Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Christmas for Obama Bundlers
Merry Crony-mas! It's time to pass out the goodies. While President Obama's lips champion the middle class, his administration's old hands are preparing to lavish rewards on the creme de la campaign creme: his wealthiest political donors. Several media outlets reported this week that the White House is considering fashion doyenne Anna Wintour for a possible appointment as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain or France. The rumored short list also includes Obama campaign finance chairman Matthew Barzun and investment banker Marc Lasry. The three share one common, er, "qualification": Each raked in more than $500,000 for Team Obama 2012.
Ronald Reagan: Progressive Taxation Came Direct From Karl Marx
Ronald Reagan, who was then a movie actor, delivered one of the greatest and most prophetic speeches of the 20th century, when he appeared before the Orange County Press Club on July 28, 1961. Vital Speeches of the Day later published the full text under the headline, "Encroaching Control: Keep Government Poor and Remain Free." Reagan made an alarming argument: Americans were slowly surrendering to socialism just as some socialists had predicted they would. "Not too long ago," Reagan said, "Norman Thomas, six times a candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, commented that 'the American people would never knowingly vote for socialism but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.'"
The Costas Anti-Gun Lecture Series
We know the news flash: On Saturday morning, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and shot himself in the head in the parking lot in front of his coaches. To liberals like NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, this was not just a crisis. It was also an opportunity. During the halftime of the Dec. 2 Sunday night game between Dallas and Philadelphia, Costas unfurled a wholly unexpected and condescending lecture about how gun owners who harm America with their "gun culture" never learn.
Jedi Mind Trick Nation
In the original "Star Wars", Jedi Obi Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) have to smuggle two droids into the criminal-infested, Empire-guarded city of Mos Eisley. The Empire has been looking for the droids, which contain secret information. But Obi Wan has a solution: when our heroes are confronted by emissaries of the Empire, he simply waves his hand. "These aren't the droids you're looking for." The weak-minded Stormtrooper promptly waves the group through. Obi Wan was using an old Jedi mind trick. Welcome to America, 2012.
Progressives Support Welfare for the Rich
Since Republicans are pushing entitlement reform and Democrats like taking money from rich people, you might think they could agree on means-testing Medicare and Social Security as part of a deficit reduction deal. Yet many Democrats are surprisingly hostile to the idea of tailoring these programs to help people who actually need them. There are two main reasons for this resistance -- one strategic, the other ideological. Neither is persuasive, even from a progressive point of view, at a time when trillion-dollar deficits are the norm and publicly held federal debt is projected to reach 150 percent of gross domestic product within two decades.
Food Bunk
With America's "fiscal cliff" approaching, pundits wring their hands over the supposed catastrophe that government spending cuts will bring. A scare newsletter called "Food Poisoning Bulletin" warns that if government reduces food inspections, "food will be less safe ... (because) marginal companies ... (will) cut corners." We're going to die! Most people believe that without government meat inspection, food would be filthy. We read "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair's depiction of the meatpacking business, and assume that the FDA and the Food Safety and Inspection Service are all that stand between us and E. coli. Meatpacking conditions were disgusting. Government intervened. Now, we're safe! A happy ending to a story of callous greed.
Let the Taxi App Roll
If Hollywood remade "The Graduate" and set it in 1980, the one word the businessman would have for Dustin Hoffman's character wouldn't be "plastics." It'd be "medallions." That's because the single greatest investment you could have made over the last 30 years isn't in gold or silver or even Apple stock. It's in New York City taxicab medallions. Since 1980, New York's taxi medallions -- essentially the license to drive a cab in the Big Apple -- have appreciated nearly 2,000 percent, according to one estimate. Prices rose on average 8 percent annually for 30 years, dipping significantly only once -- right after 9/11, calculates economist Ilan Kolet, a writer for Bloomberg.
Fiscal Cliff Notes: Part II
One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he plays "chicken" with the Congressional Republicans along the "fiscal cliff," is that Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media-- nor, apparently, by the Republicans. A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit-- so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich." It sounds very plausible, and constant repetition without a challenge may well be enough to convince the voting public that, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not go along with Barack Obama's demands for more spending and higher tax rates on the top 2 percent, it just shows that they care more for "the rich" than for the other 98 percent.
Future Generations
Is there any reason for today's Americans to care about what happens to tomorrow's Americans? After all, what have tomorrow's Americans done for today's Americans? Moreover, since tomorrow's Americans don't vote, we can dump on them with impunity. That's a vision that describes the actual behavior of today's Americans. It would be seen as selfish, callous and ruthless only if it were actually articulated. Let's look at it. Businesses, as well as most nonprofit enterprises, by law are required to produce financial statements that include all of their present and expected future liabilities. On top of that, they are required to hold reserves against future liabilities such as employee retirement.
A Sharia Financier in the TN Governor's Office
Making Tennessee a more Sharia-compliant place to do business.
