Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Death to America
Maybe I'm too sensitive, but when a foreign autocrat leads his people in chants of "Death to America," I take it personally. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry apparently don't. The chant, which became a staple of the Islamic Republic during the 1979 revolution, is not a relic of the past. Just last weekend, at a rally in the northern part of the country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was interrupted by the chant as he was denouncing American "lies" and "arrogance." He smiled and responded, "Of course, yes, death to America, because America is the original source of this pressure." Some in Iran have urged that the "Death to America" chant, common after Friday prayers and at political rallies, be downplayed during negotiations over a nuclear deal, but the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) rejects this, insisting, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency, that the United States "is still the great Satan and the No. 1 enemy of the (Islamic) revolution, and the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation..."
Cruzing Toward the Resurrection of Mainstream Conservatism
The ambush-prone mainstream media (MSM) has difficulty trapping Sen. Ted Cruz, not just because he is mentally agile and verbally adroit. He has truth and authenticity on his side, and it is much harder to trip up someone of that description. Media watchdog Newsbusters shares a litany of examples of MSM hosts doing their best to demean Cruz following the announcement of his presidential campaign. Let's just glance at a few of those. NBC's Matt Lauer, co-host of "Today," was first up to bat for team MSM. He said to Cruz, "Senator, you're a guy who's known for taking on your own party. ... You've also led your party into some fights that backfired -- the defunding of Obamacare comes to mind." (Yeah, I'm sure this just came to Matt's mind as he was formulating the sentence.) "So you have detractors," said Lauer, "not only across the aisle, but within your own party. How can you win the nomination unless you build a much broader coalition than the one you already have?"
Monica Lewinsky Lectures America
TED Talks are a hot liberal video series. The 20-minute talks, usually taped in Vancouver, have become such a viral force on the Internet that NPR now has a weekly "TED Radio Hour." TED's mission statement proclaims a passionate belief in "the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world." TED offers "a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers." Or they're seeking the most Internet clicks. Because their most recent "most inspired thinker" was ... Monica Lewinsky. Seventeen years after the Year of Our Intern, Lewinsky should be doing something different. To quote the liberal lingo during that time, "move on." Yet it is Lewinsky who keeps returning to the scene of her obscene behavior, and now insists we feel her pain, that she is the "Patient Zero" of "slut shaming."
Can Jewish Americans Support Both Democrats and Israel?
"I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president," vented Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Boston Herald Radio last week. It was a small controversy in the grand scheme of things, easily overlooked during a week when: a German pilot turned a routine flight into a murder-suicide mission, Ted Cruz drove the media batty by announcing he will run for president as Ted Cruz, an Army sergeant and Taliban captive the White House touted as a hero was charged with desertion, and America joined forces with Iran in Iraq to kill Sunni jihadists while allying with Saudi Arabia in Yemen to kill Shiite jihadists (who are backed by Iran).
Can Family Breakdown in Low-Education America Be Reversed? Maybe
Our kids, at least many of them, are not doing very well. The reason, writes Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his just-published "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis," is the "two-tier pattern of family structure" that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and continues to prevail today. Starting in the late 1960s, rates of divorce, unmarried births and single parenthood rose sharply among all segments of society. About a decade later, they fell and leveled off among the college-educated, who almost entirely raise their kids in Ozzie-and-Harriet style families today (except that Mom usually works outside the home).
The GOP Racing Form: First Edition
With Ted Cruz announcing and Rand Paul and Marco Rubio soon to follow, it's time to start handicapping the horses and making enemies. No point in wasting time on the Democratic field. There is none. The only thing that can stop Hillary Clinton is an act of God, and he seems otherwise occupied. As does Elizabeth Warren, the only Democrat who could conceivably defeat her. On to the GOP.
Bowe and Arrows: Obama Swap Takes Another Hit
The only thing worse than a soldier abandoning his post is a commander-in-chief who abandons his duty to keep the nation safe. When Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left his unit behind, we had a President willing to leave the law behind in what could go down as the most dangerous prisoner swap in U.S. history. I say "could," because the five terrorists this White House released are already trying to reconnect with their Taliban networks in an effort to reengage in the war against the West. FRC's Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin -- like most military leaders -- saw this coming. "I hope that this does not come as a surprise to anyone. It was predictable and many of us said so at the time of the release. The only surprise for me would be if it was proven that the other (two terrorists Obama freed) are not doing the same thing. I bet you that they are."
