Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Obama Tunes Out, and Business Goes on Hiring Strike
Last week, I noted that various forms of the word "unexpected" almost inevitably appeared in news stories about unfavorable economic developments. You can find them again in stories about Friday's shocking news, that only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent. But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be "unexpected." You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it is not around the corner.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
America's Long Slide from 9/11 to Crown Beach
On Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes plunged into the World Trade Center, Americans watched in awe as New York firefighters, police and paramedics rushed to the scene at risk to their own lives. Some 343 firefighters and paramedics and 60 police officers paid the ultimate price in their desperate rush to save other lives. On Memorial Day at Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach in California, police officers and firefighters stood by as Raymond Zack, 53, stood in the water, apparently intent on suicide, until he drowned. They would not go into the water after him, they explained, because a 2009 department policy prohibited water rescues in this island community. An unidentified woman finally swam out and brought his body to shore.
The NFL's Labor Pains
NEW YORK -- Although his Park Avenue office is as quiet as an empty stadium, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sits atop a seething volcano of fans who will erupt if training camps do not open in July. Fans care nothing about the details of the labor dispute that threatens to keep stadiums empty into September and perhaps beyond: There have been no serious negotiations since March 11; the court hearing this past Friday might -- weeks from now -- result in a decision that will restart negotiations. Even if, however, you think football is one of America's dispensable frills, the NFL's agony is a fascinating illustration of how things can spin out of control.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
From The Comedy Store
Wall Street fell three hundred points Wednesday on news about low home sales and poor manufacturing reports and the low number of new jobs. It's going well. The New Dictionary of American Psychiatry states that the first step to curing depression is to re-name it a recovery.
Obama's Jobs Recession
Political advantage can be fleeting. A couple of months ago, during the winter quarter, job gains looked to be picking up, unemployment was easing lower, and President Obama's re-election hopes looked more secure. But things sure have changed. In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy -- maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs and profits out to year end. And Friday's jobs report didn't buck these trends.
The Agony of Being a Jewish Conservative
I am not overly surprised when the majority of American Jews continue to support Obama, but I know it confounds Christians. What they fail to grasp is that Israel's survival is not only a low priority item for the president, but for a great many Jews. My fellow Jews, by and large, are far more connected to liberalism than they are to Judaism, far less familiar with the Talmud than with "Dreams of My Father" or "The Audacity of Hope." The more religious a Jew is, the more likely he is to be a political conservative and to be concerned with Israel's security.
Friday, June 3, 2011
It's Education, but Higher Is a Misnomer
I will not get sentimental, or so I keep telling myself. Well, maybe a little sentimental, but never maudlin at the approaching departure of my 17-year-old son for college in the fall. Fall? Did I say fall? No, he leaves in August -- cruel calendar! If I sometimes find myself leafing through photos of him at 2 and 5 and 11 -- here nodding off in the stroller, there in his Harry Potter costume -- and if there's a smile at the memory of how enthralled the preschool David was with the Triassic, Cretaceous, Jurassic and its fearsome denizens, well, that's the way of mothers. One video I happened to pick off the shelf featured an 8-year-old David narrating a tour of the backyard with, as he put it, grinning, "my dimwitted assistant, Ben." That would be his little brother, who knew well how to give it back.
Only One Party Can Solve Debt Problem, and It Too Is Running Out of Time
Do you think it's conceivable that yet another round of dismal economic news might cause President Obama to finally dig deeply enough in his id to find some hidden humility and consider reversing course? Let's be serious. Why should he do that when it's much easier -- and more profitable politically -- to just demonize Republicans? But will there ever be a time when the inescapable reality of our impending financial panic will compel him and other Democrats to act like grown-ups and help solve this problem before it "solves" itself and destroys countless people and institutions in its wake?
Putting Children First
For the first time in history, less than half of Americans now live in married-couple households. The new finding by the Census Bureau reflects the most profound change in the nature of American society ever to have occurred, yet practically no one talks about it. Only 48 percent of American households are made up of married couples. These numbers reflect a sea change in living arrangements. In 1950, married couples were 78 percent of all households. Some of these figures reflect our aging population: We have more widows and widowers than at any time in the past. But they also reflect changing mores. People are marrying at older ages, and larger numbers are choosing not to marry at all, not to stay married, and to have children outside of marriage. A new Gallup poll shows that more people now approve of both out-of-wedlock births and divorce. Only 41 percent of Americans believe it is morally wrong to bear a child outside marriage, and a mere 23 percent think divorce is morally wrong.
Courageous Decisions
ABOARD USS YORKTOWN -- There has been much said and written of late regarding "high-risk decision-making" and "courageous leadership" in Washington. The so-called mainstream media, politicians and pundits are all a-twitter -- literally -- about a congressman's underwear, the damage done by WikiLeaks and how the death of Osama bin Laden and the "Arab Spring" are changing the course of history. For those having difficulty discerning what qualifies as "decisiveness under duress" or a "gutsy call," the first week of June offers some excellent examples from living history that put current events into a more reasonable perspective.
Is Weiner Being Frank?
Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York is a very busy man. He sits on several important committees. He's newly married to a high-powered wife. He's planning a run for mayor of New York City, which they call "the city that never sleeps" for a reason. In fact, he's so busy that from 2007 to 2010, he reportedly racked up more than $2,000 in unpaid parking tickets in Washington, D.C., partly due to his penchant for parking his car -- WeinerMobile, if you prefer -- with expired tags at a taxi stand. So when the busy Mr. Weiner was asked on Wednesday if he was the guy pictured in the photo of a man in tight gray briefs in a state of readiness the folks at NORAD might describe as "Defcon 1," the congressman responded that he just couldn't say for sure. "I don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
The Ick-arus of Capitol Hill
How long before Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner conducts his next meltdown press conference flanked by two adult-movie "goddesses" a la Charlie Sheen? Like the delusional bad-boy actor, Weiner actually thinks his self-destructive act is winning, too. The tweetaholic congressman spent the week dodging and deflecting questions about what he called a "randy" image that appeared in his official, verified Twitter account last Friday. The Fruit of the Loom torso shot in his social-networking stream was addressed to a 21-year-old Seattle college student. She's an ardent fan of the cable TV-hopping lawmaker and a member of the fawning generation that unabashedly asks its political idols "boxers or briefs"?
Our Salutary Debt-Ceiling Scare
There is no drop-dead date. There is no overnight default. Debt service amounts to about 6 percent of the federal budget and only about 10 percent of federal revenues. This means that for every $1 of interest payments, there are roughly $9 of revenue the government spends elsewhere. Move money around -- and you've covered the debt service. Cover the debt service -- and there is no default. What scares Geithner is not that we won't be able to pay our creditors but that his Treasury won't be able to continue spending the obscene amounts of money (about $120 billion a month) it doesn't have and will (temporarily) be unable to borrow.
Exposing the Hollywood 'Clique'
Born blocks from the NBC soundstage in 1984 to parents in the entertainment industry, Ben Shapiro is a natural choice to write a book about Hollywood. For his new book, "Primetime Propaganda," Shapiro has studied decades of television content and interviewed a bevy of powerful Hollywood producers to document the degree to which they have created a political and cultural revolution of permissive leftism. The project gets off to a harsh start. In his introduction, Shapiro attacks "traditional" TV critics on the cultural right for being "worse than useless," suggesting some unnamed conservatives are insisting TV should not be watched. "When conservatives treat television as the Golden Calf, they leave no choice but to lay low the unbelievers -- and most of us prefer to continue occasionally glancing at the offending cow."
The Frenchman Has No Clothes
The war between the sexes is never-ending, but the battleground is dotted with the white flags of uneasy truces. Men and women have embraced such a truce when discussing what Dominique Strauss-Kahn is said to have committed in a Manhattan hotel suite. Not only are both men and women arguing on the same side, but so are liberals and conservatives, prudes and libertines, Francophiles and Francophobes. He has ruined whatever remained of the reputation of the French lover.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
A Black Eye for Black Americans
If it should come to pass that Herman Cain, who is over the age of 35, is a natural-born American and is twice as black as Barack Obama, wins the Republican nomination, it will be fascinating to see if any liberals -- black or white -- will be able to restrain themselves from calling him an oreo or an Uncle Tom. Taken as a group, there are probably no more courageous or principled people in America than black conservatives. Whether your name is Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, Allen West or Herman Cain, you know that nine out of 10 of your relatives regard you as something of a white sheep. You also know that, in spite of everything you believe, speak or write, nine out of 10 of your relatives will regularly go out and vote for the likes of Barbara Lee, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee and Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Indefensible: Israel's 1967 Borders and Obama's Policy
Americans remember the Bible story of King Solomon. Two women came to him with a baby. They were disputing whose child it was. "Cut the child in half," the wise king ordered. The mother of the child cried out: Give the baby to her. She would give up her child rather than let it be killed. President Obama is playing Solomon now. He has decided to cut the baby in half. In this case, the child is Israel. Although he has not said so directly, that is the burden of his argument, that's what just one word in his speech means. That word is contiguous.
Justice for a General -- At Last
They got another one. First it was the world's most wanted man, who was living comfortably in a Pakistani resort -- until those Navy SEALs came calling. Result: Osama bin Laden was brought to justice. Or rather justice was brought to him. Then, just in time for Memorial Day, it was Ratko Mladic who was tracked down at last in some Serbian village. He'd been on the run so long that his name had become as hard to remember as it is for an American to pronounce.
What 'Arab Spring'?
The upheaval in Yemen and the possibility that al-Qaida might take over, turning that country into a stronger terrorist base than it already is, should give pause to American and European policy in the Arab world. At its recently concluded G-8 meeting of industrial economies in Deauville, France, Western governments pledged $40 billion to "newly democratic" nations in North Africa and the Middle East. One might as well throw money at Chicago and hope for electoral reform so the dead are no longer allowed to vote on Election Day.
Gates' Verdict: Pentagon's Biggest Enemy Is Itself
Defense Secretary Robert Gates leaves office this month as widely respected as any public figure in America today, appreciated for his willingness to return to public service at a moment of high danger in Iraq and to faithfully serve presidents of both parties. Initially skeptical of George W. Bush's surge in Iraq, Gates did much to ensure its success. Not always in agreement with decisions of Barack Obama, he carried them out and defended them ably. Whether you agree or disagree with his decisions, it's hard not to admire his intellectual honesty and candor.