Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Selective Outrage When It Comes to Racism
Racism is ugly, no matter who is spewing it. But there does seem to be a double standard when it comes to public outrage on the subject. It was less than a week after LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist comments to his girlfriend in a private conversation became public that he was banned for life from NBA games and venues, fined $2.5 million, and on the verge of being forced to sell his team. But when a Democratic congressman engages in racist, public name-calling of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the reaction is muted at best. First, let's be clear: What Sterling did was offensive and hurtful, and the man is clearly a repulsive character. But what was most shocking about the incident was how quickly the NBA moved to punish Sterling for uttering his prejudices in a private conversation, when the league earlier had ignored that Sterling engaged in actual illegal housing discrimination. In 2009, Sterling settled a suit with the Department of Justice, paying a nearly $3 million fine, the largest in history for federal housing discrimination.
Gosnell: The Movie Hollywood Won't Make, But You Can
Hannibal Lecter. Freddy Kreuger. Jason Voorhees. Charles Manson. Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. Hollywood loves a homicidal monster. But what happens when an evil being exposes the monstrosities of malign government neglect and deadly ideology? Crickets. Tinseltown couldn't conjure a bigger nightmare than true-life Philadelphia serial killer Kermit Gosnell. He preyed on hundreds of poor minority women. He systematically executed hundreds of healthy, living, breathing, squirming, viable babies by stabbing them in their necks and severing spinal cords with scissors and knives. This twisted murderer kept baby feet in specimen jars, which he crammed into the grisly refrigerators of his filthy "clinic." For "research."
Catholic School Celebrates 'Year of Lady Gaga'
Buyer beware those promising a "Catholic education." Saint Mary's Institute is the Catholic grade school in my wife's New York hometown, Amsterdam. It is affiliated with Saint Mary's Catholic Church, whose pastor Rev. John Medwid pens the opening to the Saint Mary's Institute annual newsletter. "In September at the opening Mass I officially announced that this was going to be the Year of Our Lady at SMI," the letter began. How nice. Except that's not what he wrote. There was someone else he had in mind to honor besides the Virgin Mary.
Whatever Happened to Free-Speech Panic?
After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, members of the American left found one thing they could all agree on: America's Our First Amendment rights were in peril. The American Prospect insisted on Sept. 12, when the rubble was still burning and the dead had not yet been retrieved, that "a number of government agencies and their cheerleaders would be clearly tempted to lock the Bill of Rights away in some basement dustbin of the National Archives." Two weeks later, novelist Barbara Kingsolver warned, "Patriotism threatens free speech with death." She bravely attacked the claim that "free speech is un-American." Author Richard Reeves penned an op-ed for The New York Times under the headline "Patriotism Calls Out the Censor." Conferences were rapidly convened, vows to fight the crackdown on free speech were issued.
Could You Lie to a Bereaved Father?
The Ben Rhodes memo revealing the duplicity of this administration on the subject of Benghazi reminds us about the character of those involved. That President Barack Obama could lie so evenly and so passionately (remember the second presidential debate?) is not perhaps surprising at this stage. But let's not forget what it took for Hillary Clinton to lie to the grieving father of an American hero. First, a refresher on the facts (as they were certainly known to the principals): A convoy of well-armed terrorists rolled into the complex housing the American consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. The attackers sealed off streets leading to the consulate with trucks and then commenced the attack on the building using rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, mortars and artillery mounted on trucks. Ambassador Chris Stevens called Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks for help, saying, "Greg, we're under attack." Hicks, who was in Tripoli, conveyed this up the line, but no help arrived.
A Foreign Policy of Self-Delusion
Barack Obama's 949-word response on Monday to a question about foreign policy weakness showed the president at his worst: defensive, irritable, contradictory and at times detached from reality. It began with a complaint about negative coverage on Fox News, when, in fact, it was The New York Times front page that featured Obama's foreign policy failures, most recently the inability to conclude a trade agreement with Japan and the collapse of Secretary of State John Kerry's Middle East negotiations. Add to this the collapse of not one but two Geneva conferences on Syria, American helplessness in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine and the Saudi king's humiliating dismissal of Obama within two hours of talks -- no dinner -- after Obama made a special 2,300-mile diversion from Europe to see him, and you have an impressive litany of serial embarrassments.
