Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Surrender to Cuba? Why Didn’t We Think of That?
"Obama gives the Castro regime in Cuba an undeserved bailout." Was that a headline from Ronald Reagan's favorite conservative weekly, Human Events? Or, perhaps a stiff rejoinder from the up-to-the-minute reporting of the Weekly Standard? No! That's the headline on an editorial in -- can you believe? -- the Washington Post! It gets better. The Post flays President Obama's rationale for lifting the embargo on Cuba (the incoming GOP Congress will have something to say about this) and it dissects the President's White House statement.
From The Comedy Store
CNN's Anderson Cooper compared the CIA's enhanced interrogation of al-Qaeda terror suspects to tactics used by the Nazis. He forgets how people and standards change over the years. Rectal hydration may have been a form of torture a dozen years ago but today it's covered under Obamacare.
Words & Music
Recently, someone called in to my weekly webcast (K4HD.com, Wednesday at noon, PST) and, knowing of my high regard for motion picture scores asked me about my favorites. One thing led to another and I began relating anecdotes about some of America's great composers and lyricists, some of which had been told to me by the men themselves and some of which I had merely read about. They struck me as worth sharing. There is a reason I have always wished I had had a musical education and could have been a composer. For one thing, nobody needs to translate your work to be appreciated in foreign countries... For another, if you're lucky enough or talented enough, the music just seems to flow out like spring water.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Fighting Obama's Amnesty: Et Tu, Brute?
Most Americans don't watch C-SPAN and I cannot blame them. More often than not, it seems as though the Senate is in a quorum call or a lone senator is debating something totally irrelevant to the issues that are important to most Americans. That changed a little bit on Saturday when Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah forced the Senate to debate President Obama's executive amnesty. I'll save you the boring back-and-forth that occurred in our nation's capital over the procedural stuff and cut right to the chase: Ted and Mike were attempting to carry out the mandate that voters gave to Congress on Nov. 4.
Appeasing Dictators
It may not be too early for President Obama to start job-hunting given his lame duck status, and I have a suggestion for the perfect fit. He should look into a job at Sony Pictures. The president and the company are on the same page when it comes to appeasing dictators. This week the president announced he is giving Cuban President Raul Castro pretty much everything the dictator wants in return for the release of an imprisoned American, whose captivity was proof of the tyrannical regime's human rights violations. On the same day, Sony Pictures announced it is canceling the release of a comedy about North Korean President Kim Jong Un in response to threats against theaters scheduled to show the film on Christmas Day. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so deadly serious.
More 'Tolerance' From Stalinist Universities
Honestly, sometimes leftist thought police surprise even me, not so much with their unreasonableness, extremism and tyrannical tactics but with their brazenness in openly showing who they are. Each new day's headlines trump yesterday's. A few weeks ago, Fox News' Todd Starnes reported on a Marquette University student's encounter with his ethics instructor. The professor, Cheryl Abbate, was leading her "Theory of Ethics" class in a discussion about the application of philosophical theories to controversial political issues. Among the issues listed on the blackboard were gay rights, gun rights and the death penalty. Professor Abbate removed gay rights from the list before the discussion began, with the summary explanation, "We all agree on this."
Are There No Media Ethics on Hackers?
The widespread reporting on hacked emails from Sony Pictures -- spurred by the upcoming release of an allegedly funny movie about assassinating North Korean despot Kim Jong Un -- might encourage some gloating from people who would like to bring Hollywood down a peg. But hold the schadenfreude. The media's ethics -- or seeming lack of ethics -- are troubling. Take CNN "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter in an interview with the program "Access Hollywood." His ethical position? Anything goes, as long as the journalists aren't the hackers. "It would be wrong and it would be illegal for the journalists to do the hacking and find these stolen documents," Stelter declared. "But once they're out in the public domain, they are, I'm sorry to say, fair game. They are sort of a free-for-all. That doesn't make it right necessarily, but it makes it inevitable."
