Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
On Revenues, Obama Has Just Begun to Fight
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells us the tax issue is behind us and that we can now move on to spending. Really? What makes him think the GOP will succeed this time when it couldn't last time? The just-concluded fiscal cliff deal included no material spending cuts, which the GOP justified by saying it had achieved locked-in rates for most of Bush's tax cuts, which would force Obama to seriously discuss spending cuts and entitlement reform as part of the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations. But a White House memo announcing the deal said that postponing the sequester for two months "will give Congress time to work on a balanced plan to end the sequester permanently through a combination of additional revenue and spending cuts in a balanced manner."
Monday, January 7, 2013
The Real Mohamed Morsi
A regime awaiting U.S. weapons has an Islamist leader who calls Israelis "bloodsuckers" and "the descendants of apes and pigs."
Fluh
I am good about getting my shots. At my advanced age I was supposed to get a pneumonia shot and a shingles shot, so I got them. I also got a flu shot. I didn't get a flu shot in Tanzania or Kenya. I got it at my Doc's office on K Street so I can only assume it was full strength. Next year, I'm going to ask for super strength, because if I don't have the flu, I have a really, really bad cold. I am generally pretty healthy. Other than the occasional cardiac bypass surgery and a minor hernia procedure, I mostly stay out of hospitals and only go to the myriad of specialists as is warranted by my advancing age.
Detached From Reality
Here's two ways to think about the "fiscal cliff" deal that just took place in Washington. You are sitting at dinner and television is on, broadcasting the news. There is one story after another about things you don't want to hear. Recession. Unemployment. You walk over to the TV, turn it off -- or switch to a sitcom or sporting event -- and sit back down to finish your meal in peace. Or a more personal version. You take your mail out of the mailbox and see the bills that are due. Without opening the envelopes, you throw them into a desk drawer with vague intention to open them at some point. Or you have voicemails from creditors that you erase and then head out to a show.
Regarding False Idols
When the Bible refers to false idols, it has a plethora of pagan gods in mind. The ones I'm referring to rest on mantels all over Hollywood, while the others reside in the White House. Since 1928, when the World War I sky drama, "Wings," won the first Oscar for Best Picture of the Year, 83 other movies have followed suit. I have seen all but seven of them, which even I find more than a little frightening. In my own defense, I will state that I reviewed movies for about a dozen years, so a lot of the viewing was work-related.
Dodd-Frank's Problems -- and Potential Solutions
Over the next year, we will probably see much controversy over the implementation of Obamacare. Health insurance is something that almost every adult has some acquaintance with, and there seem to be glitches aplenty in the legislation, much delay in issuing regulations and some possible changes resulting from litigation. We're likely to see or hear less about the operations of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation, passed four months after Obamacare. Most of us don't work at banks or financial institutions, which will have to grapple with its myriad provisions and the regulations to be issued thereunder, and we tend to toss out those disclosure forms our bank sends out.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Luck of the Irish
WASHINGTON -- Yet another reason to revere Calvin Coolidge is that he thought the Chicago Bears were a circus act. In the 1920s, professional football was small beer compared to the already big business of college football. Which today prospers partly by selling beer: Watch the commercials that pay for the television contracts that have recently disordered many college football conferences and nullified what were solemnly called "traditional rivalries." On the eve of the national championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama, which probably will have two-thirds as many viewers as will the president's inauguration, consider some curiosities of the sports-academia complex. According to Eric M. Leifer in "Making the Majors: The Transformation of Team Sports in America" (Harvard University Press, 1995), in the 1920s, the professional football Maroons of Pottsville, Pa., (population 23,000) drew such large crowds that the New York Giants chose to play them there rather than in Gotham. By the 1890s, Yale's football receipts "accounted for one-eighth of the institution's total income, an amount greater than its expenditures on law and medicine."
Saturday, January 5, 2013
From The Comedy Store
GOP senators vowed to delay John Kerry's confirmation until Hillary Clinton testifies about her role in the terrorist attack on Benghazi. She blames a concussion for her delay. It's ironic for someone who successfully ducked this for three months to hit her head.
Guns, Gats, Rods, Roscoes & Heaters
By this time, everyone in America has commented on the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, so I suppose I might as well toss in my two cents worth. It was a heart-wrenching event and I personally hope that there is a Hell and that young Mr. Lanza will spend eternity being roasted over a slow fire. But I don't blame his guns. I don't blame the NRA. I don't even blame the movies. I blame him. I also blame society. Unlike some, I don't blame society because Americans love their guns and, as a result, there are millions and millions of guns running around loose. I fault society because there are so many evil lunatics like Mr. Lanza being allowed to run around loose. Every time I hear about a person who requires meds in order to achieve something resembling mental stability, lest he lapse back into schizophrenia or paranoia, I say to myself, that person should be institutionalized because crazy people can't be depended upon to faithfully take their medications. And anyone who thinks it's a good idea to let them roam free is crazier than they are. Quite often, these self-righteous oafs are card-carrying members of the ACLU.
A Goose-Gander Solution
If you like progressive hypocrisy ladled on with a trowel, it doesn't get much thicker than the leftist lard overflowing from the offices of the Journal News newspaper in White Plains, N.Y. Shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., these anti-gun fanatics decided that a pushback was in order. Thus, the paper published an interactive Google map containing the names and addresses of all the pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties.
