Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
No 'Fiscal Cliff' Middle Ground
Obama proves he's not afraid to go over the precipice as long as Republicans take the blame.
More Than a Game
Philadelphia, PA -- For most football fanatics, this is the time of year for watching the big conference championship games and wondering whether their favorite college team is going play in a major postseason bowl. Many of the players in these contests will be hoping to shine for the NFL scouts looking to recruit new talent. That's not the case this weekend. Few of the players I'll be watching on Saturday are likely to get a call from Jerry Maguire. They won't be hearing an agent shouting, "Show me the money!" In fact, all the players on the gridiron here in Philadelphia have already been "recruited." And the outcome of the game on Saturday isn't going to alter their paychecks next year by a single cent. They will be playing in one of our greatest sports rivalries -- the 122 year-old contest between the United States Military Academy at West Point and the United States Naval Academy -- known more widely as The Army-Navy Game.
The Polluted Documentary Oscar Pool
The cabal that chooses the 15 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature has issued its 2013 selections. Why was the top-grossing documentary of 2012 -- and the fourth most-successful documentary of all time - not on that expansive list? Because it was "2016," the film in which conservative author Dinesh D'Souza warns of a dark future for America if Barack Obama is re-elected. The film's producer, Gerald Molen, who already won an Oscar for "Schindler's List," was scandalized. "The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood."
It's Time To Turn the Tables on this Presidential Bully
Something is very wrong in the world when the most dogmatic and inflexible president in recent memory can make unreasonable demands of his GOP budget opponents and yet be confident they'll be blamed for the impasse. It is past time Barack Obama be held accountable for his intentionally irresponsible fiscal policies that are guaranteed to take us into national bankruptcy. It is outrageous enough that he is steering us into insolvency, but it is unbearable that he's fraudulently blaming the Republican Party for it to boot. This is not a close call, and reasonable people, if they understood the facts, would not support Obama. The problem is that so many people who trust him, inexplicably, look no further than his disingenuous statements and the liberal media's slanted reporting, and the Republican Party leadership simply cannot seem to get its message across. It would help if they evidenced more faith in the wisdom of their own approach.
Hey, Fat Cat Unions: Pay Your 'Fair Share'
Message for wealth-bashing millionaire actor Ed Asner: Man up and take responsibility for lying to America's schoolchildren. Confronted by a producer for Fox News Channel's "The Sean Hannity Show" this week, the left-wing celebrity claimed he couldn't remember "a thing (he) said" on a vile propaganda video produced and published by the California Federation of Teachers. Asner narrated the unforgettable eight-minute anti-capitalist screed geared toward children. Think Occupy Wall Street meets Sesame Street. "Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore," Asner warbles in a folksy grandpa voice. After education reform journalist Kyle Olson of EAGNews.org blew the whistle on the film's vulgar cartoon depiction of a "rich" man urinating on the "poor," the teachers union whitewashed the animated images from the video.
It's Nothing but a Power Play
WASHINGTON -- Let's understand President Obama's strategy in the "fiscal cliff" negotiations. It has nothing to do with economics or real fiscal reform. This is entirely about politics. It's Phase 2 of the 2012 campaign. The election returned him to office. The fiscal cliff negotiations are designed to break the Republican opposition and grant him political supremacy, something he thinks he earned with his landslide 2.8-point victory margin on Election Day. This is why he sent Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to the Republicans to convey not a negotiating offer but a demand for unconditional surrender. House Speaker John Boehner had made a peace offering of $800 billion in new revenues. Geithner pocketed Boehner's $800 billion, doubled it to $1.6 trillion, offered risible cuts that in 2013 would actually be exceeded by new stimulus spending, and then demanded that Congress turn over to the president all power over the debt ceiling.
