Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Inconvenient Truth: CO2 Disconnect With Global Temps Continues!
With climate change a huge issue this election season, we should review the latest facts on the matter. In the In this chart, CO2 continues its rise. The global temperatures, however, have not only leveled off, they have begun to fall. This result is in line with natural climate cycle theory. If the admission to the school of your choice -- be it Cornell, or lets say Columbia or Harvard -- depended on you answering this question: "Given the facts presented in the chart above, is CO2 driving the Earth's temperature?" How would you answer it?
Romney Didn't Make the Sale
Did Mitt Romney make the economic sale at the Republican National Convention? Did he convince people who are living at the margin or unemployed and discouraged that he has the answers to the economy? Frankly, I don't think so. I do not understand why he did not talk about his 20 percent across-the-board personal tax cut plan that would help the middle class enormously. He never mentioned it, and he went into no detail on the business tax cut plan. This plan is terrific for competition and global investment. He talked about a jobs tour. I frankly have no idea what a "jobs tour" is. *I do know that 23 million Americans need jobs.* I don't know that they need a president on a jobs tour to inspect them.
Bye, Bye, Birdbrain
I can surely understand why Missouri's Republican candidate for the Senate, Todd Akin, assumed that a prerequisite for holding the office was stupidity. After all, his opponent, Claire McCaskill (D), is a certified numbskull. But even she isn't stupid enough to suggest that a rape victim has the natural ability to not get pregnant. With my luck, if I had taken high school biology and tried to get my answers off someone else's test paper, Akin would have been the guy sitting next to me. In response to the multiple choice question regarding a human's gestation period being (a) one week, (b) one month, (c) nine months or (d) three years, Todd and I would probably have taken our chances with (d) if only because neither of us would have had any idea what "gestation" meant.
From The Comedy Store
The TSA were at a Paul Ryan event to scan Republicans at The Villages in Florida. It's a huge senior citizen community. TSA statistics show that people with knee and hip replacements pose the greatest threat to U.S. security since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hurricanes and Climate Change
Hurricanes have become a focal point in the climate change debate. The assertion that every problematic storm is a sign of global warming is absurd. However, the counter argument that storms are less than what they actually are is incorrect as well. While it seems to be a knee jerk reaction to the falsehoods generated by AGW propagandists, it is not helpful in the AGW debate. Hurricane Irene was a case in point. The left used the storm as a pin-up for global warming, but they are most likely unaware of what occurred in the 1950's. The pattern of the 1950's, with a cold Pacific and warm Atlantic, has been a mainstay of my overall pattern ideas since 2007. Eight MAJOR hurricanes struck the East Coast in the 1950's from the Carolinas North.
Romney Met the Test
In case you were wondering, Fox News Channel won the ratings war for the 10-11 pm slot Wednesday night when Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez and Paul Ryan delivered their speeches. Fox, according to Deadline.com, pulled a high of 8.2 million viewers during the hour which not only led the other cable news networks, but led all networks. NBC was second overall with 4.14 million; ABC had 2.85 million; CBS was fourth with 2.55 million viewers. MSNBC edged out CNN with 1.44 million viewers to 1.34 million. I did the addition for you: 20.5 million viewers total. That's down about 17 million from Sarah Palin's speech four years ago. We'll have to wait and see if the Dems' convention suffers similar drop-off.
Only in America
MY LIVING ROOM COUCH -- It was the political convention that almost wasn't. In the run-up to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Democrats and their fellow travelers in the so-called mainstream media claimed that the GOP was waging a "war against women," depicted Mitt Romney as a heartless felon responsible for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance and blasted Romney for choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate. They then tried to define Ryan as a heartless ideologue who would eliminate Medicare and throw grandmothers off a cliff. And then a tropical storm-turned-hurricane named Isaac threatened to blow the entire convention away. As Isaac churned through the Gulf of Mexico, Republican leaders and the Romney campaign revised the entire convention schedule and postponed the proceedings by 24 hours. That wasn't good enough for the potentates of the press. The GOP was castigated for going ahead with its convention while "a terrible storm" was "causing so much death and destruction." We were reminded repeatedly that Isaac had hit the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines on "the seventh anniversary of Katrina." One commentator, a former ABC and PBS political director, reporting for Yahoo News from the convention hall, said Republicans "are happy to have a party with black people drowning."
Liberal Media Brings Out the Hockey Pucks
In 2004, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then a popular figure in the Republican Party, gave an exciting, upbeat and surprisingly funny speech at the GOP convention. He covered a lot of territory: the story of how he came to America, how he became a Republican after listening to Richard Nixon, and other highlights of his life story. Afterwards, then-CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported that Schwarzenegger "slapped John Kerry around like a hockey puck." The only problem: Schwarzenegger never mentioned John Kerry, not even once. I bring it up because it's hardly news that much of the press likes to report the convention as they want it to be rather than as it is.
The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words
Thumper the Rabbit's parents always taught him, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." If the left's self-appointed Omniscient Diviners of True Meaning have their way, conservatives in the public square won't be left with anything at all to say. Ever. It's a treacherous business exercising your freedom of speech in the age of Obama. As a public service, I present to you: "The 2012 Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words." Decoder rings, activate! --Angry. On the campaign trail this summer, President Obama has become -- in the words of the mainstream Associated Press -- more "aggressive." But don't you dare call him "angry." According to MSNBC host Toure, that's racist!
Selling Sex and Candy?
