Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Donald Trump, Fake Conservative
Donald Trump has jumped to the top of the national polls for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. It's an embarrassing moment for the GOP, the country and the planet. But everyone knows America's richest celebrity businessman will never become the Republican candidate, much less president of the U.S. Unfortunately for the GOP's future, however, the billionaire blowhard is not going to fade away in a week or two like Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann did in 2012.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Planned Parenthood Gets Bad Sell Reception
Partner with Planned Parenthood, and you'll pay for it. That seemed to be the message [Tuesday] from the U.S. House upon learning that the country's largest abortion business was running its own little shop of horrors. Hours after the Center for Medical Progress exposed the group's ghoulish side business of selling human body parts, the effects of the scandal started hitting home for organizations like Susan G. Komen — longtime donors to Cecile Richards's group. What should have been a routine vote on a commemorative breast cancer coin became anything but, once members were alerted by FRC and Heritage Action that the bill included funding for Komen — which is a major supporter of the "nonprofit" caught peddling baby parts. That association was too toxic for House conservatives, who refused to turn over $4,750,000 to one of Planned Parenthood's biggest donors on the same day it was implicated in a Frankenstein-like plot. Komen had tried to cut ties with Richards's group in 2012 and fund organizations actually performing mammograms, but ultimately caved to left-wing pressure.
Friends of Trump
I cannot recall another time when American media have given so much aid and encouragement to a fledgling candidate as they have given to Donald Trump, and he is a billionaire. He does not need their help. A couple of weeks ago, he was scrambling within a tight pack of Republican also-rans. Now, thanks to the media's almost ceaseless coverage, he is near the top of the Republican heap. In some polls, he is atop the heap. The fact that the media were endeavoring to ambush his candidacy should tell you quite a lot about the media's own ineptitude in politics and about Trump's cunning. Trump, in his characteristically discursive campaign announcement, spoke across a whole range of issues, and the media pounced on the one issue that would make him a hero to millions. The media were thinking they would render him a pariah or, in their words, a racist. Who knows the public better: the floundering media or the accomplished billionaire?
California's Latino Education Crisis
The Los Angeles Times headline was cheerful: "It's Official: Latinos Now Outnumber Whites in California." The Times said, "As of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state." Is this good news or bad news? The L.A. Times seems to think the former. The article cites the chief demographer for the state finance department who asserts, "A young Latino workforce helps the economy by backfilling retiring baby boomers." Really?
Growth and Fairness in a Clinton-Style Economy
During a recent economic address by Hillary Clinton to soft-launch her "growth and fairness economy" plan, she rightfully noted that we "need new ideas" to combat slow economic growth and the lack of opportunities for some Americans. But then she proceeded to offer outdated and failed policies that would guarantee the United States remains stuck in the 20th century forever. Nowhere was this more visible than in her attack on the sharing economy — a term used by my colleagues who are experts on technology policy at the Mercatus Center to describe "any marketplace that uses the Internet to connect distributed networks of individuals to share or exchange otherwise underutilized assets."
Contrary to Progressive Belief, Human Nature Can't Be Changed
Human nature is unchanging, predictable — and can be dangerous if ignored. Five-time deportee and seven-time felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an unauthorized immigrant, recently was arrested in San Francisco for the murder of an innocent passerby, Kate Steinle. The alleged killer told a local TV station that he came to San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city. San Francisco has long boasted that it would not turn over unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities. Can it be that announcing such exemptions actually draws in foreign citizens who have arrived in the U.S. illegally and committed crimes?
Every Pro-Immigration Claim Is a Lie
In the wake of Kate Steinle's murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant, mass immigration advocates have begun a campaign of lies in defense of their cheap labor. "Studies show," they say, that immigrants commit LESS crime than the native population. Inasmuch as the vast majority of post-1970 immigrants — legal immigrants — are poor, non-white and come from countries with far worse crime rates than our own, that's at least counterintuitive. The main evidence cited in support of the claim that immigrants commit less crime than Americans is a moronic point about cities with a lot of immigrants seeming to have low crime rates. *Check and mate, Mr. Trump!* The "New York sure seems safe to me!" argument is like the "Saturday Night Live" sketch of Bill O'Reilly arguing that New York has more people than California.
