1-18-18 Excellent Guests for Your Show

1. Michael Stumo: Reagan Balanced Trade... Trump Can, Too

2. Stephen Thayer: The Trump Effect on Violent Crime

3. Daniel Greenfield: How Hollywood Killed #METOO

4. Bruce Thornton: The Movie that Made Moral Idiocy Chic

Reagan Balanced Trade... Trump Can, Too

By Michael Stumo

President Trump’s “America first” trade strategy will likely gain momentum as 2018 gets underway. The promised “renegotiation” of NAFTA is in full swing; and America’s solar panel, steel, and aluminum manufacturers are eagerly awaiting decisions in trade cases involving heavily subsidized imports from China. Many domestic manufacturers are reporting increased sales because President Trump’s trade rhetoric has caused multinationals to look harder for American sourcing. The administration is clearly serious. Already this year, promised efforts to revisit the 2012 U.S.-South Korea trade agreement have begun. This is important since America’s trade deficit with South Korea has more than doubled from $13 billion in 2011 to $27 billion in 2016. [more...]

The Trump Effect on Violent Crime

By Stephen Thayer - LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION NETWORK

According to FBI statistics, the nationwide, decades-long decline in violent crime, to include homicide, reversed itself and increased since 2014. Will President Trump’s vocal support of law enforcement help reverse the trend and be reflected in 2017 crime statistics? There is no doubt that Presidents Obama and Trump have differing views of law enforcement. Obama and the liberals took the political position of demonizing law enforcement and treating offenders as victims in order to motivate his African American base. The cost of that position was a high one, if linked to increases in violent crime and homicide or the increasing ambush and deadly attacks on police in 2016-2017. Trump, on the other hand, has taken every opportunity to praise the brave men and women of law enforcement. He did so as a candidate and continues to do so as President. He dismisses the notion of all law enforcement officers as racists and insists on personal accountability for those accused of breaking the law. [more...]

How Hollywood Killed #METOO

By Daniel Greenfield

When Time picks an abstract concept as its ‘Thing of the Year,’ it’s the kiss of death. So, #MeToo was headed for trouble as soon as it became Time’s ‘Thing of the Year.’ The best way to fight one hashtag was with another hashtag; #TimesUp replaced #MeToo. But where #MeToo was a raw personal accusation, #TimesUp was an impersonal leftist slogan of political urgency. In true Hollywood style, the solution is sending a lot of money to an established lefty group to tackle the problem: the National Women’s Law Center. It’s the same old Harvey Weinstein solution. Throw money at a trendy lefty cause and keep on inviting actresses up to your hotel room. Play the noble celebrity hero saving poor people in flyover country by writing big checks to big lefty insiders in major cities. [more...]

The Movie that Made Moral Idiocy Chic

By Bruce Thornton

Fifty years ago, the movie that changed the movies premiered. Anybody old enough to remember films before “Bonnie and Clyde” can testify to the jolting power of Arthur Penn’s kinetic blend of bluegrass slapstick, Depression-era nostalgia and gruesome, stylized violence. But something else was revealed then, something that I, just 14 at the time, was too callow and ignorant to notice behind the movie’s aesthetic sheen - the moral idiocy that has since come to define so much of contemporary American popular culture. “Bonnie and Clyde” staked a claim to a moral seriousness that supposedly validated the stylistic innovations and elevated the film beyond mere flashy entertainment. [more...]