Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Reversing Course in Illinois
The most portentous election of 2014, which gave the worst-governed state its first Republican governor in 12 years, has initiated this century's most intriguing political experiment. Illinois has favored Democratic presidential candidates by an average of 16 points in the last six elections. But by electing businessman Bruce Rauner, it initiated a process that might dismantle a form of governance that afflicts many states and municipalities. Rauner, 58, won his first elective office by promising to change Illinois' political culture of one-party rule by entrenched politicians subservient to public-sector unions. This culture's consequences include: After more than a dozen credit-rating downgrades in five years, the state has the lowest rating among the states. Unfunded public employees' pension liabilities are estimated, perhaps conservatively, at $111 billion, the nation's largest such deficit as a percentage of state revenue. Currently, public pensions consume nearly 25 percent of general state revenues. The state owes vendors $6.5 billion in unpaid bills, and more than 1 million people have left Illinois for less dysfunctional states in the last 15 years. Debt per resident is about $24,989, compared with $7,094 in neighboring Indiana.
For Death by ISIS You Have to Go Out; Illegal Aliens Deliver!
You can always tell the media are hiding something when they obsessively focus on Muslim atrocities someplace else in the world. Cable TV could cover Muslim atrocities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from 632 A.D. to the end of time, without repeating themselves. For at least a year after 9/11, I used to turn on the TV, and if I saw a "Survivor" contestant, I'd think, "Good. No news." These days, I turn on the TV, and if I see former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, I think, "Good. No news." By now, the public knows more about ISIS than they know about the Kardashians. But it has no idea that the very same Senate Democrats who claimed to oppose Obama's amnesty when they were campaigning are currently filibustering a bill to defund it, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is ready to cave.
Achilles' Hill: GOP Takes Hit on Amnesty
They may be in the same party, but Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) are on different pages when it comes to immigration strategy. The plan had been to use Homeland Security's funding -- which runs out in two days -- to back the White House into a corner on its decision to ignore the law and wave five million illegal immigrants into the country. Neither party really wants to deal with the optics of DHS shutting down, but they also know that (apart from the media's narrative), it would really have no meaningful effect on American security -- not when 85% of the Department's employees would still be working as "essential" personnel. But unlike his House counterpart, Sen. McConnell is apparently too antsy about the public's perception of a DHS slowdown to hold his ground.
Look Who's Making an Issue of Obama's Religion
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, attending a meeting of the National Governors Association, was asked by two Washington Post reporters whether President Obama is a Christian. "I don't know," Walker candidly replied. He has plenty of company. During the president's reelection campaign in the summer of 2012, the Pew Research Center polled a national sample of registered voters: "Do you happen to know what Barack Obama's religion is?" More than one-third of the respondents -- 36 percent -- said they didn't know. Only 45 percent identified the president as a Christian; 16 percent said he's a Muslim.
A Classless Society
For a great many years, ours was a nation where class distinctions existed, but they weren't usually rolled out for strictly partisan purposes. But that was before Obama and his trolls decided there was political gold to be mined by dividing America into a series of political wards, separated by age, race, gender and income. In England, the people have long been divided into upper class and lower class. Over here, Obama, a notable Anglophobe, has seen to it that the major divide is between those with some vestige of class and those with none. By promoting the redistribution of wealth, he has garnered favor with poor blacks, single women, college students, illegal aliens and Jewish socialists, and through his economic policies he has made the poor poorer and the rich even richer, leading to increased political contributions from defense attorneys, insurance companies and Wall Street. It has also sent a great many of those who were formerly entrenched in the middleclass into poverty, making them increasingly dependent on the federal government, the natural feeding ground of Democrats.
America, Love It or Leave It
When former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he did not think that "the president loves America," was he right? Of course he was. The record is strewn with President Barack Obama's statements of contempt for America. In a quieter setting, I think Professor Obama would agree. He would then go on to brag about his love for higher things: for humankind, for the world community, for the planet, the green planet. Recall in 2009 when Obama told a European audience, "There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive toward" Europe. I cannot remember exactly when "America" or even an American president expressed these sentiments, but I guess Obama and his speechwriters can. He has also expressed his contempt for the American system of commerce. In a speech abundant with contempt for capitalism he said -- and I shall only pick out one passage -- "if you've got a business, you didn't build that."