Single Belles, Single All the Way
Discussing the role of single people in the election of 2012 on my weekly podcast with Jay Nordlinger "Need to Know" (available on Ricochet.com or Nationalreview.com), your humble columnist chose the insensitive way to address it. Chatting with Jonathan V. Last of The Weekly Standard about his piece "A Nation of Singles," I popped off that "Single mothers want the state to be their husbands and father to their children." Jonathan put it better: "Well, let's say that single mothers are more vulnerable to economic shocks and are more concerned about the safety net." Much more diplomatic. Single voters were a key demographic in 2012 (if the percentage of married voters had been what it was in 1980, Romney would have won) and there is little reason to imagine that their importance will wane in the future. Singles increased their share of the vote from 2008 by 6 points.
The Stone Truth: Left-Wingers Are Boring
When, at long last, will people understand that the left is boring? The question came to mind as I was dipping in and out of Oliver Stone's miasmic 700-plus-page tome. I'll never read the whole thing, and not because it's a left-wing screed full of slimy distortions about the evils of the United States (though that doesn't help). It's that it's boring. Stone and co-author Peter Kuznick call their book "The Untold History of the United States," except, again, it isn't. This story has been told countless times before. As the Daily Beast's Michael Moynihan notes in a devastating review, Stone and Kuznick offer no new research, and much of the old research they rely on has been rendered moot by more recent discoveries since the Berlin Wall came down.
Obama's Impotence in the Face of Muslim Brotherhood Coup
The administration refuses to take sides against the Brotherhood’s tyrannical power grab.
Restoring Confidence
Help us, we're falling and we can't get up again. Once upon a time -- in 1988 and 1998 to be exact -- the United States was the best country for a baby to be born and raised in, at least according to The Economist magazine. But the 2013 edition of the magazine's "where-to-be-born" index has us down at No. 16 -- tied with Germany and one spot ahead of the United Arab Emirates. Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark -- nice countries but not exactly world famous as destinations for millions of people seeking opportunity -- are ranked 1 through 5.
Rich Lefties and Their Taxes
Ah, the hypocrisy of tax-hikers who do everything they can to avoid the taxes they wish to impose on others. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.: He tried to avoid $500K in his home state's sales and excise taxes by docking his newly purchased $7 million 76-foot yacht in Rhode Island. Massachusetts lowered its state income tax in 2001. Given the presumably large number of rich people who pine to pay more taxes, the state allowed tax filers to check a box and voluntarily pay the old, higher rate. In a liberal state of over 3 million tax filers, how many volunteered to pay the higher rate in 2004? A tiny fraction of 1 percent -- 930 taxpayers.
Warren Buffet Is an Idiot
I wouldn't want anyone to think I don't like Warren Buffet because he's rich. For one thing, I don't engage in class envy or any other kind. Maybe if I found out he could play the piano or do impressions of movie actors or even juggle, I might be slightly green. But the unvarnished truth is that I don't envy people like Buffet and Bill Gates their fortunes. I admit I'd like to be wealthier than I am because I don't like having to think about money at all. But once you get to be as rich as guys like that, I don't know how you have time to think about anything else. When you have 30 or 40 billion dollars, I would imagine that just keeping track of it would keep you pretty busy. I bet billionaires spend countless hours meeting with boring guys in suits who cart around attaché cases and are named Roger or Malcolm, talking about what to do with all that loot. I bet it keeps them busier than a Jack Russell herding sheep.
The Mysterious Stranger
Washington-Jeffrey Hillman is a man who shambles the streets of New York City looking quite unkempt, drab, and hopeless. He panhandles sometimes and mutters to himself. Frankly, he looks a wreck and apparently is often in need of a pair of shoes. On cold winter nights he gets them. One cold November night, Officer Lawrence DePrimo spotted Hillman seated shoeless on the pavement of Times Square, and the young policeman left his post, went into a store nearby, and bought Hillman a pair of shoes costing $100. He even helped Hillman put them on. A tourist snapped a picture of DePrimo doing this, and the picture appeared on Facebook. It went viral, and was seen around the world -- a young New York City cop, putting shoes on a beggar.
