Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Marriage & Divorce
The other day, my wife and I were in the car listening to a radio talk show. The host, while referring to Barack Obama, insisted that in spite of his many faults and deficiencies as a president and commander in chief, one had to acknowledge that he was a very good father. To which Yvonne said, "How does he know what sort of father he is?" It struck me as an excellent question. I think there is a widespread belief that Obama is a good family man, but we have no grounds for coming to that conclusion. The only time we see the family together is when they're taking off for a taxpayer-funded vacation or posing for campaign photos. Other than that, we never see Obama with his daughters. Surely Malia, who's 14, is certainly old enough to play golf with her father, but I never see her out on the course with him. Instead, it's those same three guys whose full time job seems to be to make up a foursome for the president, whether it's Eisenhower, Ford, Clinton or Obama.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Obama's Health Care Problem
President Obama made a remarkable statement to John Boehner in the middle of their negotiations leading up to the fiscal cliff. "We don't have a spending problem," the president said. We have "a health care problem." To put this in perspective, almost every economist familiar with the federal government finances views our national health care problem as a spending problem. In fact, it is THE spending problem. If the federal government were not buying health care, we wouldn't have a long term deficit.
Health Care Act's Death Star?
A willow, not an oak. So said conservatives of Chief Justice John Roberts when he rescued the Affordable Care Act -- aka Obamacare -- from being found unconstitutional. But the manner in which he did this may have made the ACA unworkable, thereby putting it on a path to ultimate extinction.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Can We Spend Ourselves from Recession to Prosperity?
Why is the recovery from the Great Recession so slow?
Without Deep Spending Cuts, Republicans Lose the House in 2014
OK, it's official. According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. debt jumped to $16.1 trillion in 2012 from $14.8 trillion in 2011. That's a $1.3 trillion deficit for the last year. *Remarkable.* During President Obama's first term, the federal debt rose by roughly $6 trillion. Now, if they are bold, House Republicans will take advantage of these dismal numbers. Bold means bold spending cuts, as in cut spending like there's no tomorrow. Bold means implementing the $1.2 trillion spending sequester. Bold means an absolute rock-solid commitment to spending cuts. A new Rasmussen survey shows that 62 percent of Americans favor across-the-board spending cuts. That includes *every* program of the federal government, according to the survey.
He Said, I Said
Every day, I respond to email I receive from my readers. Most of it is positive, which I appreciate, but would probably be of little or no interest to anyone but me. Some of it is negative, consisting solely of insults, and is, likewise, of little interest to anyone, including me. However, every once in a while, I hear from someone who actually addresses issues I've raised, and there is always the chance that such readers are raising points that other people would like to have addressed. It is for that reason that I am sharing the following exchange. I don't know who the person is or even if it's a man or woman, but for our purposes, it really doesn't matter. In response to a recent article titled "What's Meant When Liberals Say 'Compromise,'" it began: "I find myself a bit confused by this article. Though the headline implies a rather tight focus, you cover fiscal cliff negotiations, guns, welfare, the ACLU, felons, and -- for good measure -- a brief review of a film that has nothing to do with compromise."
From The Comedy Store
President Obama's step-brother Malik Obama announced that he's running for governer of a state in Kenya. The resemblance is uncanny. A real estate magnate in Nairobi is going around telling anybody who'll listen that he was born in the United States.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Obama Protects Hollywood
President Obama and Vice President Biden gathered their children for a photo-op as Obama showily signed executive orders to prevent future mass shootings. It quickly became obvious that regulating the entertainment media wasn't part of his solution. Politics once more trumped policy. Hollywood not only went unregulated, it went unmentioned. Biden announced that he had met with "229 groups from law enforcement agencies to public health officials to gun officials to gun advocacy groups to sportsmen and hunters and religious leaders."
Guns
Official Washington has the collective attention span of a fruit fly. This condition is exacerbated by the Obama administration's proclivity for declaring selective events and issues to be crises that require immediate action. The problem is aggravated because the loyal opposition is in nearly total disarray, and few in the so-called mainstream media have any idea what they are talking about. That's the summary assessment of many attending the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show here in Harry Reid's Nevada. Note to editors and broadcast producers: The SHOT Show isn't a gun show. Nobody here can buy or sell a single firearm.
Sandy Hook: Obama's Latest Crisis to Exploit
Liberals have an uncanny knack for designing solutions that do not address the problem at hand, and they're doing it again in their current effort to use the Sandy Hook shootings as fodder for promoting stringent gun control measures. It's as if President Obama and his fellow travelers lie in wait for the unfolding of big events that they can use to incite the public's passions and thereby gain popular support for otherwise unpopular government action. Liberals aren't just exploiting Sandy Hook to promote their unpopular gun agenda; some are now invoking false charges of racism to aid their cause, as well. Rep. Hank Johnson asserted that the National Rifle Association opposes Obama's gun control policies because it "still cannot get over" the fact that the president is "black." Rep. Charles Rangel was a smidgeon more subtle, suggesting that while his state of New York is more progressive than other states (and has thus enacted strict gun control measures), some of the "Southern areas have cultures that we have to overcome."
