Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 1, 2013
CPAC Unwise to Snub Christie, Gays
What can you do with a man like Chris Christie? The answer, according to many with the conservative movement: Throw him overboard. And while we're at it, let's toss the gays over the side too. The popular governor of New Jersey has certainly angered many conservatives, including this humble scribe. During the crucial final days of the presidential election, Christie didn't merely embrace President Obama, he all but endorsed him.
Holding the President's Men Accountable
When one of Washington's most distinguished journalists -- Bob Woodward -- accuses the White House of rewriting history, even liberals should take note. And when the White House responds by threatening him, you would think the story would become a national scandal. What makes the story even more important is that it deals with an issue that has dominated the news in recent weeks: the Draconian budget cuts that will take effect on March 1 unless a last-minute deal is reached in Congress. Woodward has accused the White House of misrepresenting the president's role in creating the plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget over the next decade. In his book "The Price of Politics," Woodward describes in detail how the idea for the sequester came about. Writing in The Washington Post on Feb. 22, Woodward said that "the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of (then Office of Management and Budget Director Jack) Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors -- probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government." Woodward not only names the individuals involved, but also gives exact timelines for when the discussions took place and how the final agreement came about.
Hail Armageddon
WASHINGTON -- "The worst-case scenario for us," a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Washington Post, "is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens." Think about that. Worst case? That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent -- and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents "and nothing bad really happens." Oh, the humanity! A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal -- the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.
White House Still Throwing Fastballs at Insubordinate Journalists
It's most gratifying that people are beginning to wake up to the bullying tactics of the White House toward those in the press who occasionally stray from the government-owned media model, but this has been going on for a while. Veteran reporter Bob Woodward has said in interviews with Politico and CNN that a White House official warned him he would "regret" publishing a story reporting that the sequestration was President Obama's idea. "(The White House aide) yelled at me for about a half-hour," said Woodward. The aide later apologized to Woodward in an email and claimed he was not making a threat but merely observing that Woodward would regret "staking out that claim."
Gullible Nation
Responding to the Obama administration's operatic warnings of catastrophe for Meals on Wheels for the elderly, Head Start, meat inspections, air traffic controllers, and police, fire, and 911 operators if the government reduces the rate of increase of federal spending by 2 percent, radio host Chris Plante offered the following suggestion: "Since this two percent obviously covers all essential government spending, let's cut the other 98 percent!" Even if these "draconian cuts" are implemented, the federal government will spend more this year than it did last year. Another way to think about it is this: In 2007, the government was 40 percent smaller than it is today. Were poor people sleeping under bridges? Were the elderly starving? Were planes grounded? Was food unsafe to eat?
Thursday, February 28, 2013
The Difference Between Climate and Weather
In every weather debate, it's almost impossible not to see the other guy's opinion. In what is turning out to be Endless Winter, there was a big debate before the season as to whether we would have another non-winter like last year. At Weatherbell.com we were confident this would not be the case, and in fact would turn much colder. It tried for about 10 days around the holidays, backed off, but since January 21 -- which is the midpoint of the 3 month coldest period of the year (December 5-March 5) -- the nation has been slipping deeper and deeper into winter, and now we may be facing the coldest March since 1996. The Ground Hog, who forecasted an early end to winter, is *Rodent non grata* in many circles, and not because he digs up your back yard.
Obama Terrorizes Public With Illegal Alien Releases
Scandalous scare tactic over sequester backfires on the administration.
Get Out of the Weeds
America's got some serious problems to solve. Our Obama Economy is still stuck in a ditch by the side of the road. Our campaigner in chief is running around the country pushing for higher taxes and no spending cuts and crying, "The federal sky will fall!" if Congress doesn't stop the puny 10 percent sequester from happening. In Washington the incompetents and cowards in Congress can't get our fiscal house in order, and they're too stupid or self-serving to realize they are wrecking the greatest economic machine humans have ever created.
Why Does Anyone Need to Read About Celebrities?
Having given up on trying to persuade Americans that taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will reduce the murder rate, Democrats have turned to their usual prohibitionary argument: "Why does anyone *need* (an assault weapon, a 30-round magazine, a semiautomatic, etc., etc.)?" Phony conservative Joe Manchin, who won his U.S. Senate seat in West Virginia with an ad showing him shooting a gun, said, "I don't know anyone (who) needs 30 rounds in a clip." CNN's Don Lemon, who does not fit the usual profile of the avid hunter and outdoorsman, demanded, "Who needs an assault rifle to go hunting?"
The Borking of 'Zero Dark Thirty'
Weeks before the Oscars, Sony Pictures, the studio behind "Zero Dark Thirty," put out this statement: "We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in (the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) as a platform to advance their own political agenda. The film should be judged free of partisanship. To punish an artist's right of expression is abhorrent. This community, more than any other, should know how reprehensible that is." To what was Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal referring? "Zero Dark Thirty," directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, was the target of a vicious, unfair campaign against the film led by members of the supposedly open-minded, tolerant Hollywood left.
Ryan's Hope
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is looking beyond Friday and the beginning of the sequestration. In an interview I conducted with him on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Ryan told me he believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality. "Mitt (Romney) and I shadowboxed against the theory of big government," he says, "while (President) Obama made all the great promises of what it delivered and used soaring rhetoric to sell it, but that will be different in a second term (when) the results start materializing."
