Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
How Obama Gets Us to Forget His Failure in Afghanistan
In the course of his rambling monologue on national security policy delivered at the National Defense University, President Obama gave only glancing attention to the most significant military undertaking of his term in office -- the Afghanistan war. The president scarcely ever mentions Afghanistan except to note that Bush's war there was "paid for with borrowed dollars." The word Afghanistan is nearly always mouthed in the context of "winding down" or "ending" our commitment. And, of course, because Obama still cannot help himself, he again chastised his predecessor for supposedly "shifting our focus" and prosecuting a war in Iraq.
How to Spell Success
The annual ritual known as the Scripps National Spelling Bee came and went last week with kids spelling words that, I suspect, many with graduate degrees couldn't spell. The winner was Arvind Mahankali, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Bayside Hills, N.Y. Mahankali is the first boy to win the title since 2008. There is a lesson to be learned from the success of these young people, including the ones who came close to winning but didn't. It is the value of persistence. Mahankali won this year by spelling the German word "knaidel." He lost the bee three times before and was eliminated from competition in 2011 and 2012 on German-derived words. Recognizing his weakness, Mahankali repaired his deficit. And his strategy succeeded.
Abstract Immigrants
One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham. That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups' children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.
Scandals? So What? Our Agenda Trumps All
Isn't it rich that the White House is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder's critics of being "partisans who seem more interested in launching political attacks than cooperating with him to protect the security and constitutional rights of the American people"? Partisan? Launching political attacks? Well, if the White House and Holder were not so partisan and attack-oriented themselves, we wouldn't be having this discussion about Holder, the IRS or the AP. Indeed, politics, partisanship and self-interest dominate the thinking of this White House to the detriment of the national interest. The New York Times is reporting that "some in the West Wing privately tell associates they wish (Holder) would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration's resistance in the near term to a change for fear of emboldening critics."
Monday, June 3, 2013
Boy Scouts: A Disheartening Betrayal
This past week has been pretty devastating for me as a long-time supporter of the Boy Scouts. My own two sons grew up in Scouting, and, with their hard work and encouragement from my wonderful husband who was a Scout Master, they both achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. I treasure the time our family spent involved in Scouting -- and always will. My heart is broken to realize that the finest institution for young men our country has ever known has grown cowardly, disappearing into the great vast wasteland that is modern popular culture.
Wanted: Positive Solutions
I hate the fact that I agree with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). On *Meet the Press* yesterday Schumer said (according to the NBC.com website): >"... in the 2014 campaign the GOP was at risk of over-emphasizing the IRS and other controversies and likened next year's election to 1998 when Republicans counted on the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal to make gains and ended up losing seats in the House." I ran GOPAC in 1998 which was the sixth year of Bill Clinton's Presidency. I wasn't a principal architect of the Congressional election strategy, but neither was I smart enough to throw myself in front of the train.
Is This Any Way to Help the Poor?
Is welfare corrupt? Of course it is, and in a damning report last week, the Massachusetts state auditor, Suzanne Bump, rounded up some of the scams: Welfare payments issued to recipients long after they were listed as dead. Multiple recipients using one Social Security number -- and multiple Social Security numbers being used by one person. Electronic benefit cards from Massachusetts being used in places like Hawaii, Las Vegas, and the Virgin Islands. Tens of thousands of blank EBT cards missing from state welfare offices. Repeated requests for "lost" benefit cards to be replaced.
Tragedy of Detroit Shows 'Big Unit America' Is out of Gas
Detroit, once one of the nation's most vibrant cities, faces imminent bankruptcy. That's the headline from the report last month of emergency fiscal manager Kevyn Orr, issued 45 days after he was appointed this spring by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to take over the city's government. "The path Detroit has followed for more than 40 years is unsustainable," Orr said, "and only a complete restructuring of the city's finances and operations will allow Detroit to regain its footing and return to a path of prosperity."
Translating Obamaspeak
I have never been good with foreign languages, so it's little wonder that I have had so much trouble figuring out what Barack Obama is talking about. Still, it didn't take me too long to realize that "fees" and "revenues" are what the rest of us call taxes. I'm ashamed to admit that the first time I heard him say, "I can't comment because there's an ongoing investigation," I assumed he couldn't comment because there was an ongoing investigation. By the second time, it dawned on me that what he was really saying was "There's no way I'm going to talk about (Operation Fast & Furious) (voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers) (the monitoring of the AP) (the national security leaks to the NY Times that made me look like I knew what I was doing when it came to foreign affairs) (Syria) (Benghazi) (the targeting of conservatives by the IRS) while an ongoing investigation is taking place."
