Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a great op-ed that coined the term “kamikaze Democrats” to describe House Democrats who let Nancy Pelosi bully them into voting for a massive, destructive, inflationary boondoggle bill that can’t even muster enough support to pass a Democrat Senate. The WSJ predicts that, just as she did with Obamacare, Pelosi has set up her fellow party members for slaughter in the next election.

That editorial was behind a paywall, but now you can read it at the NRCC’s website. And you should.

https://www.nrcc.org/2021/11/23/wsj-the-kamikaze-democrats/

I expect Democrats to cry that “kamikaze Democrats” is racist in a futile attempt to keep that perfect term from sticking.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, her office denied a claim that she and her husband bought a $25 million mansion in Florida. But if that bill dies in the Senate, and the tax cuts for blue state millionaires die with it, she might want to look hard at moving to Florida. After all, everyone else in San Francisco who can afford a U-Haul truck is moving to either Florida or Texas, and she definitely wouldn’t fit in in Texas.

Mike Huckabee

One of the many things that separate humans from animals is that we are supposedly capable of learning from the mistakes of others. Going by that yardstick, I have to assume that leftist DA’s who insist on letting criminals out of jail over and over, even as it continues to yield tragic results all around them, are about as smart as chimps in suits. Now, it's already happened again.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-city-parolee-shoots-boy-neck-guns

How many times do we have to hear some grieving person say, “This shouldn’t have happened” before the people responsible for it happening actually stop letting it happen?

On that subject, the Biden White House is standing by its stance to end cash bail, claiming that whether a suspect is released from jail should depend not on how much bail they can afford but how much of a threat they pose to society.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-end-cash-bail-waukesha-parade-attack

I might be willing to entertain that argument if any of these people could show me any evidence that they are at all capable of determining how much of a threat individual suspects pose. The Waukesha D.A. couldn’t even tell that the thug with a yard-long record of violent crimes who was just arrested for trying to run over his girlfriend shouldn’t be turned loose.

Mike Huckabee

The International Olympic Committee has issued a new ruling that allows nations to send any athlete who claims to “identify” as female to compete in all women’s sports, effectively spelling the end of women’s Olympic sports.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/24/new-olympic-committee-rules-essentially-end-womens-sports/

This is the same policy that the Biden Administration is pushing on schools and destroying girls’ sports, and after he won office largely thanks to women’s votes. It’s one of many examples of how this Administration prioritizes LGBTQ++++ rights over women’s rights.

Do you know what else this Administration prioritizes over women’s rights? Placating China, which has launched a crackdown on the #MeToo movement and is targeting and silencing not just tennis star Peng Shuai but many other women who’ve dared to expose powerful men who sexually abused them.

https://whdh.com/news/its-not-just-peng-china-is-cracking-down-on-metoo-movement/

I think this cartoon sums it up chillingly well.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/487273/

Mike Huckabee

Congratulations to President Biden for finally getting a couple of things right. Monday, he angered “progressives” such as Elizabeth Warren by renominating Trump appointee Jerome Powell to another term as Federal Reserve Chair. Lael Brainard, whom the leftists wanted in charge, was nominated for Vice Chair.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-sparks-anger-left-reappointing-trump-nominee-key-position/

In a statement, Biden said, “I’m confident that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard’s focus on keeping inflation low, prices stable and delivering full employment will make our economy stronger than ever before.”

Warren railed that Powell was a “dangerous” choice because he wouldn’t prioritize such burning issues as “climate mitigation.” Most financial analysts breathed a sigh of relief, however, since they’d rather see the Fed concentrate on reducing inflation and keeping the economy and the dollar healthy, rather than trying to change the weather.

The other move by Biden that suggests he caught a fleeting grip on reality was his decision to release 50 million gallons of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices, a move also being taken by other nations.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-strategic-petroleum-reserve-release-gas-price-spike

Don’t get me wrong: this is hardly a long-term solution. It’s only about a three-day supply for America. It won’t solve the problem of how to get a steady supply to fill our needs when the President and his Party are waging war on our domestic fuel industry. And as Joe Cunningham at Redstate.com suggests, they see this as just a mollifying stopgap while they force Americans to “transition” to unreliable and expensive green energy sources that can’t meet demand.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/11/23/the-biden-administration-prepares-to-make-the-oil-crisis-worse-on-purpose-n480453

And former President Trump slammed the move because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is supposed to be for national emergencies, not temporary relief from the bad consequences of your own stupid policies.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/11/23/trump-slams-biden-for-tapping-the-strategic-oil-reserve-n2599532

Many others agreed.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/11/23/biden-to-release-oil-from-strategic-reserve-n2599531

But at least Biden did show signs of understanding, even if only for a day, that there is a relationship between the supply of oil and gas and the price of oil and gas. It may be a small victory, but I’ll take miracles wherever I can find them these days.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

As irresponsible politicians, activists, celebrities and “journalists” continue trying to gin up riots over the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict while repeating debunked lies about the case, one of the more aggravating clichés to me is their claim that in our “racist system,” a young black man who shot someone would never be acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

https://www.westernjournal.com/black-man-acquitted-self-defense-day-rittenhouse-busts-myth-unjust-justice-system/

I guess they were so preoccupied ranting angrily and ignorantly that they failed to notice that on the exact same day that Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury of his peers, a verdict came in on the case of Andrew Coffee IV in Gifford, Florida (note: a red state.) Coffee was charged with the murder of his girlfriend Alteria Woods and the attempted murder of four sheriff’s deputies after they staged a raid of his home in the middle of the night. Police claim they announced their presence, but Coffee claimed he was asleep, he thought a flash-bang set off by deputies was gunfire by home invaders, and he grabbed his gun and fired. Deputies returned fire.

Coffee’s attorneys argued that he believed he was acting in self-defense, and the jury agreed, acquitting him on five of the six charges. He was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a gun, but that was hard to argue with. Unlike Rittenhouse, who, despite the many false claims of his critics, did have a legal right to carry the gun and didn’t take it across state lines (Jesse Watters made the good point that liberals don’t seem to care at all about our national borders, but they seem obsessed with the sanctity of the Wisconsin state line.)

