Right Opinion

Liberal Lies About National Health Care, Part 4

(12) Only national health care can provide "coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job" -- as Obama said in a New York Times op-ed. This is obviously a matter of great importance to all Americans, because, with Obama's economic policies, none of us may have jobs by year's end. The only reason you can't keep -- or often obtain -- health insurance if you move or lose your job now is because of ... government intrusion into the free market. You will notice that if you move or lose your job, you can obtain car and home insurance, hairdressers, baby sitters, dog walkers, computer technicians, cars, houses, food and every other product and service not heavily regulated by the government. (Although it does become a bit harder to obtain free office supplies.)

Rep. Charles Rangel -- Sign of the Times

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age. Let us count the ways. How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for illegally holding four rent-stabilized apartments in New York and not disclosing more than $75,000 in income from a rental villa he owns. He also took free Caribbean trips paid for by corporate cronies and used his congressional letterhead to press for money for the City College of New York's new educational center, which bears his name.

Van Jones Meets America

One of the (many) irritating things about being a Republican in the liberal Bay Area is the certainty that if there is a story out there that makes conservatives look stupid -- like the protests against President Obama's Tuesday speech to America's students -- then you know that wherever you go, folks are going to ask you about that particular flap. What do you think about Obama's speech to students? Or what about those nutty town hallers? Or what about those nasty people who claim Obama wasn't born in Hawaii? I'm supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to prove that, unlike "the mob," I'm a reasonable conservative, a good conservative -- perhaps even worthy to be included at the table when Bay Area luminaries look askance at middle America. All I have to do is behave myself and confirm their belief that everything would be right in the world, were it not for the right's great unwashed.

The Convenient Fantasies of President Obama

The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration. One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9-11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicitity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a White House appointment. Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" that occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" Jones in the Obama administration.

On Afghanistan, GOP Gives Obama an Unexpected Lift

Memo to President Obama: Why You Are Losing Public Support

It's easy to attack a leader. And yet President Obama says he wants input from Republicans. When I was politically active, including nationally, I was heavily involved on the GOP side of things. So here's a constructive memorandum to the president. It's based on both experience and on some of the nonpartisan polls our firm conducts. It's intended to explore the reasons Obama's approval ratings are dipping and what he can do to prevent a disastrous four years in office. I know he won't read it, but I'm writing it as if he will -- that is, as fairly and professionally as I can. Americans are scared stiff about a host of issues, including job security, credit availability, home values, international threats, even the Swine flu ... you name it.

Learning His Way in San Jose

SAN DIEGO -- Becoming governor next year will be a daunting challenge for California's Republican insurance commissioner, but Steve Poizner has surmounted other obstacles, as when he volunteered to teach without pay in an East San Jose high school. After he sold, for $1 billion, one of the technology companies he founded after moving to California from Texas, and after serving as a White House fellow, he walked into East San Jose's school district office, explained that he graduated No. 1 in his class at the University of Texas, earned a Stanford business degree, and now wanted to teach American government to high school seniors. A functionary declared: "Nothing you have said qualifies you to be in the classroom."

Obama's Speech Tonight

I wish President Obama would say to Congress: Members of Congress, I ask you to address our fiscal emergency. In 1964, President Johnson won a landslide victory -- quite similar to mine. His election also brought liberals into Congress. The next year, they created the first government-run health care plan: Medicare. They meant well, but unfortunately, this was the height of fiscal irresponsibility. I know Medicare is popular with the elderly. Of course it is. Everyone likes getting free things. But it is unsustainable. Retirees believe that their Medicare bills are paid from a "trust fund" that was created with deductions from their paychecks. But this is a politician's lie.

Quid but no Quo

HBO showed the film "Schindler's List" last week. The 1993 Steven Spielberg movie never ceases to arouse my deepest emotions. The perennial question put forth in the film remains: How could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy? This is more than history, however. There are those who would gladly "finish the job" the Nazis started. The Obama administration -- like previous administrations -- is pressuring Israel in ways that, if the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succumbs, will effectively give Israel's modern enemies the opportunity to destroy its people. Next time it is unlikely there will be an Oskar Schindler to save even a remnant.

Inflation and Deficits

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let's now decide what is and what is not inflation. One price or several prices rising is not inflation. Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom. As the late Nobel Laureate Professor Milton Friedman said, "(I)nflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output."

Impending Washington Deal on Health Care

As the politicians who support the president's health care plans escape back into Washington from America -- and as the politicians who oppose the president's health care plans leave their safe redoubt in the heartland and go once more behind the lines into the hostile territory of the Federal Triangle -- only one thing is certain: We don't know the end of this story. If we had a plebiscite on it today, polls show the president's plan would lose. But we are governed by representative government, not plebiscite. And our representatives represent many things. They represent their own convictions, their contributors' interests, their political parties' interests, their own career interests, their voters' interests and opinions, and -- on occasion -- what they see as the national interest.

