Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Hoaxers, Hucksters & Hooey
I don't know if you're aware of it, and until I checked it out I certainly wasn't, but 17 states are represented by one Democrat and one Republican in the U.S. Senate. How can that be? How is it that in a nation as divided as America is today, that a third of the states have seen fit to split its vote this way? Frankly, I can better understand California's electing a pair of liberal dingbats like Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer than I can grasp why it is that, say, Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, wound up with one dingbat and one Republican.
Memo From GWB: 'Welcome, Mr. President, to the War on Terror'
To: President Barack ObamaFrom: Former President George W. BushTopic: IraqMessage: "We're ba-a-a-ack!!!!!" I've been quiet these last six years. But your belated decision to "destroy" ISIS prompted me to write. You repeatedly scorched my presidency, said that I so botched up things, so destroyed American foreign policy that all you had to do was not be George W. Bush. "Don't do stupid stuff" was your West-Wing mantra. What a difference six years of Presidential Daily Briefings on national security threats can make.
Use Mercenaries to Fight ISIS?
On his Fox News show Monday night, Bill O'Reilly suggested using mercenaries to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) instead of U.S. ground forces, which President Obama has repeatedly vowed not to deploy. The use of mercenaries is as old as warfare itself. Alexander the Great used them. King George III hired German mercenaries to fight for the British in the American Revolution. Today mercenaries go by other names, like “contractor." The president is to be commended for assembling a coalition that includes Arab states, but why are our European allies not part of it? Britain hasn't sent planes, though British citizens have been killed by jihadists. An ISIS splinter group in Algeria claims to be holding a French national hostage and vows to kill him unless France halts its attacks on ISIS positions in Iraq, but France isn't joining the president's coalition to hit ISIS targets in Syria.
Old and in the Way?
Normally, no one would care that in a recent Atlantic essay -- "Why I hope to die at 75" -- 57-year-old Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argued that living to be 75 years old was long enough for anyone. After 75, Emanuel suggests, "We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic." But Emanuel is no garden-variety crackpot. Nor is he a wannabe science-fiction writer dreaming of a centrally planned planet of robust youthful humanoids. Unfortunately, he was one of the chief architects of the troubled Affordable Care Act and a key medical advisor to the Obama administration. The ACA's conservative critics have long knocked Obamacare as a first step toward medical rationing. Read Emanuel's diatribe against living too long, and suddenly Sarah Palin's attack on Obamacare's "death panels" does not seem so far-fetched.
The Restive Right at Election Time
The 2014 midterm races are heating up. It seems to me everyone is uneasy. The Republicans have not raised enough money. The Democrats are mindful that the president is immensely unpopular, and their candidates are struggling. Some Republicans are gleeful. Will they win the six additional Senate seats to control that chamber? Could they win even more? It is beginning to look like 2014 will be almost as welcome an election for the Republicans as 2010. In that year, the conservatives, numbering about 40 percent of the vote, combined with the independents, numbering about 35 percent of the vote, to send the Democrats packing in the House and in many statewide elections. What motivated the independents was the economy. Despite the Democrats' hopeful testimonials, the independents recognized that the economy was in the tank and they saw no signs of hope. In their view, President Barack Obama was overspending and had already run up the national debt to frightening levels. The independents often vote from fright. Usually they do not consider foreign policy, but in this election my guess is they will. The world is in a heap. Ukraine, Gaza, ISIS and the rest of the Middle East, Ebola in Africa, and, of course, the seeming chaos on our southern border -- all conspire to alarm the independents. This election the independents will be moved by fright to vote on foreign policy issues as well as on the economy. They will vote Republican.
