Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The Fall of Big Labor
Big Labor took a roundhouse punch on the chin a week or so ago, and the ringside clatter made it sound as though nothing much had changed in America since the days of John L. Lewis. Raise your hand if, along with me, you have the slightest recollection of John L. Lewis, the formidable, bushy-eyebrowed head of the United Mine Workers of America, who once personified the combative force of the post-World War II labor movement. In those olden times, shaped by battles over pay and working conditions, American unions attained unprecedented levels of influence. Only to decline from there -- descending lately to the agony of an election the United Auto Workers seemed sure to win.
FCC Study Sticks Out Like Soros Thumb
The FCC's newsroom crackdown may have come as a surprise to other Americans -- but not George Soros. The Left's media financier may have had more to do with the controversial study than even the Federal Communication Commission initially realized. While conservatives and broadcasters celebrated the announcement that the FCC was throwing in the towel on its pilot program to let the government monitor newsroom content, the story took an interesting twist.
Bryan Stow and a Justice System That's Criminal
On March 31, 2011, the opening day of baseball at Dodger Stadium, four San Francisco Giants fans, all paramedics, were there to cheer on their team. As they left the stadium, in the parking lot, one of them, Bryan Stow, was attacked by a Dodger fan, who hit him so suddenly and with such force that Stow hit his head on the ground without being able to break his fall, which fractured his skull. But the attack didn't end there. Once on the ground, Stow was repeatedly kicked in the head and ribs. As reported by CBS Los Angeles, "Stow's friend said he saw the assailant -- whom he described as a Hispanic man between 20 and 30 years old -- repeatedly kick Stow in the head with 'full wind-up' kicks after knocking him to the pavement with a 'haymaker punch' to the left side of his head."
It's Not Hearsay, It's Heresy
Several hundred years ago, an Italian astronomer named Galileo Galilei, which sounds like something a Swiss shepherd might yodel, was found guilty of heresy and placed under house arrest for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun. Unfortunately for Signor Galilei, this contradicted Church doctrine that had long contended the earth was the center of the universe. Today, polling shows that one in four Americans actually believes that the sun spins around the earth. But it's not because the Church tells them falsehoods. Rather, it's because they're stupid and because they, like the knuckleheads who parrot the nonsense about man-made global warming, are convinced they are dealing with "settled science," a term concocted by liberal nincompoops for the purpose of silencing logical skeptics.
The 'Fairness' Fraud
It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen. That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don't rise have been stopped by "barriers" created by "society."
Separation of Government From Press
After much criticism from conservative quarters, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided, at least for now, to withdraw plans for its proposed study of how media organizations gather and report news. The expressed goal of the survey was to determine if the "critical information needs" of the public are being met. In making the announcement on Friday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated the survey would be "revised" and that the government agency had "no intention" of regulating political speech of journalists or other broadcasters. You couldn't prove that from reading the initial study.
In Hyperpartisan Era, Only Candidates Can Change Outcomes
Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously said that all politics is local. And it mostly was, in his time: He was first elected to the Massachusetts legislature's lower house in 1936 and became its speaker in 1949, and was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952 and became its speaker in 1977. Those were years when there was constant churning and turmoil in partisan politics. Yankee Republicans yielded majority status to Catholic Democrats in O'Neill's Massachusetts.
Facing Reality on Carbon Dioxide
Though you wouldn't necessarily know it based on news coverage, the United States in the reign of President Barack Obama is enduring the most prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment since World War II. The president asserts that he saved us from another Great Depression, which, like his claim that the stimulus would "create or save" millions of jobs, is about as provable as the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. The Obama administration has done little to spur job creation, but a great deal to inhibit it. The president mocks the idea of deregulation ("cut two regulations and call me in the morning"), but the new layers of rules and directives his administration has layered over the already-existing sedimentary encrustations cannot have helped.
A Chilling Proposal
Any freedom-loving person would be outraged at the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to inject itself into monitoring the practices of print and broadcast media organizations, but the outrage came almost exclusively from conservatives, which is highly instructive. But liberals and conservatives are on such different planets that they don't even agree that this development -- that only conservatives objected -- is instructive, which is also instructive. The Washington Post was hoist with its own petard in reacting with a subtly pointed headline, "Proposed FCC study of news organizations sparks conservative outcry," and exposing its own biases rather than those of conservatives.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Yes, We Should Discuss the Clintons' Past
When Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential aspirant Rand Paul re-surfaced the Monica Lewinsky scandal as relevant to Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, fellow Republican Karl Rove immediately took him to task on national television. "Frankly, Rand Paul spending a lot of time talking about the mistakes of Bill Clinton does not look like a big agenda for the future of the country," said Rove. Actually, it was Paul's wife Kelley who first brought it up in a Vogue Magazine interview. Why should Republicans be accused of a "war on women" when Mrs. Clinton's husband, former president Bill, chartered new territory in "predatory" sexual behavior, argued Mrs. Paul.
