Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
The Wizard of Washington
This week, the Walt Disney Company releases its $325 million spectacular, "Oz the Great and Powerful" -- a "prequel," as these things are called, to You Know What. We learn (one supposes) exactly how a Kansas carnival balloonist became the Wizard. We'll have to pay in order to divine the secret, but a certain intuition grows and spreads, namely that the Wiz, after the example of pitchmen in all times and places, became what he became by talking. About his own wonderfulness. Does he put you in mind of anyone who appears on television a lot these days, jetting all over the country at taxpayer expense, delivering speeches, holding press conferences, making bold pronouncements as to actions he requires and outcomes he expects?
No Sequester Catastrophe
President Obama may be backing away from his doomsday spending-cut predictions as the sequester goes into place. But the new party line is that while there will be no impact in the first few days, there'll be a slow, downward slump after that. What, are we to believe that lower spending and smaller government *damage* the economy? Doesn't that run counter to virtually every reasonably objective study in recent years -- including ones from a number of U.S. academics and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Europe -- that describe how countries with lower government spending grow more, and how countries with higher government spending grow less?
The Downside of Orthodoxy
It's a safe bet that most conservative Republicans would rush to support a political leader with the following record, especially in a traditionally Democratic state: -- Reversed a $2.2 billion deficit and brought it into balance without raising taxes, largely by reduced spending and eliminating wasteful and unaffordable programs, allowing for a projected fiscal 2014 budget surplus of $300 million. -- Bipartisan pension and benefits reforms, saving the state $120 billion over 30 years. -- Streamlining government by eliminating 5,200 government jobs. -- Vetoing tax increase bills three times while cutting taxes for job creators. -- Reforming the nation's oldest teacher tenure law by making it conditional on teacher performance in the classroom. -- Reduced property tax increases to a 21-year low and capped them at a maximum 2 percent. There's more, but shouldn't conservative Republicans be ecstatic by this record compiled by New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie?
Could Obama Finally Have Overplayed His Hand?
Is it possible that Obama's arrogance, personal pettiness, sanctimoniousness and egotism (for starters) could finally be his unraveling? Even the liberal media are starting to notice, but will it last? Up to this point, they've dutifully played along with his Alinskyite tactics -- converting the office of the presidency into a headquarters for community organizing at a federal level and a position to organize and fund a perpetual campaign against his political opponents instead of governing. The liberal media share Obama's leftist policy goals and the ends-justify-the-means mentality that accompanies them and have thus far been eager not only to ignore Obama's thuggishness and deceit but also to proactively help him in accomplishing his goals and concealing his chicanery.
Governing Versus Campaigning Party
There are two major parties in the United States: the party that wishes to govern and the party that wants only to campaign. It's to their credit that Republicans are obsessed with getting the government to address its unconscionable and unmanageable debt, freeing up the productive private sector to create economic growth and maintaining the nation's military preeminence. But there's something almost pathetic about the way leading Republicans complain that the president doesn't negotiate in good faith. Of course he doesn't. He's not interested in governing -- at least not with Republicans. He's determined to campaign from now until November 2014 so that he can replace them.
Budget Politics
Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do? The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place. The example was deliberately extreme as an illustration. But, in the real world, the same general pattern can be seen in local, state and national government responses to budget cuts.
Monday, March 4, 2013
L.E.G.A.C.Y.
For the next 1,418 days the top issue on the mind of President Barack Obama and his ever-tightening inner circle will involve the six letters: L.E.G.A.C.Y. Just as years three and four were totally focused on the President's re-election; so the last two years of his second term will be focused on the legacy he leaves behind. Will it be Jimmy Carter's well-intentioned ineptness? Or FDR's history changing vision? One thing is for sure: Unless the Democrats win control of the House and maintain control of the Senate Obama's legacy will be an eight-letter word: Gridlock.
Too Many Americans Will Never Know What They Missed
In recent weeks I've been trying to figure out how I feel about the millions of Americans who were willing to re-elect one of the most ideologically radical and divisive presidents this nation has ever endured. While I have nothing but contempt for the Takers, whether they are the able-bodied layabouts on the lower end of the economic spectrum, or the cabal of crony capitalists and power-mongers at the upper end, there are millions of voters who opted for Obama that do not fit into either of these categories. What about them? After reading a recent column by JWR's Wesley Pruden, I've decided that most of them, especially the younger ones, deserve pity.
A Compilation of News Articles on the Global Cooling Scare of the 1970's
Does the bullet point list for solutions to global cooling at right look familiar? It reads almost like some of the manifestos we get from warmists today, including the suspension of Democracy as the article in the Owosso Newspaper clearly demonstrates. (Thanks to Poptech for the compilation.) During the 1970s the media promoted global cooling alarmism with dire threats of a new ice age. Extreme weather events were hyped as signs of the coming apocalypse and man-made pollution was blamed as the cause.