The Liberal Onslaught Against Kelly Ayotte
We ought to get perspective on the real nature of the most recent push on gun control, initiated out of the White House. This is classic bait-and-switch politics, characterized by what current Chicago mayor, and former Obama chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel once called "never let a crisis go to waste." That is, never forgo an opportunity to exploit the emotions produced by a crisis or tragedy to further a pre-existing political agenda. This has been sadly and transparently the case with this latest round of gun control politics.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Inequality
Why has the topic of "inequality" been getting so much attention in recent years? My theory: people on the left don't have solutions to any other problems. But first things first. What do the writers who are obsessing about it mean by "inequality"? They basically mean inequality of income. That would make sense if we all agree that the most important way in which people are unequal is differences in income. But what if that isn't the case? Almost all of the people who are doing the complaining have chosen professions that earn less income than they could have had. That is, all these professors and editorial writers could have gone to law school or gotten an MBA or done something else that would have earned them more money. Obviously, *money isn't the most important thing in their lives.*
A Mandate That Is Off the Rails
Texting while driving is dangerous, especially if you are driving a train. A commuter train engineer was texting on Sept. 12, 2008, near Los Angeles, when he missed a stop signal and crashed into a freight train. Twenty-five people died. Congress supposedly is incapable of acting quickly, and we are supposed to regret this. In 2008, however, Congress acted with dispatch. We should regret that it did. Herewith another lesson about the costs of the regulatory state, especially when it is excited, eager to make a gesture, and propelled by an uninformed consensus.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
The World's Gone Mad Today
My title comes from a Cole Porter lyric for "Anything Goes." If anything, it's even more relevant today than when he wrote it 79 years ago. For instance? For instance, we dither around while tinhorns in Iran and North Korea threaten to nuke us. I say that when you're in an alley fight with thugs, you toss out the Marquis of Queensbury rules and do whatever needs to be done to cripple your opponent. What you don't do is ask him time and again what you have to give him so that he'll leave you alone, while in the meantime he has all the time in the world to get his ducks, not to mention nuclear missiles, in a row.
Tax Reform Is the IRS Fix
Apart from criminal prosecution, the best way to strip the power of politics and corruption from the IRS is to initiate broad-based, pro-growth tax reform and simplification. It's the complexity of the tax code that nurtures the corruptness of the IRS.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama said he didn't know the IRS targeted Tea Partiers and he didn't know the Justice Daprtment spied on AP reporters, and he didn't know at first Benghazi was a terrorist attack. It's a smart strategy. By telling us he doesn't know anything, he's trying to convince us that Joe Biden is already president and we can skip the impeachment.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Obama's Iraq Surrender
The administration squanders the hard-won victory handed down by President Bush -- and sets off a Mideast meltdown.
On the Record
In the good old days when there were rules and there were people who knew the rules, and they taught the rules to new people, who then followed the rules there were basically three levels of discussion between reporters and sources: -- On the Record -- On Background -- Off the Record This is a good topic for discussion because the Attorney General of these United States, Eric Holder is participating in an Obama Administration-wide charm offensive with the national media in an effort to try and get back to what President Obama considers to be the normal state of affairs: The press fawning over his every word, and every deed.
Saving the Elderly Safety Net
Here's a thought: If Medicare pays your medical bills, thank an immigrant for making it possible. For all the loose talk about how immigrants burden our social welfare system, it turns out that when it comes to Medicare, immigrants contribute far more to the system than they take out. A new study by Harvard Medical School shows that between 2002 and 2009, immigrants (including those in the country illegally) contributed $115 billion more to the Medicare system than they received in benefits, while the American-born received $28 billion more than they contributed. If not for immigrants, Medicare would be in bigger trouble than it already is. And the same is true for Social Security, to which immigrants contribute a surplus of about $12 billion a year.
Viewing Cultural Collapse at Cannes
Stop the presses! Decadence dominated the publicity oozing out of the Cannes Film Festival in France. The festival's highest honor, the Palme d'Or (or Golden Palm) went to "Blue Is the Warmest Color," which drew most of its buzz from an explicit 10-minute lesbian sex scene. This apparently was art, not pornography. The Cannes jury headed by Steven Spielberg took the unprecedented step of insisting that the movie's two stars be included as Palme award recipients. New York magazine's Vulture blog cooed that these awards were the festival's "Most Pleasant Progressive Surprise."
Dole Takes His Turn in Political Parlor Game
"Could people like Bob Dole, even Ronald Reagan -- could you make it in today's Republican Party?" Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday" asked former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole. "I doubt it," Dole replied. "Reagan wouldn't have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn't have made it, because he had ideas and -- We might have made it, but I doubt it." Let me state up front that I have incredible respect and admiration for Dole. He's an American hero and was a politician of undisputed integrity. I also admire Chris Wallace as an insightful and accomplished journalist.