Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Dismantling America: Part III
One of the few campaign promises that Barack Obama has kept was this: "We are going to change the United States of America!" As in many other cases, those who were thrilled by the thought of "change" seldom seemed to consider whether it would be a change for the better or for the worse. True believers in the Obama cult assumed that it had to be a change for the better.
She Was Something
The hardest lines Patricia Neal ever had to recite in a film were "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto! Klaatu barada nikto!" Not that the gibberish was hard to remember; it's since become something of a password among sci-fi fans. The challenge was to repeat it with a straight face in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a B-movie made in 1951, when the spaceships were still made of cardboard and the transmissions from the moon were still fictional. A real actress in an unconscious parody, Patricia Neal kept breaking into giggles and spoiling the shot.
Israelis Don't Need the Lectures
JERUSALEM -- In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders can not, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."
Liberal Claims to Altruism are Horsepucky
If there's one constant refrain to American politics, it's that liberals are more giving and conservatives are selfish and greedy. It's a theme the Democrats have honed to a fine point and exploited over and over again. We've heard again and again this year that Republicans who seek to preserve the Bush tax cuts are doing so as a payoff to the nameless, faceless "rich"; that Republicans who wanted to stop additional unfunded unemployment benefits from passing merely hated that specific poor single mother from the ghetto; that Republicans who worry about the budget deficit are shills for corporate America who couldn't care less about the future of the country.
Ground Zero on the Tolerance Issue
The mission of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative is not just to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near ground zero, but also to build "interfaith tolerance and respect."
Obamanomics Fails: Will the President See the Light?
The position of chair of the Council of Economic Advisers is open. How President Barack Obama fills it can tell us whether he's finally gone wobbly on Obamanomics -- maybe in time to arrest some of the damage. Would President Obama, to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, ponder whether to nominate liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg or conservative Antonin Scalia? Would his finalists come down to Sonia Sotomayor or Samuel Alito? Elena Kagan or John Roberts?
Outsourcing: A Solution to Government Debt
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- British Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for reinforcements to help him deal with the country's massive debt, which has been caused by nonstop spending, severe recession and declining tax revenue. According to the UK's Centre for Policy Studies, at the end of 2008, the national debt was 1,340 billion pounds ($2,090 billion USD), which was 103.5 percent of GDP. This figure includes all the public sector pension liabilities such as pensions, and Private Finance Initiative contracts. It's likely that figures for last year will be even more alarming.
Obama Enters Another Controversy
WASHINGTON -- It is becoming apparent for all to see that a man who has made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be president of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Barack Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I now think it is clear even to Official Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed.
Look Who's 'Nativist' Now!
"Nativism in American politics has become so rampant that it is considered scandalous in Republican circles for a judge to acknowledge paying any attention to foreign courts and their legal rulings." -- New York Times editorial, Aug. 3, 2010
The Failure of the Gaza Pullout
Five years ago this week, the Gaza Strip was forcibly purged of its Jews. In the largest non-combat operation in the history of the Israeli military, 50,000 troops were deployed to expel some 9,000 residents and destroy the 21 pioneering communities in which some of them had lived for nearly four decades. (Four communities in northern Samaria on the West Bank were also evacuated.)
Big Government Forgets How to Build Big Projects
When I drive from downtown Washington to Reagan National Airport, I often encounter delays on the George Washington Parkway due to construction of a small bridge over an inlet of the Potomac.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
China's Border Patrol
The Pentagon just released its annual report to Congress on China's military. Weapons programs got ink, especially its cyberwar programs, its expanding navy, ballistic missile projects. The report summarized China's strategic priorities as "perpetuating Communist Party rule, sustaining economic growth and development, maintaining domestic political stability, defending China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and securing China's status as a great power."
Lack of Foresight Let Mosque Controversy Balloon
The ground zero mosque controversy is one of the stupidest debates of our time. I don't mean the substance of the debate (though there's no shortage of stupidity on that front either). I mean that we are having it at all.
Eye of Newt: The Former House Speaker Knows a 'Stealth Jihadi' When He Sees One
I do not often agree with President Barack Obama or New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But they have taken the right position in the controversy over plans for a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan, defending religious freedom and property rights against government meddling driven by irrational prejudice.
Dismantling America: Part II
"We the people" are the central concern of the Constitution, as well as its opening words, since it is a Constitution for a self-governing nation. But "we the people" are treated as an obstacle to circumvent by the current administration in Washington.
Obama Demagogues Private Enterprise
Last weekend, President Obama pandered for votes by trashing Social Security privatization. "I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced," Obama said. "(N)o one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street."
The Media and the Mega-Mosque
It was deceptive. At a White House dinner with Muslims celebrating Ramadan, Barack Obama finally weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. Incredibly, he lectured Americans about the religious freedom of Muslims "that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan."
Summertime 2010
That would seem to catch the bizarrely self-righteous tone of the message that is being offered to the voters this summer by the Democratic Party (and their little media helpmates). The Democrats have settled on their message: If you hate what we've given you -- just wait 'cause there's more where that came from. And anyway, it's Bush's fault.
Will Republicans Save Us?
Democrat control of the White House, House of Representatives and the Senate has produced an unprecedented level of political brazenness and contempt for the limitations placed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution. As such, it has raised a level of constitutional interest and anger against Washington's interference in our lives that has been dormant for far too long.
Fix the Constitutional Falsehoods Congress Carved Into the Capitol's Marble
The Exhibition Hall at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, which opened at the end of 2008, has enshrined in marble a false interpretation of the Constitution that opens the door to an ever-expanding federal government. Two of six massive marble-faced exhibit cases at the front of the hall are inscribed with tellingly edited passages from the first clause of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Another two are inscribed with tellingly edited passages from the eighth clause of that section. (The final two exhibit cases are inscribed with the First Amendment and an edited passage from the preamble.)