Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The 'Common' Defense
Rapper "Common" recently performed for "poetry night" at the White House. "Objection!" said the out-of-touch, Golf Channel-watching, Pat Boone-loving right-wingers, who called Common unworthy of an invitation to the People's House. The Comedy Channel's hip Jon Stewart ridiculed the unhip for their outrage. Who's right? White House press secretary and apparent rap-o-phile Jay Carney, who hails from the mean streets of the Lawrenceville prep school and Yale -- where he majored in Russian and Eastern European studies -- defended Common as "socially conscious."
Blackmailing Taxpayers
One of Dictionary.com's definitions of blackmail is "to extort money from (a person) by use of threats." Substitute "taxpayers" for "person" and you have what the White House and congressional Democrats are doing with the debt ceiling. In case you weren't paying attention (and too few are) the United States officially reached the debt ceiling on Monday. Treasury Secretary Tim ("I forgot to pay my taxes") Geithner informed Congress of difficult decisions he was forced to make to keep the country solvent, which is a joke. How can a country be considered solvent when just the interest on the debt amounts to more than the entire gross national product of many countries?
To Liberals, Every Woman Looks Like a Hotel Maid
I suppose we'll know the truth when the DNA testing comes back, but close observers of privileged liberal men are not shocked by the accusations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the socialist head of the International Monetary Fund. (And you thought you were getting screwed by your banker!) Only in Hollywood movies are handsome lacrosse players from nice families seen as likely rapists. In real life, they look more like the 5-foot-2-inch Roman Polanski or pudgy, unathletic Bill Clinton -- or the homunculus 5-foot-2-inch Strauss-Kahn.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
CNN's Obama Adviser
As much as CNN likes to tell the public and advertisers that it's squarely in the sensible center between the partisan attacks of MSNBC and Fox News, the reality says otherwise. Even if CNN has no Screaming Schultzes or Crazy Larry O'Donnell types, it's still firmly in the Democratic sphere of influence. On his show, "In The Arena," on May 12, CNN host Eliot Spitzer recounted how a story in The New York Times "brought a smile to my face. It said the president of the United States calls you for wisdom and advice about issues around the world. So first, when he calls you, what does he say? Hi, Barack calling for Fareed? What does he do?"
No, Newt
Just how much the welfare state has damaged America's political culture over the past 50 years was demonstrated on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, when former House speaker and current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich dug a political knife into the back of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan -- who is the most effectively outspoken fiscal conservative in Congress. The knife had been handed to Newt by "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. "Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors some premium support ... so that they can go out and buy private insurance?" Gregory asked Gingrich, alluding to the Medicare reform plan included as a long-term policy goal in the House Republican budget authored by Ryan.
A Sharper GOP Field
The Republican presidential logjam has finally broken. Donald Trump, who believes not only that he would make the best president but that he could win, declined to run because making money is his true "passion." It's as if Cincinnatus loved his plow too much. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also bowed out, with class and dignity even his friend Trump could not buy. Ron Paul, the libertarian Harold Stassen, is in for another go, presumably on the mistaken assumption that America has turned into Tea Party Nation. (If only!)
Middle East Muddle
This White House, like its predecessors, can take some comfort in the fact that the Middle East has been breaking the hearts of diplomats and foreign politicians for at least 2,000 years. Of course, some centuries have been worse than others (Pontius Pilate had a particularly difficult innings). But in modern times, the American voting public has become accustomed to seeing regular news from the Middle East feature wars, terrorism, mayhem, religious fanaticism and failed peace initiatives. As a result, few presidents pay much of a price at election time for failing to deliver peace or other conspicuous diplomatic successes from that cradle of civilization and birthplace of the three great religions of the Book. I am certainly not prepared to predict that President Obama will lose many votes in 2012 based on his Middle East policy.
Wither Medicare?
In 1995, when he was speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich told a gathering of Blue Cross/Blue Shield executives that he and his fellow Republicans planned to present "a free-market plan" that would compete with Medicare and ultimately drive it out of business. "We believe it's going to wither on the vine," he said, "because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it." Ever since then, Gingrich's critics on the left have been citing that comment to portray him as a hardhearted ideologue bent on tearing up the social safety net. Gingrich, who last week announced he is running for the Republican presidential nomination, is so eager to shed this image that he is willing to endanger Medicare reform by badmouthing a plan that by his own account is very similar to his own.
Understanding Liberals
The liberal vision of government is easily understood and makes perfect sense if one acknowledges their misunderstanding and implied assumptions about the sources of income. Their vision helps explain the language they use and policies they support, such as income redistribution and calls for the rich to give something back. Suppose the true source of income was a gigantic pile of money meant to be shared equally amongst Americans. The reason some people have more money than others is because they got to the pile first and greedily took an unfair share. That being the case, justice requires that the rich give something back, and if they won't do so voluntarily, Congress should confiscate their ill-gotten gains and return them to their rightful owners.
Plentiful Fuel
I just learned I'm going to save money! My apartment building in New York will switch from heating oil to cleaner natural gas. Gas is much cheaper than oil now because energy companies found ways to get more of it out of the ground. Even more astounding is that by using this technique, America won't run out of natural gas for 100 years or more! Time to break out the Champagne? Not so fast, say environmentalists. To get gas out of the ground, companies use pressurized chemicals to blow up rock. It's called hydraulic fracturing -- fracking. An Oscar-nominated movie, "Gasland," says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire.
