By Mike Huckabee
July 25, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Thank you for subscribing!
Sincerely,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
Today’s Huckabee video link:
This is my appearance yesterday on Fox Business News to talk about the politicized intimidation tactics of the IRS.
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=0889F919-23C4-4CD6-B573-EC43E87E172D
America Needs to Listen to Senator Kennedy
Anytime Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana speaks, you know it will be (A.) worth listening to and (B.) extremely entertaining. So, I know you’ll want to hear what he had to say about his Democratic colleagues attempting to subvert the Constitution to impose their idea of “ethics reform” onto the Supreme Court.
Just a couple of quotes: His spot-on description of Congress is that it’s “like high school, except no one graduates.” As for the ludicrous ethics charges Democrats are hurling, Kennedy said, “...if you’re asking me, do I think there are members of the United States Supreme Court who are bought, or who could be bought, with a vacation, the short answer is ‘no’ and the long answer is ‘hell, no,’ in my opinion.”
If I might make that answer a little longer, I’d say that letting that sorry collection of liars, hustlers, inside traders, valor thieves and Met Gala ticket extortionists attack the ethics of a towering figure like Justice Clarence Thomas is like letting the cast of “The View” critique a Ph.D theses on quantum physics.
How About Real Help for Veterans
Today, Republicans on the House Rules Committee will decide which amendments to include to a spending bill for the VA and related agencies, to roll back the Biden Administration’s agenda promoting abortion access, transgender treatments and other far-left “woke” initiatives.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/six-woke-biden-veterans-affairs-republicans
The White House issued a statement saying Biden will veto the bill because it would result in "devastating consequences, including harming access to reproductive health care, threatening the health and safety of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Americans, endangering marriage equality, hindering critical climate change initiatives, and preventing the administration from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Okay, now look over that list and tell me how many of those things are doing squat to provide real help for veterans, who are facing epidemics of homelessness and suicide. We have a VA that’s more focused on providing abortions and sex change operations than on PTSD treatment. Frankly, I want a VA that cares more about changing long wait times at VA clinics than about changing the weather.
Related: In the least surprising but sure-to-be most suppressed story of the day, a study by University of Florida researchers found that there are a number of negative side effects to transgender-related genital surgery.
It’s long past time for trans activists to stop claiming that their radical medical interventions are harmless and reversible, and for doctors to admit that playing God is a lot harder than they make it out to be when talking to vulnerable minors.
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
Praying for a recovery
Please join me in praying for the full recovery of Grammy-winning gospel and pop singer Tori Kelly. She passed out Sunday at an L.A. restaurant and was rushed to a hospital where doctors discovered blood clots around her lungs and in her legs. This is a developing story, so please check the news for updates, and let’s not speculate on the cause until the health emergency hopefully passes.
Let’s hope this trickle becomes a stampede:
I recently told you about Georgia Democratic State Rep. Mesha Meinor who switched to the GOP after becoming fed up with the Dems’ radical leftward lurch and their siding with teachers’ unions over the interests of students and parents. She scorched them in her departing remarks (she’s booked as a guest for next weekend’s “Huckabee” on TBN, and I can’t wait to talk to her.)
Well, here’s a similar story: Prominent New York Democrat, Jewish leader and 36-year state Assembly veteran Dov Hikind announced that he and his wife have switched to the Republicans.
Hikind tweeted, "[People] have long been asking, 'Dov, when are you gonna leave the Democratic Party?' Well, the time has come [because] the Dems have turned their back on Jews & Israel, so it's officially done!" He said his parents and family have long been Democrats, but “Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has become so radicalized…that people who are moderates or conservative Democrats are not welcomed in the Democratic Party, and I've had enough."
He added, "I am delighted to join the Republican Party. This is about sending a message — a message to the Biden administration, a message to the Democratic Party. We're losing the American people because you are not representing our values. You are not representing the Democratic Party that my parents were so proud of.”
I welcome him to the GOP, and I would add that it’s not just a lack of support for Israel in the Democratic Party that’s disturbing but the tolerance for outright anti-Semites in their ranks. Someone needs to gather the entire Democratic Caucus into one room and show them this devastating PSA from the group Stand Up To Jewish Hate:
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So Far, We Know Very Little About This Story
We still know next to nothing about the American soldier who crossed the DMZ and was detained by North Korea, but here’s an update from the UN on what little we do know so far:
Elon Musk’s “New Coke” Moment
In one of the more baffling marketing moves since “New Coke,” Elon Musk announced that he’s changing the name of Twitter to “X.” It’s not going over too well with users, but former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh hit the nail on the head when he said this:
"It’s a free country. He’s free to change the name to X. And I’m free to keep calling it Twitter."
https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-users-up-in-arms-after-musks-x-name-change-rip-twitter
MIKE HUCKABEE'S PRAYER TREE: Sign up here.
