Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Slaves to Words
We could definitely use another Abraham Lincoln to emancipate us all from being slaves to words. In the midst of a historic financial crisis of unprecedented government spending, and a national debt that outstrips even the debt accumulated by the reckless government spending of previous administration, we are still enthralled by words and ignoring realities. President Barack Obama's constant talk about "millionaires and billionaires" needing to pay higher taxes would be a bad joke, if the consequences were not so serious. Even if the income tax rate were raised to 100 percent on millionaires and billionaires, it would still not cover the trillions of dollars the government is spending.
Wielding Waivers as Weapons
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plea that Congress would have to pass the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to "find out what's in it" has become an instant classic in the annals of dysfunctional government. But in the months since the bill's passage, as the Department of Health and Human Services has parceled out waivers, something else has become clear: We may never know what's in it.
Ensign Disgraced Himself and Senate
Before John Ensign resigned as Nevada's junior senator on May 3, the Republican faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into a possibly illegal cover-up that followed an affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton, a campaign aide who was married to the senator's administrative assistant. Last week, the committee released a report on the probe -- and it is ugly. The committee wasn't particularly interested in the nine-month affair. Its focus was on -- you guessed it -- the cover-up. Ensign's parents made a $96,000 "gift" to the Hamptons after the couple stopped working for Ensign. Ensign steered husband Doug Hampton into a lobbying job -- despite a federal law that bans staffers from lobbying the Senate within a year of leaving the Capitol.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Good for Union Bosses, Bad for the Economy
One picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Sometimes you need only one number. Consider the latest monthly job report, which shows an uptick in unemployment, from 8.8 percent to 9.0 percent. Yet it's another number I'd like to highlight. It comes from a different government report, one on gross domestic product -- our nation's economic output. It shows that business investment fell from an 8.6 percent growth rate in the last quarter of 2010 to 2.8 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Crime and No Punishment
The other day, I was talking to a friend and, as old poops will, we tried to figure out when this country started sliding downhill. For instance, when did greed become not only acceptable, but admirable in the eyes of so many? When did we begin to accept that corporate CEOs were not only worth millions and millions of dollars in salary and stock options, but were deserving of their golden parachutes, which provided them with still more millions when their acclaimed business acumen brought their companies to the brink of bankruptcy? The argument I hear quite often is that if these financial wizards hadn't been at the helm, their companies would have lost even more money. Imagine if that were an argument we could all use. Employees who had botched a delivery could say, "Well, at least I didn't burn down the plant" and errant husbands could explain to their wives that while it was true they had committed serial adultery with a great many women, there were several others they had ignored.
Obama's Hypocritical Rhetoric on Immigration Reform
Barack Obama's immigration speech in El Paso May 10 was an exercise in electioneering and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because while Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself. In 2007, when such a bill was backed by a lame duck Republican president and had bipartisan backing from Senate heavyweights Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, Sen. Obama voted for union-backed amendments that Kennedy and Kyl opposed as bill-killers.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Obama's Anti-Business Stance
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. -- This summer, the huge Boeing assembly plant here will begin producing 787 Dreamliners -- up to three a month, priced at $185 million apiece. It will, unless the National Labor Relations Board, controlled by Democrats and encouraged by Barack Obama's reverberating silence, gets its way. Last month -- 17 months after Boeing announced plans to build here, and with the $2 billion plant nearing completion -- the NLRB, collaborating with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, charged that Boeing's decision violated the rights of its unionized workers in Washington state, where some Dreamliners are assembled and still will be even after the plant here is operational. The NLRB has read a 76-year-old statute (the 1935 Wagner Act) perversely, disregarded almost half a century of NLRB and Supreme Court rulings, and patently misrepresented statements by Boeing officials.
Sarah Palin's Birther Baptism by Fire
As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin "demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders," The Atlantic's Joshua Green reports in a must-read story. "She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today -- by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business." After making the case, Green then asks, "What happened to Sarah Palin?"
