Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Lessons Worth Learning
A friend, knowing how strongly I object to politically correct speech, which I regard as self-censorship, sent me ammo in an email. He reminded me that the same Obama-Holder federal government that has deprived the Washington Redskins of its constitutionally-guaranteed trademark protection has Tomahawk cruise missiles, along with Apache, Blackhawk, Kiowa and Lakota, helicopters. For good measure, the same holier-than-thou hypocrites saw nothing wrong with employing "Geronimo" as the code name for the Navy Seal attack that killed Osama bin Laden. Until my friend and blog manager Steve Maikoski called my attention to the group, I had been unaware of Anonymous, an international affiliation of cyber-hackers. Steve was alerting me to the fact that in the wake of the massacre of the French journalists, the Belgian branch of Anonymous has tossed down the gauntlet, announcing to the Islamic terrorists, via a video: "You will not impose your sharia law in our democracies, we will not let your stupidity kill our liberties and our freedom of expression. We have warned you; expect your destruction. We will track you everywhere on the planet, nowhere will you be safe. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forget. We do not forgive. Be afraid of us, Islamic State and al Qaeda – you will experience our vengeance."
Sunday, January 18, 2015
The Real State of the Union and Simple Steps for Improvement
With a new year often comes anticipation and optimism. And this year the State of the Union address will be delivered before a new Congress -- a Republican majority in both the House and Senate. President Obama's State of the Union speech will likely have its smallest audience to date. That is the price that any leader pays for being dissembling on a range of important issues -- from Benghazi to IRS misconduct and censorship -- and showing disrespect for the voting public. After all, when after the November 4 election results came in, and Obama said that he heard the message of "two-thirds of the people who chose not to vote," that was final confirmation of rigidity and denial that turns people off.
Mitt's Third Run Would Be No Charm
After his third loss, in 1908, as the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan enjoyed telling the story of the drunk who three times tried to enter a private club. After being tossed out into the street a third time, the drunk said: "They can't fool me. Those fellows don't want me in there!" Mitt Romney might understandably think that a third try would have a happy ending in a successful presidency. First, however, he must be a candidate. In 1948, when Democrats considered offering their presidential nomination to Dwight Eisenhower, the former and future Democratic speaker of the house, taciturn Sam Rayburn, said of Eisenhower: "Good man, but wrong business." Two landslide elections and an admirable presidency proved that Rayburn was spectacularly mistaken, but he was right that not every good man is good at every business. Romney, less than nimble at the business of courting voters, lost a winnable race in 2012.
Paul Krugman Rejected by His Peers
Paul Krugman has become an embarrassment to the economics profession. Despite his Nobel Prize and despite his previous high regard in the profession, his twice-a-week editorials in The New York Times are causing even progressive economists to treat him as somewhat of a kook. Since 2011, the United States has followed what Krugman correctly calls a policy of "austerity." For example, the federal budget deficit has declined from 8.4 percent of GDP in 2011 to a predicted 2.9 percent of GDP for all of 2014. All along the way Paul Krugman protested that such policies would prolong the recession and even push us into a "low-grade depression."
Saturday, January 17, 2015
How ObamaCare Harms Low-Income Workers
The primary purpose of the Affordable Care Act was to make health insurance affordable for people with modest incomes. Yet as the employer mandate begins to kick in for 2015, the law is already hurting some of the people it was intended to help. By this time next year, we may find that many workers who earn within a few dollars of the minimum wage have less income and less insurance coverage (as a group) than they did before the mandate began to take effect. This is the conclusion I draw from my survey in December of 136 fast-food restaurants (franchisees) that employed close to 3,500 workers. Before 2014 about half the employees were "full time" as defined by ObamaCare; that is, they worked 30 hours or more a week. The potential cost to the employers of providing mandated health insurance to their full-time staff would have been about $7 million a year. But by the time the employers took advantage of all their legal options they were able to reduce their cost to less than 1% of that amount.
