Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
A Twisted Outlook
Stocks collapsed roughly 700 points over two days after the Federal Reserve launched its "Operation Twist." The market correctly perceives that the central bank's plan to swap $400 billion of short-term notes for long-term bonds adds no new reserves to the financial system. So it wasn't QE3, that's for sure. No stimulus. In fact, with the Treasury yield curve flattening, the Fed's sterilized asset swap actually tightened financial markets. The Fed should have listened to the GOP congressional leadership, which in a letter advocated no more stimulus and no more market-subverting interference.
Return of the Real Obama
WASHINGTON -- In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness." A most revealing window into our president's political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one -- not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.
Bam's Government Loans to Nowhere Bill
President Obama still hasn't learned the classic First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, stop digging. Up to his earlobes in failed stimulus grants and tainted federal loan guarantees, the shoveler in chief tunneled forward this week on his latest Government Loans to Nowhere bill. His willful ignorance is America's abyss. Little noticed in the White House jobs-for-cronies proposal is a provision creating yet another corruption-friendly "government corporation" that would dole out public infrastructure loans and loan guarantees.
Why Death Penalty Opponents Can't Win
On Wednesday, two men were lawfully executed. Both insisted they were innocent. If you've been watching the news or following Kim Kardashian's tweets, you've likely heard of one of these men, Troy Davis. The other death penalty "victim," Lawrence Russell Brewer, was until this week the more significant convicted murderer. Brewer was one of the racist goons who infamously tied James Byrd to the back of their truck and dragged him to death in Texas.
Nations United in Annual Israel Mugging
It's gang-up time on Israel again. Right on schedule, here come the huffers, puffers and pipsqueaks. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, arrives in New York to demand a seat at the United Nations. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right on cue, arrives from Iran in a cloud of bluster and bombast. It's all for show, of course, irritating in the way a noisy neighbor's drunken fight with his wife at 3 in the morning can be irritating. But the show, such as it is, makes a convenient backdrop for what looks like an authentic hope for change in American presidential politics.
Charlie Sheen Roasts and Boasts
It's easy to get nostalgic for those classic Dean Martin TV celebrity roasts. Just watch a Friars Club Roast on Comedy Central. This is not comedy; they are unremittingly vicious. When they announced they were going to roast Charlie Sheen, a disgraceful human being if ever there was one, there was a sense of karmic comeuppance. Then the show aired, and only someone as deranged as Sheen would find it funny. Sheen is deserving of plenty of verbal head-slaps for his aerobically amoral life with prostitutes, his wife-beating/strangling and his bizarre behavior after being fired by the gutter-level CBS comedy "Two and a Half Men." But this was supposed to be comedic. Instead, it was a merciless bonfire of ferocity. No humanity remained.
Bill Clinton Takes Obama Gently to the Woodshed and Gives Him a Spanking
If anyone ever believed that the more conservative Bill Clinton really thought the more liberal Barack Obama was prepared to be president in 2008, let them wonder no longer. Clinton might seem to be in a tight spot, given that his wife works for Obama. But in an interview conducted by Newsmax's CEO, Christopher Ruddy, the former president made it clear that now is neither the time to be increasing taxes nor to be imposing more regulations on businesses and consumers.
Release of Prop. 8 Tapes Shows Judicial Hubris
At first blush, Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware's decision to unseal videos of the federal trial challenging Proposition 8 would seem to be a victory for truth, justice and open government. But you can't always tell a video by its jacket. The deck was stacked from the start of former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's handling of a federal challenge to California's same-sex marriage ban -- and not because he's gay.
Incumbent Protection 101
WASHINGTON -- The pleasant sound you hear -- the clatter of bad laws crumbling -- is the edifice of campaign finance restrictions disintegrating. Washington state provides a fresh example of the exhaustion of the "campaign finance reform" project, which tries to empower government to restrict speech about the composition and conduct of government. The state law at issue is awful, but usefully awful: It perfectly illustrates how the political class crafts campaign regulations for the purpose of protecting the job security of members of that class -- elected incumbents.