Anti-American Asians Don't Speak for Me
Martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan deserves a rhetorical roundhouse kick to the mouth. So does his pal PSY, the Korean rapper whose "Gangnam Style" music video has racked up more than a billion views worldwide. Both men have raked in big bucks from Western fans while trashing the very freedoms and cultures that made them superstars. Last week, The Washington Post spotlighted a recent interview Chan did with Chinese TV in which he accused America of being "the most corrupt country in the world." The Hong Kong-born Chan also admitted proudly that he is a propagandist for the Communist Chinese government. He openly advised his fellow countrymen to speak with forked tongues when addressing foreign press: "We know our country has many problems. We (can) talk about it when the door is closed. To outsiders, (we should say) "our country is the best." Translation: Rampant sex-selection abortions? Shhh. Jailing political dissidents? La, la, la, can't hear you! Systemic religious persecution? State-sanctioned censorship? Continued brutality against Tiananmen Square protesters and Tibetans? Nothing to see here, move along, and down with America!
The Speech President Obama Should Give
President Obama's second inaugural address will be full of lofty sentiments and promises to move us forward. But I'd like to suggest that instead of eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the president do something unexpected and brave. What if he actually spoke frankly to the American people about the sacrifices that are needed from all of us if we are to secure our future and salvage our character? During the presidential campaign, the president said a lot about the need for the wealthy among us to pay their "fair share" in taxes. Bolstered by his electoral victory, he was able to win concessions by Republicans in the form of tax increases. Wealthier Americans will pay higher tax rates on income and investments. And everyone who works has already seen his or her payroll taxes go back up to their previous rate of 12.4 percent beginning Jan. 1 (half of which is deducted from paychecks and half sent directly to the IRS from the employer on the employee's behalf).
Who's a Coward?
Who said this about a world leader: He's a "political coward -- an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise"? Was it perhaps John Boehner describing Barack Obama? No, though the shoe would certainly fit. It was Barack Obama describing Binyamin Netanyahu. This insight into Obama's views comes from an interview with the Atlantic Magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg. Let's pause for second to consider the gall. Mr. Obama knows full well that the United States confronts an unavoidable debt crisis if our government does not reform entitlements. Rather than lead, Obama has peddled denial ("We don't have a spending problem"), distortion (suggesting that Republicans who want spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling are "not paying America's bills") and demonization of the rich. What wouldn't Netanyahu give for such manageable problems?
Wake Up, Socially Liberal Fiscal Conservatives
Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal Conservative Friend, That's pretty toothy, so I'm going to call you Bob. But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You're the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, "I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues." When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline and balanced budgets.
A New Strategy for the GOP
WASHINGTON -- It has become conventional wisdom that Republicans are suffering an internal split that President Obama is successfully exploiting to neuter the Republican House. It is not true, however, that the Republican split is philosophical and fundamental. And that a hopelessly divided GOP is therefore headed for decline, perhaps irrelevance. In fact, the split is tactical, not philosophical; short-term, not fundamental. And therefore quite solvable. How do we know? Simple thought experiment: Imagine that we had a Republican president. Would the party be deeply divided over policy, at war with itself in Congress? Not at all. It would be rallying around something like the Paul Ryan budget that twice passed the House with near 100 percent GOP unanimity.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Why Obama Gives Video Game Violence a Pass
For the Left, the entertainment industry is sacrosanct.
Guns Don't Kill People, the Mentally Ill Do
Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder as a child and placed under treatment. But Virginia Tech was prohibited from being told about Cho's mental health problems because of federal privacy laws. At college, Cho engaged in behavior even more bizarre than the average college student. He stalked three women and, at one point, went totally silent, refusing to speak even to his roommates. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for one night and then unaccountably unleashed on the public, whereupon he proceeded to engage in the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history.
'Gun Culture' -- What About the 'Fatherless Culture'?
The face of gun violence is not Sandy Hook. It is Chicago. In 2012, President Barack Obama's adopted hometown had 506 murders, including more than 60 children. Philadelphia, a city that local television newscasters frequently call 'Killadelphia," saw 331 killed last year. In Detroit, 386 people were murdered. Since 1966, there have been 90 school shootings in the U.S., with 231 fatalities. Yes, Sandy Hook shocked us. But the odds of a child being killed at a school shooting are longer than the odds of being struck by lightning. Of the 11,000 to 12,000 gun murders each year, more than half involve both black killers and black victims, mostly in urban areas and mostly gang-related. The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.
Standing on the Graves of Sandy Hook
Last week, I appeared on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." For the past few weeks, Morgan had been inviting gun rights defenders ranging from the reasonable to the nutty, and then slamming them by appealing to the memory of the children slain at Sandy Hook. And when I appeared with Morgan, that's precisely what I told him: "What you tend to do is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids." Morgan could only stammer, "How dare you!" A few nights later, he invited me on again, specifically to stand once again on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook -- only this time, he would bring the parents of those children to make the imagistic point. His counterargument to accusation was to prove the veracity of my accusation.
President Obama's Proclamation: Displacing the Jews
President Obama's Religious Freedom Day Proclamation displaces the Jews. He describes America as a nation of "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, Sikhs and non-believers." This may be politically correct, but it is historically inaccurate. In terms of numbers, the Jews in America have always exceeded the Muslims. In terms of their influence on American ideals, Jews have been foundational from the start. Jews have lived among us from the time they first arrived on these shores. A small Jewish community came to New Amsterdam (New York) in 1654, then under Dutch rule. There has never been a time in American life as an independent nation when Jews have not been a part of our people.