Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
I'm Moving to Fox
It's time for a change. Next month, I leave ABC News to start a weekly one-hour prime time show with Fox News. When I announced that on my blog, plenty of viewers said they were happy to have me leave. "Goodbye. You suck. You have found a much better home for your garbage reporting and backwards politics." "Congratulations on the move to the network intellectually suited to your quasi-libertarian corporate-apologist hackery!" Oh well, you can't please everyone. I don't expect that my libertarian beliefs will please everyone at Fox, either.
The Long War (September 11, 2001 -- )
"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." --Henry IV, Part I This long, long war now enters its ninth year, counting from that fateful September morning when everything changed, or was supposed to change. After that terrible morning, not even the blindest could deny that America had been attacked. Yet this war had been going on for years. The same enemy had launched earlier attacks in Somalia, against U.S. embassies in Africa, and off the coast of Yemen against the USS Cole. Indeed, the same Twin Towers had been a target once before. At the time the attack was considered a matter for law enforcement to handle -- a crime, not an act of war. But as of September 11, 2001, another date which will live in infamy, the peril that confronted us was clear, or should have been. For explosions not only destroy but illuminate. That was the day the war stopped being unilateral. For the enemy had got our attention at last. Our eyes were opened. And the Long War had begun.
Administration Downsizes Our Diplomatic Muscle
With one-sixth of the Obama administration's term of office complete, last week it revealed its profound commitment to an unprecedented policy of eschewing the exercise of great-power diplomacy -- and indeed of being willing to consciously accept humiliation -- in the hope of gaining future advantage from talking with hostile but weaker nations. Following up on his campaign commitment to unconditional diplomatic talks, the president -- in dealings last week with Iran and North Korea through his government -- yielded previously asserted conditions for negotiations as a price his administration is willing to pay for talks with those nations. Earlier in the year, the president set Sept. 30 as a deadline for Iran to suspend its nuclear program in return for substantial talks with the United States -- or face tougher economic sanctions. Also, the president previously sent personal letters to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in hopes of direct, private engagement.
ACORN Watch: A "Sting"-ing Indictment of Media Hypocrisy
Undercover journalism is only acceptable when it fits a liberal agenda. That is the message from "professional" reporters and left-wing activists outraged about three successful video stings targeting President Obama's old friends at the left-wing tax-subsidized outfit ACORN. Conservative documentarian James O'Keefe and writer Hannah Giles, working for the BigGovernment.com website, posed as a pimp and prostitute during visits to ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn. ACORN housing officials and tax advisers offered them brazen suggestions on how to lie on their applications, disguise their income, obscure their child sex-ring business and hide cash from abusive johns. ("When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin," an ACORN counselor in New York told Giles, "and you bury it down in there, cover it and put the grass over it.")
Education
Instead of President Obama addressing school students across the nation, he might have accomplished more by focusing his attention on the educational rot in schools in the nation's capital. The American Legislative Exchange Council recently came out with their 15th edition of "Report Card on American Education: A State-by-State Analysis." Academic achievement in no state is much to write home about but in Washington, D.C., by any measure, it approaches criminal fraud. Let's look at the numbers. Only 14 percent of Washington's fourth-graders score at or above proficiency in the reading and math portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. Their national rank of 51 makes them the nation's worst. Eighth-graders are even further behind with only 12 percent scoring at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent in math and again the worst performance in the nation. One shouldn't be surprised by Washington student performance on college admissions tests. They have an average composite SAT score of 925 and ACT score of 19.1, compared to the national average respectively of 1017 and 21.1. In terms of national ranking, their SAT and ACT rankings are identical to their fourth- and eighth-grade rankings -- dead last.
Shapiro's Law: Obama Supporters Must Cite Bush
On the Internet, there is a famous principle that has come to be known as Godwin's Law. Named after columnist Mike Godwin, the Godwin Law states that as Internet discussions grow longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler (whether legitimate or illegitimate) approaches. Anyone who has spent any time browsing the blogosphere can verify Godwin's Law. Anyone who pays any attention to the trials and tribulations of President Obama can recognize the existence of another law. Call it Shapiro's Law: As any conversation involving an Obama supporter grows longer, the probability of the Obama supporter citing the failings of President Bush approaches. In fact, Obama supporters rarely wait longer than 30 seconds before referencing President Bush's shortcomings. President Obama himself talks about President Bush more than FDR, JFK, Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. combined.
