Rich McFadden of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review approved of Hillary Clinton’s low ratings in new Ohio polls. They reviewed the hacking at the Office of Personnel Management scandal, and they laughed about CNN and Fox News’ decision to have a secondary debate for candidates not eligible for the prime time debate.
Deep-seated rebellion against God is at the heart of the transgender movement and activists and sympathizers are demanding public approval to compensate for the conviction they feel over their own sin, according to the pastor of a prominent Washington-area bible church who has written extensively on the subject.
The transgender issue exploded again in the news this week as Olympic champion turned reality television star Bruce Jenner announced he was a woman named Caitlyn and Vanity Fair magazine released of Jenner in women’s clothes. The story instantly dominated traditional and social media.
Virtually every outlet diligently began referring to Jenner as “Caitlyn” and using female pronouns in reference to him. Many who ridiculed the story or merely refused to refer to Jenner as a woman were labeled as bigoted or hateful.
Immanuel Bible Church Lead Teaching Pastor Jesse Johnson wrote about the appropriate response of the church to the transgender movement this week. The week before, he wrote about it in the context of accommodating transgender students and teachers in Fairfax County, Virginia, where his church is located.
Johnson says the relentless push from activists for the general public to accept and even applaud transgenders should come as no surprise.
“When somebody rebels against God in this way, that’s never sufficient enough for them. Their goal in rebellion is to silence their conscience and to silence the conviction of sin that they feel. Simply changing their body or changing their sexual identity is never going to actually going to achieve that. It’s not going to fix the conscience at all. So the second part of that rebellion is to demand that others approve,” said Johnson.
He says that is the same motivation for the demands of transgenders to have access to bathrooms of the gender with which they identify.
“It goes back to this idea that I don’t want to be confronted with the sin I’ve done to my body. I don’t want to be confronted with it. Where’s the place you’re confronted with it every single time. Every single day, you’re confronted with that sin when you have to choose which restroom you’re going to use in public,” said Johnson.
“It seems so strange that some political movement with nationwide support would target elementary school bathrooms,” said Johnson. “It seems so surreal, but what’s behind that is this idea that that is the place where these people are confronted with their sin. They’re confronted with the fact that God made them in a way that they reject, so their goal is to attack that place in our culture,” said Johnson.
Johnson believes the rapid onset of the transgender movement could be heading for a major backlash, especially if accommodations and forced in areas of the country far less liberal than Fairfax County, Virginia. He says if there is a backlash, it could get the public to rethink the push to redefine marriage.
“It is connected to gay rights and same-sex marriages. If you say that gender doesn’t matter for a marriage, why would you say it matters for a bathroom? Marriages are obviously more significant than what bathroom you use. It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. If the thing is absurd at the level of the bathroom, obviously it’s absurd at the level of marriage,” said Johnson.
While the biblical condemnations of homosexual conduct in passages ranging from Leviticus in the Old Testament to many of the letters from Paul in the New Testament are fairly well-known after years of debate, what about being transgender? Johnson says the Bible is clear.
“It is a sin because it’s a form of rebellion against God. The scripture teaches that people were made in the image of God and that they were made male and female. We live in a country that has freedom of course, and people can do, in many respects, what they want to with their own body as long as you’re not harming other people, but we still have a category for something that is sinful because it’s done out of rebellion against God,” said Johnson.
Not only that, Johnson says this rebellion takes on additional dimensions.
“Most Americans who want to rebel against God just say, ‘I don’t need God to forgive me of my sins because I’m a good person.’ They go on and they try to work hard to be good people, totally ignoring God,” he said.
“There’s a second degree of rebellion against God, where somebody says I’m not going to be content just being my own person. I want to actually rebel against the way God made me. It’s this idea of, ‘Who does God think He is that He would choose that I get to be male or He would choose that I get to be female. What right does he have?’ I think it is a deeper form of rebellion against God than simply rejecting Him,” said Johnson.
Johnson also contends that the transgender movement inherently contradicts the rest of the gay and lesbian argument and much of the feminist cause.
