Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Back to School - 2012
It's raining granddaughters in Mullville. The newest was born about two months ago -- the Lad's & Ladette's second. This column, first written, in 2001, has held up through the years. Enjoy. * * * The children of America have gone back to school. And, in nearly every household, there is at least one person who is standing over the kitchen sink in tears, wondering where the years have gone. I understand.
Obama's (Un)American Auto Bailout
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Cue "Fanfare for the Common Man" and rev up the Government Motors engines. Wednesday is Great American Auto Bailout Day at the Democratic National Convention. Party propagandists have prepared a prime-time-ready film touting the "rescue's" benefits for American workers. UAW President Bob King will sing the savior-in-chief's praises. But like all of the economic success stories manufactured by the White House, the $85 billion government handout is a big fat farce. "I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back," Obama bragged on the campaign trail. Here's the inconvenient story they won't tell you: GM is once again flirting with bankruptcy despite massive government purchases propping up its sales figures. GM stock is rock-bottom. Losses continue to be revised in the wrong direction. According to The Detroit News, "The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast."
Biden's the Gaffe King, Not Ryan
Within minutes of Paul Ryan concluding his convention speech in Tampa, Fla., the media attacks were launched. Why, the man is loose with the facts! He only spews vitriol and nonsense. Democratic National Convention Political Director Patrick Gaspard quickly sent out a fundraising appeal: "Paul Ryan's speech to the Republican Convention tonight wasn't grounded in reality." It was impossible to tell where the Democratic Party ended and the "news" media began. Liberal arrogance often reveals itself in the smug certitude that its globe-encompassing enlightenment trumps all. For decades, the liberal media have ripped conservatives as hopelessly ignorant. From Dan Quayle to Sarah Palin to Rick Perry to yes, Ronald Reagan, the exercise has always been the same: Find a gaffe, even just a perceived gaffe -- and pounce mercilessly. They attempt to ruin careers by shredding any sense that these conservative leaders could form a coherent sentence in English. *"That's how dumb he/she really is."*
Fraudulent Feminism vs. High School Football
Meritocracy is nowhere more manifest in modern America than on the high school football field. The boys who play the game know who their most courageous teammates are, and they just as readily recognize the fastest, the smartest and the hardest working. In the weeks of physical training and full-pad practices that precede their first game, they learn to admire each other's skills and trust each other's character. Having been through much together -- and having started with equal chances to prove themselves on the field -- they become a team. That is not what happened in Florida last Friday night, when South Plantation High fielded a girl as quarterback to run two carefully circumscribed plays.
The Question Nobody Wants to Answer
You have to feel a little sorry for Team Obama as they squirm to explain why the question "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is so unfair. After all, there is only one way to answer it and retain any credibility. Which is why Maryland's Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, when asked, responded, No, we're not. Within 24 hours, he reversed himself, by all accounts because the Obama campaign forced him to. I haven't checked the video to see if he was blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code as he did so. The idea that presidents "run" the economy is both ludicrous and fairly novel. Before the New Deal (which in my opinion prolonged the Great Depression), the notion that presidents should or could grow the economy was outlandish. But, as the historian H.W. Brands has argued, it was JFK who really cemented the idea that the president is the project manager for a team of technicians who create economic prosperity. "Most of the problems ... that we now face, are technical problems, are administrative problems," he explained, and should be kept as far away from partisan politics as possible.
What I Ask of Romney and Obama
The Republican Convention ended on the theme "Believe in America." That sounded nice, but it was just another platitude. Mitt Romney's speech was filled with platitudes: "We will honor America's democratic ideals. ... We're united to preserve liberty." Please. Liberals and conservatives have real differences. We should state them. America is going broke, and tough decisions must be made. To save our future, we must slow the growth of entitlements *and* military spending. Mitt Romney was silent about that.
The President as Planetary Policeman
If you don't count Clint Eastwood, whose rambling, Bob Newhartesque conversation with an empty chair included implicit criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rand Paul may have been the only speaker at the Republican National Convention last week who questioned his party's mindless militarism. The Kentucky senator said, "Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent." That mild rebuke -- which came, fittingly enough, from the son of the Texas congressman whose resistance to promiscuous interventionism distinguished him from the other contenders for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination -- was no match for the foreign policy vision endorsed by the rest of the speakers, which amounted to a full-throated declaration of war on tyrants throughout the world. This view of America as the righter of all wrongs is hard to reconcile with Republican promises of fiscal responsibility.
Upward Mobility Barriers
Let's pretend that we have the political guts to expand economic opportunities for people at the lower end of the economic spectrum. What vested interests should be attacked, and what economic regulations should be targeted for elimination? It doesn't take a lot of money to become a taxi owner-operator and earn more than $40,000 a year. One needs a car, an insurance policy and ancillary interior equipment to make a car a taxi. In New York City, to be a taxi owner you'd have to purchase a license -- called a medallion -- that in June 2012 cost $704,000. New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission restrictions that generate such a license price outlaw taxi ownership by people who don't have access to a $704,000 loan. By contrast, in Washington, D.C., the annual fee for a license to own a taxi is $125. I'll let you guess which city has more taxis per capita, cheaper fares and more black taxi ownership.