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/486902/

So there’s an example of how the legal system in America really operates, when it operates fairly and isn’t tainted by politics and mob threats. Anyone, regardless of race, can assert their right to fire a gun in self-defense (in this case, even at police officers), and if a jury of his fellow citizens who examine all the testimony and evidence agrees, then he’s acquitted. You can agree or disagree with any particular trial outcome, but don’t attack the system unless you can come up with a better one.

Mike Huckabee

When we talk here about so-called fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact, we typically put quotations around the word “fact.” That’s because when it comes to politics, these websites often select their “facts” carefully, leaving out or shading information that is inconvenient, and sometimes even manufacturing it as needed –- all while accusing others of doing just that –- to “debunk” a claim and support a different narrative. When they can’t make that happen, they’ll sometimes borrow a skill often used in court or on the debate stage: change the original assertion so they can argue against their preferred one instead.

The people who work this way are not fact-checkers but advocates, or, to use the vernacular, hacks.

PolitiFact, created in 2008 to cover that year’s presidential election, became part of the Poynter Institute in 2018. The Poynter Institute trains journalists –- yes, believe it or not, they get training! –- and we would venture to say that the state of journalism today does not speak well of their performance in this area. The line between news reporting and opinion writing is now as meaningless as the border between Mexico and Texas.

The Poynter Institute also includes the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which is “dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide.”

https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/

More than 60 fact-checking organizations on six continents participate in IFCN’s work and sharing of “best practices,” and more than 30 organizations have passed the vetting process to become signatories to its Code of Principles for Fact-Checkers. Given some of the fact-checks we’ve seen from PolitiFact, that is indeed a scary thought.

Oh, but wait –- they’ve won the Pulitzer. Yes, and so did The New York Times and the Washington Post for their wildly inaccurate coverage of Trump-Russian “collusion” fantasies. I guess if those newspapers can win a Pulitzer for their misreporting and the Academy Award for Best Original Song can go to “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp,” then this bunch can have a Pulitzer, too.

“Each year, Poynter trains over 100,000 journalists from more than 70 countries in person and online...in virtually every country in the world.” That should keep you up at night. They’re very proud of their reputation, they say. A few of the news organizations that hire Poynter include National Public Radio, NBC News, Newsweek, and the Washington Post.

Click on “Support for Content & Training to Strengthen Media Literacy,” and you’ll find such groups as The Democracy Fund, Facebook (“Helping MediaWise and PolitiFact in the fight against mis- and disinformation to help people sort fact from fiction online”), Google, Microsoft, and TikTok (“Helping PolitiFact continue to fact-check elected officials and hold government officials accountable”).

https://www.poynter.org/poynter-thought-leader/

“Founded in 1975,” their website says, “Poynter is an inspirational place but also a practical one, connecting the varied crafts of journalism to its higher mission and purpose. From person-to-person coaching and intensive hands-on seminars to interactive online courses and media reporting, Poynter helps journalists sharpen skills and elevate storytelling throughout their careers.” They “explore the intersection of journalism, technology and the public interest.”

The reason why we wanted to examine this is that Dan Bongino called attention to a so-called fact-check from Politifact that is really quite shameful, supposedly debunking something President Trump said in a media briefing on August 31, 2020, soon after Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested for killing two and injuring one in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Their verdict: “Trump paints false picture of Kyle Rittenhouse shootings ahead of Kenosha visit.”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/01/donald-trump/trump-paints-false-picture-kyle-rittenhouse-shooti/

Trump had said the video showed Rittenhouse “was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like...fell, and then they very violently attacked him.”

Now, if you watched the trial this month, you saw that video over and over, many times. It showed that Rittenhouse was trying to get away from them, fell, and then they very violently attacked him.

Yes, PolitiFact said, Rittenhouse “tripped and fell as a group of people pursued him on the night he allegedly killed two protesters and injured a third.” But, they said, Trump left out “vital context”: that “Rittenhouse ran away after PROSECUTORS SAY [emphasis mine] he had already shot and killed someone.”

“The President correctly describes some minor details about that night,” PolitiFact said. “But, overall, his comments grossly mischaracterize what happened –- leaving out that by the time of the events he described, prosecutors say Rittenhouse had already shot and killed a man.”

What??

PolitiFact also concluded that since Rittenhouse had already been arrested and charged with homicide, Trump was wrong to say the matter was “under investigation.” Note: an incident doesn’t stop being investigated just because charges have been filed.

“Rittenhouse did fall as a crowd followed him, but Trump’s comments leave an incendiary and false picture,” PolitiFact said. “By the time he fell, according to criminal charges, Rittenhouse had already shot and killed one man that night. We rate [Trump’s] claim FALSE.”

Well, because they accepted as true the prosecutor’s version of events, which turned out to be false, we rate PolitiFact’s fact-checking FALSE, and it’s not the first time. How wonderful that the Poynter Institute is training fact-checkers all over the world, with the help of Facebook and TikTok.

Derek Hunter at Townhall has a great opinion piece --- notice we say “opinion” --- about the outrageous media misconduct concerning the Rittenhouse case.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/11/21/a-special-kind-of-stupid-media-and-the-kyle-rittenhouse-case-n2599418

As a palate-cleanser, we’d like to show you a case in which a conservative site got the fact-checking right in debunking a story, even though that story might have fed a more conservative narrative.

https://www.conservativereview.com/fact-check-was-a-woman-kicked-out-of-a-hockey-game-for-wearing-a-lets-go-brandon-shirt

A video on Facebook had showed what appeared to be a woman being kicked out of a Wichita Thunder hockey game on November 5 for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt.

“Check Your Fact” at Conservative Review looked into this and learned that the woman was escorted out of the arena by security after “she was using extremely profane language and gestures toward our staff and those around her,” according to a statement from the team. She was part of a group who were all wearing “Brandon” shirts, and she was the only one who had to leave.

