Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Reflections on My 45th Earth Day
I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. I was a freshman in high school and we had an Earth Day Assembly. There was a play with Steppenwolf's "The Monster" blaring. They changed the words, "America where are you now, don't you care about your sons and daughters?" to "America where are you now, don't you care about your *parks and waters*?" The young ladies from the drama club and the cheerleaders were dressed up as trees running around on stage. When I saw that, I wanted to become a tree-hugger, but alas, none of the trees were interested in hugging a 5 foot 2 inch, 160 lb. freshman nerd.
Michigan and the Backlash Against Race Preferences
Bans on affirmative action deemed constitutional as more states follow suit.
Go to Heaven, Bloomberg
If Michael Bloomberg is going to heaven, as he recently assured The New York Times, does that mean I am going to hell? The former New York mayor and I do not agree on much, especially when it comes to his two biggest passions: gun control and "public health," both of which involve restricting people's freedom for no legitimate reason. Bloomberg told the Times he plans to spend $50 million this year against politicians who oppose his gun-control agenda. According to the Times, the billionaire busybody's main goal is to "expand the background check system for gun buyers both at the state and national levels."
In Richest U.S. Community, 31% Work for Government
Those who live in this nation's richest county and those who live its poorest have an important thing in common: a disproportionate dependence on government. In the United States as a whole, according to Census Bureau estimates for the five-year period from 2008 through 2012, 14.9 percent of the people who had civilian jobs worked for government. Another 78.7 worked for private employers and 6.3 percent worked for themselves in their own unincorporated businesses. In America's richest county, this pattern did not hold. Nor did it in the poorest.
The GOP's Marry-Go-Round
Whoever declared an end to the marriage debate must not have consulted Republicans. While the media is busy eulogizing one of the hottest issues of the last 15 years, those who vote for GOP candidates are saying, "not so fast!" Turns out, pronouncing marriage dead is convenient -- but not credible. Earlier this spring, FRC and American Values set out to gauge how the Republican base really feels about an issue that, until recently, was non-negotiable in the GOP. With help from Wilson Research Strategies, we asked a couple straightforward questions about the party's core values -- and what pollsters found might surprise you. Public opinion on marriage isn't the runaway train that liberals want you to believe it is. A whopping 82% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe marriage "should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman."
NBC's Cognitive Dissonant Hack Syndrome
I've always thought entrenched left-wing journalists in Washington needed their heads examined. Much to my satisfaction, it appears the corporate media bosses of at least one Beltway anchor now agree. According to The Washington Post this week, NBC News hired a "psychological consultant" to examine why flailing "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory has been bombing in the ratings. The overpriced shrinks (NBC prefers the euphemism "brand consultants") came from the New York-based brand fixer-upper Elastic Strategy.
Chelsea Clinton's Baby, Politicized
Chelsea Clinton announced she's going to be a mother this year. That should elicit the same reaction reserved for the daughter of any former president: a polite "how nice." But this is a Clinton. Everything with the Clintons gets filtered through politics. It is fitting (and equally crass) that this news is met with this reaction: "Hillary (Clinton) in 2016. Does it help or hurt?" Indeed, that is precisely how pro-Hillary pundits reacted, leaping to profess this will succeed in adding warmth and humanity to Hillary's image in the years to come. But put the celebration on hold. This was surely the same concept the Democratic pundits had in Little Rock, Ark., when Chelsea was born in 1980, and the warm image never really stuck.
The High Cost of Liberalism: Part II
Liberals can be disarming. In fact, they are for disarming anybody who can be disarmed, whether domestically or internationally. Unfortunately, the people who are the easiest to disarm are the ones who are the most peaceful -- and disarming them makes them vulnerable to those who are the least peaceful. We are currently getting a painful demonstration of that in Ukraine. When Ukraine became an independent nation, it gave up all the nuclear missiles that were on its territory from the days when it had been part of the Soviet Union.
Obama's Keystone Pipeline Trap
On Good Friday, President Obama made a bad call. The State Department announced that it would delay its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the Nebraska Supreme Court rules in a case involving the route. The administration insists the decision to punt has nothing to do with politics. Pretty much everyone else thinks otherwise. Obama, who is rarely reluctant to act unilaterally when it benefits him politically, and who regularly brags about his red-tape cutting, is paralyzed by perhaps the only big shovel-ready jobs project he's been presented with.
Wage Discrimination
"President Obama Vows Zero Tolerance on Gender Wage Gap," read one headline. Another read, "Women Still Earned 77 Cents On Men's Dollar In 2012." It's presumed that big, greedy corporations are responsible for what is seen as wage injustice. Before discussing the "unjust" wage differences between men and women, let's acknowledge an even greater injustice -- which no one seems to care about -- age injustice. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers ages 16 to 24 earn only 54 cents on every dollar earned by workers 25 or older. This wage gap is 43 percent greater than the male/female gap. Our president, progressives, do-gooders, academics and union leaders show little interest in big, greedy corporations ripping off the nation's youth. You might say, "Whoa, Williams! There's a reason younger people earn less than older people. They don't have the skills or experience." My response would be -- if I shared the vision of the president, media elite and do-gooders: Just as there can be no justification for big, greedy corporations paying women less than they pay men, there's no justification for them to exploit the nation's youth.