“The core of feminism is you can’t reduce femininity to a certain set of physical features. That’s exactly what the transgender movement tries to do. Men who are changing their bodies to be women are presenting this idea that femininity is just simply the lack of maleness, remove the male parts and you have a woman, add some other physical parts and you have a woman. . Of course, that’s not what true womanhood is,” said Johnson, who says there is also a major breakdown in rationale between this movement and homosexuals.
“It’s definitely hostile to this idea in the gay rights movement that you’re attracted to somebody based on their physical appearance, where the transgender movement says physical appearance is not necessarily connected to gender or to sex. So that becomes a huge problem,” he said.
But Johnson says it’s really the tip of the intellectual iceberg.
“Logically, things that are presented by the two movements don’t correspond at all. They conflict all over the place,” he said.
How should committed Christians approach this emerging issue in the culture? Johnson says a line must be drawn in the sand, namely believers not giving approval to the movement.
“The Bible makes it clear that’s the one thing Christians can’t do. Romans 1 talks about how people who fall into this kind of sin immediately go pursuing and demanding that other people approve of it as well. The book of Jude talks about people who display their shame like the foam of the ocean, throwing it up. Jesus talked about people who feared man and wanted the approval of men more than the approval of God,” said Johnson.
“The very thing they’re after is for people who know God to approve of what they’re doing and that’s the one thing that Christians can’t do. They can’t be seen as approving of that which God calls evil,” he said.
Johnson says believers should extend the love of Christ, who has the power to forgive all sin.
“This is sin, but it’s not the unforgivable sin. Believers understand that all sin can be forgiven through the person of Jesus Christ, faith in Jesus and submission to His word and His rule,” said Johnson.
“Love your neighbor. Love those who are around you. This is key for Christians to remember, part of love does not mean accepting someone as they portray themselves. Part of love is wanting what is best for that other person and God, of course, knows what’s best,” he said.
Just as a football team can never be sure when a blitz is coming, our lives can often be blindsided by unexpected death, illness, infidelity or job loss, but preparing for crisis and responding well in the moment can lead to life being more full and rich than ever before.
That’s the thesis behind “Facing the Blitz: Three Strategies for Turning Trials into Triumphs” by former NFL quarterback Jeff Kemp, son of the late football star and political figure Jack Kemp. The younger Kemp is now a vice president at FamilyLife, a Christian ministry based in Arkansas.
As most football fans know, a blitz occurs when a defense sends more players than usual after the quarterback. But while that puts an offense in immediate peril, Kemp says it doesn’t have to end that way.
“It’s not just danger. It’s also opportunity. If the offense comes together and does the right things and adapts and changes, the ball may end up in the end zone. The biggest play of the game may come on a blitz,” said Kemp, who says the same principle applies in life.
“The lesson of life is that all of us are going to get blitzed. We have tough stuff happen. Life is great but it’s not easy. I think more than ever people are getting hit with things, whether it be economic loss, job loss, a breakup in our family , deep wounds, cancer, losing a loved one,” he said.
Everyone faces the blitz at various times in life, says Kemp, and responding to these trials in the right way can actually make life better than ever.
“Those are actually opportunities if we see the blitz problems through a different lens. We can respond better and make the best of it. Sometimes they turn into a blessing, not just for us but for others. If we go through tough stuff and can help other people, we’re making a difference in other people’s lives,” said Kemp.
In “Facing the Blitz,” Kemp focuses on three key principles to emerge strong from the crises of life: taking a long-term view of life, being willing to change and reaching out to others.
Kemp says being able to see the big picture in our toughest challenges is vital because getting consumed with the problems of today is never helpful.
“You don’t see the possibilities of future. You’re not looking at character, you’re just looking at circumstances. You might give up on a marriage before you should or give up on a kid before you should. You may blow some steam off and say something at work that did some damage you can’t rebuild. Many people have looked at the pain they’re in at the moment and thought this won’t change, but it can,” said Kemp.
