Here are my observations and opinions on some of the news.
PEGGY NOONAN, says Republicans need to be artists, not economists in a highly esoteric piece in the Saturday Wall Street Journal.
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. (lonelyconservative.com)
She again goes back to the Reagan era, when she was a speechwriter for the former president, and weaves a piece that I believe, for the most part, will go over the heads of most readers.
Noonan and others must stop drawing on comparisons to Reagan. He was one of a kind, as is Trump today.
“Be more human. Show a felt sympathy for those trying to rise. Align yourself with the culturally disheartened. Be on the side – as the party was since its inception, and now seems not to be – of Main Street, not Wall Street,” writes Noonan.
Certainly, I thought, she’s heard President Trump’s frequent references to the “forgotten people,” but she may be addressing her comment to the Republican establishment, RINOs.
Fox’s Andrew Napolitano, wrote a memorable op-ed in the Washington Times shortly after Trump’s election on that subject, “The Forgotten Man,” and I highly recommend that you, and Noonan, read it in its entirety, but here’s the gist of it:
“Whatever the impression Mr. Trump may have given you – a carnival barker, a hero, a jerk, a courageous leader – he brilliantly tapped into a deep vein of millions of American men and women who believe they have been forgotten by the government they pay for. These good people (the deplorables) have been alienated by the elites who dominate American government and culture and civic life.”
“Take a new look at impediments to the American Dream,” Noonan continues, “Figure out why people don’t feel so upwardly mobile anymore.”
The president has addressed this in spades with the historic tax cut, reduction of job-killing regulations and a number of executive decisions.
Finally, she refers to the anti-Trumpers who want to take back authority within the party; those “who have made the current mess.” They need to get on board the Trump agenda train.
It wasn’t until the final paragraphs of her treatise that she gets to the point. With the midterms elections in mind, I’m sure, she asks Republicans to “Define and defend essential principles. Say what they stand for and stand there proudly. See and speak clearly.”
THE HILL, a popular newspaper in Washington covering political matters, caused me to chuckle to myself. “Few people have heard of Michael Horowitz, but that’s about to change,” read the lead paragraph in a piece by Morgan Chalfant about the pending release of his report as the inspector general of the Justice Department.
I saw humor in that lead because I believe readers of this blog are certainly aware of Horowitz, about whom I have written extensively.
On Friday, we learned that his report will officially conclude that the fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly lacked candor and leaked unauthorized materials to the Wall Street Journal.
There’s more to come from Horowitz.
“MEMORIES” – While many have enjoyed the song styling of Barbara Streisand, many disagree with her political views, and for good reason.
Streisand tweeted that “Trump accused Comey of leaking. What he did is keep contemporaneous notes after meeting Trump so that he could document what was said. That is not leaking.”
Of course, he leaked, and admitted doing so when questioned by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Many fellow tweeters responded. This was one of the kinder responses from Lynne Walker at @ward_lynette: “Ummm no Barbie, he took notes and leaked them to his college professor friend.”
You will recall that the professor leaked the information to the New York Times with Comey’s aim of getting a special counsel appointed.
“CHICK-FIL-A’S CREEPY INFILTRATION of New York City,” is the headline of a New Yorker magazine piece by Dan Piepenring that is being panned by a number of conservative publications; and justly so.
“The air smelled fried, Piepenring wrote, ominously. “The New Yorker has taken to Chick-fil-A and yet the brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because if its pervasive Christian traditionalism.”
“The horror,” commented conservative Ben Shapiro, “The New Yorker has honed in on a serious threat to the lives of all New Yorkers: the arrival of a Chick-fil-A in their homey little corner of the universe.”
In his 1,400-word piece (that’s long), Piepenring refers to “The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God,’ and that proselytism purpose thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch.”
“This Piepenring piece is not only an example of laughable cosmopolitan hackishness, it is rank anti-Christian bigotry,” wrote Rod Dreher in The American Conservative.”
MORE GAY RIGHTS OVERREACH – There’s legislation pending in Illinois that would require a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender section be added to public school classes and to ensure textbooks “accurately portray the diversity of our society, according to Bill Lukitsch of the Chicago Tribune.
When is this PC crap going to stop?
