Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, June 24, 2016
GOP Recoils at Gun Stunt
The media has been calling last night’s Democratic sit-in a “revolt.” And people were revolted all right. A little over a week after the worst U.S. terror attack since 9/11, House Democrats seem intent on helping radical Islam carry out another one. When liberals spend hours derailing House business to force a debate on gun control, they aren’t preventing another massacre like Orlando’s. They’re creating the division — and diversion — radical Islamists need to plot another assault.
Trump Pivoting Away From Tabloid-Style Campaigning
Donald Trump is the latest proof that the campaign always reflects the candidate and that the candidate is a product of his experience over the years. So, as Trump, after clinching the Republican nomination, reshuffles and rejiggers a campaign that has fallen behind Hillary Clinton, it’s instructive to look at his political ground zero. That would be New York and its tabloid politics. I first encountered this in summer 1961, on a family vacation to New York City. As a teenager I was allowed to travel on the subway (15 cent fare, a dollar gets you six tokens and a dime change) and arrange my own meals (a pizza slice — exotic food back home — for a quarter).
Time for Trump to Put Up or Shut Up
Donald Trump should put his money where his mouth is. The real estate mogul says he’s worth “in excess” of $10 billion. I think he’s lying, as does pretty much every expert and financial journalist who has looked into the question. Forbes has put his net worth at $4.5 billion. Bloomberg says it’s below $3 billion. Billionaire Mark Cuban has cast doubt on whether Trump is even a billionaire at all. I’ve read the analyses, but common sense always told me he was full of it. Actual multi-billionaires tend not to waste their time recording videos hawking steaks in the Sharper Image catalog. They don’t bother with snake oil schemes peddling dietary supplements. They don’t claim under oath that much of their net worth depends on how good a mood they’re in. And they don’t threaten to sue anyone who suggests they aren’t as rich as they claim.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
The Incredible Hopelessness of America’s Gun ‘Conversation’
For millennia, the ability to interpret hieroglyphics had been lost to the ages. So when Jean-Francois Champollion decoded the Rosetta Stone it was a monumental breakthrough. Since then, a “Rosetta Stone” has come to refer to anything that offers a roadmap for understanding the undecipherable. Today’s political landscape is rife with puzzles and paradoxes in desperate need of Rosetta Stones. The one that I want to discuss is this: Why are we so profoundly incapable of having a reasonable dialogue about guns? National Review writer David French describes the “conversation” as hopelessly polarized. It’s as if, he laments, we are coming from entirely different worlds when processing events like the massacre that took place in Orlando.
Hillary’s Expensive Jacket
Hillary Clinton may have been better off wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes during her victory speech after the New York primary, rather than what she chose to wear and her aides managed to overlook. Clinton, who has decried income “inequality” throughout the nation during her campaign, stood before the assembled ---- and carefully screened ---- crowd wearing a $12,495 Giorgio Armani jacket.
Rubio Said He Was Leaving. That’s Why He Should Leave.
When a Washington Post column described Marco Rubio as being “a bit at sea in terms of his next step politically,” the Florida senator was irritated. “Another genius line,” he tweeted acerbically. “I have only said like 10000 times I will be a private citizen in January.” That was on May 16 — two months after Rubio dropped out of the presidential race and long after he’d made it clear that whatever came of his White House bid, he had no interest in another Senate term.
Trump’s 3 Challenges: Himself, Media and Republicans
After finally getting the endorsement of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Donald Trump frittered the goodwill away. Trump called a judge born in Indiana a “Mexican.” Rather than apologize, Trump, at first, doubled and triple down, until finally saying that he didn’t mean that the judge’s ethnicity equaled bias. That Trump fired his campaign manager shows that he’s not oblivious to criticism. Reportedly, his children came to him and told him that now ex-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski must go. Trump’s critics had called him immune to change, and Lewandowski’s dismissal shows that they were wrong. Most, of course, now say this won’t matter, revealing that their dislike of Trump had little to do with his campaign manager.
A Conversation About America’s Future
It’s been called a “reckoning,” an “inquisition,” even a “quiz,” but yesterday’s meeting between Donald Trump and hundreds of Christian leaders was a *conversation* -- an important one about America’s future. The closed-door gathering with the GOP’s presumptive nominee had been the talk of the media for over a month and [Tuesday], after weeks of planning, perhaps the largest assembly of social conservative leaders in a generation convened -- hoping, after eight years of extremely hostile policies, to build a bridge between them and the man who could be the nation’s next commander-in-chief. [Tuesday] night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked me why it was necessary for Christian leaders to start a dialogue with Donald Trump. I’ll tell you what I told her: I believe we have to be both an influence in this process and a witness to a standard of truth that is revealed in Scripture that we adhere to. When we have a candidate whose positions in the past were inconsistent with that standard, we have to have a conversation.
Character No Longer Counts
Ranking right up there with the line, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” is this recent headline in The Washington Times: “Honesty issues aside, voters still back Hillary Clinton, poll shows.” Though Clinton’s negatives appear higher than that of any Democrat running for president in, perhaps, all of history — and Donald Trump’s are even higher — honesty appears not to matter in this election, especially to younger voters. The Washington Times story is based on a poll taken by the technology company Morning Consult, which found that Hillary Clinton’s “56 percent unfavorability rating is driven by the fact that 39 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents say she can’t be trusted” and that “significant percentages of those who view her unfavorably also say she’s flat-out corrupt.”