Hollywood Hypocrites Demand 'Wage Equality'
When actress Patricia Arquette won an Oscar, she pled for "wage equality" for women: "To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen in this nation: We have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America." Days later, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said, "I think we all cheered at Patricia Arquette's speech at the Oscars, because she's right -- it's time to have wage equality." Back in April 2014, Hillary Clinton sent out this tweet: "20 years ago, women made 72 cents on the dollar to men. Today it's still just 77 cents. More work to do." Today women, supposedly, only make 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men. Here's the problem -- it simply is not true. When you compare apples to apples, the earnings gap shrinks to between four and seven cents, and the Labor Department suggests "non-sexist" reasons explain even this small gap.
Stop the Immigration Flood
Washington is such a phony city. Maybe that's why it has such a good relationship with Hollywood. In the sequel to a "film" we have seen many times before, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may "shut down" Saturday because of a dispute between the Obama administration and the new Republican congressional majority over funding for the president's immigration orders, which writes The Hill.com, would "provide deferred deportations and work visas to illegal immigrants." In essence, the orders would grant them the equivalent of squatter's rights. DHS doesn't have to shut down. Most employees will show up for work, though they might have to go without pay for a while, at least until Congress gets its act together, as it has in previous politically motivated closings. But the appearance of closing the agency will allow Democrats and their media flatterers another opportunity to blame Republicans and gain short-term political advantage.
Illiberal Approach to Immigration Only Invites More Acrimony
A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Obama's executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos. It is a good time to remember that there are more than just two types of immigration -- legal and illegal. There also exist liberal and illiberal approaches to immigration. Take liberal immigration. It is governed by laws passed by Congress and signed and executed by the president. Nearly all Americans accept that no individual can pick and choose which federal statute he chooses to obey, depending on his own perceived self-interest.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
DHS Funding Battle Goes Down to the Wire
The Obama administration chooses amnesty madness over domestic security.
When Push Comes to Poll...
How much is your religious liberty worth? Try $2,001. That's the going rate in Washington state, according to its attorney general. If Barronelle Stutzman wants to exercise the freedom already guaranteed to her by the First Amendment, she'll have to fork over a couple thousand dollars (which she doesn't plan on doing any time soon). The Christian owner of Arlene's Flowers is standing by her beliefs, no matter what it costs her. "You are asking me to walk in the way of a well-known betrayer, one who sold something of infinite worth for 30 pieces of silver. That is something I will not do." When she turned down a same-sex "wedding" job, Barronelle says she didn't "relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important."
Obama Criticism Should Be Banned?
Some might insist Barack Obama is a lame duck, but our national media elite still think of him as a very graceful swan. When this man comes under criticism, journalists are incapable of any sense of objectivity, balance or fairness. The accuser must be forced to withdraw the criticism, or be punished. First, Rudy Giuliani said at an event for Gov. Scott Walker that the president doesn't love America like previous presidents did. That might be a little unfair. Jimmy Carter also loved to get up in front of a podium and lecture about all of America's flaws. The media erupted. Outraged that anyone dared to question Obama's love of country, they pounded the table and demanded that Walker denounce Giuliani. The New York Times ran a defensive story headlined "President Obama Has, in Fact, Expressed Love for His Country."
Has Chuck Grassley Ever Seen a Prison Sentence He Thought Was Too Long?
Last week the newly created Coalition for Public Safety, a bipartisan, transideological campaign to reform the criminal justice system, made a big splash by bringing together political adversaries such as Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress. Notably absent from celebrations of this strange-bedfellows alliance: any mention of actual policy changes the coalition plans to pursue. The lack of specifics was understandable but telling. While there seems to be broad agreement within the coalition about what should be done to "make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer and more cost effective," the current Congress may settle for little more than lip service to those goals.
