Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, February 25, 2013
'With All Due Disrespect...'
If there's one term I would like to see retired in 2013, it's the one so much favored by politicians and other hypocrites: "With all due respect." Has anyone in the history of the world begun a sentence with those four words that didn't immediately evolve into the equivalent of calling the other person a charlatan, a thief or an ignoramus? Recently, we had Hillary Clinton open her remarks to Sen. Ron Johnson with those words just before going into her well-rehearsed rant about nobody needing to know whether Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues were killed by members of al Qaeda or by some guys taking a nighttime stroll in Benghazi who suddenly decided to kill Americans.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Sequester: A Manufactured Crisis
Even during this desultory economic recovery, one industry thrives -- the manufacture of synthetic hysteria. It is, however, inaccurate to accuse the Hysteric in Chief of crying "Wolf!" about spending cuts under the sequester. He is actually crying "Hamster!" ... The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, it is the bare minimum necessary to forestall intolerable suffering.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
What Is Liberalism?
President Obama is said to have made the case for a liberal public policy agenda in his State of the Union speech the other night. But what is liberalism? The conventional view is that liberalism is an ideology. In fact it is a sociology. An ideology is a set of ideas that cohere. Socialism is an ideology. So is libertarianism. Suppose I told you that socialists believe the government should nationalize the steel industry and the auto industry. You would have no difficulty inferring what their position is on nationalizing the airline industry. Right? Suppose I told you that libertarians believe in a free market for tinker toys and ham sandwiches. You would have no difficulty inferring that they also believe in a free market for Rubik's Cubes.
Names & Gnomes in the News
By the time this article is posted, it's possible that Christopher Dorner, the ex-L.A. police officer who has been the target of a major manhunt here in Southern California will have been arrested or exterminated. It's also possible that he will have added to his kill total of one cop and two civilians. (In the days since I wrote those lines, both things took place.) In addition to the obvious, something else that really disturbs me is that once again, a large segment of the population has begun rooting for this blood-thirsty loon, just as they rooted for OJ Simpson 19 years ago. I'm sure a portion of that group is cheering him on because he's a black man with a grievance. Others applaud him because in his manifesto, he mentioned he's a big fan of Barack Obama. Still others hope he keeps eluding capture and continues killing cops because they get a vicarious thrill out of his doing for real what they can only do in their masturbatory video games.
From The Comedy Store
The White House released a video of President Obama extending his Valentine's Day greetings. It shows the president saying that if you haven't met that someone special, he hopes you'll meet that someone special soon. Of course, he is talking to a drone.
Friday, February 22, 2013
'Dialogue' Required for Violent Video Games
The Obama administration's assault on the Second Amendment in reaction to Newtown is not a serious solution. It's a Band-Aid on cancer. The NRA's call for armed guards in every school also misses the point. When is anyone going to get serious? The problem is violence, a violence of monstrous and horrific proportions that has infected America's popular culture. The Hartford Courant reported on Sunday that during a search of Newtown grade-school killer Adam Lanza's home after the shootings, "police found thousands of dollars worth of graphically violent video games." Detectives are exploring whether Adam Lanza might have been emulating the shooting range or a video game scenario as he moved from room to room at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Moving Pictures
The other day, the President railed against Congressional (read: Republican) inaction on averting the sequester by giving a speech while surrounded by uniformed policemen. The picture was designed to make the point that if the automatic cuts go into effect, people across the country will lose police protection. Back when mules were the principal form of transportation, I was a member of the City Council of Marietta, Ohio 45750. One of my committee assignments was as chairman of the Police and Fire Committee.
Dem-Controlled Atlanta Schools Rob Minority Students of Their Futures
The nation's epicenter of educational fraud, corruption and public school failure.
What Will Kerry Do About Christian Persecution in China?
Secretary of State John Kerry chose an interesting place to deliver his first foreign policy address. The former Massachusetts senator spoke at the University of Virginia. He was introduced by the university's president, Teresa Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan noted that the university's founder, Thomas Jefferson, had served as the *first* Secretary of State. Unlike today's foreign policy elites, Mr. Jefferson thought religious freedom was fundamental to our political liberties. He authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he introduced into the state's General Assembly in 1779. It was a world historical event. When James Madison, Jefferson's loyal lieutenant, pressed that bill through to adoption in 1786, Jefferson was serving as this country's second Minister Plenipotentiary to France. He took pains to have the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom translated into French and circulated widely in Europe.
What if One Day We Get a Bad President?
The consequences of being saddled with a non-progressive, dumb chief executive are too horrible to imagine.
Tyrannical Twins
WASHINGTON -- Last year, the Obama administration announced to the world that it was planning to pursue a new Asia/Pacific-oriented national security strategy. Since then, North Korea has countered with a strategy of its own. In December, Pyongyang successfully launched a multistage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a warhead-sized payload to the U.S. mainland. On Feb. 12, the North Koreans tested an improved-design nuclear weapon. After the test, Pyongyang announced that despite tightened United Nations sanctions that theoretically went into force last month, its latest nuclear test bolstered its defenses against U.S. "hostility." In a lengthy broadcast on the communist dictatorship's Korean Central News Agency, a government spokesman claimed that countries that abandoned nuclear weapons in response to U.S. pressure have suffered "tragic consequences" and that North Korea's nuclear program is "farsighted."