Another Bronx Cheer For Politicians
It helps to read history. We know, or should, that American life shows us nothing like the social and political conniptions that Germany experienced in the 1920s, France in the 1790s and the United States in the 1850s. But something is cooking. Indignant people -- I'm sidestepping the adjective "angry" so as to avoid connotations -- don't mysteriously materialize in the capital city to fulminate and castigate on their own nickels. They have to want to. What might make them want to? I would venture, the sense that something's badly, seriously, woefully out of joint in their beloved homeland.
Our "Intolerance Festival"
It's very easy to be outraged by the way our "objective" media greeted the massive Sept. 12 rally against Big Government in Washington and across the country. They treated it as a menacing surge of white anger, meanness, and racism. But all the media bias against this rally clearly illustrates one nagging truth for media liberals: They really don't think conservatives should be allowed to protest. It's somehow like a copyright violation. On Monday night's "Countdown," MSNBC's David Shuster found the protest united "in apparent hatred of the current president, Barack Obama." It was undemocratic, a sign of people not accepting election results, and Shuster even suggested Sen. Jim DeMint's speech at the rally signaled he favored a "military coup." The unglued anchorman also dismissed the crowd as "white, whiter and whitest," all attending an "intolerance festival."
SOF Targets and Soft Targets
When American special operations forces (SOF) operating in Somalia killed a terrorist mastermind this past week, media reports focused on the drama and the bombast. The drama was palpable. U.S. SOF used helicopters to attack a vehicle carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a notorious al-Qaida-affiliated killer currently aligned with the Somali Islamist militia, Al Shabab. After the copter attack on Nabhan's vehicle, a commando team landed and retrieved his body. This daring raid sounds like the work of U.S. Navy SEALs, but in complex missions in complicated places like the Horn of Africa, the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) makes use of elite SOF units from all services.
It's Not the Public Option, It's the Public Subsidy
In the three days following President Obama's speech to Congress pitching his proposed makeover of the U.S. health care system, the Washington Post-ABC News poll asked this question: "Overall, given what you know about them, would you say you support or oppose the proposed changes to the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama administration? Now, as recently as late June, President Obama's approval rating was at 65 percent in this same poll. Given that level of support for the president at the beginning of summer, you might have expected that a majority of Americans would now support the proposal the president and his party spent all summer promoting. Not so.
The Relational Wasteland
WASHINGTON -- There is a segment of society for whom traditional family values are increasingly irrelevant, and for whom spring-break sexual liberationism is increasingly costly: men and women in their 20s. This is the period of life in which society's most important social commitments take shape -- commitments that produce stability, happiness and children. But the facts of life for twentysomethings are challenging. Puberty -- mainly because of improved health -- comes steadily sooner. Sexual activity kicks off earlier. But the average age at which people marry has grown later; it is now about 26 for females, 28 for males.
The Consumer Is Not the Customer
The other day, I was trying to figure out why the paycheck deduction for my health insurance was higher than I had expected. When I called my insurer to ask what the total premium was, the customer service representative said it was none of my business. Three-fifths of Americans, the share with employer-provided health insurance, are in the same situation: Since someone else buys insurance for them, using money they would otherwise receive as wages, they are in no position to shop around and typically do not even know the true cost of their coverage. This disconnect between payment and consumption is one of the central problems with the current health care system, contributing to rapidly escalating costs, insecurity, and the general lack of choice and competition. Yet both Democrats and Republicans insist upon preserving it.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Left Is Right -- Taxes Are a Moral Issue
One principle that all those on the left hold is that taxes constitute more than an economic issue; they are, first and foremost, a moral one. Economists on the left may argue for higher taxes on economic grounds but they and we know that at bottom, higher taxes, especially "taxing the rich," is what they believe morality demands. For example, there are obviously only two possible ways to reduce government deficits: reduce spending or increase taxes (or some combination of both). The left advocates the later; the right advocates the former. Left-wing spokesmen, such as New York Times economics columnist and Princeton University professor of economics Paul Krugman, may offer economic arguments for raising taxes in order to lower government deficits, but their real motivations are moral: reducing economic inequality (by redistributing income) and expanding government (because government is the most effective way to help all citizens).
