Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tiny Cuts, Big Complaints
In the context of federal spending that will total something like $3.8 trillion this year, $61 billion is a rounding error. Yet the Democrats resisting that amount in House-approved cuts say it will wreck the economy while leaving children unschooled, taking food from the mouths of the elderly and casting disabled people into the streets. Laughter is the only appropriate response to such predictions. In these absurd times, when both parties quibble over crumbs while the layer cake of debt rises higher and higher, laughter is a mark of fiscal seriousness.
Calculated Covert Action Against Gadhafi
In 1941, air power gave Japan significant military and psychological advantages in its war against China. Japanese bombers pounded Chinese ground forces. They also targeted defenseless civilians. The Nanking Massacre (1937) demonstrated that the thugs running Tokyo's China war regarded terror, atrocity and mass murder as tools to intimidate and control the Chinese populace. Imposing a no-fly zone wasn't an option for President Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Japanese military might eliminated the choice. FDR opted for a covert operation: the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG), better known as the Flying Tigers. The AVG would give China a nominal air defense capability and signal U.S. political sympathy for its war-savaged people. Now for the overt fact: Most AVG pilots were U.S. Army and Marine officers who conveniently resigned their commissions. However, their public status as volunteers provided a thin veil of deniability that made the operation politically feasible. It wasn't a black op, to use the jargon for covert action, but a gray op.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
In Wisconsin and Washington, Broke Ain't Broke
"America is not broke," filmmaker Michael Moore told a group protesting against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempts to curb public employee union collective bargaining in Madison over the weekend. "Neither is Wisconsin." Forget Wisconsin's projected two-year $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Forget this year's $1.65 trillion in federal deficit spending. Any claim that Wisconsin -- or Washington -- is broke, Moore claimed, is "a Big Lie."
The Politicians Blow It (Again)
Crash! Thud! The president's grand scheme of remaking America in the image of the Daily Kos, MSNBC and the Democratic left is encountering, hmmm, let's say some slowdowns. These should make varied American breathe more easily as they contemplate the near future. Bad enough, from Barack Obama's standpoint, has been the refusal in recent months of at least two federal judges to affirm his right to compel universal purchase of health insurance.
The Uses of Antisemitism
It was the always observant Mary McCarthy who observed that antisemitism is the one form of intellectuality that appealed to stupid people. But she may have overlooked its appeal to ambitious politicians, too. They're always on the lookout for some mania they can use for their own purposes. Whether to seize power at the beginning of their rise or to hold onto it at the end. Or anytime in between. Think of the way Southern demagogues back in the bad old days knew that, whenever they needed a way to stir folks up, they could always rely on the Race Issue.
Chicago Politics Targets High Court
The Alinskyite left is not content with cramming its legislative agenda down the American people's throats. Next stop, the Supreme Court, where it is seeking to attack and discredit justices who will pass upon the constitutionality of its overreaching legislation. Liberals were incensed when the Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, struck down a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that prohibited all corporations and unions from broadcasting "electioneering communications" -- broadcast, cable or satellite communications that mention a candidate within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary. So incensed that President Barack "New Tone" Obama departed from years of custom and proper decorum and personally lambasted the justices for it in his 2010 State of the Union speech.
Time to Rethink Arab Arms Sales
For many years American policy has been to sell modern weaponry to Arab states. The reasons given are to maintain the "balance of power" in the region, but the unstated and most likely reason is to keep the oil flowing. The Obama administration has approved billions in arms sales and transfers to Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But public attitudes about arms sales to Arab countries appear to be changing, especially in light of the current upheaval in the region with some dictators using "Made in USA" weapons against their own people.
Terrorists With Union Cards?
The response of our State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, to the murder of two U.S. Airmen and the wounding of two others in Germany was firmly noncommittal. Crowley was unwilling to call the incident terrorism. After all, he said, you wouldn't call the shooter who killed federal judge John Roll, and five other people and who seriously wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson a terrorist, would you? According to many witnesses, the assailant in Germany yelled "Allahu Akhbar" (Arabic for "God is Great") as he gunned down the young American servicemen, who were in uniform. The killer is a Kosovar Muslim, news reports confirm, but Crowley didn't want to jump to any conclusions.
Union Myths
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians. Nothing shows the utter cynicism of the unions and the politicians who do their bidding like the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act" that the Obama administration tried to push through Congress. Employees' free choice as to whether or not to join a union is precisely what that legislation would destroy.
The $50,000 Orgasm
On Feb. 21, the 600 Northwestern University students enrolled in the popular Human Sexuality course taught by professor John Michael Bailey were told that if they wished to stay after class -- it was clearly made optional -- they would see a live demonstration of female ejaculation, the subject of that day's class. A naked young woman (not a student) would demonstrate a "f---saw" and come to orgasm in front of the students. About 120 students stayed. When word came out about this contribution to young people's understanding of life, the university defended it. Its official spokesman, Al Cubbage, released this statement...
