By Mike Huckabee
January 24, 2022
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Good evening!
Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! Tonight's stories include:
- Bible Verse of the Day - John 16:33
- Two Reminders
- Is the Iran nuclear deal coming back?
- “How to deal with sadness and frustration under Biden,” by Jen Psaki
- Things are this bad
- Ainsworth on "wokeness": Why I no longer eat Peanut M&M's
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
P.S. To subscribe to the advertisement-free version of the newsletter (delivering the morning and evening editions together in one email), go here.
1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE
This verse is dedicated to Dena and Steve in Texas, both are in the ICU.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected]
2. Two Reminders:
Democrats, media propagandists and politicized DOJ agents may hope that their attempts to demonize or even jail people for daring to oppose leftist policies have scared Americans into silence. But there are still plenty who don’t get scared when someone tries to take away their rights. Instead, they get angry and they get loud. And Washington, DC, just got two reminders of that great American character trait.
It was a good weekend for freedom of speech and assembly in DC, first with the March For Life…
https://heavy.com/news/march-for-life-2022-crowd-photos/
and then with Sunday’s “Defeat The Mandates” rally to oppose draconian government vaccination mandates that violate Constitutional rights. Liberal media outlets tried to paint it as a “super-spreader event,” but they already told us that it’s okay to hold mass protest rallies during a pandemic, so their hypocrisy was also on the march.
https://www.westernjournal.com/people-bidens-inauguration-sea-patriots-floods-dc-anti-mandate-rally/
Bonus: watch a liberal “triggered” by the anti-mandate rally have an epic meltdown, screaming about white supremacy and demanding, “Stop invading our territory!” News flash: The nation’s capital is every American’s “territory.”
Both events drew huge crowds, despite the bitter cold. And separate Marches For Life were held in other cities all over America, drawing many more supporters nationwide. That jibes with a recent poll showing that 71% of Americans want more restrictions on abortion, not fewer.
As you can see in this article from the Catholic News Agency, a growing number of younger women are starting to turn against all the pro-abortion propaganda they’re deluged with.
The more we learn about the science of what happens during a baby’s development in the womb, and the more easily available contraceptives are, the more obvious the barbarism of killing babies (or “clumps of cells”) in the womb has become. That’s why the horrific reality of abortion has to be papered over with fuzzy euphemisms like “reproductive choice” or “women’s health care.” Never mind that the child gets no choice; and pro-abortion advocates fight laws to ensure that abortion clinics are medically safe and sanitary, claiming they limit access to “choice.” What choice, the choice to die of an infection or botched operation?
Our “Catholic” President and his Vice President marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with a statement reading, "We must ensure that our daughters and granddaughters have the same fundamental rights that their mothers and grandmothers fought for and won on this day, 49 years ago.” And the president of Planned Parenthood said she’s seeing “a level of rage that we could be living in a world six months from now — where our children have fewer rights than we have right now."
Don’t you love the utterly cluelessness of people who lobby for abortion by saying, “But think of the children!” We are thinking of the children, that’s why we oppose killing them.
If it were up to them, their daughters and granddaughters might not even exist because they wouldn’t have the fundamental right to live.
PS – Speaking of pro-abortion propaganda that insults people’s intelligence, check out the new cartoon that tries to accuse pro-life people of pushing a “big government” agenda. As a bonus, this includes a reminder of what would actually happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned, which is that it would go back to local governments, not the federal government. This is almost always wildly misrepresented (yet oddly, nobody seems to get banned from social media for pushing that misinformation.)
3. Is the Iran nuclear deal coming back?
The Biden White House is reportedly following Obama’s tradition of trying to do an end-run around the Constitution and Congress in order to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
Two top House Republicans claim that Russia proposed a secret agreement with Iran to lift some sanctions in exchange for a limited set of restrictions (or actually, promises of restrictions) on its nuclear program. Iran reportedly rejected it in hopes of getting a bigger, more lucrative deal. The Republicans say that the Biden Administration knew about the Russian deal, and that Russia was trying to take the lead in negotiating with Iran, and kept it a secret from Congress. They’re also obstructing more than a dozen congressional investigations into the issue.
For an Administration that claims to care so much about democracy, these people sure hate dealing with the people’s elected representatives.
4. “How to deal with sadness and frustration under Biden,” by Jen Psaki:
Things are going so badly under the Biden Administration that his own spokesperson, Jen Psaki, suggested that people just deal with their anger, sadness and frustration by going to a kickboxing class or having a margarita.
I’m a teetotaler, and I don’t think I’ll be taking up kickboxing at this stage of life. So I guess I’ll just deal with my frustration by continuing to report on this Administration and counting the minutes until November, when I hope and pray the elections go the way the latest polls suggest that they will.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-split-congressional-election
But as you can see in that Fox News poll, the Democrats still have the advantage on several issues, in some cases, inexplicably (people actually think they’re better at “uniting the country”?) As I always remind people, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day (or whenever election season starts in your state), so don’t get complacent. Work, donate, volunteer, and most importantly, vote!
Although I suspect poll-watching will also be pretty important this year.
PS – Speaking of polls, the latest NBC poll is so bad for the Democrats that even Chuck Todd had to admit that most Americans no longer see President Biden as competent and effective, a good commander-in-chief, or even “easygoing and likable.” That must've been painful for him to report.
5. Things are this bad:
The inimitable Kurt Schlichter examines the question, “How bad are things going under the Democrats?” To paraphrase Johnny Carson, “It’s SO bad that”…the Democrats are the only ones who don’t realize how bad it is.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/01/24/savor-the-democrats-humiliation-n2602215
6. Ainsworth on "wokeness": Why I no longer eat Peanut M&M's:
I wish to thank Mars --- the corporation, not the planet --- for instantly curing me of my addiction to Peanut M&M’s.