Blame Game Rages on Over Looming Sequester
We are just days away from a cataclysm of biblical proportions. The cuts foretold in the Budget Control Act of 2011 are young as far as prophecies go, but apparently they are every bit as terrifying as rivers of blood and plagues of locusts. Any day now we can expect White House spokesman Jay Carney to take to the podium and read a prepared statement: "And when he opened the seventh seal, there was a small decrease in the rate of increase in federal spending." The great game in Washington is who will get the blame for something both House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama agree will be calamitous for the country. It is an argument so idiotic it could only pass for seriousness in Washington. The Republicans correctly note that the president proposed the sequester. In fact, back when the president believed that Republicans were more terrified of these automatic budget cuts than Democrats were, he pretended that he would veto any attempts to get rid of them that didn't give him even more of the tax hikes he holds so dear. Now that Republicans have already agreed to a tax hike, they'll be damned if they'll raise them even more.
Hagel Proves Obama Won't Stop Iran
Does it matter that a nominee for secretary of defense doesn't particularly care for American power? Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007, Sen. Chuck Hagel revealed the kind of prejudices regarding American military strength most frequently found in the pages of the Nation magazine or among protesters at Occupy rallies. Distancing himself from Republicans he regarded as too bellicose, Hagel said, "Rather than acting like a nation riddled with the insecurities of a schoolyard bully, we ought to carry ourselves with the confidence that should come from the dignity of our heritage, the experience of our history, and from the strength of our humanity, not from the power of our military."
Why Do Democrats Hate American Manufacturers?
Here's the latest example of head-splitting cognitive dissonance in Washington: President Obama used his State of the Union address to crusade for a revitalized U.S. manufacturing sector. But while he pays lip service to supporting businesses that build their products on American soil, Obama and his left-wing operatives are hell-bent on driving a key sector of the U.S. manufacturing industry six feet under: the American firearms and ammunition industry. The White House is pushing new government spending to "spur economic growth," protect manufacturing plants and "create good-paying jobs" to help America's middle class. Yet across the country, with aggressive lobbying by the White House itself, Democrats are working to destroy tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and the firms that created them. Assault rhetoric has lasting real-world consequences.
Immigration: The Lesser of Two Evils
WASHINGTON -- The president suggested he would hold off introducing his own immigration bill as long as bipartisan Senate negotiations were proceeding apace -- until his own immigration bill mysteriously leaked precisely as bipartisan Senate negotiations were proceeding apace. A naked political maneuver and a blunt warning to Republicans: Finish that immigration deal in Congress or I'll propose something I know you can't accept -- and flog the issue mercilessly next year to win back the House. John McCain responded (correctly) that President Obama was creating a "cudgel" to gain "political advantage in the next election." Marco Rubio, a chief architect of the Senate bill, called Obama's alternative dead on arrival.
GOP Must Not Cave to the Bully on His Sequestration
President Obama's demagoguery and fear-mongering on his sequester cuts are breathtaking, even for him. Lest you think I am engaging in hyperbole, let me give you the dictionary definition of a demagogue. One definition is "a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument." Obama's ordinary MO is to stir people against one another, to stoke the flames of envy among some against others in lieu of rational argument to rally support for his causes.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
China Weaponizes Cyberspace
A dire threat of the 21st century — and the unwillingness of the Obama administration to confront it. A damning, 60-page report released by American computer security firm Mandiant reveals that a 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is most likely the epicenter of ongoing cyber attacks perpetrated against a number of American corporations and government agencies, as well as entities such as power grids, gas lines and water works. The building, located in a run-down section of the city, is the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Unit 61398. A 2010 report by Mandiant questioned whether the Chinese government was directly involved in such hacking. No longer. "The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them," the report states.
The Real Answer to the Immigration Question
America has almost 12 million illegal immigrants. Many of them came here on visas and never left. But about 60 percent of them walked in from just one country -- Mexico. Though the stalled Obama Economy has caused about 900,000 to go home since 2007, there are still about 6 million Mexicans living in the United States who've sneaked across our borders. Everyone from Marco Rubio to John McCain and our golfer in chief are trying to figure out how to deal with the illegal immigrants we have already and prevent future waves of Mexican migrants.
Hispanicked GOP Elite: They'll Respect Us in the Morning
Don't anyone tell Marco Rubio, John McCain or Jeff Flake that nearly 80 percent of Hindus voted for Obama, or who knows what they'll come up with. I understand the interest of business lobbies in getting cheap, unskilled labor through amnesty, but why do Republican officeholders want to create up to 20 million more Democratic voters, especially if it involves flouting the law? Are the campaign donations from the soulless rich more important than actual voters? Without citing any evidence, the Rubio Republicans simply assert that granting 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens amnesty will make Hispanics warm to the GOP. Yes, that's worked like a charm since Reagan signed an amnesty bill in 1986!
The Pro-Growth Sequester
The Obama administration is whipping up hysteria over the sequester budget cuts and their impact on the economy, the military, first providers, and so forth and so on. *Armageddon.* But if you climb into the Congressional Budget Office numbers for 2013, you see a much lighter and easier picture than all the worst-case scenarios being conjured up by the administration. For example, the $85 billion so-called spending cut is actually budget authority, not budget outlays. According to the CBO, budget outlays will come down by $44 billion, or one quarter of 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP is $15.8 trillion). What's more, that $44 billion outlay reduction is only 1.25 percent of the $3.6 trillion government budget. So the actual outlay reduction is only half the budget-authority savings. The rest of it will spend out in the years ahead -- that is, if Congress doesn't tamper with it.