A Tip for Deval Patrick: Be Like Bush
Last week Deval Patrick shed the title he had worn for eight years. This week he donned the first of what will doubtless be a batch of new titles: The commonwealth's former governor announced plans to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a "visiting innovation fellow" at the school's Innovation Initiative. As Patrick re-acclimates to life in the private sector, there will be plenty to keep him busy. He told Fortune magazine that he has been approached by venture firms, equity firms, and corporations. He will have his pick of speaking engagements and media appearances. And the political hive will keep buzzing with speculation about any future electoral plans.
From The Comedy Store
The White House admitted Obama should've attended the anti-terrorism rally in Paris. The press secretary said the president wasn't told of the rally. From now on whenever world events are breaking to which Obama must respond, the ESPN anchor will tug on his right ear.
Jindal's Brilliant Take on Radical Islam
"Let's be honest here. Islam has a problem." Those are key sentences in an incredibly hard-hitting speech that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will give in London on Monday. It is the toughest speech I have read on the whole issue of Islamic radicalism and its destructive, murdering, barbarous ways that are upsetting the entire world. Early in the speech Jindal says he's not going to be politically correct. And he uses the term "radical Islamists" without hesitation, placing much of the blame for the Paris murders and all radical Islamist terrorism on a refusal of Muslim leaders to denounce these acts.
The Last Time I Saw Paris
In 1940, when Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote their Oscar-winning ode to Paris, she had recently been invaded by the Nazis. Had the song been written 75 years later, the lyric would have to mention that her streets ran red with blood, and Hammerstein would have to find a rhyme for Islamic butchery. It wasn't that long ago that the media expressed its universal contempt for Sony Pictures when the company initially decided not to release "The Interview." The charge was that Sony was letting Kim Jong-un get the idea he could unilaterally abolish the First Amendment. Even Obama, in spite of his fondness for Hollywood liberals, belatedly piled on, insisting that Sony had made a mistake.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Monsieur Obama MIA
Everyone from Jon Stewart to Ted Cruz has mocked President Obama for not flying to France last weekend. And rightly so. It should have been a no-brainer for any American president to want to be seen by the whole world leading a massive unity march against terrorism in response to what is being called France's 9/11. Obama had a great chance to show America's solidarity with the latest victims of Islamist extremism and stand up for a fundamental Western value like free speech.
Duke Reverses Muslim Call to Prayer Decision
Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Students Association behind the effort.
Penn Pals? GOP Heads to PA to Mend Ties
Even in Hershey, there's no sugar-coating the tough job ahead for the GOP majority. But that isn't deterring Republicans, who trekked to Pennsylvania's chocolate capital to map out the next few months. For the House and Senate GOP, the retreat couldn't have come at a better time, as the two chambers try to hammer out a strategy on big-ticket issues like immigration. The break from D.C. may be exactly what the doctor ordered for House Republicans, who were still stinging over the rift in the Speaker's election. Fortunately, some of those wounds may be starting to heal, thanks to John Boehner's gutsy move to the right on the President's amnesty order. Making good on a promise he made before Christmas, the new Speaker didn't budge on his commitment to conservatives to take a hard line against the White House's lawlessness.
Don't Be Afraid to Give Kids Independence
When I started second grade at St. Mary's Elementary School in Albuquerque, my parents decided it was time I learned how to walk to school. The trek from my grandparents' house, where we lived in a small two-room adobe casita at the rear of the property, to the school a mile away took about a half-hour. I walked alone, down what passed for busy streets in those days, through neighborhoods and commercial areas, occasionally meeting classmates en route. It was good exercise and taught me independence at an early age. It's lucky for my parents they weren't raising me in Montgomery County, Md., today, or they might be facing child neglect charges. That may be the fate of a Silver Spring, Md., couple.
The Golden Globes of Propaganda
When the Golden Globe awards telecast was over, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation proclaimed, "It was a great night for LGBT-inclusive television." They could have added: "We run the joint." Gay actor Matt Bomer thanked his "husband" and his surrogate sons when he won an award for HBO's Reagan-bashing AIDS drama "The Normal Heart." But the bigger celebration came with a best actor award to Jeffrey Tambor, who plays Mort, a 70-year-old father of three who decides he's a woman named Maura in a show called "Transparent," or literally, "Trans Parent," since his three adult children have to figure this whole scene out. The show "airs" on Amazon.com.
