Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Klein, Krugman Offer Biased Views of Confirmation Bias
"If all you have is a hammer," the old saying goes, "everything looks like a nail." Left unsaid is the fact that the real problem isn't the possession of a hammer, but the certitude that all you need is the hammer. In other words, it's a failure of the imagination -- which is a kind of arrogance -- that's really to blame. "I've got my hammer, and that's all I need. Besides, have you ever seen a problem that didn't look like a nail?" This is a version of what academics call "confirmation bias" -- the tendency to accept only the facts that buttress your closely held views. It's a hot topic these days. Ezra Klein, a young liberal writer, has launched a news website, Vox.com, that purports to be the vanguard of something called "explanatory journalism" (which is something of a redundancy, like culinary cooking or belligerent war). In his inaugural essay, Klein argues that conservatives and liberals alike are prone to confirmation bias, which he is here to fix.
If You Think the Sky is Falling, Check out the Prophecies of the 1970s
Forty years is roughly the length of a working lifetime -- and long enough for history to have taken some unexpected turns. And to have proved that long-term forecasts based on extrapolations of existing trends usually end up wide of the mark. The list of failed prophecies from the 1970s is rather long. The conventional wisdom of the time was more than usually unreliable. Example: the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report in 1972, which predicted that the world was running out of oil and other natural resources. For a while that seemed right, as the 1973 and 1979 OPEC oil price hikes led to gas lines in the United States.
Obama's Politicized, Lawless Executive Branch
Under the administration of President Barack Obama, as never before in my lifetime, there is reason to be a bit afraid of the federal government. I have written two books documenting Obama's abuses of power, his assaults on the Constitution, his wars against business and energy, his abominably reckless spending, his divisiveness, his renegade Justice Department, his regulatory expansion, his executive orders, his overall lawlessness, and more. Obama's conduct concerning Obamacare alone would be enough to get the impeachment wheels rolling for any other president. His flagrant, deliberate lies regarding almost every aspect of that horrible law and his defiant refusal to accept any accountability for it seem unprecedented to me. Yes, Bill Clinton looked us in the face and denied his adulterous tryst with Monica Lewinsky, but Obama's lies involve the nation's health care system and affect virtually every American.
Integrity Lives
The screeching polarization of American political and cultural life in recent years is exacting a toll. Debate has been debased. Contempt and hatred for those with opposing views is now the norm. While some on the right have criticized their own side -- think of Rick Perry and Jeb Bush challenging immigration opponents, or conservative columnists taking on some talk radio hosts -- liberals have been shamefully silent about the excesses committed by Democrats. That's why it gives me particular pleasure to report that two liberal columnists have recently defied this trend. One is my old friend and sparring partner Ruth Marcus (we've known each other since the fourth grade) of the Washington Post, and the other is Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times.
Thought Police on Patrol
Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to The Washington Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming. The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy. The column ran as usual. But 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. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences -- from social ostracism to vocational defenestration -- upon those who refuse to be silenced.
Bush Candor Could Win the Day
Agree with him or not, you have to respect Jeb Bush's honesty. On two issues, immigration and a common core in education, Bush recently went on record stating positions at odds with some powerful activists in his own party. In a speech in Florida last week, he came out solidly for immigration reform that includes giving legal status to the 11 million illegal immigrants who are living in the U.S. now (provided they pay fines, taxes and haven't committed crimes while here) and for a common core of knowledge that children in all states should be expected to learn. This is heresy to some Republicans, but just plain common sense to others, including those of us who consider ourselves Reagan Republicans.
