By Mike Huckabee
July 22, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Thank you for subscribing!
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Sincerely,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 19:19
“Huckabee” Preview
Escape the July heat with a cool new episode of “Huckabee” tonight on TBN! I’ll talk about the latest issues with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and co-founder of The Federalist, Sean Davis. Former World Series relief pitcher Jason Grimsley will tell how God saved him from drugs and suicide. Internationally popular clean comic Fred Klett will bring you plenty of laughs. And we’ll welcome back the inspiring Kechi Okwuchi to perform a song from her debut album.
Catch all this and more tonight at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and Sunday at 9 EST/8 CST on TBN. To find out how to watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv and click on “Channel Finder” on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only “Digital Exclusives,” including extended interviews, “In Case You Missed It” and “Facts of the Matter” segments, plus extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests and links to all their sites, at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.
Suspicious Fire
In a story that gives new meaning to the term “suspicious fire,” early Friday morning, a blaze ripped through a Bowling Green, Kentucky, office building that just happens to house the offices of Sen. Rand “Hold Fauci’s Feet to the Fire” Paul. At this writing, the cause of the fire is still officially unknown. More at the link.
Democrats show a stunning lack of self-awareness
This week, for a “Headline of the Day,” we ran this: “Dems Demand that RFJ Jr. Be Banned From Congressional Testimony on Government Censorship.” I chose it because it was such a perfect example of oxymoronic government doubletalk that it sounded like something Radar would’ve said on “M*A*S*H.”
But just hours later, proof arrived of why it’s so hard for comedy writers to stay ahead of what the Democrats actually do. Showing a stunning lack of self-awareness, they actually started a House hearing into government censorship by desperately trying to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was there to testify about how he’d been censored by the government.
Their pre-hearing machinations to silence Kennedy having failed, the Dems launched a flurry of motions, accusations, points of order and finally, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz moved to take the meeting behind closed doors so the public couldn’t hear what Kennedy had to say. The pretext for this was an accusation that RFK Jr. made racist and anti-Semitic comments about COVID, which he strongly denied, calling the claims “defamations and malignancies that are used (to) prevent people from listening to the actual things I'm saying."
I have my differences on many things with RJK Jr. but I would never deny him the right to speak, nor try to shout him down when he does. In fact, I’ve been trying to book him onto my TV show for a civil discussion, you know, like adults. And no matter our disagreements, I respect him more than I do politicians who try to abuse their powers to quash the First Amendment or call someone a racist to keep others from listening to him. And I respect him far more than his relatives, who’ve disgraced themselves by rushing to cameras to badmouth their own flesh and blood just to curry favor with the media and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself.)
For those who actually wanted to hear what he had to say, here’s an excerpt. Once you read it, you’ll see why those Democrats were so desperate to keep him from speaking.
Here’s a sample: “The term ‘misinformation’ did not denote falsehood or veracity, rather it was a euphemism for any information that departed from government orthodoxies. It was very dangerous.”
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
New Trump message to Autoworkers: Electric cars are destroying the American auto industry
Former President Trump released a campaign ad yesterday aimed at union auto workers, blasting the Biden Administration’s push to force everyone into electric cars. Trump said Biden is spending “billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing electric cars for rich people.” He called it part of a “ridiculous Green New Deal campaign” that’s “absolutely destroying” the American auto industry with crippling mandates and making regular cars unaffordable for working Americans (prices are topping $50,000), “even as thousands of electric cars are piling up on car lots, all unsold.” Good luck to the "fact-checkers" who'll try to debunk any of that.
I’m sure this won’t sway the union bosses to abandon the Democratic Party. After all, it’s hard to walk away from something after you’ve paid so much money to buy it. But maybe Trump's message will reach the rank-and-file auto workers who are fed up with their union bosses making political alliances that go against their best interests.
Related: JD Power reports that the percentage of new car buyers who say they’re “very unlikely” to consider an EV is actually rising, despite all the pressure and propaganda. They cite as concerns “range anxiety; time required to charge; power outage and grid concerns; lack of servicers for repairs and maintenance; and inadequate performance in extreme temperatures.” News flash: none of those are unreasonable concerns, and I’ve been writing about all of them for ages.
