Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Liberal Media Might as Well Wear Obama Buttons
The liberal media gave the ceaselessly political President Obama a pass for campaigning instead of performing his presidential duties when they were most needed, while they castigated Mitt Romney for being political when he was the only one of the two acting presidential. To be sure, Obama is a political candidate for re-election to the presidency, but do we have to remind ourselves -- as he often reminds us -- that he also currently holds that office and that it includes duties that supersede his political activities? After remaining silent for hours after the attacks in Egypt and Libya, Obama called a news conference to issue a brief statement on the matter and, in response to the first question, turned on his heels and walked off. Yet the liberal media, feigning outrage over Romney's alleged political exploitation, are neither curious nor critical about Obama's refusal to answer questions about the attacks, such as whether he considers them an act of war and what responses he is considering.
Don't Misplace Blame for Middle Eastern Mayhem
An incendiary video about the prophet Muhammad, "Innocence of Muslims," was blamed for the mob attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt (and later, Yemen). In Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. The video stirred some passion here in America as well. Over at MSNBC a riot of consensus broke out when contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch as well as University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the people behind the video should be indicted as accessories to murder. "Good Morning," declared Butler, "How soon is Sam Bacile [the alleged creator of the film] going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now."
Winner and Losers in Teacher Strike
Children in Chicago may soon be back in school, if members of the 26,000-member Chicago Federation of Teachers vote to accept a new contract whose details at this writing are still being finalized. But are there any winners in this confrontation in the nation's third-largest school district with some 350,000 students? It has been 25 years since Chicago teachers walked the picket line -- and their decision to do so this time runs counter to a nationwide trend toward fewer strikes by unionized teachers. The decision was all the more surprising given who sits on the other side of the bargaining table: former Obama White House Chief of Staff and now Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel.
The Abandonment
WASHINGTON -- There are two positions one can take regarding the Iranian nuclear program: (a) it doesn't matter, we can deter them, or (b) it does matter, we must stop them. In my view, the first position -- that we can contain Iran as we did the Soviet Union -- is totally wrong, a product of wishful thinking and misread history. But at least it's internally coherent. What is incoherent is President Obama's position. He declares the Iranian program intolerable -- "I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" -- yet stands by as Iran rapidly approaches nuclearization.
Obama's Dangerous Weakness
President Obama's weakness in foreign policy is a contributor to the events of the last several days in the Middle East. Though he gave the order to take out bin Laden (who wouldn't?), and though he attacks suspected terrorists with drones, this president has nevertheless conveyed to the world that he believes in a diminished world role for the United States. He believes in a more modest United States -- remember those bows -- because he comes from an intellectual tradition that is hostile to American power. His pastor and mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, expressed a common leftist view when he said after 9/11 that the attacks represented "America's chickens coming home to roost." Mr. Obama's one-time green jobs czar, Van Jones, was of the same school, showing up at a radical leftist rally on September 12, 2001 and, amid the drum circles and curses, heaped on the nation that had just suffered an attack of unprecedented savagery and joined in the denunciations of the victim. "It's the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders."
Incest and Pedophilia, the New Frontier
Veteran reporter Sharon Waxman knew she'd found a new low. Reporting from the Toronto Film Festival, she revealed the viewpoint of director Nick Cassavetes, which she summarized in a headline: "Who Gives a Damn? Love Who You Want." The topic was incest. Hollywood's march to tear down -- to obliterate, really -- every boundary of sexual decency should compel even the harshest accusers of social conservatives like Rick Santorum to apologize profusely. They were wrong to mock conservatives for warning of the extremes, as we're lurching so quickly and easily into the darkest "love who you want" extremes of the Lifestyle Left.
The Hip-Hop President: All Swag, No Cattle
Wazzup, President Obama? You've got room on your schedule to schmooze hip-hop radio DJs, debate Nicki Minaj's rap lyrics, hobnob with big donor celebs Jay-Z and Beyonce, and hang with Hollywood gossip TV anchors. We see your passion on the golf course, basketball court and beach. We see you late night on Letterman and Leno. We see your boundless energy on the campaign trail. We see your Twitter donation solicitations from dusk till dawn. But when it comes time to play leader of the free world in times of international crisis, it's "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya." He's all swag, no cattle.
September Surprise
WASHINGTON -- The storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the brutal murders of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, produced chaos this week in the so-called mainstream media. Instead of asking about how the heck this could happen in the aftermath of the Obama administration's Arab Spring euphoria, "reporters" started looking for scapegoats. The potentates of the press first focused their ire on something few of them even had seen -- a puerile Internet video titled "Innocence of Muslims" -- and then they turned their guns on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As usual, the O-Team's media cheerleaders got it all wrong.
God and Jerusalem
Who would have thought that God and Jerusalem would become controversial issues at this year's Democratic National Convention? Previous Democratic Party platforms had mentioned God and referred to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After both were initially missing from this year's platform, someone apparently realized that this was likely to raise questions about Democrats that they could ill afford to have raised in an election year. So the convention faced a vote on whether to restore God and Jerusalem to their party's platform. Rather than risk a roll-call vote from the delegates, the chair called for a voice vote. The voice vote sounded too close to call, but the chair called it anyway, ruling that those wanting God and Jerusalem restored had the necessary two-thirds vote.