'Bait and Switch' Taxes
We have heard many times from President Barack Obama how he plans to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires," but not on the middle class. Apparently, if you don't happen to be a millionaire or billionaire, you don't have to worry. But the numbers say otherwise -- and say so big time. The actual tax increase plans being proposed by Obama do not start with people who have an income of a million dollars a year. They start with people with incomes of $250,000 and up. That is more than most people make, but it is far short of a million dollars, and miles away from a billion dollars. How many of the people who stand to get hit with Obama's higher tax rate plan are in fact either millionaires or billionaires?
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Budget
But didn't know to ask Frank J. Fleming for the answers.
Clinton Magic Cannot Obscure Obama Record
The Byzantine relations between President Obama and former President Bill Clinton could fill several psychology textbooks, providing juicy examples of passive aggression, older man/younger man competition, complex alliances (Hillary as secretary of state is the perfect embodiment of the maxim to "keep your friends close but your enemies closer"), and mutual interests. That the president needs Bill Clinton now to make his case to the country must be richly satisfying to the only American whose ego can compete with Barack H. Obama's. Let's recall that one of Obama's supposed triumphs in 2008 was defeating the vaunted Clinton machine. The Democratic Party's delirium for Obama supposedly obliterated the Clinton magic. After winning the South Carolina primary in January, Obama exulted that "we're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington. ... But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans ... around a higher purpose ... " Though he never tired (and still doesn't) of insulting George W. Bush, that barb wasn't aimed at him. It was for the Clintons.
Are You Better Off ...?
As the Democratic Party gathers in Charlotte, North Carolina this week to re-nominate Barack Obama, the big question Republicans are asking Americans to answer this week is: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? There is almost no metric that would allow a segment of the population to answer, "Yes." But, before we get into the wrangling of the coming three days, let's step back a bit.
War on Students: Chicago Teachers Union to Strike
Any academic instruction during the mayhem is prohibited by law.
Privileges and Responsibilities
My first political convention was in 1964 when Democrats convened in Atlantic City to nominate Lyndon Johnson for a full term as president. I was a young copyboy at the NBC News network bureau in Washington. We arrived from Washington aboard a chartered DC-3 plane that also carried the late anchor/reporter Frank McGee and his wife. Emotions were still raw from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy only nine months before. A floor battle over the seating of the delegation from Mississippi added to the drama and public interest. The "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party," which was integrated, demanded to replace the all-white elected delegates on the grounds that blacks had been excluded from voting in the Mississippi primaries. A compromise was reached and that convention marked the last time Democrats would accept segregated delegations.
Obama's Dreams
After reading Barack Obama's book "Dreams from My Father," it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth -- and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things. Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far left fringe during his life. As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people. There is no hint of the slightest curiosity on his part about other visions of the world that might be weighed against the vision he had seized upon.
After All, a Real Campaign
On with the campaign, then. And guess what. It's going to be a campaign after all, bearing no resemblance to the schizoid Republican effort of 2008, with John McCain (solid citizen, non-ripsnorter) selling good will and random platitudes, Sarah Palin selling mostly herself. Ugh. The memory belongs in a dark closet, with door closed and locked. A presidential campaign is not always a contest between ideas and philosophies. This one is. Just wait if you don't think so. Two different ideas about America are on display in speeches and ads: America as a land of freedom and opportunity vs. America as a placid sheepfold, run by the shepherds. The two notions have crossed paths before in campaigns but rarely so vividly, not to mention excitingly, as now. It's for two reasons.
Media Yawn at Obama Hurricane Reaction
Following a long track record of covering the President's non-response to natural disasters.
Time to Shelve the Conventions
TAMPA, Fla. - "There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the *gluteus maximus*, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell -- and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour." That was Henry Louis Mencken, writing in July 1924 about the Democratic National Convention that had adjourned a few days earlier at New York's Madison Square Garden. Never was a presidential convention more grueling. It lasted 16 days and went through 103 ballots before finally anointing John W. Davis, a former solicitor general and ambassador to Great Britain, as the Democrats' standard-bearer. Four months later Davis lost in a landslide to President Calvin Coolidge.
Inspiring but Not Slick, Romney Showed Right Stuff
The 40th Republican National Convention is now history, and political strategists and pundits are poring over the poll numbers to see whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are getting a post-convention bounce in what have been very closely divided polls. Romney's convention managers made some correct and some interesting decisions. First, don't relitigate 2008, as some conservatives would love to do. Romney and Ryan both acknowledged the hopes for change motivating so many erstwhile Barack Obama voters. They looked back on his record in office more in sorrow than in anger.