CNN, DHS and SPLC's Blame-Righty Hit Job
The Department of Homeland Security refuses to release a report on "right-wing" terrorism that somehow found its way into CNN's hands last week during the farcical White House summit on Don't Say Islamic Extremism. Your tax dollars are once again hard at work -- defaming conservatives, deflecting from worldwide murderous jihad and denying the public access to information they funded. CNN splashed the big scoop on its website: "DHS intelligence report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat." The fear-mongering piece featured a huge map of 24 alleged acts of "violence by sovereign citizen extremists since 2010." CNN's Evan Perez and Wes Bruer prominently quoted Mark Potok of the widely disgraced propaganda outfit the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok claimed that "there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism."
Is America's Destiny Now Rental Housing?
Is the realistic aspiration to own a home still central to the American dream or is it fading away like so many other traditional American values? Newly released data from the Census Bureau shows that the overall rate of homeownership in America hit a 20-year low in 2014. Only 64.5 percent of American households lived in a home they owned last year. That was the lowest rate since 1994, when 64.0 percent lived in a home they owned. The overall homeownership rate peaked in 2004, when 69.0 percent of households lived in a home they owned. Each year since then, homeownership has declined.
Why Rudy and Walker Were Right
This week, the media broke news that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, at an event attended by prospective Republican presidential candidate Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, that he does not believe President Barack Obama "loves America." This isn't news. Barack Obama doesn't love free enterprise, believes founding philosophy was fatally flawed and sees the American people as rubes with antiquated religious and racist tendencies. Sure, we can all agree that Obama likely loves America's scenery; perhaps he loves America, but doesn't like her very much. But that's not what Giuliani was talking about, and everyone knows it. But in any case, Giuliani wasn't the media's true target. The true target was Walker.
Kochs and Unions
Lots of people sure hate the Koch brothers. The Kochs get death threats like this: "If I had a chance to murder a Koch brother in cold blood, I would surely take it." Jim Dean doesn't want to kill the Kochs, but he does want new laws to limit their influence. Dean's brother Howard was a Democratic presidential candidate, and Dean chairs a group called Democracy for America. "Get money out of politics," Dean says on my show this week. But Dean's not just unhappy because the Kochs have money to throw around. He doesn't like their politics.
Hillary Clinton's Identity Crisis
Is Hillary Rodham Clinton a McDonald's Big Mac or a Chipotle burrito bowl? A can of Bud or a bottle of Blue Moon? JCPenney or J. Crew?" That was the opening question of a front-page Washington Post story on Clinton's effort to figure out her "brand." To that end, she has recruited a team of corporate marketing specialists to "help imagine Hillary 5.0." "It's exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal," Peter Sealey, a longtime corporate marketing strategist, told the Post. "She needs to use everything a brand has: a dominant color, a logo, a symbol. ... The symbol of a Mercedes is a three-pointed star. The symbol of Coca-Cola is the contour bottle. The symbol of McDonald's is the golden arches. What is Clinton's symbol?"
The Cancer of Multiculturalism
President Barack Obama surprised many at the National Prayer Breakfast when he lectured us, "Lest we get on our high horse and think this (barbarity) is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ." Obama went on to explain, "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often (were) justified in the name of Christ." In Obama's mind, Western outrage at Islamic barbarism should be tempered by the remembrance of what Christians did a thousand years ago in the name of Christ. Plus, that outrage should be chastened by our own history of slavery and Jim Crow. President Obama's vision is that of a man brainwashed through an academic vision of multiculturalism, in which American exceptionalism has no place. It's a vision that has been shaped by a longtime association with people who hate our country, people such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Weather Underground leader and Pentagon bomber William Ayers and Ayers' onetime fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. A vision that sees a moral equivalency between what Christians did centuries ago and today's Islamic savagery is quite prevalent in academia. It's part of what's worshipped on most college campuses as diversity and multiculturalism.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