This fact-check was objective, reasonable, non-political, “just the facts.” Maybe contributor Mecca Fowler, who wrote it, should be the one training all those legions of fact-checkers around the world, This example shows that at least somebody knows how to do it right.

Mike Huckabee

Please join us in praying for the victims and their families in Sunday’s horrific tragedy in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, where someone drove a red SUV at high speed through a police line and plowed into a Christmas parade. At least five people are known dead at this writing, and more than 40 injured, including children. This link from Fox News will have continually updated information:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/wisconsin-waukesha-suv-plows-crowd-christmas-parade

Police have arrested a “person of interest.” I won’t give his name until it’s more official, but he’s a career criminal and registered sex offender with a history of resisting arrest, obstruction, battery, statutory sexual seduction, strangulation and suffocation, property destruction, illegal firearm possession, drug related charges, domestic violence and bail jumping. Despite that record, he was just released from jail two days ago on three misdemeanor and two felony charges after posting cash bail of just $1,000.

https://www.westernjournal.com/christmas-parade-massacre-suspect-reportedly-identified/

There were a number of disgusting comments from the left on social media, trying to tie the assault to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. It takes an awful lot of “not raised right” to use something like this to try to score cheap political points, but that’s how badly social media has eroded basic human decency. Many of the tweets were deleted after the arrest came, and the truth didn’t appear to be helpful to their cause at all. Sadly, some didn’t even have enough shreds of decency left to realize how awful they were being.

https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021/11/21/lowlife-cbs-6-alum-thinks-horrific-incident-at-waukesha-wi-christmas-parade-is-the-perfect-opportunity-to-make-garbage-takes-about-rittenhouse/

While we pray for the victims, we should also pray for a moral reawakening as well.

Mike Huckabee

Since the not guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse was announced, it’s been both instructive and disheartening to see how many political leaders and media figures have proven violently hostile to the rule of law and the rights of due process. They’re the ones whose false reporting and inflammatory language fueled another night of violent protests, riots (in Portland, naturally) and looting. Because nothing says, “I disapprove of the verdict in a trial I didn’t watch in Kenosha, Wisconsin,” like looting a Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/rittenhouse-trial-jury

Starting at the top: President Biden said he didn’t watch the trial, but “the jury system works and we have to abide by it.” The White House later released a statement reading, “While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken… I urge everyone to express their views peacefully, consistent with the rule of law. Violence and destruction of property have no place in our democracy.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-issues-hypocritical-statement-rittenhouse/

That’s pretty good, possibly the most presidential statement he’s ever made – except for the part about him feeling angry and concerned, especially since he just admitted he hadn’t watched the trial. It’s reminiscent of his previous false accusation that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist, which helped taint the jury pool. As a chief executive, whether President or Governor, it’s your duty to support the jury system and the rule of law, not try to undermine the public’s faith in it with your own uninformed opinions.

But Biden was practically Abe Lincoln compared to his fellow Democrats. We had Rep. Jerrold Nadler, repeating debunked claims on Twitter and calling for the politicized, weaponized DOJ to subject Rittenhouse to double jeopardy. He thinks a federal civil rights prosecution is in order, since Rittenhouse infringed on the First Amendment protest rights of the people he shot. Note to Nadler: the First Amendment doesn’t give you a right to physically assault someone or point a Glock at his head during a protest. But the Second Amendment gives you the right to use a gun to stop it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/alert-rittenhouse-not-guilty-verdict-overturned-jerry-nadler-sets-stage/

There were also the many Hollywood celebrities and sports stars taking to Twitter to repeat debunked MSNBC talking points and condemn the jury and the verdict. Because how could jurors who’d spent over a week listening to the testimony and examining all the evidence, then days longer deliberating over it, possibly know more about this case than people who heard about it from the media and Twitter?

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/486464/

It’s no surprise that some of the most uninformed, rabble-rousing comments came from America’s worst mayor, worst Governor and worst ex-Governor: Bill DeBlasio, Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, the Three Stooges of jurisprudence.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/11/19/mainstream-media-convicted-on-all-counts-of-lying-about-kyle-rittenhouse-n1534559

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2021/11/19/sit-down-calif-gov-newsom-joins-lefts-gaslighting-spin-fest-after-rittenhouse-verdict-hint-its-bs/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/11/19/andrew-cuomos-ominous-reaction-to-the-rittenhouse-verdict-n1534730

As Robert Spencer at PJ Media points out about Cuomo, a man who was forced out of office after trying to cover up thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes due to policies he imposed while allegedly sexually molesting multiple female staffers has no business calling a legitimate jury verdict a “stain on America.” All of these men, who hold (or held) top leadership positions that require them to defend and protect the Constitution and the rule of law used this occasion to stain themselves by trashing those concepts, to repeat claims that anyone who followed the trial knows were exposed as lies, and to do so knowing full well they were encouraging more mob violence.

How dare they claim this verdict encourages vigilante justice? Rittenhouse was arrested, given a trial in front of a jury of his peers (a jury taken from a pool so tainted by liberal media misinformation that two-thirds of them came to court convinced he was guilty), and yet was still found innocent. So they’re now ginning up mob violence. Who’s promoting vigilante justice again?

While it was obvious before now that none of these men should be in any position of power, this should draw a big red line under it. But perhaps even worse was the condemnation of the verdict (complete with more repeating of media falsehoods) by the ACLU.

https://reason.com/2021/11/19/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-acquitted-aclu-media-liberals/

This is an organization supposedly created to defend the Constitutional rights of every American, yet they’re siding against Rittenhouse’s now-jury-affirmed right to self-defense and in favor of a prosecution that repeatedly broke the rules in an attempt to railroad him into prison, including hiding evidence from the defense and violating Rittenhouse’s Fifth Amendment rights. And that’s just the tip of the corruption iceberg. Here’s some of what the ACLU is actually defending.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/11/19/how-unethical-were-the-prosecutors-trying-to-put-kyle-rittenhouse-in-prison-let-us-count-the-ways-n1533326

Finally, the comments that tick me off the most are the ones that try to sow more riots and racial division by claiming the jury was protecting “white supremacy” (FYI: everyone involved was white) or that Republicans who sided with Rittenhouse would never have defended the rights of a black teenager in the same position.