Serena and Incivility
It still stuns me when people of great privilege and position choose to behave like spoiled children. You’ve seen it a million times as have I – the boss going out of his way to humiliate an employee with a public criticism; the teacher who purposely degrades a little kid in class; the politician who arrogantly dismisses the opinions of his dedicated staff and the very people he is supposed to represent. Sadly, this week we saw two of sports greatest stars display the worst of behavior while the whole world watched. When Michael Jordan was given basketball’s highest honor and celebrated with a tribute worthy of a king, he berated and belittled person after person in his acceptance speech. When Serena Williams suffered a bad call from a line judge, she lost both the match and her dignity as she pitched a fit, complete with the “f” word and threats of bodily harm.
Fables for Adults
Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream. The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth-- and it seemed to him that the other dog's bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog's bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost. At the time, I didn't like that story and wished they hadn't told it to me. But the passing years and decades have made me realize how important that story was, because it was not really about dogs but about people.
At Least Spanky Had Grace To Leave Quietly
Will the sex scandal of former GOP Assemblyman Mike Duvall make a difference for the California GOP? In that Duvall -- now known as Spanky -- had the good sense to resign 15 hours into the scandal, the answer would be: No. Orange County Republicans are like weeds. Cut off one and another will grow in its place. With any luck, Duvall's replacement will respect the position and not treat the Capitol like a frat house. True, Duvall comes across as another Republican family-values hypocrite -- but that's only because he proved to be one. The beefy lawmaker bragged in graphic detail before what he thought was a turned-off Capitol microphone about two affairs -- one with a Sacramento lobbyist with business before the energy committee on which he was vice chairman. Insiders, who wouldn't blink at the news of a lawmaker straying outside his marriage vows, were left dumbstruck at the Duvall's barrier-breaking stupidity.
Democrats Failed on Digital Divide, Too
The Democrats have never seen a problem they didn't think could be fixed with a government program. And they sometimes discern crises crying out for government solutions where there are none. Remember the "digital divide"? It was, we heard from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in 1998, "the next civil rights movement." The unconscionable gap in Internet access between whites and minorities required, of course, a new $2.25 billion annual tax (it was called the "E-rate") to be levied on telecommunications companies (who naturally passed it along to their customers). Congressman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., outlined the liberal understanding: "There are millions of youngsters who are struggling right now to become a part of American society, struggling to become productive in the American society, who are fighting without any of the technological advantages that are available to others. These individuals will soon be road kill on the information superhighway because they won't have access to the kind of technology, access to computers, access to the Internet. They won't be productive members of society. If in fact this E-rate is diminished, or if this E-rate effort, if it's derailed then we are really creating two different societies."
Memo to Dems: Spare Us the Phony Wilson Outrage
Memo to the Democratic leadership threatening to censure Rep. Joe Wilson if he doesn't publicly apologize on the House floor for calling President Barack Obama a liar on that floor: You don't have the moral authority to be demanding apologies. Not only has their own decorum in that very chamber been abysmal at times, such as when they booed President George W. Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address; they do much worse damage every week to this nation and its institutions than Joe Wilson conceivably could have done with his temporary breach of decorum. While Democratic leaders are wagging their fingers at the Republican Party's alleged descent into incivility over Joe Wilson's unplanned, indignant outburst, they have a very short memory about their own partywide monopoly on incivility, as they savaged President Bush throughout his presidency. I researched and wrote a 400-plus-page book documenting the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these hypocritical scolds in 2006, in case you need a refresher course.
Liar, Liar
Wouldn't it be nice, as The Beach Boys sang in another context, if there was such a thing as a liar meter? It would detect when a politician wasn't telling the truth and alert the public. In the absence of such an invention, we are left to challenge our political leadership based on an objective look at the facts. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) may have been out of order when he shouted, "You lie!" in response to President Obama's assertion in his congressional address Wednesday night that illegal immigrants would not be covered by his proposed health care plan. What if the administration plans to bar illegal immigrants from purchasing health care coverage, but as the New York Times reported, continues "to require hospitals to provide emergency treatment to illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense? Would that then absolve Wilson of his rude behavior?
Like a Knife Through Water
What a fine speaker our president is. That's the overriding impression he left once he managed to get through the endless applause and handshakes and Roman ovations -- late Roman -- that have become a feature of presidential addresses to Congress and was finally allowed to begin his speech about health care. It's not the content of the speech that evokes wonder and admiration but the speaker himself. Content scarcely matters with this president. What counts is how he delivers it. It's as if he were lecturing a law school class, and the students are just bowled over--not with the case he's presenting but the presentation. If the case is a muddle, and will raise more questions than it answers once the haze of admiration has cleared, never mind. For he's a master of what the Italians call una bella figura. He cuts a fine figure.