There’s also the concern that the same leftist politicians who are trying to force us all to buy electric cars are also the ones in charge of states that can’t even keep enough power flowing to keep the lights on. The massive strain millions of EVs would put on the already overtaxed power grid (and leftists also want to replace gas, coal and nuclear power generation with windmills, solar panels and unicorn burps) is finally starting to be grudgingly admitted. A recent Stanford University study called for Californians not to tax the grid by charging their cars at home overnight, but to do it in the daytime, at work or (paid) charging stations.
Our favorite YouTube auto mechanic, Scotty Kilmer, had some choice words about all this in a recent video.
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Bipartisan idea
Who says there’s no bipartisanship in Congress anymore? New York Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley are co-sponsoring a bill that would ban Congress members from owning individual stocks, even in blind trusts. While they’re serving, they could only make stock investments in mutual funds or index funds, to prevent them from using inside information about a particular business to profit themselves.
https://www.westernjournal.com/zg-bipartisan-bill-introduced-ban-congressional-stock-trading/
As that story notes, time and again, members of Congress and the executive branch who are privy to information the public doesn’t know have made investments that miraculously outperform the market. If you or I did that, it would be called “insider trading,” and we’d be doing a stretch in the Graybar Hotel. But when “public servants” who make less than $200,000 a year somehow become multi-millionaires, that’s considered normal. It’s so common, in fact, that a couple of ETFs have been created that allow the public to invest in the same stocks purchased by Congressional leaders.
It will be interesting to see how much support this bill gets and who votes against it. I think we can guess one "nay" from the fact that Hawley previously proposed a similar bill called the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act,” or the PELOSI Act for short.
Disney In Trouble
Thanks to mismanagement and replacing family-friendly entertainment with woke politics, Disney, once the behemoth of entertainment, is looking at selling off up to a third of its properties, including the ABC TV network. (But who will pay the ladies of “The View” to insult our intelligence every day?!)
And now, here’s one more potential body blow to Disney. With their July 4th park attendance hitting historic lows (they blame it on the heat and humidity, something that’s never occurred in Florida in July before), Disney could be about to face new competition from the $2 billion American Heartland Theme Park and Resort in Oklahoma, planned to open in 2025. It’s built around a patriotic theme of celebrating America, its landscapes, cultures and people.
The developers say, “The park will feature an Americana-themed environment with a variety of entertaining rides, live shows, family attractions, waterways as well as restaurant-quality food and beverage offerings.” Yes, but will it have Disney’s secret weapon: a princess boutique staffed by mustachioed dudes in dresses?
This is just the latest example of a very encouraging trend of moderate and conservative Americans using the massive power of their dollars to fight back against the radical left minority that over the past few years seized control of the media and the Democratic Party, blackmailed corporations into supporting wokeness, and bullied their critics into silence. From the cratering of Disney to the collapse of Bud Light to “Sound of Freedom” destroying woke “blockbusters” at the box office, the economic counter-revolution is on a roll.
And as long as we’re mowing down cherished leftist narratives, one of their favorites is the bogus claim that blue states are so successful that their taxes support welfare-dependent red states. That was long a favorite falsehood of the left, usually based on the claim that more government funds went to red states, but that was because that’s where most of the military bases were located. Now, here’s another blow to the idea that blue states are more successful:
A study by Bloomberg found that since 2021, six Southern red states - Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee – have been contributing more to US GDP than the entire Northeast, including the Washington, DC-New York City-Boston corridor (admittedly, it’s no great feat to contribute more to GDP than Washington, DC, does. The government contributes to GDP like a tick contributes to a dog.)
The gap is only widening as more and more taxpayers flee blue states for red states. That would support the theory that it's not leftist policies that make blue states successful. The successful industries (the stock exchange, tech, entertainment, etc.) were concentrated there long before the states fell into the hands of leftists who are now strangling the golden geese with both hands (ironic, since I’m sure most of them are vegans.)
It shows that these states, far from being models for other states or the federal government, are really just like the YouTube film critic, The Critical Drinker’s description of LucasFilm: an organization “founded by geniuses and inherited by morons.”