Excuse me? I’ve publicly defended the due process rights and presumption of innocence even for Andrew Cuomo, and believe me, that’s not easy! Like most Republicans, I absolutely believe that all law-abiding Americans of all races have fundamental rights to trials by jury, to own legal firearms and to use them responsibly to defend themselves and their families from attackers. That includes violent radicals who were attacking black people and burning down black neighborhoods during the 2020 riots that Democrats approved of. These were the same anarchists Democrat officials refused to prosecute and who were bailed out of jail by donations from the staff of our current Vice President.

I would remind these race-baiters that in an earlier time, other Democrat radicals like the KKK were also burning black neighborhoods, and Democrat public officials also refused to provide protection. Who stood up for black people’s right to defend themselves with firearms? The NRA.

Mike Huckabee

The Washington Post has added editors' notes to 14 stories dating back over several years to correct its false reporting on the Trump/Russiagate “scandal” that has now been revealed to be a politically-motivated hoax (FYI: we don’t have to do that because we smelled a politically-motivated hoax from day one.)

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-corrections-steele-dossier

I would call that “a good start,” but it’s not even that. It’s just a start. A good start would be issuing an abject apology for misleading readers and undermining Trump’s Presidency, then firing all the reporters who fell for that garbage, and returning the bogus (and no doubt also politically-motivated) Pulitzer Prize the paper won for it.

Speaking of that, I’ll link again to this article by Julie Kelly at American Greatness, demanding the same thing.?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/15/retract-every-russian-collusion-story-and-fire-everyone-who-wrote-them/

And in addition to the corrections, apologies and firings over Russiagate and every other hoax they’ve pushed in recent years, if media outlets ever want to start stitching their shredded reputations back together, they should all immediately cease acting like Biden PR agents and DNC groupies and start behaving like actual reporters again. I know they didn’t learn how in “journalism” school or on the job, but maybe they could watch a few old movies on TCM and learn how.

Mike Huckabee

In breaking news Friday afternoon, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges. No one can say these jurors didn't do their duty and carefully consider all the evidence before rendering a verdict, as it took them four days of deliberation under tremendous psychological pressure. We'll have a roundup of commentary and our own analysis over the weekend. Meanwhile, pray for peace in Kenosha, Wisconsin, tonight.

Prior to the verdict being announced, the two biggest developments had to do, as is typical of this case, not with justice but with media malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct. First, the judge barred anyone from NBC or MSNBC from the building after a freelancer working for NBC was stopped for running a red light and claimed he was trying to keep up with the sealed juror bus. He said an NBC News booker in New York had assigned him to follow the jury bus, possibly in hopes of booking interviews with jurors whose identities are being shielded for their own protection from mob threats.

https://www.westernjournal.com/rittenhouse-judge-bans-msnbc-courthouse-freelancer-follows-juror-bus/

NBC released a statement reading, “While the traffic violation took place near the jury van, the freelancer never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations, and never photographed or intended to photograph them. We regret the incident and will fully cooperate with the authorities on any investigation.”

Fine, but you’ll be doing it from outside the courthouse, where you belong. Considering what a huge role MSNBC has played in promoting indendiary false information about this case from day one, I wouldn’t blame the judge for banning them from Kenosha permanently. I doubt that any locals would complain.

The story involving more possible prosecutorial misconduct relates to a witness identified only as “Jump Kick Man.” He’s a man in white pants seen in a video running up and drop-kicking Rittenhouse as he was running away, which allowed the two men to catch him and attack him, and get shot.

It was reported that a man named Maurice Freeland was “Drop Kick Man,” and that he’d offered to testify for the prosecution. They turned him down, ostensibly because they couldn’t positively identify him, but critics note that it might have hurt their case because Freeland is a convicted felon with a violent criminal record who was on probation. The misconduct charge could arise from the prosecution failing to inform the defense about Freeland, whom they might have wanted to call as a defense witness.

https://www.westernjournal.com/key-rittenhouse-witness-development-identity-man-kicked-kyle-face-comes-light-report/

And as long as we’re rightfully bashing the prosecution, they also told the jury that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have used a gun to stop someone who was beating him over the head with a skateboard because “Nobody’s ever died as a result of being hit with a skateboard.” Putting aside the fact that it’s rather hard to ponder that question when you’re being HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A SKATEBOARD, Todd Starnes did some research. He came up with numerous news stories about people being beaten to death or nearly to death with skateboards.

https://www.toddstarnes.com/show/starnes-debunks-rittenhouse-prosecutors-claim-nobodys-died-from-skateboard/

Finally, as we wait, please read this article by Bari Weiss, who was driven out of the New York Times for daring to stand up for free expression and against the paper’s capitulation to woke Twitter mobs.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-medias-verdict-on-kyle-rittenhouse

It’s her own confession of how she was misled by the media into believing a long list of things about Rittenhouse and this case that the trial has exposed as complete lies. She goes through those lies one by one, and then gives us specific examples of the politicians and media figures who spread them. It’s a great thing to bookmark in case you ever experience a weak moment and start to trust any liberal media outlet again.

Mike Huckabee

As of this writing on Friday morning, the House just passed the massive $1.75 trillion “Build Back Bankruptcy” bill, 220-213.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/spending-bill-vote

I’ll spare you all the usual balloon juice from Nancy Pelosi about the wondrous, historic things it will do for Americans once the people who voted for it find out what’s actually in it, because now it goes back to the Senate where the real fight recommences. The Dems have tortured the term “reconciliation bill” to try to turn a massive piece of transformative leftwing government bloat into a simple budget bill that isn’t subject to a filibuster. The parliamentarian should have shut that garbage down from day one. Now, we have to rely on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to protect America. If it does pass in some form, it will go back to the House again.

While House Democrats voting to spend trillions we don’t have and greatly expand government power was never really in doubt, there were a couple of interesting side notes to the vote. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy deserves a golden box of Sucrets as an award for his record-setting 8-hour, 32-minute speech, ripping this monstrosity to shreds.