But what does a healthy long-term view look like?
“A long-term view means, ‘What do I want to be remembered for? What impact will this have on my kids? What impact will this have on others? Maybe I’m supposed to learn something from this rather than just jump our of the situation?” said Kemp, who says those concerns ought to trump temporary feelings or desires.
“If we focus everything on the here and now and our circumstances and trying to be happy, we never will be full of joy. We’ll never develop the character that God wants us to have. We’ll never have the impact on this world we were meant to have. We are souls and not just bodies,” said Kemp.
Kemp says the healthiest long-term view not only considers our earthly relationships but also keeps eternity in the front of our minds.
“Heaven is a real place. If we’ve got a little, tiny view of heaven, then we’ll get carried away with trying to get all of our happiness on earth. If we have a big view of heaven, a big view of God, an amazing view of Him and we look at the true long-term, that’s going to change things,” said Kemp.
“We’re more willing to suffer and go through trials, like Jesus was. [They] change us to be more like Him, which is more loving, more forgiving, more generous, more kind, more others-centered. That makes our relationships go well and relationships are what make our lives go well or not well. That’s why heaven, eternity, a long-term view makes all the difference,” he said.
When trying to decide how to respond in a crisis, the instinctive reaction of many in our culture is to assign blame rather doing some introspection. Kemp encourages people to think about whether that strategy has mad your life any better to this point.
“How well has selfishness worked out for me. How well has it worked out for me that I’ve stayed kind of prideful and that I’m prickly when anyone criticizes me? How well is it working out for me that anytime my wife says something to me I don’t like, that I argue with her and get defensive instead of listening and trying to understand what she really is experiencing?” asked Kemp.
“I think most people realize that doesn’t turn out well. To change is to transform, to become better. It’s to grow more toward the version of who you will be for eternity in heaven,” he said.
Taking the long view of life and evaluating where we can change are helpful when facing the blitz, but Kemp says adopting those mindsets before crisis strikes will make the tough days easier to manage.
“If you work more on becoming a relationship investor and less of a consumer, if you work on asking questions and seeking to understand others rather than always wanting them to understand you, if you work on teamwork and not just a solo approach to life right now, when the blitz comes you’re going to be so much more ready to handle the blitz,” said Kemp.
He says being spiritually prepared is another critical factor.
“It does make sense to pursue your relationship with God now and know what the Bible says. Know that Jesus is your identity, not your job. Your happiness isn’t your circumstances, it’s your relationships. If you develop that now, it makes so much sense to be ready for the blitz but don’t be shocked when the blitz comes and you’re not exactly ready, because it always surprises us,” said Kemp.
Once in the midst of a personal or family blitz, Kemp says we have two options: remove ourselves from the rest of the world and focus on our issues or reach out to connect with others and even focus on their problems.
“You come out of your blitz better when you focus on serving others. One of the most powerful set of stories in the book is about a gal that lost her son from PTSD after serving in Iraq. She was in depression for two years but she came back to life when she went on a missions trip to New Orleans to chaperone young people who were serving Katrina victims. She started to come alive and got a vision for helping others,” said Kemp.
Kemp also shared an example of this from his own life during a difficult moment in his NFL career.
“There was a year where I got cut from the Philadelphia Eagles. Training camp was going terribly. I wasn’t getting a chance, but I focused on encouraging another guy on my team. It was a piece of advice from my wife,” he said. “I took him to lunch and patted him on the back and talked with him, spent time with him and prayed for him,” he said.
“When you focus on others, you’re not stuck as a victim, and that’s kind of the key point here,” said Kemp.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer the U.S. bombing of an ISIS command and control center after an ISIS “moron” posted a selfie in front of it. They also groan as the worst hacking yet exposes data of millions of federal workers and others. And they get a kick out of the New York Times being horrified by Marco Rubio getting four traffic tickets in 18 years.
A freshman congressman is staunchly opposing legislation to grant President Obama Trade Promotion Authority because he fears Obama will end up weakening national security through a bad deal.
Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., says the last thing the Republican Congress should do is give Obama more power during is final 19 months in office.
“Do we really want, with the last months of this president, and him wanting to establish a legacy, to run in haste into some Asian construct that could put us in a very dangerous future situation?” asked Russell. “I’m just not willing to grant him that authority.
Russell gained notoriety for leading the U.S. Army unit that captured Saddam Hussein near Tikrit in 2003. He says Obama’s performance in Iraq and many other places over the past six-and-a-half years convinces him that the last thing Obama needs is more power.
“For example: Syria, the red line, picking the wrong side to arm that turns into ISIS and then calling ISIS a jayvee team only to realize it’s a serious situation we still don’t have a strategy for,” said Russell. “Iraq, that it would work on its own if we pulled out. Then we also see the problems of the Arab Spring that’s turned into nuclear winter, the issues with Crimea and Ukraine. I can go on and on.”
The debate is triggering some strange political bedfellows, with union-backing liberals teaming with Obama-distrusting conservatives and protectionists from both parties in fighting against Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, and the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.
Russell says is coming at this issue from a unique perspective in trying to protect national security.
“Maybe they’ve got concerns about secrecy or sovereignty or whatever and all of those issues are important. On the progressive side, they’re worried about labor and wages and manufacturing trade unions. I don’t come at this issue from any of that,” said Russell.
“All of that, although it is important, is not going to result in destructive forces being unleashed between our nation and Pacific nations (which it will) if we fail on the national security side,” he said.
The man Russell replaced in the House sees things very differently.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., recently told us why he supports TPA and believes concerns about Obama’s handling of that power are largely unwarranted.
“In all likelihood, this trade agreement wouldn’t be complete until the next president. So we’re lining up at the end of this presidency authority that will extend the majority of it into the next presidency,” said Lankford.
While respecting Lankford, Russell strongly disagrees about the timing of any trade deal negotiations.
“It is the president that was granted that authority that sets the parameters. For example, when we signed the U.S.-Korea agreement, KORUS, last year, all of that groundwork was laid by President Bush before he left office. So it does matter who the president is,” said Russell.
Another frustration for Russell is how supporters of TPA and TPP urge passage because it would “hedge” or “contain” China.
“This is dangerous rhetoric. It’s puts us very much at odds with our largest trading partner. Two, it has consequences when we do not have diplomatic and military efforts in tandem with economic efforts in a brand new region. China’s not our enemy and making rhetoric like this and using it for some trade venture could be very dangerous,” said Russell.
TPA and TPP supporters also cite China’s human rights record as a major reason to exclude it from the proposed deal with Asian countries. Russell says that is a valid concern but wonders why those same people have no problem including Vietnam and Brunei in the TPP.
The U.S. economy is still struggling to find traction. Revised numbers from the first quarter of 2015 show the Gross Domestic Product shrinking 0.7 percent. TPA backers say getting American goods into foreign markets is critical for economic growth and job creation. Russell says there’s plenty we can do to kickstart America’s economic engines.
“China needs oil and gas. We have plenty of it. Let’s get the export legislation over there. China needs asphalt for her roads. We have the raw materials. They need timber. They need beef. We have timber and cattle in abundance in this country,” said Russell.
“There are a number of things we could do. With four quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, we could be sending that to Europe and also Asia. Start trading natural gas for Chinese debt, how about that one? There’s a number of things that we could immediately do and that the president is capable of authorizing in his tenure,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss Rick Perry’s entry into the 2016 presidential race and his strong economic record as governor of Texas. They scoffed at Lincoln Chafee for his idea of relieving tensions in the Middle East by sitting down and talking to ISIS. Finally, they laughed at Chafee’s proposal to switch the nation to the Metric system in hopes of improving the economy.
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to impose tougher emission standard on commercial airplanes in the United States, a move that experts say will lead to carbon taxes on airline passengers in the near future but one that could ultimately trigger the de-industrializing of America.
