Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Ted Cruz: New Voice for the American Dream
Ted Cruz knows the American Dream because his family has lived it. As teenager in the 1950s, his father, Rafael Cruz, fought with Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution, not knowing Castro was a communist. He was eventually imprisoned and brutally beaten by the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship's police. Rafael's father bribed his son's way out of prison. The son fled Cuba with a hundred dollars sewn into his underwear -- and earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas.
The Scapegoat Syndrome
The separate but equal annual rituals are well established in the Middle East by now: First the Israelis observe a day of mourning for those who have fallen in their country's defense. For a little country, Israel has had a lot of wars, which means it has the mourners to match. Then a siren sounds, the solemn commemorations are done, and the country's Independence Day festivities begin. This was Israel's 63rd such celebration; the first was punctuated by air raid sirens even as its declaration of independence was being proclaimed -- against the advice of all the old Middle East hands in the U.S. State Department.
Home Insecurity: Two Privacy Rulings Hit Us Where We Live
A few years ago, two police officers were chasing a crack dealer at a Lexington, Ky., apartment complex when they lost sight of him as he ducked into one of two units at the end of a breezeway. Detecting "a very strong odor of burnt marijuana" coming from the apartment on the left, they figured that must be the one, so they banged on the door and shouted, "Police!" Hearing "the sound of persons moving," the officers later reported, they feared evidence was being destroyed, so they kicked in the door. It turned out to be the wrong apartment, but inside the cops discovered a guest smoking pot and, during a "protective sweep" of the apartment, saw marijuana and cocaine powder "in plain view." A more thorough search turned up crack, cash and drug paraphernalia.
Battle of the Budgets
Since America is on the road to bankruptcy, we've got to make some changes. What would you do? The Peter G. Peterson Foundation gave $200,000 to six think tanks to write budget proposals. The money went to the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation; the "liberal" Center for American Progress, Economic Policy Institute and Roosevelt Institute Campus Network; and the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Jews in Name Only
In 2008, Obama grabbed 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Even the most wildly optimistic polling today shows that Obama's support remains high among Jews. It's a result that Republicans simply can't understand -- why do so many Jews continue to support a president who has shown time and again that he stands against the State of Israel? Why the reflexive lever-pulling on behalf of a man who appoints anti-Semites to positions of high power, attends a virulently anti-Semitic church for 20 years, and sees Israel as the cause of the West's conflict with the Muslim world? The answer is deceptively simple: the Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch "Schindler's List"; they visit temple on Yom Kippur -- sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming.
No One May Lecture Obama
When Barack Obama replaced George Bush, there was unbridled joy among the elites. The days of "cowboy diplomacy" were over! Finally, we had a president who was a careful multi-lateralist who wouldn't rudely impose his will, but would instead work with allies to build consensus. But that's not what Obama delivered with Israel last week, is it? Obama went to the State Department and insisted Israel needed to stop its "unsustainable" policy toward the Palestinians and "boldly" retreat behind pre-1967 borders. A stunned Benjamin Netanyahu responded as any ally would if so roundly betrayed. He publicly -- correctly -- denounced Obama's policy prescription.
Mideast Communications Chaos
The president's speech last week, which was described by the White House in advance as a speech intended to reach out to the Muslim world, will probably go down as one of the least well-understood major presidential speeches in modern memory. Confusion concerning the president's words and intent cut across the lines of Jews, Christians and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans, neocons and paleocons, friends and foes of Israel, and friends and foes of the president. For many serious commentators, the confusion lies on what the president meant by his statement that "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." Was this a shift of policy, no shift or a critical increase in U.S. presidential pressure on Israel in future peace negotiations?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Some Friend
President Obama has claimed many times to be a steadfast friend of the state of Israel. He certainly found bold words to convey that impression when he addressed the AIPAC conference in 2008. "(W)e know that we cannot relent, we cannot yield, and, as president, I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security ... not when there are still voices that deny the Holocaust, not when there are terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel's destruction, not when there are maps across the Middle East that don't even acknowledge Israel's existence, and government-funded textbooks filled with hatred towards Jews, not when there are rockets raining down on Sderot, and Israeli children have to take a deep breath and summon uncommon courage every time they board a bus or walk to school."
Betraying Israel
With friends like President Obama, who needs enemies? If you're Israel, you already have quite enough of those. On May 14, 2011, the State of Israel observed the 63rd anniversary of its independence. But if the proposals made by President Obama in his State Department speech are implemented, that observance could be its last. It is difficult to say if the president is self-deluded, if he drinks State Department Arabist Kool-Aid or if he's just a fool. It doesn't matter. The results are the same.