Enough White House Lies on Benghazi
The Obama administration has no shred of integrity left concerning the Benghazi scandal. Caught in the act with the "loaded gun," those in the administration are telling us it is a toy pistol, but no honest observer can possibly believe them anymore. It took a lawsuit to force the White House to release emails that reveal just how deliberate and fraudulent the plan was to deceive the press and the American public about the cause of the attack on our consulate in Libya. The incident and a nearby attack a few hours later, in which four Americans were killed, occurred in September 2012, just a few short months before the November presidential election. Obama's foreign policy credibility was on the line, for he had long boasted that he had al-Qaida on the run, despite his efforts to relax our war on terror into a law enforcement matter (except for his precious drones, of course).
No-Brainers
These days, you can't go an hour without someone insisting that one thing or another is a no-brainer. They mean that something is so obvious that even a child of six or seven could figure it out. But I suspect that more times than not they are guilty of over-estimating the intelligence of the American public. These are the folks, after all, who re-elected Barack Obama. They also keep electing boobs like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sheila Jackson Lee, Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Brad Sherman and Patty Murray, to represent them in Congress. Politics aside, these are very stupid people. They and the knuckleheads who vote for them are literally no-brainers.
The Real Problem With Kerry's 'Apartheid' Myth
After The Daily Beast released excerpts of his warning world leaders that Israel would devolve into an "apartheid" state if it failed to agree to a peace deal, Secretary of State John Kerry walked back his comments. "If I could rewind the tape," he explained, "I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two-state solution." This shouldn't make anyone feel better. It's not just the incendiary use of "apartheid" that's the problem but the well-worn canard about Israel that Kerry rests his position on. And his position shouldn't really surprise anyone who's been paying attention. President Barack Obama offered basically the same argument only a couple of months ago when he warned that time was running out for "Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy."
Despite a Partial Pivot in Asia, Obama Foreign Policy Still in Disarray
For a president who hasn't enjoyed many foreign policy successes lately, Barack Obama did pretty well on his just completed trip to Asia. In Japan, he reiterated in no uncertain terms the American defense commitment, including on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyus. "Historically, they have been administered by Japan, and we do not believe they should be subject to change unilaterally," Obama said. "What is a consistent part of the alliance is that the treaty covers all territories administered by Japan."
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Major Arctic Sea Ice Story Lurking, but Is Anyone Watching?
There is a huge event being forecasted this year by the CFSV2, and I don't know if anyone else is mentioning this. For the first time in over a decade, the Arctic sea ice anomaly in the *summer* is forecast to be near or above normal for a time! While it has approached the normals at the end of the winter season a couple of times because of new ice growth, this signals something completely different -- that multiyear growth means business -- and it shows the theory on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is likely to be on target. Once it flips, this red herring of climate panic will be gone. Global and Southern Hemisphere anomalies are already unmentionable since the former is well above normal and the latter is routinely busting daily records.
Benghazi Smoking Gun Exposed
Newly released emails pierce the veil of Obama's Benghazi cover-up.
Independence or in Dependence?
It's been 50 years and 20 trillion dollars since President Lyndon Johnson's famous speech declaring war on poverty. What's the report from the frontlines? The number of poor people hasn't shrunk -- and neither has the government. In fact, quite the opposite. Fighting poverty became an excuse to expand bureaucracy, 92 programs worth. And now, five decades later, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) wants to know what Americans have to show for it. Certainly not the poverty rate, which is the highest at 15% in a generation. "Federal programs are not only failing to address the problem," Ryan said in yesterday's House Budget hearing. "They are also in some significant respects making it worse." For too long, he explained, "we have measured compassion by how much we spend instead of how many people get out of poverty." Food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, housing assistance, while well intentioned, aren't solving the problem.
