Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Plundering Sold as Populism
The IMF plots outright wealth confiscation across the entire globe.
A Tale of Two Subsidies
Leave it to the federal government to build a national health care system without bothering to nail down a cost structure first. Unfortunately, that's just the latest installment of "Adventures in ObamaCare," as the President's team scrambles to figure out how the website's pricing system will work for insurers. Thousands of Americans may be paying for coverage, but insurers still have no way of receiving their money through HHS's joke of a website. As recently as last month, the brain trust behind HealthCare.gov admitted that the website's bridge to insurers hadn't even been built yet.
History Casts Doubt Upon Non-Aggression Pact With Iran
According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted. The agreement is not like détente-era arms reductions with the Soviets. After all, each superpower in the Cold War had enough nuclear missiles to reduce most of civilization to cinders. One mistake could have ended in Armageddon.
ObamaCare: If You Like Your Facts ... You can Keep Them
President Barack Obama recently asserted, "Thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act, also known as 'Obamacare,' the cost of health care is now growing at the slowest rate in 50 years." So, you may be losing your health care coverage, and you may end up paying more -- but, hey, rising costs are slowing overall "in part" *because* of Obamacare. True, as Obama says, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- the agency that administers Medicaid and Medicare -- "estimated that ... (in) the three years since Obamacare passed, we've seen the slowest growth in health care costs on record."
Liberals Are Culture War Aggressors
Maybe someone can explain to me how, exactly, conservatives are the aggressors in the culture war? In the conventional narrative of American politics, conservatives are obsessed with social issues. They want to impose their values on everyone else. They want the government involved in your bedroom. Those mean right-wingers want to make "health care choices" for women.
A Case for Containing Iran
Critics of the agreement with Iran concerning its nuclear program are right about most things but wrong about the most important things. They understand the agreement's manifest and manifold defects and its probable futility. Crucial components of Iran's nuclear infrastructure remain. U.S. concessions intended to cultivate the Iranian regime's "moderates" are another version of the fatal conceit that U.S. policy can manipulate other societies. As is the hope that easing economic sanctions will create an Iranian constituency demanding nuclear retreat in exchange for yet more economic relief. Critics are, however, wrong in thinking that any agreement could control Iran's nuclear aspirations. And what critics consider the agreement's three worst consequences are actually benefits.
The Liars Club
It is now apparent that our president has lied to us. He lied when he crooned soothingly about improving the healthcare of millions of Americans through vast changes in health policy that would actually *lower* their costs. Those costs are now going up, and they are going up for almost everyone. They will not come down. He lied when he said we could keep our present health care policy. Those policies are rapidly disappearing. He lied again when he said we could keep our doctors. He lied when he said his plan would not involve rationing. I could go on, but in sum he is lying about most aspects of the most massive social policy in American history. It is also the greatest disaster in social policy in the history of social policy. President Barack Obama is a rank amateur.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Slap Your Face, Pick Your Pocket Cold and Snow
If what's coming in the next 15 days is followed by what we at WeatherBELL believe will be a cold January for the United States, it will mean the late fall/winter periods of three of the last five winter seasons will have been colder than normal in much of the nation. The non-winter of '11-'12 is sticking out like a soar thumb when one considers the pick your pocket energy-wise, slap your face temperature-wise cold and snow of the mid and late winter last season well into what was a cold spring. By the way, cold springs are quite common when the Pacific is in its cooling phase (we call this a cold PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation]) and the Atlantic is in its warm phase (called a warm AMO [Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation]). Therefore, the warm spring of 2012 is not likely to be repeated anytime soon.
Majority Rules on Climate Science?
Back in 2006, around the time Al Gore's global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was released, I started a file labeled "*What* Climate Consensus?" Gore was insisting that "the debate among the scientists is over," and only an ignoramus or a lackey for the fossil-fuel industry could doubt that human beings were headed for a climate catastrophe of their own making. But it didn't take much sleuthing to discover that there was plenty of debate among scientists about the causes and consequences of global warming. Many experts were skeptical about the hyperbole of alarmists like Gore, and as I came across examples, I added them to my file.
