Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Basketball & Budgets
Let's see. How can I make a discussion of budgets interesting. Or, at least, not deadly dull? Answer: I can't. No one can. Nevertheless the House passed the Ryan budget this week and sent it off the Senate where it has the same chance of success as Liberty University had in the NCAA Tournament.
World Opinion: When Some Americans Get It Wrong
Before he became a China scholar, our friend Steve Mosher was an engineer. He likes to say that if you are an engineer whose bridges collapse or whose highways break up, you're likely to lose your Professional Engineer's license. But if you are a social scientist, or a history professor and all your ideas collapse under the weight of evidence, you get tenure. And if you are a liberal journalist who gets it all spectacularly wrong, you get promoted. Andrew Sullivan is a case in point. He waxed lyrical about the Advent of Barack Obama. Even better than the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Obama would stop terrorists dead in their tracks
The 50 Percent Solution
WASHINGTON -- The proposition that entitlement curbs are the key to maintaining national solvency is widely accepted, though not by many congressional Democrats. President Obama, however, has endorsed it on various occasions. And he could make it happen. If he wants. I remain skeptical that he does. But national solvency is important enough to test this proposition at least once more. The obstacle is Obama's current position that entitlement cuts must be "balanced" with new revenue from closing loopholes. Republicans are adamantly opposed. No more revenues, Mr. President. You got your tax hike on Jan. 1. Is there a solution? Yes: tax reform with a twist.
Was It Worth It? (Part 2 of 2)
WASHINGTON -- It's the question asked by Gold Star families -- the loved ones of our fallen -- when I meet them at funerals or public events. It is spoken quietly by the spouses of grievously wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines when I visit military and veterans hospitals. And it's in the correspondence I receive from parents and friends of those who have left something on the battlefield: "Was it worth it?" A decade ago this week, when Operation Iraqi Freedom began, this wasn't a question posed to our Fox News team. While cameras in Baghdad captured the "shock and awe" of precision-guided missiles and bombs hitting Saddam Hussein's capital, Griff Jenkins and I were embedded with U.S. Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 268 and a battalion of Royal Marine commandos en route to the Faw Peninsula on the largest night helo-borne assault in history.
Expose and Oppose Obama's Radical Appointees
No matter what progress Republicans may make in electoral politics over the coming years, it will be difficult to roll back the steady march of liberalism that has taken place inside our cultural, bureaucratic and legal institutions -- from academia to regulatory agencies to the Department of Justice -- but we have to try. A good place to start would be to oppose Obama's radical appointees, the latest being his appointment for secretary of labor, Thomas Perez. Radical liberals are characteristically activists, strategists and organizers. Their plan to infiltrate and dominate academia was hardly spontaneous, and its effects have hardly been sporadic. Peruse any university course catalog and notice the kinds of political tripe that pass for core studies.
A Health Care Solution
In my last column, I argued that for all the undeniable woes of the Republican Party, the unfurling of Obamacare represents a huge vulnerability for Democrats. The Democratic health reform bill is economically nonsensical and politically unpopular. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent believe the law will damage the U.S. health care system. Even among Democrats, support for the law is ebbing. In February, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that only 57 percent of Democrats (compared with 72 percent in November of 2012) support the law. The battle over health care reform is not over. Yes, the 2012 election ensured that the law would not be repealed and replaced in 2013. But when the American people are unhappy with a policy, they find a way to alter it. Republicans can tie themselves in knots and consider abandoning their principles on abortion, taxes, immigration or marriage (and perhaps some of those positions require rethinking), but the health care issue is pitched right over home plate.
'One of These Things Is Not Like the Other'
Just because things can be put on the same list doesn't mean they are necessarily similar. My attic contains within it thousands of comic books, an inflatable bed, some jigsaw puzzles, some family pictures and a "Frampton Comes Alive!" album. These things are, roughly speaking, in the same location, but they're hardly of equal value, importance or function. I bring this up for the simple reason that we're hearing a lot about how the GOP must deal with "abortion and gay marriage" as if they are almost the same issue. Well, in my house, I hear about my dog and my mortgage a lot. They're both important -- and complicated in their own ways -- but they aren't all that similar.
