Radio America Online News Bureau

Archives for August 2017

Hope In the Midst of Harvey’s Misery

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The devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey is hard to even fathom for residents along the Texas coast, but as the heroic rescues continue, the harrowing individual stories are emerging, including the dramatic saving of family members of a local reporter.

Jessica Morales worked for many years as an anchor and reporter for Fox television affiliates in Beaumont and Tyler, Texas.  A Beaumont native, Morales is now a video reporter for Hart Energy in Houston.

She says the 50-plus inches of rain in the Houston area rendered many local neighborhoods – many of whom had never flooded in recent memory – vulnerable to intense flooding.  And the intensity of the rainfall often left people very little time to get out of their homes.

“It could be minutes once the water starts coming in, depending on how close you are to a creek or a bayou, which is where the current was really picking up on a lot of people,” said Morales.

And while much of the media attention is understandably focused on Houston.  Nearby cities such as Port Arthur and Beaumont are also devastated.  On Wednesday, officials in Port Arthur reported that the entire city was flooded.

In Beaumont, Thursday, the high waters shut down the city’s water supply.

“They’re having to get the patients out of the hospitals because there is no water supply at all for the city of Beaumont,” said Morales.  “That’s happening as of right now, where they’re trying to evacuate people.  The rain has stopped, but the water supply is compromised and that could be for days.”

Mendoza and her husband live in southwest Houston and their home did not flood.  However, she became involved in a dramatic rescue of her aunt in Beaumont on Tuesday.

“[Tuesday night], my aunt started texting and putting on Facebook that water was coming into her house.  She wasn’t sure what point she should call for a boat rescue.  I knew at that point that she couldn’t get out of the house.  If water’s coming in the house, there’s no way she can get her vehicle out.  So I just got on social media and started finding rescue groups,” said Morales.

She says that was critical because the typical rescue methods were not an option.

“My cousin was calling 911 and they weren’t answering.  They weren’t able to do anything as far as getting to anything.  They don’t have the boats, so a lot of people were being rescued by Good Samaritans and people coming from Louisiana with their boats.  So I just started contacting groups like that on social media,” said Morales.

“Someone told me there was a boat near my aunt’s neighborhood when I posted her address.  They told me to tell her to go outside and just start yelling and waving for the boat.  That’s what she did.  Then a boat came by and got her and my cousin and their three cats and go them to safety,” said Morales.

A similar story played for Morales’s great aunt.

“She opened her front door when her neighbor came to check on her and the water started rushing in her front door.  So they called rescue for her,” said Morales.

Morales says the rising water at her aunt’s house highlights the stress an uncertainty of whether to evacuate.

“I said, ‘Is the water rushing in?  How quickly is it coming in?'”

“She said, ‘I wouldn’t say it’s rushing, but it’s rising quickly.’  I told her to open the door to see how the current was in the street, because I heard a lot people didn’t realize how heavy the current was when it picked up,” said Morales.

“By the time she got out, she walked out of her house and it was up to her hips in her yard,” said Morales.

Morales says the relentless spirit and resolve of the emergency personnel and private citizens is stunning.

“It is truly amazing and it is very empowering.  I think that the spirit of people wanting to keep helping and not quit is helping the survivors, just to give them a little more energy,” said Morales.

She says the selflessness of those saving lives is a powerful example.

“Restaurants were trying to bring them in and feed them a hot meal.  Some of those rescuers right now are saying, ‘No, we don’t want to stop to eat right now, we still have people to rescue,'” said Morales, who also witnessed an example of this spirit.

“Yesterday, we were able to get out a little bit and we drove past a group of men who were just standing in a parking lot on their phones next to their boat.  One man just had his socks on.  You could tell he was soaking wet.  They were looking on their phone, I’m sure to find out where they could go next for a rescue,” said Morales.

“These people are not stopping.  You know they haven’t slept.  Some of them are not stopping to eat.  It’s incredible that people will sacrifice themselves like that just to help someone else.  It’s amazing,” said Morales.

