Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
AP Textbook Angst
After several cries of pain from my 16-year-old son, I finally got around to reading his Advanced Placement world history textbook. Not a way to spend a placid weekend. Paging through the "World Civilizations: The Global Experience" by Peter N. Stearns et al. is flabbergasting. The authors lean so far backward to be neutral about various cultures and nations that the text fails utterly as reliable history.
Spending Debate Creates an Opportunity for Romney
Here's a simple suggestion for Mitt Romney: Admit that the Democrats have a point. Right before the Memorial Day weekend, Washington was consumed by a debate over how much Barack Obama has spent as president, and it looks like it's picking up again. Romney says that he'll "lead us out of this debt and spending inferno" ignited by Obama. The president's defenders say, in effect, "What inferno?" White House Press Secretary Jay Carney scolded reporters last week not to "buy into the b.s. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness."
Our Nation's Future
Our nation is rapidly approaching a point from which there's little chance to avoid a financial collapse. The heart of our problem can be seen as a tragedy of the commons. That's a set of circumstances when something is commonly owned and individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest produce a set of results that's inimical to everyone's long-term interest. Let's look at an example of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon and then apply it to our national problem.
Egg on Face(book)
There will be investigations and already there are lawsuits over the rollout of Facebook's overhyped IPO last week, but no investigation is necessary into the reason for the outrage over the stock's rapid fall. It's called human nature. It is the same characteristic that causes people to believe against staggering odds that they can win the lottery, or score big in Atlantic City or discover a fool-proof "system" for playing the stock market. It is the familiar get-rich-quick notion that somehow one can bypass hard work, sound financial planning and win The Big One, retiring to a life of ease.
'Meaningful Work'
"Education" is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society. The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.
Obama's Bain Attacks Could Backfire
The ham-handed Barack Obama campaign attack ads on Mitt Romney's former firm Bain Capital have drawn a lot of ire from other Democrats. And not just because they were sloppily fact-checked (the ads hit Romney for layoffs long after he left Bain) and because a leading Obama money bundler is a Bain executive himself. Chiming in with various degrees of disapproval were Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker ("nauseating"), former Rep. Harold Ford, Obama car czar Steven Rattner, Sen. Mark Warner and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
Memorial Day - 2012
[This is the 11th anniversary of this edition of Mullings which was first written for Memorial Day, 2001 -- four months before 9/11. Our son, Reed, was a member of the team in charge of President George W. Bush's visit to Arlington Memorial Cemetery on that day.]
The Nutty Things Liberals Say
I know that those on the Left pride themselves not only on their compassion and on holding the deed to the moral high ground, but also to having brains so enormous that they can barely make it through doorways. Well, it ain't necessarily so. For instance, while speaking at Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Eric Holder said this to his host: "Thank you for your partnership, your friendship and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill."
When 'Minority' Is a Trick of Definition
When the Census Bureau this month issued a press release headlined "Most Children Younger Than Age 1 are Minorities," the media snapped to attention. News outlets nationwide covered the announcement, hailing it as a "historic demographic milestone" (CNN), as the "dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority" (Washington Post), and as an "important turning point for the nation" (McClatchy) that would "starkly ... change the face of America's next generations" (Time).
A Liberal Squeeze Play
In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism's first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that." TR was as mistaken about Holmes' spine as are various progressives today about Chief Justice John Roberts'.
Time to Start Playing Offense
Recently, I wrote a piece in which I pleaded with Mitt Romney to toss away his copy of the Marquis of Queensbury rules and to stop playing defense in his battle with Obama and his gang of dirty tricksters. We saw what happened to John McCain when he tried to remain above the fray and prohibit his supporters from even mentioning Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Valerie Jarrett and Van Jones, and we don't need a repeat of his patty cake campaign.
From The Comedy Store
Robert Downey Jr. got a fifty million dollar payout for The Avengers. Like President Obama, he has evolved. Early in his career he was a liberal, after Iron Man he became a moderate, and as soon as his check for the Avengers cleared, he came out for states' rights and the flat tax.