Still Shooting It Up on TV
Adweek reporter Katy Bachman obviously doesn't know how silly she sounds. She recently passed along the intelligence that TV and movie industries would be "fulfilling a promise made to Vice President Joe Biden that they would be part of the solution to curb gun violence." They've taken the Newtown massacre to heart and toned down the violence of TV and movies? That's something they promise after every mass shooting. Sometimes they actually act on the promise. For a day. Maybe two. And as soon as the heat is off, it's back to business as usual. No, this time it's even less. They are simply recycling ridiculous old ads telling parents to be the "boss" of their children and it's considered "news." Bachman isn't enough of a jaded reporter to capture the sheer corporate cynicism she was peddling on Hollywood "solutions" to crime.
Dumb and Dangerous: America's Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia
It's business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens. And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled "racists," "xenophobes" and "Islamophobes," political correctness remains the handmaiden of terror. According to a new report released this week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), President Obama's Department of Homeland Security plans to bestow "trusted traveler" status to travelers from Saudi Arabia. Yes, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers will soon enjoy the exclusive privilege of new entry shortcuts into the U.S.
GOP's Image Remake
Sen. Rand Paul's embrace of immigration reform this week shows just how far the GOP has come on this contentious issue since the election. Two years ago, the tea party's favorite senator was one of those Republicans wanting to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. Now, he's considering whether even their parents (and other illegal immigrants "who want to work and stay out of trouble") should become eligible for citizenship at some point. "If they want to become citizens, I'm open to debate as to what we do to move forward," he told reporters after his speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington. One thing Paul really gets right and almost everyone else gets wrong is what role employers should play in enforcing immigration laws. He has consistently opposed "a national ID card or mandatory E-Verify, forcing businesses to become policemen." It's hard to imagine, however, that he'll get far with his Republican colleagues on that issue. Nor are Democrats likely to go along, because demonizing "greedy" employers as the drivers of illegal immigration is their way of mollifying anti-immigrant factions within their own party.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
On Balance, Was the Iraq War Worth It?
Ten years ago this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The preceding months had been filled with vehement protests against the impending war, expressed in editorials, in advertisements, and in rallies so vast that some of them made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. With so many people against the invasion, who supported it? Well, if you were like the great majority of Americans -- you did. In February and March 2003, Newsweek's polls showed 70 percent of the public in favor of military action against Iraq; Gallup and Pew Research Center surveys showed the same thing. Congress had authorized the invasion a few months earlier with strong bipartisan majorities; among the many Democrats voting for the war were Senators John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
New Song, New Singers
I love talk radio; I love Fox News. If it weren't for the arrival of their strong conservative voices, Americans would still have nothing to listen to but the one-sided news and opinions of the left-liberals who run the mainstream New York-D.C. media. But I'm frustrated. Talk radio and Fox are getting so boring, so predictable, so shrill, I can barely tune in anymore. Night after night on Fox, it's the same issues, the same arguments, the same lame liberal guests showing up to be browbeaten by Hannity and O'Reilly.
America's Big Fat Advantage
For all the Obama-era talk of decline, there is at least one reason why America probably won't, at least not quite yet. "Peak oil" and our "oil addiction" were supposed to have ensured that we ran out of either gas or the money to buy it. Now, suddenly, we have more gas and oil than ever before. But the key question is: Why do we? The oil and gas renaissance was brought on by horizontal drilling and fracking that opened up vast new reserves either previously unknown or considered unrecoverable. Both technological breakthroughs were American discoveries, largely brought on by entrepreneurial mavericks and engineers exploring on mostly private lands. Couldn't the Saudi, Venezuelan or Nigerian oil industry have discovered these new methods of resource recovery, given their nations' reliance on petroleum exportation?