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Military Rifles Through Transgender Policy
When it comes to his latest military maneuver, the President isn't asking -- but leaders are telling their concerns. Military officials may finally be saying, "enough!" to the President's radical social policies. Last month, it looked like the commander-in-chief might finally have a partner in his social experiment, new Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Barely four weeks into the job, the Pentagon's latest boss said he was on board with the President's last military makeover: lifting the ban on open transgenderism. "I don't think anything but their suitability for service should preclude them," Carter told reporters late last month. "I'm very open-minded about (it)..."
Four (Black) Cops Killed in Seven Days -- Where's the Outrage?
Wednesday, March 4: Fulton County police detective Terence Avery Green was killed, shot in the head by a suspect. According to WXIA-TV, Atlanta: "Police responded to a shots fired call early Wednesday. They were told the suspect was possibly intoxicated. Neighbors said the man was going from house to house, banging on doors and firing a long barrel gun. ... "(Fulton County Assistant Police Chief Gary) described the situation as an ambush, saying the officers 'were trying to do their job, they were trying to protect this neighborhood from someone who was shooting. And they had no other option but to do their job. And the way it appears to me, they were ambushed without warning.' ... "Green was a veteran officer with nearly 22 years of service. He is survived by his parents and his four sons."
The Challenge: Meditating on the Crucifixion
The crowds that normally pressed in tight around him made way, decorating the dusty ground with the shirts off their backs and branches freshly cut from palm trees. He came riding in on a borrowed donkey, humbling himself even as the people praised him. They honored him as the king who would conquer; rejoicing at the entrance of the man they hoped was their awaited Messiah. They shouted, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" Days later, they crucified him.
Reforming Islam
What do you know, the world's leading reformer of Islam is turning out to be a general. He is not a learned mullah. He is not a suicide bomber. He does not even have a weaponized bicycle. He is Egypt's Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi who, somewhat reminiscent of our own General George Washington, turned in his uniform for civilian garb and was elected president of Egypt with a huge majority. President el-Sissi's new role as reformer should not be terribly surprising. After all, the last great reformer in the Arab world was the Egyptian statesman Anwar Sadat. Sadat restricted his reforms to politics, initiating a demarche with Israel. Those reforms ended abruptly when assassins shot him as he appeared at a public ceremony in Cairo in 1981. To be sure President el-Sissi's reforms are political, but they are also religious. He has called upon religious clerics assembled at the premier Cairo university of Al-Azhar to commit Islam to a "revolution."
Hey, Pretty Boy: Do You Actually Know What's in the News?
When "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams crashed and burned over all the tall tales he had told, there must have been mirth in the hallways at ABC. In the highly competitive world of TV news, finding the right anchor is crucial to a network's brand. After running through a few pretenders, ABC had finally filled the iconic Peter Jennings' seat on "World News Tonight" just months earlier with David Muir. ABC was perfectly poised to snatch the top spot from NBC. During his first six months as "World News" anchor, the newly minted Muir had beaten Williams only a half-dozen times. But after Williams' fall from grace, ABC sailed to the most-watched evening news program. ABC executives could go for long lunches and look forward to cashing their bonus checks. Muir is young, dashing -- one of People magazine's 2014 "Sexiest Men Alive"! -- and the proud recipient of the Walter Cronkite journalism award.
The Secret Life of Barack Obama
There is a unicorn lair in North Korea. We know this because the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jung Un, tells us so. According to the official Korean Central News Agency, archaeologists have "recently reconfirmed" the existence of the unicorn lair dating back to the Koryo Kingdom (918-1392). President Obama has his own unicorn lair. It is the world as it exists inside his head, Walter Mitty-style. In no way does this world resemble reality; it is a bizarre fantasyland of Obama's own construction, in which he is all-powerful, all-knowing and always right. It is a world in which his foreign policy predictions come true, in which his policies are successful, in which the flaming world he has helped create sparkles rather than burns.
Who Says Economics Is Hard?
