Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
States Choose Own Paths With One-Party Governments
In Washington, Americans have two-party government, with a Democratic president and Senate and a Republican House. We had it before November's election and will have it again for the next two years. Looking back from 2014, we will have had two-party government for most of the preceding two decades, for six years of Bill Clinton's presidency, three and a half years of George W. Bush's and four years of Barack Obama's. But in most of the 50 states, American voters seem to have opted for something very much like one-party government. Starting next month, Americans in 25 states will have Republican governors and Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislatures. They aren't all small states, either. They include about 53 percent of the nation's population.
Riddle Me This, Batman!
Over the course of my life, I have occasionally been labeled a know-it-all, but I'm happy to say that those who've said it have generally been those who know nothing. The fact is that there are any number of things I can't begin to fathom. For openers, I am hopeless when it comes to things mechanical and electronic. I just don't get how things work. I don't look down on those who do; if anything, I'm in awe of them. That's one of the reasons that I wish our educational system made sense. Instead of acknowledging that most young people would be better off learning a trade, they are shuffled off to colleges and universities where they'll waste four years and a lot of their family's money as liberal arts majors.
The Pledge
Much was made over the weekend about cracks in Grover Norquist's "No Tax Pledge" dam by Rep. Peter King and Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Before we go on, we all know there IS such a thing as the "No Tax Pledge," but until last night as I was writing this, I had never actually read it.
Digesting the Twinkies' Lessons
[T]he crisis of Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of Twinkies, involves two potent lessons. First, market forces will have their way. Second, never underestimate baby boomer nostalgia, which is acute narcissism. The Twinkies melodrama has the boomers thinking -- as usual, about themselves: If an 82-year-old brand can die, so can we. Is that even legal?
From The Comedy Store
The Postal Service asked Congress for authority to close post offices more easily. They also want to end Saturday mail delivery. The Postal Service said last year it lost sixteen billion dollars, making it the most profitable department in the U.S. government.
The Truth About Muslims and the Fourth Estate
If you depend on the mainstream media -- and why would anyone? – you would come to believe that Muslims are decent, law-abiding people and Christian conservatives are blood-thirsty ogres. It is because of promoting such head-spinning balderdash that the American press has earned the contempt of millions of us. Instead of speaking truth to power, they roll over for Obama and the Democrats. In dictatorships, you expect journalists to be propagandists because to be otherwise doesn't mean you lose your job; it means you lose your life.
The Tired Repetition of a 'Truce'
How the Left's moral equivocation threatens Israel’s survival.
Why Was There War in Gaza?
WASHINGTON -- Why was there an Israel-Gaza war in the first place? Resistance to the occupation, say Hamas and many in the international media. What occupation? Seven years ago, in front of the world, Israel pulled out of Gaza. It dismantled every settlement, withdrew every soldier, evacuated every Jew, leaving nothing and no one behind. Except for the greenhouses in which the settlers had grown fruit and flowers for export. These were left intact to help Gaza's economy -- only to be trashed when the Palestinians took over. Israel then declared its border with Gaza to be an international frontier, meaning that it renounced any claim to the territory and considered it an independent entity. In effect, Israel had created the first Palestinian state ever, something never granted by fellow Muslims -- neither the Ottoman Turks nor the Egyptians who brutally occupied Gaza for two decades before being driven out by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
To Appeal to Black Voters, GOP Must Run Gauntlet of Racism Accusations
If the GOP wants to win more black votes, it will need to get a lot more "racist." The scare quotes are necessary because I don't think the Republican Party is racist now (and, historically, the GOP has a lot less to answer for than the Democratic Party does). But that hasn't stopped a lot of people from slandering Republicans as racist for one reason or another. Right now, many in Washington -- particularly the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus -- insist that Republican attacks on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are racist and, yawn, sexist. The basis for this claim is that some Republicans are calling Rice unfit for the soon-to-be-vacated job of secretary of state. More specifically, they're cross with Rice for what they contend to be her dishonest and incompetent handling of the Benghazi scandal.
Wal-Mart vs. the Mob
Black Friday always brings out the worst: long lines, short tempers and random outbreaks of shoppers' rage. This year, Big Labor will ratchet up the Strikesgiving tension with professional grievance-mongers and workers picketing at 1,000 Wal-Mart stores nationwide. Attention, Wal-Mart directors: Mob appeasement never works. They've tried repeatedly to stave off union thuggery through political "partnerships" and capitulation. It has failed and failed and failed. As you may recall, the discount retail giant shocked many observers in 2009 when it announced it was embracing the principles of President Obama's federal health care mandate. The nation's largest private (and non-union) employer was joined by its perennial arch-enemy, the Service Employees International Union (then-helmed by frequent White House guest and deep-pocketed heavy Andy Stern) and the far-left Center for American Progress (run by Obama confidante John Podesta and funded by billionaire George Soros).
Reaching Out
Forget Republican comebacks in 2014 or 2016. Unless it gets its head and its heart straight, the party might never win the popular vote or the White House again. The GOP today is not my father's party. And until the hierarchy of the GOP stops talking about how great Ronald Reagan was and starts embracing what he really stood for, the party of conservatism is destined for the ash heap of history. Ronald Reagan was somebody who believed in inclusion, not exclusion. He found a way to reach out to all voting groups, which is why he was the last Republican presidential candidate to win the Hispanic vote.
