Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Jihadists vs. Policewomen
We learned a lot this week about what makes Hillary Clinton tick. Just like Barack Obama, the man she served for four years, Clinton sees it as her obligation to stoke the fires of racial tension while going out of her way to downplay Islamic terrorism. Saturday night a bomb went off in a Manhattan neighborhood. The day before, a black man was shot by a white policewoman. Reacting to the bombing event, Clinton was muted. Some said she seemed sedated or “zombie-like.” Hillary said, “We have to let this investigation unfold.” She also attacked Donald Trump for making rash statements about a bomb, adding, “I’ll have more to say about it when we actually know some facts.” In contrast, Clinton went on the “Steve Harvey Morning Show” [Tuesday] to offer her thoughts about last week’s police shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here Hillary was not so restrained. There were no calls to let this investigation unfold.
Hillary, Donald and the Birther Demise
Did you see the interview over the weekend of a listless and, apparently, exhausted Hillary Clinton? Supposedly she has recovered from last week’s bout with pneumonia, but she could have fooled me. Call me a hypochondriac, but in my opinion her recovery is not going very well. From the back of her airplane, Clinton droned on about “the bombings in New York and New Jersey,” and then launched robotically into yet another attack on Donald Trump. This time, his transgression, according to Clinton, was to prematurely mention the bombing, though she had already introduced the subject. If she were aware of her faux pas — or was it more serious like, say, a blackout? — she gave no sign of it.
Anatomy of a Multi-Government Shakedown
I’m slow to defend corporations these days because so many of them have built their business models around government-granted privileges and are free markets’ worst enemies. However, for all the perks they get from governments, they also fall victim to their own government. And sometimes the shakedown is done by multiple governing authorities. A few weeks ago, the European Union’s antitrust regulator demanded that Ireland get back $14.5 billion in taxes from Apple Inc. At the heart of the issue are legal tax arrangements between Ireland and Apple passed in 1991 and 2007, which allow the company to pay an annual tax rate of roughly 1 percent on its European profits channeled to Ireland.
More Terror, More Denials
In Florida Monday, following the bombings in New York and New Jersey, Donald Trump referred to the captured bombing suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, as an “evil thug.” He then added, “Hillary Clinton is a weak and ineffective person and I will tell you, if you choose Donald Trump, these problems are going to go away far, far greater than anybody would think.” Whatever one thinks of Trump’s rhetoric, his is a voice of certainty at a time when a growing number of Americans appear fed up with a seemingly ineffective government, weak statements and even weaker responses. Example: Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on CNN: “What I can tell you is that we are, when it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle.”
A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall
This summer, President Obama was often golfing. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were promising to let the world be. The end of summer seemed sleepy, the world relatively calm. The summer of 1914 in Europe also seemed quiet. But on July 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip with help from his accomplices, fellow Serbian separatists. That isolated act sparked World War I. In the summer of 1939, most observers thought Adolf Hitler was finally through with his serial bullying. Appeasement supposedly had satiated his once enormous territorial appetites. But on Sept. 1, Nazi Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland and touched off World War II, which consumed some 60 million lives. Wars often seem to come out of nowhere, as unlikely events ignite long-simmering disputes into global conflagrations.
Who Does Hillary Find More Deplorable — Jihadists or Trump Supporters?
Who does Hillary Clinton find more deplorable — the Islamic radicals or Donald Trump supporters? I read a transcript of her remarks on Sept. 19th in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Minnesota, New York and New Jersey — and to be honest, it’s hard to tell. “We will defend our country and we will defeat the evil, twisted ideology of the terrorists,” she declared. Notice that she condemned the ideology of the Muslims bad guys — but she did not actually condemn the Muslim bad guys. As a matter of fact, she carefully suggested that we not make any generalizations regarding Muslim-Americans.
