Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Dems Play Politics With Bogus 77-cent Differential in Male-Female Pay
An economist serving on a second-term president's Council of Economic Advisers might expect to weigh in on fundamental issues, restructuring the tax system or making entitlement programs sustainable over the long term. Barack Obama once talked of addressing such issues, and Republican leaders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are doing so. But that's not what University of Michigan economist and CEA member Betsey Stevenson finds herself doing. Instead, she is defending the use of misleading statistics in support of legislation addressing a minor problem.
Aiming High
There's an MRCTV video circulating on the Internet that features a man with a microphone asking college students in Washington, D.C., to name just one member of the United States Senate. At least half a dozen are stumped. When he asks how many senators each state has, the same crew is equally flummoxed. One hundred percent of the students could name the hit song from the movie "Frozen," though. These surveys about how ignorant Americans are have become hardy perennials. Survey data confirm that large numbers of Americans lack even rudimentary knowledge of what used to be called "eighth-grade civics." A survey by Common Core found that 25 percent of American high school students thought Christopher Columbus sailed after the year 1750, and about a third of them did not know the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and religion.
Statistical Frauds
The "war on women" political slogan is in fact a war against common sense. It is a statistical fraud when Barack Obama and other politicians say that women earn only 77 percent of what men earn -- and that this is because of discrimination. It would certainly be discrimination if women were doing the same work as men, for the same number of hours, with the same amount of training and experience, as well as other things being the same. But study after study, over the past several decades, has shown repeatedly that those things are not the same.
Kathleen Sebelius: Scapegoat
Dictionary.com offers two definitions for scapegoat: "1. A person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place; 2. Chiefly biblical. A goat let loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur after the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the people on its head. Lev. 16:8,10,26." Both definitions seem to fit last week's announcement of the "resignation" of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, who presided over the disastrous rollout of the government's website, healthcare.gov, which was supposed to provide easy access for people who wished to sign up for Obamacare.
GOP, Don't Be Comforted by Sebelius' Resignation
As horrible as Kathleen Sebelius has been as this nation's health and human services secretary, she has been exactly who President Barack Obama has wanted her to be. This was no rogue incompetent tinkering with America's health care. This was one of Obama's chief lieutenants, one who was doing his bidding every step of that treacherous road they traveled together. Don't get me wrong; Sebelius was inexcusably bad -- arrogant, defiant, uncompassionate, dogmatic and unrepentant. Obama cashiered her only because it was time to deflect blame from himself and change the channel.
What the Left Did Last Week
In his column last week, Charles Krauthammer crossed a line. He declared the American left totalitarian. He is correct. Totalitarianism is written into the left's DNA. Krauthammer wrote about a left-wing petition "bearing more than 110,000 signatures delivered to the [Washington] Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming." He concluded: "I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation -- no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian."
Obama and the Politics of Race
So "Racism" once more stalks among us! The Obama administration and its congressional minions are in full-court press style on the topic. The country's president and chief magistrate asserted the other day at a political rally put on by, of all racial demagogues, Al Sharpton that poor people and black people find it harder than ever to vote. Along came Atty. Gen. Eric Holder with his own tale of racial woe. A Republican-dominated House committee had roughed him up, he thought. "What attorney general," he asked the same political gathering, "has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"
Monday, April 14, 2014
Embrace Progressivism – or Shut Up
Sometimes a confluence of seemingly unrelated ideas offer great clarity regarding the current state of the nation. In this particular case, a column, a comment by a friend, a book, and a conference underscore a disturbing reality best described by the late, great Ronald Reagan. "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
Repeal and Replace ObamaCare
The announced departure of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius marks the end of a chapter of American history. Sibelius, aside from President Obama, has been the most prominent public face on the signature initiative of the Obama administration -- the Affordable Health Care Act. The question before Americans today is whether we are concluding the first chapter of a dream come true or whether this may be the beginning of the end of a nightmare. I'm hoping Americans will wake up and see Obamacare for the nightmare it is. Victory dances are taking place in the "dream come true" camp that over seven million have now signed up for Obamacare plans through federal and state insurance exchanges.
Sebelius Visits Health and Human Resources
When the President led his ObamaCare victory parade through the Rose Garden April 1, there was one person conspicuously absent -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Days later, it seems that same person, the conductor of the ObamaCare train wreck, will be conspicuously absent from the law's next phase (whatever that may be). After five rocky years at the helm of one of the biggest political catastrophes in U.S. history, Secretary Sebelius is headed for the exit in a move that caught even congressional Democrats by surprise. Flanked by the outgoing Secretary on one side and incoming nominee Sylvia Burwell on the other, the President spoke in triumphal tones of HHS's handling of his health care law. In one of the last -- and most ironic -- moments of the Secretary's tenure, Sebelius presided over one final glitch. As she thumbed through her final remarks, Sebelius discovered at one point that she was missing a page -- leaving us all to wonder of the resignation: what else is this administration leaving out?
