Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Grand Compromise Brings More Spending
The Republican congressional leadership congratulated itself for leading nine "moderate" GOP senators away from a cliff and back to solid footing by persuading them not to vote with Democrats on a 1,924-page, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill that has more pork in it than a pig farm. Instead, most Republicans went along with another bill, which President Obama quickly signed last Friday. It preserves the Bush-era tax rates, but also perpetuates the cycle of debt and spending that contributed to America's current economic difficulties.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Great RomneyCare Denial
Q: When it comes to a government overhaul of health care, what is the difference between President Obama and Mitt Romney? A: Obama was against an individual insurance mandate before he was for it. Romney was for the mandate before he was against it. Actually, that's not quite accurate. The real difference is that Obama acknowledges reversing his position, while Romney seems to be trying to have it both ways.
Stop the START Treaty
There are many incomprehensible moments in movies. For instance, in just about every James Bond film, the sadistic villain finally has his nemesis, Agent 007, in his clutches. Instead of just shooting Bond, because a gunshot would be too quick and relatively painless, he sets up an elaborate mechanism so that he can enjoy watching the British spy die a slow and agonizing death. But then, instead of sticking around and watching the execution through to its blood-curdling conclusion, the bad guy suddenly glances at his watch and says something along the lines of, "Good-bye, Mr. Bond. I would love to stay another minute or so and watch your excruciating demise, but there's a tuna fish sandwich waiting with my name on it."
Obama, McCartney and the Taxman!
It was a great event at the White House last June. Sir Paul McCartney came to be honored by President Obama. And he thrilled the glittering company with his rendering of that classic Beatles hit -- Michelle, Ma Belle. Sir Paul cooed to our First Lady the lines that say: "I love you, I love you, I love you!" He later joked he might be the first man ever punched out by a president. (That questionable honor actually goes to the unnamed man who tried to assault a nearly 70-year old President Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory went after the would-be assassin with his cane.)
Reid and Pelosi Finally Get Mugged by Public Opinion
Elections have consequences. The consequences of the November 2010 elections -- and one might add the November 2009 elections in New Jersey and Virginia and the January 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts -- became clear as lights shined over the snow at both ends of the Capitol on Thursday night. At the north end of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly withdrew the 1,924-page omnibus spending bill he had submitted two days before. Reid had hoped that the $8 billion worth of earmarks, including some for Republicans, would provide the Republican votes to pass a bill that financed Obamacare and otherwise furthered Democratic policy goals well into the next calendar year.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Fantasyland of No Labels
WASHINGTON -- As the new political group No Labels convened in Manhattan, a judge was issuing a decision that illustrated why the group's premise is preposterous and its pretense is cloying. The premise, obscured by gaseous rhetoric, is that political heat is inherently disproportionate. The complacent pretense is that it is virtuous to transcend the vice of partisanship. No Labels purports to represent a supposedly disaffected middle of the ideological spectrum. Some No Labels enthusiasts speak of eliminating "political retribution," presumably meaning voters defeating candidates with whose positions they disagree. No Labels promises to police the political speech of the intemperate.
The Democrats' New Pork: Trains to Nowhere
In the last decade, the symbol for profligate federal spending was the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" -- a huge proposed span that would link the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, population 7,500, to an airport on Gravina Island. Powerful Alaska Republican lawmakers tried to stick American taxpayers with a huge chunk of the tab for this dubious project. This decade, the symbol for federal pork-barrel excess may well be Trains to Nowhere -- and if Democrats get their way, those boondoggles could span the country. At least in blue states.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Reaganomics 2.0 in the Driver's Seat
On a historic night this past Thursday, a new tea party Republican Congress completely transformed U.S. economic policy. Elections matter, and so do their ideas. Smaller government, low taxes and less spending were key election themes in the Republican landslide. And those themes triumphed this week as a large tax-cut bill finally passed the House and a monstrosity of a spending bill was defeated in the Senate. In one fell swoop, Obamanomics is out the window. Reaganomics 2.0 is now in the driver's seat.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama prepared to delay his Christmas vacation to help shove bills through Congress. He also faces the traditional last-minute Christmas shopping. A president can't shop for Christmas gifts in late November like everyone else does because in Washington D.C., you never know who your friends are going to be in six weeks.
