Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Danger in the Third-Party Movement
The pages of the political calendar are turning relentlessly. Yesterday, GOP voters went to the polls in Arizona and Utah. Donald Trump's path to the Republican nomination continues substantially unabated. Yet there are many variables still in play, and there's no guarantee that Trump will reach the 1237 delegates he needs prior to the GOP Convention.
Keeping Kids at Harms Length
Liberals like to say they're pushing these gender-neutral bills *for* the kids, but new research suggests they're doing it *despite* the kids. Every day, it seems like another city or school board is pushing a policy that tells children to ignore the anatomy that classrooms should be teaching! The waves of gender-neutral bathroom and athletic proposals keep coming, no matter how devastating it can be for students. Gender isn't a matter of self-determination, the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) is arguing, and suggesting otherwise can harm kids for life.
Obama's Vision of America — Brought to You From Cuba
The United States of America was verbally assaulted this week from Cuban soil — by our own president. "Cuba," the State Department said in its latest human rights report, "is an authoritarian state led by Raul Castro, who is president of the council of state and council of ministers, Communist Party first secretary, and commander in chief of security forces." Yet in public appearances in this "authoritarian state" — where he was a guest of the "Communist Party first secretary" — President Obama criticized the United States.
Lamenting the Right Wing in Europe
The smoke hasn't even cleared from the airport in Brussels, and already the press is issuing its typical lament: This will only stoke Europe's right wing and spread rampant Islamophobia. NBC's Richard Engel complained on the "TODAY" program, "We're already seeing the rise of the right wing. We're already seeing rise of hate attacks, where people will use the kind of terrorist attacks, these kinds of incidents, to vilify all of the Muslim community. Which, of course, only makes the situation worse, because then people feel isolated, ostracized, ghettoized, and they retreat into their own communities." NBC's Andrea Mitchell, cited gains for right-wing parties in recent German regional elections.
Post-Jihad Gesture Theater: Je Suis Sick of It
While homicidal, suicidal and genocidal jihadists are busy plotting the next soft-target terror attacks on the West, docile Westerners are busy shedding cartoon tears and doodling broken hearts on social media. European artists rushed to fill Twitter and Instagram with images of Belgian comic book character Tintin weeping after vengeful Muslim terrorists left the Brussels airport and subway system buried in rubble and dead bodies.
ISIS Attacks Brussels
Once again, jihadists have struck in the heart of Europe, this time in Brussels, Belgium. Reports indicate that at least 30 people were killed and more than 180 were wounded after coordinated attacks at an airport and subway station. ISIS has taken credit for the attack. The Brussels attack follows a bombing over the weekend in Istanbul, Turkey, in which a suicide bomber stalked a group of Israelis. He blew himself up as they were leaving a restaurant, killing four people, including two Americans.
The Day Freedom Died in Cuba
In 1959, Fidel Castro and his communist henchmen put a bullet through the head of freedom. Proclaiming the era of equality, they threw dissidents in jail or shot them, cracked down on free speech, closed their markets and seized private property. Thousands of Cubans fled to the liberty of the United States. Over the decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island any way they could. Learned men floated battered cars 90 miles toward Florida in the hope that they would reach land; young women smuggled their babies into rickety old boats in the desperate desire to escape perennial servitude.
Free the Little Sisters of the Poor
The passage of the Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — in 2010 launched the tea party movement and planted seeds of resentment toward the Washington establishment that rages across the nation today. And there's no better of example of why this movement of outrage has grown and accelerated than the case — Zubik v. Burwell — now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Zubik v. Burwell, more popularly known as Obamacare v. Little Sisters of the Poor, is about the Obamacare mandate requiring employers and private insurance plans to provide cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.
The Art of Trump
Hooray for Donald Trump! I can ice skate in Central Park because Trump got the skating rink fixed after New York City couldn't. Couldn't, you ask? Really? How is that possible? New York City government couldn't fix an ice rink? Sad, but true. Despite six years of effort and fiddling with 13 million taxpayer dollars, government's bureaucracy was unable to fix an ice rink. At one point, they left one side of the rink 6 inches lower than the rest. That's government work for you.
Trade Deficit Angst
Let's look at the political angst over trade deficits. A trade deficit is when people in one country buy more from another country than the other country's people buy from them. There cannot be a trade deficit in a true economic sense. Let's examine this. I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me. That means I have a trade deficit with my grocer. My grocer buys more from his wholesaler than his wholesaler buys from him. But there is really no trade imbalance, whether my grocer is down the street, in Canada or, God forbid, in China.
It's the End of the Line for GOP as We Know It
Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better. Denial has been Trump's greatest ally. Republicans and commentators didn't believe he would run. They didn't believe he could be an attractive candidate to rational people, no matter how angry with "the establishment" voters said they were. They — which includes me — were wrong.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
President Obama's Che Moment
President Barack Obama inadvertently found the perfect photo-op for his Cuba visit at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana. A news photo at Revolution Square caught Obama standing together with American and Cuban officials, with an enormous mural of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara looming over his shoulder on the adjacent Ministry of the Interior building. Che is, of course, ubiquitous on dorm-room walls and T-shirts in the United States, and a hero of the Cuban revolution. He also was a coldblooded killer who set up the Cuban gulag and presided over summary executions of political prisoners (trials were, per Che, "an archaic bourgeois detail"). No doubt, he would have been astonished at the Yanqui president coming to Revolution Square to pay his respects — and exceedingly pleased.