Zero Tolerance for Confederate Flag, Nuance for Islamic Terror
"Nice flag!" the woman shouted sarcastically, adding: "F— you!" The woman was seated on the patio of a restaurant overlooking Main Street in this famously liberal capital of this famously liberal state when a truck sporting the Confederate emblem passed by. I could understand the sentiment (particularly given the fact that her lunch partner was an African-American man). When the woman saw my daughter and her friend, she apologized for her profanity. And while I could have done without the f-bomb around two 12-year-old girls, my real objection was something different. The young woman's outburst was exactly the reaction the buffoon in the truck was hoping for. After all, Vermont is the heart of union territory (and the first state to ban slavery in 1777). Even without the recent controversies, there's no reason to fly a Confederate flag in downtown Montpelier except to offend.
Defining Hillary Clinton
When I listen to Hillary Clinton speak, as she did Monday at The New School in New York, outlining her "economic policy" should she become president, my first reaction was not to her lack of substance and the predictability of her party line about taxing the rich more and "income inequality," but to how boring she is. I love definitions. They help focus the mind. But not everyone defines a word the same way. Dictionary.com defines "bore" in several ways, all of which fit Hillary Clinton. As a verb used with an object, it says, "to weary by dullness, tedious repetition..." As a noun it is defined as "a dull, tiresome, or uncongenial person; a cause of ennui or petty annoyance." Even the synonyms for "bore" seem to describe Hillary Clinton: "fatigue, tire, annoy."
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
The Wine-Sipping Butchers of Planned Parenthood
Hannibal Lecter ain't got nothing on the profit-maximizing abortion ghoul caught on tape hawking aborted baby parts as she swilled wine and nibbled on a gourmet salad. In newly released undercover footage from the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, seasoned abortionist Dr. Deborah Nucatola, who serves as national senior director of "medical services" at Planned Parenthood, chitter-chattered eagerly about fulfilling the bloodthirsty demand for "intact hearts," "lower extremities" and lungs. Price tag? "You know, I would throw a number out," she babbled breezily as she twirled her fork. "I would say it's probably anywhere from $30 to $100" per specimen.
Scott Walker and the Other Dummies
On the day Scott Walker would announce in Wisconsin that he was running for president, The New York Times offered a typical takedown on the front page. "Admiring voters" found him to be authentic and approachable, but there were two words these fans apparently did not use: "Smart" and "sophisticated." That might be because liberal snobs at the Times think that those words are defined by how liberal you are. Those are qualities you get from reading the Times. Their own ads have touted them for giving the customer "depth" and "breadth" and "insights." Conservatives are dumb, but they have hope if they put enough of The New York Times into their brain every day. Times reporter Patrick Healy focused on how Walker needed "several months of policy tutorials" to be ready to run for president, which reminded the Times of the crash course in foreign policy the McCain campaign forced on Sarah Palin. They suggested Walker may not be "big enough to be president."
Obama’s Vienna Concession: A Foreign Policy Disaster
Many of our fellow conservatives are saying that President Obama's deal with Iran is a "nuclear Munich." That is, they are comparing the Iranian settlement negotiated over these many months by Secretary John Kerry in that Austrian capital with the Munich capitulation negotiated over mere days in September, 1938, by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain's failed appeasement of Hitler — as bad as it was — arguably is not as harmful as President Obama's Vienna concession is. This deal is worse than Chamberlain's Munich sellout because its implications are immeasurable. Once Chamberlain had given away Czechoslovakia's German-speaking Sudetenland region to the Nazi Führer, the umbrella-toting Prime Minister could at least show Hitler's signature on a joint statement. All the world could see that Hitler said he had no further territorial ambitions in Europe. Chamberlain had a measurable, comprehensible, signed on the dotted line commitment from Adolf Hitler.