The order will not impact smaller planes or military aircraft.
The New York Times reports the directive is part of the Obama administration’s larger climate change agenda, but this step may have been unavoidable.
“The agency didn’t really have a choice here. This was going to be a non-discretionary decision,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Will Yeatman.
According to Yeatman, the die was cast on this policy and much more when the Obama administration made a fateful choice to pursue it’s climate change agenda through the Clean Air Act, a strategy rejected years earlier by the George W. Bush administration.
“The Clean Air Act is an interlocking mechanism, such that regulation begets further regulation. The upshot is when this administration made the choice to use the Clean Air Act as its vehicle to mitigate climate change, it, in essence, locked itself in on this course,” said Yeatman, who says lawmakers on all sides of the climate change debate believe the Clean Air Act was a terrible tool to implement an environmental agenda.
“There is agreement among them that the Clean Air Act is simply an inappropriate vehicle for this particular policy. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, when people were scared of global cooling. The act is meant to deal with pollutants like ozone and sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. It is meant in no way to deal with a pollutant as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide,” said Yeatman.
However, Yeatman says there are far more serious concerns about this policy than how tougher emissions standards might impact airlines and their passengers. He says the future of the American economy is at stake.
“It doesn’t stop here. The dominoes will keep on falling and the logical end, which is pretty scary, is something known as a greenhouse gas National Ambient Air Quality Standard. That would effectively necessitate the de-industrialization of the United States of America’s economy. That the sort of frightening end game. It’s where we’re headed due to this administration’s foolish choice to get this ball rolling,” said Yeatman.
Yeatman elaborated on the dominoes we’ve seen and those allegedly still to come.
“The program for cars that they started in 2010 triggered the program for stationary sources. They promulgated that in 2011 for power plants. They’ve actually got a pending rule for existing power plants and that triggered the one for airplanes. That will trigger the one further down the road for marine vessels. Ultimately, the Big Kahuna, the end game, the last trigger is this regulatory program known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS,” said Yeatman, who fears increasing emissions restrictions threaten the feasibility of American industry.
And what does the proposed regulation on airplane emissions mean for the industry and for passengers? For airlines, not much changes anytime soon.
“No one has a larger incentive to decrease greenhouse gas emissions because they are a function of fuel efficiency. No one cares more about fuel efficiency than the airline manufacturers (primarily Boeing and Airbus),” said Yeatman. “There’s nothing that direct regulation will be able to do. They can’t command some sort of miracle technology that will do beyond that which these manufacturers already strive to do.”
It’s a different story for passengers, who could be forking over higher airfares in the form of a per picket carbon tax if this rule is implemented.
“Who knows ultimately what it would be, one to five dollars or perhaps even greater. I’ve not heard any definite numbers bandied about, but that’s what we’re looking at, another surcharge on your airline ticket to join the 30 other surcharges. This one comes courtesy of the EPA and environmental special interests,” said Yeatman.
One of the few surprising political elements of this story is that the EPA is moving forward on the rule change despite opposition from the Obama administration.
“The administration didn’t want to do this. There are international negotiations ongoing about addressing aviation emissions and so the administration didn’t want its hands forced by the green groups, but that’s the way the law works,” said Yeatman.
“This administration bit off more than it can chew and now the chickens are coming home to roost if you will,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review appreciate the new CNN/ORC poll showing that Americans now view former President George W. Bush more favorably than President Barack Obama. They scold both Senator Rand Paul and Representative Pete King for their childish, over-the-top criticisms of each other during the NSA debate. They also slam liberals for jumping to conclusions after Boston police shot and killed a Muslim man that was plotting to kill and behead police.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says President Obama is likely to sign any nuclear deal he can get with Iran because it’s the centerpiece of his second term agenda.
In a wide-ranging interview, Bolton also defended his strong support for the NSA’s bulk data collection program that expired Sunday night and explained why he decided against a presidential run in 2016.
