Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Hey, Snotty Bloomberg: Mind Your Own Crumbling City
Some sore losers just don't know when to pick up their billion-dollar marbles and go away. Far, far away. I'm looking at you, Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor mouthed off about my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs and my friends in nearby Pueblo in Rolling Stone magazine this month. He snidely bashed our neighborhoods as backwater holes "where I don't think there's roads. It's as far rural as you can get."
How to Fight Sexual Assault
Two University of Miami football players have been arrested and dismissed from the university after being criminally charged with sexual battery on a 17-year-old girl. According to ESPN, the two admitted to buying drinks for the girl and then bringing her back to a dorm room where they engaged in nonconsensual sex acts with her. Six Vanderbilt students have filed a suit claiming that their allegations of sexual assault were not taken seriously. Students at Amherst, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Yale and dozens of other colleges have filed similar complaints.
Actually, Hillary's Wealth Is Her Greatest Accomplishment
It's simply mystifying that so many Americans look to candidates who pretend to be just like them. We're the worst. In the rare instance I am moved to vote, the least I expect is for a candidate to be far more successful than I am. This last hurdle is not particularly challenging, mind you. Which brings me to Hillary Clinton, whose clumsy efforts to convince America that she's a commoner not only are transparently silly but intentionally discount her most impressive gift: the ability to persuade rational people to pony up $200,000 (The Wall Street Journal says she was paid $300,000 for a speech at UCLA) to hear her talk about a career in politics. One thing's for sure: Those students would benefit far more from a talk about the inner workings of Clinton Inc.'s multimillion-dollar business than they will sitting through an hour of platitudes about public service.
Obama the Problem Creator
Only if we understand that Wednesday was "Opposite Day" can we comprehend President Obama's bizarre remarks in Texas concerning our border crisis. He said he had asked Gov. Rick Perry, "Are (members of Congress) more interested in politics, or are they more interested in solving the problem? ... If the preference is for politics, then it won't be solved." Everything Obama does is about politics. If he weren't endlessly raising money for his hyper-partisan Democratic Party, he wouldn't have even bothered to fly to Texas in the first place. His entire approach to the immigration issue is to fast-track as many illegals as he can, with the long-term goal of turning the country permanently blue, which happens to be a political, not humanitarian, motivation. Obama is so thoroughly political that commentators can't even discuss Obama without focusing on the "optics." Would it be that hard for them to assess, just once, whether he's doing the right thing?
Education, Politics & Racism
I never want people to assume that just because I have questions about colleges and universities, I oppose education. It's just that the current system makes no sense. For one thing, the cost of a college education has increased by 1,200% over the past three decades. That is twice the rate at which the cost of health care has soared. But at least until Obama tossed the monkey wrench known as the Affordable Care Act into the works, health care just kept getting better. Is there anyone who would suggest that's been true about education, which has come to be better known as indoctrination? That is why I keep suggesting that universities be turned into parks, and that higher education be turned over to trade schools, where not only carpentry, plumbing and auto mechanics are taught, but medicine, law and architecture.
The Immigration No-Brainer
As is his wont, President Obama is treating the border crisis -- more than 50,000 unaccompanied children crossing illegally -- as a public relations problem. Where to photo op and where not. He still hasn't enunciated a policy. He may not even have one. Will these immigrants be allowed to stay? Seven times was Obama's homeland security secretary asked this on "Meet the Press." Seven times he danced around the question. Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest was ostensibly more forthcoming: "It's unlikely that most of those kids will qualify for humanitarian relief. ... They will be sent back." This was characterized in the media as a harder line. Not at all. Yes, those kids who go through the process will likely have no grounds to stay. But most will never go through the process.
Obama Skitters, Scampers and Scuttles Away From Failure
Skitter, scamper, scuttle. That seems to be the mode of the Obama administration of late. Skitter away from your red line in Syria. Scamper off to a meeting you'd previously nixed with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Scuttle as much as the Constitution as you can, at least until you get called on it by 9-0 majorities in the Supreme Court, as the justices did on recess appointments, warrantless cellphone searches and $75,000 a day fines for disturbing supposed wetlands. It's not a very effective way to make public policy, and it tends to put you in an embarrassing public posture. But that's what happens when you start off believing you know all you need to know and that the world is endlessly enchanted with you.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Family Rules
We all know that if we're going to make a positive difference in the world, our heart has to be in the right place. But it's keeping our heart in that right state that usually ends up being the biggest challenge. If the lyrics, "Bind my wandering heart to Thee" from *Come Thou Fount* have ever resonated in your heart like they have in mine, you know what I mean. In our culture, we don't particularly love the thought of rules. We tend to think of them as restrictive, or *binding*, if you will. But sometimes that binding element is exactly what we need to get our hearts to stay where we need them to in order for them to grow properly.
American Idle: Reid Competes for Most Futile Senate Ever
Being the "greatest deliberative body" in the world usually implies that you've done some deliberating. Not so for the U.S. Senate. While the Middle East, southern border, and economy implode, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seems perfectly content to coast along in the sea of futility. Occasionally, he'll drop anchor -- but just long enough to push a political agenda that has nothing to do with the country's priorities. Case in point: the Democrats' decision to shift into legislative overdrive on the supposed shortage of free birth control.
Tea Party: Learn From Al Gore
Chris McDaniel, candidate for the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, lost the Republican runoff to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran last month, and now he is being led down a primrose path to political oblivion. McDaniel's passionate supporters think that a moment of crisis for the country is a good time to treat control of the Senate as if it's a prom queen election. Hoping for yet a *third* primary vote, McDaniel's crew is going to prevent him from having any political career, ever again. Observe that no one is asking Al Gore to run again, except maybe his cardiologist. Even in cases of actual vote fraud, history shows that the contesting politicians get branded as sore losers and destroy their political careers. Better to be magnanimous and live to fight another day.
