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We're introducing a new column today that looks at national issues from the conservative viewpoint.

It's a step to achieve more balance in the syndicated columnists we use on the Editorial page.

The Press-Republican has always welcomed opinions from all across the political spectrum. We firmly believe that an important part of a newspaper's job is to encourage input from the breadth of views represented by the residents of the North Country.

We don't turn Letters to the Editor away because they are too conservative or too liberal. We reject letters only if they could be libelous or if they contain hate language.

Hate language, of course, is a matter of judgment. Over the years, some readers have urged us to ban a few letter writers. But we try to give writers as much leeway as possible to express their thoughts.

When it comes to national columnists, we felt for years that we had a decent mix.

Byron York,chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner, runs on Saturdays, writing from a conservative viewpoint.

Gene Lyons,Arkansas Times columnist and co-author of "The Hunting of the President," appears Sundays, writing on the opposite end of the political spectrum.

We use Kathleen Parker, who writes for the Washington Post, as our moderate. Although she was, at one point, paired as the conservative across from Eliot Spitzer in a CNN point-counterpoint show, her views have been embraced sometimes by the right, sometimes by the left.

We frequently use Georgie Anne Geyer, a foreign correspondent with 40 years of experience, to put international issues in perspective.

Dr. Alan Chartock, editor and publisher of the Legislative Gazette and CEO of public radio station WAMC in Albany, appears on Mondays, giving the state perspective.

But Chartock's views usually lean left, as do Cokie and Stephen Roberts, another column we have available from the syndicate service we use.

Newspapers can run only the columns they pay for, you see.Editor Lois Clermont has asked the service several times in the past six months to add another conservative to its "full service" package.

To even things up, we are introducing ultra-conservative Ann Coulter, who will move into the Saturday spot, allowing us to use York closer to when his columns are released.

Coulter is well known as a voice for the right. She is legal correspondent for Human Events andauthor of 11 New York Times best-sellers, including "Adios, America, Never Trust a Liberal Over Three" and "Demonic: How the Liberal is Endangering America."

She has been a guest on many TV shows, including "The Today Show," "Good Morning America" and "The O'Reilly Factor."

Her viewpoints are sure to stir up conversation, challenge ideas and expand perspectives.

And that is what a good editorial page is all about.

Read this article:
Editorial: Ann Coulter joins columnist lineup - Plattsburgh Press Republican

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But none of us can, because were too busy working so we can afford to pay for the health care of 22 million poor, entitled or irresponsible people under Obamacare.

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Just yesterday, for example, in addition to working, I had to spend an hour on top of days and days last month figuring out which few remaining clinics provide mammograms under my brand-new, now third Obamacare insurance plan.

My original plan was made illegal by Obamacare, and the next two plans fully approved under Obamacare went bankrupt and were shut down by state and federal regulators.

Now I just have to pray I dont get cancer or break a bone before Obamacare is repealed because, even at $700 a month with a gigantic deductible, there is NO PLAN on the individual market accepted by the two premier hospitals in my area for cancer or broken bones.

Those $700 premiums go to pay for the pregnancies and dental care of welfare recipients and immigrants, not cancer treatment for Ann.

Democrats love to get on their high horses about the wonderful things Obamacare has done for the uninsured. They should be asked why they refuse to live under it.

After they spend 800 hours changing insurance plans every year, ending up with increasingly expensive and increasingly useless plans all so that their premiums can pay for the poor Ill be fascinated to hear about their love for the downtrodden.

Same with Republicans who are, once again, being bamboozled by lobbyists, to the detriment of their taxpaying constituents who dont have time or money to fly to Washington and tell them our hard-luck stories.

Insurance lobbyists have somehow convinced politicians, who have very little experience in the private sector, that health insurance is wildly different from every other product even car insurance and homeowners insurance because of its need for a large pool of enrollees.

Everyone talks about the enrollment problem as if this is a bug unique to the health insurance industry. What product, do they imagine, does not need lots of customers?

How could restaurants afford those chefs, fresh flowers, industrial kitchens, one hundred sets of plates, napkins and silverware and a staff of waiters without customers? AHHHH! THEYLL GO OUT OF BUSINESS!!! THE MODEL DOESNT WORK WITHOUT LOTS OF PARTICIPANTS! CONGRESS MUST GET INVOLVED.

Publishers couldnt have editors, proofreaders, lawyers, paper plants and marketing departments unless theres a large pool of book buyers. Pipe manufacturers couldnt have hundreds of employees, huge machines and factories unless you get the idea.

Why is having customers treated like some freakish need of this one industry?

People are a lot less interested in buying hotel rooms, restaurant meals and pipes than they are in buying health insurance. Everyone knows someone who has died of cancer or had some other major medical problem, and most people are not insane.

Even with the hell of Obamacare, requiring hundreds of hours of work to research, sign up for, be thrown off of, then sign up for a different, ever-more-expensive plan, year after year the long-suffering taxpayer is doing all that in order to maintain some form of health insurance.