Brandeis Bows to Islamic Censorship
It's graduation time. Many college students are preparing for their commencement ceremonies. On some campuses, some students are playing a game of what we might call "Dump the Speaker." Conservative speakers chosen to deliver commencement addresses are being howled off campus by leftist student organizations and faculty as well. It's either a left-wing speaker -- or none. Rutgers University recently faced this by inviting Condoleezza Rice and refused to budge. But Brandeis University has just knuckled under to student and faculty protests over its announced speaker, author Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was disinvited. You'd think a human rights advocate would be cheered by these liberals. You'd think they'd positively swoon at a human rights advocate for *women*! But, no. She is a conservative.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
A Look at the Upcoming Hurricane Season
In 2006 I made a comment that the East Coast was looking down the barrel of a gun over the next 10 years (unfortunately and unknown to me, someone publicized it as it just being in 2006). I made the comment because I felt we were going into a period similar to the 1950s. I stated that *at least two major hurricanes* would hit *from the Carolinas and points north* over the next *ten years.* It was a simple forecast. We had eight major hurricane in seven years in a similar cold PDO/warm AMO cycle and I knew it was coming back on! I knew where the climate cycle was going, so if I take 25% of what happened in a similar cycle, then I think I have a good chance of being right. Not brain surgery. Not *hyping* something to get attention. Just simple deductive process.
Why Kerry Let the Palestinians Make a Fool Out of Him
For reasons perhaps only psychiatrists understand, Democratic presidents seek, at last, finally and forever, to "solve" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe it's something akin to discovering that ultimate, clean-burning, renewable source of energy. Then when the talks collapse, an inevitability as long as one side refuses to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, Israel gets blamed. Secretary of State John Kerry, weeks ago, boldly announced his trip to the Middle East where he would shuttle between the parties, applying his decades of foreign policy experience and skill to at last resolve the conflict. Then came the reality check. "There are limits to the amount of time the president and myself can put into this," said the exhausted and frustrated Kerry, "considering the other challenges around the world, especially if the parties can't commit to being there in a serious way." A recent Times of Israel headline said: "Kerry Focuses Blame On Israel For Collapse Of Talks."
Poll Vaulting: Marriage Gets PR Boost
For Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, supporting marriage must feel like an awfully lonely position. But according to a new Rasmussen Poll, it's anything but. In what should be an eye-opening survey that the media will go out of its way to ignore, the survey house announced a flat-out tie between Americans who back same-sex "marriage" and those who don't. Holding almost completely steady from its 2013 numbers, 43% of people, when asked "do you favor or oppose gay marriage," said they supported, compared to another 43% who opposed. The debate, which the media pronounced dead and buried, has never been more alive! Meanwhile, sportscasters are being fired from their jobs and brilliant CEOs are chased out of their offices because of their so-called "extreme" views on marriage. Turns out, the only extremists are the ones prematurely ending the conversation! Despite everything the Obama administration, the courts, and the liberal media has thrown at Americans on marriage, the country is a long way from walking away from natural marriage.
The Talk Radio Party
So what does the Tea Party want this fall? A repeat of 2010, or a repeat of 2012? The Tea Party succeeded spectacularly in 2010. Its principled enthusiasm put Republicans back in charge of the House of Representatives and, if the Tea Party hadn't been so stupid in several races, it should have given the GOP control of the Senate.
Competition for Thee, but Not for Me
Between having Republican presidential candidates fly to Las Vegas to kiss his ring, billionaire Sheldon Adelson has managed to fit in time to talk Sen. Lindsey Graham into sponsoring a bill banning Internet gambling. As you may know, Sheldon Adelson is a CASINO OWNER. Internet gambling would compete with his casino business. On the other hand, when it comes to the services Adelson isn't selling, but buying -- low-skilled workers -- he's for unbridled competition, preferring not to limit the supply even to people who are legally in the United States. (Weirdly, so is Lindsey Graham!)
Unity in the Death of Colleagues
Anja Niedringhaus, an award-winning Associated Press photographer, was killed on the job last Friday when an Afghan policeman in Khost fired an AK-47 into the back seat of the car in which she and three colleagues were traveling. Niedringhaus died instantly. She was 48, and had been covering conflicts and war zones, which she considered "the essence of journalism" since the siege of Sarajevo in 1992. By every account, she was a wonderful person and a superb journalist -- "a life force," as AP's CEO Gary Pruitt put it, "spirited, intrepid, and fearless." On the day Niedringhaus was murdered, the front page of The Boston Globe was dominated by news of the funeral for Michael Kennedy, one of two Boston firefighters who died battling a nine-alarm fire in Back Bay on March 26. Kennedy's funeral, like that of Lieutenant Edward Walsh Jr. the day before, was attended by an estimated 10,000 firefighters from three continents, who streamed into Massachusetts from all 50 states and as far away as Australia. Each man was laid to rest amid solemn pageantry and a stunning show of solidarity: a sea of fellow firefighters, in dress blue uniforms and white gloves, standing 15 deep in a formation that stretched for six or more blocks.