Forcing Israel's Hand
In the dreary years of Depression and drift leading up to World War II, there was always a difference of perception between Britain and France about the Hitler threat. France wanted to strike Hitler when he marched into the Rhineland in 1936. This was a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles and France felt its very life was threatened by a re-militarized Rhineland on her border. The French premier was invited to London by Prime Minister Baldwin -- *for talks*. Four years later, France fell under the Nazi boot. Britain always had the advantage of distance from Germany. Britain had a 22-mile anti-tank trench called the English Channel. France naturally resented Britain's talking, talking, talking while Hitler moved. This is useful history as we view the situation in Israel today. The Iranian mullahs are motivated by the same anti-Jewish hatred that poisoned Hitler. They are developing a nuclear weapon, while claiming only to want nuclear energy for "peaceful purposes." Why a country like Iran that is sitting on a sea of oil needs a nuclear power program is left for the credulous of the world to consider. The mullahs want the bomb.
Time for School Choice in Chicago
"There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." -- Calvin Coolidge, responding to the 1919 Boston police strike This oft-quoted line from the then-governor of Massachusetts might be updated to include "the public interest," as well as public safety. There are few matters of public interest greater than educating the next generation. Chicago public school teachers who went on strike Monday have struck against the public interest, placing self-interest in difficult economic times ahead of children. At a time of high unemployment, the teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union want a pay increase and better medical coverage, as well as provisions that include a hire-back policy for laid-off teachers and one that makes it more difficult to dismiss underperforming teachers.
Chevy Volt : Solyndra on Wheels
"I absolutely love my Chevy Volt." That's what the smug guy in the TV commercial says when he's praising the virtues of his plug-in hybrid and boasting that he hasn't seen a gas pump in months. You might love your Chevy Volt, too -- if you could afford to buy one. The GM Volt, aka the Green Edsel, is not just an overly engineered, overly expensive, overweight and impractical car than runs on electricity and gasoline.
Libya Commemorates 9/11
When President Obama intervened in Libya last year, he claimed that "it's in our national interest to act" to remove a tyrant who -- in response to Bush's invasion of Iraq -- had just given up his weapons of mass destruction and pledged to be America's BFF. Apparently Gadhafi neglected to also tell Obama, "I've got your back." Obama said: "We must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms ... our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for the governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people." The Libyan mob was the equivalent of our founding fathers! (If you overlook the part about it being a murderous Islamic mob.)
Obama Could Be the Odd Man Out on Tax Reform
One of the services of the Simpson-Bowles Commission was to set out a path for tax reform, with lower income tax rates and removal of many tax preferences -- or, to use the commission's term, tax expenditures. It's an approach that has been tried before and worked. Ronald Reagan called for such a reform in 1984, and after much negotiating, it was hammered out in 1986. Lead roles were played by Treasury Secretary James Baker; the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski; and the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Bob Packwood. It wasn't easy work, and at one point it required an extra pitcher or two of beer at an Irish pub for Packwood and his staffers. Mitt Romney has endorsed a similar procedure. So has Paul Ryan, who included it in the budget he steered to passage in the House.
Resisting the Monetary Morphine Fix
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Fortunately, not everything is up to date in Kansas City. Esther George, president of the regional Federal Reserve Bank here, is refreshingly retrograde regarding what less-circumspect people welcome as the modernizing of the nation's central bank into a central economic planner. She has concerns, both prudential and philosophical, about the transformation of the Fed in ways that erase the distinction between monetary policy, which is the Fed's proper business, and fiscal policy, which is inherently political. The basic interest rate -- i.e., the federal funds rate minus the inflation rate -- was negative during about 40 percent of the disastrous 1970s and the 2000s, which ended disastrously. Because today's rate is negative, the Fed's stimulus repertoire is reduced to "quantitative easing." That phrase, which is how government speaks when trying not to be understood, means printing money.
The Problem with Obama's Polls
WASHINGTON -- Nuts. The Democratic National Convention is over. Watching Bill Clinton, Jean-Fran‡ois Kerry, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and all the other preposterosities -- not least being the widely under-depreciated Sandra Fluck -- I fell under a spell. I thought the convention would go on forever. There would be no need for horror movies, action movies, X-Treme sports, cockfights or soap operas. I could enjoy them all in the comfort of my own home -- all provided by the Democratic National Committee, safely watched over by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and probably select units of the North Carolina National Guard. Yet the convention ended, and now comes the surprise. President Obama actually received a bump in the polls, modest but a bump. CNN was up 6 points. Gallup was up 5 points. ABC News/Washington Post was up 1, and so it went until I came across something called SurveyUSA/Civitas. That poll had Mitt Romney up by 10 points, but I do not know who they were polling or why. Possibly they were pulling our leg.
You Can Like Movies and Still Hate Jane Fonda
Those of us who are conservatives tend to be dismissive of the popular arts. We say, and with good reason I'd argue, that music has been going downhill since the days when composers and lyricists named Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Berlin, Loesser, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Hart, Mercer and Fields, were writing the songs; people named Astaire, Rogers, Kelly and O'Connor, were dancing to them; and folks named Crosby, Sinatra, Fitzgerald and Stafford, were singing them.
The Brass Standard
Politics takes a lot of brass. And Bill Clinton is a master politician. His rousing speech at the Democrats' convention told the delegates that Republicans "want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place." That is world class brass. Bill Clinton's own administration, more than any other, promoted an unsustainable housing boom, which eventually and inevitably led to a housing bust that brought down the whole American economy. Behind all the complex financial processes that reached to Wall Street and beyond, there is one fundamental fact: many people stopped making their mortgage payments.