The Case for Irrelevance

A recession may stunt more than material growth. It can also drain intellectual curiosity. For economic pressure can lead people to settle for what only seems to be security instead of following their dreams. Which can be a tragedy for both the individual and a society that depends on people reaching ever higher, rather than not settling for what only seems safe. Poverty is much overrated as a spur to human achievement. Rather, it's a brake on it. The romantic image of the starving artist creating a masterpiece in his garret, charming as it may be, has little connection with reality. Walking around hungry is not a good thing, no matter what people who've never been hungry say. Maybe that's why it hurts to learn about the declining enrollments at some of the country's finest liberal-arts colleges. Such schools have long stood out as islands of education in a sea of technical training, but they're short of students these days.

The K Street Tax Cheat Who's Lobbying to Save Obamacare

Tom Daschle is the human toe fungus of Washington -- a persistent infection that may disappear from time to time, but always comes back with a vengeance. Despite abandoning his secretary of health and human services nomination in disgrace in February 2009, the K Street tax cheat who evaded IRS rules for years remains a top White House confidante and policy strategist. In fact, he's leading the drive to save Obamacare. He climbed up from under the bus back into the Oval Office and onto the sets of "Meet the Press" and "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" to offer his rescue plan.

Obama Vs. 'Hyperpartisans'

Is President Obama getting overexposed? This we know: A firm believer in all his fawning media clips, Obama thinks there is no political problem he cannot overcome with yet another nationally televised address. Not only has he scheduled an umpteenth appearance in prime time, he now insists on addressing the nation's schoolchildren. Why is this controversial? What is more American than having her president addressing the young? Reagan did it. So did Bush. The problem is Obama and his administration. There is -- always is -- a political agenda. The mission was not to educate; it was to indoctrinate. The public learned the Department of Education sent out guidelines to principals urging that children "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Older students were urged to answer the question: "What is President Obama inspiring you to do? What is he challenging you to do?"

U.S. Won't Secure a Single Additional Mile of Border in 2010

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to move several hundred Border Patrol agents away from the U.S.-Mexico border and will not secure a single additional mile of the U.S. border in fiscal 2010, according to the department's annual performance report. The document -- "Department of Homeland Security Annual Performance Report: Fiscal Years 2008-2010" -- was originally published by the Bush administration on Jan. 15 and was updated by the Obama administration on May 7. Excluding the border between Alaska and Canada, the combined length of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada is about 6,000 miles (with almost 2,000 miles along the Mexican frontier and 4,000 along the Canadian).

You Really Don't Know Jack

"You Don't Know Jack" is the perfect title for the upcoming HBO biopic starring Al Pacino as Death Doc Jack Kevorkian -- because it is clear that many of Kevorkian's fawning interviewers don't know much about Jack. Fox News' Neil Cavuto, for example, last week introduced Kevorkian as a "Michigan physician who claims to have assisted in the suicides of at least 130 terminally ill people from 1990 to 1998." Physician? Not the kind who treats patients. Kevorkian was a pathologist until his medical license was yanked in 1991. In 1999, a Michigan jury convicted him of second-degree murder after he gave a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

What Van Jones Tells Us About President Obama

On Monday, Sept. 7, 2009, President Obama's hand-picked "green jobs czar," Van Jones, resigned. It was a week too late to prevent all the revelations about Jones: his admitted agreement with communist philosophy; his membership in the 9/11 "truther" movement; his racist views on environmental policy (he accused "white polluters and white environmentalists" of "steering poison into the people of color's communities"); his ridiculous ideas about school violence ("You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child . a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school"); his unmitigated hatred for President George W. Bush (he compared Bush to a crack-pipe-licking cocaine addict, and accused him of using the American flag to "beat and whip and lynch" political opponents).

The AP's Decision To Exploit a Marine's Death

Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near universal press practice since 9/11, and the expressed wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua "Bernie" Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan. The AP also ignored the pleas of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had implored the press agency as a "matter of judgment and common decency" not to publish the photo. Bernard, 21, a devout Christian and Iraq War veteran from Maine, was described by his squad leader as "a true-heartedly very good guy ... probably one of the best guys I've known in my entire life." Bernard served as his unit's point man and navigator. He lost his life Aug. 14 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that blew off one leg and badly mangled the other. The AP photo captured Bernard lying on the ground, two buddies attempting to help -- a splash of red where one leg had been.

Don't Damage the First Line of Defense

Morale matters -- especially in a time of war. Morale even matters in an "overseas contingency operation," the hazy bureaucratic phrase the Obama administration sought to substitute for "The Global War on Terror." The GWOT is a poor name in my opinion (terror is a tactic), but at least it sketched the wicked problem al-Qaida's 9-11 attack posed -- a war fought on a global scale, where transportation, weapons and communications technologies had shrunk the planet. Sept. 11 demonstrated that the distance between "over there" (overseas) and "over here" could be easily bridged by a terrorist organization.

The Crisis of Health Care Reform

WASHINGTON -- President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it." Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride. But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is the most dramatic expression of this approach.