Bill Maher Discovers His Inner Grover Norquist
To the list of liberals who vote for higher taxes -- and then proceed to complain about them -- add comedian Bill Maher. Incredibly, the caustic, left-wing Maher recently warned, "ln California, I just want to say: Liberals -- you could actually lose me." As a resident of California, a state with high income taxes, Maher complained that his taxes are "over 50 percent." What's more, Maher made a point seldom heard except on Fox News or by a rich Parisian. Maher said, "Rich people ... actually do pay the freight in this country ... like 70 percent" of the taxes. (Presumably, Maher meant that the top 10 percent of taxpayers pay about 70.5 percent of the federal income taxes.) Holy Grover Norquist! Was it an epiphany or merely the latest example of liberal hypocrisy?
Where's Luca Brasi When You Need Him?
I had barely left the stage at CPAC when Republicans did the exact thing I told them not to do. Contrary to giddy liberals writing the obituary of the Republican Party, the nation has not swung left. Republicans just keep losing easy races through unforced errors. I advised them to stop doing that. Not two days later, in the Republican primary for Tim Scott's old congressional seat from South Carolina, among the top two finalists was Mark Sanford, the Todd Akin of South Carolina. You would think Akin would stand as a beacon, reminding Republicans to stop giving away winnable seats by running ridiculous candidates. Alas, no.
President Barack Isuzu
Back in the 1980s, a fictional pitchman named Joe Isuzu made a series of TV commercials promoting Isuzu cars and trucks. A fast-talking, smarmy-looking guy, would make outrageous claims along the lines of "It has more seats than the Astrodome" and "It goes faster than a speeding bullet," and everyone knew it was a takeoff on every overly zealous, ethically-challenged, salesman who had ever tried to sell you a lemon. Today, it seems to me that we have his cousin living in the White House. I mean, is there anything our commander-in-chief says or does that doesn't remind you of the cheapest sort of huckster? Instead of being the leader of the greatest nation on earth, this guy was born to work a carnival midway. He would clearly be right at home trying to con you into trying to knock iron ten-pins off a pedestal or blow several dollars trying to win a ten cent Kewpie doll by shooting at mechanical ducks.
Mayor Bloomberg Daydreams
WASHINGTON -- Apparently New York City's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg whiles away his last hours in the mayor's palace daydreaming. He has been mayor for almost three terms and though his mayorship may not have been as heroic or even as effective as that of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it has at least kept the city up to Mayor Giuliani's standards of cleanliness, law and order, and an approximation of sense of financial rectitude. So if Bloomberg is no Rudy Giuliani, at least he has done OK up until now. Now his daydreams are taking on the air of delusion. He apparently longs for the perfect gesture with which to festoon his legacy. Health for all! An end to guns for everyone, except the cops! No more violence! Maybe he even plans a campaign against spitting in public. If that last daydream plays well with the public relations team he has hired to ensure his fame for the ages, he will probably call a press conference and admonish us all to avoid public spitting. Possibly the citizenry will be advised to carry little cups or doggy bags. The mayor and his team think of everything.
Republicans Must Show Support for Hispanic Dreams
Rarely does a political party issue a document so scathingly critical of itself and its most recent presidential nominee as the report of the five-member Growth and Opportunity Project of the Republican National Committee. It refers to Mitt Romney on occasion as "our presidential nominee" and notes disapprovingly of his reference, in the debate about immigration, to "self-deportation." And while the report states modestly, "We are not a policy committee," it does call for a policy -- "comprehensive immigration reform" -- that many, perhaps most, Republican members of Congress oppose.
Flight of Fancy
President Obama should listen to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the "founder" of shuttle diplomacy. Kissinger told Bloomberg TV's Judy Woodruff recently that he sees little hope in the "Arab Spring," nor is he optimistic about peace in the region following the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Welcome to the party, Dr. Kissinger. Some of us who have been denigrated for taking seriously the Muslim Brotherhood's goal to promote radical Islam worldwide are happy for you to join us in Realityville.