Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
What Obama's Ferguson Sermon Left Out
In his 967-word statement to the nation about the Ferguson grand jury decision on Tuesday night, President Obama devoted precisely one sentence to the risks and sacrifices police officers make to keep the peace. One. Obama delivered a tepid, obligatory acknowledgement that "our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day." But he sandwiched it between a finger-wagging admonition that cops need to "show care and restraint" and a pandering discourse justifying the "deep distrust" that "communities of color" have toward law enforcement because of the "legacy of racial discrimination in this country."
Time to Stop the Moderator Masochism
On an interview tour for his new book on President Obama, NBC's Chuck Todd told Larry King that his conversations with Obama are "very nourishing." Even after six or seven years of adoration, reporters still sound like then-NBC reporter Lee Cowan admitting in 2008 that being assigned to the Obama campaign made his "knees quake." He wondered if "he could do the campaign justice," since it was "truly historic." With conservatism on the ascent again and Obama's legacy in tatters, it doesn't take psychic powers to guess the 2016 presidential cycle is going to be another brutal campaign for GOP presidential contenders. Not only will the media transparently wish for Democrats to retain the power to protect Obama's "historic" policies, Republicans will inevitably be tagged as sexist for daring to run against the "truly historic campaign" of Hillary Clinton.
Feelingstown, Missouri
On Monday night, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced that Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, would not be indicted in the shooting death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown. McCulloch explained the falsehoods permeating the original media accounts of the shooting; he explained that Brown had, by all available physical and credible witness evidence, charged Wilson after attempting to take his gun from him in Wilson's vehicle. And none of it mattered. The riots went forward as planned; the media steadfastly distributed its prewritten narrative of evil racist white cop murdering innocent young black man. President Obama stepped to the microphones to denounce American racism. He did not recapitulate the evidence; he did not condemn rioters and pledge that law enforcement would crack down on them. Instead, he said that protesters and rioters -- all of them ignoring the fact that a white police officer had not murdered an innocent black man in cold blood -- were justified in their rage.
Why Michael Brown's Killer Would Have Been Acquitted
Conflicting Witness Accounts and Ambiguous Physical Evidence Provide Plenty of Room for Reasonable Doubt
Thanks, Property Rights!
This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for something our forebears gave us: property rights. People associate property rights with greed and selfishness, but they are keys to our prosperity. Things go wrong when resources are held in common. Before the Pilgrims were able to hold the first Thanksgiving, they nearly starved. Although they had inherited ideas about individualism and property from the English and Dutch trading empires, they tried communism when they arrived in the New World. They decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much work they did.
Obama's Immigration Goal: Enrage Republicans
Maybe President Obama is just trolling? For those who don't know, in Internet parlance, trolling is an effort to elicit outrage from a specific group or the public generally. As the always useful -- but not always G-rated, or spell-checked -- Urban Dictionary explains, "Trolling requires deceiving [sic]; any trolling that doesn't involve decieving [sic] someone isn't trolling at all; it's just stupid." (Pro tip: When spelling "deceiving," remember it's "i before e except after c.") The definition continues: "As such, your victim must not know that you are trolling; if he does, you are an unsuccesful [sic] troll."
The Challenge: Thanksmissing
God "gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike" (Matthew 5:45). Every one of us has been blessed by God, but so few of us recognize His hand on our lives. And those of us who do recognize His providence so rarely take the time to express our gratitude. All too often our thanks is missing. The Bible tells the story of a time when Jesus healed ten men from leprosy at a time. "One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus' feet, so grateful. He couldn't thank him enough -- and he was a Samaritan. Jesus said, 'Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this outsider?' Then he said to him, 'Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you'" (Luke 17:15-19).
Not Entirely Idle Thoughts
Some people collect stamps, others collect sea shells, and I collect notions. Unfortunately, unlike those others, I can't just stick mine in albums or glass jars. I have to stick them in my articles. First up is illegal immigration. Before Obama or Congress gets around to pulling any stunts, they should enforce the laws already on the books. Nobody is entitled to sneak into our country any more than they have the right to sneak into your house. Anyone caught sneaking in should only be deported after serving a six month stretch in one of those Tent City prisons overseen by Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
A Nation of Problem-Solvers No More?
It's easy for Thanksgiving to boil down to little more than turkey, football and travel delays, but many Americans strive to make it more meaningful. They try to take the focus off of our problems and to reflect on our many blessings. As well they should. Consider the example set by Abraham Lincoln. Our 16th president was in the middle of a bloody and protracted civil war when he issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation. "The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies," it began.
Media, Democrats Called Out Bush, Reagan on Abuse of Executive Power. Where Are Their Voices Now?
Republicans are rightly and predictably infuriated by Barack Obama's immigration executive action power play. What has been remarkable has been the silence from the left to President Obama granting legal status to some 5 million illegal immigrants. Such Nixonian abuses of White House power once elicited howls of protest from Democrats and their lap dogs in the media. But in this case of Obama defying voters, Congress and the Constitution in one fell swoop, the left has drifted between quiet unease and full-throttled support. What rank hypocrisy.
Uniting the Nation is Not the Impossible Dream
I am a conservative. The 2014 mid-term election marks the 20th year (at least) I've voted *against* something rather than *for* something, or as the phrase goes, "the lesser of two evils." I'd like to blame Democrats for my predicament, but I can't. They are what they are, and their downward spiral from the party of JFK, to the collection of divide-and-conquer, lying hacks who disdain America's language, culture, traditions -- and finally, our national sovereignty--has been evident for quite some time. Yet in all that time they've never betrayed their ideological imperatives, twisted as they are. It was the GOP who did that. After the electorate gave them control of both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2000, they proceeded to betray their commitment to limited government, fiscal responsibility, and liberty itself. "Compassionate conservatism" was nothing more than tax-and-spend liberalism by another name, and if they really want to know why the nation is now enduring a second helping of the most corrupt administration in the history of the nation, they need look no further than the nearest mirror. Without George W. Bush and a break-the-bank GOP preceding him, the reign of error known as Barack Obama would not have been possible.