Privacy, Please
Scarlett Johansson left nude photos of herself on her computer. A hacker grabbed them and sent them to gossip websites. A Pennsylvania high school issued laptop computers to students and then remotely activated the laptops' cameras to watch the students when they were away from school. On my computer, a program called Disconnect reveals that my favorite websites spy on me and track what I like to read, what I browse, what I buy.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Cloners Eggs-periment With Disaster
While millions of people were busy hiding eggs for kids, scientists were hunting for eggs. Human ones. While researchers in London are growing noses, ears, and blood vessels with ethical stem cells, some scientists are still stubbornly plowing ahead with their morally dubious methods. Just last week, scientists from the U.S. and Korea broke the news that they had successfully created cloned, then killed the young humans for their embryonic stem cells. While not the first successful human embryo cloning, it is the first time any scientists have used the DNA from adults to create the cloned human embryos. By showing that it's possible to refine the technique and make clones (even embryonic clones) of adults, it brings us even closer to the threat of using this technique to gestate and birth human cloned children.
Resisting the Rising Tide of Regulations
Congress must dial down the rules that are overwhelming the U.S. economy
Conundrums
In the immortal words of Oscar Hammerstein's King of Siam, "Is a puzzlement." Everything from the media's silence when it comes to Benghazi to liberal voters not being even slightly perturbed by Obama's constant lies about the Affordable Care Act, or the fascistic activities of the IRS, leaves my head spinning. A reader of mine we'll call Ray sent me six contradictions that sum up the thinking of Progressives, or at least what passes for thinking in those bizarre quarters. It begins: "One, America is capitalist and greedy, and yet half the population is subsidized. Two, half the population is subsidized, yet they regard themselves as victims. Three, they think they are victims, yet their representatives run the government. Four, their representatives run the government, yet the poor keep getting poorer. Five, the poor keep getting poorer, yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about. Six, they have things that people in other countries only dream about, yet they want America to be more like those other countries."
The High Cost of Liberalism
Liberals advocate many wonderful things. In fact, I suspect that most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world envisioned by liberals, rather than in the kind of world envisioned by conservatives. Unfortunately, the only kind of world that any of us can live in is the world that actually exists. Trying to live in the kind of world that liberals envision has costs that will not go away just because these costs are often ignored by liberals. One of those costs appeared in an announcement of a house for sale in Palo Alto, the community adjacent to Stanford University, an institution that is as politically correct as they come.
Faith in ObamaCare, or Government, Is Misplaced
One of the reasons our political structure has become dysfunctional no matter which party is in power is that too many of us are living in the moment. The closest we get to history is the instant replay. It is as if there is nothing the past can teach us; no wisdom that might be culled from those who have gone before. We buy guidebooks, or go online for information about countries or cities we plan to visit, trusting those who have been there to tell us the best places to stay, see and eat. When it comes to more momentous things, like health care, too many people believe government does best, regardless of historical and even contemporary evidence to the contrary.
Declaring the ObamaCare Debate Over Won't Save Democrats
Apart from gutting America's military, our standing in the world, our fiscal stability, the economy, the office of the presidency, conventional energy sources, the free market and religious liberty, Obama has little to boast about other than Obamacare, so let him go for it. Yes, let him gloat, because the more he bloviates in defense of the indefensible -- the more he spins the unspinnable -- the more damage he'll do to the cause he's trying to promote: the election of Democratic congressmen in November. Obama wasn't content with having just one news conference to tout the "success" of his Obamacare sign-up efforts, the one in which he fraudulently claimed he had met his goal of enrolling 7 million new people to fund this monster.
Memo to: Republican Candidates, Answer War on Women
Just because your opponent is hurling baseless or even ridiculous charges does not mean that you are free to disregard them. You may think it's absurd to argue that you are engaged in a "war on women." But contempt for the accusation is not enough. Some strategists suggest (they have for years) the key for Republican candidates is to downplay social issues in favor of economic arguments. Pocketbook appeals are great, but the premise -- that social issues damage Republican candidates -- is shaky at best. When Pew asked women voters to rank a list of issues in order of importance in September 2012, abortion was named less often than health care, education, jobs, Medicare, the economy, terrorism, taxes, foreign policy and the budget deficit. The only issues that ranked lower for women voters were immigration and energy. A post-election Kaiser poll found only 7 percent of those who voted for President Barack Obama cited women's issues as most important to their vote.
From Greatness to Whiteness
When Americans over the age of, let us say, 45, look at any of the iconic paintings of America's Founders -- the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of the Constitution, George Washington crossing the Delaware, any of the individual portraits the Founders -- what do they see? They see great men founding a great country. If you ask recent graduates of almost any American university what they see when they look at these paintings, chances are that they see something entirely different.
The Return of Robin Hood
A prime reason for subscribing to the New York Times -- a cultural misdeed for which I regularly beat my breast -- is that of tapping into the Times' tips concerning what real, bona fide Forward Thinkers are thinking at a given moment. Like now, when opinion leaders are lining up to assure us the return of Robin Hood economics is way overdue. To a talkative redistributionist -- the young French economist Thomas Piketty -- the Times turned over a whole page of its Sunday Business section, allowing the subject to make the case for what the reporter called "a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the proceeds ... redistributed to those with less capital."