Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Obama's 'Counteroffensive'? Please!
Seeing as President Obama cannot govern, he's had to go back to campaigning -- an activity with which he's quite comfortable but decreasingly successful, as evidenced by his falling poll numbers and his endless, repetitive speeches. I don't just throw out this governance charge lightly. The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama is no longer receiving daily Oval Office economic briefings. More troubling, he doesn't even appear to have much of an economic team left to advise him. "The economic team lacks a top-caliber economist" and "is noticeably short on big-name players -- potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public."
Explanations and Excuses for English Riots
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Some of those caught looting stores last week in Britain were asked why they did it. Four teenagers explained to Sky News that they viewed it as "a shopping spree." One teen blamed the government: "They say (they) are going to help us but I don't see any of it. There has to be more opportunities and jobs. Help us at least and then maybe everyone will settle down." This is the triumph of the entitlement mentality and the welfare state. Conservative MP Eric Pickles wasn't buying it: "I think that is them trying to justify being thieves, robbers and burglars."
GOP Field Narrows
Who says presidential debates and straw polls don't matter? The field of Republican presidential candidates has narrowed a bit after the presidential debate-cum-straw poll at Ames, Ia., home of Iowa State, corn-fed beauties of every species, and the GOP's straw-in-the-wind poll. These up-close-and-personal encounters of the political kind give Americans a chance to judge the field. And after each one, there aren't as many contenders as there were before. The choice is clarified.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Tea Party Sounds a Needed Alarm
The fire hall next to my in-laws' house in northern New York State has a siren that can be heard for miles. "Loud" doesn't begin to describe the sound: a shrill, relentless, piercing wail that is impossible to ignore -- and can be extremely upsetting for anyone who isn't used to it. There's good reason for that. None of the rural towns in the area has a professional fire department, so when a fire breaks out, the siren is needed to summon volunteers. The urgent blast of that siren used to terrify my younger son, who would hide under a bed when it sounded, and angrily tell us afterward how much he hated it. In the recent clamor over the federal debt ceiling and the Standard & Poor's downgrade of US Treasury bonds, the Tea Party has been that fire hall siren. And a lot of liberals have been angrily telling us how much they hate it.
Role Models (Only Blacks Need Apply)
Recently, someone asked me who my role models were when I was a kid. Having been a baseball fan all my life and a fairly precocious reader ("The Grapes of Wrath" at age 11), the names I came up with were Ted Williams, Stan Musial, John Steinbeck, William Saroyan, and Humphrey Bogart. For someone born in Chicago in 1940, but raised in L.A. from the age of six, it wasn't a particularly unusual list, consisting, as it did, of a couple of baseball greats, two very successful California-based writers, and a movie actor who personified cool. What I now find interesting about my list is that not one of those named was Jewish.
GOP Has Momentum, Needs Clear Direction
AMES, Iowa -- This has been quite a week or 10 days for Republicans. As this is written, down in South Carolina Rick Perry has just announced he's running for president, while here in Ames most of the votes have been cast but none has yet been counted in the Iowa Republican straw poll. Yesterday Sarah Palin walked slowly through crowds at the Iowa State Fair and addressed voters there on the set of Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
JFK's Berlin Blunder
WASHINGTON -- Fifty years ago, a metaphor became concrete. Beginning on Aug. 13, 1961, along West Berlin's 27-mile border, the Iron Curtain became tangible in a wall of precast slabs of concrete. It came down 22 years ago, but the story of how it rose, as told in Frederick Kempe's book "Berlin 1961," compels an unflattering assessment of John Kennedy. His serial blunders that year made it the most incompetent first year of any presidency. In a State of the Union address just 10 days after his inauguration, Kennedy seemed exhilarated by hysteria. He said that "in this brief 10-day period" he had been "staggered" by "the harsh enormity" of the "trials" ahead:
Debate Leaves Republican Field Unaltered
Never before has there been a televised presidential candidates debate so short a time before the Iowa Republicans' Ames straw poll. Last night's debate, co-sponsored by The Washington Examiner and Fox News Channel, provided plenty of spirited conflict and some unscripted, or at least unanticipated, moments. The sharpest conflict came between the two candidates from next-door Minnesota, who, they assured us, are anything but twins. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has spent more time and money in Iowa than anyone else on the stage but has been lagging behind Rep. Michele Bachmann, launched the sharpest attack of the evening.
Castro Valley Boulevard Redevelops, but to What?
Castro Valley, Calif., is the spot where the East Bay meets the 1950s. In the old parts of town, there's a white rock lawn on every block. First names are big -- as in Al's Food Market, Gigi's Florist and Pete's Hardware. Residents boast about the parks and go fishing at Lake Chabot. Castro Valley is famous for its diners. No dinner crowds -- they close in the afternoon. If you're looking for fast food, you can find it on Castro Valley Boulevard. There are no high-end retail outlets or chichi restaurants. You don't see pairings of pedestrians enjoying a stroll down the boulevard. "It's not Walnut Creek," Smart N Cleaner owner Namjoo Kim observes.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Death of a Principled Moderate
Mark Hatfield, 89, who died last weekend in his native Oregon, was the first Christian politician I recall meeting in Washington, which is to say he did more than keep a Bible on his desk. He sought to keep its words and teachings and its main "Character" in his heart.