He called it “the single most reckless and irresponsible spending bill in our nation’s history,” one that will worsen inflation, harm the long term economy and introduce a large degree of socialism into America. He also called the Democrats “out of touch” with the needs and wishes of ordinary Americans, adding, "Never in American history has so much been spent at one time. Never in American history will so many taxes be raised and so much borrowing be needed to pay for all this reckless spending."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/mccarthy-biden-spending-bill-most-reckless-legislation-us-history

All of that is true, and of course, the Democrats voted for it anyway. But while you can’t talk sense into some people, you can accomplish what McCarthy did: he talked so long that the Democrats went home, blocking them from passing this in the dead of night, as they usually do with unpopular, radical spending bills, and forcing them to vote on record in the bright light of morning when everyone was watching. That will make it much easier to remember this day when you go into the polling places next November.

Some other interesting gamesmanship came from the report on the cost of the bill from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats loudly touted an early leak claiming the CBO found that the bill would reduce the deficit. But it turned out that was just about the part that raises taxes. When the full CBO report came out and said it would add $367 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, not counting the potential revenues from a sure-to-be-wildly-popular IRS crackdown on taxpayers, the Dems turned on a dime and started dismissing the CBO’s assessment as meaningless.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/cbo-biden-spending-bill-add-367b-deficit-irs-tax-enforcement-plan

The CBO was rightly skeptical of claims that all the new taxes and IRS crackdowns in the bill would raise taxes enough to pay for it, or that much of the cost would be offset by eliminating waste and fraud. Rich people can always find ways to avoid high taxes, and those are usually ways that involve pulling income out of productive, job-creating investments which depresses economic growth so that tax revenues fall across the board.

As for “eliminating waste and fraud,” that’s hilarious! How many times have politicians dangled that one in front of us over the years, like Lucy fooling Charlie Brown into trying to kick that football one more time (he should’ve kicked Lucy instead, the way we should kick politicians out of office who promise to eliminate waste and fraud and then go to DC and vote for more of it.)

Is there anyone dumb enough to believe that Democrats will pay for trillions in new spending by “eliminating waste and fraud”? I hear that these days, when you join the Democratic Party, you get a membership card, an autographed picture of AOC and a T-Shirt that says “I (Heart) Waste and Fraud.”

Mike Huckabee

On the heels of a new report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz saying the “Justice” Department has a problem with public trust and the perception that they are partisan –- surprise! –- the FBI has just taken actions in Mesa County, Colorado, that reinforce that view.

In what is likely the most outrageous and underreported story of the week, the FBI conducted simultaneous early-morning raids Tuesday on at least four people, including Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters –- an outspoken critic of the 2020 election –- and three of her associates. These heavy-handed raids against nonviolent people involved armed agents in combat militia-style gear, the use of handcuffs, and, in at least one case, a battering ram.

One reason for the media’s hesitance to cover this might be that it emerged via the TV channel of “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who is generally seen in the media as having cooties and absolutely will not be taken seriously no matter how valid a story he breaks. He did interviews with two of the women, Peters and “America’s Mom” Sheronna Bishop. Lindell already knew both of them, as they had participated in his on-air election integrity symposium in August and had reportedly even flown in on his private plane.

The first write-up we saw in print media was at conservative WVW Broadcast Network, which told the story of a raid conducted early Tuesday morning at the home of Bishop, a concerned Christian mom who has become an activist on issues such as Critical Race Theory and forced masking in schools. (She’s homeschooling her kids.) When we first read about this, we suspected the raid on her house probably had something to do with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dictate that parents who get angry at school board meetings should be dealt with like domestic terrorists. (Garland denied this policy before Congress, but we now know he was not being truthful.)

https://www.worldviewweekend.com/news/article/americas-first-mom-raided-fbi-october-4th-doj-memorandum-she-fought-against-voter

But the target on her back seems to have more to do with her association with Peters, who is on extremely bad terms with Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Peters has apparently been under investigation over allegations of leaking election data, and the search warrant authorized confiscation of her phones and cyber devices.

Brannon Howse conducted the TV interview with Peters on Tuesday, with additional guest cybersecurity expert Sean Smith. In the interview, she explains about the four raids carried out that morning on her and “some of her friends,” saying that one of them indeed had involved a battering ram. Apparently that was the raid at Bishop’s house; Bishop has said her front door was broken down.

Peters said at the time of this interview that the affidavit for her search was still sealed and that she didn’t know what the “probable cause” was. Here’s the interview in full.

Exclusive: FBI Raids Home of County Clerk Tina Peters in Attempt to Cover Up Voter Crimes? | Frank Speech the Home of Free Speech

(SIDE NOTE: At about 38:30 in this video, there’s a phenomenal 6-minute clip of several former FBI agents who are appalled at this new abuse-of-force approach by the FBI against non-violent targets such as Roger Stone. One of them said that if he’d been on a S.W.A.T. team and ordered to do that raid at Stone’s house, he would have refused. That’s the kind of FBI agents we need; too bad so many of them are of the generation that's now retiring from the Bureau.)

Anyway, Peters says that since she started looking into the results of the 2020 election in Mesa County --- she claims that 29,000 election records were illegally deleted --- she's been attacked "on every front" and is facing civil litigation and huge legal bills. She says this raid is obviously an intimidation tactic aimed at the larger community.

In Bishop’s interview with Howse, which debuted Thursday on Lindell TV, she says the agents were likewise armed and in combat gear, that they treated her and her daughters roughly and that she was handcuffed for about 30 minutes. (Peters was not handcuffed.) The agents were in Bishop’s house for about three hours.

Bishop is a former campaign manager for conservative Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert. She describes herself as a “very strong supporter” of Peters.

In the interview, she reads from the search warrant, which authorized them to confiscate her phones and other cyber equipment, alleging that she caused "intentional damage of a protected computer" --- "I have no contact with a computer," she says --- "wire fraud" --- "they couldn't explain to me what that even meant" -- and "conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer and/or commit wire fraud." It also listed the names of the others who were being searched, including Peters. She says all she has done is exercise her First Amendment freedom to be an advocate for Peters, whom she claims has "hard evidence" about Colorado officials and Dominion Voting Systems, and that they’re trying to make her go away and be quiet. She says officials who are "running Colorado" are criminalizing free speech.

