Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Obama Equal Reagan? So Far, It Ain't Even Close
A week after Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday celebration, comparisons between Presidents Obama and Reagan continue. The conversation began when Obama praised Reagan in a USA Today op-ed. He commended Reagan's leadership, his confidence in and optimism for America, and his great ability to communicate his vision for the country. Reaganites like myself appreciate these sentiments.
From The Comedy Store
Homeland Security's Janet Napolitano told Congress the U.S. faces a terror threat. She said she tightened airport security to keep terrorists out of the country. If they want to come to the United States they'll have to fly to Mexico and walk across like everybody else.
It's Still the Land of Lincoln
Today may be Lincoln's Birthday by the calendar. But officially there is no more Lincoln's Birthday. Or Washington's. The old holidays have been telescoped, flattened, mixed and matched, their identities melted into a generic Presidents' Day that honors ... well, no one is quite sure. Washington and Lincoln? All the presidents combined? Bargain sales? It is all a blur. Not that Mr. Lincoln was ever easy to pigeonhole. To quote one of his contemporary biographers, David Donald, "I'm not sure anybody's ever gotten Lincoln down." But historians keep trying. So do a lot of pseudohistorians. Today we want our Wisdom of the Ages bite-sized, user-friendly, convenient, easy to open, unwrap and reseal. Mass-produced, cellophane-wrapped, french fries with that, and no thought required.
Adultery and Politics
When Bill Clinton was caught up in that messy bit of monkey business with Monica Lewinsky, liberals and the French sprang quickly to his defense. The French, especially, couldn't wait to sneer at us for our obvious lack of sophistication, although their linguists, to their credit, expressed some contempt for Clinton's apparent inability to define "is." The French feel that a man without a mistress is something of a freak. In fact, if it ever got out that a French politician didn't have a woman or two tucked away, the Parisian press would label him a sissy boy or, worse yet, an American.
Friday, February 11, 2011
JFK and Ronald Reagan: Two 'Classic Liberals' You Could Count On
Liberals and Democrats go nuts whenever any columnist dares to suggest that John F. Kennedy had more in common with Ronald Reagan than he did with, say, Kennedy's brother Bobby during the latter's bid for the presidency in 1968; or with another brother, Ted Kennedy, during most of his career in the U.S. Senate. Partisans of the political left will argue that John Kennedy was a liberals' liberal. They will say he subscribed to an entirely different political philosophy than Reagan and that the various points of comparison between the two ex-presidents are taken out of context.
From Freedom Agenda to Freedom Doctrine
WASHINGTON -- Today, everyone and his cousin supports the "freedom agenda." Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism -- the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another sordid example of U.S. imperialism.
Slaying Sacred Cows
House Democrats have been taunting Republicans to come up with concrete budget cuts ever since the GOP rode to victory last November on a platform of reducing spending. Now, the GOP leadership has proposed an impressive $35 billion down payment on reducing spending for the remaining eight months of the current fiscal year. But don't expect any applause from the Democratic side of the aisle. House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., offered the cuts from non-Defense discretionary programs. They include hefty slices out of the budgets for education, environmental programs, food for poor women and children -- all sacred cows for Democrats. The cuts add up to more than $43 billion in fiscal year 2011 spending, though the net savings is only $35 billion after proposed increases in some areas, such as Defense and Homeland Security.
De-Fund the Predators of Planned Parenthood
Thanks to the persistent investigative work of young pro-life journalists, Planned Parenthood's ruthless, money-grubbing colors are on full, fresh YouTube display. But as shocking as the illicit new videos from Live Action Films are, the routine, parental authority-sabotaging advice the taxpayer-funded abortion racket gives teens every day deserves more front-page headline news, too. Live Action is a California-based "new media, investigative and educational organization committed to the protection and respect of all human life" led by Internet undercover pioneer Lila Rose. The group's latest video footage at abortion clinics in Perth Amboy, N.J., the Bronx and four cities in Virginia shows Planned Parenthood officials aiding and abetting individuals posing as criminal sex traffickers seeking abortions for underage girls.
When They Grow Up
Companies are quietly redesigning their products to accommodate the needs of (shh, don't say it aloud) aging baby boomers. So reports the Wall Street Journal: "The generation that sent diaper sales soaring in the 1960s, bought power suits in the 1980s and indulged in luxury cars in the 2000s is getting ready to retire: The oldest boomers turn 65 this year ... But there's a catch: Baby boomers, famously demanding and rebellious, don't want anyone suggesting they're old." Marketers, always alert to the sensitivities of this most self-absorbed of cohorts, are developing products and shopping environments that will appeal to the needs of, let us say, ripening baby boomers without ever using the "o" word. "Surreptitiously, companies are making typefaces larger, lowering store shelves to make them more accessible and avoiding yellows and blues in packaging -- two colors that don't appear as sharply distinct to older eyes."
