Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Romney Buoyed by Good Luck -- and Hard Experience
Napoleon is supposed to have said that the quality he most valued in his generals was luck. In the current race for the Republican presidential nomination, Napoleon's favorite would clearly be Mitt Romney. One lucky break after another has helped Romney maintain front-runner status or something close to it in polls of Republican primary voters and caucus-goers. And he needed luck to rebound from his unsuccessful run in 2008.
Barack Obama, Drug Warrior
President Barack Obama has become quite the drug warrior. Last month, his Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives issued a memo that stated that it is unlawful for anyone with a state-issued medical marijuana card to possess a gun or ammunition. This month, four U.S. attorneys in California announced that they are escalating prosecution of medical marijuana clubs by going after the assets of their landlords and property owners.
Cain the Tax-Code Killer
Herman Cain is the only GOP presidential candidate who wants to kill the tax code. That's right. Put a knife in it. Junk the entire system. And people are cheering as he rises in the polls in his quest for the nomination. Cain's 9-9-9 plan is not perfect. But then again, the good should never be the enemy of the perfect. Rep. Paul Ryan gives the plan a thumbs-up. Supply-side mentor Art Laffer tells me it would be "far, far better than the current system." And Chris Chocola, president of the free-market Club for Growth, calls it "a truly revolutionary tax reform that would amount to a massive job-creating tax cut on investments, savings and income."
From The Comedy Store
Columbus Day was marked with New York parades as all government offices were closed. The financial markets were open and the Dow went up three hundred points. It is the latest proof that a government shutdown could be the solution to all our problems.
Occupying Wall Street and My Brain
I have heard that rich leftwing knuckleheads are paying some of the folks camping out on Wall Street and in financial districts around the country. At first, it only amused me to think that people who refuse to be paid minimum wage to flip burgers, which is at least a job that can lead to better jobs and is understood by everyone to be an actual job, were quite willing to be paid a minimum wage to stand around in filthy clothes and defecate on the sidewalk. As a career, I suppose it offers certain advantages; namely the freedom not to shower, show up at a given time or deal with those pesky dry cleaners. On the other hand, I had always assumed that even liberal arts majors generally aspire to become something other than a bum.
Hubris 4, Bosox 3
God's in his heaven, the Boston Red Sox aren't in the World Series, and all's right with the world once again. The natural order of the universe, broken after the Bosox won not one but two World Series in the last decade, has been restored. It kind of revives one's faith. In tragedy. No, it wasn't easy to set things right. It took some of the highest-paid talent in the major leagues for the Red Sox to bumble their way out of the American League playoffs this year, but somehow, against all odds, they managed it.
Hollywood Versus Emilio Estevez
Say the name Emilio Estevez and most people think of the "Brat Pack," when he was a star in popular '80s youth movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire," or maybe the hockey coach in the "Mighty Ducks" films. Compared to his brother Charlie Sheen, he's become the quiet, stable brother. But with his new movie "The Way," Estevez comes into his own as a producer, writer, and director, telling a beautiful story about death, faith and family. A father -- played by his own father, Martin Sheen -- mourns the loss of his son by walking for months on the 500-mile "camino" to the shrine of St. James in Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.
A Colorblind America
Could anyone have imagined even a few years ago that the 2012 U.S. presidential race might end up as a contest between two black candidates? I certainly couldn't have. Yet, with Republican candidate Herman Cain's recent surge in popularity, the possibility is there. This says a great deal about race in America -- all of it good. In many respects, Herman Cain's advance in the Republican primary contest is more striking than Barack Obama's rise in 2008. Unlike Obama, whose father was African and who was raised largely in Hawaii by his white grandparents, Cain is a product of the segregated South.
Obama Will Not Be Deterred
If it's not narcissism, what explains President Obama's habit of demanding something against the people's will, being rejected, refusing to take no for an answer and berating the public he is pretending to represent? We saw it over and over with Obamacare. By now, it's part of our national lore that he delivered some 54 speeches to sell the public on his scheme yet never made a dent in the public approval numbers. Truth be told, in the end he gave far more than 54.
Obama's Weakness Invited Iran's Plot
If the Iranian government doesn't frighten you, you haven't been paying attention. The regime in Iran has been killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years and has sworn countless times in the past 30 years to preside over the destruction of the United States. If it wasn't for a lucky break, Washington D.C., this autumn, would have been the scene of a massive explosion detonated at a high-end restaurant, with scores and perhaps hundreds killed and maimed. The principal target of this terror attack was to be the Saudi ambassador to the United States, but as one of the plotters told another during the planning: "They want that guy (the ambassador) done (killed), if the hundred go with him f**k 'em." The FBI suggests that several U.S. senators are also known to frequent the restaurant.