Obama's Fascist Communication Commission
The American left's commitment to the free marketplace of ideas is a fraud. Due to outrage voiced by conservative media outlets, the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) attempt to put government "researchers" into the nation's newsrooms to carry out its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs" has been shelved -- for now. Under the guise of examining, as the FCC puts it, "the barriers that may prevent entrepreneurs and small business from competing in the media marketplace" the so-called "Cin Study" is nothing less than a bald-faced attempt to intimidate those who refuse to abide by the FFC's determination of a community's "critical needs." Eight of those needs were identified by the study.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Worse Than Death Panels: Cookbook Medicine
People who worry about death panels are missing the forests for the trees. Yes, people with expensive-to-treat conditions may someday be denied life-saving treatment because of ObamaCare. But there is a far greater danger for ordinary mortals: government and its health insurance proxies telling doctors how to practice medicine. In treating patients with various symptoms, doctors are increasingly pressured to follow guidelines or protocols. This "cookbook" approach to medicine is the opposite of personalized medicine -- an approach which aims to tailor the therapy to the characteristics of the patient, including her genetic makeup.
Before We Leap
There seems to be a rising chorus -- even among some on the right -- that marriage is over and we need to give up on the civil institution of marriage. I'm reminded of the blonde starlet, Mae West. This Hollywood celebrity was asked why she didn't marry one of the handsome young men who always followed her around. "Marriage is a great institution," said Mae, "but I'm not ready for an institution." Married or not, Mae West understood marriage better than some federal judges and some policy analysts. When we hear them say "let's privatize marriage," what they are really saying is let's abandon the children. And let's abandon America's future.
Calling Pest Control
A question that keeps repeating itself in my mind is whether only creepy people run for public office or if, somehow, it's winning elections that transforms normal people into some distasteful form of alien life. For instance, with all the billions of dollars that the government wastes year after year, was it really essential that they cut pensions for military veterans? God knows I'm all for saving money, but the amount these mopes saved by chiseling the veterans is hardly enough to fund the government from midnight to 12:05 a.m.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
And What if He is a Marxist?
It's getting harder even for sincere media supporters of President Obama's signature legislative achievement -- the government takeover of health care known as Obamacare -- to defend the indefensible. Kirsten Powers has spoken up for the compassionate idea of covering everyone. But she signaled on FOX News that it was getting harder to defend the botched rollout and, now, losing her *own* coverage, she is looking less and less willing to stand up for this deeply flawed program. Powers attributes all this confusion -- and the *thirty-five* "fixes"Mr. Obama has unilaterally mandated -- to "incompetence."
From The Comedy Store
The Washington Post ripped President Obama for making laws by executive orders without Congress. It's perfectly legal. Law professors say his executive orders are unconstitutional but it's not true; he just issued an executive order making them constitutional.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Progressive Insanity and the Global Warming Cult
What explains the Left escalating its outlandish claims and scaremongering?
Why Parents Are 'Paranoid' About Common Core
This week's award for Biggest Common Core Jerk goes to Missouri GOP state legislator Mike Lair. Parents, teachers and administrators who object to the government education "standards" racket -- which usurps local control, impedes academic achievement and undermines family privacy -- have politicians on the defensive. The only thing these Fed Ed flacks and hacks can respond with is cowardly condescension. Lair, chairman of Missouri's House Appropriations Committee on Education, inserted an $8 budget line item to mock Common Core critics as tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. Lair's item reads: "For two rolls of high-density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind reading and control technology."
Jimmy Fallon, Democrat Political Asset
The Obamas have had few more obsequious media allies than NBC's Jimmy Fallon. Now that he's taking over the hallowed ground of "The Tonight Show," Fallon's proven ability to spread his reach into viral videos on YouTube promises to become even more politically potent. Fallon's Obama-friendly sketches and interviews have become immediate "news" grist for the Comcast corps at NBC and MSNBC. The same sensation happens when Fallon is ripping into a Republican. Just as NBC and MSNBC were tearing Gov. Chris Christie apart over "Bridgegate," Fallon joined this political crusade by bringing on liberal rock star Bruce Springsteen for a jokey version of the hit "Born to Run."
Unions Can't Win
It's not often that a union election makes front-page news. But last week's stunning loss by the United Auto Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., is a seminal event in the history of the labor movement. Union membership has fallen consistently over the past 60 years, and the UAW loss suggests there's no way for labor to reverse the trend -- at least not in the private sector. But why? The UAW blames Republican politicians and conservative groups --outside agitators, if you will. Sen. Bob Corker, a former Chattanooga mayor, weighed in on opposing unionization at the plant during the voting, claiming a vote against the union would enhance the chances that VW would give the plant the right to build SUVs, adding hundreds of jobs. But the bigger problem was that the union had little to offer prospective members. Workers get little in return for paying dues that equal two hours' pay monthly.