More Republican Governors Drink Medicaid Kool-Aid
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has become the eighth Republican governor to agree to expand Medicaid coverage in his state under the provisions of Obamacare. Is the last line of Republican resistance to Obamacare disintegrating? In 2011, 26 states joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the provision of Obamacare, which forced them to participate in expanding Medicaid coverage as a condition to continue to participate in the program. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor last year, negating the mandatory requirement, so it is now voluntary for states to expand Medicaid coverage.
Europe's Hezbollah Cowardice
What so often motivated Europe's appeasers, Winston Churchill understood, was cowardice and dishonor. "Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last," he said of the political elites who thought the best way to confront the threat posed by Nazi Germany was to avoid confronting it. "All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured."
For Obama, Politics Always Trumps Governing
Do we have a president or a perpetual candidate? It's not an entirely unfair question. Even as Barack Obama was warning of the dreadful consequences of the budget sequester looming on March 1, he spent days away from Washington, apparently out of touch with Democratic as well as Republican congressional leaders. In the meantime, Obama fans were lobbing verbal grenades at none other than The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. His offense: He's continuing to make it clear, as he did in his book "The Price of Politics," that it was Obama's then-chief of staff and now Treasury Secretary Jack Lew who first proposed the dreaded sequester.
Pursuing the News
Even when you write as often as I do, you can't really keep up with all the zaniness that passes for the news today. But I can't help trying. For instance, there were only three senators who voted against confirming John Kerry, who not only lied about his service and his injuries in Vietnam, but then lied about throwing away his medals. He not only kept his medals, but had them framed on the wall of his Senate office. It was other people's medals he tossed for the benefit of the cameras. In any case, I thought it was worth looking into, and I discovered that the three senators who had the courage of their convictions, and deserved to be lauded, were John Cornyn, James Inhofe and Ted Cruz. Speaking of the members of the U.S. Senate, most of whom are ex-lawyers, I heard some wag recently suggest that it's 98% of lawyers who give the other 2% a bad name.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
In a Rut on Voting Rights Act
Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress. Social Security is 78 years old and myriad social improvements have added 17 years to life expectancy since 1935, yet progressives insist the program remain frozen, like a fly in amber. Medicare is 48 years old and the competence and role of medicine have been transformed since 1965, yet progressives cling to Medicare "as we know it." And they say the Voting Rights Act, another 48-year-old, must remain unchanged, despite dramatic improvements in race relations.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
How Liberals Live
The Democratic Party has two reliable groups of adherents: the rich and the poor. Not all of the rich, of course. Not all of the poor, either. But a large swath of wealthy people, especially those whose wealth was inherited rather than earned, wouldn’t dream of voting for a Republican. Ditto for a large number of poor people who have discovered how to sign up for various welfare programs and intend to remain on the dole for the rest of their lives. What do these groups have in common? Nothing. They rarely meet. And if they did they wouldn't like each other.
From The Comedy Store
Tiger Woods played golf with President Obama and afterwards praised his golf game at a press conference. That's the consensus. Every PGA pro who's played with President Obama says he's a pretty good golfer for a guy who plays only seven days a week.
The Little President Who Cried 'Wolf!'
You have to wonder just how many times Obama is going to announce that, thanks entirely to Republicans in Congress, this nation is on the verge of going over the cliff or ending up in a ditch. I also wonder how many people still give a darn if Operation Head Start simply disappears or how it is that cops and firefighters, who all collect a city or county paycheck, will suddenly be unemployed if the federal government has to cut two cents from every dollar it currently squanders. And why is it that instead of ever coming up with a plan to avoid emergency measures, Obama always pretends that he has no choice in such matters but to fire food inspectors and air traffic control agents, people who actually perform vital services, but never mentions his own battalion of butt-kissing aides and Mrs. Obama's ladies-in-waiting?
Friday, March 1, 2013
Richard Milhous Obama
Well, well, well. Here we are. March first. Sequester Day. America Held Hostage; Day One. President Obama has been criss-crossing the country proclaiming the dire effects of March 1 if the Republicans in the House didn't bow to his demands. We don't know what his demands are, but he spent a lot of money accusing the GOP of not caving into them. The Department of Homeland Security is made up, apparently, of the only group of people in America that believed Obama. A division of DHS got a jump on Sequester Day by letting "several hundred" illegal aliens who were in jail, out of jail and into what a spokesperson called "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release."
Sequestration and Stupidity
WASHINGTON -- The screeching you hear in Washington is the sound of politicians slamming their mouths into reverse as they back away from their previous positions on the misnamed "budget sequester." For weeks now, we have been told that an $85 billion reduction in the rate of increase in federal spending -- a 2.4 percent cut -- will have devastating consequences for our nation. According to administration spokesmen and supporters, the sequestration means reduced agricultural inspections and the prospect of tainted food, cuts in childhood immunizations and more ill kids, long delays at airport security checkpoints, air traffic disruptions and dangerous vulnerabilities on our frontiers and ports of entry as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are furloughed. And of course, fewer police, firemen and park rangers on duty means that lawbreakers are going to run rampant in our communities and that forest fires will threaten us all.