Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Thanks for the Reminder, Glenn
Glenn Beck’s remarkable rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday was a wake-up call for his beloved America. This nation, he reminded us, is and has been since its founding a nation under God. Failure to recognize our absolute dependence upon God, he said, has put this nation in peril.
Rocky Mountain Showdown
DENVER -- Put away the pitchfork metaphors that are prevalent in this season of populist ferment: Colorado's Senate contest is a duel of distinguished diplomas. Tea partiers toiled mightily to nominate Ken Buck as the Republican candidate to run against Sen. Michael Bennet, who is a direct descendant of a Mayflower passenger, grandson of an economic adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and son of an official in the Carter and Clinton administrations. He attended tony St. Alban's school in Washington, D.C., and Yale Law School. Buck is a Princetonian.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Senator from Agribusiness
Does the American taxpayer have a right to know just who's feeding at the public trough? Not according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (and Secret Subsidies). The department has just announced it's going to stop revealing the names of just who gets all those generous checks compliments of the rest of us. Just in time for them to collect the additional $1.5 billion that Blanche Lincoln (D-Agribusiness) wants to shower on them.
Simpson and the Sacred Cow
Alan Simpson violated a taboo last week when he likened Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." But contrary to the dictionary-deprived critics who accused him of sexist vulgarity, the former Wyoming senator's transgression had nothing to do with his use of a perfectly acceptable synonym for teat. Simpson's real sin was "belittling a bedrock program," as the AARP put it -- i.e., showing insufficient reverence for a sacred cow.
Glenn Beck's Ecumenical Moment
Predictably, the "Restoring Honor" rally on the National Mall last Saturday has evoked a lot of consternation. Because the rally explicitly and studiously avoided trumpeting a political agenda, it freed up a lot of people to fill in the blanks themselves. For instance, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post insists it was all a con: "As high-minded as that may sound, the real point of stressing the rally's apolitical goals was political." By leaving the listener to infer an anti-Obama agenda from all of this talk of lost honor, host Glenn Beck was practicing "classic political demagoguery."
The Passing of E-6
Most people have no idea what "E-6" is. To avid baseball fans, E-6 is the way to record an error by a shortstop on your scorecard. But there is another E-6, in photography. This E-6 is the developer in which color slides are processed. Recently, I received an e-mail from Chromatics, a photo lab used by professional photographers in Nashville, that they will be discontinuing the developing of color slides and color transparencies in general, after September 9th. This was sent to me as an old customer of theirs.
Sixty Years of War in Korea: 'This Kind of War'
North Korea's sneak attack at sea this past March, which sank the South Korean corvette Cheonan, provided a murderous reminder that the Korean War is not over. This continuing tragedy serves as a lesson in the difficulty of change, the limits of hope and the necessity of vigilance.
Good Intentions Gone Bad
You own a business, maybe a restaurant. You've got a lot to worry about. You have to make sure the food is safe and tastes good, that the place is clean and appealing, that workers are friendly and paid according to a hundred Labor Department and IRS rules.
U.S. Allowed Terrorists on No-Fly List to Buy Guns
The only thing stupider than allowing a known foreign terrorist into the United States may be allowing that terrorist to buy guns. Current U.S. law allows this happen. It also allows known terrorists on the no-fly list to buy guns. Perhaps worse still, the U.S. government has approved background checks for watch-listed terrorists to possess explosives in the United States.
Arizona vs. the U.N. Human Rights Police
An indignant President Obama complained last week, "I can't spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." Fine. How about plastering a copy of his presidential oath of office there instead? The kowtowing commander-in-chief is in dire need of a daily reminder that his job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" -- not international law or global diktats.
Something for Nothing
Perhaps the most difficult economic lesson is that we live in a world of scarcity and everything has a cost. Scarcity exists whenever human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants. For example, Rolls-Royce produces less than 4,000 cars a year but it's a safe bet that more than 4,000 of the Earth's 6.5 billion people want a Rolls-Royce. That means Rolls-Royces are scarce. But it's not just Rolls-Royces that are scarce. It's clothing, food, land and most anything a human would want. There's not enough to meet every single want.
President Barack Hussein Obama Bush
On Tuesday evening, two years, two months and four days before the 2012 elections, Obama made yet another of his endless primetime speeches on all the major networks. "Tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended," he declared. "We have met our responsibility. Now it is time to turn the page."
Obama's Wandering Economic Message
WASHINGTON -- After a first year mainly focused on health reform, and a bleak December 2009 employment report, the Obama administration was finally ready to talk, in Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's words, about "jobs, jobs, jobs." Strategist David Axelrod admitted the Obama team was recalibrating to focus on the economy. President Obama said, "We have to continue to work every single day to get our economy moving again. For most Americans, and for me, that means jobs."
Brian Williams: from Musketeer to Mouseketeer
The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina recalls a horror show on two levels. There's the actual disaster, which killed hundreds of people, and then there's the media smear job on the Bush administration and first responders. No one should forget pompous grandstanders like "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams signing off three months after the floods from the Lower Ninth Ward: "This is a neighborhood that's been left to die."
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
ABC, NPR and PBS Hosts Equate Christian and Muslim Violence
There was one thing more than any other that turned this New York, liberal, Jewish, Columbia University graduate student from modern liberalism. It was its use of moral equivalence to avoid confronting evil during the Cold War.
Here's a Concept: Let's Not Talk About Race
On a regular basis, we are enjoined, usually by a leading Democrat, to overcome our reticence -- or, in Attorney General Eric Holder's formulation, "cowardice" -- and engage in a hearty national conversation about race.
Obama's Cronkite Moment?
President Obama may have experienced his Walter Cronkite moment over the economy. Responding to Cronkite's reporting from Vietnam four decades ago that the only way to end the war was by negotiating with the North Vietnamese, President Lyndon Johnson was reported (though never confirmed) to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
The War Within the War
With the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, as announced to the world by President Barack Obama, we can all sit back and smile, right? Not too big a smile, if you please. The war in nearby Afghanistan goes on, no path to victory yet discernible save the path of patience. Meanwhile the jihadists seem to be taking over Yemen and Somalia.
The Mosque Controversy
The proposed mosque near where the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, along with thousands of American lives, would be a 15-story middle finger to America. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult. What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it. The State Department is subsidizing his travel.
Obama's Appalling Mistreatment of Israel
As Israeli and Palestinian peace talks are scheduled to resume in Washington in a few days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland is an essential condition for peace. Completely reasonable, yet don't keep your fingers crossed, especially with the Obama administration's attitude toward Israel.