So apparently, no matter how awful you make it, this is a product Americans are desperate to buy!

Republicans all say they want to save the so-called good parts of Obamacare. Because who knows better what the American consumer wants than a member of Congress!

I keep imagining Congress designing a comprehensive hotel reform bill, promising to save the popular parts: BUT PEOPLE LIKE HAVING TVS IN THEIR HOTEL ROOMS! How could we ever get TVs in hotel rooms without Congress writing a law?

It turns out, people running a business have an uncanny ability to figure out whats popular with their customers.

Any popular features of Obamacare obviously, manifestly, inevitably will be preserved by the free market. If parents like keeping their useless millennial kids on their plans, guess what? Any insurance company forced to compete with other insurance companies WILL OFFER THAT.

As for covering people with pre-existing conditions there are pre-existing conditions and pre-existing conditions. Does this mean the unfortunate few with some exorbitantly expensive medical problem? Or does it mean people who have a pre-existing condition because they waited to be diagnosed with cancer before buying insurance?

The first category of people was dealt a bad hand. Eventually, they will be taken care of by the market when excess coverage policies are common and reinsurance companies pop up to cover the primary insurance companies.

Until then, a separate program can pay for the unlucky. Thats not a reason to wreck the health insurance market for everyone else. There arent 22 million people with horrifyingly expensive medical conditions. Theyre being used as the baby seals to sell subsidized health care for the irresponsible.

The second category is a lot less sympathetic, which is precisely why the two cases are always conflated. You cant buy flood insurance after your house has already floated away.

But we wont let people die in the streets, so as Trump said at the very first GOP debate they will be dealt with through a different system. They probably cant go to Sloan Kettering, but then again, neither can I. Right now, my $700 a month pays forthemto go to Sloan Kettering.

Both cases are of zero practical importance to the vast majority of people who just want to buy health insurance on the free market, rather than what were doing now, which is giving shiftless layabouts and irresponsible screw-offs an unlimited health care credit card paid for through our insurance premiums.

Wed come to Washington and tell you that, but were working to pay for the pediatric dental care of illegal aliens.

The rest is here:
Ann Coulter: Can I Be the Poster Child Against Obamacare? - Breitbart News

Pink hats were the signature clothing at the Womens March on Washington, but rightwing pundit Ann Coulter saw something more sinister behind them: brownshirts.

Coulter was referring to the Nazi paramilitary group, also known as the SA. Serving the party, the stormtroopers carried out vicious attacks on political rivals, Jews and other minorities before and after Adolf Hitlers rise to power.

Coulter, a vehement supporter of President Donald Trump, has gotten into trouble before when talking about Nazis. Back in November, she faced a barrage of criticism after a tweet that seemed to defend the American Nazi Party on charges of violence. And in January, she was accused of dog-whistling at white supremacists, when she tweeted 14. She said that it indicated to the number of days until President Trump was inaugurated. Others alleged it was a reference to a white power slogan.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

View original post here:
Ann Coulter Compares Women's Marchers to Nazi 'Brown Blouses ... - Forward

To celebrate Donald Trumps inauguration this week, Im returning to my new favorite parlor game: quoting Republican consultants on the 2016 campaign.

It never gets old! Also, this exercise reminds us of the many things we are thankful for this week: Donald Trump, the cluelessness of his opponents and Nexis transcripts.

Our featured GOP consultant this week is Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign and modern-day Mr. Magoo.

Nominally a conservative in a liberal business, Dowd couldnt pull off a full Arianna, so if he wanted to sit in a warm studio on Sunday mornings issuing pronouncements as if from Mount Olympus, he had to come up with an act.

Even a guy like Dowd wrong on everything else, from the time of day to whether its raining accurately sussed out what the media wanted: a non-conservative playing the conservative. How else to explain the fact that the entire American media refused to have on anyone who supported the man who just won a landslide presidential election?

The territory Dowd carved out for himself was: patriotic sage, above partisanship, announcing on every subject that both sides were wrong, he alone was right. This made him a regular panelist on ABCs This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Dowds both sides are wrong offering to the one-party church was condescending and tiresome, but it would help if he were, from time to time, correct.

Instead, from the moment Trump announced, Dowd treated us to hilariously boneheaded prognostications that were instantly proved wrong and never acknowledged as he issued each successive boneheaded prediction.

n On Feb. 7, 2016, Dowd pronounced that the nominations would be wrapped up in April for the Democrats and May for the Republicans.

Trump won the nomination by May 4 and Hillary won it in June two months after Dowds confident prediction.

N On April 3, Dowd said Trump cant win a general election for all intents and purposes. (For all intents and purposes is what consultants add to nothing-burger statements to make them sound weighty.)

Trump won the election and he won it with far more electoral votes than Dowds candidate ever got.

n On May 1, Dowd said, Its going to be a men-versus-women election, unfortunately.