High Stakes in Kansas
Tacked to the wall of Greg Orman's campaign office is a print of a John Steuart Curry painting, "Tragic Prelude," that hangs in the capitol in Topeka. It depicts John Brown of Osawatomie, 39 miles south of here, as what he was, a deranged product of "bleeding Kansas," the Civil War's overture. Today, Orman, who is as calm as Brown was crazed, is emblematic of fascinating Kansas. Orman wants to deny Pat Roberts a fourth Senate term, thereby ending a congressional career that began in 1981 with 16 years in the House. Orman, who favors term limits and pledges to serve only two terms, is running as an independent. The Democrats' nominee has dropped out of the race, so Orman, 45, or Roberts, 78, will be a senator come January. Sensible Kansans have a problematic choice to ponder: Electing Orman would deepen the Senate's pool of talent, but it might thwart Republican efforts to control the Senate.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The Oil 'Market': Time to Get Off This Rollercoaster
One look at today's headlines will tell you that events around the world seem more unpredictable and chaotic than ever. Russia is showing no sign of backing down in Ukraine, even under increasing sanctions. The terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continues to wreak havoc in the Middle East, energized by up to $2 million a day in captured oil revenues. And political violence from Iraq to Libya continues to escalate. Americans are stuck wondering what, if anything, we can and should be doing. In the midst of all this chaos, oil prices were expected to rise. Instead, they have dipped in recent months, thanks primarily to lower global demand and increased production here at home. Gasoline prices have dropped for the moment too, prompting some to call this a "new era" of oil abundance, where our fuels are cheap and plentiful, even in the face of multiple international crises.
107,581,000 Already in Government Health Plans
There were 107,581,000 people enrolled in government health insurance plans in the United States in 2013, the year before the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) was fully implemented. The Census Bureau published this number last week in its annual report on health insurance. These 107,581,000 pre-Obamacare government-health insurance enrollees equaled 34.3 percent of the nation's population, according to the Census Bureau. Another 41,953,000 -- or 13.4 percent of the population -- were uninsured.
Cancel the Unethical 'Daily Show'
The liberal legend of Jon Stewart began with his Oct. 15, 2004 appearance on CNN's "Crossfire," where he rhetorically sentenced the show to death. He proclaimed, "It's hurting America. Here is what I wanted to tell you guys: Stop. ... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably." CNN announced it was canceling the show two months later, as network president Jon Klein told the New York Times "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." As is so typical of liberals who preach one thing while doing its opposite (Leonardo DiCaprio, call your office), Comedy Central has never felt any responsibility to "the public discourse." If we applied Jon Klein's standard, it would be time for "The Daily Show" to be canceled.
Six Ways Obama Contradicts Himself in Waging War on ISIS
A year ago, before public and congressional opposition changed his mind, President Obama planned to attack the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a brutal dictator whom he said had to go. This week Obama switched sides in Syria's civil war by attacking the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Assad's most formidable enemy among the rebels fighting to overthrow his regime. Confused? You should be. Obama certainly is. Let us count the ways:
Hicken-Weasel: Why Colorado's Gutless Gov Is in Trouble
D.C. journalists called the latest Quinnipiac University poll results in Colorado's tight gubernatorial race a "shocker." But it's a surprise only if you've been hopelessly trapped in a Beltway echo chamber. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is down 10 points against former GOP Rep. Bob Beauprez among all likely voters. The Q poll also shows him behind Beauprez by 13 points among independents. A survey conducted last week by Suffolk University for USA Today shows the beleaguered incumbent in a statistical dead heat with Beauprez.
A Moral Universe Torn Apart
"I am not ashamed," a young woman says into a camera. "I am not ashamed." The woman is Leyla Josephine of Glasgow, and she is a self-described feminist performance artist. She is reading a poem titled "I Think She Was a She" -- a poem lauded by The Huffington Post as "unapologetic. ... She ardently declares her power over her body as she reminds us that a woman exercising her right to choose is not uncommon -- and should never be shamefully brushed under the rug." What, exactly, is this poem? It's Josephine recounting her abortion of her unborn daughter. She notes, "I know she was a she and I think she would've looked exactly like me. I would've told her stories about her grandfather, we could've fed the swans at Victoria Park." Then, however, she reveals just what she's done: "I would've supported her right to choose. To choose a life for herself, a path for herself. I would've died for that right like she died for mine. I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time."
What 'War on Women'?
Last Friday, the White House announced its "It's On Us" initiative aimed at combating sexual assaults on college campuses. I'm all in favor of combating sexual assault, but the first priority in combating a problem is understanding it. That's not the White House's first priority. Roughly six weeks before Election Day, its chief concern is to translate an exciting social media campaign into a get-out-the-vote operation. Accurate statistics are of limited use in that regard because rape and sexual assault have been declining for decades. So the Obama administration and its allied activist groups trot out the claim that there is a rape epidemic victimizing 1 in 5 women on college campuses. This conveniently horrifying number is a classic example of being too terrible to check. If it were true, it would mean that rape would be more prevalent on elite campuses than in many of the most impoverished and crime-ridden communities.
Do Statistical Disparities Mean Injustice?
