Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Winners and Losers
Credit for best timing in this year's midterm elections goes to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and political maven who resigned earlier this year to run for mayor of Chicago, his reputation as a hard-driving winner still intact. Nothing sustains a reputation like resigning in time.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Deficit Reduction
Another deficit reduction commission has now made its recommendations. My own recommendation for dealing with deficits would include stopping the appointment of deficit reduction commissions. It is not the amount of money that these commissions cost that is the issue. It is the escape hatch that they provide for big-spending politicians.
Dr. Bernanke's Magic Elixir for the Economy
Ben Bernanke is proving a fitting successor to Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. Unfortunately. The Fed's previous chairman and guru-in-chief drove interest rates down till he could scarcely get them any lower without diving into the negative numbers. It was a very popular policy. Booms always are till they go bust.
The Tax Rate Racket
The flap over whether to extend present tax rates for the rich finds its center in a cultural proposition: Liberals, including rich liberals, either don't like the rich or feel obliged to pretend they don't. The argument official Washington will have this month over tax rates -- Republicans on one side, President Obama on the other side -- is perhaps the oldest argument in politics. They had it 2,500 years ago in Rome: plebes vs. patricians. They'll have it 2,500 years from now (assuming no Second Coming of Christ disarranges worldly affairs). At least the language will be familiar: fat cats, plutocrats, the middle class, the poor, compassion, justice, fairness, highway robbery, grrrrrrrrr.
Time Machine
My Apple computer has a handy icon called "Time Machine." By clicking it, I can find data that might have been misplaced, or return the computer to a specific configuration dating back to a specific date and time. That serves as a good metaphor when discussing the initial report by the Debt Commission. Though Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, start at the wrong end. They are recommending cuts in some government spending and advocating for higher taxes to pay for the rest. What is needed, instead, is a "history commission" to remind those who have forgotten -- or never learned -- the purpose of government and the role and responsibility of the individual.
Culture Challenge of the Week: Risk-Taking/Texting Teens
My children and I love texting. It's an instantaneous way to keep in touch and share moments that otherwise might be missed. Like parents everywhere, I've taken pains to teach my children to avoid the bad habits of texting, like ignoring the people you're with in order to text someone else, as well as the harmful kinds of texting -- deadly things like texting while driving and immoral things like sexting.
The Happy Meal Banners and Their Ilk
What are we to make of Nancy Pelosi's home town's measure to ban Happy Meals? Shall we say that the San Francisco board of supervisors got a little carried away in their zeal to prevent childhood obesity? Or is it about time someone staged an intervention to shake Americans out of their sickening (literally) eating habits? Well, maybe, but not this way. When liberals unleash their coercive urges as the supervisors in San Francisco have done, even some Democrats -- notably the mayor -- are forced to protest. Would we like it if McDonalds changed its menus in response to social pressure and consumer demand? Yes. And by the way, that is happening. Customers at McDonalds can now choose salads, fruits, and quite tasty coffee in addition to the usual fatty fare. But that clearly didn't satisfy the food cops.
Haste (and Ideological Blindness) Makes Waste
President Obama's fiercest obstacles as chief executive are neither recalcitrant Republicans nor the increasing complexity and demands of the job; they are his ideology and his political allegiances. Newsweek sees it differently. In its latest issue, it laments: "The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world. ... The issue is not Obama, it's the office. ... Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency?"
The Liberal Mind Rejects Sad Facts
I recently devoted my biweekly column in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles to analyzing why most Jews believe that people are basically good despite the fact that this belief is neither rational nor Jewish. In a lifetime of teaching and writing on Judaism, I have never encountered a single normative statement in 3,000 years of Jewish writing that asserted that man is basically good.