The Republican Lifetime Achievement Award
Republicans have an unfortunate habit. It's a habit cribbed from the Academy Awards, in which Hollywood rewards somebody who has been around forever with a special trophy. Republicans have their own Lifetime Achievement Award. It's called The Presidential Nomination, and it generally goes to dues-paying members who have spent their last few decades working for the party and clawing their way to the top. Members of the Republican Lifetime Achievement Award club include Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and John McCain. The latest nominees for the Lifetime Achievement Award include Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, both of whom have the excitement factor of dish soap. Now those rebels inside the Republican Party are clamoring for an insurrectionist pick like ... Mitch Daniels.
The Tale of the Governator and the Baby
In 2004, Maria Shriver told Vanity Fair that many people were surprised that a Kennedy clan member would marry Hollywood bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. "People at first were like, 'You married the other side of the tracks.'" She said, "They have trouble with the class thing. ... Everyone assumed that I was supposed to marry someone like a John Kerry, some preppy that had gone to Harvard or Yale. I didn't want to marry those boys. I did not like them. I had been around them my whole life. I interrupted the story line."
Libya: Toothless Lawfare Amid Warfare
This week, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors announced that they intend to indict Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi on an array of charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Gadhafi's regime immediately dismissed the ICC investigation as imperialist propaganda. For possibly better, but likely for worse, ICC criminal warrants -- or at least the threat of warrants -- are now a weapon in the Libyan Civil War.
Waive Me
Hear that? It's the escalating cry of American employers and workers trying to hold on to their health care benefits in the age of stifling Obama health insurance mandates: Gangway! Gangway! Save me! Waive me! Obamacare refugees first began beating down the exit doors in October 2010. As I've documented since last fall, waiver-mania started with McDonald's and Jack in the Box; spread to Dish Networks, hair salon chain Regis Corp and resort giant Universal Orlando; took hold among every major Big Labor organization from the AFL-CIO to the CWA to the SEIU; roped in the nationalized health care promoters at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (whose board of trustees includes health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle); and is now gripping entire states (Maine, New Hampshire and Nevada all recently got in on the act).
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Apocalypse Now?
Politicians and political activists frequently declare the end of the world will occur if their candidate isn't elected, or if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Some conservative Christians think the end is on the way because of behavior and practices they judge immoral. Somehow the country, not to mention the planet, survives and when "doomsday" passes, the prognosticators live to predict Armageddon on another day. Now comes radio preacher Harold Camping, the nearly-90-year-old owner of a network of stations he calls "Family Radio." Camping once belonged to a traditional church. He then decided all churches are corrupt and people should leave whatever congregation they're in and listen only to him because only his interpretation of Scripture is true. I believe that is one characteristic of a cult.
Obamacare Based on Fraudulent Premise
I think people are missing the main point of Obamacare's alleged "death panels": Obama has forfeited any claim to moral authority in pursuit of his so-called health care reform. It is indisputable that the thrust of Obama's push for Obamacare was that too many Americans were being denied access to medical care, and that health care "should be a right for every American." He obviously believes insurance companies let his mother die in refusing to cover her medical bills because of her pre-existing condition. So, Obama concluded, as a matter of morality and legality, there should be universal access to health care among Americans. Anything less is immoral.
Are the Jews the Chosen People?
I assume that the type of person who reads columns such as this one has wondered at one time or another why, for thousands of years, there has been so much attention paid to Jews and why, today, to Israel, the one Jewish state. But how do most people explain this preoccupation? There is no fully rational explanation for the amount of attention paid to the Jews and the Jewish state. And there is no fully rational explanation for the amount of hatred directed at Jews and the Jewish state.
Justice and Bin Laden
"USA! USA! USA!" The chants and cheers echoed in college bars, sports stadiums, and public streets across the country. Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was dead from two bullets through the head, courtesy of our finest soldiers, the Navy Seals.
Give Victory a Chance
LITTLE ROCK -- The other day a scholarly panel at the University of Arkansas' branch here was discussing what everybody else in the country had been talking about, too: The causes and effects of the long-awaited demise of one Osama bin Laden at the hands of parties well known and much admired: SEAL Team 6. One of the speakers, the university's director of international studies, said the SEALs' signal achievement vindicated this country's counter-terrorism strategy. No arguing with that. But then he had to add that the highly effective commando raid illustrated -- by contrast -- how costly and ineffective the whole war in Afghanistan had been. To which I would add only this scholarly comment: Huh?
Gingrich the 'Social Engineer'
There's never any accounting for a Newt Gingrich idea, or even for Newt himself, who never steps out of the spotlight, never leaves a thought unexpressed, and seems to crave the microphone and TV camera the way a 3-year-old craves peanut butter. The Republican Medicare plan is "right-wing social engineering"? Aw, come on, Newt. Does the aroma of presidential politics come to us on the breezes from "Meet the Press," from which vantage point Newt addressed us Sunday? Maybe he hopes to pick up Democratic votes through his new "moderation," or whatever it is.