Tax Tyranny
Anxious and somber faces greet me as I step into the crowded waiting room. A sense of dread fills the air. Men and women sit silently, clutching folders and envelopes, stacks of papers and piles of files. The fear in the air is so thick you can almost cut it with a knife. I join the morbid group as I slump into the nearest empty chair and wait for my turn to see....the ACCOUNTANT! It's tax time, and even though we go through the same depressing ritual year-after-year, it just doesn't get any easier. If I think about it too long, I get really ticked off.
Student Unrest in Springtime
Spring is in the air, and one senses that it is again time for the college students of the land to engage in protest. It all began in the late 1960s, and one of the legacies of that period is that the campuses are evacuated as soon as possible. By May, the student body will be vamoosing. Administrators have discovered that that soft, gentle, spring-like weather breeds discontent among the students, drunken carousal, violence and criminality. It is best to return the inmates to their parents. An early sign of this seasonal discontent came a week ago at Dartmouth where a troop of students took over the president's office and delivered up a 72-point manifesto, which obviously took a lot of work. As Jillian Mayer, a senior, said, "None of those points are just thrown in there because we thought they should be there. People spent a lot of time building this Freedom Budget.
The New Inquisition
What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs? Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity? Or, if global warming were the fault of mankind, you trusted that the slight increases would not make all that much difference? The Los Angeles Times would not print your letter to the editor to that effect.
A Recourse to Budgetary Inaction
From the Goldwater Institute, the fertile frontal lobe of the conservative movement's brain, comes an innovative idea that is gaining traction in Alaska, Arizona and Georgia, and its advocates may bring it to at least 35 other states' legislatures. It would use the Constitution's Article V to move the nation back toward the limited government the Constitution's Framers thought their document guaranteed. The Compact for America is the innovation of the Goldwater Institute's Nick Dranias, who proposes a constitutional convention carefully called under Article V to enact a balanced-budget amendment written precisely enough to preclude evasion by the political class. This class has powerful and permanent incentives for deficit spending, which delivers immediate benefits to constituents while deferring a significant portion of the benefits' costs.
Chuck Stone (1924-2014)
Black journalist Chuck Stone was one of those people whose passing makes us think, "We shall not see his like again." He was passionately interested in racial issues but he was never a race hustler. He followed nobody's party line but called the issues as he saw them. Chuck Stone was a three-dimensional man, not like the cardboard cutouts with standard-issue liberal talking points that we see too often in the media today. He was with the liberals on many issues, but he did not hesitate to advocate the death penalty, and he said: "We have got to stop apologizing for the self-destructive little savages in our communities." He called the defense of such people "committing genocide against ourselves."
Kerry's Folly
After his spectacular, but predictable, failure to move forward the "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinian side, Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States will now "evaluate" its role in the Middle East. Let me help: The peace process in the Middle East isn't working and it can't work when one side -- that would be the Palestinian leadership -- has no intention of settling for anything less than their ultimate goal of removing the Jewish people from the region. Kerry's cynical ploy suggesting that convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard could be released from prison in exchange for even more Israeli concessions was another indication of how desperate he is to get something -- anything -- to work.
Reading the Polls
I don't recall a time when it was so profitable to be in the polling industry. It seems as if there's a new one every five minutes, and most of them, you've probably noticed, show Obama cratering at the speed of light. As a result, Republicans can hardly conceal their glee. I, on the other hand, look at the numbers and I feel like tearing my hair out. That is, I would if I had hair. Instead, I'd settle for tearing out someone else's; perhaps Chuck Hagel's or Harry Reid's. I know I should celebrate the fact that 59% of the electorate think Obama is doing a lousy job, but that means that 41% don't see it that way. How can I feel good as an American knowing that 83% of the people believe that our country is weaker and less powerful than it was six years ago? For one thing, that's not a situation in which I ever want America to find herself, but for another, it means 17% think we're stronger and more powerful since Obama took office, and they can't all be smoking pot in Colorado.