Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Hurricane Matthew’s Nonexistent Silver Lining
Hurricane Matthew’s trail of devastation has been ghastly. In Haiti, the storm killed more than 1,000 people, and towns along the country’s southern coast were smashed into rubble. Mercifully, the cost in American lives has been far lower; as of Tuesday, there were 33 confirmed deaths across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. But the destruction in many areas has been appalling: shattered roofs, eroded beaches, washed-out roads, mangled piers. Downed power lines have set off transformer fires. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses have been blasted. Crops have been decimated. And the floodwaters are still rising.
Hillary Clinton’s Staff Infection
Most people don’t need to hack into the Clinton campaign to know the campaign’s hostility toward Bible-believing Christians. From the paring down of the freedom of religion to the freedom of worship to the basket of deplorables, Hillary Clinton’s comments were certainly clues of her campaign’s disdain for those whose faith is important in their lives. Those clues were confirmed this week in a scandal involving two chiefs of the campaign. Proving that Donald Trump’s mouth isn’t the only liability in this race, Clinton’s Communications Director, Jennifer Palmiere, has gotten the campaign in plenty of hot water with her 2011 email exchange with equally prejudiced John Halpin from the Center for American Progress.
Media Collusion
Donald Trump recently told supporters that Hillary Clinton “wouldn’t have a chance” without the media’s support. He is probably right. Recent revelations by Wikileaks prove beyond any doubt that we do not have an independent press. The so-called “mainstream media” are willing mouthpieces for Democrat propaganda. And the collusion with the left is all designed to demoralize conservatives and pre-determine the outcome of elections.
The Kaine Impunity
America needs seriousness, sincerity, normality. How could he not have known that?
Debate II: Trump Shows Up
The crass tape of Donald Trump speaking in vulgar terms about women and what he has supposedly done to them worked, ironically, in Trump’s favor during the second debate. It meant that more people tuned in for this debate than otherwise would have and saw Trump’s vastly superior performance compared with that of the first debate. Trump promptly apologized and admitted to being embarrassed by the things he said, but he attributed his filthy remarks to “locker room” banter. When asked, he pointedly denied doing the things he bragged he did, including groping women as he’d boasted on the tape. Assuming no woman comes forward to dispute his denial — and, so far, no one has — the air pretty much escaped from this “bombshell” within the first few minutes of the debate.
The Bickersons Revisited
Not since George and Martha in the play “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or for older readers Don Ameche and Frances Langford in the radio comedy “The Bickersons,” have we seen the kind of verbal pugilism practiced in Sunday night’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If the business of Trump’s lewd language about women caught on tape 11 years ago and Bill Clinton’s sexual history with Hillary enabling him in the trashing of his conquests could be set aside, only the issues would remain, and wouldn’t that be good?
Medieval America
Pessimists often compare today’s troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison. The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement — along with endemic insecurity, superstition and two, rather than three, classes. The great medieval universities — at Bologna, Paris and Oxford — continued to make strides in science. They were not unlike the medical and engineering schools at Harvard and Stanford. But they were not centers of free thinking.
A New Phase of History
History is full of surprises. While looking back on history, never have I found it to go precisely as I had anticipated. Always, the reality of history’s progress plays tricks on us. It now appears that the sexual revolution that began in the late 1960s is ending. Would it not be spectacular if one or two of its most famous products were done in by this historic turn of events?
For Disaster Recovery, the Best Knowledge Is Local Knowledge
As residents all along the Southeastern coast start to put their lives back together after a devastating visit by Hurricane Matthew, these communities will face unique challenges. Not surprisingly, the calls for billions of dollars in federal government aid are already coming out loud and clear. In states affected by storms, government is often thought of as the only answer to reconstruction. However, research on the aftermath of natural disasters reveals that more often than not, local residents are better-suited to efficiently address these challenges than government on the local, state and federal levels.
Military Academy: You Won’t Disrespect American Flag on Our Football Field
The young men who attend St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy in Wisconsin know the names of the fallen. Their names are recited every spring — young men, alumni, who gave their lives defending America. Jack Albert, the president of the military academy, believes the blood shed by his cadets make their campus sacred ground. So when Albert learned that some of the high schools in their athletic conference were allowing students to disrespect the national anthem, he decided to draw a line in the sand.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Year of the Normal Republican
Mike Pence’s vice-presidential debate victory was a striking blow for normality. In fact, beneath the sound and the fury of the Trump campaign, normal Republicans are having a pretty good year. Pence had an exemplary introduction on the national stage. GOP Senate candidates are holding their own. House Speaker Paul Ryan, flying the banner of a traditional Republican agenda of uplift, could well minimize Republican losses in the House.