GOP Infighting Is a Positive Development
While The New York Times is gloating over "turmoil" in the GOP House "ranks," internal disagreements over spending and other issues are a healthy development and should lead to more disciplined and aggressive action. In his State of the Union speech, President Obama presented himself as a remade fiscal hawk, promising to freeze discretionary spending for five years. Conservatives immediately called him out on his disingenuousness. After greatly escalating baseline spending the past two years, his freeze pledge, especially when coupled with his gross inattention to the looming entitlement crisis, would just lock us onto our inexorable path to national bankruptcy.
The Death of Civility: Fadspeak's Latest Victim
It's happened before. The politically correct among us take a perfectly good word and prate on about it till they bore everyone in sight. They may even turn it inside out so that it becomes the opposite of what it once meant. Then they wonder why the word they've finally driven into the ground has lost all its power. See what happened to diversity, which was once a good, simple enough concept. But that was before the word-killers got their hands on it. First they turned it into a shibboleth, then an obsession, then a way of creating not diversity at all but a quota system embedded in law, faculty appointments, fashion and everything else. Instead of a diversity of opinion, they wound up preaching uniformity. Until eyes now glaze over at the very mention of the word.
More F-Bombs for Your iPod
The top of the pop charts has become a low, low place indeed. Just last summer, the singer Cee Lo Green took popular culture one rung lower into the sewer with the release of his song titled "F--- You." After a few weeks, it was mainstreamed into "Forget You," but why bother? While both versions sold well, the vulgar one clearly had its intended effect. The pop star Pink now has her own version with her new single titled "F---in' Perfect." How creative. That's reaching for the stars.
Numbness on the Nile
WASHINGTON -- On Thursday morning, the heads of America's intelligence services went to Capitol Hill to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on worldwide threats to the United States. We won't know what was said in the committee's closed sessions until it's leaked by one of the participants. But to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, based on their public testimony, what we now know about what our intelligence services don't know ought to alarm us. The director of national intelligence, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, stunned the committee by describing Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood -- the organization that has co-opted pro-democracy protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square -- as "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. ... They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt."
Not for a Faux Democracy
Democracy is more than a word. The protesting Egyptians and the watching world are learning that between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood stand a lot to overcome. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got one thing right: "It needs to be an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy, not faux democracy." Hope and change are not the same thing. Big talk and big deeds are not the same thing, either, as our own experienced taught. Not everyone believed the great Philadelphia experiment of 1776 would succeed, an experiment born of hope not experience. Not everyone believes now that what was wrought then will endure.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
AOL/HuffPo Meet Corporate Greed
In one of her many iterations, Arianna Huffington targeted "corporate greed" as a force undermining America. That was during one of her populist phases, which frequently are followed by Huffington morphing into what she once scorned. Score another transformation for La Huff. On Sunday, AOL announced it would pay $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the left-wing website she co-founded, Huffington Post. The merger and acquisition also will place Huffington at the helm of AOL's new Huffington Post Media Group division.
Where the Liberal Money Goes
We keep hearing claims that a lot of money goes into the pockets of so-called right-wing groups, but we hear nary a word from the media of where the really big bucks originate and where they end up. That’s too bad, because if the truth were known Americans would discover that those huge political contributions we keep hearing about really help finance far-left candidates and their generally wacko political causes.
Lieberman, Harman and Vanishing Democratic Moderates
Political pundits of a certain stripe have been lamenting the disappearance of Republican moderates for years. It's time now to lament the disappearance of moderate Democrats. Last month, Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced he wouldn't seek re-election. He lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut in 2006 because of his support of the Iraq war, but won in November as an independent.
January's Unemployment Report Was a Snow Job
The January employment report was a complete snow job. Abominable winter blizzards across the country caused 886,000 workers to report "not at work due to bad weather," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is 600,000 more than the normal 300,000 not at work for the average January of the past decade. So the bad weather has distorted the numbers. The actual 36,000 increase in non-farm payrolls and the 50,000 gain in private payrolls really don't have a snowball's chance at being accurate. The 1 million people in January who wanted a job but didn't look for one because of "other" reasons hints again at the bad-weather distortion. So does the 4.9 million jump in the part-time workforce.
The Most Important Speech Since Churchill
On March 5, 1946, the once and future prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. He was introduced by President Harry Truman, who then sat and watched as Churchill, the man who had recognized and fought the threat of Nazism before anyone else, identified the threat that would menace the world for the next half century. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent," Churchill warned. "Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe."
Ronald Reagan: The 100-Year-Old Racist?
Ronald Reagan "tortured" blacks. Tavis Smiley, the PBS television host, once said this about the former president. NBC's Bryant Gumbel and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, among many others, consider Reagan a racist. "There they go again," as Reagan might have said. The economic lot for blacks and Hispanics improved far more than it did for whites after Reagan's steep tax cuts. In late 1982, Reagan's second year in office, the unemployment rate for blacks was 20.4 percent. By 1989, his last year, the black unemployment rate had fallen to 11.4 percent -- a 9 percent drop. In late 1982, the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 15.3 percent. By 1989, it had fallen to 8 percent -- a drop of over 7 percentage points. White unemployment, by contrast, fell "only" 4 percentage points.