I watch some commercials on television and am amazed that the corporate sponsor really signed off on the product. Think about the expressions on the faces of the dark suits in the executive boardroom when they were presented with some of the commercials running on TV right now. Take Jack in the Box. "Jack Box," the fast-food chain's mascot -- a man wearing what looks like a Ping-Pong-ball head or a snowman getup with a clown hat -- is sitting playing a game much like Scrabble with a beautiful blonde. He lays out the nonword "swavory," selling a waffle breakfast sandwich for having savory sausage and sweet maple waffles. The blonde then lays on the board letters reading "No Nookie." Jack says, "What's that supposed to ... ? Oh." Is sexual slang really necessary to sell breakfast sandwiches during prime time? Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn had this reaction to Jack's misfortune: "The resulting image in my mind's eye is cricky -- a combination of creepy and icky."
The Ryan Vision: Let's Get This Done
The Democrats and their mainstream media cheering section can huff and puff at Paul Ryan's convention speech, but they can't blow his house down. It was built on a solid foundation. So powerful was the speech that the liberal establishment is reduced to wailing about alleged lies the speech contained -- dishonest and easily refuted allegations. Ryan delivered a substantive indictment of the Obama administration's failed record and a content-rich, realistic plan for putting this nation back on track to economic growth and fiscal recovery, a plan that includes "protecting and strengthening" Medicare, not "raiding" it. Don't listen to the naysayers. Ryan began with a humble acceptance of his "calling" and "duty" to help restore America. His message was positive. "I know we can do this," he said, not dwelling on the malaise in which Obama's disastrous policies have placed us but offering a specific blueprint to deliver us from this quicksand.
The 'Deterrence Works' Fantasy
WASHINGTON -- There are few foreign-policy positions more silly than the assertion without context that "deterrence works." It is like saying air power works. Well, it worked for Kosovo; it didn't work over North Vietnam. It's like saying city-bombing works. It worked in Japan 1945 (Tokyo through Nagasaki). It didn't in the London blitz. The idea that some military technique "works" is meaningless. It depends on the time, the circumstances, the nature of the adversaries. The longbow worked for Henry V. At El Alamein, however, Montgomery chose tanks.
Democrats, Republicans and Race
Among the most stirring moments in an effective convention came during Condoleeza Rice's speech. She delivered (beautifully) a number of well-chosen one-liners that hit bull's-eyes with Republicans and conservatives, warning, for example, that "when a nation loses control of its finances, it eventually loses control of its destiny." She touched on the problem of failing schools and the challenge they represent to the American dream. "The crisis in K-12 education is a threat to the very fabric of who we are," she said, to thumping agreement. But when she mentioned her own story, the hall erupted. "A little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham. The segregated city of the south where her parents cannot take her to a movie theater or to restaurants, but they have convinced her that even if she cannot have a hamburger at Woolworths, she can be the president of the United States if she wanted to be and she becomes the secretary of state."
Paul Ryan's Night
Fifteen thousand reporters are here all watching the same thing, writing about the same thing, and Tweeting the same thing. Walking through the huge Tampa Convention Center (where THE Convention is not being held; that is in a nearby building called the Tampa Times Forum) which houses most of those reporters you could see room after room filled with row after row of reporter after reporter trying to tease out the hidden meaning of how long it took for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to mention Mitt Romney's name in his keynote address on Tuesday night.
Let's Agree to Win
We can win in November with ease. All Mitt Romney and Republicans need to do is follow the GOP's script from the historic midterm elections of 2010. In case you've forgotten, 2010 wasn't just a Republican wave. It was a tsunami. The GOP gained 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate, plus they picked up five governorships and a record 680 seats in state legislatures. Republicans won in every corner of America for one important reason -- the election was about the economy, not social issues. Independents and Democrats swung to the GOP because they had lost their jobs, lost their houses and had already lost hope in President Obama's ability to fix anything bigger than a parking ticket in Chicago.
Pro-Choice Media Decides Abortion Is THE Issue -- Therefore, It Is
Abortion, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, fails to make the cut among the top 10 issues important to voters. Yet, because of the GOP opposition to abortion, the mainscream media insist that Republicans suffer from a voter "gender gap," with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney down 8 percentage points among women. Fifty percent of men support Romney, but only 42 percent of women do so. Funny, just two years ago in the 2010 off-year elections, Republicans took the female vote for the first time in nearly 30 years. There are big differences in the way *married* women vote versus unmarried women. Married women vote Republican, as do their husbands.
Big Boy (and Girl) Night
TAMPA, Fla. -- The delayed opening of the Republican National Convention worked to the advantage of the GOP by both heightening anticipation and forcing the elimination of extraneous speakers, which there are always too many of at these things. Ann Romney kicked off her primetime address wearing a bright red dress, Ronald Reagan's favorite color and one occasionally worn by his wife, Nancy. Ann Romney immediately addressed one of the main criticisms Democrats have leveled against her husband: that he's an out-of-touch rich guy who doesn't understand the struggles of the middle class and the poor.
Romney Pins Hopes on Being Different From Obama
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Republicans who are assembled here have been told time and time again that Barack Obama's great advantage over Mitt Romney is likability. And many of the 15,000 or so journalists who endured the gusts of rain on Monday and groaned in the sun on the 1.5-mile walk from the nearest parking lot to the metal detectors outside the convention press center have been writing and soundbiting that the chief task of the Romney campaign is to introduce Romney's personal background and character to the public to improve his favorability ratings. Both talking points are true, but only (in an old journalistic phrase) up to a point. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll, for example, reported that when asked which of the two candidates was more likable, 61 percent picked Obama and only 27 percent said Romney. That looks like a huge advantage.