The New Healthcare Contract With America
Affordable Care Act regulations have forced health insurers to cancel the policies of an estimated five million Americans. By the end of the year, the final number of people who receive cancellation notices could reach seven to 10 million. These victims of ObamaCare are being forced into the new health-insurance exchanges. But the exchanges don't work. The federal exchange is such a disaster that the administration announced a "tech surge" to get it right -- as if the bureaucracy were launching a foreign war.
Security a Sorry Site on Healthcare.gov
It doesn't matter how healthy you are, everyone signing up for ObamaCare is in a high-risk pool when it comes to online security. While the White House boasts that HealthCare.gov is more functional than ever, internet experts beg to differ. For those applicants lucky enough to make it past the exchange's home page (and that still isn't many), "proceed at your own risk" seems to be the motto from most insiders -- including HHS's own.
The Holidays: When the Season of 'More' Begets Less
I confess. I'm a bargain-hunter with the best of them. Why spend a dollar more when a better price is just across the mall or on the next website? I'd easily trade an extra few minutes in line (or online) for the best price on a gift that's just perfect for someone I really love. So, apparently, would millions of other people.
Real Charity
'Tis the season for giving. But when you give, do you know your money will help someone? Social workers say, "Don't give to beggars." Those who do give are "enablers," helping alcoholics and drug users to continue bad habits. It's better to give to charities that help the "homeless." I put "homeless" in quotes because my TV producers have quietly followed a dozen of the more convincing beggars after "work," and all had homes.
Contraception Exceptions
For many Americans, religion is something you do on weekends and holidays. For others, it is the central organizing principle of life. That split helps explain the dispute over Obamacare's requirement that businesses pay for their employees' contraceptives, which is the focus of two cases the Supreme Court agreed to hear last week. President Obama says forcing employers to provide 100 percent coverage for 20 kinds of contraception is a straightforward matter of "public health and gender equality." He nevertheless recognizes that the rule runs afoul of certain religious doctrines, which is why he exempted churches and offered to accommodate church-affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities by routing contraceptive coverage through a middleman.
Anti-Gun NFL: National Frauds' League
The National Football League's hypocrisy and selective decency standards reek like a post-game locker room. On the one hand, the organization refuses to run a firearms manufacturer's self-defense Super Bowl ad under the guise of neutrality and taste. Yet, the professional football conglomerate routinely revels in raunchiness, gratuitous physical violence and anti-gun screeds. Welcome to the National Frauds' League.
Obama's Picture-Perfect Propaganda
It might seem like another day in Tea Party Land when a conservative columnist accuses President Barack Obama's White House of "airbrushing history" like the Stalin-era Soviet Union. But the columnist isn't a conservative. It's Dana Milbank of the liberal Washington Post complaining about what's happened to White House news photographers. He's not alone. A New York Times photographer has publicly compared Team Obama to the Soviet Tass news agency. What is going on?
Obama Worship Syndrome
When George W. Bush was president of the United States, many of the left fell prey to what columnist Charles Krauthammer called "Bush Derangement Syndrome": "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush." With Bush out of office, BDS has waned somewhat. Unfortunately, it has been replaced by a converse condition, just as grave and dangerous to the mental stability of its victims: "Obama Worship Syndrome."
Which Immigrant Should Be Your Neighbor?
Daniel and Samuel were both born in Monterrey, Mexico on the same day in 1990 and baptized by the same priest two Sundays later. Both attended the same primary and secondary schools. Both dreamed of some day moving to the United States. But there the similarity ends. Samuel dropped out of school in tenth grade. Daniel graduated from secondary school, went on to the university and graduated at the top of his class.
Blacks and Obama
In a March 2008 column, I criticized pundits' concerns about whether America was ready for Barack Obama, suggesting that the more important issue was whether black people could afford Obama. I proposed that we look at it in the context of a historical tidbit.