Dems Have Edge, but Presidency Still in Play
A funny thing happened as I was looking at the political map of this year's presidential election: It began to look like the map of the presidential election of 2004. I'm not talking about the superficial similarity, the fact that in both elections an incumbent president beat a challenger from Massachusetts by a 51 to 48 percent popular vote margin. I'm talking about the fact that the large majority of states voted just a little bit more Democratic in 2012 than they did in 2004. Enough to give 2012 nominee Barack Obama 332 electoral votes, far more than 2004 nominee John Kerry's 252. But not enough to change the political balance of the nation or the various regions very much.
Let Obama be Obama
After his party's devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous in battling the federal takeover of health care. Republicans countered with arguments that higher taxes on the employer class hurt the economy in general. They assumed most voters knew that amnesties are euphemisms for undermining federal law and in the past have had the effect of promoting more illegal immigration. They tried to point out that there is no such thing as free universal health care, since Obamacare will only shift responsibility from health care practitioners and patients to inefficient government bureaucracies and hide the true costs with higher taxes.
Marco Rubio: A Hispanic Reagan?
Conservatives have been dreaming that a political reincarnation of Ronald Reagan would lead them to an electoral promised land. I never put my faith in such a possibility, because the past is a dangerous place in which to live. Reagan never lived in the past, though he learned from it. Yet among the contemporary political figures that closely represent the substance and style that made Ronald Reagan who he was is Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Republican. At a fundraising event for Iowa Governor Terry Branstad last Saturday, Rubio touched all the Reagan bases and focused on solutions, not just a recitation of well-known problems. Probably his best line of the evening was, "The way to turn our economy around is not by making rich people poorer. It's by making poor people richer." In this, he resembled Reagan's favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, who said, "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
So What If Taxing Rich Hurts the Economy?
Consider this headline from a Reuters article in The Huffington Post: "Raising Taxes on Rich Won't Hurt Economic Growth, CBO Says." But the first paragraph refutes the headline: "Allowing income tax rates to rise for wealthy Americans would not hurt U.S. economic growth *much* (emphasis added) in 2013 ..." The CBO did *not* say, as the headline suggests, that raising taxes on the rich has no negative economic effect. In fact, the CBO actually said that extending the Bush-era rates for *all* would increase economic growth by 1.5 percent. If, however, the Bush era rates expired for the rich -- but were retained for everybody else -- economic growth would still increase, but by 1.25 percent.
In Our Time
I have been listening to a Bob Seger song called "In Your Time" a lot since the election and Hurricane Sandy, as the misery that storm and the nor-easter a week later caused is certainly not lost on me. As I heard it, he wrote the song for his son back in the 90s and it became a favorite of mine, a modern version of one of my favorite passages in scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:9 -- "There is nothing new under the sun"... The dreams of an idealist, combined with the rational thought of a realist. It's what is needed now, in OUR time, not only about fights like mine with Anthropogenic Global Warming, but much more. And if we can do that, We'll be fine, In our time. Happy Thanksgiving, and count your blessings, for they are as big a part of life as the trials we must all endure!
For This, We Give Thanks
WASHINGTON -- Among the things for which Americans can, on this feast day, be thankful is Washington's resolve to temper severity with mercy: It will *seriously* -- this time we really mean business, we are not going to be Greece, or worse, Illinois -- restrain spending but will not balance the budget on the backs of popcorn eaters. Growers of this essential snack may yet retain their subsidy, lest the price of a tub of the stuff at the movies soar by a nickel, even a dime. Can't have that. Or this: "I," said Terry List, "would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan" because a proposed pension reform would delay her retirement past age 47. Under Michigan's mandatory evaluation system, all the teachers in Hazel Park School District were given the top rating -- "highly qualified" -- yet the high school was given an "F" for student achievement.
2016
The next presidential election is just four short years away. It seemed like just yesterday that we Republicans envisioned a future of Romney, Ryan and Rubio. Now we have to wonder if we were too quick to laugh when Joe Biden said that this wouldn't be his last hurrah, and that he would be on the ballot next time. These days, that seems all too possible. After all, if the majority of Americans don't object to his being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, why would they object to his actually having the heart that some other Vice President would be monitoring on a daily, if not hourly, basis? After all, Biden will only be 73 when Obama vacates the White House. No doubt he will have even more hair and whiter teeth by then. Because the Republican Party will have gone the way of the Whigs and the Bull Moose, his only real worry will be whether Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton, who will be 69, but only 10 or 11 in dog years, decides to take him on.
Thanksgiving 2012: Destiny's Child
It was the day before Thanksgiving, crisp and clear. I was giving the Mullmobile its quarterly treat: A professional car wash. At Andy's Car Wash in Alexandria, you drop your car off, then go inside to pay. A woman and a little girl -- about three-and-a-half -- were paying ahead of me. It was a cold day, so the little girl was bundled up in the way little girls are on a cold late-Autumn day. Ignoring the advice of The Lad, ("Dad, just because you CAN talk to everybody in the world, doesn't mean you HAVE to talk to everybody in the world.") I asked the woman what little girl's name was.