She says she has made herself completely available to officials and that there was no reason other than intimidation for them to treat her and her family this way.

Here’s the link to her TV interview.

https://home.frankspeech.com/tv/video/exclusive-colorado-mom-becomes-first-parent-have-her-door-broken-down-doj-and-fbi-target

We’ve seen a few reports of the raids in mainstream media, but they focus not on the violation of civil liberties –- since when do Trump supporters have civil liberties? –- but on allegations that Mesa County election results were allegedly leaked to some “QAnon conspiracy theorists.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lauren-boeberts-ex-manager-sherronna-bishop-also-targeted-in-fbi-raid-on-maga-election-clerk-tina-peters

It’s impossible to sort out all the accusations and counter-accusations going on in Mesa County. We just find it interesting that this angle from THE DAILY BEAST doesn’t address the FBI’s intimidating use of force against non-violent targets. The DB also reflexively calls the hypothesis that the 2020 election was stolen “a baseless idea.” That is wrong; it’s not proven, but it’s certainly not baseless.

Another outlet, TALKING POINTS MEMO, describes Peters as “a Trumpy Colorado county clerk already under investigation” and identifies the QAnon personality as Ron Watkins, “a right-wing influencer that many believe to be behind the posts that spurred the QAnon conspiracy theory,” according to reporter Matt Shuham. The armed raids are characterized by a Mesa County spokesperson as “four federally court-authorized operations into potential criminal activity.” All documents related to these “operations” are apparently still sealed.

We can’t say this investigation is being carried out to take focus off what Peters might have FOUND regarding the voting machine data. But we can’t say it isn’t, either.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/feds-raid-home-of-trumpy-colorado-clerk-under-scrutiny-after-election-data-leak

That’s the story so far. We’ll leave you with an outstanding companion piece by Victor Davis Hanson called “Can the FBI Be Salvaged?” that lists many familiar examples of the FBI overstepping, lying, leaking, colluding, hushing-up, setting-up, intimidating, witch-hunting, infiltrating, improperly surveilling, abusing, withholding evidence and more.

He should add these armed raids in Mesa County to his list.

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2021/11/18/can-the-fbi-be-salvaged-n2599279

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Sometimes former President Trump points us to some really interesting stories that we might otherwise have missed. In an email bulletin Tuesday from his Save America PAC, he linked to an article by former CIA operations officer and security expert Charles “Sam” Faddis at a website called "AND –- Expert Analysis and Commentary." The case Faddis analyzes, filed in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, deals with the constitutionality of a change in Pennsylvania election law signed by Gov. Tom Wolf on October 31, 2019.

https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/08/02/exclusive-did-pennsylvanias-legislature-violate-the-state-constitution-is-no-excuse-mail-in-voting-illegal-in-pennsylvania

“The results of the suit [Doug McLinko vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of State and Veronica Degraffenreid],” Faddis says, “could have major implications for future elections and potentially for ongoing efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.” The date for a hearing hasn’t been set yet, but “those interested in the question of election integrity will be watching for that news with intense interest.”

Apparently, Degraffenreid is named in the suit because at the time of the election, she was working in the Pennsylvania Department of State as the Special Advisor on Election Modernization. Perhaps she was specifically involved in the push to get mail-in voting passed for 2020, but we have no details on that. She is now acting Secretary of the Commonwealth and oversees elections. She previously served in North Carolina as Director of Election Operations and, going back further, worked for almost ten years in the North Carolina Department of Justice, specializing in “redistricting and election-related litigation.”

https://www.dos.pa.gov/about-us/Pages/Secretary-of-the-Commonwealth.aspx

As Faddis describes it, this is a very straightforward, narrowly focused case that was brought by someone who clearly has legal standing –- as you will see –- Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko, a member of the Bradford County Board of Elections. The plaintiff says that when the Pennsylvania legislature passed “Act 77” in 2019 and went to “no excuse” mail-in voting, they violated the state constitution, which specifies four instances when absentee voting is allowed:

a. “When they are absent from their residence on the election day because of business.”

b. “[When they are] unable to attend in person because of illness or disability.”

c. “[When they are] unable to attend because of the observances of a religious holiday.”

d. “[When they are] unable to vote because of election day duties.”

But go online, and the State of Pennsylvania says this: “Any qualified voter may apply for a mail-in ballot. You may simply request this ballot without a reason.” And according to Act 77, they can.

https://www.vote.pa.gov/Voting-in-PA/Pages/Mail-and-Absentee-Ballot.aspx

They do at least require a form of I.D. or the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court looked at another case and declared an earlier version of “no-excuse” mail-in voting passed by the state legislature in 1923 unconstitutional under Pennsylvania law. So why did the present-day legislature think it was permissible for them to put one in place in 2019? A court may determine that they have...NO EXCUSE.

If that’s the case, it means that to change from in-person to “no-excuse” mail-in voting, they would have had to amend their state constitution. But that’s a process that takes time, and they bypassed that one little inconvenience.

So, moving to the all-important question of “standing” to bring this suit, how is McLinko affected by this law? “As a member of the Board of Elections,” the suit reads, “McLinko must oversee the lawful administration of all aspects of elections, including voter registration, the voting process, and tabulation of votes. He must also certify the results of all primary and general elections in the county to the Secretary of State.” He says that because the move to mail-in voting was done unconstitutionally, he was being required by the state to “act unlawfully.”

One would think that if anyone had standing to challenge the constitutionality of state election law, it would be him.

As Faddis points out, this suit has nothing to do with such allegations as hacked voting machines or ballot stuffing, though we would point out that any expansion of mail-in voting certainly encourages the latter.

Finally, what is the plaintiff asking for? He requests a declaratory judgment saying that Act 77 violates the state constitution and is void –- as in, a legal nullity –- and calls for “any and all other appropriate relief.” Faddis explains to us non-attorneys that by implication, any action taken on the basis of this law would be a nullity as well.

