Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
This Week's MSM Bias Award Goes to George Stephanopoulos
We've been dealing with liberal media bias for years, but George Stephanopoulos' performance in the Republican presidential debate Saturday night in New Hampshire was particularly egregious. In many of these MSM-moderated debates, liberal moderators have tried to stir up personal fights between candidates, which diverts our focus from more important issues and, before national television audiences, shifts attention far away from Barack Obama and his disastrous agenda. Yes, these are debates among Republicans and designed to bring out distinctions among the candidates, but it should be up to the candidates to initiate and define those distinctions, and it is improper for the moderators to continually steer the debate away from substance and into the personal. With the moderators constantly stirring up catfights, liberal ends are served, both in placing Republican candidates in the worst light and in creating the illusion that their primary differences are with one another rather than Obama.
The Cruelest Cuts
On January 3rd, President Obama released his vision for military expenditures going forward. It is a plan that calls for reducing troop strength by tens of thousands because, Mr. Obama contends, "we've succeeded in defending our nation, taking the fight to our enemies, reducing the number of Americans in harm's way, and we've restored America's global leadership." An integral part of the new strategy? Abandoning the capability to fight two major ground wars simultaneously. "Yes, our military will be leaner, said the president, "but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats." Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, cut right through the rhetoric. "This is a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America," he contended. "The president has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense."
The Threat
LISBON, Portugal -- When the Republican presidential candidates tire of bashing each other, perhaps they will start addressing the expansion of radical Islam. Only Rick Santorum raised the issue in last Saturday's debate in New Hampshire. Next door in Spain, two new satellite TV stations recently signed on. They won't be airing "Judge Judy," but instead are broadcasting Islamic theology and political propaganda. It was not coincidental that the launch of Islamic TV in Spain coincided with Christmas. One of the early broadcasts featured a story, from Islam's perspective, on the Virgin Mary and the birth of Jesus. Not surprisingly, it differs significantly from the biblical account with which even secular Americans are familiar.
Family History Haunts Romney
At the 757th Republican debate over the weekend, Newt Gingrich zinged Mitt Romney for attempting to portray his decision to forego a re-election race in Massachusetts as reluctance to become a lifetime politician. " . . . Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?" Gingrich taunted, observing that Romney's poll numbers were dropping in 2006, and he was eyeing a presidential run, which he did indeed make in 2008. True enough. Romney's explanation was transparently self-serving and contrived. That said, Romney cannot hope to compete in the phoniness league Newt Gingrich belongs to. At that level of play, candidates dare to suggest that they take huge retainers from Freddie Mac in order to offer advice "as a historian," and commit serial adultery because "partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."
Monday, January 9, 2012
Congress in 2011: Pros and Cons
It's hardly news to say that the American people are fed up with Congress. Public disapproval of the legislative branch is practically as old as the country itself. But lawmakers seemed to reach a new low in 2011. One Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed that one out of every three Americans considered the first session of the 112th Congress to "below average." Another 42 percent said it was "one of the worst" in the institution's 222-year history. A poll by CNN, meanwhile, found that only 41 percent think their representative should be re-elected -- the first time that figure had dropped below 50 percent.
Still the Land of the Free?
There seem to be two kinds of Americans. There are those who wish this nation could once again be what it used to be, a beacon for those who cherished freedom and liberty. Then there are those who look at America and wish it could be more like Cuba, of all places. Or if not Cuba, perhaps Spain or Mexico or Venezuela, with maybe just a smidgen of Iran or Egypt or the West Bank tossed in, and a dash of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In short, they prefer a swamp to a melting pot.
A 'Referendum' on Romney
SALEM, N.H. -- Mitt Romney has been thought for months to have the New Hampshire primary in the bag. But one vote he didn't have locked up until Wednesday was that of Steve Rowe, a Vietnam-era veteran who spent much of the 1970s aboard the USS Saratoga, a US Navy supercarrier. Like a lot of New Hampshire residents, Rowe headed into the final week before the presidential primary still unsure whom to support. It was only the endorsement of another Navy vet -- US Senator John McCain, the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee -- that moved Rowe into the Romney camp. Rowe showed up early Thursday morning, camera in hand, for a Romney town hall meeting at the Boys and Girls Club here. It wasn't the former Massachusetts governor he wanted a picture of, but the former war hero. "Now that McCain's behind Romney, he'll pull a lot of votes from people like me," Rowe predicted.
The Weakness That Saps the Strength of GOP Candidates
A presidential campaign exposes candidates' strengths and weaknesses. The strengths they're eager to tell you about. So let's look at the weaknesses. Start with Rick Santorum, whose poll numbers in New Hampshire and South Carolina have been surging since (by last count) he lost the Iowa caucuses by the Chinese lucky number of 8 votes. Santorum's weakness is that he can't resist concentrating on peripheral issues. The prime example is his leadership in 2005 in getting the Senate summoned into voting for a law preventing the removal of life support for Terri Schiavo.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
The Redistributionist Behemoth
WASHINGTON -- Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today's redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself. Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society's primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage. The left's centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth -- to decrease inequality by increasing government's redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of -- the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
My Brother's Valuable Life
How does one measure whether a life was a success, or a failure? Some would measure it by recognition, that is, how many knew the person's name. For others, the measure of a successful life would be the amount of wealth accumulated, or possessions held. Still others would say a life was successful if the person made a major contribution to society -- in medicine, sports, politics, or the arts. By that standard my brother, Marshall Stephen Thomas, who died January 5, was a failure. If, however, your standard for a successful life is how that life positively touched others, then my brother's life was a resounding success.