No Redo: Obama Must Fire Kerry
Secretary of State John Kerry has taken only one element from all of America's history in his peripatetic quest to forge a Mideast peace settlement: It is Theodore Roosevelt's famous "Big Stick." It was the Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Roosevelt, who famously quoted the West African proverb: "Walk softly but carry a big stick." Kerry has walked anything but softly. In fact, he has often jammed his boot in the door and hectored the sides in the century-old Arab-Israeli conflict. He seems determined to force a Mideast settlement on the contenders by using his Big Stick diplomacy -- on one side.
A Man of Sterling Character
I had listened to roughly eight hours of commentary on Donald Sterling and the ugly remarks he made in conversations secretly tape-recorded by his girlfriend, before I heard anyone mention a wife. HE HAS A WIFE? At first, I thought the topic must have changed when I left the room, but no -- the TV talking heads were still discussing Sterling advising his girlfriend to stay away from blacks. Not only does Sterling have a wife of 50 years, but earlier this year, she sued his girlfriend, demanding the return of two Bentleys, a Ferrari, a Range Rover and a $1.8 million apartment, claiming it was bought with community property without the wife's consent.
National Day of Prayer
How often do you gripe about high taxes, stupid laws and bad politicians? It is incredibly easy to become discouraged about the direction our country is heading. And when you are discouraged, it's even easier to start blaming and complaining. But why is it that we are so quick to complain and so slow to pray? Whether we feel it is justified or not, all our complaining and grumbling ends in is anger, bitterness and discontentment. Any parent understands that complaining isn't simply unproductive -- it is counter productive. Yet it comes so naturally when things don't work out the way we want them to.
Sterling, Media and the Race Card – a Confederacy of Dunces
A secretly taped conversation between long-time L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his then-girlfriend was released. The NBA has now banned Sterling from the league. The commissioner recommends that Sterling sell his team. Goodness, what happened? The old guy had a quarrel with his girlfriend, which she apparently -- surreptitiously -- recorded. The most eye-raising parts have to do with Sterling, 80, telling his less-than-half-his-age girlfriend that he doesn't want her attending games with black people, specifically with Magic Johnson. She can "f--k" anybody, he said, just don't bring "them" to the games.
The Heavy Hand of the IRS
Earnest moralists lament Americans' distrust of government. What really is regrettable is that government does much to earn distrust, as Terry Dehko, 70, and his daughter Sandy Thomas, 41, understand. Terry, who came to Michigan from Iraq in 1970, soon did what immigrants often do: He went into business, buying Schott's Supermarket in Fraser, Mich., where he still works six days a week. The IRS, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year. Sandy, a mother of four, has a master's degree in urban planning but has worked in the store off and on since she was 12. She remembers, "They just walked into the store" and announced that they had emptied the store's bank account. The IRS agents believed, or pretended to believe, that Terry and Sandy were or conceivably could be -- which is sufficient for the IRS -- conducting a criminal enterprise when not selling groceries.
The End of Affirmative Action
Sometimes doctrines just vanish, once they appear as naked as the proverbial emperor in his new clothes. Something like that seems now to be happening with affirmative action. Despite all the justifications for its continuance, polling shows the public still strongly disagrees with the idea of using racial criteria for admissions and hiring. Its dwindling supporters typically include those who directly benefit from it, or who are not adversely affected by it. Arguments for the continuance of affirmative action are half-hearted and may explain why some supporters descend into name-calling directed at those who dare question its premises.
Hillary Clinton's 'Social Gospel' Good Enough for Democrats
Faith is making a comeback among liberal Democrats, but they still have a way to go. First, some history. Hoping to attract some Evangelical Christian votes more than 20 years ago, former vice president Al Gore wrote that the biblical story of Noah and the Ark could be paraphrased in modern terms, "Thou shalt preserve biodiversity" ("Earth in the Balance" p. 245). Gore also claimed the first recorded instance of pollution was when Cain killed Abel and Abel's blood "falls on the ground, rendering it fallow" (p. 247).