Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Three Wars, Little News
It is a busy time in America. The Major League Baseball playoffs are competing with the upcoming midterm elections for the public's attention. The rescue of courageous miners in Chile has for a time overshadowed even the latest psychodramas of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.
Tea Party Neophytes Outshine the Dems' Old Pros
One of the constant refrains of the so-called mainstream media is that tea party candidates are blithering incompetents and weird wackos. They may do well this year, the refrain goes, but when voters come to their senses, the Republican Party will pay a big price for embracing them.
The Rage in Coal Country
WHEELING, W. Va. -- In 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state by seceding from some secessionists: 50 counties, with few slaves, left Virginia, almost all of which have seams of coal. Barack Obama has a remarkable hostility to coal. For example, in 2008 he said: "If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Democrats are the French Party
Only in France could a labor action sound like a tasty appetizer. They call it "escargot," but they're not referring to snails in a buttery/garlic sauce. No, this escargot refers to the practice of truckers who work in teams to snarl traffic by driving at a snail's pace. Infuriated drivers cannot get around them.
Obama: Wrong, Not Evil -- That's Why He's So Dangerous
Is President Obama evil or "just" wrong? A Rasputin or a Chamberlain?
Chris Coons Lied, Granny Died
In all of life's tribulations, there is nothing so aggravating as being condescended to by an idiot. In last week's CNN debate in the Senate race between the astonishingly well-spoken Christine O'Donnell and the unfortunate-looking Chris Coons, O'Donnell had to put up with it from Coons for 90 minutes.
Don't Call Me Madam
California is broke -- flat broke. Two of the reasons for the state's desperate financial crisis are seeking yet another chance to completely wreck the state's economy.
Fannie, Freddie, Frank, and Fiction
Barney Frank can be ruthless in debate, especially when laying into opponents who try to evade the historical record. But as he pursues a 16th term in the US House, Frank seems to be attempting a little evasion of his own.
Vote-Buying America to the Brink
Across the pond, British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is calling for 19 percent cuts in government spending. As The New York Times reported, British finance minister George Osborne believes that the cuts will steer the country -- where the deficit runs at about 11.5 percent of total economic output -- away from the "brink" of "economic ruin."
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Nearly Invisible Harry Reid
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally appeared in a debate Oct. 14 in Las Vegas with his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle. The appearance might come as a surprise to consumers of the national media. While Angle has been pounded relentlessly by national media outlets as being both dangerously radical and ridiculous, Reid has been left alone and untouched.
The Undeniable Jewish State
Nothing about Israel could be more self-evident than its Jewishness. As Poland is the national state of the Polish people and Japan is the national state of the Japanese people, so Israel is the national state of the Jewish people. The UN's 1947 resolution on partitioning Palestine contains no fewer than 30 references to the "Jewish state" whose creation it was authorizing; 25 years earlier, the League of Nations had been similarly straightforward in mandating "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." When Israel came into existence on May 15, 1948, its Jewish identity was the first detail reported. The New York Times's front-page story began: "The Jewish state, the world's newest sovereignty, to be known as the State of Israel, came into being in Palestine at midnight upon termination of the British mandate."
Public-Sector Unions Choke Taxpayers
"I thought unions were great -- until at Chrysler, the union steward started screaming at me. Working at an unhurried pace, I'd exceeded 'production' for that job."
Shovel-Ready White Elephants
It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building, four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took a year and a half, the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.
War of Attrition Against Regulators Needed
In 2011, the two major legislative initiatives of the tea party Congress (pray the voters deliver such a congress) will be to get a grip on the deficit, and to begin to reverse the intrusion of the federal government in American lives and business.
Not Pelosi's Fault: San Francisco Got More 'Arts' Stimulus Grants Than 48 States
The National Endowment for the Arts distributed $1.4 million in special "stimulus" grants to 37 private nonprofit "arts" organizations located in the city of San Francisco, most of which is represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, however, had no role at all in determining who would win these grants or whether such grants would be distributed in her city.
Top Five Reasons I'm Grateful for President Obama
I spend a good deal of time in this space criticizing President Barack Obama. His policies are wrongheaded; his manner is arrogant and condescending; his ideology is Marxist in tenor and content. He is, through his first 21 months, the worst president in American history, a leader who has purposefully polarized the country along racial and economic lines for his personal benefit.
The Multicultural Cult: Part II
There was a reason why employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, "No Irish need apply" -- and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed.
Conservatives' Top National Security Priorities
Conservatives in Congress need to move quickly to staunch the flow of blood, literally, in our military. The Fort Hood shootings proved convincingly that political correctness is lethal. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey ran to the Sunday talk shows to say it would be a "tragedy" if our diversity were a casualty of this incident. No, General, it was your misguided approach to diversity that led scores of officers to look the other way as Nidal Hasan breathed mutiny and sedition daily—for years.
Leftists, Progressives and Socialists
One of the greatest sources of confusion and deception is the difference between leftists, progressives, socialists, communists and fascists. I thought about this as I caught a glimpse of the Oct. 2 "One Nation" march on Washington. The participants proudly marched with banners, signs and placards reading "Socialists," "Ohio U Democratic Socialists," "International Socialists Organization," "Socialist Party USA," "Build A Socialist Alternative" and other signs expressing support for socialism and communism. They had stands where they sold booklets under the titles of "Marxism and the State," "Communist Manifesto," "Four Marxist Classics," "The Road to Socialism" and similar titles.
Stopping the Next Stuxnet
The cyber-warrior scenario goes something like this: If the worm is a computer worm (or other digital malware) infecting a dam's computer system, it might be possible to use the malicious code to take control of the supervisory operating system. The attacker then orders the computer to open the dam's gates and thus create a destructive flood inundating cities downstream. The computer worm would breach the dam with deniable finesse, rather than the concrete and traceable mess left by a high explosive bomb or a nuclear weapon.