Less Expensive, More Galling
Last week, I told you about how New York City's (blessedly) former Mayor Bill DeBlasio agreed to spend $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to settle a lawsuit by teachers who claimed the city’s occupational exam was racist because they couldn’t pass it (that included an interview with a man who got $2 million for repeatedly flunking the exam, and whose quotes suggested that he might have only a nodding acquaintance with the English language.)
Well, this is less expensive, but maybe even more galling: last week, the city agreed to pay $13 million of taxpayer money to settle a lawsuit by approximately 1300 people who accused the police of brutality and mistreatment when they were arrested for engaging in the George Floyd riots. These are the people who looted stores, set police cars on fire and threw rocks and bottles at officers, and now, they’re getting a big cash reward for it. They were represented by the National Lawyers Guild (which explains the old joke about why acts of God are exempt from prosecution: because Heaven has no lawyers.)
I’m sure that Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino summed up the feelings of many law-abiding New Yorkers when she tweeted, “Thank you for burning down our city, here’s millions of dollars we can’t afford. Where’s the settlement for all the actually peaceful anti-mandate protesters who were arrested and blacklisted and lost their jobs for no reason whatsoever?”
But as infuriating as this is, expect a lot more of it. As Bob Hoge at Redstate points out at the link, suing police departments and getting fat settlements is one of the ways that leftist anarchists fund their movements. It was bad enough that so many of them were caught and released. I hope political leaders in other cities will refuse to pay these extortionists off. If not, their voters need to let them know that they’d better grow a spine or start looking for another line of work. I hear “professional rioter” pays really well.
Feel Good Story of the Day:
The radical climate group Just Stop Oil likes to attract attention by inconveniencing other people: causing traffic jams, gluing themselves to airport runways, etc. So when they held a banquet at a “progressive” church in England, some pro-sanity protesters decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. They released helium balloons with loud alarms attached to them that floated up to the ceiling, blaring their deafening sirens.
https://notthebee.com/article/taste-of-their-own-medicine
To make the story extra funny, the Just Stop Oil activists gave us a great demonstration of their mental powers by bringing out a ladder to try to reach the balloons. It was a 12-foot ladder and a 40-foot ceiling. Just watching them trying to use a ladder at all reminds me of a punchline by Southern comedian Brother Dave Gardner: “Get away from that wheelbarrow; you don’t know nothin’ ‘bout machinery!”
“Barbie”
The new “Barbie” movie had a huge opening weekend, pulling in $155 million. But conservative critics are calling it a triumphant bait-and-switch by Warners’ marketing department, who kept it secret that the movie was not the light, funny, nostalgic family film viewers expected. That enabled them to use Barbie to dupe parents into taking their daughters to watch two hours of relentless man-hating and woke feminist lectures. They are predicting that grosses will tumble fast once word of mouth gets out.
And word of mouth is brutal. Ben Shapiro despised it so much that he made a 43-minute video savaging it as “horrific,” “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen on every possible level,” and “a flaming piece of dog(BLEEP) piled atop an entire dumpster on fire, piled atop a landfill filled with dog(BLEEP.)” He said it’s a heavily political movie explicitly designed to divide men from women, with its negative message directed at kids.
On the other hand, maybe some audience members did know what they were getting into, and they’re gaslighting the makers. Athena Thorne at PJ Media reports that young men are making memes celebrating “patriarchy Ken” and pretending to have gotten the opposite message the woke filmmakers were sending, just to make their heads explode.
I haven’t seen it, and even with grandkids, I have no intention of doing so. But just from all the reviews and clips, I get the idea that Barbie ventures out of Barbieland into the “real world” and discovers it’s a hotbed of male-dominated chauvinist piggery where strange men slap her rear and sexually harass her on the sidewalk in broad daylight.
But here’s my thought: she’s in Los Angeles. Isn’t that the deep blue city in the deep blue state wherein live all the enlightened leftist celebrities who lecture us constantly about our various isms and lack of wokeness? I don’t know any Trump-supporting small town where women would be treated so disrespectfully. Maybe the filmmakers seriously believe that everyone still treats women like bimbo sex objects because they live in L.A. and work in the business that protected Harvey Weinstein for decades.