Secretary Kerry's 'Stupid' Defense of Religious Liberty
Secretary of State John Kerry was barely off the plane in Germany before he embarrassed himself -- and all of us -- with what is perhaps the *worst* defense of religious freedom ever offered. Kerry, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 2004, said the United States protects religious freedom because: "In America, you have right to be stupid." Sec. Kerry's audience of German students laughed when he said that. He missed, of course, the perfect opportunity to share our deepest values with the rising generation that will have Europe 's future in their hands.
American Recessional
Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for impending cuts to the defense budget brought about by sequestration. But with serial annual deficits of $1 trillion-plus and an aggregate debt nearing $17 trillion, the United States -- like an insolvent Rome and exhausted Great Britain of the past -- was bound to re-examine its expensive overseas commitments and strategic profile. The president's nomination of Chuck Hagel for defense secretary was a sort of Zen-like way of having a Republican combat veteran orchestrate a reduced military. In fact, Barack Obama has nurtured a broad and diverse constituency for his neo-isolationist vision. Budget hawks concede that defense must suffer its fair share of cuts. Libertarians want back their republic and hate the big-government baggage that comes along with a big military's involvement overseas.
Origin of a Lie
WASHINGTON -- I have long contended that public policy issues are as complicated as they appear because the giants of Capitol Hill like it that way, particularly the giants of the left. Bills can be written more simply. Decisions can be phrased with a certain lucidity. Yet, if they were, the electorate would mull them over and, after a cup of coffee, make a decision on them. As things stand today, with talk of budget imbalance and of esoteric matters such as "sequestration," voters scratch their heads, blink their eyes and walk away. Who gives a hoot? It is time for my morning nap, perhaps, two naps. This is another anti-democratic way that Washington politicians have bootlegged our legislative process. Make policy so confusing to normal people that they will take little or no interest in it. It is all a game reserved exclusively for the political class. Al Gore in his new book, prosaically titled "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," bangs on about the power of lobbyists and giant corporations in shaping legislation -- do you know anyone who sits on more corporate boards than Gore? Has he considered the unwieldy nature of the legislation in the first place? Debt piled atop debt that even Warren Buffett cannot conceptualize. Sequestration, indeed -- why not segregation or constipation? It is a geek to me.
Plotting the Future of California's GOP
Last month, I was invited to be on a panel at the bi-annual convention of the California Congress of Republicans. This isn't just a gathering of like-minded conservatives. These are political activists whose lives are built around actually trying to wage successful campaigns in a state so blue, it could be renamed East Hawaii. In case you're unaware, this is the place where the Democrats hold super majorities in both the state senate and the state assembly. This is the place that Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Brad Sherman and Maxine Waters, call home. We're the cuckoo nest that decided that the only thing better than having a young Jerry Brown as our governor was having an old Jerry Brown.
The Fed's Not-So-Golden Rule
RICHMOND, Va. -- A display case in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank here might express humility. The case holds a 99.9 percent pure gold bar weighing 401.75 troy ounces. Minted in 1952, when the price of gold was $35 an ounce, the bar was worth about $14,000. In 1978, when this bank acquired the bar, the average price of gold was $193.40 an ounce and the bar was worth about $78,000. Today, with gold selling for around $1,600 an ounce, it is worth about $642,800. If the Federal Reserve's primary mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value, displaying the gold bar is an almost droll declaration: "Mission unaccomplished." Today the Fed's second mission is to maximize employment, and Chairman Ben Bernanke construes the dual mandate as a single capacious assignment -- "promoting a healthy economy." But the Fed's hubris ignores the fact that it anticipated neither the Great Depression that began in 1929 nor the Great Recession that began five years ago. The Fed failed to cure the former, and today's unprecedentedly anemic recovery -- approximately 3 million fewer people are working than were five years ago -- has failed to cure the latter: If the workforce participation rate were as high as it was when Barack Obama was first inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.
Discord and Disarray Won't Help Obama Legacy
Barack Obama is said to believe that he can win the political fight over the sequester. That's certainly the conventional wisdom. And there is some evidence to support it. When you ask voters who will be to blame if the sequester occurs, Obama or "congressional Republicans," they're much more likely to say they'll blame the latter. Obama also comes out on top when you ask whether they will blame "Obama and congressional Democrats" or "congressional Republicans." There's reason to wonder, however, whether reaction after something happens will be the same as what people predict before it does. Voters are not always good predictors of their future attitudes. That's why pollsters ask people which candidate they would vote for "if the election were held today." They don't ask them to predict whom they'll vote for.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Still Obsessed With Citizens United
In a rational world, November's election would have finally ended the left's hysteria over the Supreme Court decision in *Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*. From the howls of liberal outrage that greeted that 2010 ruling, anyone would have thought the court had condemned Democrats to electoral defeat as far as the eye could see. Time magazine grimly predicted that American democracy would never be the same: "Now ExxonMobil or Walmart can simply go into the district of a member of Congress who is giving them a hard time and spend as much money as it wants to defeat him." President Obama pronounced *Citizens United* "more devastating to the public interest" than anything he could think of. If Democrats in Congress failed to overturn the ruling, Senator Charles Schumer warned, "we will have let the Supreme Court predetermine the outcome of next November's elections." Liberals compared the case to one ugly archetype after another: "Watergate." "Plessy v. Ferguson." "Dred Scott."
How to Go $16.5 Trillion in Debt
A recent poll by the Pew organization showed that while those of us in Our Nation's Capital and the 2,375 people who watch cable chat shows are consumed by the looming sequester, the other 75% of Americans are just shrugging, sighing, and smiling knowingly that the world will go on after Friday. The underlying issue about the size of the deficit (about $1 trillion for FY 2013) and the national debt (a touch under $16.6 trillion) is the way the government spends our money. Not its money. Our money.