The GOP Needs a Bolder Growth Message
Message to my fellow conservatives: Please don't blame the mainstream media for the improvement in jobs, unemployment and economic growth. Reporters are not making this up. The economy is better. It's going to give President Obama a leg up on the election. GOP beware, and come to your senses. Take Friday's jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Non-farm payrolls gained 200,000, and the unemployment rate slipped to 8.5 percent from 8.7 percent. It may well be that a seasonal quirk added 42,000 messengers and couriers to the totals, but that will be lost in the headline reporting. It will be given back next month. It's inconsequential to the overall story. Likewise, a normal labor participation rate would yield much higher unemployment. But that's academic.
Political Incorrectness, 2013
Apparently the Obama family holiday in the islands will run us taxpayers $4,113,038, and that's not counting Sno-cones, leis, surf board rentals and assorted Hawaiian souvenirs. Still, it's hard to begrudge the man his vacation. After all, for months now, it's been one damn fund-raiser after another, broken up only by a daily round of golf and an hourly excoriation of Republican congressmen. A schedule like that can take it out of anyone.
From The Comedy Store
Hollywood firefighters put out fifty-two car fires that erupted in driveways the week after Christmas. No driveway was safe. It ended when the mayor ordered everyone in L.A. to take the red paper ribbon and bow off their new electric car before they turn the key.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Obama's Motto
President Obama is calling for dramatic defense cuts that could threaten our national survival while obstructing structural reforms to our entitlement programs that are essential for our national financial survival. It just doesn't get much worse than this. President George W. Bush attempted in good faith to reform Social Security, and Democrats savaged him. Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a comprehensive financial plan that would, as painlessly as possible, restore national fiscal sanity, and Obama and his Democrats have misrepresented the plan (saying it would end Medicare) and used class warfare and fear-mongering to kill it in the cradle.
Strategic Capitulation
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military had better get ready to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. That's the bottom line of the so-called "new strategic guidance" issued this week by President Barack Obama during a brief visit to the Pentagon. Flanked by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama proudly proclaimed to allies and adversaries alike that the United States is heading toward a much less expensive, far smaller and ultimately less capable military than we've had since before World War II. Titled "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense," the 16-page document is the result of a "fundamental review" ordered by the White House in April. It purports to provide a strategic framework for addressing present and future threats to the United States and the means of protecting the nation from them now that the "tide of war" in Iraq and Afghanistan is receding. It doesn't live up to the hype.
Santorum vs. the Meat Grinder
For many months, the liberal media elite has made no secret that in its mind the field of Republican presidential candidates includes Mitt Romney and a collection of clowns. Clearly, Romney is the opponent that Barack Obama and the liberal establishment want nominated. Journalists have mercilessly savaged every single conservative alternative to Romney who's ascended to the top of the polls: Palin, Bachman, Cain, Perry and Gingrich. It's too bad for them that the results from the Iowa caucuses threw off their bold predictions that the Romney juggernaut would achieve lift off in Des Moines, Iowa. Yet Romney won by only eight votes over, surprising, Rick Santorum. This means one thing only: Senator, step up to the guillotine.
Dinner With Terrorists
If you were running the Illinois Humanities Council and a famous terrorist offered to help in your fundraising drive, what would you do? If you said, "slam down the phone" or something to that effect, it just shows how remote you are from the sensibilities of the Obama age. Because, in fact, when Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers offered to auction "dinner for six" at their house, the IHC cheerfully accepted. Ayers and Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and early '70s. They set off bombs at the New York police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon. In 1970, the group blew up the Park police station in San Francisco, killing Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell, a 45-year-old father of two and wounding eight others. The San Francisco Police Association has claimed, as recently as 2009, that "There are irrefutable and compelling reasons to believe that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn ... are largely responsible for the bombing of Park Police Station."
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: He Kept His Eyes on the Prize
Informed in 1960 that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Senior would be voting for the Protestant Richard Nixon, Sen. Jack Kennedy smiled and said: "We all have fathers." It was typical of his wit and grace. Kennedy's own father was a notorious anti-Semite and appeaser. Young Jack would never repudiate Old Joe, or fail to cash Joe's hefty checks. Kennedy would win that election and go on to present Congress with the most far-reaching civil rights legislation in a century. We celebrate this month the life and legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King, Junior. He kept his eyes on the prize: civil rights for millions of black Americans suffering under unjust Jim Crow laws.
An Imperial Sham
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a man whose political success is largely attributable to the aura of befuddled incompetence he uses to disarm his adversaries, was a failed Watergate baby. In 1974, a slew of often sanctimonious and very liberal Democratic politicians rode the tide of understandable national disgust with Richard Nixon to Congress. Then the lieutenant governor of Nevada, Reid ran for the U.S. Senate, hoping to tie his opponent to the "imperial presidency" that had allegedly sprung up ex nihilo under Nixon.
Goodbye, Momma
My mother died this week. Death is never easy to accept, much less embrace, but it taught me that the end of life need not be frightening. She lived 90 years -- the last three of them in my home -- healthy, independent and happy, despite a life that others might have regarded as difficult, if not tragic. She was born Velma Lou McKenna in Sheridan, Wyo., in 1921. Her mother's family were pioneers who came west by covered wagon. Her father was the son of Irish immigrants and left his wife and four small children to find gold in Alaska -- and never returned.