Or maybe “progressives” have to pretend that women’s rights have made no advances since the 1950s for the same reason they have to pretend racism is worse than it was in the 1950s: if they acknowledged how much actual progress has been made, there would be no need for them. (Spoiler alert: there is no need for them. They’re actually turning back the clock and undoing women’s rights and racial equality.)
Related: I also noticed that “Sound of Freedom” added another $20 million over the weekend, bringing its gross so far to $124.7 million. Even more impressive, it was third at the box office, beating out the new “Mission Impossible” movie by about $600,000, despite being on about 1,500 fewer screens.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/
This has caused leftwing outlets from Rolling Stone to NPR to amp up their efforts to keep people from seeing it, which is only turning out more viewers. Their hollow claim that this fact-based story of child sex trafficking is “rightwing, QAnon conspiracy theories” is being undermined every day as more and more stories appear of pedophile slimeballs being busted, some of them part of the same media that’s trashing the movie. Like former ABC News producer James Meek, who just pleaded guilty to sending and receiving child porn, and ex-CNN producer John Griffin, who was sentenced to 19 years for raping a nine-year-old girl.
For those who have a VIP subscription to PJ Media, Kevin Downey Jr. has an excellent write-up of this story, complete with multiple links to stats and news stories proving that the problem of child sex trafficking is all too real, and the people busted for it have ranged from media figures to teachers to CIA employees.
If anyone at PJ Media reads this newsletter, I hope you’ll consider making this story non-paywall. It’s something that everyone should be able to read.
It’s on again! Devon Archer scheduled to testify next Monday
“Just in: House Oversight Committee’s transcribed interview with Devon Archer is set for Monday, July 31. This should be the last time the date is changed but you never know.”
That was Miranda Devine tweeting on Monday. We’d reported that Devon Archer, former business partner of Hunter Biden and fellow member of the Burisma executive board, was scheduled to testify this week before the Oversight Committee but had canceled for the third time, and we’d suggested hog-tying him and dragging him in. But for the moment, it looks as though that won’t be necessary. Still, you never can tell. He was subpoenaed in June.
Devine’s tweet was to signal that her new column was up at the NEW YORK POST: “Hunter put then-VP dad Joe on the phone with business associates at least 2 dozen times, ex-partner to testify.”
Archer is expected to testify that Vice President Biden was regularly on speakerphone with Hunter’s overseas business partners. It wasn’t to get deeply involved in the business, he has said, just to maintain an influential presence.
At least one call stood out, though, according to previous testimony. Once, while Archer and Hunter Biden were sitting outside at the bar at the Four Seasons Resort in Dubai --- and why is it that leftists aren’t screaming about “privilege”? --- Burisma CFO Vadym Pozharsky phoned to ask where they were because the founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, had the urgent need to speak to Hunter. (Zlochesvsky was then living in Dubai.)
Pozharsky and another Ukrainian joined them there at the bar, and Zlochevsky asked Hunter, “Can you ring your dad?”
Hunter obligingly called his dad (it was late Friday afternoon in Washington, DC), put him on speakerphone and introduced the two gentlemen as “Nicolai and Vadym.” According to Archer, Hunter said words to the effect that these Burisma execs “need our support.” Vice President Biden spoke in “vague pleasantries,” as was typical for him in these frequent speakerphone interactions with Hunter’s business associates. Miranda Devine describes this speakerphone bit as “Hunter’s go-to party trick,” which Archer said he saw performed about two dozen times.
Congressional investigators want to take this questioning further and find out why Zlochevsky was so urgently requesting the opportunity to speak with the VP. They already have some context: lead Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Slokin was in the midst of his investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky. Also, three days after the call, Biden was due to fly to Kyiv to address the Ukrainian parliament about the “poison of cronyism, corruption and kleptocracy.” It was a month later that Slokin was fired as prosecutor after Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion. The irony is rich.
As Devine reports, an email on Hunter’s laptop shows that a month before this speakerphone call with Joe, Pozharski explicitly demanded that they use their influence to “close down” the criminal investigation against Burisma. Sure enough…
This expected testimony is consistent with what former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski has said: that Joe would take these speakerphone calls during business meetings. Hunter would brag to his associates that his father would take these calls anytime, anywhere. Bobulinski said, “The American people don’t fully appreciate yet the key role Joe Biden played in the family global influence peddling...I would equate it to a chairman’s role in a traditional business structure.”
Archer refused comment to the NEW YORK POST, but a close associate told them he’s testifying because it’s his “civic duty.” Well, he’s put off his testimony three times and Congress is about to go on hiatus, so let’s hope his sense of duty holds up through the end of the month.
