Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Elections Have Consequences
I've been doing a lot of TV since the shut down began. Specifically I've been doing one or both of Anderson Cooper's programs at 8 PM Eastern and/or 10 PM Eastern. In almost every one of those programs whoever is to my Left says that President Obama has been elected twice on the program of ObamaCare and, as ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, Republicans should back off, roll over, and accept their fate as having lost the Presidency in 2008 and 2012.
Telling Secrets on Abortion Coverage
As Congress debates ObamaCare, one issue that almost stopped the law in 2009 -- yet still receives scant media coverage -- is the law's subsidies for abortion coverage. ObamaCare is funded through mandatory spending so as to avoid the Hyde Amendment, the provision which stops appropriated funds for the Department of Health and Human Services from paying for abortion or even subsidizing plans with abortion coverage. The President promised when the health care bill passed that it would not cover abortion, but like FRC warned during the debate over ObamaCare, buried deep within the 2,700 pages is language Nancy Pelosi was hoping Americans would never read, the abortion surcharge scheme. That's right! If an insurer decides to cover abortion in its plan, and the government subsidizes people's premiums in that plan, every single person is required to pay an extra abortion surcharge!
Conservatives Balk at Ryan Gov. Funding Plan
While the president may be showing signs of cracking.
Hard Questions & Easy Answers
I realize that those on the Left hold anyone who questions where Barack Obama was born in contempt. They even came up with a silly term, Birthers, for those who aren't satisfied that a president who continues to keep documents related to his college applications and grades under lock and key is being entirely forthright.
Democrats to America: We Own the Government!
In the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people. Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates. Contrary to Obama's promises, it turns out: You can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your insurance -- you can't even keep your job. In other words, it's a typical government program, but this one wrecks your health care.
Government by Tantrum
"Waaaaa! You're not playing fair!" "Waaaaa! You're going to bankrupt America!" "Waaaaa! You guys started it!" The crybabies in Washington are at it again.
When Liberals Became Scolds
She thought it robbed his death of any meaning. But a meaning would be quickly manufactured to serve a new politics. First, however, an inconvenient fact -- Oswald -- had to be expunged from the story. So, just 24 months after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Kennedys' kept historian, published a thousand-page history of the thousand-day presidency without *mentioning* the assassin. The transformation of a murder by a marginal man into a killing by a sick culture began instantly -- before Kennedy was buried. The afternoon of the assassination, Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy's "martyrdom" to "the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." The next day, James Reston, the New York Times luminary, wrote in a front-page story that Kennedy was a victim of a "streak of violence in the American character," but especially of "the violence of the extremists on the right."
Mr. Netanyahu and the End of Days
So far Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. President Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations -- only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone him for the first conservation between heads of state of the two countries since the Iranian storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979. Rouhani has certainly wowed Western elites with his mellifluous voice, quiet demeanor and denials of wanting a bomb. The media, who ignore the circumstances of Rouhani's three-decade trajectory to power, gush that he is suddenly a "moderate" and "Western educated."
Compromise With Republicans, Don't Demonize Them
You know why Republican conservatives *really* want to defund ObamaCare? "Everyone knows why," wrote Salon's editor Joan Walsh last week as brinksmanship over the health-care law triggered the federal shutdown.
Why Do Advertisers Back Race-Baiter Al Sharpton?
Back in 1987, a young demagogue named Al Sharpton leapt onto the national scene, accusing a New York assistant district attorney, Steven Pagones, of raping a 15-year-old girl, Tawana Brawley. Actually, Sharpton claimed that Pagones had raped Brawley, anally raped Brawley and then scrawled the initials "KKK" on Brawley's torso in feces. "We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it," Sharpton proclaimed. "If we're lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us -- sue us right now." Pagones sued. Pagones won. But Sharpton never apologized and had his supporters foot the bill.
Harry Reid: Concern About Runaway Spending Is 'Anarchy'?
A national network reporter, during an interview about about the government shutdown, actually told me: "Democrats believe government should do *some* things. Republicans don't believe government should be doing *anything*." Where had we heard that characterization of the GOP? "'Anarchist'? Why in the world wouldn't I use the term anarchy?" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a CNN interview. "That's what they are. They're anarchists. They don't believe in government -- at any level. ... They're anarchists, just like they were at the beginning of the 20th century. ... They're not blowing up buildings and they're not killing people. But they're throwing monkey wrenches in the wheels of government." That a reporter parroted the line almost verbatim explains why Obama and the Democrats believe they will win the PR battle over which party voters will blame for this partial government shutdown.