Marines Brace for Mandatory Sensitivity Training
If you need more proof that the Obama administration has turned the greatest fighting force on the planet into a social engineering petri dish, just consider what's about to be forced upon the Marine Corps. Marines will soon be forced to attend "unconscious bias" training in advance of the women joining the infantry. The seminar will focus on how people prejudge others based on factors like race and gender, and principals of institutional change, Miltary.com reports. "There's no doubt we're leading cultural change," Brig. Gen. James Glynn told the website. "It's not the first time for the Marine Corps, but we like a challenge." That could be a mighty big challenge.
A Liberal Garland for Garland
Whenever I hear the words "centrist" or "moderate," especially when they come from The New York Times and The Washington Post, the words "liberal" and "cover-up" immediately come to mind. Since President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, a confirmed conservative, the words "centrist" and "moderate" have been repeated ad nauseam. They were repeated so often, in fact, that they resembled the sound of a skipping needle across a vinyl LP with dust in its grooves.
Hillary Clinton Is Bad for Stocks and the Economy
In a supremely weird election season the latest weird twist is the consensus emerging on Wall Street that Hillary Clinton would be better for financial markets than Donald Trump. The usually sensible Barrons magazine concluded in its cover story last week that Hillary-onomics are better for investors than Trump. Warren Buffett and other stock gurus have made the same case. The argument for Clinton is that she's predictable and that Wall Street knows what she will do. Trump, by contrast, is the high beta candidate, and let's face it: No one knows exactly what you get with a President Trump. Clinton's the safer bet. Investors are also drooling for a return to the 1990s and the bull-market returns we saw under Bill Clinton — when stocks tripled in value. I know I am.
Donald Trump Has 37 percent. Hard to Get to 270 Electoral Votes
Many Donald Trump supporters think he is a slam dunk to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The candidate himself certainly takes this view. But Trump's analysis of current public polls is preposterous. In the RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls, Trump trails Clinton by 6 points, 47 to 41 percent. Ted Cruz, in contrast, leads Clinton 46 to 45 percent. Ex-candidate Marco Rubio and splinter candidate John Kasich have been running even better. All at least equal the 46 percent that is the lowest percentage won by either party's nominee this century. Against each of them Clinton falls short of that.
Black and White, Left and Right
Much is made of the fact that liberals and conservatives see racial issues differently, which they do. But these differences have too often been seen as simply those on the right being racist and those on the left not. You can cherry-pick the evidence to reach that conclusion. But you can also cherry-pick the evidence to reach the opposite conclusion. During the heyday of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate, genetic inferiority of not only blacks but also of people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as compared to people from Western Europe.
The Intolerant Left
Radical left-wing protestors attempted to shut down a Donald Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, this weekend by shutting down a highway leading to the event. The rally was delayed an hour while local law enforcement worked to remove the blockade. At least three protestors were arrested. Once again, the intolerance of the radical left was on full display. Candidates for public office have a First Amendment right to speak. Their supporters have a First Amendment right to hear and see them. But the left is trying to deny them their rights. The protestors have a right to demonstrate. But there is no First Amendment right to shut down roads and create traffic jams. The left is trying to shut down speech it doesn't like by demonizing candidates it doesn't like.
No, I Don't Believe Donald Trump Is a Conservative
This short essay is in response to a friend who asked me to explain how Donald Trump is unacceptable to "movement conservatives." Let's first acknowledge that many Trump supporters don't even claim to be conservative — though others do — and Trump himself is rather dismissive on the point, so they may consider this column a meaningless academic exercise. But a Trump supporter asked, so I'll try to explain. Because I think my questioner was inquiring mostly about issues, I won't delve into Trump's apparent lack of presidential temperament and public deportment — as reflected mostly in the debates and his speeches — other than to suggest that they betray values that don't strike me as particularly conservative.
It's the Character
I first became aware of Donald Trump when he chose to make cheating on his first wife front-page news. It was the early '90s. Donald and Ivana Trump broke up over the course of months. Not that divorce is shocking, mind you; among the glitterati marriage seems more unusual. Nor is infidelity exactly novel. But it requires a particular breed of lowlife to advertise the sexual superiority of one's mistress over the mother of one's children. That was Trump's style. He leaked stories to the New York tabloids about Ivana's breast implants — they didn't feel right. Marla Maples, by contrast, suited him better. She, proving her suitability for the man she was eager to steal from his family, told the papers that her encounters with the mogul were "the best sex I've ever had." It wasn't just Donald Trump's betrayal that caught my eye, nor just the tawdriness: It was the cruelty.