Supreme Court's Scary Power Grab
The U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered California on Monday to release 33,000 inmates over two years from an in-state prison population that numbers about 143,000. Kent Scheidegger of the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation blogged that Californians shouldn't "bother investing much in a car. It will be open season on cars, given that car thieves (nonviolent offenders) will never go to prison no matter how many times they are caught."
Dependency and Votes
Those who regard government "entitlement" programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality. To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of. In other words, if you cut spending on school lunches, children will go hungry. If you fail to subsidize housing, people will be homeless. If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds.
Don't Let Liberal Establishment Choose Our Candidates
Conservatives are worried that an ideal Reagan conservative has yet to emerge and lead the 2012 GOP presidential field. But are we allowing the liberal media (and establishment Republicans) to manipulate the narrative to prevent such a result? Obviously, the liberal media do not have the best interests of Reagan conservatives in mind when they do their "reporting." So when they tell us certain GOP candidates are unelectable or electable, common sense would counsel us to take their advice with mounds of salt. But do we?
Israel and America: Two of a Kind
The point about Israel that keeps getting lost in the Gentile underbrush is that Israel isn't just a Jewish homeland. Well, it's that certainly. Such was the point of its creation in 1948, which wasn't about efficiency of things like that. Under mandate from the League of Nations, the British had been doing a characteristically admirable British job of looking after a foreign territory -- building roads, administering justice, and such like. The Jews had a different vision for Palestine, as it was then known. They saw the vision enacted at last, and in paraphrase of the Creation narrative it was good.
When It Comes to Doomsdays, the Left Shouldn't Laugh at the Religious
It appears that the Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, 2011 did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening, Pacific Time, yielded more than 32,000 articles -- in English alone -- in the world media. The secular, especially the anti-religious, left, enjoy these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm for them not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general.
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Not So Great Debate
In the wake of the GOP debate in South Carolina, I have decided that Herman Cain was not only the clear-winner, but that he's now the guy to beat. He's bright, speaks well and seems to be free of the sort of baggage that career politicians always seem to be carting around. Even when given the opportunity, Mitt Romney refuses to disown RomneyCare, while Newt Gingrich is being ridden piggyback by a sex life that even has Bill Clinton shaking his head and going "Oh my!" I would suggest to Tim Pawlenty that he learn what to do with his hands before the next debate rolls around. As it is, he comes across like someone who graduated in the bottom third of the class from the Harry Truman School of Public Speaking. He comes across like a robot whose batteries are running low.
Obama Channels W. Except on Israel and Palestinians
"The State Department is a fitting venue," declared Barack Obama at the beginning of his speech on the Middle East last Thursday. That's curious because in three-quarters of his speech Obama repudiated most of what has been traditional State Department Middle East policy. Only in the last page and a half of a six-page text, when he discussed the Israeli-Palestinian issue, did he revert to State Department mode. Not once did Obama mention the name of George W. Bush, but much of his speech sounded like it came from his predecessor.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Golden State Blues
SACRAMENTO -- In 1967, five years after California became the most populous state, novelist Wallace Stegner said California -- energetic, innovative, hedonistic -- was America, "only more so." Today, this state's budget crisis is like the nation's, only more so. Bob Dutton is an island of calm in the eye of the storm -- which should agitate Gov. Jerry Brown. Dutton came to California from Nebraska at age 19 in 1969 and now is leader of Republicans in the state Senate. He contentedly says his caucus is "almost like a Chamber of Commerce board of directors." Its members are mostly from small businesses, as he is. Because they are term-limited, they cannot make a career here, so they might as well follow their small -- well, smaller -- government inclinations.
The Latest Futility: New President, Same Middle East
Remember our president's speech in Cairo at the bright onset of his tenure, the speech that was going to change everything? But the Middle East being the Middle East, and Barack Obama being Barack Obama, it changed nothing. Yet some things can change in that part of the world -- with the speed of wildfire. See events this year from, west to east, Tunisia to Syria. This administration is still trying to catch up with that whirlwind, aka the Arab Spring, and it still sounds way behind.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
From The Comedy Store
Air Force One missed its approach on a runway Wednesday with President Obama on the plane. The pilot didn't like cloud cover and pulled up and circled for a second approach. Three newspapers lost their White House credentials for downplaying the threat to the country.
Choosing Between RINOs and Libs
For several weeks now, I've been involved in email debates with some of my fellow conservatives. They've been on my case ever since I pointed out that a Republican-lite is preferable to a Democrat. I swear, if this were the Middle Ages, they'd have me burned at the stake for heresy. It's their contention that it is better to vote for a third party candidate than for a Republican In Name Only (RINO). In response, I have pointed out that a third party candidate can't win the presidency, and while wasting your vote on one can have the short term benefit of making you feel good about yourself, in the long term, you're merely making it easier for the liberal to win the election.