Government Shutdown? So What?
According to news reports, Team Obama and House Republicans are at least $50 billion apart in the budget negotiations for FY2011. I'm willing to bet that Team Obama and Senate Democrats won't agree to even $20 billion in spending cuts. And that's a far cry from the GOP's annualized $100 billion pledge-to-America mark, and an even farther cry from the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts that are necessary over the next five to 10 years. As I recall, the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission suggested more than $1 trillion in cuts to the domestic discretionary baseline over 10 years. I think the plan by Rep. Paul Ryan would do the same.
The Flipside of Feminism
Are women happier than they were thirty years ago? They ought to be, according to the feminist blueprint. But they're not. An excellent new book, The Flipside of Feminism, explains why. Written by Phyllis Schlafly, the icon of conservative women, and her niece Suzanne Venker, this witty and fast-reading book dismantles the myth of feminism and prescribes a "new road map" for women's happiness.
Impervious to Evidence
My friend E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, is a fine man with, I feel safe in asserting, a warm heart. But he betrays in a recent column a persistent failing of the left -- imperviousness to evidence. Describing Speaker Boehner's tactics in the budget fights with Democrats, Dionne wrote: "Begin with the outrageous $1.1 billion, 15 percent cut from Head Start, a program that offers preschool education to roughly 965,000 poor children. According to the Center for Law and Public Policy, this would knock 218,000 kids out of Head Start and force 16,000 classrooms to close. That is an excellent way to lose the future, as Obama ought to be saying. What could be a better use of public money than helping our poorest children early in life so they might achieve more in school, and later?"
Monday, March 7, 2011
A Bunch of Things That Annoy Me
A while back, I confessed that I had grown tired of people -- including some conservatives -- who demeaned those of us who wished that Barack Obama would be compelled to cough up his birth certificate and his college application. It just strikes me as very suspicious that the fellow hanging out in the Oval Office is so determined to keep those items under wraps. It's not that I am dying to see Joe Biden take his place; I would much prefer to see Obama suffer a shellacking in 2012, but I see no reason that he should be allowed to get away with stuff that no other president would even consider attempting.
Who's to Blame for Union Woes?
The labor union movement is in deep trouble. Only 6 percent of private-sector employees are union members. Voters are beginning to realize, thanks to governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, that public-sector unions have negotiated unsustainable levels of pensions and benefits -- and that public-sector unions are a mechanism for involuntary transfers of money from taxpayers to the Democratic Party. Who's to blame for the unions' plight? I blame Frederick W. Taylor.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
First the Public Service, Then Endless Litigation
Last month, the website Politico reported that the Department of Justice dropped its representation of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his former deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and other defendants in a lawsuit filed by convicted al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla and his mother. The Department of Justice continues to represent Defense Secretary Robert Gates, but no longer the Bushies. Padilla, you may recall, is an American citizen who was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002; authorities claimed that he was plotting to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb." After the Bush administration designated Padilla as an "enemy combatant," he was held in a South Carolina Navy brig for 44 months.
The GOP's Weirdness Faction
WASHINGTON -- If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party. The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who won the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa and reached that year's national convention with more delegates than Mitt Romney, and might run again. Huckabee, now a Fox News host, was asked by Steve Malzberg, a talk radio host, this:
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Complaining About Conservatives
Unfortunately, the best thing you can usually say about Republican politicians is that the Democrats are worse. For instance, it's easy to fault those on the left for ObamaCare, but why is it that those on the right side of the aisle never bothered making it possible to shop for health insurance in other states or cleared the way for a worker to take his health insurance to a new job? Instead, as usual, the Republicans merely reacted once Obama and his cronies cooked up their vile stew, consisting of rat tails, bat wings and eye of newt.
From The Comedy Store
IBM said Tuesday its Jeopardy-champion computer Watson is not going to be used to replace an IBM scientist or IBM engineer. A company spokesman said that although Watson knows almost everything, he can't think. So they're going to run him for Congress.
Friday, March 4, 2011
We, the Unhyphenated Americans: Meet My People
My fellow Americans, who are "your people"? I ask because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase "my people" in congressional testimony this week. It was an unmistakably color-coded and exclusionary reference intended to deflect criticism of the Obama Justice Department's selective enforcement policies. It backfired. In pandering to skin-deep identity politics and exacerbating race-consciousness, Holder has given the rest of us a golden opportunity to stand up, identify "our people" and show the liberal poseurs what post-racialism really looks like.