Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Our 1 Percent Economy
Have you noticed that Hillary Clinton wants to talk about the economy about as much as she wants to talk about Monica Lewinsky or Benghazi? Here’s why: The economy is lousy. Feeble. Barack Obama’s own numbers prove it. We got revised GDP numbers from the Commerce Department on Friday and the economy is actually getting worse. The rate of economic growth was slightly less than 1 percent for the first six months of 2016. No wonder almost half of Americans think we are still in a recession. They are personally in recession.
On Hillary Clinton as a Model for Young Girls
One of the most oft-heard claims made by supporters of Hillary Clinton is what a positive role model she would be for young girls as president. They say: “Then, my daughters will know that nothing is to too great for them to aspire to. A woman can indeed be president of the United States.” So goes the argument. According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll, women will vote for Clinton by 60 percent to 36 percent, a margin of 24 percent. In the last presidential election, the margin was 10 percent.
Monday, August 29, 2016
The Fed Seeks to Postpone a Federal Government Default
I have been writing for years that our government is essentially broke and the federal debt will never be repaid. Within this context, the Federal Reserve has been the great enabler of even more federal debt by its ZIRP policy. The Fed has opted for the slow-growth Japanization of the American economy as a lesser evil than letting interest rates on the national debt rise so as to precipitate a political crisis and potential default. As John Tamny points out in his book, “Who Needs the Fed?,” the Fed is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the private marketplace for capital; its primary role is to cram down interest rates on the federal government’s debt and keep our broke government solvent (absent rampant money creation).
Grocery Store Boots Girl Scouts, Salvation Army
Lots of folks around the Midwest are looking for another place to buy their butter beans after a major grocery store chain gave the Girl Scouts and the Salvation Army the heave-ho. Schnucks, based in St. Louis, announced a new policy banning all solicitors — and that includes little girls selling Thin Mints and Tagalongs. “Our primary obligation is servicing our customers by providing the most pleasant and convenient shopping environment,” company spokesman Paul Simon said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Because of this we have decided to end the solicitation of our customers or distribution of written or other materials at our stores.” For the record, Schnucks is a privately owned company and the owners have a right to run their business however they see fit. But they might want to reconsider calling themselves the “friendliest store in town.”
Hillary Clinton: From Glass Ceiling to Crass Dealing
The world has seen a number of women as top political leaders. Theresa May is the second female prime minister in Great Britain, after Maggie Thatcher. Angela Merkel is the long-serving chancellor of Germany. Years ago there was Indira Gandhi of India. Now Hillary Clinton is on the cusp of being elected U.S. president, the biggest political prize in the world. Despite America’s disquiet with family dynasties in a republic, there is much to celebrate in America’s willingness to elect anyone, irrespective of background, as president. Unfortunately, Clinton is a poor choice to be a path-breaker. The image that best fits her time in politics is not breaking the glass ceiling but engaging in crass dealing. From the emergence of the Clintons in Arkansas politics to now, everything has been about them in the worst way.
Does the Death Penalty Deter? Of Course
Writing in support of Proposition 62, a California ballot initiative to repeal the death penalty, former El Dorado county supervisor Ron Briggs makes the tiresomely familiar claim that “the death penalty does not make our communities any safer” and “is not a deterrent to crime.” For death penalty opponents, it is a venerable article of faith that executing murderers doesn’t deter other murders and that abolishing the death penalty doesn’t make killings more likely. Never mind that a thick sheaf of peer-reviewed academic studies refutes the abolitionists’ belief, as, of course, does common sense: *All* penalties have some deterrent effect, and the more severe the penalty, the more it deters. Let a parking meter expire, and you risk a $20 ticket; park in a handicapped spot, and risk a $200 ticket. Which violation are you less likely to commit?
How Did We Get Here?