How many times have we heard laments such as "women are 50 percent of the population but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs" and, as the Justice Department recently found, "blacks are 54 percent of the population in Newark, New Jersey, but 85 percent of pedestrian stops and 79 percent of arrests"? If one believes that people should be represented socio-economically according to their numbers in the population, then statistical disparities represent injustices that demand government remedies. Before we jump to conclusions about what disparities mean and whether they are indicators of injustice, we might examine some other disparities to see what we can make of them. According to a recent study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times as likely to attack and kill men than they are women. If sinister motivation is attributed for this disparity, as is done in the cases of sex and racial disparities, we can only conclude that sharks are sexist. Another sex disparity is despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. I wonder what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men.
A Potentially Deadly Denial of Reality
The ideologically-inspired bankruptcy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party remains unrelenting. Last Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a bill in the Senate that would revoke citizenship for Americans who join ISIS. Believing time is of the essence, Cruz sought to fast track the Expatriate Terrorist Act, meaning he bypassed the normal Senate committee process. He did so because the Senate is nearing the end of its current session and having the bill go through committee "would mean that it could not pass in time to prevent Americans fighting right now with ISIS from coming back and murdering other Americans," he said. "There is an urgency and an exigency to this situation," Cruz added.
Two Anti-Choice Parties
Democrats often call themselves "pro-choice." Republicans defend "freedom." Unfortunately, neither party really believes in letting individuals do what we want. When Democrats say they are "pro-choice," they are talking about abortion. Some act as if a right to legal abortion is the most important freedom in America. But Democrats aren't very enthusiastic about other kinds of choice. They don't want you to have the right to choose your kids' school, work without joining a union, buy a gun, pay people whatever you contract to pay them if they choose to work for you, buy things you want to buy without regulations constantly interfering and so on.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Politicians and Other Moral Amateurs
That's it, that's it! Why did no one think of it before Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., concocted the solution to NFL violence? "If the NFL doesn't police themselves" -- she meant "itself," but never mind grammar when a senator is in the throes of inspiration -- "we will be looking more into it." "We"? Congress, of course. The investigatory remedial fraternity, always with the solution to newly recognized human problems -- in the NFL's case, brutality toward spouses, other players and likely humanity in general.
'Not Islamic'?
President Obama declared in his recent address to the nation that "ISIL is not Islamic." But how does he know? On what basis did the president of the United States declare the a group of Muslims that calls itself "Islamic State" "not Islamic"? Has he studied Islam and Islamic history and concluded that ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the group that slaughtered 166 people in Mumbai, most especially guests at the Taj Hotel,and which tortured to death a rabbi and his wife), the various Palestinian terrorist groups (all of which have been Muslim, even though there are many Christian Palestinians), and the Muslim terror groups in Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere are also all "not Islamic"?
Student Bullies Trump 1st Amendment
Well, the wild and crazy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is at it again, this time ruling that in a conflict between bullies and the First Amendment, bullies win. The court let stand a previous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that school officials of Live Oak High School can prohibit American students from wearing to school clothing featuring the American flag because of threats made against the American students. You read that right: not threats made by the American students but threats directed at them by others. Admittedly, it's hard to surprise sane people anymore with all the wrongheaded things going on in this country, but this just won't do. It's one thing to insist, for example, that English be the official language; it's one thing to forbid American students from heckling Mexican students for celebrating Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday. But it's altogether another thing for the school administration -- and then the courts -- to prevent peaceful American students from wearing flag apparel because it might provoke some rowdy students who don't approve of American students demonstrating and displaying their patriotism.
Is It Ever OK to Spank?
The image of Adrian Peterson's son's legs has ignited a welcome cultural conversation. This is unusual. Most of these contrived "conversations" are efforts to take one headline and shoehorn it into a narrative that liberals want to advance, usually about race and racism. Those "conversations" are never truthful. But the discussion of a 4-year-old boy's wounds has elicited some brutally honest commentary. Writing for CNN, Steven Holmes blasted what he regards as excessive tolerance for spanking and child abuse in the black community. He dispatches the "I was whipped and I turned out all right" excuse. Holmes cites the abundant research showing that "spanking inhibits the learning process. ... It leads to anger, depression, violence and alcohol and drug abuse. It breeds hostility toward authority ... and spawns other antisocial behaviors." Physical punishment, he continues, "is associated with legions of sullen, angry, violence-prone boys."