The Iranian nuclear threat emerged again on Monday when the New York Times reported that Iran’s enrichment program is ramping up, contrary to Obama administration assurances.
“With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period,” said the Times in it’s lead paragraph.
Bolton says this disconnect between administration statements and the true state of Iranian activities raises even more red flags about a formal agreement.
“It underlines just how feckless the president’s policy is with respect to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, how dangerous and how flawed this deal that they’ve been negotiating is turning out to be,” said Bolton.
While Bolton thinks the recent injury to Secretary of John Kerry could postpone a final deal with Iran, he firmly believes Obama will take whatever agreement he can get from the mullahs in Tehran.
“The president’s press people have already said this is his second term signature issue, the equivalent of Obamacare in the first term. He’s going to sign a deal with Iran, I’m afraid, with Iran no matter how bad it is,” said Bolton.
Even if talks were to break down somehow, Bolton believes simply engaging with Iran has done our enemy enormous good.
“The administration’s efforts are both legitimizing the regime, which is a tragic mistake, given that it’s still the world’s largest financial supporter of international terrorism. It also legitimizes the nuclear program, which really paves the road for Iran to become a nuclear weapons state at a time of it’s choosing. This is very dangerous,” said Bolton.
Bolton also believes it was dangerous for Congress to let certain aspects of the Patriot Act expire over the weekend and for lawmakers to reject giving the National Security Agency, or NSA, the power to collect bulk data as a means of tracing terrorist connections.
Led by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., lawmakers concerned about the program’s intrusion into Americans’ fourth amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure, succeeded in ending the program that a federal appeals court said was never authorized by Congress in the first place.
On Tuesday, the Senate passed the House version of the USA Freedom Act. Bolton isn’t impressed.
“I think that’s a very poor substitute for the Patriot Act program,” he said.
Under the previous policy, the NSA collected information on every phone call in the U.S., listing both the numbers involved in each call and the duration of the calls. Critics like Sen. Paul contend the government has no right to that information without probable cause.
Bolton disagrees.
“Unless you own a telephone company, if you want to make a phone call, you’ve got to go through a third party. The records we’re talking about are not your records. They’re the telephone company’s billing records,” said Bolton, who says other sources are far more likely to act irresponsibly with your information.
“These records are like bank records, department store records, amazon.com records, all of which are sold to other commercial ventures. I think Google and Facebook probably know more about you than the NSA ever will,” he said, adding that the collection of any data beyond the numbers called and the length of those calls requires a fourth amendment compliant warrant.
Calling the recent debate “a bizarre moment in American politics,” Bolton, without naming Paul or any other critic of the bulk data collection program, slammed them for what he considers a series of misleading points.
“I think this debate has been characterized by demagoguery and misinformation. It’s very hard to catch up with the truth when some of the opponents of the program are saying things that leave many Americans with the implication NSA is listening to their phone calls or reading their emails. Absolutely not true and yet it’s very hard to have a rational discussion when the distortions are so prevalent,” said Bolton.
Bolton also addressed his recent decision not to join the crowded Republican presidential field. After publicly mulling that option for weeks, as he also did in 2012, Bolton ultimately decided running for the highest office in the land without ever holding elected office was not the right move. Still he believes his motivation for considering a White House bid has succeeded.
“Too many people in the Republican and Democratic parties don’t understand how critical national security is, Barack Obama at the top of that list. I thought running for president would help restore that attention. Unfortunately, events in the external world have put it back in the center of the debate and I think it will be one of the very top issues in the 2016 presidential campaign,” said Bolton.
Bolton still expects to be active in the 2016 cycle through his PAC, Super PAC and a new foundation he is starting. He is not endorsing any GOP hopeful at this point but says the Republican nominee must be ready to debate Hillary Clinton and ready to lead in a dangerous world one their first day in office.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the movement to get Elizabeth Warren to run for president closing down. We groan about Iran’s increase in nuclear fuel despite the Obama administration’s promise that the program had been frozen. Finally, we mock the TSA’s 95 percent failure rate in detecting explosives.
