost effectiveness, as an example of the sort of drug rationing that amounted to a ‘death panel.’” Avastin is just the first step.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said, “I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning a value to a day of a person’s life. It’s sickening to think that care would be withheld from a patiet simply because their life is not deemed valuable enough.”

Brittan’s health care death panel is scheduling a revue of Avastin in response to the FDA’s move. It looks like America is leading the way to dusty death.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The New York Times is beside itself over a new Pew Research Center survey that finds more Americans than ever think President Obama is a Muslim. When he was running for office in 2008, Obama was perceived as being submissive to Islam by 11% of the country. Today, that number stands at 18%.

“The findings suggest that, nearly two years into Mr. Obama’s presidency, the White House is struggling with the perception of ‘otherness’ that Candidate Obama sought so hard to overcome,” laments the Times, “in part because of an aggressive misinformation campaign by critics and in part, some Democratic allies say, because Mr. Obama is doing a poor job of communicating who he is and what he believes.”

What’s fascinating about the Pew finding is that Americans define Obama’s “otherness” in religious terms. And they see that otherness as Islamic. His recent White House remarks supporting the building of the Ground Zero mosque didn’t help to discourage that perception.

The influences on Obama’s world view only partially hale from Mecca. They come primarily from James H. Cone – by way of Obama’s minister of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Cone is the angry theologian that crafted Black Liberation Theology in the late 1960s.

In his book , “The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation,” Cone writes:

“The Christian identity of the black self was not important to [Nation of Islam's] Malcolm X. For him, Christianity was the white man’s religion and thus had to be rejected. Black people, Malcolm contended, needed a black religion, one that would bestow self-respect upon them for being black. Malcolm was not interested in remaking Christianity into a black religion…While Martin and Malcolm were prevented from coming together during their lifetime, I was determined to put them together in black liberation theology.”

Obama’s “otherness,” therefore, is correctly seen by a growing number of Americans as Islamic. Obama’s “transformative change” is right out of the writings of Cone, and represents the culmination of Black Liberation Theology and Malcolm X’s demand for “a radical change in the interlocking structures of society.”

This also explains the America-hating radical left’s affinity for radical Islam and its support for the building of a mosque so close to Ground Zero.

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 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 hair-pullers at MSNBC, like resident loon Keith Olbermann, must be beside themselves. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is charging General Electric, NBC’s parent company, with providing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein $3.6 million in kickbacks in order to get access to the lucrative and corrupt United Nations oil-for-food program, which Saddam used to bribe his way around the international community’s economic sanctions. Cheryl Scarboro, who heads the SEC’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit said GE “failed to maintain adequate internal controls to detect and prevent these illicit payments.”

That begs the question: “Were Keith Olbermann’s objections to America’s toppling Saddam more a product of protecting an overseas paymaster or just a product of his Saddam-level hatred of George W. Bush?” Inquiring minds want to know.

According to the SEC indictment, GE subsidiaries paid kickbacks to the Saddam regime to get oil-for-food gravy. German-based Marquitte paid $1.2 million to the Iraqi Health Ministry in goods and services. Norway-based Nycomed paid $750,000 to secure a $5 million contract. Italy-based Italba paid $795,000 to gain a $2.3 million profit for mamma GE; in all, GE allegedly profited by $204 million thanks to Saddam’s murderous regime.

Just as an aside, Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian working for the United Nations Procurement Department, pled guilty to fraud in the UN oil-for-food scandal. Yakovlev helped facilitate a business deal that put cash in the pocket of one Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a US and UN designated terrorist financier for Al Qaeda. And that juicy little fact was uncovered by America’s number-one cable news source…Fox.

Back in February of 2007, big-salaried (an estimated $4 million a year) GE employee Keith Olbermann went apoplectic when then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared toppling Saddam to America’s victory over Hitler. “…Secretary Rice, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Adolf Hitler?” screamed an incredulous Olbermann. “Are you kidding? Did you want to provoke the world’s laughter?”

