Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
American Meltdown: Two Revolts, Entirely Different Revolutionaries
America is undergoing a revolution. Two revolutions, to be exact. One is made up of hardworking families who believe that what matters -- or should matter -- are their good efforts, minimal government intrusion in their lives, and a fair but free enterprise system that incentivizes small businesses and doesn't countermand that incentive by imposing a burdensome tax liability. The other revolution is made up of people who believe that both government and those who are successful in life owe them something; that the United States should be a nation of equitable distribution, and not one of free enterprise. Sadly, the polling tells me that these two nations within one are meeting in the middle. They don't share beliefs, but they are sharing similar frustrations.
Pop Goes the Green Jobs Bubble
Before his American Jobs Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote Tuesday, President Barack Obama made a last-ditch speech to talk up his troubled bill. Not once did Obama mention "green jobs" -- his erstwhile jobs of the future. Smart move. Obama's 2009 $787 billion stimulus package included $500 million for training programs that were supposed to create new green jobs for thousands of middle-class Americans. Last month, however, the Department of Labor's inspector general conducted an audit that found that as of June 30 -- with one-third of the funds spent and more than 50,000 participants -- only 10 percent of trainees were placed in jobs. And only 1,336 participants, or 2 percent, had held jobs for six months or longer.
Cain's Moment
WASHINGTON -- As an observer on the national scene lo these many years, I have noted time and again that in a discussion of politics the first person to inject the topic of race into the discussion is often the racist. Though that person almost always affects to be without bigotry, in fact he or she is invariably a racist and hopes to emerge from the fracas as the moral colossus. Those who have followed the careers of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his holiness Al Sharpton will get my drift. These frauds would have to be debating George Wallace to be the lesser racists, and, frankly, I think the contests would be too close to call.
Chastising Cain, Coulter and Colmes
I am not a wealthy person. If I were, I would pay as little in income taxes as I could possibly get away with. I would hire excellent accountants to assist me in this endeavor. For one thing, I'd know that I was already paying far too much in a nation in which nearly half the people don't pay anything. For another, I would regard it as something of a sacred mission to make sure that the federal government didn't get its hands on any more of my money than I could help, in the same way that I wouldn't finance a drug addict if I happened to be related to one. And unlike all those various goons and chiselers I despise in Washington, I might actually like my relative.
Pampered Protesters
The hordes of so-called "protesters" now polluting the streets of several U.S. cities, including New York, are sending confused messages about their grievances. The unemployed among them complain that the jobs available to them are beneath them. I guess that cancels out the old concept of starting in the mailroom and advancing step-by-step to the boardroom. It used to be the norm that one started at the bottom and worked their way up. This bunch seems to be living under the delusion that simply by virtue of having been born they are entitled to immediate arrival at the boardroom level with appropriate compensation.
Predator in Chief
We are in a long war against radical Islamic terrorism. The struggle seems almost similar to the on-again/off-again ordeals of the past -- like the French-English Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries, or the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century. In these kinds of drawn-out conflicts, victory finally goes to the side that responds best to constant new challenges. And we've seen a lot of those since 9/11, when the United States was caught unaware and apparently ill-equipped to face the threat of radical Islamic terrorists hijacking our passenger jets.
Calling for a Mulligan
WASHINGTON -- The tea party's splendid successes, which have altered the nation's political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a countermovement -- Occupy Wall Street. Conservatives should rejoice and wish for it long life, abundant publicity and sufficient organization to endorse congressional candidates deemed worthy. All Democrats eager for OWS' imprimatur, step forward. In scale, OWS' demonstrations-cum-encampments are to tea party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one tea party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Washington Mall. In comportment, OWS is to the tea party as Lady Gaga is to Lord Chesterfield: Blocking the Brooklyn Bridge was not persuasion modeled on tea party tactics.
Arab Spring and the Paradox of American Leadership
Militant Islamist extremists murdering Egyptian Christians offer one criminal version of change amidst the Arab Spring 2011 revolutions. Islamist extremists, many linked to Iran or al-Qaida, are using assassination and violence to intimidate and kill moderates committed to peaceful, democratic modernization. The Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran certainly offers a model for changing culturally Islamic societies. After three decades, the Iranian regime is a clerical dystopia. Moreover, the Islamist revolutionaries established a new tyranny. Al-Qaida's Muslim future lies in recovering lost glory. Restoring the caliphate, this time on a global basis, is part of al-Qaida's model.
Protesters Occupy the Liberal Media
When the Tea Party movement erupted in the spring of 2009, the media elites dismissed them as corporate-generated "Astroturf" noise. They found them barely worth covering, even to besmirch them. But when the Occupy Wall Street protests began on Sept. 17, the liberal media was quickly bombarded with complaints from the left that the media were ignoring this massive "news" story. NPR Executive Editor Dick Meyer said the early protests "did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption, or an especially clear objective." So the protesters went out and blocked the Brooklyn Bridge and drew 700 arrests -- voila, a national story.
DOJ: Feds Can Tell Church Who Its Ministers Will Be
In yet another stunning attack on freedom of religion, President Barack Obama's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court last week to give the federal government the power to tell a church who its ministers will be. The case involves a former teacher at Lutheran school, who along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pushing a claim that a Lutheran congregation should be forced to restore her ministry position.