It seems like only yesterday that we had a nation that prided itself on its strength, its productivity, its ability to differentiate between good and evil, and its obvious preference for the former. Today, when you look around, you find a younger generation that is far more concerned with how it feels than what it does. We have youngsters who demand their rights, but refuse to step up to their responsibilities. They demand that their education, such as it is, be paid for by others and insist on all the freedoms they see as their birthright, but show little or no interest in defending them. They insist on voting just like every other adult, but they feel no shame or even embarrassment at remaining on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26 years old.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
In Defense of Trump
Almost everything I read about Donald Trump these days is negative. Writers on the right have been almost as critical as writers on the left. Is there nothing that can be said about Trump that is positive? I think there is. Since his nomination by the Republican Party, Donald Trump has made a number of serious policy speeches. In each case he is saying things that no other Republican presidential candidate has said. What he is saying is worth listening to. On foreign policy, he has basically noted that our entire approach, from NATO to military bases, is based on 1950s Cold War thinking. That must change. He is the first modern leader of consequence to say this.
University Hosts ‘Stop White People’ Workshop
Nothing screams tolerance and diversity like a university workshop designed to target white people. The State University of New York in Binghamton has a bit of explaining to do after it held a workshop titled, “#StopWhitePeople2K16.” The workshop was an official part of the residential assistant training program at the taxpayer-funded university. The Binghamton Review, the university’s conservative newspaper, exposed this nonsense and they deserve a round of applause for their efforts. It’s not exactly clear how they intend to stop all of us white folks, but the course smacks of blatant bigotry disguised as cultural awareness. Get a load of the course description: “The premise of this session is to help others take the next step in understanding diversity, privilege, and the society we function within.” I developed a micro-aggression just reading that nonsense.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
The Kinder, Gentler Trump
Behold the kinder, gentler Donald Trump. The latest of Trump’s “pivots” is more far-reaching than a stab at greater message discipline. It is an effort to make him more appealing to minorities and college-educated whites by adopting a more inclusive message. It is an attempt to engineer on the fly a “compassionate populism.”
Hillary’s McCarthyism
Since the 1950s, smearing someone through tenuous connections — guilt by association — has been labeled “McCarthyism.” The term was coined by the left, and named after a member of Congress, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who the left contended was too aggressive in rooting out communists in the government. Hillary Clinton’s speech in Reno, Nevada, [Thursday] was McCarthyism on steroids. Donald Trump, who had a pretty good idea of what she was going to do, said earlier in the day, “Shame on you.” And shame is exactly the right word for Clinton’s disgusting speech.
A Wounded Boy’s Silence, and the Candidates’
With the campaign proper about to begin, on Labor Day, a last August thought, a very simple one: *War is terrible.* It is my impression our candidates for president don’t really know this. They never say it, not in formal speeches or in thinking aloud, in reveries in friendly interviews. I would say of most of America’s political class that they have their heads all screwed up about war, that they approach the subject coolly, as a political and geopolitical matter, and that they see it through prisms of personal political need and ideological gain. They are missing the central fact of it — that it is terrible. Before the election is over it would be good if someone said it.
Louisiana Cop: Red Cross Stopped Me From Praying With Flood Victim
A law enforcement officer said he was asked to leave a Red Cross shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana, after he prayed with several flood victims. Clay Higgins, a reserve city marshal and a local legend, dropped by after work to minister to evacuees at the Heymann Performing Arts Center on Aug. 19. “I was not proselytizing,” he told me. “I was just there to thank volunteers and offer prayers and encouragement.” Higgins, who is also running for Congress, was dressed in uniform and was holding a Bible. At some point during the visit a volunteer approached Higgins and mentioned there was a problem.