Apparently, the only one laughing was Keith Olberman – all the way to the bank…to cash his check from a murderous Middle Eastern dictator the MSNBC host assured us was not all that bad.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Liberal Democrats are so frightened by the Tea Party onslaught coming from their right, they forget to look left. Sen. Carl Levin had finished delivering an address before the Mecosta County Democratic Party in Detroit, Michigan, when two students approached him and read a long statement accusing the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee of – I just love this – “war crimes.” That’s when the young female student, identified as Ahlam Mohsen who attends Michigan State University, hit Levin in the puss with a pie.

News accounts failed to mention what kind of pie.

The pie-throwing stunt is a sign that the ankle-biters on the left are angry Democratic Party leaders are continuing the policies of George W. Bush – from drone attacks to the extension of the Patriot Act. “They didn’t hurt me,” Levin assured the press, “but they hurt their cause even more than their own extreme words had already done.”

How things have changed. The old Bill Ayers left used to build bombs in basements and rob Brinks armored cars. Today’s more effeminate incarnation just fattens the bottom line at Marie Callender’s.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

President Obama has figured out a winning strategy for Democrats heading into November: attack Republicans for attacking Social Security. In fact, the headline for Paul Krugman’s New York Times column was “Attacking Social Security.” Funny how these hyper Keynesian socialists are on the same wavelength.

Paul Krugman insists GOP “attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans… So let’s beat back this unnecessary, unfair and – let’s not mince words – cruel attack on working Americans.”

In his weekly radio address, Obama claimed Republicans are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall,” calling such a move “an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.”

This is the same big government that devised the Community Reinvestment Act, which started the ball rolling in the direction of sub-prime lending, which popped the housing bubble, which destroyed home values and caused Wall Street to crash, destroying your real retirement 401k and mutual fund investments.

Democrats are counting on the greatest asset in their arsenal: your ignorance. And that ignorance has served them well, from FDR to Obama. Here’s a few uncomfortable facts the donkeys in Washington and at the New York Times would rather you not know:

• 1. Which president and political party changed the protected “trust fund” status of Social Security, dumping all that cash into the General fund to pay for unsustainable Great Society programs? President Lyndon Johnson and his Democrat controlled Congress.
• 2. Which political party ended the tax deduction for Social Security withholding? The Democratic Party.
• Who extended Social Security payments to immigrants who never paid into the system? President Jimmy Carter and his Congressional Democratic majority.
• 3. Which political party began taxing Social Security annuities? The Democrats under Bill Clinton, with Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate.

According to Krugman, “Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution.” The “success” of Social Security, at least for Democrats, is that it serves as a slush fund to buy the votes of targeted constituencies at the expense of America’s vulnerable elderly. Now that’s what Democrats call compassion.

The Associated Press reports that, “…Democrats have been able to seize on the issue because of a proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee that would allow younger people to put Social Security money into personal accounts.”

Now that the Democrat’s policies have destroyed both Social Security and the American economy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank ask that you continue allowing them to manage your retirement “today, tomorrow and forever,” as President Obama put it.

Personal accounts would only keep your lovely money in your hands and far from the reach of “compassionate” Democrats.

Younger Americans should remember the name Ernest Ackerman. Why? You see, Ernest was the first Social Security beneficiary. In 1937, Earnest received a whopping Social Security lump-sum payout ­in the amount of 17 cents.

At least Earnest got something. Young Obama voter should be so lucky.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

At Friday’s White House gala commemorating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, President Obama said, “Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.” The president then weighed in on the latest intended contribution to our country by Islam. “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan…” The president may not be a fan of property rights, but assured Muslims he’ll make an exception at Ground Zero.

Saturday, the president further clarified his statement, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.” Interesting how a president whose totalitarian health care plan shows contempt for the Constitution’s limits on government power, uses it for convenient cover to support a monument to mass murder.

At the same time, Obama can’t bring himself to comment on the disgusting in-your-face statement the Ground Zero mosque shouts to America and the Islamic world. If Obama can’t apologize on our behalf, he has nothing to say.

And the president’s support for a gloating monument to shadow over 3,000 American innocent dead is not due to any pro-Muslim feeling on his part. He merely admires the ability of Islam’s religious totalitarian ideology to community organize on a global scale.

In other words, Obama suffers from Osama envy.