What the Pope Got Wrong About Free Expression
We heathens can leave the theological debate to others. But Pope Francis, the bishop of Rome and world leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has some ideas about laws governing the secular world. We expect Francis to defend the dignity of faith, to bring clarity to the Catholic position. Yet instead, the pope, while en route to the Philippines, offered a number of comments about freedom of expression, which ranged from the unclear to the contradictory. More than simply saying that poking fun at religion is ugly, he argued that there should be limits on freedom of expression and limits on mocking faith. (All this with the caveat that the pope's words were not misrepresented or taken out of context as they so often are by the media.)
Obama to Further Tighten the Noose on 'Big Awl'
I am guessing you don't know one of the major things President Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world's war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart -- as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America's currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by the administration and the media, this economy is not bouncing back. According to Gallup CEO Jim Clifton, for the first time in 35 years, the United States is no longer first but 12th (12th!) among developed nations in business startup activity. More businesses are closing than opening. Four hundred thousand businesses are being born each year in America, but some 470,000 are closing. That's because America, under this president, is a business-hostile zone.
Obama: Charlie Who?
On Sunday, at the great Paris rally, the whole world was Charlie. By Tuesday, the veneer of solidarity was exposed as tissue thin. It began dissolving as soon as the real, remaining Charlie Hebdo put out its post-massacre issue featuring a Muhammad cover that, as The New York Times put it, "reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities." Again? Already? Had not 4 million marchers and 44 foreign leaders just turned out on the streets of France to declare "No" to intimidation, and pledging solidarity, indeed identification with ("Je suis Charlie"), a satirical weekly specializing in the most outrageous and often tasteless portrayals of Muhammad? And yet, within 48 hours, the new Charlie Hebdo issue featuring the image of Muhammad -- albeit a sorrowful, indeed sympathetic Muhammad -- sparked new protests, denunciations and threats of violence, which in turn evinced another round of doubt and self-flagellation in the West about the propriety and limits of free expression. Hopeless.
Attack of the Open-Borders Mau-Mau-ers
I stand with the Santa Barbara News-Press. How about you? The newspaper is under fire for refusing to kowtow to left-wing word police and militant propagandists who demand unfettered illegal immigration. Last week, in the wake of angry protests against the publication, vandals threw paint bombs and spray-painted graffiti on its offices. So, what exactly is the News-Press' unforgivable crime? Calling illegal aliens "illegals" in a headline for a story about illegal aliens descending on California DMVs. A new law went into effect last Friday allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses without proof of lawful residence. The article featured interviews with ecstatic illegal aliens, including one who has been in the country illegally for "22 years."
Protecting a Tolerant Society Against the Intolerance: A New -- and Old -- Challenge
How far should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? It's a difficult issue, one without any entirely satisfactory answer. And it's a current issue in the days after 40 world leaders and the U.S. ambassador to France marched together in Paris against the jihadist Muslim murderers who targeted the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. English-speaking peoples, to use Winston Churchill's phrase, have been dealing with this problem off and on for 300 years. In the late 17th century, most of continental Europe had established state churches and prohibited or disfavored other worship. England had an established church but also tolerated other forms of worship, including by Jews who were invited back into the country by Oliver Cromwell.
Ducking Reality: Administration Goes to Rhetorical Extremes on Terror Attacks
Could this argument be any dumber? The Obama administration has forced America and much of the world into a debate no one wanted or needed. Namely, does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with Islam? This debate is different than the much-coveted "national conversation on race" that politicians so often call for (usually as a way to duck having it), because that is a conversation at least some people want. The White House doesn't want a conversation about Islam and terrorism. White House spokesman Josh Earnest says, "We have chosen not to use that label [of radical Islam] because it doesn't seem to accurately describe what happened."