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American Music Icon Tony Bennett Dies at 96
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
We are all very sad to have to report that it was announced that Tony Bennett died yesterday at 96. He had been battling Alzheimer’s since 2016, but miraculously was still able to remember his song lyrics. He kept recording up through 2021 and performed a triumphant farewell concert with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall.
Bennett’s career took off with his 1962 smash and signature song, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.” He eventually received virtually every musical honor in existence, including 18 Grammy Awards out of 36 nominations, plus a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.
As music changed in the ‘60s, he resisted the pressure to cut rock songs (the kind that criminally forced Ella Fitzgerald to do “Sunshine of Your Love,” Mel Torme to cut “Sunshine Superman” and Keely Smith to record a twist album.) Instead, Tony moved in a more jazz-oriented direction, recording with pianist Bill Evans and becoming the world’s greatest ambassador of the Great American Songbook.
With his stunning voice that was powerful enough to fill a theater with no amplification but also tender enough to convey the most intimate lyrics, his impeccable musical taste and his ebullient personality, only Tony Bennett had such cross-generational appeal that he would not only be asked to do an “MTV Unplugged” special, but make it a huge hit. One young fan was Lady Gaga, who was so inspired by him that she became his Grammy-winning duet partner.
But that’s enough from me. I want to quote the real expert in the family, my wife, co-writer and award-winning retro jazz singer Laura Ainsworth. She grew up on Tony Bennett and loved his music, having watched her late dad back him in showrooms when she was a kid. Here’s the latest post from her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/lauraainsworthsings):
I am deeply saddened to learn just now that Tony Bennett, the man Frank Sinatra called the greatest pop singer of them all, has passed away at 96. He was one of my favorite singers and biggest influences. He did more than anyone else on Earth to keep the Great American Songbook alive and introduce it to new generations, which became my mission as well.
I first saw him as a kid, when my late father Bill Ainsworth was playing behind him at the Fairmont Venetian Room. My husband and I have virtually everything he ever recorded in one form or another, and saw him live whenever we could.
The spine-tingling moment when he put down his microphone and sang "Fly Me To The Moon" acapella, his natural voice filling the Majestic Theater in Dallas, inspired me to cut several of my songs live in the studio or acapella as well. And his song "Where Did The Magic Go" described what I do so perfectly that I recorded it myself, getting the lyricist's permission to change a line to honor my dad.
Rest in peace, Tony, knowing that your music touched millions and will live forever. And largely because of you, so will these great songs.
BUSTED! FBI caught in lie about purpose of redactions
We’ll have much more about the government’s “special handling” of the Hunter Biden case on Monday, leading into former business partner Devon Archer’s testimony next week. But in the meantime, Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST, credited with breaking the original Hunter laptop story in October 2020, has noticed something peculiar about certain redactions in that compelling FBI “1023.”
It proves we’ve been right all along in our suspicions that redactions aren’t necessarily made to protect “sources and methods” or safeguard national security, even though the FBI tells us they are. Now we know they can be made for extremely subjective reasons that have nothing at all to do with these concerns. Once again, the FBI has humiliated itself.
Recall that Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s receipt of that document, which contains detailed notes from the 2020 interview of an FBI confidential human source (CHS), was the culmination of months of negotiation with the Bureau. The first version the FBI released to Sen. Grassley was, he estimated, 30 percent redacted. But as negotiations continued, most of those black bars were lifted. So, by comparing the first version to the final version, it’s possible to see what the FBI’s original redactions were.
Miranda Devine unleashed a hilarious tweet about this: “Well done, @Chuck Grassley. Now everyone can read for ourselves what the FBI tried to hide. Question: why did the FBI try to redact the line where Zlochevsky says his dog is smarter than Hunter? How is that protecting “sources and methods”?
Also this: “Here’s the document, mostly unredacted. [We linked to that final version of it in yesterday’s newsletter.] But the document grudgingly shown to House Oversight chairman James Comer last month had a whole lot of gratuitous redactions.”