Certainly, the state would have to return to in-person voting. Considering the possible effect this might have on changes to election law made (unconstitutionally) in other states, we’d bet that Marc Elias and his team of lawyers are on it like white on rice. As Faddis writes, “The implications for the November 2020 election remain unclear.”

The “fact”-checkers at POLITIFACT took a look at this issue --- not the specific case brought by McLinko but about what Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has said about Act 77 --- and rated his claim about the law’s unconstitutionality “mostly false.” They say the state constitution doesn’t specifically ban absentee balloting, but it seems the case is easily be made that in specifying only a few instances when it’s allowed, the constitution implies that it is not allowed across the board.

They do offer some interesting points about the law’s passage. For example, Republicans supported it at the time, at least in part because it included a provision against straight-ticket voting. But we would think the fact that it was a bipartisan bill to begin with should help take the partisanship out of this whole argument. Both Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature passed this law to get certain provisions that they wanted. That does not mean the law is constitutional.

POLITIFACT really is just acting as an advocate for the “nay” side of this argument because, well, they’re POLITIFACT and that’s what they do. But a court, not the partisan advocates at POLITIFACT, will rule on the law’s constitutionality and McLinko’s claim. Sadly, elections are increasingly being won by lawyers, and as we've said, to keep from being bulldozed our lawyers have to be better than their lawyers.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/josh-hawley/fact-checking-hawleys-claim-about-pennsylvania-mai/

An earlier suit regarding the constitutionality of Act 77 was filed about a year ago by multiple plaintiffs including congressional candidate Sean Parnell, and a Commonwealth judge said it had merit, but the state Supreme Court dismissed it with prejudice, not for lack of merit but for not having been filed “in a timely manner.” Parnell said he’d take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://coalregioncanary.com/2020/11/29/pennsylvania-supreme-court-dismisses-parnell-lawsuit-act-77-2020-election/

By the way, if you’d like to know more about Charles “Sam” Faddis, he has quite a resume as a homeland security and terrorism expert and appears on FOX NEWS, FOX BUSINESS NEWS, NEWSMAX and other news outlets. After 20 years with the CIA, he serves as senior partner and executive consultant at Artemis LLC, whose experts have “decades of experience in the Intelligence Community, Special Forces and Military Communities and the Private Sector.”

https://www.artemis-llc.com/about

His books include “WILLFUL NEGLECT: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security” and the very timely “BEYOND REPAIR: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Repair-Decline-Fall-Cia/dp/1599218518

Mike Huckabee

As of Wednesday morning, the jury has yet to reach a verdict, and it might not have to, under two possible scenarios:

Jack Posobiec of Human Events tweeted that an unnamed US Marshal told him two jurors are holding up the verdict out of fear of threats by radicals against themselves and their families. If that’s true, the judge might have to dismiss them, and since alternate jurors have already been dismissed, declare a mistrial. But Jennifer Van Laar at Redstate.com explains why she’s skeptical of this story:

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/11/17/about-those-claims-that-a-u-s-marshal-said-two-rittenhouse-jurors-are-holding-up-verdict-due-to-backlash-doxxing-fears-n477072

The other scenario: Rittenhouse’s attorneys filed a new, late request for the judge to declare a mistrial with prejudice, meaning no retrial. They already requested a mistrial based on the prosecution improperly infringing on Rittenhouse’s right to remain silent and introducing evidence that had been ruled inadmissible. The new filing adds an accusation that the prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense by turning over a compressed copy of the FBI surveillance video and not revealing that they had a clearer, higher resolution version until after that part of the trial was over.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/11/17/rittenhouse-defense-files-new-motion-for-mistrial-arguing-prosecution-withheld-evidence-n477176

Meanwhile, both pro- and anti-Rittenhouse protesters are gathered outside the Courthouse, and the city is bracing for potential street violence. Some anti-Rittenhouse protesters are claiming that an acquittal means that white supremacists will be free to kill black people, which seems like an odd conclusion to draw from one white guy shooting three other white guys in self-defense. But when you get your news from CNN and MSNBC, clear thinking is not your strong suit.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/11/16/tempers-flare-outside-kenosha-courthouse-fascist-crowd-taunting-jurors-in-kenosha-n1533626

I already told you how the “fact-checking” site Politifact got Wisconsin law wrong in declaring it "false" that Rittenhouse had a legal right to carry a gun. After being called on it by conservative media sources and having the judge throw out an illegal weapons possession charge, the site acknowledged that the law is "unclear." And then they stood by their original ruling of "false" and refused to retract it. Maybe their next “fact-check” could be a deep dive into what the word “unclear” means.

https://www.westernjournal.com/politifact-wont-remove-false-fact-check-saying-rittenhouse-illegally-possessed-gun-charge-tossed/

Mike Huckabee

Ever since COVID-19 helped us ring in the New Year of 2020, the approved narrative was that it had come from a wet market in Wuhan, China, though social media didn’t allow mention of Wuhan or China.

But in recent months we’ve learned plenty about Chinese gain-of-function research into dangerous bat viruses, commissioned and funded by none other than the National Institutes of Health, and we know it’s very likely the source of the pandemic. Steve Hilton, on his FOX NEWS show “The Next Revolution,” reported Sunday night that even the LOS ANGELES TIMES had to report that “...there is no clear sign of an intermediate host. Of the 80,000 animal samples tested in China, none have contained the virus’ genetic material or antibodies to it.”

As recently as August of this year, the LA TIMES was still pushing the “wet market” idea. Business columnist (not doctor) Michael Hiltzik actually said the “lab leak” explanation was driven by politics, not science.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-26/lab-leak-theory-origin-covid-19

As a side note, “fact”-checkers also tried to discredit the story about beagles being used in cruel experiments funded under Dr. Fauci’s leadership at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but we found this was happening.