A little background: I try to avoid sugar as much as possible, just because I think it’s healthier to be on a low-carb diet. But one exception I’ve made was Peanut M&M’s. I rationalized that since the candy was just on the outside of each piece, surrounding a peanut, the protein sort of “canceled out” the sugar. And, to some extent, I was correct.
But lately at our house, we’ve been buying not just the little single-serving packages but the big bags, and my nightly ritual was to pour a pretty fair amount into a dish and polish them off after dinner, typically while watching Tucker Carlson. (Tucker can thank me for the plug later.) I even had a little ritual surrounding which colors would be eaten first, leaving one each of green, orange and blue before they were all gone. I am not kidding. And I thought I could stop any time, though I hadn’t yet tested that theory.
But a few days ago, a story came out about the little animated M&M’s mascots getting an “image makeover” for 2022. And my love affair with Peanut M&M’s was suddenly and absolutely over.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/20/mms-g-a-new-look-thats-representative-of-todays-society/
I don’t care if they want to change the look of their characters. But this is yet another example of tedious virtue signaling about “inclusiveness” brought about by the current climate of corporate fear, and I have had enough of it. Mars Inc. had already bowed to pressure and changed the name of its beloved Uncle Ben’s brand rice. The real Uncle Ben was not a slave or a servant –- from the best I can gather, he was a real rice farmer in the Houston area known for his superior product. The model for the picture is Frank Brown, head waiter at a high-end Chicago restaurant when he posed in 1947. But now, in Orwellian fashion, Mr. Brown’s image has been erased, a casualty of wokeness.
But back to M&M’s. From Mars Inc.’s own press release: “M&M’s, a proud part of Mars Incorporated, launches a global platform to increase a sense of belonging for ten million people by 2025, helping to connect and celebrate one another.” Good grief.
Their release announces “a global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong, and society is inclusive.” Skipping down a bit: “Studies show our desire to belong is as strong as our desire to be loved, and that desire is common for all people irrespective of culture, race, ethnicity, geography or location.” Skipping down a bit more, we see that there will even be more emphasis on the ampersand in M AND M’s, “to demonstrate how the brand aims to bring people together.”
Silly me, I thought we came together because of our mutual love of the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hand. This is too...heavy-handed.
They say they’ve even updated their “tone of voice” to be “more inclusive, welcoming and unifying, while remaining rooted to our signature jester wit and humor.” I apologize for not having picked up on M&M’s “signature jester wit” in the past. But do you know what destroys wit and humor with a sledgehammer? Fear of not being woke enough.
The Global Marketing Vice President refers to these as their new “evolved” characters, introduced as part of their effort “to create a world where society is inclusive.” Other aspects of their “global [there’s that word again] commitment” are “gender balanced leadership teams, running an independent annual diversity audit of its advertising by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media [I am not making this up], and its role as Vice Chair of the Unstereotype Alliance, part of UN Women, amongst others.”
“The world we want tomorrow starts with the way we do business today,” they say, and I agree with that statement. But this way of doing business is just pandering. It’s yet another case of a corporation drinking the Kool-Aid of wokeness, using the required buzzwords and professing the required intentions. It’s already become a cliché. But as fun as it would be to write a parody of this type of press release, why should I when it already reads like a parody of itself?
When you get down to the actual changes being made to these colorful candy characters, they mostly involve superficial characteristics such as footwear. (Come to think of it, that’s just about all they have to work with, style-wise, as M&M’s are otherwise sans clothing. But the brown one does wear glasses, I assume to make nearsighted people like me feel included!) The green M&M used to wear high-heeled boots, which have been exchanged for sneakers. The brown M&M also wore high heels, but they are lower heels now. Well, it’s about time those poor M&M’s got to be more comfortable! Perhaps their focus groups included an oversampling of podiatrists.
The red, yellow and orange M&M’s all sport shoelaces, with the laces left untied on the orange M&M, to make him/it more casual and “street.” I would have loved to be in on the creative session when they decided which color of candy would get which footwear: “Hey, we can’t put the untied shoelaces on the brown one!”)
Sorry to be flip, but you KNOW they talked about it.
Oh, and they’re doing away with prefixes that might identify gender. They want to “focus on their personalities, rather than their gender.” Maybe that’s why high heels were done away with. But what if a male M&M identified as female, and wanted high heels? Somebody has to think about these things!
As reported in the New York Post, “The characters are changing up their looks for ‘a fresh, modern take’ on their style and ‘more nuanced personalities to underscore the importance of self-expression and power of community through storytelling’...adding that today’s ‘more dynamic, progressive world’ would be reflected in the changes.”
They now have “personalities and backstories...representative of today’s society.” Backstories, really? They’re M&M’s.
As the Gov. said when we brought you this story last week, M&M’s were already teaching the lesson that whatever colors we are on the outside, we’re the same on the inside. I’ve always thought that was a great message, but right now, it’s not the precise message that everyone in business must –- repeat, MUST –- convey. So apparently Mars is the latest corporation to be assimilated, like pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” They’ve all been frightened by the “progressive” (radical) left into parroting the same mandatory messages in the mandatory vocabulary. They think they have to do this to bring their product up to date, but to me it already seems old, lame, dated –- so 2021.
And, you know what? I’ve completely lost my taste for M&M’s. So, thank you, Mars Incorporated, for that.
Laura Ainsworth is a staff-writer at MikeHuckabee.com. You can read more of her work here.
7. I Just Wanted To Say:
Thank you for reading the Evening Edition.
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