Deepen Charleston’s Port, and the Big Ships Will Come
Technology has put powerful computers in billions of pockets, but an invention much more mundane than the smartphone — the shipping container: a rectangular steel box — also has changed the world. Because of it, two of today’s preoccupations — infrastructure and globalization — are connected by a chain of events that began more than 60 years ago and today runs through Congress and to the wharves of Charleston’s booming port. In 1934, Malcolm McLean, a North Carolina high school graduate struggling in the Depression, spent $120 earned pumping gas to buy a used truck. In 1955, running what would become the nation’s fifth largest trucking company, McLean had an idea: The process of loading ships — swarms of stevedores stowing (and often pilfering) cargo packed into ships’ holds in different sizes of wooden crates — was so slow that ships often spent more time in ports than at sea. Cargo brought to docks on trucks or rail cars and sealed in standardized containers could be loaded 20 times faster per ton, and for one-20th the cost.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Boston Can Learn From Houston’s (Nonexistent) Zoning Code
When developers proposed to turn the old commercial property next to our Brookline house into a large condominium development, they came over to show the plans to me and my wife. As the nearest abutters, we would face considerable disruption and discomfort during the year and a half that construction would take. And once the project was finished, we would have lost a good deal of privacy: In place of the red brick wall enclosing our property on two sides, four-story residences would tower over our little backyard.
America: The Point of No Return?
Over the last decade, I have interacted with hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow Americans, as we have shared our grave concerns over the direction of our nation. There is no doubt that the land of the free and home of the brave is on a course that threatens our future and the very survival of our nation. So we must ask ourselves this question. *Have we reached the point of no return?*
Cruelty to Black Students
Last year’s college news was about demands for safe spaces, trigger warnings and bans on insensitivity. This year’s college news is about black student demands for segregated campus housing and other racially segregated campus spaces and programs. I totally disagree with these calls by black students. It’s a gross dereliction of duty for college administrators to cave to these demands, but I truly sympathize with the problems that many black college students face. For college administrators and leftist faculty, the actual fate of black students is not nearly so important as the good feelings they receive from a black presence on campus. Let’s examine some of the problem.
Obama’s Trolling Helped Give Rise to Trump
Many people are to blame for the rise of Donald Trump as a political force, and most of them reside on my side of the aisle. But that story is familiar by now. And we’ll be hearing a lot more about it. Should Trump lose, conservatives will be lucky if the ensuing riot of recriminations falls short of outright civil war. Should Trump win, I’m hoping to get a tent upwind from the latrine at the re-education camp. (I kid, I kid.) Still, not all of the blame belongs inside the conservative family. Consider President Obama. One of the central insights of both the Obama campaign and administration (the difference is subtle but real) is that Obama benefits when his critics overreact. In 2008, then-political adviser David Axelrod coined the phrase “no drama Obama” to describe not only his client’s personality but his messaging. By seeming unflappable in the face of criticism, Obama comes across as presidential. The more heated the criticism, the more presidential he seems.
Supreme Court Picks
Hillary Clinton and her fellow progressives shout things like “Health care is a right!” They’ve also said that education, decent housing and child care are “rights.” The U.N. goes further. Its bureaucrats declared that every person has a “right” to rest and leisure, food, clothing, housing, “necessary” social services, free education, periodic holidays with pay and protection from unemployment. Wow. I guess Abe Lincoln, Thomas Edison and Mark Zuckerberg were denied basic human rights. Clinton and the U.N. busybodies are wrong. Health care, housing and food are not “rights.” They are “gifts” bestowed by politicians. These “gifts” violate other people’s rights because politicians take from people to give to favored groups.
What to Expect in the First Debate
Thanks to the nomination of volatile reality television star Donald Trump, the first presidential debate between Trump and the soporific Hillary Clinton is widely expected to draw record numbers. With the polls knotted up and the swing states in heavy contention, conventional wisdom says that the debate will be exciting, a bloodletting between the staid Clinton and the aggressive Trump. But actually, it could be massively boring.