In addition to highest priorities of saving lives and getting survivors basic necessities, there is a significant economic impact on the region and the nation.  The Texas gulf coast is the center of America’s oil refining industry, and right now it’s largely at a standstill.

“They still have to get all the refineries’ power back up.  That’s going to take awhile.  They can’t do that in flood waters,” said Morales, noting that those refineries provide a huge amount of the fuel we get at the gas station.  She says gas prices will rise throughout much or all of the U.S. and in the immediate region, gas is already scarce.

Morales says tropical storms and hurricanes are nothing new to the region but the extent of this one dwarfs even the destruction from Hurricane Rita in 2005.

“This magnitude is much greater as far as flooding.  A lot of people can’t even get back into their homes.  I was talking with one of my friends who was able to get back in her home last night and they already started ripping up carpet because they’re afraid of mold setting in,” said Morales.

She says those who cannot return for days can do nothing to mitigate mold or other horrific effects of the waters.  Nonetheless, she says there are already other signs of people ready to clean up and rebuild.

“There are people already out there with chainsaws and things like that.  People know how important it is to get moving quickly, and I think they’re feeding off of each other too, knowing that they’re not doing it alone,” said Morales.

She says the spirit of community that is getting so much attention in the media is very real and is keeping spirits as high as possible.

“You see hashtags out there, #HoustonStrong and #PrayforBeaumont, but it really is true that southeast Texans take care of each other.  Even our neighbors in Louisiana are coming in and just texting people and asking where they can go next to rescue someone,” said Morales.

In addition, the confidence and apparent competence of local officials is doing a lot of good.

“It really seems like there’s a lot of preparing going into this.  You can’t possibly know what all is going to come, but it really seems like everyone is working together to figure out the best way to move forward, whether that’s getting people back into their homes or getting people the help they need for contractors,” said Morales.

Morales and her husband spent part of Wednesday driving relief supplies to different areas of need in the Houston region.  She says despite the devastation, the people in Houston acutely feel the prayers and love of the American people for those suffering.

“I appreciate the outpouring of support.  It’s come from all over the U.S.  Everyone in this area is absolutely feeling it, and it’s helping people power on,” said Morales.

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Dems Coming Clean on Single Payer, Sarsour’s Sick Con Job, Cruel Texas Cartoon

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Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are actually glad to see Sen. Kamala Harris and other national Democrats admitting they want single payer, government-run health care for everyone and they hope America is still ready to reject it.  They also hammer radical activist Linda Sarsour for acting as if she’s raising money for hurricane victims when her real goal to build up the bank of her organization to foster division along ethnic, racial, and gender lines.  They also pound Politico for a horrible political cartoon characterizing Texans as confederate, Christian rubes who should realize they are being rescued by government rather than God.  And they close by shaking their heads at the cases of Americans who injured themselves by applying sunscreen directly to their eyeballs to look at the recent solar eclipse.

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Is GOP Ready for Fiscal Fights?

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Congress returns to Washington next week with a full plate of urgent fiscal issues awaiting it, but how well-prepared are the Republican majorities to tackle these priorities in a fiscally disciplined way and respond to Democratic opposition?

Lawmakers will quickly need to steps to address the debt ceiling, spending for the new fiscal year that begins October 1, how to structure a disaster relief bill for the Gulf Coast, and how to accomplish tax reform.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., sits on the House Budget Committee and is a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  He expects any debt ceiling hike to include significant spending restraints going forward.

“In the past, Republicans wouldn’t even put a clean debt ceiling increase on a Democrat president’s desk. much less a Republican, without any reforms or discipline going forward,” said Brat.

Even if Congress hits a stalemate over the conditions of the debt ceiling hike or faces the threat of a government shutdown, Brat expects there to be no worries over U.S. solvency as the debt and the interest on the debt are still paid.

But going forward, Brat says lawmakers must acknowledge the fiscal realities staring the U.S. in the face and begin to address them with significant spending restraints.