Read My Tea Leaves
In their Oct. 7 press release announcing "coordinated enforcement actions" against medical marijuana dispensaries, California's four U.S. attorneys use the adjective "commercial" to describe their targets eight times and refer to "profit" nine times, not counting two mentions of "money" and one of "moneymaking." You might surmise from these clues that nonprofit organizations supplying marijuana to authorized patients need not worry about raids, forfeiture and prosecution -- but only if you are unfamiliar with the Obama administration's weaselly ways. Barack Obama promised a more tolerant approach to medical marijuana, saying he would not "circumvent state laws on this issue." Instead, he has delivered a crackdown more aggressive than anything seen under George W. Bush, featuring more-frequent raids, threats to landlords and banks, and ruinous IRS audits. Although his underlings occasionally pretend they are respecting state law, they clearly have no intention of doing so.
It's Hard to Be a Racist
Years ago it was easy to be a racist. All you had to be was a white person using some of the racial epithets that are routinely used in song and everyday speech by many of today's blacks. Or you had to chant "two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate" when a black student showed up for admission to your high school or college. Of course, there was that dressing up in a hooded white gown. In any case, you didn't have to be sophisticated to be a racist.
Obama's Teachable Truthiness Moment
President Obama blames Republicans for the collapse of his latest government jobs bill. But in the end, he has only his tall tale-telling tongue to blame. After hyping the TARP, Obamacare, Stimulus I and EduJobs spending behemoths as economic saviors, Obama just couldn't help overselling his half-trillion-dollar American Jobs Act. The teachable moment of "truthiness" for this taxpayer-subsidized scam came last week when Obama made an unwitting Boston teacher the botched poster child for his campaign.
Morality, Not Theology
Robert Jeffress introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit on Friday. He started a great big hullabaloo by asking, "Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person, or one who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?" Before we go on, let me just say, I'd probably go with curtain No. 1. Don't get me wrong -- I've got no problem with a born-again Christian being my president, my pilot or my chiropodist. But saying someone is a born-again Christian, for me at least, is not inherently synonymous with being a "good, moral person," never mind being transparently preferable to one.
Law, War and Nonsense
We live in strange times. Aren't they all? But much like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each strange time is strange in its own peculiar way. And most peculiar, at least this week, may be the little legal brouhaha that some of our fellow Americans -- learned citizens all, maybe too learned -- are trying to raise in the midst of the general acclaim for the latest accomplishment of the armed forces of the United States. In another victory-by-drone, the armed forces of the United States took out al-Qaida's chief of operations in Yemen and points north on the Arabian peninsula. This achievement was a twofer, for it also eliminated one of his trusted lieutenants. Both were technically Americans. By birth if not by loyalty.
Euro-Debt Danger
How dangerous is the European financial condition? On Monday, while stock markets from the DAX and FTSE to the New York Stock Exchange were up sharply on report of French and German cooperative murmurs regarding sovereign debt negotiations (and on temporary easing of U.S. double-dip recession fears), the financial and political European press were warning of a coming financial crisis of unmatched dimensions. The ever stiff upper-lipped London Financial Times let loose with uncharacteristic wails of woe: Its five column above the fold front page headline panted: "Time is short for eurozone," while its editorial page -- in a rare single top to bottom of page leader -- shouted with a now quivering upper lip: "Save Europe's unity now."
How Players Unions Are Killing Sports
This year, we may not get to see Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers play. The people of Italy probably will. While the National Basketball Association lockout continues, Bryant is considering a deal worth $5 million for one year from the Virtus Bologna. He's not the only NBA player who might appear overseas. Deron Williams of the New Jersey Nets signed a contract with the Turkish team Besiktas, worth $200,000 per month. Many more top players are jumping overseas during the work stoppage. By contrast, Bryant signed a contract on April 2, 2010, with the Lakers for $87 million, which means he's playing for about one-sixth what he would be if the NBA lockout ended. Williams has a player option for $17.7 million next year, so he's playing for about one-seventh his normal pay.
Government the Job Killer
President Obama says government will have to build the nation out of the economic trough. "We're the country that built the intercontinental railroad," Obama says. "So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads?" Ironic that he mentions the Chinese. Progressives used to complain that to build the railroad, bosses abused Chinese workers -- called them "coolies" and treated them badly. Now this is big success?
The Nuttiness of the 'Occupation' Movement
Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, different leaders of varied labor unions -- pour it on, folks! Show your political solidarity with all the "occupations" going on around the country! Speak to us in anguished tones about the awfulness of free market mechanisms like banks and the horror of earning more money than someone else. While you're at it, tell us what you're going to do about the horrors of free enterprise and the profit motive. The explicit Marxist-Leninist remedy seems out of favor these days. That leaves, what? Congeries of yelps ("Stop Corporate Greed," "People, not Profits") from the ragtag occupation armies enjoying the autumn sunshine in venues from Wall Street to the West Coast.
Supermom Is Stressed Out!
Several years ago, my friend Kim fit the profile of a young "supermom" perfectly. You know, the one who looks like a million dollars, has time for the gym and weekly manis and pedis, volunteers as soccer team-mom for her daughter, and is a top-producer for her company. While other moms struggled in the back-to-school frenzy to find washable Crayola markers -- classic colors, 10 count, not 8, mind you -- plus red plastic folders with pockets, and more, Kim had it under control. All supplies sorted, bagged, and delivered to the classroom ahead of time. And she kept up that pace all year long.