Paying the Price of Preparation
At the memorial to the USS Arizona, you can watch droplets of oil from the sunken ship drift to the surface. Some say the ship is weeping for the 1,177 service members killed at Pearl Harbor 71 years ago this week. It's a chilling reminder of the heavy price our country paid when it was caught unprepared. Today's geopolitical risks are far different, of course. Since 1945, the United States effectively has led the world, and from that position of strength we've redirected geopolitics. For most countries, trade is now seen as a better way to advance a nation's interests than fighting. Most of the planet has enjoyed booming growth and soaring living standards as the American-style exchange of goods and services has helped make the free world rich.
Dark Shadows
The opening scene-setter for the 1996 film "Independence Day" might serve as a metaphor for what Egyptians could face if a draft constitution written by a panel dominated by Islamists and based on Sharia law wins approval in a referendum: "A loud rumble is heard. Suddenly, we are covered in darkness as the shadow engulfs us. Only the image of our Earth hangs in the air, until a huge silhouetted object suddenly blocks our view." Egypt could well embrace the dark side (to mix movie metaphors) and become the region's biggest force for extremism, just ahead of the Wahaabists in Saudi Arabia, though Iran with its race toward nuclear weapons poses the most immediate danger.
Obama Barreling Toward Real Fiscal Cliff
Some commentators wonder why President Obama always engages in brinksmanship. Why can't he meet Republicans halfway, like Clinton did, they ask. Let me try to respond. One blogger suggests that Obama prefers to play chicken, taking the nation right to the edge of a fiscal disaster because it will increase the likelihood that the GOP will cave. Perhaps, but there's more to it. Many of us warned that Obama is not, by nature or ideology, a conciliator. He is not a centrist, and he's not someone who is interested in the other side's ideas. He knows what he wants to do, and he is hell-bent on doing it. He is not just playing hardball as a matter of strategy; he has no interest in compromise and is angling to get his way entirely. And he wants to further damage the Republican brand in the process.
Professor Obama and the Constitution
Remind me -- what was the college course Barack Obama used to teach? Constitutional law? Or was it "Machiavelli for Beginners"? If it was the former, did it cover the American system of checks and balances and separation of powers? Did it dip, however briefly, into the dangers that the founding fathers wished to forfend, such as accumulation of unchecked power in a single governmental branch? Or in a single man? If the course taught by the future President Obama tended to evade such considerations, and instead to emphasize princecraft, the art of prevarication and the hidden dagger -- yeah, it shows; more and more dismayingly all the time. Semi-buried in the White House's fiscal-cliff-avoidance offer to the Republicans last week was a pernicious proposal giving him executive authority to raise the debt ceiling without consent of Congress. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell reportedly laughed at the proposal as a whole. He might better have wept. A president bent on usurpation is in the end no laughing matter.
What's Wrong With Public Nudity?
If you want to understand Leftism -- and everyone needs to because it has been the most dynamic religion of the last one hundred years -- one good place to start is with San Francisco. Or perhaps more precisely -- with nudity. And even more precisely -- with public nudity. Last month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted by the barest (pun not intended) margin -- 6 to 5 -- to ban public nudity. By public nudity, the law refers only to displaying one's genitals in public. San Francisco women are still free to walk around topless. But that is not unique to San Francisco. Years ago, the highest court in New York state ruled that since it sees no difference between a man's chest and a woman's, women should be free to walk around topless, just as men do.
Fiscal Cliff Notes
Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year?
Republicans and Mad Max
The incomparable Walter Russell Mead, writing in the American Interest, offered a glimpse into the coming dystopia: "Things are getting worse in San Bernardino. The city filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, but its financial situation has continued to deteriorate. And now with what promises to be a heated court battle over payments to the state pension fund in the offing, further cuts are likely. "Things are getting so bad that at a recent city council meeting, the city attorney advised residents to 'lock their doors and load their guns' because the city could no longer afford to keep up a strong enough police force."
Capitalism?
With the Redskins playing the Monday night game and the National's still not having made a deal with their 1st baseman, Adam LaRoche, there's not much to think about here in Our Nation's Capital other than that pesky fiscal cliff. Depending on what comes up in your Google search for "What will be the effect on GDP of the fiscal cliff" you get answers ranging from a drop of about 1.4 percent (NASDAQ) up to four percent (Washington Post). Most of the guesses fall in the 3 -- 3.5 percent range.
Fighting the Good Conservative Fight
Ever since the election, introspective Republicans, gloating Democrats and a largely corrupt media have offered innumerable suggestions regarding how the GOP can "reconstitute," "re-brand" or "re-invent" itself to attract more Americans. The party must become more diverse, more inclusive, more compassionate and/or more modern. Some of these arguments might have merit, but in reality there is only one thing Republicans must fully embrace: genuine conservatism, for two simple reasons. One, anything less makes them Democrat-lite, and voters will invariably prefer the real thing; and two, embracing conservatism is critical for the nation's survival. That survival depends on conservatives first acknowledging, and then waging all-out war, on three critical fronts. Until that occurs, conservatives are doomed to irrelevancy.
The Biggest Lesson the GOP Should Learn From the Election
Republicans need to stop nominating right-wing extremists like John McCain and Mitt Romney.