Every day the Chinese go to work, Americans get a raise: Chinese workers, many earning each day about what Americans spend on a Starbucks latte, produce apparel, appliances and other stuff cheaply, thereby enlarging Americans' disposable income. Americans similarly get a raise when they shop at the stores that made Sam Walton a billionaire. The ranks of billionaires are constantly churned. Most of the persons on the original Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982 were off the list in 2013. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, was not born until 1984. America needs more billionaires like him, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. With the iPod, iPhone and iPad, unique products when introduced, Jobs' Apple created monopolies. But instead of raising their prices, Apple has cut them because "profits attract imitators and innovators." Which is one reason why monopolies come and go. When John D. Rockefeller began selling kerosene in 1870, he had approximately 4 percent of the market. By 1890, he had 85 percent. Did he use this market dominance to gouge consumers? Kerosene prices fell from 30 cents a gallon in 1869 to 6 cents in 1897. And in the process of being branded a menacing monopoly, Rockefeller's Standard Oil made gasoline so cheap that Ford found a mass market for Model T's.
Sen. Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero
The snarky quip attributed to 19th-century French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -- "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder" -- has recently been making the rounds to deride a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and signed by 46 other senators. They wrote to the Iranian theocracy that any agreement on nuclear proliferation negotiated with President Obama will not constitutionally bind the next administration -- unless it is properly ratified by Congress. Democrats were outraged. They charged that Cotton's letter is a crime, a violation of the 216-year-old Logan Act. That law bars unauthorized individuals from conducting negotiations with foreign governments. Even some Republicans sighed that the letter was a political blunder. It supposedly plays into President Obama's caricature of right-wing and obstructionist conservatives.
Hillary & Other Ignoramuses
I believe I understand why Hillary hates the media. It's because they keep writing the truth about her. Even the NY Times, as left-wing as it is and always has been (let us never forget that Walter Duranty won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for filing news stories about Joseph Stalin that read like love poems), couldn't refrain from breaking the news that during the four years she was Secretary of State, she used her personal email and owned her own server. What she did was illegal, immoral, unethical and probably fattening, but probably no more so than the Clinton Foundation sucking in millions of dollars in foreign bribes while Hillary busied herself sightseeing on the taxpayers' dime, lying about Benghazi and pushing the reset button with Russia. When asked about Hillary's using an unsecured email account, Obama, who had swapped countless communiques with Hillary, claimed he was unaware of the brewing scandal until he read about it in the newspaper. At the same time, the chap who has kept his birth certificate, his school transcript, his travel visas and his early sex life, under lock and key, insists he is as transparent as glass. Maybe, if he happens to be referring to stained glass.
A Better 2016 Agenda
"In your heart you know he's right," was Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign slogan in 1964. The critics of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced Monday he is running for president, are effectively saying of him: "In your head you know he's nuts." Even before his announcement, Cruz was labeled with the typical modifiers the left uses to scare people who don't pay much attention to politics -- extreme, far right, out of the mainstream. In the run-up to the next election, the left and their media colleagues will try to fool Republicans into nominating a mushy moderate from the party's establishment wing. You know, someone like "President John McCain," or "President Mitt Romney." They know that if the GOP falls for this line again, conservatives will stay home and Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Countdown to Obama's Dangerous Deal With Iran
Appeasing those who call for “death to America.”
ISIL Survived U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
No reasonable person can dispute that the terrorist organization that now calls itself the Islamic State -- and that the administration usually calls ISIL -- is a force for evil and enemy of the United States. The question is: What policies are most likely to stop -- or minimize to the greatest degree possible -- the damage this terrorist group can do to Americans and our friends? To answer this question rationally, U.S. policymakers must take into account certain facts. These include: 1) The group the administration now calls ISIL existed before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and was involved in murdering an American before then. 2) It survived an eight-year U.S. occupation of Iraq and the death of its founding leader. 3) It has a broader base in the Islamic world today than before the 2003 invasion.
The Washington Post's Obama Deniers
It's as if they were waiting, breathlessly. The moment Ted Cruz announced his presidential campaign, the national media proclaimed their horror. He was "brash," a "hardliner," an "uncompromising conservative," they warned. ABC anchor David Muir announced his agenda was the usual No list: "Promising no abortion, no gay marriage, no gun control, no IRS." Apparently, there's no room for hope and change -- if you're a conservative. Barack Obama owned the most left-wing voting record during his short tenure in the Senate. But when he announced his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois, on Feb. 10, 2007 -- arrogantly comparing himself to Abe Lincoln -- the networks warmly repeated that he pledged to be a "uniter" that was "promising a more hopeful America." They said he declared it was "time for his generation to end the cynical partisan politics of the baby boomers."