Saturday, May 14, 2011
We Are Better Than Them
In the wake of Osama bin Laden's execution, I heard a lot of people spouting sheer poppycock. Some of these schmoes felt we had no business taking care of business in another country. Considering that the country in question was Pakistan, a nation that even really rotten, corrupt countries look down upon, that's a position not even worth debating. There were those who felt the Navy Seals should have captured him and brought bin Laden back for trial. Those people may even be dumber than the ones in that first group. The only possible reason we might have considered keeping him alive would have been in order to extract information from him. But inasmuch as the Seals carted off his computer, his files, his letters and, for all I know, his naughty doodles of women without veils, we're all far better off having him swimming with the fishes.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama went to Ground Zero in New York City to mark Osama bin Laden's death. So much has changed in the past ten years. Bush said we will get whoever did this, and Obama said we will give whoever did this a culturally sensitive funeral.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Memory and Celebration in Israel
The line between life and death is always a thin one, and never more, literally and symbolically, than in the tiny state of Israel, which celebrates its 63rd birthday this week. (That's a lot of bar mitzvahs.) No sooner had the sirens sounded across the promised land of milk and honey, marking Memorial Day for the soldiers who have died fighting for Israel's survival, than fireworks splashed across the heavens recalling that moment in 1948 when Israel declared its independence. The two commemorations are not unrelated. President Harry S. Truman, after days of bitter argument with his own State Department, announced just minutes after the declaration of Israeli independence that the United States would be the first to recognize the new state. As Israel took its first steps as a state, armies from four Arab countries marched in with guns ablaze, opening the first of several Arab-Israeli wars. This year's Israeli Memorial Day honors the 23,000 men and women who have died in those wars, and the 2,500 Jews slain by Palestinian terrorists.
Americanism
One of William F. Buckley's later books was titled simply "Gratitude," which is, when you think about it, one of the cardinal conservative virtues. The spirit of gratitude was amply on display this past week at a symposium jointly sponsored by the Bradley Foundation and the Hudson Institute titled "True Americanism: What It Is and Why It Matters." Spoiler alert: It matters. Panelists took as their starting point an indispensable new book by Leon and Amy Kass and Diana Schaub called "What So Proudly We Hail," a selection of stories, songs, and speeches about "the American soul" which should become "The Book of Virtues" for patriots. From the Mayflower Compact to Flannery O'Connor, and from Ralph Ellison to George S. Patton Jr., this collection ranges across American history lighting upon the words that have shaped and reflected us.
What Happened on AA Flight 1561
If you listen to the passengers and crew who flew on American Airlines Flight 1561 last weekend, there's no doubt about what happened on their harrowing trip: A Yemeni man shrieking "Allahu akbar!" at the top of his lungs more than 30 times rushed the cockpit door twice intending to take down the plane and kill everyone on board. The clammy, sweaty lone male passenger exhibited classic symptoms of what Middle East scholar and author Daniel Pipes has dubbed "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" -- a seemingly random outbreak of threatening behavior or violence by a hysterical Muslim adherent who had not previously exhibited signs of Islamic radicalization. It took at least four men to tackle and restrain Rageh Ahmed Mohammed al-Murisi. "There was no question in everybody's mind that he was going to do something," passenger Angelina Marty told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Now What?
QUANTICO, Va. -- Here at this sprawling Marine Corps base south of our nation's capital, nothing has changed since Osama bin Laden met his demise in Pakistan. Thousands of Marines here at the "Crossroads of the Corps" are still waking up at "Oh-Dark-Thirty," going about their duties, running for miles, lifting weights and tossing each other about in hand-to-hand-combat drills. Apparently these American heroes are unaware that Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass; Carl Levin, D-Mich.; and even Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and a host of others up the road in Washington, D.C., have decided that bin Laden's death means the war in Afghanistan has been won and most of our troops need to come home ASAP.