Islam, 'Honor' Violence, and the Silence of the Progressives
"Honor Diaries" might not be coming to a theater near you, at least not if CAIR gets its way. The award-winning documentary about "honor" violence against girls and women in much of the Muslim world was released last month in honor of International Women's Day, and it didn't take long for the Council on American Islamic Relations to slap its all-purpose "Islamophobic!" label on it. The film has been shown in dozens of venues, but CAIR has raised enough of a stink to get screenings cancelled on several college campuses, including the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois.
The Churchills: Ward & Winston
In my book, "67 Conservatives You Should Meet Before You Die," one of the questions I asked of all my subjects, who ranged, alphabetically, from Ablow, Keith, a prominent psychiatrist, to Zucker, David, a famous screenwriter-director, was which eight people who had ever lived, they would invite to a dinner party. Being conservatives, it wasn't too surprising that two people who would never have to pay for another meal if they ever showed up ready to tie on the old feedbag, were Jesus Christ and Winston Churchill. I have a feeling that if I had, God forbid, interviewed liberals, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and even the phony Indian, Ward Churchill, would have wound up with a lot of meal tickets. Although perhaps by this time, Ward might have to give up his seat to make way for that other phony Indian, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, at the big pow-wow.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
A Republican Vision for Health Reform
What is most missing from the Republicans is not so much the lack of an alternative to ObamaCare. It is the lack of a clear vision. Even if you can understand what their various proposals (and friends and close allies often cannot), it is almost never clear why they want to implement them. Here is the sad truth: Even though the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is a Rube Goldberg contraption that no one can explain and even though its rollout has been a complete disaster and even though the delay of one provision after another makes it seem as though the entire enterprise is coming apart…
A Counter for Hysterics in Michigan
Robert Griffin, now 90, who rose to be second in the Republican U.S. Senate leadership, was defeated in 1978. Since then, only one Michigan Republican, Spencer Abraham in 1994, has been elected to the Senate and for only one term. Evidence that former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land might end this GOP drought is that Democrats are attacking her for opposing "preventive health care." This is a phrase Democrats use to include abortion as they try to reprise their 2012 alarms about Republicans' "war on women," which began with the martyrdom of Sandra Fluke. She was the Georgetown University law student aggrieved because the Catholic university she chose to attend was not paying for her contraception. The median starting annual salary of Georgetown law graduates entering the private sector is $160,000. Wal-Mart sells a month's worth of birth control pills for $9.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Yellen's Low-Flation Nonsense
Will somebody please explain to me how rising inflation is somehow going to extricate us from the tepid economic recovery? I don't get it. It used to be hypothesized that *low* inflation was the key to *high* economic growth. For everybody in the economy, low inflation was a tax cut. Conversely, rapidly rising prices were thought to penalize the economy by placing a tax-hike effect on investors, businesses and families. It was this logic that spurred Paul Volcker (especially) and then Alan Greenspan to labor mightily in the 1980s and 1990s to bring inflation down.
Victimless Crimes
It's been called to my attention by a few readers -- a little too gleefully in a couple of cases -- that I goofed when I recently passed along the news that Barack Obama had opened up gas stations in certain urban enclaves that, thanks to a little known section of the Affordable Care Act, were offering free gas to poor people. Apparently it was part of a satirical piece that had been posted on the Internet and red-flagged by Snopes. Okay, mea culpa. I wish I hadn't spread misinformation. In my defense, I can only say that it certainly sounded like a stunt that Obama would pull off in order to rev up his base in preparation for the 2014 elections. Besides, as we all know, my mistake today could easily be an Obama brainstorm tomorrow.
From The Comedy Store
Dave Letterman announced he will retire from his CBS talk show next year. He's enjoyed a million laughs and a workplace sex scandal. No one wants to say Dave had a lot of affairs with staffers but he's agreed to donate the couch in his office to the Clinton Presidential Library.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brandeis' Double Standards
A heroic defender of oppressed Muslim women is persona non grata; but pernicious anti-Semites get the red carpet.
Judge Promotes Conservative to Professor of Justice
While Americans fume about the sidelining of Mozilla's Brendan Eich, another conservative is getting some long-awaited payback. It took eight years, but Dr. Mike Adams, associate professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, finally won the promotion he deserved -- thanks to a federal court's intervention. Almost a month earlier, a jury had sided with Dr. Adams, agreeing that the university was retaliating against the criminology professor for his conservative views. This week, a U.S. District judge followed up on that verdict, ordering UNCW to promote Adams and provide $50,000 in back pay in what many are calling a "landmark anti-discrimination case." Eight years ago, the university's sociology department turned down Adams's application for promotion, despite a folio of awards, student recommendations, 125 speaking appearances, and 11 published peer-review articles. It was the first time, his attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom pointed out, that a professor with that many peer-reviewed pieces had ever been denied promotion at the Department level.
The Legacy of Obama's Illegal Alien Aunt
Zeituni Onyango, President Obama's illegal alien aunt, died this week of cancer and other complications. I hope she rests in peace. America, however, should be up in arms. Auntie Zeituni is an enduring symbol of all that is wrong with this country's immigration "policy" -- or rather, its complete lack of a coherent, enforceable system of laws and rules that puts the national interest first. She was a beneficiary of the welfare state run amok, enabled by bipartisan fecklessness. To the bitter end, she bit the hand that fed her with predictable ingratitude and metastatic entitlement.