Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
From The Comedy Store
President Obama's interview on Between Two Ferns last fall was nominated for a Emmy Thursday. Good call. He convinced the host that Obamacare would be easy to access, lowers costs and lets you to keep your doctor, and all the Academy could say was brother, that's acting.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Atrocity Over Ukraine
A surface-to-air missile massacres 295 people on a Malaysia Airlines jetliner.
End Corporate Welfare as We Know It
Imagine that you were at home on a weekend afternoon and the doorbell rang and a representative from Boeing stood at the door with a tin cup asking you to contribute $10 to the Fortune 100 company so it can sell more products overseas. It's a good bet you would slam the door in the lobbyist's face. But this is, in effect, what these corporate lobbyists are doing in Washington now. Instead of panhandling door to door, they're going to one congressional office after another securing cut-rate insurance that could cost taxpayers more than $2 billion over the next decade. The program is called the Export-Import Bank. Taxpayer groups have been trying to get rid of this corporate welfare racket for 30 years. Yet Congress always seems to rush to the rescue on behalf of GE, Caterpillar, Boeing and the rest.
Reid's Dem-agogues Lose Phony War for Votes
Forget birth control. America needs border control! But that's not something the nation is likely to get from this Senate, whose leaders are too busy chasing women's votes to put out the real fires over immigration, the economy, or the Middle East. Of course, the greatest irony of this contraception push is that liberals thought it would help them in November, when in reality, it's turning into the best advertisement for a conservative takeover yet! It may come as a surprise to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), but women are capable of looking past their reproductive systems to the serious issues facing America. With just a handful of weeks left on the legislative calendar, they know those are the conversations leaders should be having -- not a trumped-up political show over pills that they have more access to than ever. Still, the President's party plowed ahead anyway, eating up precious time to misrepresent a Supreme Court ruling that exempted religious employers from covering drugs that run counter to their faith by preventing or ending a pregnancy.
We're Talking to the Wrong Iranians
When it comes to an agreement with Iran about its nuclear program, no deal is better than a bad deal. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered the news to President Obama this week that a deal was unlikely by the July 20th deadline agreed to at the beginning of talks last September -- which no doubt disappointed his boss, who is desperate for some foreign policy success to point to. But unless Iran is willing to give up its program -- and dismantle the uranium-enriching centrifuges it currently operates and destroy its existing stockpile of heavily enriched uranium -- economic sanctions should not be lifted. Unfortunately, the U.S. negotiating position has been far more conciliatory to the Iranians. We've virtually conceded Iran's right to enrich uranium, with the caveat that we expect them to freeze their capabilities of producing weapons-grade nuclear material and will ensure their compliance through inspections. If they agree, we will lift the sanctions that have helped cripple the Iranian economy.
Mrs. Obama's Operation VA Scandal Distraction
Barack and Michelle Obama are quite the diversionary tag-team. He blames everyone else for his problems. She takes credit for progress on his behalf that he doesn't deserve and distracts public attention from his avalanche of failures with endless feel-good photo-ops. While the shirker in chief golfed and grubbed for money at closed-door celebrity fundraisers this week, his East Wing flak-catcher provided him cunning cover on the still-festering VA scandals. Mrs. Obama flew to Los Angeles to declare a war or something on veterans' homelessness. At a summit with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday, she said the neglect of our men and women in uniform, abandoned on the streets after returning from battle, should "horrify all of us."
Cleveland Could Be Good for GOP, If ...
You needn't be clairvoyant to deduce what the Democratic Party wants to run on in 2016. It really doesn't matter whether their nominee is Hillary Clinton or someone else. Democrats won't be campaigning on the thriving economy under President Barack Obama, global stability under American leadership, the successful routing of al-Qaida or Obamacare. No, the Democratic Party is the ladies' party now -- dependent completely on the lopsided votes of single females for their electoral success. To the degree possible, 2016 will be about women's sex lives and who should pay for IUDs. Republicans have perfectly good responses to these juvenile arguments, starting with "buy your own blankety-blank contraceptives" and moving up to sensible health care reform. Still, Republicans (and grown-ups) are not well-served if the election revolves around condoms and morning after pills.
Moral Clarity in Gaza
Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking. "Here's the difference between us," explains the Israeli prime minister. "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles." Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent "cycle of violence." This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows Hamas' proudly self-declared raison d'etre: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.
How Obama Questions Your Patriotism
So Barack Obama is again using one of the most contemptible phrases in American politics -- "economic patriotism." There are many credible reasons to despise this rhetorical construct. Patriotism, after all, is the attachment to one's homeland, a nationalistic devotion to one's country and the values that make it great. If a person not only resists things that are "patriotic" but opposes them, then logic dictates that the person is being unpatriotic. So the president is really asking one question: Why do you hate America? Instead of protecting tax loopholes that let corporations keep their profits overseas, let's put some of that money to work right here in the United States rebuilding America. We can rebuild our airports, create the next generation of good manufacturing jobs, make sure those are made in America.
Has the Right Lost Its Will to Fight?
I don't think Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against President Obama right now, but I also don't think that considering the idea is "crazy talk." The man has, in my view and that of many others, committed multitudinous impeachable offenses, and we need to strenuously object and bring it to the public's attention every chance we get. The idea of turning our heads and looking the other way is repugnant. Yes, the elections are too close for Republicans to risk impeachment proceedings at this point, unless it became clear that the majority of Americans have the political will for that action -- as Andy McCarthy eloquently explains in his book "Faithless Execution."