Why Obama Turned Iran Into a Regional Power
On Tuesday, Barack Obama championed his legacy-making agreement with the Iranian mullahs. That agreement provides billions of dollars to the Islamist aggressors hellbent on dominating Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, and any place else they can spread their regime of terror. In exchange, the United States receives a pinkie swear that the Iranians will not develop nuclear weapons for a grand total of 10 years; within five years, we will allow weapons embargoes against the state to end, and within eight years, we will allow missile technology to flow into Iran unimpeded. This deal, Obama said, is a move in a "different direction." He is right. It *is* a move in a different direction: America used to care when its enemies created spheres of influence across strategically important swaths of territory. President Obama used to pretend to care. In phraseology that now seems charmingly quaint, Obama stated in his 2010 State of the Union Address, "the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise."
Planned Parenthood's Fetal Flaw
We may never know the full extent of evil that goes on behind Planned Parenthood's closed doors. But we know enough. In a world where killing is currency and empires are built on the backs of innocent children, maybe nothing should surprise us. And yet, it does — with every new story of the abortion industry's inhumanity. [Yesterday] morning, pro-lifers awoke to another scandal: the news that Planned Parenthood — the same organization President Obama routinely praises, speaks to, and fundraises for — is involved in a black market of body parts. The ghoulish details are the subject of [an undercover video just released by the Center for Medical Progress](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjxwVuozMnU) (CMP), featuring a woman extremely high up in Planned Parenthood's chain of command: Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola.
Reagan's Tax-Cutting Legacy
President Reagan had a gift for proving his critics wrong. Almost none of the leading economists of the late 1970s thought that his supply-side, tax-cutting agenda, along with stable monetary policy and deregulation, could revive the U.S. economy. But the prosperity of the 1980s, with growth rates higher than 6 percent, proved the Gipper correct. An economics major from Eureka College understood our free-market system better than the so-called experts at Harvard, Yale and MIT. As the 2016 presidential campaigns gear up, Reagan's policies are under assault again, this time even from some on the right. This new group, called "reformicons," says that supply-siders are obsessed with cutting tax rates for the richest Americans at a time when middle-class tax cuts and tax credits should take precedence.
Historical Ignorance
The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies "to be free, sovereign and independent states." These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.
Governments Keep Turning to Socialism, Even Though It Always Fails
A few years ago, the prestigious economic publication Journal of Economic Literature dubbed the period from 1980-2005 "the age of Milton Friedman." The article described this era of greater reliance on free markets and privatization, which the Nobel laureate economist Friedman advocated, as arguably the period of greatest economic advance for mankind in world history. It would be hard to argue against that. As freedom and free markets were on the march, more than 1 billion people worldwide, mostly in China and India, were moved out of poverty. Tens of trillions of dollars of new wealth were created worldwide. But the past decade could be described as the comeback of socialism. In response to the financial crisis, nations foolheartedly turned to central governments to steer them out of crisis. Government debt, spending and regulatory activity soared all across Europe and in the United States. The Keynesian model that sees government welfare spending as a "stimulus" came storming back in vogue — nowhere more so than in the United States.
Progress
Obamacare! The War on Drugs! A War on Poverty! Prohibition! The idea that government will bring social progress isn't new. Europe's monarchs believed in big government long before there was a Soviet Union or a welfare state. Eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire praised "enlightened" monarchs like Prussia's Frederick the Great. Since the nineteenth century, so-called "progressives" have wanted government to get ever larger. They got their wish. The results were not so good for people. Today pundits and protesters moan about fiscal "austerity" in nations like Greece. But if austerity means cuts in government, there hasn't been much of it.
Liberals Will Fuel Racial Tensions Forever
So now the Confederate flag has been removed from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol in Columbia. Governor Nikki Haley got the ball rolling and the job was finished by Republican State Rep. Jenny Horne, who stood before the South Carolina House of Representatives identifying herself as a descendant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and made an impassioned plea to move the bill to remove the flag with haste and not allow it to get hung up with amendments. But this is not and will not be good enough for liberals. In 1963, newly elected Alabama governor George Wallace took the oath of office in Montgomery, former capital of the Confederacy, and issued forth his famous phrase, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."