Be Wary of Muddy Waters
America is still "wringing wet" from the political tsunami that we just witnessed in the mid-term elections and, from where I stand, I can easily detect a mix of guarded hope and cautious apprehension among Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party followers and the "others" alike. The right to vote is the American way. It is a crystal-clear part of our freedom. And when the majority in any race picks its winner, there is a deep and abiding trust that accompanies the victory. There is a pledge taken by those elected to dutifully represent us, or at least that's the way it is supposed to work because sometimes those elected take a little different turn.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Bars into Churches
Some people are alone because they want to be. This we call solitude, and how sweet it is. Others are alone but don't want to be. So they cluster. Where do all the lonely people go to be together? If they have laptops, to Starbucks. If not, they can be found -- where else? -- in either bars or churches. Both institutions provide fellowship, allay fear, offer succor and may disappoint.
Created by God to Be Good
It has become an annual tradition: The days grow shorter, the holidays approach, and the American Humanist Association rolls out an ad campaign promoting atheism and disparaging religion. Last year, the organization placed ads reading "No god? No problem!" on billboards and buses in more than a dozen cities. Its theme in 2008 was: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." This year, the association is taking a more combative tone. It is spending $200,000 to "directly challenge biblical morality" in advertisements appearing on network and cable TV, as well as in newspapers, magazines, and on public transit.
Post Election Elation
On a whole, I thought it was a wonderful election. It wasn't just that I astonished myself with my prognostications, which consisted of predicting a pick-up of seven seats in the Senate and 65 in the House, but that a couple of candidates I truly despised went down in ignominious defeat. Even if, God forbid, I were a Democrat, I like to think I would have cheered the departure of Florida's Charley Crist and Alan Grayson from the political landscape.
Bush Had Ups and Downs, but the Surge Counted Most
George W. Bush is sitting on a hotel sofa in front of a south-facing window on a sunny November morning. His presidential memoir, "Decision Points," is No. 1 on amazon.com and is expected to be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. "I've got a very comfortable life," he says. "Decision Points," as the title suggests, does not purport to be the full story of Bush's life or his administration. It "provides data points for future historians."
B. Verdot's Secret
America was deep in the grip The Great Depression on Dec. 17, 1933. People were not only out of work but many were forced to endure the agony of not being able to feed their own children, of watching a sick kid with no medicine nor even heat to give. So on that memorable day, a 158-word ad appeared in the Canton, Ohio, newspaper that we just now have learned changed some lives forever.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama stood in front of India's congress and bowed low before he gave a speech to them. The gesture didn't work. The lawmakers still observed the Indian custom of putting the American on hold for twenty minutes before they'd listen to them.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Two Wonks With One Plan About Too Much Debt
The draft deficit-reduction proposal released last week by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and retired GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming -- the co-chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt -- has the feel of what two wonks might draw up on cocktail napkins in a bar. It's a bit too easy for two unelected guys to hash out a plan that tells other people what they have to give up -- just to be fair. The thing is, sometimes two smart guys in a bar make more sense than the entire Washington political establishment. There are a number of intriguing ideas in their plan to cut nearly $4 trillion from the federal deficit through 2020. It's worth more than a look.
Shocking Hype on the Volt
WASHINGTON -- General Motors, an appendage of the government, which owns 61 percent of it, is spending some of your money, dear reader, on full-page newspaper ads praising a government brainstorm -- the Volt, Chevrolet's highly anticipated and prematurely celebrated (sort of) electric car. Although the situation is murky -- GM and its government masters probably prefer it that way -- it is unclear in what sense GM has any money that is truly its own. And the Volt is not quite an electric car, or not the sort GM deliberately misled Americans into expecting.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Getting Our Fiscal House in Order
On November 2, the American people sent a resounding message to Washington D.C. that the era of reckless spending must stop. We all know a Balanced Budget Amendment is vital to stopping out of control spending. That's why Senator-elect Mike Lee (R,Utah) and I launched Balanced Budget Amendment Now.
A Diet You Can Live With
It seems like only yesterday that everyone who could possibly afford it made sure to consume a lot of eggs, milk and red meat. In my case, come to think of it, it was yesterday. It's not that I'm unaware of the part that nutrition plays in one's overall health. It's not even that I don't care about the possible dire consequences. I'm well aware, actually way too aware, that forks and spoons kill off more Americans than guns and knives. I just wish everybody wouldn't harp on it constantly. For, as a topic of conversation, diets are right up there with soccer, life insurance and flossing.