“We’re $20 trillion in debt and we’ve got about a $600 billion deficit just this year under Republican stewardship.  That’s our brand.  We all run on fiscal responsibility.  We have to give the American people some assurance we take this seriously and it’s got to show up on paper,” said Brat.

He says Washington needs to answer a simple question.

“Should we be doing more spending at the federal level or less.  We’ve got to start showing some restraint or we’re going to put the kids in a real world of hurt,” said Brat.

Brat points out that the burden on the next generation is not just a talking point.  He says kids starting kindergarten this year will graduate college facing a fiscal catastrophe if major changes are not made.

“Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid are all insolvent about 2034, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.  So those kids, when they graduate from high school, that’s 2030.  When they graduate from college, that’s 2034.  That’s when all of our major programs are insolvent, upside down, and will experience severe cuts,” said Brat.

In April, Congress passed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through September.  At the time, Republican leaders said it was not the time for major battles over spending, and the proper time for that would be during the appropriations debates in September.

So will they happen?  Brat says not to hold our breath.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Brat.  “It’s kind of like the health care debate.  The surest sign that you’re going to get it right is you’ve got to have messaging coming from the White House and then from the Speaker’s office and then from Mitch McConnell’s office, that we’re going to get serious.  That probably takes a year or two of prep work.  On health care we didn’t do that.  So we failed on health care.”

Brat admits pushing spending cuts that will actually make a dent in the debt and deficit are not popular.

“It’s hard because it’s like telling people you’ve got to eat spinach but some discipline is in order,” said Brat.  “We’ve got to get our ducks in order and we’ve got to make some hard decisions and the American people want to see us stand up and start leading on the fiscal side.”

Brat is also urging Trump to go on offense when it comes to the debate over spending.  He says Trump and the GOP need to stay on message that any shutdown is the fault of Senate Democrats.

“Eight Democrat senators are threatening to shut down anything you do that are in the president’s wheelhouse or the Congress’ priority list unless they get their way.  I don’t think it’s on the president for the shutdown.  I think he just needs to go to the bully pulpit and explain to the American people how government works,” said Brat.

When it comes to tax reform, Brat sees plenty of collaboration and coordination among the White House and GOP congressional leaders.  He says Republicans have not choice but to get tax reform done this year, especially after the failed attempt to address health care.

“We tanked on health care after we said we’re going to repeal it for seven years in a row and then the Senate couldn’t even pass a skinny bill, which was more like a Madison Avenue tag line than a responsible policy position on how to run one-fifth of the economy,” said Brat, who also says Congress cannot give up on fixing a badly flawed health care system.

Brat is also siding strongly on the side of those pushing for generous disaster relief for the recovery and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey.  But he says unrelated pork barrel spending needs to be left out.  He says the type of pet projects that often make into these bills were roundly rejected by Americans of all political stripes in 2016.

“It was a movement pretty much all the way across the spectrum from Bernie (Sanders) all the way over to Trump.  The American people are just sick of the cronies, and the earmarks, and the pork spending, and the idea that the system is rigged and that the cronies, and lawyers, and lobbyists are getting the money and they’re not,” said Brat.

He says the people in his Virginia district made it very clear over recess that they expect Republicans to restore fiscal sanity in Washington.

“They’re frustrated.  They’re like, ‘You guys can’t shoot straight.  Get it done,'” said Brat.

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Disaster Relief Done Right, Berkeley’s War on Speech, High Heel Hysteria

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Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are all for a robust federal response to assist in the recovery and the rebuilding of the Texas coast, but they also don’t want to see the legislation turn into a spending spree for a bunch of unrelated projects for other parts of the country and they applaud political and policy figures for setting that priority now.  They also unload on the mayor of Berkeley, California, for calling for speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter not to speak on campus because it might set off the Antifa rioters.  And Alexandra explains the litany of double standards as the media and social media savage First Lady Melania Trump for wearing high heels to board Air Force One on her way to survey the devastating floods in Texas.