Hang Together or Hang Alone
There's one sure way for Republicans and conservatives to lose the 2012 presidential election -- split over who their presidential nominee will be, and fail to go all-out to support the winner. People keep asking me, "What would your father, Ronald Reagan, do?" The answer is easy. No matter who the nominee is, he or she would get his support. After all, his famous "11th Commandment" demanded that Republicans support their party's nominee, no matter who he or she might be.
Unsound Bites
The so-called "debates" among Republican presidential aspirants are classic examples of the media spreading misunderstanding instead of enlightenment. The ancient admonition, "With all you're getting, get understanding" has been replaced in the media by, "With all you're getting, get sound bites -- and, if possible, 'gotcha' sound bites." After all the media hype over Governor Rick Perry's having called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme," viewers are no more informed than before as to what specifically is a Ponzi scheme, what are the objections to such schemes, and whether those same objections apply to Social Security.
Cop-Killer Is Media's Latest Baby Seal
For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing. Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.) Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.
Twenty Percent, Yes. Twenty-Five Percent, No
Unfortunately, for the president, the Buffett Rule is like much else in his administration. It is a hoax. Buffett is wrong, and the president did not check Buffett's numbers or, if he did, he did not think we would check the numbers. Sources as diverse as The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press have demonstrated that millionaires and billionaires pay taxes -- as you would expect -- at a higher rate than the middle class. How could Obama, the smartest policy wonk of all, get things so wrong?
A Gaggle of Liberal Loons
When Al Gore likened global warming deniers, otherwise known as everyone who isn't receiving government grants or getting filthy rich off the biggest hoax since the Piltdown Man, as latter-day racists, I found myself wondering if he had his father, the late Al Gore, Sr., in mind as an example of an old-fashioned racist. His dad, in case it's slipped your mind, was one of 21 Senate Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Regarding civil rights, I just discovered the other day that Anthony Johnson, who had started out like many poor people in the 17th century as an indentured servant, became, after working off his contract, the first official slave owner in America. Ironically, Mr. Johnson, who had been born in Angola, was a black man.
Can Israel Survive?
Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse for the Jewish state. Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before -- and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.
Obama's Economy -- Running Out of Excuses
Two and a half years into the Obama presidency, why does the economy still sputter? The first and most popular line of defense, of course, remains to blame it on the George W. Bush administration. Pundits like CNN's Fareed Zakaria falsely attribute the current $1.5 trillion deficit to the "Bush tax cuts," while Obama puts the "cost" at $70 billion a year. MSNBC's Ed Schultz asserts that "98 percent of you" were not affected by the cuts, an odd argument considering that Obama supports extending the Bush-era rates for the very 98 percent that Schultz claims received no benefit.
Texas (Partially) Explained
The cultural and media snobs are trying to explain Texas to those who don't know the difference between a steer and a bull. If you fall into this category, a steer has been castrated -- a bull has not. I'll leave any analogy to East and West Coast elites for you to sort out. People who are from Texas, or have lived there, are devoted to it and I never truly understood why until I lived there ... twice. Texans speak of their state with an affection one doesn't often hear from Oregonians or Michiganians. No matter what city they are from, Texans almost always add "Texas" when they introduce themselves, apparently to avoid confusion, as though there were another Nacodoches or Cut and Shoot anywhere else in the world.
What 'Developing' Countries Can Teach the U.S.
As Barack Obama huffs and puffs about his tax plan, which is unlikely to pass in the Democratic-majority Senate much less the Republican-controlled House, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, has provided a much broader view of where the United States stands amid great changes in the world and some useful guidance on what direction public policy ought to take. Zoellick spoke at George Washington University on Sept. 14, midway between Obama's Sept. 8 speech to a joint session of Congress calling for a second stimulus package and his Sept. 19 speech in the Rose Garden laying out the tax increases that he evidently believes will, somehow, lead to the creation of jobs.
Names in the News
Dear Dominique Strauss-Kahn, familiarly known as just DSK in haute-financial and political circles: I owe you an apology. I could scarcely keep myself from smirking when you were accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid in one of those upscale hotels in Manhattan that no working stiff could ever afford. My chronic case of Francophobia went into overdrive.
LightSquared: Obama's Dangerous Broadband Boondoggle
If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever. Welcome to LightSquared. It's a toxic mix of venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase), campaign finance influence-peddling and perilous corner-cutting all rolled into one.