Cultivating Our Bewitchment
WASHINGTON -- Even Jonathan Swift, who said promises and pie crusts are made to be broken, might have marveled at the limited shelf life of Barack Obama's promise of a "balanced" deficit-reduction plan -- substantial spending cuts to accompany revenue increases. Obama made short shrift of that promise when he demanded $1.6 trillion in immediate tax increases and mostly unspecified domestic cuts. He also promised to cut $800 billion from 10 years of war spending that will end in two years, which is like "cutting" $800 billion by deciding not to build a ski resort on Mars. Year after year, the Democratic-controlled Senate, ignoring the law, refuses to pass budgets. Year after year, Washington makes big government cheap by charging Americans only $6 for every $10 of government services, borrowing the difference. And the biggest purchaser of U.S. government debt is not China but ... the U.S. government, largely through the Federal Reserve. Yet what supposedly is horrifying is a sequester that would cut less than 3 percent of federal spending over the next decade?
The Kingdom of Fairness
We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back. Obama would agree. He once alleged that George W. Bush's much smaller deficits were "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic." Obama himself vowed to cut the budget deficit in half by the end his first term. Instead, Obama's annual deficits have never gone below $1 trillion. Three ways to establish a long-term trajectory toward a balanced budget were under discussion. One was to adopt the proposals of the nonpartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission appointed by Obama. The commission offered a balanced mix of tax reform and greater revenues, along with cuts in federal spending. But the president was not interested. The commission's findings now seem stale just two years after they were issued.
Higher Tax Rates Won't Support Entitlement State
The fiscal cliff negotiations seem to be foundering on Barack Obama's insistence on higher tax rates on high earners and House Republican leaders' insistence on opposing them. The president believes he has a mandate from voters for his position, and House Republicans believe they have a mandate from voters for theirs. The real argument here is over the size and scope of government. Under Barack Obama, federal outlays -- the technical term for federal spending -- have increased to 24 and 25 percent of gross domestic product. That's a higher level of federal spending than in any year since 1946, when we were demobilizing after World War II. And the Obama budgets envision federal spending to continue at such levels more or less indefinitely.
No Skin in the Game
An Internet search is inconclusive as to where the phrase "no skin in the game" originated. Some ascribe it to the late columnist William Safire; others to investor Warren Buffett. Politicians often use the phrase to justify policies to their liking. It can also be applied to the latest in a long list of their outrageous behaviors, as well as to those of President Obama. Like an increasing number of politicians, the president has never served in the military, nor has he ever run a business. He has never headed a company that needed to make a profit (and thus employ people who create things people wish to purchase). He has likely never had to produce a balance sheet. His entire career -- and that of too many other politicians -- appears to have been about redistributing other people's money and organizing "communities" to receive government benefits.
Better Storm Drains for All
It is now likely that a deal will not be reached between now and December 31 to avoid the fiscal cliff. Before you become an economic prepper and start stocking up on canned goods and extra Tequila, remember I also thought Mitt Romney would win the election. If we do tumble over, the automatic sequester -- spending cuts -- kick in and everyone is looking for the worst-case scenario of what services will be lost to old folks, young folks, sick folks, and all the other folks in the United States. As an example, in a Fresno Bee piece titled, "Automatic Cuts would hit California Hard," reporter Michael Doyle writes, "California is projected to lose $27 million in Community Development Block Grant funds ... a sizable chunk from a program that in recent years has funded better storm drains in Fresno County."
Election 2012: Echoes of Truman's 1948 Campaign
Many of our friends continue to register shock at the election returns of last month. How can it be?, they ask. It's not so hard to figure out, we reply. The first Romney bumper sticker that appeared last year bore a startling resemblance to another famous corporate logo. What were they thinking? The first bumper sticker for the President's re-election said simply: "ObamaCares." Brilliant. We are not saying that President Obama *does* actually care about "people like me." But voters polled on that question chose Mr. Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping 81-18 margin. That's fatal in politics.