Trump won both white men and white women, decisively. White women without a college degree carried the Midwest for Trump.

Dowd spent several Sundays in May assuring viewers that a third-party candidate would be on stage at the debates: I think there is likely to be somebody else standing in the debates and that changes the dynamics.

That never happened.

After Trump wrapped up the nomination, Dowd claimed he had predicted it! Well, I was very bullish on Donald Trump in the primaries, he said on May 8. His use of the term bullish was, well, half-right.

As for Trump winning the general election, Dowd declared it unlikely. (Based on his fantastical recollections of his own predictions, I assume he is currently claiming to have predicted Trumps win in the general election.)

In the week leading up to the election, Dowd was a whirling dervish of soothsaying on Twitter:

n NOVEMBER 1

@matthewjdowd Any expenditure of time or money by Trump in PA, VA, MI and NH is a total waste. Campaign mismanagement if they keep it up.

Of the four states Dowd considered a total waste for Trump to campaign in, he won the two biggest, worth more than twice as many electoral votes as the other two combined and one of those he lost by only 0.3 percent.

n NOVEMBER 2

@matthewjdowd clinton has a better chance of carrying Arizona than trump does of carrying Mi or Wi

Trump carried both Michigan and Wisconsin. Hillary did not win Arizona.

n NOVEMBER 4

@matthewjdowd Look for sure signs Trump will lose: 1. The only poll that matters is election day 2. Our vote doesnt show up in polls. 3. Truman

Although Trump never made any excuses he won! all three of those statements turned out to be true. (See Newsweeks Madam President issue.)

n NOVEMBER 5 was Dowds Latino Appreciation Day:

@matthewjdowd even if Trump gets the exact % of votes of whites, blacks & Asians as Bush in 2004, Trump would lose by 3 million votes due to Latinos.

n @matthewjdowd Trump will lose latino voters by a larger margin than romney. Who set a new modern low.

N @matthewjdowd It looks like Trump campaign was right, the silent hidden vote is showing up: Latinos are voting at record levels. Motivated by Trump.

Trump won more of the Hispanic vote than either McCain or Romney and probably more than Bush, for whom we only have nonsense numbers (as both Republican and Democratic analysts agree.

n NOVEMBER 6

n @matthewjdowd If trump loses Ohio and Florida one reason is that Clinton campaign head faked them into thinking he had chance in Michigan. & media helped

Trump won Michigan. Also Ohio and Florida.

n On Nov. 6 48 hours before the election Dowd announced on ABCs This Week that Trump would lose, and lose badly. Bored with his own omniscience, Dowd explained, George, to me, this election has been incredibly predictable actually from the primary.

Mr. Magoo had more wisdom to impart: On election night, Hillary Clintons margins among nonwhite voters and among college-educated voters are going to be the highest margins weve ever seen.

Dowds sweeping declarations turned out to be less accurate than a blindfolded monkey throwing darts in a bar.

On Twitter, Dowd assured his readers:

n NOVEMBER 7

@matthewjdowd Clinton wins by five points. Over 300 electoral votes. Trump loses by more popular votes than Romney.

Final electoral vote: Trump, 304; Clinton, 227.

TV bookers couldnt get enough of Dowd. What smugness! What monumental cluelessness!

ABCs This Week is a show famous for confronting guests with their own prior statements. Would ABC play this game with its own Powerhouse Roundtable prognosticators? Surely a man of Dowds integrity would come on the air and admit, I couldnt have been more wrong!

HELLO! That didnt happen at all!

Dowd was allowed to sit out the Sunday after the election. The following Sunday, he was in his usual seat on the Powerhouse Roundtable, right back to giving his sweeping, grinning predictions, with no acknowledgment that he had been spectacularly and characteristically wrong in every prediction hed made, all year long.

Thats why Dowd is our modern-day Mr. Magoo.

As Trump is being sworn in and visions of the wall are dancing in your head, remember that if he ever runs out of bricks, he can always use Republican consultants.

Read the rest here:
ANN COULTER: Under en-Dowd - St. Augustine Record

Pink hats were the signature clothing at the Womens March on Washington, but rightwing pundit Ann Coulter saw something more sinister behind them: brownshirts.

Coulter was referring to the Nazi paramilitary group, also known as the SA. Serving the party, the stormtroopers carried out vicious attacks on political rivals, Jews and other minorities before and after Adolf Hitlers rise to power.

Coulter, a vehement supporter of President Donald Trump, has gotten into trouble before when talking about Nazis. Back in November, she faced a barrage of criticism after a tweet that seemed to defend the American Nazi Party on charges of violence. And in January, she was accused of dog-whistling at white supremacists, when she tweeted 14. She said that it indicated to the number of days until President Trump was inaugurated. Others alleged it was a reference to a white power slogan.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Here is the original post:
Ann Coulter: Women's Marchers Are Like Nazis - Forward