Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Race to the Bottom in the ObamaCare Exchanges
The ObamaCare health insurance exchanges are supposed to open for business next Tuesday. Despite huge subsidies and despite daily publicity, these exchanges are expected to enroll only 11 million of 48 million uninsured Americans over the next year. Those who do enroll may not be happy with their experience. We now know quite a lot about how these exchanges are going to function and the picture doesn't look good.
The Fed's Applied Progressivism
WASHINGTON -- Because Ben Bernanke's public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored. The change is dramatized by two recent developments. One was the *campaigning* by several *constituencies* for and against what supposedly were the two leading *candidates* -- Larry Summers and Janet Yellen -- to replace Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Fed can no longer be considered separated from politics.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Sell the Individual-Mandate Delay
The Glitches Are Huge. The GOP Must Make the Freedom Case
Hollywood: A State of Mind
When comedian Ken Murray first came to Los Angeles, it was the late 1920s and he was a member of a vaudeville troupe. Luckily, he brought with him a movie camera because he was a star-struck fan, and wished to share his experiences with the folks back in New York. In the beginning, he would film any actor or actress he came across. As his own career developed and his circle of acquaintances widened over the next 40 years, he eventually captured anyone who was anyone in what he came to refer to as his hometown.
From The Comedy Store
Joe Biden landed in Colorado to inspect the damage from the flooding in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. he got the greenlight to go Sunday. FEMA said the destruction's so complete that not even an appearance by Joe Biden can make it any worse.
Friday, September 27, 2013
As the CR Turns...
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) may be asleep, but his chamber is anything but. While the GOP's ironman catches a few winks after his 21-hour ObamaCare beat down, the rest of his colleagues are buzzing around, trying to speed up a vote on the government's short-term budget bill. After some debate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is pushing for a Friday morning showdown on the House's legislation to fund the government and *de*fund the health care law.
The Gay Passion Play Unravels?
Within days of being brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998, Matthew Shepard became for the Left a Christ figure, a sacrificial savior of the gay-rights cause. They even composed a passion play indicting a bigoted America in the hate crime, "The Laramie Project," that's been performed across the country, even in public schools. Ford's Theatre, the historic site of Abraham Lincoln's murder, has been selected as a natural Washington site for a restaging of this play, as well as a whole slate of panel discussions and other events on preventing hate, with The Washington Post signing as "Official Media Partner."
Republicans Suffering From Post 2012 Traumatic Shock
The Republican Party has experienced a calamity -- the reelection of Barack Obama -- and some parts of the party are behaving like an animal in a trap, chewing off a foot in an effort to cope with it. Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, Heritage Action and a handful of talk-radio hosts are lashing out at anyone who questions the "defund" tactic on Obamacare as "the surrender caucus." The only reason Republicans haven't prevailed, they argue, is because Republicans politicians -- especially Republican leaders -- are squishes. What's needed are stalwart fighters who do not care about being invited to Georgetown cocktail parties.
The Iranian 'Moderate'
WASHINGTON -- The search, now 30 years old, for Iranian "moderates" goes on. Amid the enthusiasm of the latest sighting, it's worth remembering that the highlight of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages debacle was the secret trip to Tehran taken by Robert McFarlane, President Reagan's former national security adviser. He brought a key-shaped cake symbolizing the new relations he was opening with the "moderates." We know how that ended.
Democrats Created the Hostage Crisis
When Sen. Ted Cruz rolled out an epic 21-hour anti-Obamacare "filibuster," his efforts were ridiculed by journalists across the Twitterverse as a useless exercise in would-be obstructionism. No surprise there. The New York Times editorial board joined in, spitting out an angry editorial accusing Cruz of employing an "aimless and self-destructive Tea Party strategy" -- an egomaniacal attempt to cash in on the impulses of misguided conservatives. However hopeless a liberal cause may be (gun control, cap and trade, Wendy Davis -- take your pick), it's always a worthy idealistic pursuit. Conservatives in uphill fights, on the other hand, are likelier to be fanatics or money-grubbing frauds; the Times can't seem to decide.