A National Disgrace
I am just wondering if Miriam Carey, the mentally ill mother who drove her black Infiniti down Pennsylvania Avenue after she rammed a White House barricade, was read her Miranda rights before she was shot dead in a fusillade of gunfire by a gang of well-armed police who surrounded her car at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The information has not been released, though as I write almost a week has passed since the lethal event. Why could not those crack shots have aimed at her car's tires. Then they could have waited for her next move. It looks to me like they were shooting at the side of the car about half way up the door. They apparently wanted to take no chances.
Culture's Casualties
It's the 40th anniversary of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying," which some have described as a breakthrough book for women and for modern feminism. Reduced to its common (and I do mean common) denominator, the book, which was written in the appropriately named "Me" Decade of the '70s, encourages women to behave like promiscuous men, having meaningless sex without fear of consequences. "Fear of Flying" gleefully encourages women to engage in the so-called "ZF." Don't know what that means? Look it up.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Drawing Default Lines
The United States of America will not go into default any time in the near future. That's a pretty strong statement to make, but it's true. Why? Because we have a lot of money with which to make good on our loans. As I noted in [yesterday's Update](http://patriotpost.us/opinion/20689), our government collects, on average, $206 billion a month. The average per-month interest on our debt over a 12-month period is $35 billion which is all that the federal government is paying as it pertains to our nation's debt. The math is pretty straightforward: We will have more than enough to service our national debt and pay for other essential obligations.
California Makes U.S. Citizenship Obsolete
While amnesty is stealthily moving through Congress.
Obamacare's Next Round
For all the acrimony in Washington over Obamacare, there's an intriguing consensus around one issue: the ratchet effect. Neither side uses the term, but both the right and left treat it as an article of faith. The term was coined by the libertarian economist Robert Higgs. In his book "Crisis and Leviathan," Higgs describes how the state takes on massive new powers during a crisis, usually wars. When the crisis subsides, the state relinquishes some of those powers, but it never gives them all back. This is how the state grows over time.
Shutdown Theater
Government wants you to play a role in the "shutdown" of the federal government. Your role is to panic. Republicans and Democrats both assume that shutting some government is a terrible thing. The press concurs. "Shutdown threatens fragile economy," warns Politico. "Federal workers turn to prayer," laments The Washington Post. If the public starts noticing that life goes on as usual without all 3.4 million federal workers, we might get dangerous ideas, like doing without so much government. Politicians don't want that.
Occupy America! Park Visitors Storm the Barrycades
Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government "shutdowns" to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off the orange traffic cones and "Barrycades." Enough is enough. The movement started with waves of World War II veterans who flew to D.C. last week as part of the Honor Flight Network. (The nonprofit group brings our surviving heroes to visit the memorials that honor their service and sacrifice.) The vets and volunteers breached the fences last week, exposing the tone-deaf tactics of President Obama's Spite House. Honor Flight visits continue this week, and more vets vowed to defy the cynical closures.
Let Money Talk
If Congress tried to limit spending by newspapers, the courts would reject such meddling as a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Likewise if Congress tried to accomplish its goal indirectly by limiting the amount of money newspapers receive from advertisers. Yet the same sort of distinction supposedly justifies federal limits on campaign contributions, the subject of a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday. McCutcheon v. FEC involves just one aspect of campaign finance regulations: the overall limits on how much one person can give to candidates, parties and political committees during an election cycle. But the case gives the court an opportunity to reconsider the illogical constitutional line it drew nearly four decades ago between campaign spending and campaign contributions.
The Ministry of Confusion
I can think of one reason to end the federal shutdown: There are a lot of stupid people now roaming the streets. The Feds, however, do not have a monopoly on idiocy. Bureaucratic bumbling can be found wherever there's large government, even on the state, and yes, on the county level. I know a thing or two about these things. Back in the early '70s, I was in Spain with my brothers Michael and Johnny; the three of us were attending a Spanish high school. As part of this arrangement, we had to handle all necessary requirements, uppermost being the requirement for patience dealing with the most incoherent bureaucracy ever visited on man. There was no problem Spaniards couldn't make worse by a factor of 10 just by tackling it.