What does Zlochevsky’s comically low assessment of Hunter Biden’s intelligence have to do with national security, or the protection of the FBI’s “sources and methods”? Not a thing. It’s part of the story, not just an entertaining part but actually an important part, because it shows that there was no reason to hire Hunter for a lucrative position on Burisma’s board other than his father’s Vice-Presidential clout.
And it’s the kind of detail that can quickly make its way around social media. The Democrats wouldn’t like that, but we hope it does. We hope the phrase “dumber than Zlochevsky’s dog” enters the lexicon as a fun way to talk about stupid people who still manage to reach high places. In fact, we plan to start using it here in the Huckabee newsletter. It’s descriptive along the same lines as “dumb as a box of rocks,” but more specific and definitely timely.
It’s probably safe to say that President Biden himself is dumber than Zlochevsky’s dog. They both are smart enough to respond to simple commands, such as “shake hands,” but neither is smart enough to understand why it’s inappropriate to sniff young girls. They both read a teleprompter equally well. But Zlochevsky’s dog surely can find his way off a podium more easily than Biden can.
I digress. Another point about this: knowing what was redacted now is making us wonder what else in that “1023” is STILL redacted. Are those last few black bars really there for national security purposes, or are they just hiding bits of information that makes some member of the Biden family look bad?
………
Devine also co-authored a very interesting report about the influence wielded by President Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, Hunter’s “Aunt Val.” IRS whistleblower #2, Joseph Ziegler, testified behind closed doors last month before the House Ways & Means Committee that he’d repeatedly asked to interview her about a payment from Hunter she’d received via Venmo. But any attempt to interview Biden family members was, he claimed, blocked by prosecutors.
We don’t know the amount of that payment. But it would be interesting, because according to Devine, Valerie has a “powerful place at the heart of the Biden’s family and political operation.” She earned the nickname “Hurricane” and even used that as one of her email addresses. Reportedly she was skilled at smoothing things over with staff when Joe’s temper got the better of him.
“She was never part of Joe’s strategic team,” a former White House aide told the POST. “But she is his final gut check.” She’s not sitting right there in the Oval Office with him, the source said, but “they’re best friends and the President values her opinion.” She’s managed his political campaigns since he first entered politics, many, many...many...years ago.
The POST reports that emails from Hunter’s laptop “show Biden Owens as the final arbiter and micromanager on everything that has to do with her brother and the Biden family.” And with her “central role orchestrating the family,” she worked to raise money for their many causes. She even chairs the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Institute of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware.
This enthusiastic woman apparently has had her brother’s complete trust, all these many years. You’d think such a closely involved relative --- who had received a payment from Hunter --- would naturally have been interviewed by the FBI. But according to whistleblower Ziegler, that was not in the cards.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/21/the-influence-of-valerie-biden-owensjoes-final-gut-check
Finally, when Jesse Watters interviewed former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan Friday evening, they touched on something we’ve been wondering about: where ARE those 17 recordings that Zlochevsky allegedly said he’d made of conversations with Hunter and Joe Biden, the ones that were supposed to show that Zlochevsky had been “coerced” to give them $5 million each? If these were real, what mad dash has been going on behind the scenes to retrieve them --- with the goal either of exposing them or preventing them from being exposed?
FOX NEWS didn’t put the Kaplan interview in a separate clip on their website, but here’s the entire opening segment of the show; the interview starts about 10 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
When Jesse asks what might have happened to the “tapes” (probably not magnetic tapes but digital recordings), Kaplan says this: “Let me put it succinctly and based upon facts. There is no doubt that the FBI continue to conduct an investigation to ascertain and locate and try to retrieve those recordings. You can take that to the bank...[I] can tell you that the FBI did do that.”
But if the recordings were obtained and then buried or destroyed, he said, “that would be something that would be so hard for me to wrap my head around, ‘cause that would then bring the end to the FBI.” And after seeing what he has seen, he doesn’t put it past them. “It would not surprise me that the agents were able to locate and track down those recordings, and make those recordings disappear, or got those recordings and we will never, ever see them in the light of day.”
Related: The Delaware Supreme Court sided with the University of Delaware in blocking the release of Biden’s Senate papers (which should be public property) until they are "properly processed and archived." Let me guess: that will take until the year 2123?
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