Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
The Second Debate
Obama rebounded strongly in this debate. Romney was prepared and did as well as he did in the first one, but Obama's performance was so much better than last time, he gets the win. Mitt Romney got the first question (from a college student asking about the availability of a job after he graduates). He walked over to "Jeremy" and spoke directly to him. Barack Obama also walked to the student and used the answer to attack Romney on wanting to "bankrupt Detroit." Candy Crowley busted the rules right off the bat by asking a follow-up question -- what about short-term jobs -- which both men used as an excuse to get on each other.
The First $1 Trillion Agency
The question is not whether America is afflicted with socialized medicine, it is whether the socialized medicine afflicting this country is curable or incurable. The inescapable diagnosis: If nothing is done, America dies. You don't need to run an expensive test -- or commission a group of fiscal pathologists -- to see the metastatic growth of government-controlled health care. You only need to look at the data the U.S. Treasury and Office and Management Budget have released to the public. In 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid, all federal outlays equaled $118.23 billion, according to OMB. In fiscal 2012, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, outlays for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) alone hit $1.05 trillion -- the third straight year they exceeded $1 trillion.
Reporters Say 'Libya, Schmibya'
Hillary Clinton declared while traveling in Peru -- weeks after the 9/11 attacks on our consulate in Benghazi -- that she was taking responsibility for the dreadful lack of security that cost the lives of our Ambassador to Libya and three others. But when a CBS reporter asked who'd given false information to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to broadcast nationally via five different Sunday TV interviews, Hillary's answer was classic Clintonian: You'll have to ask her. How's that for "taking responsibility"? And where oh where are the media now? Will the media elites finally take responsibility to demand answers about this outrageous cover-up of a terrorist attack? Or is reelecting Obama more important than demanding the Obama administration answer the questions about Libya?
Hollywood's Hysterical 'Cancer Screening' Lie for Obama
The Hollywood Women for Obama Club wants you to vote with your "lady parts." I want the women of America to vote with their lady *smarts*. The latest ad from a trio of Tinsel Town actresses spreads one of the stupidest lies about Mitt Romney this election cycle. Fantasyland needs a fact check. According to starlets Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington, the GOP presidential ticket wants to "end" funding for "cancer screenings." If you and your reproductive organs don't vote for Obama, the doe-eyed celebrities ominously imply, people will DIE, DIE, DIE! This scare-mongering falsehood has been repeated endlessly by Planned Parenthood and the Obama campaign itself. An official Obama for America ad released in August accuses Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, of backing measures to "allow employers to deny women access to cancer screenings." It also is being used by demagogic Democrats in key Senate races (in Montana, for example).
Hillary Goes Under the Bus
Clinton takes responsibility for Benghazi, but who is ultimately to blame?
Poverty Nonsense
Here's a recent statement frequently suggested by leftist academics, think tank researchers and policymakers: "People were not just struggling because of their personal deficiencies. There were structural factors at play. People weren't poor because they made bad decisions. They were poor because our society creates poverty." Who made that statement and where it was made is not important at all, but its corrosive effects on the minds of black people, particularly black youths, are devastating. There's nothing intellectually challenging or unusual about poverty. For most of mankind's existence, his most optimistic scenario was to be able to eke out enough to subsist for another day. Poverty has been mankind's standard fare and remains so for most of mankind. What is unusual and challenging to explain is affluence -- namely, how a tiny percentage of people, mostly in the West, for only a tiny part of mankind's existence, managed to escape the fate that befell their fellow men.
Bad Rules
We take free speech for granted in America, unlike elsewhere. The furor over that anti-Muslim video is the latest reminder of that. But freedom of speech is never safe, even here. Many colleges now impose "civility codes." Civility is nice, but enforcing a "civility rule" against offensive speech would put an end to lots of useful provocative speech. As a University of North Carolina student put it, "A picture of Mitt Romney would offend 70 percent of residence hall students." Taping my Fox Business Network show at UNC, I also learned that the college, to "protect" women, had dropped the word "freshman." The PC term is now "first year." UNC also decreed that no student may "implicitly" or "explicitly" ask for sex. (Then how do students get it?) Since sexual activity on campus continues, it's clear that such rules are often ignored. But there is danger in selectively enforced rules. They let authorities punish those with unpopular ideas.
What Foreign Policy Debate?
Next week, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are scheduled to meet for their third and final presidential debate, this time focusing on foreign policy. Although he will be on the ballot in at least 48 states on Nov. 6, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's nominee, was not invited, lest an actual debate about foreign policy break out. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, believes that so-called defense spending should be used for defense, that the United States "should resort to military action as the last option and only as provided in the Constitution" and that our foreign policy should be "reoriented toward the protection of U.S. citizens and interests." Obama and Romney, by contrast, believe "it is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history," as Romney put it in a recent speech.