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Humans Aren’t Responsible for Harvey

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Within the dramatic coverage of Hurricane Harvey and the historic flooding that ensued, the mainstream media repeatedly assert that climate changes triggered by human activity are responsible for the amount of devastation seen along the Texas coast, but a leading critic of the climate change movement says science tells a very different story – that cooling is playing a key role.

Since Friday, record amounts of rainfall have inundated the Houston area, flooding countless homes and roads, and forcing thousands of rescues of stranded residents by emergency responders and area residents.

But as the media share the dramatic stories of rescue and loss, they are also suggesting human activity played a role in the severity of this storm.

“What is the role of man-made climate change in disasters like this one?” asked CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

CNN political contributor Ron Brownstein was even more assertive.

“There is no doubt that climate change, particularly because of the warming of the ocean waters and the gulf waters, makes storms like this more common,” said Brownstein.

CNN anchor John Berman presented climate change as a reason when speaking with former National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read.

“One of the thing we’ve from scientists over the last ten years is that climate change does impact the intensity of many of the storms that we see,” said Berman.

Read did not agree.

“I probably wouldn’t attribute what we’re looking at here.  This is not an uncommon occurrence,” said Read.

So did human activity play a role in the misery being inflicted upon Texas?

“Man-made climate change is not occurring.  There’s no evidence for that whatsoever, and climate changes all the time naturally,” said Dr. Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg and the author of “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science.”

He says partisans are cherry-picking information to advance a narrative.

“They’re taking things out of context.  You’re looking at one event.  When you look at the long-term history of hurricanes and severe weather events, this is well within the normal variability and nothing unusual at all,” said Ball, who posits that government agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is using Harvey to further a political point.

“NOAA especially, and the media amplifying it, are doing everything to hype these things because they want to push this whole human-caused global warming agenda,” said Ball.

Even worse, Ball says anyone with the temerity to dispute the government and media line is targeted for ridicule and humiliation.

“To try and get to the truth and to calm things down is almost impossible.  If you dare to even question any of this, it’s ‘Oh, you don’t care about the people that are drowning or the loss of life and so on.  How dare you say that?’  This is what’s going on.  you’re immediately bullied into silence if you dare to try to bring some semblance of reason and evidence and facts to the issue,” said Ball.

So why have we seen record rainfall topping more than 50 inches of rain in Texas and why did the storm just linger on the coast for days?  Ball says it’s actually just the opposite of what the climate change activists would have people believe.

“The reason it parked itself day after day is because the world is cooling down and the cold air is pushing down from the north.  If you look at the weather maps, you’ll see that there were two high pressure ridges to the northwest of where the hurricane would normally go inland and they were preventing it from moving inland.  So it’s actually global cooling that’s causing the problem,” said Ball.

He says tropical storms and hurricanes typically lose steam very quickly once they hit land but Harvey stopped at the worst possible place.

“With Harvey, that’s not fully happening.  Half of it is over the land and half is over the water, so it’s continuing to pick up some of the moisture and that’s feeding the steady rainfalls that are associated with it,” said Ball.

While Harvey’s rainfall totals are the worst on record, Ball says that’s no reason to jump to conclusions about human activity playing a role.

“Has this happened before?  Of course.  It’s just that it hasn’t happened as far as I know in the modern record of hurricane events.  To understand the meteorology of it and to say that this would have occurred in the past is perfectly reasonable,” said Ball.

However, experts who agree that humans do play a role in the changing climate say the volatility and severity of events such as Harvey are proof of their conclusions.  Ball says it’s just the opposite.

“The increased variability of weather, that is what you get when the world starts to cool down.  The cold air starts pushing farther south,  That’s what’s caused the problems with Harvey, and what it does is amplify the variability of the weather and the climate and that’s what we’re seeing happening,” said Ball.

Ball says the cooling planet is just the latest failure of most climate scientists to predict what will happen.