Mislabeling for Fun & Profit
The FDA has pretty strict rules when it comes to labeling products. It will stop you in your tracks if you try to pass off ground chuck as ground sirloin or try to peddle something doused in sodium as being salt-free. But, unfortunately, there is no federal agency or even a law that can prevent people from mislabeling themselves. As a result, Elizabeth Warren could call herself a Cherokee in order to advance her academic career and land her a spot at Harvard, where apparently being or at least claiming to be a Native American counts far more than honesty, character and intelligence. In much the same way, left-wing activist Rachel Dolezal insisted that, in spite of being born to white parents, that she was a black woman, and Bruce Jenner, physical evidence to the contrary, could announce he was a she named Caitlyn.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Trump’s Bathwater vs. Hillary’s
The Great Donald Trump Pivot is still very much in progress. Who knows where his position on illegal immigration is going. If he does anymore specials with Sean Hannity, he’s liable to replace his signature border wall idea with a big open gate in El Paso manned by volunteers from Welcome Wagon. What’s the next late-August surprise going to be? That he’s fired Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon and replaced them with James Carville? That he’s offered the secretary of state job in advance to Khizr Khan?
Pressurized Sin
Christians differ on whether it is permissible, according to the faith, to participate in gay marriage ceremonies. The mainstream Christian view is that marriage is ordained by God between one man and one woman. Providing the goods and services for a gay wedding would be participating in sin. While some Christians may disagree, it is commonly recognized by many Christians that to demand a Christian provide goods and services or otherwise participate in a gay marriage ceremony would be sinful. The reason comes from scripture. The apostle Paul wrote that pressuring a Christian to do something he believes is sinful is to commit a sin.
Not Over Yet
Don’t let big media tell you this race is over. The left is doing its best to demoralize conservatives, but this election is not over yet. Not by a long shot. Polling this year has been wildly unpredictable. For example, in recent days three major national polls were released. One had Clinton up eight points, one had her up three points and one had Trump and Clinton tied. Only one of those polls surveyed likely voters and that was poll that found Trump and Clinton tied at 44%. Of course, the election isn’t necessarily a national contest, but a series of state-by-state races that determine the outcome in the Electoral College. So let’s see how Trump is doing in some key swing states.
Hillary Clinton’s Felonious Friends in Virginia
Terry McAuliffe is a Hillary Clinton pal. He fronted $1.3 million for her house in Chappaqua, New York. We should all have such friends. Thanks to the Republicans who shut down the government in 2013, McAuliffe is now the governor of Virginia, a swing state, and thus in a position to help Clinton get another house — on Pennsylvania Avenue. Any governor has political strings to pull, but Gov. McAuliffe is going beyond sharing voter information, get-out-the-vote operations and other traditional political tools. He’s creating new voters by unilaterally restoring voting rights to 206,000 convicted felons. McAuliffe is focused on this: In 2012, Barack Obama’s margin of victory in Virginia was 3.88 percent, which represented 149,298 votes.
Karma for the Clintons at Last?
Hold on; we may finally be getting some fireworks in this lackluster presidential campaign — as the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be gathering steam. Could the Clintons finally have to face the music for their adult-lifetime of corruption? Is it possible that Hillary Clinton’s lifelong scheme to be America’s first female president could be derailed by this power couple’s wanton venality? I’ve watched closely through the years the Clintons’ uncanny agility at hurdling real scandals and coming out almost unscathed. Yes, Bill Clinton was impeached, but what a dud that turned out to be, with Clinton rising to the figure of beloved statesman among Democrats and his accusers being painted as petty partisans.
Is Comedy Central Racist?
Comedy Central frustrated racial bean counters across America when it abruptly canceled “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” for the obvious reason: It “hasn’t resonated.” Its ratings were terrible, and nothing it aired went viral. It was a desperate stretch when one Wilmore staffer described their audience as “small, but (mighty).” A lack of market demand on a for-profit network is apparently no excuse to cancel a show. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans leaped to the microphone to pound the affirmative-action hard line: Had Comedy Central’s audience “ultimately rejected a black man talking boldly about race in late night television?” He complained, “The real measure of equality in Hollywood will be when non-white stars get the same resources and latitude as white hosts, being allowed to experiment with staff and being given several years to fail, to improve, to find their voice.”