Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
The Scientific Consensus Has Been Dead-Wrong on Oil
It would be hard to find anyone in all of America who has been more wrong on the American energy story than Barack Obama. Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to hovering at $35 a barrel today. That's a two-thirds reduction in the price, and the biggest factor is shale oil brought to you by fracking. In many areas of the country gas is now less than $2 a gallon, and it could fall further in the weeks ahead.
Remembering 2015
How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it? It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it. However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for Western civilization. This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran — the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism — from getting a nuclear bomb. Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.
Monday, December 28, 2015
World War III
In case you haven't noticed, this administration, which has prided itself on getting tens of millions of us on food stamps, has recently decided that we all need additional baloney in our daily diet. You would have thought that Nanny Michelle would have put her foot down, but of course she's fine with it so long as we finish our veggies.
Obama's Cuba Policy Makes Life Worse for Cubans
When President Obama declared 12 months ago that he intended to normalize relations with Cuba, he claimed that rapprochement with the Castro regime would uphold America's "commitment to liberty and democracy." Liberalizing US policy, the president predicted, would succeed "in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous."
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Creationists of the Secular Kind
Presidential campaigns inflate expectations that power wielded from government's pinnacle will invigorate the nation. Thus campaigns demonstrate that creationists threaten the creative ferment that produces social improvement. Not religious creationists, who are mistaken but inconsequential. It is secular creationists whose social costs are steep.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Our Most Divisive Political Issue
Can you name the most contentious issue in American politics? Here's a hint. It's being fought at the federal, state and local levels. And it doesn't go away. The struggle is persistent, ongoing, unending. Here is a second hint. The issue is not gay marriage, or gun control, or police brutality and or immigration. Those issues are either settled, largely settled, isolated or completely out of the control of local and state governments.
Bleeding Hearts & Boneheads
For seven years, I have stated that in my opinion Barack Obama isn't a Muslim. For one thing, it matters less to me what someone believes than what he does. For another, he attended a racist "Christian" church in Chicago where, week after week, he and Michelle listened politely as Rev. Jeremiah Wright ravaged America, whites and Israel, in obscene diatribes he passed off as sermons. Finally, although Obama has stated that the Muslim call to prayer is the sweetest sound he has ever heard, he not only smokes and drinks, but he doesn't prostrate himself in the direction of Mecca five times a day.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Admit It. You Just Want Your Own Dictator
This incessant clamoring by voters and punditry for better "leaders" and more "leadership" is one of the most unsavory, dangerous and un-American tendencies in political discourse. When Donald Trump was asked last week by Joe Scarborough what he made of an endorsement from Vladimir Putin — a thug who's probably murdered journalists and political opponents and more — the GOP presidential front-runner responded, "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country." Then he offered an incredibly dumb moral equivalency about how the United States also does "plenty of killing."
Religion and Republicans
About 15 years ago, on Christmas Eve, our family departed from the traditional American Jewish observance of the holiday (ordering Chinese takeout) and elected to find an open restaurant. We drove to the local city center (or what passes for it in suburbia) and were stunned to find that not only were all of the restaurants open; they were packed.
Conservatives' Biographies Show How History Can Move Right
Biography is one way — often the most vivid way — in which people understand history. The beautifully written biographies of Franklin Roosevelt that rolled off the presses and rose in the bestseller lists in the 1950s and 1960s created a template in which the New Deal was central to American history. It was the culmination of what happened before the 1930s and the model for what should and would happen next.
Food Fads: Make Mine Gluten-Full
When the federal government's 1980 "Dietary Guidelines for Americans" warned about the baleful effects of saturated fats, public interest activists joined the fight and managed to persuade major food companies to switch to the shiny new alternative: trans fats. Thirty-five years later, the Food and Drug Administration finally determined that trans fats are not just useless but unsafe, and ordered them removed from all foods. Oops.
Cultural Winners and Losers of 2015
ABC News devoted a fluffy two-hour special to the year in review, studying the news and pop culture. They had a "Dishonor Roll" segment where they mocked the adultery of Josh Duggar and the scandal of the adultery website Ashley Madison when its client list leaked. They scorned the dentist that shot Cecil the Lion, white activist Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black, "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Kim Richards getting arrested for shoplifting, and pop singer Ariana Grande caught on video licking donuts. But nowhere in this summary were the grisly tapes exposing Planned Parenthood for its effort to profit from selling the organs of babies it killed in its abortion clinics.
Celebrate Christ
For those of us who are Christians and grew up in the '60's, the attack on religious expression we are witnessing today is unsettling. The Christmas holidays of the past are now "Winter holidays." Displays of the Ten Commandments, once fairly common in and around courthouses and public parks, have been targeted by radical secular and atheist groups. Often federal courts have ordered them to be taken down or removed.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Christmas: The Gift of You
It's that time of year again, when we all scurry around doing our last minute shopping for that person who seems to have everything already. And as so many of us rush around to make sure that our final purchases can be delivered in time for Christmas by UPS or USPS, it's easy to forget just what Christmas is all about.
Naughty List: University Says Nativity Scenes, Mistletoe Not Inclusive
The folks over at Cornell University are worried about "inclusive seasonal displays." That's academic code for Christmas decorations. Cornell warned students that some "winter holiday displays" are not consistent with the university's "commitment to diversity and inclusiveness."
The Right's Post-Constitutional Moment
No one will ever mistake Donald Trump for a student of James Madison. The real-estate mogul has demonstrated about as much familiarity with the U.S. Constitution as with the Bible, which is to say, none. Trump has captivated a share of the tea party with a style of politics utterly alien to the Constitution. In the year of Trump, the right is experiencing a post-constitutional moment.
The Perfect Presidential Candidate for an Imperfect Time
I don't typically endorse candidates, but as 2015 draws to a close, I feel I must make an exception. I think it's a safe bet that for most of us, the year-that-was was not the year we wanted it to be. Oh, sure, there's got to be the stray story about how this was a great year for some happy couple. Some executive at Disney probably has his feet up on his desk, lighting a cigar with a lightsaber, thinking: "2015 was all right by me." But for most of us, 2015 was the year in which differences hardened.
Graham's Call to Arms
An extraordinary statement was issued [Tuesday] by a renowned leader of Christian evangelicals, Reverend Franklin Graham. His statement should be considered as a thunderclap to the Republican Party. The GOP is already at loggerheads with its more populist economic supporters in the Tea Party. It has been unable to recreate the kind of message that Ronald Reagan delivered, which brought millions of blue collar workers to the party's banner.
The Glorious Impossible
Nine years ago this past week my wife was given six months to live. On the same day that we received that diagnosis, I lost my job. I spent the afternoon exhausted, sitting in mud, cradling my one year old in the rain, while I cried. Having left the hospital to get my child from day care, I was too exhausted to get up and go inside. It was a Christmas to remember.
15 Questions in Search of a Democratic Debate
1) Polls show that, by a large margin, Americans feel we're on the wrong track, both economically and as to foreign policy. Yet none of you offers *any* criticism of President Barack Obama, who has been in charge for the last seven years. Why, then, should Americans believe that four more years, under your leadership, would be any different from the last seven?