“The fact that all the predictions of temperature that have been made since 1990 have been wrong.  If your forecasts are wrong, your science is wrong,” said Ball.

Ball points to a new British study suggesting 2016 is the warmest year on record as an attempt to keep the political narrative in place in spite of the science.

“They cooked the data to show this.  There is a warm patch down in the southeast of England right now, but the rest of England is below normal temperatures.  So it’s this cherry-picking of data and selectivity of data to push the agenda you’ve sold to the public,” said Ball.

He says the politicians pushing the climate change agenda are too far down the road to turn around now.

“As a bureaucrat, you don’t want to come out and say to the politicians who put their political lives on the line with this, ‘Hey, what I told you was wrong.’  That ain’t going to happen.  This is the difficulty.  When you get it in a bureaucracy, it takes on a life of its own,” said Ball.

Ball says the cooler the earth gets in the coming years, the more the public will see the truth in the climate debate.

“There will be a continued attempt to keep it going but the evidence for cooling will continue to grow.  Gradually, people will start to realize that they’ve been fooled by it,” said Ball.

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Houston Heroes Abound, Kim’s Latest Mischief, Media Playing Climate Card

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are aghast as the threat to life along the Texas coast gets more dire but they are amazed at the tireless efforts by exhausted heroes to save thousands and thousands of lives.  They also disgusted, but not surprised, as North Korea fired a missile over Japan in one of the most provocative acts in years.  And they sigh as the mainstream media leap to the conclusion that man-caused climate change is responsible for the extent of the devastation in Texas.

Also a note to our listeners, Three Martini Lunch will spend next week on vacation before resuming on Monday, September 11.  We will have episodes for the rest of this week.

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Why Cops Are Standing Down in Berkeley and Beyond

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On Sunday, a large group of Antifa activists descended upon a small number of people the group surmised were supporters of President Trump and assaulted them viciously while Berkeley, California, police largely stood by, and policing expert Heather Mac Donald says the passivity from the cops is a result of withering demonization from politicians and the media.

The Washington Post headline described the violence as an Antifa “attack” against “peaceful right-wing protesters.”  This is not the first time Berkeley police have let the violence play out.  Earlier this year, extensive property damage ensued from riots connected with a scheduled University of California speech by Milo Yiannopoulos.

Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of the best-selling “The War Against Cops: How the New attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.” She says the seeds for police reticence to intervene were planted in yet another episode of Berkeley unrest in December 2014, as part of a four-day protest against the police by Black Lives Matter.

“The first day of the anti-police, Black Lives Matter riot, the police actually used conventional riot tactics of skirmish lines, of not allowing protesters to get dangerously close,” said Mac Donald.

“The left-wing Berkeley council and mayor, the next day, blamed the police for the violence, rather than the people who were using Molotov cocktails and attacking businesses and police officers and other people,” added Mac Donald.

She says the police could draw only one logical conclusion from that political response.

“The Berkeley police learned their lesson and said, ‘OK, our policy is going to be to allow certainly the destruction of property and if there’s collateral damage to people, so be it.  We are not going to risk again the claim that we are an occupying, fascist force,'” said Mac Donald.

“They’re so worried about a lawful act of force being captured on video and the inevitable press reaction that it was the police’s fault, that they have simply moved into a hunkered down, passive position that, given our current levels of civil hatred in this country, I think is extremely dangerous,” said Mac Donald.

She says despite the political slings and arrows, the police still have a responsibility to their communities.

“I hope…they will realize that they really owe it to the law-abiding people of this country to maintain order,” said Mac Donald.  “Police use of force is never a pretty sight, but there are times – whether you are subduing a resisting suspect or trying to keep order in a public anarchy situation like we had again this weekend – where it is necessary.”

She says the tone and extent of police intervention in these situations will ultimately be up to the voters in each community.

“It’s really up to the public to decide how much policing it wants.  If the public decides we would rather have crime, we’d rather have anarchy than have the police use their lawful authority, well that’s their decision to make,” said Mac Donald.

If the police continue to hold back, what will we see?

“I fear real civil violence, whether it’s race war of left-right war.  Both sides at the extremes are becoming more emboldened,” said Mac Donald.

Mac Donald makes clear that the most heinous act we’ve seen to date in this escalating violence is the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville earlier this month.  She says that carnage is squarely on the hands of the white supremacists.

However, she also points out that many of the instances of non-lethal are instigated by the likes of Antifa.

“The left certainly has the bit in its teeth at this point.  I hope that Trump still has the moral authority to say this is simply not acceptable.  He ran rightly as a law and order president.  He alone among the candidates saw what was going on with the demonization of the police, with the rising crime levels, with the resistance to cops, with the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers last year,” said Mac Donald.

So how do we get to what most Americans expect in terms of law and order?  Mac Donald says it is going to be tough so long as the media casts such a negative eye on police.

“The media has just been soaked, it’s been saturated in anti-cop hostility for the last 20 years but it has certainly gotten much worse with the Black Lives Matter surge that began in August of 2014,” said Mac Donald.

She says the tragic irony is that the media are hypocrites when it comes to caring about minority deaths.

“The overwhelming victims in the rising crime increase are black.  Nine hundred more black males were killed in 2015, thanks to the Black Lives Matter de-policing, than the previous year.  Even though the media think of itself as so Social Justice Warrior-like, it actually doesn’t give a damn about black lives unless they’re taken by a cop,” said Mac Donald.

 

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Agony and Heroism in Houston, Antifa’s Ugly Reality, Dem Circus Awaits in 2020

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America lay out the extent of the devastation in Southeast Texas but also salute the first responders and big-hearted citizens who are rescuing their neighbors.  They also unload on Antifa, as the leftist mob attacks people in Berkeley and chants, “No Trump. No Wall. No USA at All.”  And they discuss the likely circus car of endless 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls that will make the 17 GOP candidates in 2016 seems like a reasonable number.

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‘They’re Furious at Our Senators’

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Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, is fully behind President Trump’s demand for full congressional funding for a border wall and both he and his constituents are exasperated with the state’s two Republican senators for offering no solutions of their to overhaul or repeal Obamacare.

Gosar is a member of the House Freedom Caucus who fended off a primary challenger backed by national party allies in 2016.  He says the GOP Senate is a major disappointment, with the failure to address Obamacare as the prime example of its inability to get things done.

“What has the Senate done?  They copped out on Obamacare.  And to my senators (Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake), if you didn’t like what the House put forward, where are your ideas?” said Gosar, a dentist who first ran for Congress as part of the tea party wave in 2010.

He says while politicians are posturing, people in his state are suffering from Obamacare.

“We’re catastrophically moving down this pathway where we’re seeing Americans getting a 40-90 percent increase in their premiums coming up.  Obamacare is failing.  There’s not enough money to fix it.  We’re seeing Medicare being implemented in all the group plans, so it behooves us to be big boys and girls and have that conversation,” said Gosar.

Gosar says the anger of Arizonans towards McCain and Flake is palpable everywhere he goes.

“They’re furious at our senators.  There isn’t one meeting I don’t have where people are going off on our two senators.  Leadership comes at a price and that means you have to put solutions on te table.  That means that ‘No’ can;t be your answer, it’s going to be what it takes to be ‘Yes,'” said Gosar.

In addition to hearing his constituents vent about their senators, he’s also hearing about their hardships created by our current health care system.

“I have represented most of the rural parts of Arizona.  They’ve got a piece of paper that says they have health insurance but they can’t afford to pay the co-pays and deductibles.  It’s a travesty.  They see no job growth out here.  They don’t see opportunity.  Those were all the things they were promised,” said Gosar.

Gosar says Trump has done what we can to improve conditions but Congress needs to do the heavy lifting.