All the News That's Fit to Ridicule
So many absurd things are taking place around the world on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis that there's simply no way to stay on top of it all. If one man can barely keep up with the lunacy occurring in America, you can imagine what a Herculean task it is to also keep abreast of foreign follies. But I am not one to shirk my responsibility. For instance, in Afghanistan, the farmers recently called for a meeting with U.S. Marines in order to alert them to the fact that they will be in their fields at night harvesting opium poppies. They wanted to make sure that the Marines didn't take them for members of the Taliban and shoot them by mistake. Like the farmers, I also don't want our Marines to shoot them by mistake.
Bachmann Shows Why She's the Straw Poll Favorite
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Things look different in the Midwest. Back in Washington, people are talking about President Barack Obama's poor showing this past week. (Did you see that Maureen Dowd has turned against him?) In Iowa, they're focused on the state Republicans' presidential straw poll in Ames next Saturday. And in Wisconsin, they just got through counting the votes in a recall election that has great national significance. In Iowa, most of the focus has been on Rep. Michele Bachmann. She's only in her third term in the House, and she hasn't sponsored any major legislation; she has no executive experience in government. Her Iowa headquarters, in a suburban shopping mall near a Panera Bread cafe, only opened two months ago.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama went on TV Monday to back the credit of the United States. He said he doesn't care what anyone says, America will always be a AAA country. That makes Obama the first president ever to tell the nation that we'll never be called up to the Majors.
Rain!
LITTLE ROCK -- It came late in the afternoon -- literally out of the blue. Unexpected. Unearned as grace. The great sunlight over the newsroom had been shuttered days ago, and covered by tarps to keep out the record heat and dispiriting glare. All you want in an August in Arkansas, especially an August like this year's, is shade. And water. Any hope of relief had dried up with the grass. And then.... The first drops splattered on the office window like a forgotten promise about to be fulfilled. It had been so long I didn't recognize the sound at first, and wondered what the tap, tap, tapping was. It came tenderly, tentatively. Like a child's kisses. But then -- ah, then! -- there came a rain. A full-throated, soaking, overflowing rain, pouring down like a mighty stream. Like long awaited justice.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Remembering the Shame
We're all children of our histories. Some of us become victims, others reactors and rebels. Some of us just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Commemorations, celebrations and memorials become important, documenting what is, what was and what might have been. Germany commemorates the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall this week. That wall wasn't as lengthy as the Great Wall of China, nor did it have the mythic significance of the wall that Joshua's trumpet brought down at Jericho. But the Berlin Wall marks a significant milestone in the history of the Cold War, when a supposedly civilized nation locked in its people and described it, in the Orwellian rhetoric every government bureaucrat could envy, as an "anti-fascist protection rampart."
The System Works
WASHINGTON -- Of all the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom in today's Washington, the most lazy, stupid and ubiquitous is that our politics is broken. On the contrary. Our political system is working well (I make no such claims for our economy), indeed, precisely as designed -- profound changes in popular will translated into law that alters the nation's political direction. The process has been messy, loud, disputatious and often rancorous. So what? In the end, the system works. Exhibit A is Wisconsin. Exhibit B is Washington itself.
We've Seen This Bernanke Movie Before
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's shocking Federal Open Market Committee announcement Tuesday -- that its zero-interest-rate target would be extended for two more years, through the middle of 2013 -- drove Dow stocks up more than 400 points. But this new policy had no stock market carry-over on Wednesday, when the Dow plunged more than 500 points. But we have not heard the last from Bernanke -- not by a long shot. Buried in the last paragraph of this week's surprise FOMC announcement was this huge statement: "The Committee discussed the range of policy tools available to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability."
Ingratitude, Insolence and Entitlement
The riots that have wracked England in the last week should be a sober warning to the United States: This is what happens when a country breeds a generation of welfare dependents who are happy to bite the hand that feeds them. For days, roaming gangs of young people have engaged in looting, setting fires, intimidating citizens, even killing innocents. Speaking to a special session of Parliament, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "This is not about poverty, it's about culture, a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities."
The Debt Panel's Patty Murray Problem
Everything that's wrong with the so-called debt "super-committee" can be summed up in the person, partisan hackery and policy ignorance of Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid named Murray co-chair of the dog-and-pony deficit-reduction panel tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by late November. Murray, an unrepentant Nanny State cheerleader and patron saint of the Washington lobbyist, is a double-exclamation point on the debt deal's rotten joke.