Costs of the Occupiers
When fiscally conservative tea party activists held protests over the past two years, they filed for all the required permits and paid for their own power. Occupy Boston, by contrast, neither sought nor obtained any proper permits at any level, according to the Boston Globe. Instead, city and park officials have been cowed into providing them gratis electricity and camp space lest there be "conflict." Many of these occupiers are primarily occupied as paid rent-a-mobsters for unions, left-wing think tanks and the radical Working Families Party. While one collective hand soaks the taxpayers, the other hand is busy soliciting free stuff. Occupy Los Angeles activists took to Skype on their laptops to solicit donations of iPhones and iPads.
The Scapegoat Strategy
WASHINGTON -- What do you do if you can't run on your record -- on 9 percent unemployment, stagnant growth and ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see? How to run when you are asked whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago and you are compelled to answer no? Play the outsider. Declare yourself the underdog. Denounce Washington as if the electorate hasn't noticed that you've been in charge of it for nearly three years. But above all: Find villains.
At Last, Fun on the Hustings
Some of the Republican candidates wanted to audition for Comedy Central the other night, aiming their one-liners at Herman Cain. But the pizza man is no joke. Cain is able, you might say. If his rivals are not taking him seriously, they should. Everyone else is. Stand-up comedy is for professionals, and the comedy candidates, particularly Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann, showed us why. Cain was the early target for his 9-9-9 tax reform scheme; he would tax personal income at 9 percent, and enact a national income tax of 9 percent and a corporate income tax of 9 percent.
The Diminishing Returns of Reasonableness
Should we bomb Iran for plotting to blow up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in order to assassinate the Saudi ambassador? Probably not. Should Iran be worried that we might? Absolutely. And yet, within hours of the Justice Department charging elements within the Iranian government (the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) of scheming to commit an act of war against us, the administration made it clear that it wanted a diplomatic response to the foiled scheme. A Pentagon spokesman explained: "The U.S. military has longstanding concerns about Iran's malign influence in the region. But with respect to this case, it is a judicial and diplomatic issue." Never mind that the "region" in this instance just happened to be two miles from the White House.
Fact vs. Fiction
The line between fact and fiction in politics can be blurry. I'm reminded of that every time I see still another strange quote of Sarah Palin's ("I can see Russia from my house!") that was actually spoken by her talented mimic, Tina Fey. It's another proof that, as the neurologists tell us, the centers of memory and imagination are closely related in the human brain. Psychologists call it the Misinformation Effect, and there's a lot of it going around. There always is as an election year approaches.
Protests, Justice and Fruit Flies
WASHINGTON -- Official Washington -- meaning the Obama administration, fellow travelers in Congress and their allies in the so-called mainstream media -- here's a quick peek at some recent events, the lead stories they generated and the response by the O-Team. Let me know if you think I'm wrong, but it looks to me as if they have the collective attention span of a fruit fly. For three weeks, several hundred mostly young, media-savvy protesters billing themselves as "occupiers" have been encamped at a small Manhattan park not far from Wall Street. In a pale shadow of what has taken place in Greece, England and Portugal, the New York protesters have tried to "invade" banks, investment houses and the residences of "wealthy Americans" to stage '60s-style sit-ins. Their stated goals are to "stop the machine," "save Social Security," "stop the war" and "bring down the system."
Herman Cain to Blacks: Divorce the Democratic Party
What to do about Herman Cain? This question goes not to the Republican Party, where "establishment" candidates like Mitt Romney privately dismiss Cain as lacking the experience, gravitas and resources to beat President Barack Obama and then to soundly govern the country. Herman Cain is not going to be the GOP nominee.
Wingless, Bloodsucking and Parasitic: Meet the Flea Party!
So far, the only major accomplishment of the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is that they have finally put an end to their previous initiative, "Occupy Our Mothers' Basements." Oddly enough for such a respectable-looking group -- a mixture of adolescents looking for a cause, public sector union members, drug dealers, criminals, teenage runaways, people who have been at every protest since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Andrea Dworkin look-alikes, people 95 percent of whose hair is concentrated in their ponytails and other average Democrats -- they can't even explain what they're protesting.
Congress, Governors Nix Obama's High-speed Trains
Dead. Kaput. Through. Finished. Washed up. Gone-zo. That, I think, is a fair description of the Obama administration's attempt to build high-speed rail lines across America. It hasn't failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats' February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects. The Democratic Congress appropriated another $2.5 billion.
Politics and Religion 2012 Version
It was said of Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, that if he won the 1928 presidential election he would take orders from the Vatican and not uphold the Constitution. John F. Kennedy famously confronted that anti-Catholic prejudice in a 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Kennedy said in part, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote..."