The Audacity of Hopelessness
Perhaps Obama was onto something when, as a young author, he zeroed in on the term "audacity" to (subconsciously) telegraph his ambitious designs to fundamentally transform our beloved America. What word could describe better than audacity Obama's refusal to accept responsibility for his dreadful policies; his standing before the American people -- even today -- in the face of the avalanche of evidence proving how terrible Obamacare is and continuing to lie about what it will do; his persistence in mislabeling his unaffordable monstrosity "the Affordable Care Act;" his failure to address the legitimate, undeniable complaints about Obamacare and his insistence -- at all costs -- on cramming it down Americans' throats; and his taking -- in the words of Time -- an "early Obamacare victory lap" just as the horrifying effects of this law are about to descend, in full force, on the American people?
A Funny Definition of Anarchy
"It's the law of the land." This is rapidly becoming the preferred shorthand argument for why criticism of Obamacare is just so, so wrong. It also serves as the lead sentence of a larger claim that all attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act are really symptoms of a kind of extremist right-wing lunacy. For instance, here's Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who walked out of the painting "American Gothic" to deliver this homespun wisdom: "We're not going to bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law. We will not bow to Tea Party anarchists who refuse to accept that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional."
Education's Shiny Toy Syndrome
It's elementary. Public education bureaucrats do the darnedest, stupidest things. Clever kids are ready, willing and able to capitalize on that costly stupidity in a heartbeat. Within days of rolling out a $30 million Common Core iPad program in Los Angeles, for example, students had already hacked the supposedly secure devices. The Los Angeles Times reports that the disastrous initiative has been suspended after students from at least three different high schools breached the devices' security protections. It was a piece of iCake. The young saboteurs gleefully advertised their method to their friends, fellow Twitter and Facebook users, and the media.
President Obama: The Anti-Reagan
As a candidate in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged that Ronald Reagan was a "transformative" president in a way that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were not. The Clintons -- then pushing Hillary's rival candidacy -- were red-faced in rage. Mr. Obama's statement was fully understood by his ultra-liberal base, however. They wanted a man to win the White House who would not engage in "triangulation," but *strangulation*. They wanted to bury all of Reagan's achievements. They wanted a president right off the set of Hollywood's *West Wing*. They wanted a progressive champion who could change the country, pushing it as far in their direction as they believe Ronald Reagan did in the opposite direction.
Obama Doctrine Makes America Weak
"The most morally crimped speech by a president in modern times." That description of President Obama's address to the United Nations this week came not from conservative critics but from the editorial page of The Washington Post. The Post was reacting to what will now go down as the Obama Doctrine in foreign policy. In what has become Obama's signature tone, much of the address was focused on America's "failures," as he defines them: the war in Iraq, past efforts to "impose democracy," unilateral U.S. military action, Cold War politics. But he also laid out in the clearest terms of his presidency what he defines as America's "core interests" in the Middle East and North Africa -- a list so narrow it embarrasses even the president's supporters among the liberal media.
New Report Undercuts Global Warming Alarmists
Events have failed to fulfill the prophecy. Preachers have suddenly been struck dumb by uncertainty. Believers are understandably nervous and some, under their breath, are abandoning the dogma. These sentences could have been written at the end of the day on Oct. 22, 1844, about the Millerites, a religious sect started in upstate New York. Preachers had told their followers that Jesus would return to earth that day. He failed to show.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Seizing Homes to Solve the Mortgage Meltdown?
How one California city will help big-monied financiers make a bundle by confiscating property.
The GOP's Last Stand
When Senator Ted Cruz said he was going to stand up to ObamaCare, who knew he meant literally? Twenty-one hours into the fourth longest speech in Senate history, Cruz's one-man crusade finally came to an end -- the victim of age-old Senate procedure. While he might not succeed in keeping Harry Reid from amending the continuing resolution to include ObamaCare funds, he *has* succeeded in bringing international attention to one of the worst legislative catastrophes in American politics: ObamaCare.
The Cynical Budget Game
I get it. I understand Obamacare is a total crock. I know it's going to make our current health care system even more expensive, more complicated, more irrational and more socialized than it already is. I know it's something that needs to be repealed, delayed, defunded, shredded, stomped or killed forever by any legislative means necessary.
Cruz Control Should Be Standard on GOP Models
If I could briefly interrupt the Republican firing squad aiming at Ted Cruz, let's talk about something we all agree on. And by "we all," I mean a majority of the American people, the Teamsters, many Democrats and every single last Republican. Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster.