Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America salute UN Ambassador Nikki Haley for her clear language and strong defense of American priorities on the world stage. After briefly condemning The Atlantic’s firing of Kevin Williamson, hey also groan as President Trump and China exchange threats of even more aggressive trade action against one another. And they scratch their heads as former two-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty runs for the job again.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome President Trump’s order sending National Guard personnel to the southern border. They explain why questions about whether Trump has such power are ridiculous but also hope the forces are not needed for long if lawmakers address the problem quickly and effectively. They also get a kick out of “moderate” Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner suddenly supporting some kind of “assault weapons” ban, proving once again Warner talks like a moderate but always ends up toeing the liberal line on virtually every issue. And they shake their heads as Steven Spielberg suggests Indiana Jones could be a female character in future installments of the series. Jim makes the point that it’s a bad idea to recast roles so closely identified with a certain actor, and they both vent about the unmitigated garbage heap that was the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shake their heads as Democrats win another high-profile special election. By itself, it may not mean much, but Democrats have won a string of races where Republicans were expected to be competitive or heavily favored. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is openly concerned about a “Blue Wave” in 2018 and Jim and Greg discuss why he’s right to sound the alarm. They also sigh as the Trump administration and China swap tariffs, leading to stock market drops and higher prices. And they shake their heads as the media go wall-to-wall with coverage of the shootings at You Tube headquarters, only to drop the story when the shooter does not fit the media stereotype of a mass shooter.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleasantly stunned to hear Saudi Arabia’s crown prince publicly state that Israel has a right to live in peace on its own land and wonder if things are truly changing in the Middle East or whether this is a temporary thaw in order to confront Iran. In the wake of the very public feud between Fox News host Laura Ingraham and gun control activist David Hogg, they also discuss how the rise of populism leads to political debates becoming a referendum on the people in the debate rather than the ideas involved in the debate. And they wonder why President Trump is spending so much time blasting Amazon and the rate it pays to mail packages, suspecting it might have something to do with another business venture headed by Jeff Bezos.
Advocates for religious freedom in the military are mostly cheering President Trump’s policy on transgenders serving in the military and are breathing a sigh of relief as the U.S. Navy rejects the push for an theist chaplain.
On Friday, President Trump issued a memo reversing the Obama administration policy on transgender service. The president believes there are legitimate concerns about the impact of transgenders – particularly those transitioning from one identity to another – on military readiness.
“In my judgment, the previous administration failed to identify a sufficient basis to conclude that terminating the departments’ longstanding policy and practice would not hinder military effectiveness and lethality, disrupt unit cohesion, or tax military resources, and there remain meaningful concerns that further study is needed to ensure that continued implementation of last year’s policy change would not have those negative effects,” reads the memo.
The move is largely applauded by Christian voices in the military community. Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty Executive Director Phil Wright says Trump did the right thing.
“The Chaplain Alliance affirms the commander-in-chief’s decision. The number one priority for the military is to be ready to deploy and engage in and win the nation’s wars as well as defend our allies,” said Wright,a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as a chaplain while in uniform.
He says it’s time for the government to stop using the military to advance cultural and political goals.
“The military is not (designed) to engineer social change. It’s not a club. It’s not to reflect America. It is to win the nation’s wars, to defend the nation and our allies,” said Wright.
The memo largely restricts military service from people undergoing surgeries or therapies that make them undeployable if they get sent somewhere they won’t have access to those medical options.
However, it does not call for a total ban on transgenders serving in the military, and Wright says some aspects of the lingering policy leave him concerned, including safety for women in uniform.
“When you have men alleging to be women and having access to female billeting, barracks, showers, bathrooms, we think that is an issue that has not been addressed appropriately,” said Wright.
Wright says there are numerous complaints from women being forced to share quarters with men transitioning to a female identity and that those women not only fear for their safety but are deeply concerned that their superiors will have little regard for their privacy.
He’s also concerned about whether chaplains and other personnel will be pressured to stifle their beliefs on transgender issues.
“We are very concerned that the constitutional protections afforded our service members as far as religious liberty are not addressed when those who continue to serve seem to have all of the rights,” said Wright.
However, Wright is fully thrilled to see the U.S. Navy once again reject the application of a humanist to join the chaplain corps. Jason Heap was rejected once during the Obama administration but tried again this year. The effort met swift resistance on Capitol Hill from 45 Republicans in the House and 22 in the Senate.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., led the effort to quash Heap’s application. Both serve on the respective armed services committees in the House and Senate.
“We’re very fortunate that we have people in our civilian leadership, which is part of our military, having oversight. We were glad that they were able to step in and make such a cogent argument,” said Wright.
Wright says the idea of an atheist chaplain boggles the mind.
“By definition, humanists or human secularists or atheists could not be a military chaplain is to be religious. Their very first comment will be that they are not religious and have no intention of being religious. They’re actually hostile to religion,” said Wright.
He does not see Heap’s application as an effort to water down the chaplains’ corps but the exact opposite.
“It seems to be more aimed at doing away with the chaplain corps than it is to minister to those soldiers of that particular belief system,” said Wright.
Wright points out the chaplains were first ordered into the Army by Gen. George Washington and that chaplains play a far more critical role in combat than many people realize.
“Having served myself, I know many commanders would not go downrange into combat without a chaplain in their ranks because of what the chaplains provide for those commanders and the men and women that they lead and the family members left behind,” said Wright.
“You have someone who understands authority. You have someone that’s disciplined. You have someone who has a high view of life, and in those murky fog-of-war situation, I think you would want someone, whether it’s a soldier who’s pulling the trigger or a chaplain who is trying to instruct them about just war and about doing right at the right time for the right reason.
“That’s who you want in your formation and not someone who does not have an informed worldview like that,” said Wright.
With atheists wanting to join a unit specifically for people of deep faith and people wanting to join the military while identifying as a different gender than their biology indicates, how challenging is it for chaplains and other believers in the service today?
“You have a biblical worldview on the one hand that our chaplains hold to and that a lot of Americans hold to and then you have other worldviews which lead to some of these other kinds of belief systems or facts that aren’t really truth.
“You get into, ‘Well, maybe that’s your truth not my truth. There is one absolute truth,” said Wright. “This is an ongoing challenge that has always been around ever since Jesus walked the earth.”
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the Trump administration for evicting dozens of Russian officials from the U.S., many of whom were intelligence personnel posing as diplomats. They also dissect the March for Our Lives, as the Parkland teenagers insist one moment that they’re not after anyone’s guns and the next minute blame the NRA for the deaths of children. They also discuss how the gun control push may be the one thing that saves the GOP from a midterm election disaster. And they react to former President Obama’s saying he wants his foundation to be a way to connect activists and innovators and create a million more Barack Obamas in the process. David and Greg then discuss how de facto worship of politicians is bad for America on both sides of the aisle.
The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill and new tariffs announced by President Trump will not only drive up our national debt, but could greatly reduce the economic benefits otherwise expected through the recent tax reform bill.
On Thursday, Republican majorities in the House and Senate approved the bill to ward off a partial government shutdown and President Trump signed it after briefly considering a veto. The omnibus plus Trump’s embrace of steel and aluminum tariffs and this wee’s targeting of China for unfair trade practices has fiscal conservatives are furious with the GOP at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave.
National Taxpayers Union President Pete Sepp sees the omnibus as a disaster.
“We’re talking about an increase of $80 billion in defense spending, $62 billion in non-defense spending, a gimmick called the Overseas Contingencies Operation Account.
“Bottom line, amid rising interest rates, the additional debt that’s going to finance this bill is going to have headaches down the line, because servicing that debt is going to get costlier in addition to this spending,” said Sepp.
Sepp says fiscal conservatives really weren’t asking that much of the GOP-led Congress.
“In addition to passing tax relief and tax simplification, we were expecting them to at least hold the line on federal spending,” said Sepp.
“Congress decided earlier in the year to break the spending caps for a third time that were established in a 2011 bill called the bipartisan Budget Control Act. Congress has not kept that promise.
“For the third time, they’ve broken the caps and by deciding to do that, they had to consciously pass another law. This do-nothing Congress, as it’s been criticized for, needed to do nothing to hold the line on spending, but they wouldn’t do that. They actively plotted to undermine the caps, and this omnibus spending bill seals that deal,” said Sepp.
Both Trump and many of the congressional Republicans who backed the omnibus counter by saying only defense spending was still under the caps and the military is suffering badly as a result of austerity aimed specifically at the Pentagon during the Obama years.
They further assert the only way they could get the votes for greater military spending from Senate Democrats was to bump up non-defense spending as well.
Sepp isn’t buying it.
“That’s the politics of the deal but as policy it is rotten. Unfortunately, our defense spending establishment has had years of bloated practices, bad management and unauditable financial statements.
“If we were to demand better fiscal accountability from the Pentagon, I have the feeling, we would find a lot more resources to get to our service people who really need them, instead of just approving a huge spending increase with very, very little accountability to go along with it,” said Sepp.
However, Sepp says the omnibus could have been far more expensive and that there are a few bright spots for taxpayers tucked in there.
“The omnibus spending bill could have been a lot worse considering some of the riders that were being proposed: a new tax on travelers – a passenger facility surcharge if you will, a new act that would have empowered states to collect sales taxes on internet transactions,” said Sepp.
Sepp also says there are also elements of greater government transparency in the bill. However, he says those positive nuggets don’t outweigh the negatives of the bill and adding in Trump’s proposed tariffs make our economic outlook less rosy.
The steel and aluminum tariffs alone could be major job killers.
“There are some reports estimating that the steel and aluminum tariffs alone could cost up to 180,000 jobs in our economy, because while we’re protecting steel and aluminum manufacturing workers, other types of industries that use the steel and aluminum in their own manufacturing will be badly hit by higher prices,” said Sepp.
We can debate how many jobs might be at stake here, but at that upper level of 180,000 jobs, you’re talking about giving back as much as half of the jobs created by the tax cut act,” said Sepp.
Sepp hopes Trump’s new chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, will be able to pivot the president away from tariffs. He says Kudlow is clearly on the record as opposing such policies.
“He said, essentially, that when we impose tariffs on another country’s imports, we’re imposing sanctions on our own consumers. That’s exactly what’s going on here and the amount of sanction could be very significant,” said Sepp.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America briefly grouse about D.C.area drivers in inclement weather before sipping their martinis. Then, they welcome the end of the Austin mail bombing horrors as the suspect apparently blows himself up as police close in on him. They also fume as the GOP-led Congress pursues yet another omnibus spending bill with virtually no fiscal restraint in sight, leading Jim to declare that “fiscal conservatism is dead.” And they sigh as President Trump defies his staff to congratulate Vladimir Putin on “winning” his election and because a disgruntled Trump staffer then leaked classified information to the media.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have whiplash from all the media hyperbole in the wake of Andrew McCabe getting fired, almost all of it from people who have never read the inspector general’s report. They also hammer President Trump for gloating about McCabe’s ouster and McCabe for suggesting his firing was a political hit job from Trump when multiple DOJ officials recommended it. They also applaud the media for finally noticing a series of bombings in Austin, Texas, which have killed or injured several people in a story reminiscent of the Unabomber. And they have some fun with D.C. city council member Trayon White alleging that the Rothschilds control the weather to bring calamity to American cities and then swoop in to pay for the cleanup and take control of the cities.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shake their heads as ProPublica issues a massive correction to confirm that President Trump’s nominee to be CIA director didn’t oversee the waterboarding of terrorists after all and that the original reporting was based on assumptions. They also sound the alarm on all the supposedly moderate Democrats running away from Nancy Pelosi as they run for seats in competitive or right-leaning districts. News flash: If Democrats win the House, Pelosi will be speaker. And they roll their eyes as Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake says the refusal of Republicans to denounce Trump suggests maybe the GOP doesn’t deserve to lead.