No Superheroes in 'The Interview' Capitulation
The first issue of Captain America came out on December 20, 1940. It shows Cap slugging Adolph Hitler in the mouth. Good stuff, but note the date. America wouldn't enter World War II for about another year. At the time, many Americans wanted to stay out of another European war. And here was an American superhero punching the leader of a sovereign nation in the kisser. Subsequent issues kept pitting Captain America against Hitler and his goons. The angriest reaction came from the German American Bund, Hitler's stooges in the U.S. They harassed Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, the creators of Captain America, with hate mail and telephoned death threats.
Mrs. Obama's Tall Tales of Racialized Victimhood
Oh, woe is she. In an "exclusive" interview with People magazine this week, first lady Michelle Obama lamented the "sting" of "racist experiences" that she and her husband allegedly still suffer. My message for America's Marie Antoinette? Cry me a river. To show how she's down with The Struggle of post-Ferguson agitators, Mrs. Obama cited a supposedly horrifying incident at a Target store where she was treated, in her paranoid mind, as a subservient. "Even as the first lady," she bemoaned, "not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf."
Cold War Replay: This Time We Lose
Has there ever been a president more eager to make concessions to vicious regimes than Barack Obama? The opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba is the latest and, one fears, not the last in a string of preemptive concessions. Obama, with his blend of hard-left prejudices and vaulting solipsism, has sought throughout his presidency to atone for what he and his party view as America's past sins. That was the essence of the "reset" with Russia, which included betraying two of America's European allies, Poland and the Czech Republic, who had been scheduled to receive ground-based antiballistic missile systems. Though Obama is fond of saying "the Cold War is over," and even mocked Mitt Romney's concern about Russian behavior by sniffing, "The Eighties called, and they want their foreign policy back," it is Obama himself who seems fixated on reenacting the Cold War -- except this time, the U.S. loses.
Run, Liz, Run!
When Sen. Elizabeth Warren rallied beleaguered House liberals to push back against a bank-coddling omnibus bill and the spineless White House that enabled it, she showed us some of her dynamic appeal. Passing trillion-dollar pieces of legislation should never be easy, and disrupting the current cozy, bipartisan environment surely can't be a bad thing. As Warren was disrupting D.C., it's not difficult to imagine Hillary Clinton ensconced in her penthouse suite in whatever city she's about to give a six-figure lecture in, contemplating every conceivable political angle of this debate, tabulating every potential big-money donor's interests and asking obsequious staffers how polling looks before composing her own opinion on the matter. That's because Hillary is the Democrats' Mitt Romney. And Democrats would be engaging in a historic act of negligence if they allowed her to run unopposed for president.
How to Fight the Lone Wolf
The lone wolf is the new national nightmare, dramatized and amplified this week by the hostage-taking attack in Sydney, Australia. But there are two kinds of lone wolves -- the crazy and the evil -- and the distinction is important. The real terrorists are rational. Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, had been functioning as an Army doctor for years. Psychotics cannot carry that off. Hasan even had a business card listing his occupation as S of A (Soldier of Allah). He then went out and, shouting "Allahu Akbar," shot dead 13 fellow soldiers. To this day, Hasan speaks coherently and proudly of the massacre. That's terrorism.
Jeb and Hillary: Dynastic Politics in America?
Earlier this week, Jeb Bush announced he was setting up a political committee to explore a presidential candidacy. Hillary Clinton has been exploring a presidential candidacy for months and perhaps years. Polls show Clinton with a wide lead for the Democratic nomination and Bush as a leading competitor for the Republican nomination. All of which leaves many people, some of them admirers of one or both potential candidates, queasy. Out of 319 million people in America, will our 45th president be the son of the 41st and brother of the 43rd or the wife of the 42nd? The United States is a republic. Have we developed a dynastic, royal form of politics?