Red, Blue and Faithful
Apparently, Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are both theocrats willing, nay eager, to use state power to impose their religious views on the rest of us. In last week's vice presidential debate, moderator Martha Raddatz asked the two Roman Catholic politicians "to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion." "I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith," confessed Ryan. "Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life." But he went on to make it clear that his views on abortion are based as much on "reason and science" as they are on his Catholicism.
Will Hillary Resign?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stepped forward to say she accepts responsibility for the fact that our consulate in Benghazi was refused enhanced security. This is another example of her willingness to take one for the team. But what does it mean? Will she "accept responsibility" by resigning her office? This is what is meant by accepting responsibility in most parliamentary democracies. As Secretary of State, she surely knows that any of her NATO colleagues who accepted responsibility for such a debacle would immediately surrender his office.
Campus Left Mobilizes Against Diversity Officer
Gallaudet University acts swiftly to punish woman who supports Maryland's right to vote on same-sex marriage.
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Joe Biden's Religion: Catholicism or Leftism?
In the vice presidential debate, the two candidates, both Roman Catholics, were asked about their religious beliefs, how they impact the candidates' political positions and specifically about abortion. This was the response of Vice President Joe Biden: "My religion defines who I am. And I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who -- who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. "With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a -- what we call de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life.
Smilin' Joe and the Democratic Way of Life
Let's cut Smilin' Joe Biden a little slack, which is no heavy lifting for his fan base in the media. Common civility? The vice president showed none whatsoever toward Paul Ryan. Wisdom and insight? Not much of that escaped his lips during the televised encounter. Our No. 2 elected leader clearly had not come all the way to Kentucky to show his command of Emily Post, or impress future historians with examples of 21st century oratory. Smilin' Joe had come chiefly to prevent Ryan from making substantive points concerning the nation's varied messes and conundrums. The idea wasn't to enlighten or inform; it was to obfuscate, cover up and change the subject. He got the job done. "Mr. Biden," reported The New York Times, "showed no hesitation in hectoring, heckling and interrupting his challenger."
Biden vs. Ryan: Old vs. New
Had Vice President Joe Biden behaved toward Sarah Palin in their 2008 debate the way he behaved toward Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan in their debate last Thursday, he might have been denounced as a patronizing misogynist. In his debate with Ryan, the vice president was merely a jerk. Interrupting while someone is trying to make a point is an old debate tactic intended to throw your opponent off-balance and distract observers from what is being said. By some counts, Biden interrupted Ryan more than 80 times and moderator Martha Raddatz broke in at least 50 times, mostly interrupting Ryan. At first I wanted Raddatz to tell Biden to stop behaving like a bully, but the longer the debate went on Biden revealed something about his character, which is, or ought to be, at the center of any campaign for high office.
A More Aggressive Obama Still Won't Make the Grade
As he prepares for the second debate, Obama faces a major dilemma: how to be more aggressive without jeopardizing his alleged likability, the main thing he supposedly has going for him with voters. The Barack Obama the public usually sees is not the real Barack Obama. The former is a carefully manufactured media image designed to appear eminently reasonable, highly engaged, ultra-caring, inordinately intelligent and as one who transcends the pettiness that plagues so many politicians. The real Obama is none of those things. These things wouldn't matter as much if the liberal media hadn't insulated Obama from scrutiny and covered over his policy failures, his ideological extremism and his corruption. They've allowed the fable of his extraordinary gifts to remain largely unchallenged.
Companies Are Evil, So It's OK to Lie About Them
President Obama presented himself to the nation in 2008 as something new -- a change agent who would bring fresh ideas to our national challenges and solve problems in a post-partisan, unifying fashion. In fact, as some noted at the time, his ideas were decrepit hand-me-downs, about as novel as disco or the leisure suit. He is a conventional, left-wing statist, George McGovern with a bigger smile, eager to bring ever-larger segments of American life under tight government control and direction. As for unity, his presidency has set new records for contemning the opposition -- a disdain histrionically pantomimed by Joe Biden.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic. Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about "creating jobs" with one plain and inescapable fact -- "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office." Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost. How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?
The Sagging Obama Campaign
This campaign feels like it has been going on since 1873. It hasn't but it feels that way and we are now down to 22 days to go; three weeks from tomorrow. For the past 12 days the political world has been marveling at the enormous impact -- however tenuous it might turn out to be -- that first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney has had on this race.
Stuff
During last week's vice presidential debate, the candidates clashed over whose team would be better able to impose "crippling" sanctions on Iran. The problem of sanctions is an old one. President Jefferson tried to impose a trade embargo on Britain in 1807 to stop the Royal Navy from seizing our sailors on the high seas. This Embargo was an attempt to use peaceful coercion to bring about a change in policy by the British. It failed. It was Jefferson's greatest failure as president. We have a Bicentennial Walking Tour of the War of 1812 at the U.S. Naval Academy. I'd be happy to take you on that tour. The War of 1812 was the direct result of the failure of Jefferson's *sanctions* to make Britain changer her behavior.