Stinking Border Politics
Here's a modest proposal for solving the "Children's Invasion" on our southwestern borders. Next time a planeload of "unaccompanied alien children" from Honduras or Guatemala is being dispersed to their relatives in the U.S., the pilot should divert the flight and land at Ronald Reagan National Airport in downtown Washington. If the politicians in DC were forced to deal with the effects of the immigration mess they've made for a few days, they might be more interested in fixing it. Instead of dispersing 52,000 illegal Latino kids around the country, or hiding them from sight on military bases, maybe the politicians in DC could house a few thousand Latino kids in tents on the east lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building. They could call it "Obamaville."
ObamaCare Is Costing A Lot More Than You Think
Everybody knows that the new health reform program is expensive. But just how expensive is it? Start with the direct costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that spending for all the different parts of ObamaCare (health insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion, administrative costs, etc.) will come to about $2 trillion over the next ten years. That works out to about $2,000 for every household in America, every year. You won't get a bill for your share of all this, however. Most of the money is collected in hidden ways, such as taxes, health insurance plans, drugs, medical devices and even tanning salons. The cost to you will show up in higher prices, lower wages and (for the elderly) less access to medical care.
DOW at 17,000 – But You're Not Invited
The stock market reached a record high last week, closing over 17,000 for the first time. Good news, of course. As President John F. Kennedy famously said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." But it sure helps if you own a boat. In this case, the "boat" would be the dynamic American stock market. But investors in the stock market disproportionately come from the top 1 percent, and they hold about 35 percent of all stocks and mutual funds. The next-richest 9 percent control about 45 percent. The remaining 90 percent have less than 20 percent. While nearly half of Americans have either direct or indirect investments in the stock market, half of Americans do not. And even for those who do, their home equity is still, by far, their largest investment.
Chicago: A Town That Won't Let You Down?
Frank Sinatra's song about Chicago, "My Kind of Town," "a the town that won't let you down," seems dated in light of last weekend's shooting spree that left 16 dead and dozens wounded in 53 separate incidents. According to the Chicago Tribune, "The victims were among 82 people shot between Thursday afternoon and early Monday." Chicago wasn't alone in the Independence Day violence. New York City and Detroit combined for 10 dead in 46 shootings, but let's stick with Chicago where violence in mainly poor African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods has become a way of death.
What the Obituarists Never Said About Dick Scaife
On the day after his 82nd birthday, on Independence Day to be precise, a giant passed away, Richard Scaife. The man had style. He departed decorously as the nation was happily celebrating its 238th birthday. His sense of style has not been often mentioned in the obituaries, nor have his wit and engaging warmth. His philanthropy has been mentioned, though it is often his political philanthropy, not his cultural philanthropy. Dick came from a long line of philanthropists, dating back to his grand uncle, President Calvin Coolidge's secretary of the treasury Andrew Mellon. Dick generously supported medical research, various educational institutions, the National Gallery, a slew of Pittsburgh-based museums, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Toward the end of his life, he donated to the Clinton Foundation and had a friendly meeting with Bill Clinton. He admired the president's charitable work with the Clinton Foundation, and I have always believed he wanted to encourage Bill's good side.
Hypocrites Take a Selfish Stance on Border Crisis
No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals -- most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens -- are streaming across America's southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the U.S. For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spins-offs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Peru. Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America, which they have often been taught back home is the source of their misery. They either believe that America's supposedly inadequate social safety net is far better than the one back home, or that its purportedly cruel free market gives them more opportunities than anywhere in Latin America -- or both.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Obama Fundraises as the Border Disintegrates
The president's two-faced game of decrying the border crisis while making it worse.
Mr. President, Where Are Our 5 Million Missing Jobs?
The commerce department reported Wednesday that the economy contracted by nearly 3 percent from January through March. This dismal shrinkage in output has many Americans worrying about a dreaded double dip recession. On the jobs front, it feels to many Americans that the recession never ended. One of the misleading headlines from last month's employment report was that all the jobs lost during the recession have finally been won back. Well, not really.
Pat Buchanan's Campaign Chronicle of the 1960s
Shortly before Richard Nixon was going to formally announce that he would be running again for president in 1968, Pat Buchanan and Rose Mary Woods, two of his closest aides, presented him with an idea. "Given the multiple crises confronting the nation -- race conflict, soaring crime, inflation, the war in Vietnam, the mounting Soviet missile threat -- and the difficulty of dealing with them all at once," Buchanan writes in his new book "The Greatest Comeback," "we suggested that Nixon in a single declaration destroy the image of him as a consummate politician and tell the nation 'that the next president should be a one-term president.'" Nixon dismissed the idea of term-limiting himself. He did not want, as Buchanan relates it, to be "a lame duck from his inaugural."
Obama's Incompetence Sinks In
MSNBC host Chuck Todd assembled a panel of liberal-media veterans on his morning show "The Daily Rundown" Monday and joked that the assembled heavyweights presented "a nightmare scenario for Brent Bozell." But what these journalists proceeded to issue was a devastating indictment of the Obama presidency and a real nightmare for this president. Carolyn Ryan, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, brought up "the national funk we're in, the sort of national malaise." The word "malaise" is never a good word to be around if you're the president. But for President Barack Obama, who is now seen in polls as the worst president since World War II, worse than the Master of Malaise, Jimmy Carter, it's kryptonite.