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Gruber Reflects the Undemocratic Left
Key Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has been under a hot spotlight recently for disparaging comments he made about his fellow citizens. In a series of videos taken at various conferences and lectures between 2010 and 2013, Gruber claimed that the effects of Obamacare had to be hidden from Americans because of "the stupidity of the American voter." The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor said that "lack of transparency is a huge political advantage" in writing such legislation and likened its critics to "my adolescent children." Adding, well, injury to the insult, it's been discovered that Gruber received almost $6 million in taxpayer dollars for his various services in designing and consulting on Obamacare.
A Time for Torture
A poll released this week found 51 percent of Americans approve of the harsh interrogation tactics the CIA used immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Imagine what those numbers would have been on Sept. 12, 2001. The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey is in synch with the results of similar opinion polls that show a majority of Americans are not naive about what "torture" is or isn't or when it should be used. About half of those polled called the CIA's use of water boarding, sleep deprivation and other tough interview methods "torture," but a majority still approved of it.
Obama's 'Operation Choke Point'
Why the administration’s crusade against lawful U.S. businesses won’t be discontinued anytime soon.
One in Five People Who Write for Rolling Stone Are Morons
In response to the total implosion of Rolling Stone's preposterous story about a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia, the media have reverted to their Soviet-style reporting. They're not even saying: *We're choosing not to talk about UVA because it's a side show. It's more like: UVA? That's a school?* Not only did the UVA gang rape turn out to be a hoax, but then President Obama's own Department of Justice completed a six-year study on college rape, and it turns out that instead of 1-in-5 college coeds being raped, the figure is 0.03-in-5. Less than 1 percent of college students are the victim of a sexual assault -- 0.6 percent to be exact -- not to be confused with the 20 percent, or "one in five," claimed by feminists and President Obama.
A Texas-Sized Plate Dispute
The Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas, on May 13, 1865, is called the last battle of the Civil War, but the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) might consider that judgment premature, given its conflict with the state's Department of Transportation and Department of Motor Vehicles. This skirmish is of national interest because it implicates a burgeoning new entitlement -- the right to pass through life without encountering any disagreeable thought. Under Texas' specialty license plate system, plates can be created by the Legislature by specific enactments, or can, for a fee, be designed by individuals, nonprofits or businesses. In the private instances, Texas is selling space for advertising. The specialty plates exhort ("Be a Blood Donor"), emote ("I'd Rather Be Golfing"), celebrate (NASCAR, many universities) and commemorate ("Buffalo Soldiers," "Korea Veteran").
The Challenge: Making Sense of the Light
This time of year, lights strung up around our homes proclaim a warm welcome, usher us into the firelight, the flickering candlelight, the colorful glow of family trees. The lights elicit an exciting sense of hope; they help ready us for the coming holiday. We are naturally drawn to light. We adore it. We love watching the sun stretch its arms wide across the cold ground, helping our minds make sense of an otherwise dark world. "As the light approaches, the earth takes shape like clay pressed beneath a seal." (Job 38:14).
Humbug Narratives
Will Rogers, the late American humorist and corn-pone philosopher, once said, "All I know is what I read in the papers." That statement earned him a place in Bartletts's Familiar Quotations. Were he alive today it would most likely be inviting widespread derision. Today's newspapers abound with bogus stories. Most of us only know of the stories that are soon exposed. Doubtless there are many more. For instance, news stories of GDP growth or inflation rates usually have to be revised but they are taken at face value when they first appear. Are there any newspaper readers in America who do not know about the humbug of Rolling Stone's story about alleged rape at the University of Virginia? The story was based solely on the word of the alleged victim without any further sourcing. Now University officials and local police have yet to find a trace of the seven alleged rapists. The fraternity at which the alleged rape took place has no record of a party having taken place there -- two years ago, as it happens! And one more thing, it appears three of the victim's original supporters now think they were given a bogus email address. They are beginning to doubt her elaborate story, which features no witnesses other than her.