What Donald Trump Has Learned
It has now been a year since Donald Trump formally became a politician and declared his candidacy for the nation’s highest office. Actually, it has been a little over a year, because he considered it for months before he announced it from Trump Tower on June 16, 2015. What has he learned? Well, he has learned that while there are developers who would try to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge they do not hold a candle to politicians when it comes to lying, and that goes double for the mendacious political press. Moreover, he has learned that though there may be opportunists among his fellows in the real estate business, they are veritable good Samaritans when compared with the big-league opportunists in politics.
The Left’s Assault on Our Values
In yesterday’s report, I told you how congressional liberals were attacking the Second Amendment. (They’re still at it. Anti-gun politicians staged a sit-in on the House floor [Wednesday] morning demanding votes on gun control legislation.) Now I want to tell you about the left’s ongoing assault on the First Amendment. California has mandated that all insurance policies must cover elective, surgical abortions as “basic health care.” At least three churches filed a federal lawsuit against the mandate, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.
Reduce the Hurdles to Private Investment in Infrastructure
The Congressional Budget Office has a new report looking at the return of federal investment in transportation and research. The bottom line is that the return is not so much as the private-sector investment. So rather than invest more money in federal investments, let’s get rid of all the federal policies that get in the way of the private sector’s doing the investing. First, let’s look at the CBO report. Salim Furth of The Heritage Foundation explained in an email to me how this CBO report deserves much credit for “diligently following Congress’ new requirement that CBO include macroeconomic feedback effects in its evaluations of major fiscal policy changes.” He continued: “This dynamic approach is a lot more work than the alternative, and Director Keith Hall is quietly making CBO more transparent. He’s more open to criticism, but that’s a benefit in the long run, since it will compel CBO to constantly improve its modeling.”
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
White-Out: Obama’s Response to Islamic Terrorism
This week, in the wake of the worst mass shooting in our nation’s history, President Obama’s Department of Justice, via U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, released an excerpt of the transcript between Omar Mateen, the Islamic terrorist, and a 911 operator. However, the excerpt provided was scrubbed to exclude references to “ISIS” and ISIS leader “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” It was as if Obama and Lynch chose to use White-Out to cover up another Islamic terrorist attack.
Defeating the Next Strain of Terrorism
It’s been only 15 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But when you look at how the terrorist threat has evolved since then, it seems as if a century or more has gone by. Things have been changing — fast. And if our response doesn’t change, and just as quickly, we’re practically begging for trouble. Not another Sept. 11, necessarily — but another Orlando. Another Fort Hood. Another San Bernardino. Indeed, the sheer magnitude of Sept. 11 can almost blind us to the metastasizing danger out there. Most people are aware, of course, that attacks such as the one in Orlando have occurred, and that the attacker had terrorist connections. Few people are aware that Orlando was the 86th plot of Islamist terror in the United States since Sept. 11.
America Stands With UK on Brexit
On June 23 citizens of the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to choose freedom, sovereignty, and independence from the European Union. Americans, knowing a thing or two about fighting for independence from a certain European nation ourselves, should cheer on our cousins across the Atlantic. The British exit from the continental government — or “Brexit” — has been a long time coming. The referendum is the first time in 40 years that the British people have had an opportunity to assess their membership in the European Union.
Warning: Labels
When you use a coffeepot, do you need a warning label to tell you: “Do not hold over people”? Must a bicycle bell be sold with the warning: “Should be installed and serviced by a professional mechanic”? Of course not. Yet that bell also carries the warning: “Failure to heed any of these warnings may result in serious injury or death.” This is nuts. It’s a *bell*. The blizzard of warning labels means we often won’t read ones we should, like the Clorox label that warns, do not use bleach “with other product ... hazardous gasses may result.” No kidding. Mixing bleach and ammonia creates gasses that can kill people.
Ideologues Make for Dangerous Politicians
Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria and the use of the term “radical Islam” all seem to hinge on what she perceives 51 percent of the public to believe on any given day. Such politicians believe truth is a relative construct. Things are deemed false by politicians only if they cannot convince the public that they are true — and vice versa. When the majority of Americans no longer believe Clinton’s yarns about her private email server to the point of not wanting to vote for her, then she will change her narrative and create new, convenient truths to reflect the new consensus.
USA Needs More Entrepreneurs, Not More Bureaucrats
Uber, the ride-hailing company, founded in 2009, began operations in San Francisco in 2011, and now has a presence in 449 cities worldwide. From its beginning with just a vision, the firm’s market value, by recent estimates, now exceeds $60 billion dollars. Uber is just one of many new emerging businesses that are the result of applying new technology to the routine affairs of living. In this case, rather than needing to hail a cab or order one from a central office, you just connect with drivers through an app on your smartphone. When existing businesses find themselves threatened by innovation, they have two choices. Adapt and change or try to destroy the innovation that is challenging their existence.
Tuesday’s Meeting With Trump
I am writing this report from the Marriott Marquis in New York City, where I have been in meetings with Donald Trump and more than 1,000 religious leaders. There were household names like Franklin Graham, who opened the meeting with an incredibly moving prayer. Others present included Dr. James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Dr. Ben Carson, Penny Nance and Jerry Falwell, Jr.
Obama Never Blamed for Bad Security
In the swing of the Trump wrecking crane, President Obama’s approval ratings have risen above 50 percent. The media see greater appreciation for his “competence” in office — but, why? In the wake of the Orlando attack it’s easy to ask, “How competent would the media have made President George W. Bush appear if an Islamic terrorist shot up a gay nightclub in Florida eight years ago?” It seemed like every piece of bad news during the Bush years was somehow Bush’s fault — and proof of his incompetence. The media’s attitude toward Bush was summed up in Bill Maher’s diatribe to Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show”: “The man is a rube. He is a dolt. He is a yokel on the world stage. He is a Gilligan who cannot find his ass with two hands.”