Black Racism
Whenever I start thinking about all the damage that's been done to America by the social engineering Socialists, I have to remind myself that some of my best friends are left-wingers. That doesn't do much for my blood pressure, but at least it serves to remind me that they're not all as self-righteous as George Soros, as fatuous as Michael Moore, as smarmy as Jimmy Carter, as shrill as Nancy Pelosi, as hypocritical as Barney Frank and Henry Waxman, or as deceptive as Barack Obama, the fellow who had the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate and yet managed to convince millions of people who should have known better that he was a card-carrying centrist.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Don't Play Politics on Afghanistan
There are few areas in which I believe President Obama has earned high marks, but his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan last year is one I supported. Now, a new U.S. military assessment of the progress made in Afghanistan suggests that the 30,000 additional U.S. troops deployed in 2009-2010 have made a difference in southern Afghanistan, especially in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Unfortunately, those additional troops may begin to be withdrawn next July, which could not only set back current progress but subject our remaining troops to greater danger -- simply to fulfill a political promise.
A Night With the Animals
BERLIN -- "Money, money, money makes the world go round, the world go round." Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli sang it loud and clear in the movie "Cabaret," based on Christopher Isherwood's tales of the high life among the lowlife in the Berlin of the early 1930s. Today, they might change the lyrics to "euro, euro, euro, euro." But no one here suggests the euro is making the world go round. The Germans grumble over the loans to Greece and Ireland as the cost of borrowing has risen for German consumers, along with the healthy economies in the European Union. Why should Germans help the profligate Greeks, who get to retire 10 years earlier than they do?
Don't Start on START -- Until Next Year
Americans can tell when we are being lied to. We're being lied to when Harry Reid tells us that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia is a bit of unfinished business that the Senate must ratify because it's "urgent." Urgent? If that had been the case, why didn't Mr. Reid bring the measure up last summer? Or last fall?
A Democratic Congress That Even Obama Can't Trust
Make no mistake. President Obama's support for an extension of the Bush tax cuts is born out of the reality that his re-election is now less than two years away, and by the minute he is losing those independent voters who voted for him in 2008. But you know the old saw: Sometimes you have to dance with the ones who brung you to the dance. The president is stuck waltzing about with a Democratic House and Senate whose members learned nothing from the November elections.
Exploiting the Teen Temptress
You may have never heard of the 17-year-old actress Taylor Momsen, but she represents everything that's wrong with pop culture today. At 7, she starred as the adorable Cindy Lou Who in Jim Carrey's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," but there's nothing adorable in what she's done lately. Momsen is a "multiple threat," matching acting on CW's smutty teen series "Gossip Girl" with a "music career" with a band accurately titled the Pretty Reckless. In July, still aged 16, Momsen's music video for the song "Miss Nothing" featured her in raccoonish eye makeup wearing a white silk bodysuit, fishnet stockings and garters -- not exactly your standard high school junior outfit -- a child crawling, standing and lying on her back on a banquet table offering herself figuratively as a morsel for men twice her age.
America, the Crab Bucket
No matter how soothing the White House overtures to business leaders sounded this week, an inconvenient fact remains: Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And there's no cure in sight. Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket, and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket, and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape. President Obama sought to reassure 20 CEOs that he wasn't the king crab holding them down: "I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success," he cooed. "We want to be boosters because when you do well, America does well."
Thrown Under the (Omni)Bus
The gold standard in contemptuous politics remains emperor Caligula's appointment of his horse, Incitatus, to the Roman senate. Well, Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is getting some long delayed senatorial payback. Figuratively speaking, Reid plans to drop on the president's desk a steaming pile of what Incitatus used to deposit on the stable floor. This sack of non-shinola goes by the technical name of an omnibus spending bill. It wraps together all of the appropriations bills of the last year into a single $1.2 trillion monstrosity so laden down with spending grotesqueries that it comes out to more than $623 million a page -- and it's 1,924 pages long. By my rough estimate, that's about $3.1 million per word.
Tis the Season To Spoil Our Children?
The advice columns are beginning to reflect the season. A dismayed mother wrote to the Washington Post, "I love the holidays, but they bring out the greed in my children. From Halloween to Christmas Eve, all I hear is 'gimme, gimme and gimme.' How can I make them think of others instead of themselves?" The always wise Marguerite Kelly offered some sound suggestions -- like having the kids make fudge to give out to friends and neighbors "so your children will find out how good it feels to be a giver as well as a getter."
The New Comeback Kid
WASHINGTON -- If Barack Obama wins re-election in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010. Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls.
GOP Should Slam on the Brakes
Conservatism and responsible government won a resounding victory in November's elections, and yet just a month later, we're witnessing legislative arrogance on a scale you wouldn't expect if voters had ratified the ruling class' sprint toward national bankruptcy. Can you imagine how it would be acting if it hadn't received a "shellacking"? It seems that Washington is embracing all the principles and practices the voters soundly rejected, without the slightest indication it either received the message or cares. Are we seeing any evidence of greater transparency, a rejection of earmarks, budgetary restraint or legislative deliberation?