Obama’s Terror Failures
In the past 24 hours, we have learned a lot more about New York City bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami. His ex-wife says he hates America, the military and homosexuals. He has a criminal record, including a domestic dispute. His father says he called the FBI to warn his son was radicalized. He made multiple trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. On one trip, he married a new wife. She left the United States days ago and is currently being held in the United Arab Emirates. Remember the wife of the Orlando shooter? She disappeared too. One of his brothers posted this on Facebook: “I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life.” That’s a quote from Khalid al-Walid, one of Muhammad’s generals. Yet with all these markers the FBI did not have Ahmad Khan Rahami on a watch list.
Moderators: Are They Referees or Fighters?
The latest Gallup poll confirms that the level of trust in the media has reached another new low. The percentage of Republicans who hold a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the press has dropped precipitously to 14 percent, begging the question: Who are the 14 percent who are comfortable with the nonstop tirade against them? It’s no accident these numbers emerge while the liberal press slams the GOP nominee as too dangerous to be allowed to win. Public trust is on the line when moderators line up for the presidential debates. Will they be fair, or will they decide “history” is too important, and pound on Donald Trump before a national audience? Some won’t.
Hey, UN Corruptocrats: Spare Us Refugee Sanctimony
Another United Nations summit in New York. Another finger-wagging extravaganza. Another useless “historic declaration” (nonbinding, of course) to save the world (by holding another summit ... in two years). As America reels from the latest terrorist attacks by Muslim refugees and immigrants in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, the world’s global do-gooders filled the Big Apple with their humanitarian hot air. U.N. officials convened in NYC this week to push for “collective action” to “protect the rights of refugees and migrants, to save lives and share responsibility for large movements on a global scale.” Let me put this as politely as possible: Bug off, U.N. nitwits.
Obama: God-Given Rights ‘Was a Radical Idea’
President Barack Obama affirmed this week that the Declaration of Independence recognizes that “individual human beings” have “God-given rights.” Yet, he insisted this was a “radical idea” at the time of the founding. Were he right — which he is not — history would see it as one radical idea Obama did not devoutly pursue. On multiple occasions early in his presidency, Obama dropped any reference to the Creator when paraphrasing these famous words from the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In the Navy, Anchors Aweigh for Gender
It’s been a long time since Americans read a headline about the U.S. military that actually had to do with national defense. And thanks to the Navy, that’s not about to change any time soon. While Congress has yet to weigh in on the administration’s push for open transgenderism in the ranks, Navy brass are making it clear that it’s full steam ahead on President Obama’s radical social policy that threatens to unravel whatever unit cohesion the military has left. Starting November 1 (a week before an election that could help end this nonsense), all sailors will be required to undergo “transgender behavioral education.” According to Navy Chief of Personnel Vice Admiral Robert Burke, the training will include everything from multi-hour briefings to discussion groups about how to best coddle gender confusion in the ranks. Supervisors will be taught to be “on alert” for signs of mistreatment of people who identify as transgender and deal with offenders appropriately.
High School Coach Leads Team to Protest National Anthem
This is a tale of two high school football coaches from Washington state. Both took a knee at a football game. Coach Joe Kennedy of Bremerton High School took a knee to pray to God. He was fired. Coach Joey Thomas of Garfield High School took a knee to protest America. He was praised. To be fair, both men coach in different school districts. So the rules on prayer and protest may vary, but it does demonstrate how public schools embrace anti-American sentiment while rejecting freedom of religion. Coach Thomas made national headlines over the weekend after he joined the entire high school football team in a protest during the national anthem.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Our Political Predicament
There is no point denying or sugar-coating the plain fact that the voters this election year face a choice between two of the worst candidates in living memory. A professor at Morgan State University summarized the situation by saying that the upcoming debates may enable voters to decide which is the “less insufferable” candidate to be President of the United States. My own take on this election is that the voter is in a situation much like that of an American fighter pilot in World War II, whose plane has been hit by enemy fire out over the Pacific Ocean and is beginning to burst into flames. If he bails out, there is no guarantee that his parachute will open. But even if he lands safely in the ocean, he may be eaten by sharks. If he comes down on land, he may be captured by the Japanese and tortured and/or killed.