Nobody Is Pushing Piketty's Policies to Combat Economic Inequality
Last spring, you may remember, the French economist Thomas Piketty was all the rage in certain enlightened circles. His book "Capital" shot up to the No. 1 spot on bestseller lists, and many economists praised his statistics showing increased income and wealth inequality. Piketty argued that, absent a world war, returns to capital will exceed economic growth, inevitably producing growing inequality in the 21st century. There are problems with Piketty's -- or anyone else's -- statistics. Reliance on U.S. income tax returns overlooks the fact that tax cuts encourage people to realize income and misses non-taxable income such as welfare and Social Security payments.
Hagel Dismissed, but Not Missed
Nearly two years ago, these writers urged President Obama to "Chuck Hagel." Today, it seems, the hapless Secretary of Defense is on his way out. We wish him no ill. And we certainly don't rejoice in his forced resignation. The timing of his dismissal could hardly be worse. It comes on the eve of another "deadline" in our dealings with an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Secretary Hagel never overcame his stumbling debut. A recent poll of national security personnel gave him an abysmal 26% approval rating. And while we should never put civilian control of the military up for a vote of the troops, we should try to avoid naming defense chiefs who command so little respect among those whom they can order to risk their lives.
Sticks in Spokes
During the 2012 campaign, President Obama often resorted to his favorite substitute for thinking: ridicule. Before enthusiastic audiences (who were assured his reelection would spell a thriving economy and a revived middle class), the president would mock Republicans by suggesting that "they have the same prescription they've had for the past 30 years. ... Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning." Obama's prescription, which we are now in a position to evaluate for effectiveness, was the most massive increase in regulation of modern times. There is no industry or economic sector that the Democratic Party does not believe would benefit from badgering interference from Washington. Adding insult, every new regulation is trussed up and presented as "being on the side of the middle class."
Beware of Our Betters
Jonathan Gruber's several videotaped remarks about the gross deceptions that got ObamaCare passed in Congress should tell us a lot about the Obama administration. And the way that the mainstream media hesitated for days to even mention what Professor Gruber said, while they obsessed over unsubstantiated charges against Bill Cosby, should tell us a lot about the media. Whatever did or did not happen between Bill Cosby and various women is not likely to affect the lives of 300 million Americans. But ObamaCare does. For both the politicians and the media, this was not just an isolated incident. Gruber's videotaped discussions of the complicated deceptions built into ObamaCare with his help, designed to take advantage of what he called the "stupidity" of the public, are all too typical of the role played by the political left.
Bad News Continues to Roll In for ObamaCare Nightmare
Whatever we do, let's not allow ourselves to be distracted from the continuing nightmare of Obamacare by the other nightmare of President Obama's latest abuse of power in furtherance of a terrible policy decision -- this time on immigration. I would be remiss if I didn't provide my periodic update on the Affordable Care Act, lest you grow complacent to its unspeakable egregiousness. So let's review some recent tidbits, shall we? First the good news. Customers who enrolled in the most popular Obamacare plans for 2015 shouldn't expect to see major hikes in their out-of-pocket health expenses compared with 2014, according to a new analysis. But wait. Those individual and family plan customers will still have substantially greater deductibles than people with employer-provided plans -- and more limited networks. So even for these customers, things are still terrible; it's just that they're not expected to get too terribly more terrible next year.
From Thank-Mas to Thanksgiving
Thanks-mas -- as our new winter holiday deserves to become known, with pumpkins and red-and-green lights merging in anticipatory celebration -- only partly occludes the opportunities for national and personal gratitude widespread in Novembers past. Such opportunities as can be found might, if grasped, afford a few moments of useful reflection on America's present challenges. Those challenges have many forms and shapes, but a certain political character seems to shove most others aside. This makes a certain kind of sense. The big news stories are about politics: tThe president proclaims how it's going to be on immigration policy; the secretary of Defense jumps from a White House window, propelled by supposedly friendly hands; a new Congress prepares for confrontation; the Supreme Court prepares to tell us what we think about everything or what we'd think if we all wore black robes.
Obama's Immigration Policy: How About Putting Americans First?
Addressing the nation last Thursday, President Obama sought to justify his misreading of the Constitution by unilaterally granting legal protection to 5 million illegal immigrants. In this, he reminded me of what Richard Nixon told David Frost in a 1977 interview. The exchange is worth recalling: "FROST: So what in a sense you're saying is that there are certain situations ... where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal. NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
We Have a Moral Divide, Not a Racial One
As we await protests and riots scheduled for Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere if a grand jury in Missouri does not indict the white officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, a black teenager, a little moral clarity is called for. For decades now, we have been told that there is a black-white divide in America. The problem with this belief that is that it renders moral judgment -- of white police, of black crime and black incarceration rates, of white judges and jurors, and of black riots and protests - impossible. It is, we are told over and over, all about "perceptions" -- a "black-white divide" in the way each race perceives racial matters. This is how it works:
Crazy Is as Crazy Does
[Read this Washington Post piece](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/20/theres-growing-evidence-that-global-warming-is-driving-crazy-winters/) on the idea that global warming (what happened to climate change?) is driving "crazy" winters. It's a testimony to a lot of nonsense going on in our nation today, where people have little ability to remember the past and understand that history is what got us where we are today. Let's look at last winter. As "crazy" as it was, the fact is that Weatherbell.com, my company, forecasted it well in advance by looking at the winters of 1917-191 and 1993-1994 -- *before global warming was "driving crazy winters."*