'Common' Nonsense
The Obamas want credit for bringing American culture to the White House. When they decided to celebrate poetry at the White House on May 10, it was really not a surprise they would try to make it socially "relevant" by inviting a rap music "artist" to unload some rhymes. The rapper goes by the name "Common" (real name: Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.). He is celebrated by many on the left as a "socially conscious" street poet. But that's not the way it was seen by cops in New Jersey. ABC reporter Jake Tapper blogged that Dave Jones, president of the New Jersey State Trooper Fraternal Association, was contacted by the White House about trooper objections. Obama officials claimed they had never heard of Joanne Chesimard (who renamed herself Assata Shakur), a woman Common celebrated in "song."
English for Immigrants
President Obama invoked immigrant assimilation this week in a speech in El Paso, Texas, praising the notion embodied in the motto E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But it wasn't all that long ago when many liberals eschewed the idea of America as having one language, one culture, and one people. Ironically, it has taken an anti-immigrant backlash to awaken at least some liberals to the dangers of multiculturalism, which they pushed aggressively for decades. It was liberals -- not conservatives -- who originally claimed that today's immigrants couldn't assimilate, or, in their view, shouldn't even try. Liberals insisted that Hispanic kids, even those who were born here, be taught in Spanish and learn to revere their ancestral culture rather than to take pride in being Americans. The bilingual, multicultural approach became deeply imbedded in the public school curriculum, thanks to the efforts mostly of white liberals, with help from some college-educated, fully assimilated Hispanic activists.
Demagoguery 101
WASHINGTON -- Constructive and civil debate -- like the one Obama initiated just four weeks ago on deficit reduction? The speech in which he accused the Republicans of abandoning families of autistic and Down syndrome kids? The debate in which Obama's secretary of health and human services said that the Republican plan would make old folks "die sooner"? In this same spirit of comity and mutual respect, Obama's most recent invitation to civil discourse -- on immigration -- came just 11 minutes after he accused opponents of moving the goal posts on border enforcement. "Maybe they'll need a moat," he said sarcastically. "Maybe they want alligators in the moat."
White House Hoping Triumph Will Transfer
After hearing the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed, who among us didn't joyfully shout, "Yes! This is a huge triumph for wind and solar energy!" Or, "Wahoo! Now we can get immigration reform passed!" Personally, I would like to thank every member of SEAL Team 6 for taking such huge risks for high-speed rail and for streamlining the bureaucratic regulations governing salmon fishing. If you're confused, it's only because you haven't heard the White House explain the true significance of bin Laden's death. According to an article in the Washington Post headlined "Bin Laden raid fits into Obama's 'big things' message," the White House believes taking out the world's most wanted terrorist is a boon for the entire Obama agenda.
My Recurring Obama 'Dream'
Can you imagine how insufferable President Obama would be about his record in office if he actually had abundant positive accomplishments? Have we ever seen a starker contrast between a politician's record and his self-assessment of it? It's not as though the president just avoids or downplays his failures. It's more like he showcases them, but only after completely revising history to put his actions in a favorable light. I have this recurring dream where I'm watching the president give a speech and he makes a claim about his record wholly at odds with what we have witnessed and I have to question my memory. Did he just say what I think he said, or did I miss a word or phrase that would have changed the meaning to something far less inaccurate -- and outrageously absurd? The trouble is, these are not dreams.
The Learning Curve of Presidents
There's nothing like bitter experience to test glib theories. But presidents can be remarkably slow learners, such is the power of their more cherished -- and fixed -- ideas. Following those ideas over the cliff tends to reduce politicians to explaining why their policies were really right all along, no matter how wrong they proved in practice. See Jimmy Carter -- or, for that matter, Jefferson Davis. The first, and last, president of the Confederate States of America could still fill up two unreadable volumes explaining why his constitutional theories were absolutely right -- even as he stood amid the ruins his theories had wrought.