This person also said that since news broke that Archer would be testifying before a Republican-led congressional committee, his family has been receiving death threats and warnings to “keep your mouth shut.” (Note: that’s not unlike what some of the FBI and IRS whistleblowers have experienced. It’s clear which side these threats are coming from, and it’s not the side interested in hearing the truth.)
Much more detail from Miranda Devine…
DAILY CALLER has a write-up on Archer’s upcoming testimony as well. Archer already faces over a year in prison for defrauding an American Indian tribe, they note. They also mention that Hunter is scheduled this Wednesday to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, essentially putting to bed all the other potential charges. We know from the whistleblowers that the whole team thought felony charges were appropriate.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/24/hunter-biden-devon-archer-house-oversight-committee/
So, will Judge Aileen Cannon accept this slap-on-the-wrist plea agreement in light of all we know now about the case? The nonprofit research group Marco Polo has sent a letter to the judge asking her to reject it. Rudy Giuliani, who is a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with his attorney Robert Costello, also signed the letter. This is a must-read...
On FOX NEWS SUNDAY, law professor Jonathan Turley laid out why he thought the FBI “1023” form detailing what Zlochevsky allegedly said about being shaken down by the Bidens should be taken seriously. Turley said the FBI is “where evidence goes to die,” especially if it has the name “Biden” on it.
There’s no legitimate reason for the FBI to have withheld this, Turley said, “because it confirmed independent information they had access to.” Lead IRS investigator Gary Shapley must have been shocked to find out about that document --- information they most definitely should have had. It describes just the sort of thing they were looking for, such as the labyrinth of shell companies designed to hide transactions from the IRS, including those going to ‘the Big Guy.”
Turley also says the Democrats are running out of “maneuvering room” regarding the Biden financial scandal. The media are panicked because they played a role in suppressing it.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/24/turley-democrats-media-biden-scandals-bribery/
PJ MEDIA has a little more on Archer and his backstory with Hunter Biden. Archer was considered by Hunter to be part of the family, and Hunter and all the Bidens thought it was a very, very special family. Hunter allegedly remarked to Archer that “Every great family is prosecuted [and] persecuted in the U.S. ---- you are part of a great family --- not a sideshow, not deserted by them even in your darkest moments. That’s the way the Bidens are different, and you are a Biden. It’s the price of power.”
(Aside: any time a family --- or any group --- starts thinking it’s different and possesses some kind of mystique or political “destiny,” watch out. The Bidens aren’t special --- anything but --- and the recurring phrase “my word as a Biden” is increasingly laughable.)
At the time the PJ MEDIA piece was written, the date for Archer’s testimony was still being negotiated. So, will he or won’t he testify on July 31? If he’s a no-show again and Congress leaves for summer recess, he should have to cool his heels inside the Graybar Hotel until they return.
RELATED: On Monday, the DOJ wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio saying U.S. Attorney David Weiss been cleared to testify before Congress after the August recess. Jordan had made the request in June. While agreeing to let him testify, the DOJ reply was critical: “...we are deeply concerned by any misrepresentations of our work --- whether deliberate or arising from misunderstandings --- that could unduly harm public confidence in the evenhanded administration of justice, to which we are dedicated.” They had to put this in a letter because I don’t think even they could have said it with a straight face.
That’s not the whole story, though. They’re holding back ten other DOJ employees --- for example, Weiss’ deputy Lesley Wolf, pending “investigative work” they say they need to do first.
Also, BUSINESS INSIDER, hardly a conservative publication, reports that according to three people directly familiar with Hunter’s own account of his “art” career, Hunter did learn the identity of at least a couple of his buyers. This is not supposed to happen. And one of those buyers happens to be someone who got a very nice favor from the White House. This is Los Angeles real estate investor, philanthropist and big-time Democrat donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who was appointed by President Biden to the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad.
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen who is entitled to have his own career as an artist,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams. Does he honestly think Hunter would be selling his paintings at those prices if he didn’t have the political connection?
We still don’t know if this buyer purchased the art before or after she was appointed. (Neither the White House nor Hunter’s counsel could provide INSIDER with an answer, and Naftali did not respond.) But professional ethics trainer --- and don’t we need more of those! --- Bruce Weinstein told INSIDER that “if you really want to choose the most ethically appropriate course of action that would not involve any conflict of interest, then you don’t buy the painting.”
But Hunter’s paintings are so beautiful! How could she resist?
https://www.businessinsider.com/hunter-biden-joe-artwork-berges-gallery-elizabeth-hirsh-naftali
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2023/7/huckabee-post-feel-good-story-of-the-day
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