Step Right Up to MTV's Incest Plot
For those who predict the coming collapse of Western civilization, there's always MTV for proof. At this year's Television Critics Association summer tour in Hollywood, MTV put on a panel discussion for the press with the cast and creators of a forthcoming series called "Happyland." The female star of the show, actress Bianca Santos, announced the new MTV motto: "Incest is hot, and we're going to have fun!" Lisa de Moraes at the website Deadline Hollywood reported on the pilot episode of this "soapy teen comedy" -- remember that this is a show for teenagers. This show, "exploring the underbelly of a popular theme park," includes a clip of Santos making out with the amusement park's "new hottie" only to discover ... he's her brother.
How Obama is Turning Liberalism Into an Instrument of Coercion
Liberals just aren't very liberal these days. The word "liberal" comes from the Latin word meaning freedom, and in the 19th century, liberals in this country and abroad stood for free speech, free exercise of religion, free markets, free trade -- for minimal state interference in people's lives. In the 20th-century, New Dealers revised this definition by arguing that people had a right not only to free speech and freedom of religion but also, as Franklin Roosevelt said in his 1941 Four Freedoms speech, freedom from fear and from want. Freedom from want meant, for Roosevelt, government provision of jobs, housing, health care and food. And so government would have to be much larger, more expensive and more intrusive than ever before.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Dinesh D'Souza Tells the True Story of America
"America" demolishes the Left's false narrative of the United States.
Recognizing Design as Divine
One of my favorite things to think about, talk about, and simply revel in is how much God loves design -- and to design. From detailed instructions on the decorations and colors to adorn garments; to specifics on the materials and dimensions of buildings; to dictates on the metals and the way that tools and objects should be cast and formed; the Bible is filled with accounts of God's intense interest and care in directing people to create beautiful, useful and meaningful clothing, textiles, tools and structures. The Scriptures reveal that God is quite specific, quite intentional, and quite demanding when it comes to design.
Honoring Our Fathers
Despite the media play Chicago gets, it isn't the official "Murder Capital of the U.S.A." That unhappy distinction — based on the murder rate per 100,000 people, not on the number of actual dead people on the streets — belongs to poor, under-populated Flint, Mich. Chicago gets the bad rap — and the attention of the anti-gun nuts -- because it led the nation with 415 homicides last year. That's more murders than any other city, but not even in the top 10 when you factor in population.
Happy 30th Birthday, Central American Humanitarian Crisis
It's been fun to watch the media discuss the border crisis in real time, improvising their arguments on the fly. *Let's try A, and if that doesn't work, we'll try B.* First, they said there was no surge at the border -- it was a phony crisis manufactured by the Drudge Report. The facts on the ground quickly made that argument inoperable. Next, liberals told us these "undocumented migrants" (the PC phrase for "illegal aliens" -- because we'll never figure out what that means) were mere children fleeing violence and drug cartels.
Blum-enthralled With Pro-Abortion Sham
Senate Democrats have certainly proven there's a "war on women" -- a war on women's intelligence! While America sinks under the weight of the Left's failed policies, Harry Reid and company are busy insulting the female voters they claim to speak for. Instead of serious discussions about the crises of immigration, the economy, the IRS or Middle East, the Left is taking up valuable legislative time with gratuitous debates over abortion and birth control. If liberals are such devoted feminists, why do they insist on reducing women voters to the sum of their reproductive organs? Having two X chromosomes doesn't mean women are incapable of caring about the issues Senate Democrats are ignoring. Yet that's exactly what this Majority Leader is banking on with feisty hearings over political show bills that have zero chance of passing both chambers and little significance if they did. It's an offensive -- if not risky -- strategy for the party desperate to keep its grip on the Senate. And based on Tuesday's Judiciary hearing, Reid's stunt is less about opening an honest conversation and more about opening the wallets of hard-line Democratic donors.
The Playboy Presidents
I have been vindicated! For years I have been comparing the Clinton family to the family of Warren Gamaliel Harding, our 29th president and a president of dark memory at least to most liberal historians. For me, Warren was sheer slapstick, as to some degree his modern-day equivalent was, Bill Clinton. And forget not their gruesome wives. I began my historical comparisons in the 1996 bestselling book, "Boy Clinton: The Political Biography." For years, I punctuated my syndicated column with references to the two families. Then in my 2007 book, "The Clinton Crack-Up," I clinched the comparison in a reminder of how that Little Rock monstrosity, the Clinton Library, compared so favorably with the Harding Memorial in Warren's hometown, Marion, Ohio. But now, you ask, how am I vindicated? Well, America's historical memory is not very strong. Comparing Bill with a 1920s president to a modern American audience was not easy. Yet, by month's end it will be much easier. In fact, the comparison will be inescapable.
Are Black Voters Turning Against Obama?
It may be too soon to label it a trend and there is insufficient data to confirm it, but President Obama and his party may be losing their iron grip on their most loyal and enthusiastic voting bloc: African-Americans. Last Friday in Chicago, a group of black residents of the city's South Side, staged a protest against the violent shootings that are becoming as commonplace as White Sox games at Cellular Field. It wasn't just the protest that should concern the administration and Democrats; it was the language used by some of the protesters, many of whom at the time of the president's 2009 inauguration likely joined other African-Americans in worshipping at the Obama shrine.
Don't Like the Constitution? Amend It
To the Constitution's 27 amendments, Senate Democrats would like to add a 28th. The Senate Judiciary Committee last week approved a resolution to amend the Constitution by empowering Congress to regulate the amount of money that could be raised or spent in federal election campaigns, and granting state governments the same authority in state elections. The amendment -- introduced by New Mexico Senator Tom Udall and co-sponsored by most of his Democratic colleagues, including Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts -- is intended to roll back not only the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, but also its landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which affirmed nearly 40 years ago that political spending was expression protected by the First Amendment from arbitrary government limits.