When Republicans Wish Upon a ‘Star’
“You can do anything. Grab them by the [genitals]. You can do anything.” That was Donald Trump explaining to Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” what it’s like “when you’re a star” in the now-infamous hot-mic incident 11 years ago. The remarks have been somewhat misunderstood by Trump critics and defenders alike. The defenders want to claim this was mere “locker room talk,” as Trump insisted on the debate stage Sunday night. Well, I can report with confidence that men in locker rooms typically don’t confess to sexually assaulting married women — and striking out!
What Candidates Won’t Say
Catch politicians in private moments and you might hear what they really believe: Donald Trump “can do anything” to women because he’s powerful. Hillary Clinton’s “private” positions aren’t the same as her “public” ones. In public, politicians mostly get away with spouting talking points and clamming up about questions that really matter. When Clinton was asked if she agrees with Trump’s approach to terrorism and immigration, she confidently replied, “This is a serious challenge. We are well equipped to meet it. And we can do so in keeping with smart law enforcement, good intelligence and in concert with our values.”
Whole Foods and Chicago Partner to Fight Poverty
I have always been a great fan of the idea of “enterprise zones,” originally introduced by the late Cong. Jack Kemp in 1980. Jack Kemp and I were of one mind that free markets and enterprise are the way to reduce poverty, rather than government spending programs. Kemp’s plan called for designating impoverished urban areas as “enterprise zones,” which would qualify them for a package of relaxed taxation and regulation from both federal and local governments. This was designed to attract businesses. With this in mind, I was intrigued to read about the opening of a new Whole Foods market in the Englewood neighborhood of South Chicago.
The Astounding Hypocrisy of Hollywood, the Media and the Democrats on the Trump Tape
This week has been a full-scale disaster for Republican candidate Donald Trump. His poll numbers are dropping toward Australia. His establishment-Republican supporters are panicking. His campaign has swiveled toward slapping defectors rather than drawing new voters. All of this is because Trump turned out to be a Hollywood media celebrity with Democratic leanings...who ran as a Republican. How else could we explain the media’s sudden obsession with a 2005 tape of Trump riding on an “Access Hollywood” bus? In the tape, Trump jabbers in disgusting fashion about wanting to “f—“ a married woman and his tendency to “just start kissing (women).” He said: “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Hillary’s Dream
It has been a tumultuous three days since the leak of an old tape and the latest presidential debate, but the situation remains the same. The choice confronting this nation is between an imperfect man who wants to make America great again and a woman who should be in jail. Hillary Clinton jeopardized our national security and engaged in a systematic cover-up, destroying evidence and obstructing justice. What she did would have destroyed the career of any Republican. And yet we have people in our ranks worried about what Trump said 10-plus years ago. (Seriously, how is that a hard choice?)
The Trump Tape vs. Hillary the Assault Enabler
In the election cycle dominated by Donald Trump, it should not be much of a shock that the first October Surprise came from “Access Hollywood.” In a 2005 outtake, Trump told then-“Access” co-host Billy Bush how he could rudely grab women’s genitals and get away with it because “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” They say it was a recent discovery. No media October Surprise there. No, siree. Smelling Trump’s blood in the water, the Clinton-enabling press sprung into action. None of them seemed to reflect for 5 seconds about how Trump could be describing Bill Clinton’s modus operandi. Trump talked as Clinton did. The press’ moral outrage was as phony as Hillary Clinton’s. “This is horrific,” Clinton shamelessly tweeted. “We cannot allow this man to become president.”
Obama Lied. My Third Health Plan Just Died.
Once was a shock. Twice was an outrage. Thrice is a nightmare that won’t end. Over the past three years, my family’s private, individual health insurance plan — a high-deductible Preferred Provider Organization — has been canceled three times. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. Our second, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, came last August. Three weeks ago, we received another ominous “notice of plan discontinuation” from Anthem informing us that the insurer “will no longer offer your current health plan in the State of Colorado.”
Feinstein in 1999: Bill Clinton ‘Gave False or Misleading Testimony’
Seventeen years ago, as a Republican-controlled Senate concluded its impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., expressed her concerns about how future generations would perceive what had happened. Feinstein — along with every other Senate Democrat and five Republicans — voted on Feb. 12, 1999 that Clinton was “not guilty” of either of the two Articles of Impeachment the House brought against him. “Clinton acquitted but tarnished forever by impeachment,” said an Associated Press headline the next day.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
In the race to recapture the White House, Donald Trump’s biggest obstacle has never been Hillary Clinton. It’s been himself. Saddled with baggage from years of crass comments, Trump has been his own worst enemy. Those self-inflicted wounds continued last week, when footage surfaced from 2005 of the GOP nominee making contemptible comments about women. Now, with 27 days left until the election, the Trump campaign is in the unenviable position of not only trying to win people’s votes — but keep them. Caught between a candidate who doesn’t share their sense of decency and a woman who stands against everything they believe in, evangelicals have some difficult decisions to make.