“Whether it be tax breaks, tax cuts, getting government out of the way, this president has done his fair share with the Congressional Review Act and with executive orders to streamline the regulatory process.  Now Congress has got to respond.  It can’t continue working in a broken, dysfunctional fashion,” said Gosar.

Dr. Kelli Ward, a former Arizona state senator, is already running against Flake in next year’s GOP primary.  Ward challenged McCain last year and lost badly in the primary, leaving some conservatives to push for Gosar and other conservatives to enter the fray.

Gosar says he’s thought about but is not close to any decision.

“We’ll see.  That’s as good as we can say at this point in time,” said Gosar.  “We want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason.  I don’t need another title, I’ve got four titles above congressman: that’s a husband, a father, a citizen, and a doctor,” said Gosar.

Just a few days ago, President Trump held a campaign rally in Phoenix.  In addition to sparring with the media and defending his response to the chaos in Charlottesville, Trump demanded Congress fund his central campaign promise of a wall along the southern border, even vowing to shut down the government to make it happen.

Gosar says no one should be surprised by Trump’s blunt tactics.

“This gentleman is not built as a politician and that’s why America voted him in.  He’s a disrupter.  The business as usual has got to stop.  We’re $20 trillion in debt,” said Gosar.

He also says not approving the money would be a huge mistake.

“I don’t think I would cross the president and I don’t think I would cross the American people.  This is something the American people want.  So far the Senate has let them down in regards to promises they made on Obamacare and so I think they’re getting restless.  They don’t see solutions but they see a man that’s struggling to make sure that he honors the promises that he made to those people,” said Gosar.

Gosar also asserts that the controversy over the wall is only a creation of the past decade.

“The wall was authorized over a decade ago and it was a bipartisan effort.  A sovereign country has a right to defend and dictate it’s borders,” said Gosar.

So how did this become such a political lightning rod?

“It’s because the political correctness in the media has gotten into people,” he said.

Another hot-button issue is the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.  He says all contracts ought to be renegotiated every few years and NAFTA has been on the books for more than two decades.  He says the issues of border security and trade are very closely linked.

“I think these are all interwoven and I think the president has a good thought process about how to drag all these together to get what he believes the American people want because they voted for him.  He made no qualms about border security and building the wall,” said Gosar.

Gosar also applauds Trump sending more border patrol agents and immigration judges to stem the tide of illegal entries and to adjudicate cases much more quickly.  He does, however, urge the president to make more personnel nominations in the Justice Department and elsewhere to improve the effort even more.

But with Trump in a very public battle with members of his own party about blame over Obamacare and other issues, will any big ticket items on the GOP agenda actually get done when Congress returns next month?

Gosar says they have no choice.

“Winston Churchill made the famous analogy saying, ‘You can always count on Americans to do the right thing when they’ve exhausted everything else.  Well, here’s our sign looking at Congress..  We’ve exhausted everything else, at least from the House.  We’ve got over 200 bills over there waiting on the Senate to take a look at,” said Gosar.

While he can’t say for sure what will get done, Gosar says if one big thing can get to Trump’s desk, other major priorities will fall like dominoes.

“The atmosphere is going to be very confrontational.  It’s going to be very high stakes.  But once that first brick falls, a lot of this stuff is going to fall right in line,” said Gosar, who personally hopes Obamacare repeal is the first brick to fall.

“I would hope that it’s health care, because I think that sets the stage for tax breaks [and] the budget and that looks at a positive influence for the American people to move forward,” said Gosar.

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Could Kasich Bid Help Trump? Cuba’s Commie Tactics, Pelosi vs. Free Speech

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America consider whether an independent ticket of Republican John Kasich and Democrat John Hickenlooper in 2020 would damage President Trump or simply dilute the anti-Trump vote.  They also demand a firm response from the Trump administration as the evidence of hostile Cuban acts against our diplomats in Havana piles up.  And they unload on House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for trying to deny a permit for a “Patriot Prayer” event in San Francisco because such a gathering is akin to “shouting wolf in a crowded theater.”

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