Friday, January 4, 2013
A Meritocracy
In the deep dark days of 1994, I was out of politics. I was actually running the Middle East for the company then known as EDS out of Dallas. In the Fall of that year, I got a call from my good friend Joe Gaylord -- Newt Gingrich's political guru -- asking me to fly into Atlanta for election night because they were certain they were going to take control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years and Newt wanted me to come in and help oversee the press operation. I was in Abu Dhabi or Qatar or somewhere, but flew in and, indeed I was there for election night. It was well after midnight when the 218th Congressional District was officially called for the GOP and Republicans would, for the first time since Eisenhower's first election, be in the majority in the U.S. House.
Sweet Reason
Much of the Internet exploded in wrath over Pope Benedict XVI's Christmas greetings to the Roman curia. Delivered in those historic halls painted by Renaissance artists, the Pope's address was given to those tasked with administering the Vatican State and serving the Catholic faithful worldwide. "Rant!" "Hateful!" "Outrageous!" These were some of the milder expletives cast at the Pope -- the ones we didn't have to delete. This storm of abuse arose because of a papal statement extolling marriage and the natural family. Let us carefully note what is happening here. The acknowledged leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics is speaking to his brother priests about the essentials of the Roman Catholic faith. He is speaking in a forum recognized to be the sovereign territory of a city-state, known to Catholics as the Holy See.
No Way to End Violence in Schools
The shooting of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Conn., just before Christmas has reignited the debate about guns and violence in America. But the problem with trying to tackle a complex issue in reaction to a horrific event is that too often we end up making symbolic gestures -- and sometimes those gestures end up doing as much harm as good. A prime example is the recent suspension of a six-year-old boy from a public school in Silver Spring, Md. His offense? He pointed his index finger at another child and said, "Pow." The school claims that the boy was actually threatening to shoot the other child. Maryland schools have a zero-tolerance policy that treats any offense that can be deemed violent as cause for suspension. Maryland is simply following a nationwide trend in which children, even very young children, can be punished with suspension for what are essentially harmless acts.
Murdoch's KGB-Friendly Series
In August, Rupert Murdoch's FX picked up a Cold War series set in the 1980s titled "The Americans." Liberals might have braced themselves for the worst. It sounded like some kind of Chuck Norris-style "jingoistic" homage to freedom-loving intelligence agents. But this is Hollywood, so the show instead focuses on KGB spies who speak perfect English, working to destroy Reagan-era America, which is not altogether a bad thing to people in Hollywood. Joe Weisberg, who worked for more than three years at the CIA, first wrote a script about two CIA case officers stationed in Bulgaria. Fox bought that script, too, but that project was deep-sixed. Boring. But exploring the daily joys and sorrows of undercover Soviet agents, that just thrills the Hollywood Left. Some things never change.
The Right's Unwitting Obama Apologists
I hate to break it to those deniers who believe that President Obama's tax-guzzling capacity has somehow been diminished by the fiscal cliff provision to fix "permanent" tax rates. You're dreaming. Several smart columnists and respected conservative editorial pieces tell us that a major silver lining in the crisis deal just concluded is that by agreeing not to reinstitute the Clinton tax rates (and leave the Bush rates in place) for all but the "wealthy" (income of $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for marrieds), Obama and the Democrats made a major concession. They argue that if Democrats couldn't do better after Obama was just re-elected and when the debt is so high, they'll never be able to. They'll have to realize that they will never be able to sustain their desired welfare state through raising taxes alone and have to come to the table on serious spending cuts and entitlement reform.
Winning Ugly: Obama and the Fiscal Cliff
By all accounts, President Obama won the fiscal cliff showdown. Why anyone would take much pride in this kind of "win" is beyond me. It's a bit like being the least filthy toddler in the mud pit. One of the main reasons Obama won, according not only to Obama but an at times cheering press, is that he had a mandate. He ran on the need for the wealthy to "pay their fair share." To his credit, Obama never said raising taxes on the "rich" will solve all of our problems. What he did say, however, is that he couldn't in good conscience ask seniors and college students to take a hit from budget cuts without asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. He wanted "shared sacrifice" and a "balanced approach" because we're "all in it together."
Kicking the Can
PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. -- It seemed like a good idea at the time. After Christmas, my wife, Betsy, and I planned to head south to this lovely barrier island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Our plan included celebrating New Year's quietly with as many of our kids, their kids and our friends as possible and then returning to Virginia. It was supposed to be the antithesis of Times Square. Like so many of the best-laid plans of mice and men, it didn't turn out quite as expected. Only six of our grandchildren made the trek south, because so many of them had this year's version of Spanish influenza, bubonic plague or both. The kickoff for 2013 didn't turn out much better for the rest of our countrymen. The new year is now under way -- and if the next 51 weeks go anything like the first episode, this 13th annum of the 21st century is going to be a doozy.
Are We Becoming European?
Following the fiscal cliff melodrama, Senator Richard Shelby appeared on television to declare that we are becoming European. "We're always wanting to spend and promise and spend and borrow but not cut. We've got to get real about this. We're headed down the road that Europe's already on." There's no "heading" about it. We're there. Prof. John J. DiIulio, writing in "National Affairs", outlined the true size of American government. When state and local government expenditures are added to federal outlays, government spending as a share of GDP easily competes with European nations. In fact, per-capita government spending in the U.S. is higher than in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and our debt to GDP ratio is higher than most European states.
Prediction for 2013: Obama Will Lie Under Oath
Looking back over the last four years, it is now obvious that the greatest symbolic moment of President Barack Obama' first term was the very first moment. That is when Obama placed his left hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible, raised his right hand, and followed the lead of Chief Justice John Roberts in attempting to recite the oath that all American presidents must take, swearing to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Obama and Roberts mangled the oath, a poignant precursor of their subsequent exertions to mangle the Constitution itself.