Now, Hilton points to a new story offering more specifics about surreptitious bat studies at the Wuhan lab. In September, 900 pages of documentation from this research was released in response to a FOIA request a year ago by THE INTERCEPT, leading Rutgers University professor Dr. Richard Ebright to say,“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/

“POTENTIAL PANDEMIC PATHOGEN ENHANCEMENT”? Think about what that is, and one can only conclude that it is evil.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, said, “This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic."

If the NIH commissioned gain-of-function research, it did so, Hilton said, “in direct contravention of the rules that were in place in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Hilton has been calling for months for a real investigation of this funding, as the one way to perhaps show Fauci accountable.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group consisting of Republicans Roger Marshall of Kansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced legislation establishing a “9/11-style” Covid Origins Commission to determine how the pandemic really started. Sen. Marshall told Hilton that it was important to make this investigation bipartisan, without politics involved.

He’s hoping this can be an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act before it comes up for a vote “in three or four weeks.” This is the act that funds the military; in its 60-year history, it’s always been passed.

Marshall told Hilton that he thought it was “a matter of months if not weeks” to get the commission in place. They would have to come up with ten names –- five from Republicans, five from Democrats, all “experts in their specific areas,” he said, but not driven by politics.

There’s a great deal of information that would need to be declassified, Marshall said, and these commissioners would also have the power to subpoena people such as Peter Daszak and others from EcoHealth Alliance and get them in front a grand jury. He thinks that if we start looking at all the DNA sequences having to do with this virus, “we’ll find the grandfather of COVID-19 somewhere buried in Eco Health lab system.”

……………………..

Something else that needs to be looked at critically in the age of COVID: the push for draconian lockdowns that force us all to comply with our political leaders regarding the most personal decisions we make. Those who for decades have been saying we have the right to do what we want with our own body (even if it happens to be our own body and another very small person's, too) are quick to say we must follow orders to have new, practically untested substances injected into our bodies.

To question this is not to be an “anti-vaxxer,” no matter who decides to rewrite the dictionary. It’s to be anti-mandate, which is altogether different.

Now that well over a hundred million people have been exposed to COVID-19 and have presumably obtained some immunity to it --- most likely even stronger than that possessed by a vaccinated person who hasn't been exposed --- one has to wonder why we’re still talking about all the restrictions. Is the idea really to get us used to taking orders “for the public good”? Christopher Bedford at THE FEDERALIST has an interview with FOX NEWS climate expert Mike Bastach. You may ask, what do COVID restrictions have to do with climate? Turns out, quite a bit.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/15/how-covid-lockdowns-handed-global-warming-extremists-the-tools-to-crush-freedom/

As we reported in our commentary on the National Audubon Society and their apparent dismissal of the effect wind turbines have on birds, China has said it will work with the U.S. on cutting carbon emissions. (We said we’d believe it when we see it.) This was the Glasgow Climate Conference, in which (Bedford’s words) “a few thousand clueless, feckless old men flying from all over the planet to babble on about saving the world and maybe even catch a quick nap during the most boring of the mostly boring speeches.”

Now that we’re back to boring meetings that don’t really accomplish much, it might seem as if we’re returning to normal, but we’re not. The way Bedford explains it, our society is at a crossroads: we can continue to pursue individualism, or we can turn to “a more involved government that tries to actively reorder society toward the ‘higher good.’”

And here’s where COVID comes in. British writer/editor Mary Harrington said, “The pandemic state of emergency [shattered] the consensus about individual freedom. Across the developed world, the liberal privileging of individual freedom has been replaced by a de facto acceptance that state power absolutely must be ordered to the common good, up to and including coercive measures when necessary.”

Bedford goes to describe even how this way of thinking is transforming the language, and not in a good way.

He says, “In all societies, there are people who feel entitled to build their own moral universes and compel us to obey their manmade constructs. It’s for the collective good, they say, although suspiciously often 'the collective good' seems to align with giving them the most money and power, status and freedom...”

“COVID was the best thing ever to happen to these people,” he says, and he’s right.

And with COVID fading away, they’ll turn on a dime and make “climate” the new emergency. Consider that if they can essentially trap you in your home and limit your travel to purportedly contain the spread of COVID, they can do the same thing to purportedly keep the temperature from rising. Same for spreading so-called “misinformation” (which very often turns out to be the truth).

We know China won’t keep their promise on fossil fuels. But don’t assume we'll hold China accountable for their toxic emissions. That won’t happen, any more than we’ll hold them accountable for their toxic virus.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Aside from dismissing it, the CDC has had very little to say about natural immunity gained from having already been infected with COVID-19. But last week, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that they had no records of any recovered person infecting another person. Not to say that it can’t happen; they apparently just haven’t been bothering to compile any data on what is one of the most important public health questions in America.

https://beckernews.com/the-cdc-finally-reveals-its-estimate-for-how-many-americans-have-natural-immunity-42976/

Now, as Kyle Becker of Becker News reports, after declining for five months to update its figures for how many recovered Americans there are, “The CDC quietly acknowledged that a staggering 146.6 million people have been infected by the Sars-CoV-2 virus and have survived it.” That’s far more than earlier reported. Even that could be an underestimate: counting likely unreported cases, it could be as high as 187.6 million. If infection conveys immunity, you’d think that would be something our national health agency would want to know about.

Also, 124 million of those recovered people had “symptomatic illnesses,” but only one in four sought medical treatment. (That would include my two staff writers, who took only aspirin and vitamins.) There were 7.5 million hospitalizations, but that could be greatly inflated by counting routine hospital treatments that happened to include a positive COVID test.

The 921,000 “estimated total deaths” include “COVID-related deaths,” not necessary deaths caused by COVID. 94% of these deaths had serious underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and the average age of a COVID-related death victim in 2020 was 77.

There are many more numbers at the link, but few of them bolster the government’s case for ignoring natural immunity or imposing draconian lockdowns or vaccine mandates, especially on children. It also has information on a longterm study of natural immunity that Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. Marty Makarey and his team are launching. He said it’s a study that the CDC and NIH should be doing “instead of torturing thousands of beagle puppies.”

It will be interesting to see if social media sites ban this story, considering all the numbers and charts in it are taken directly from the CDC’s own website.

Mike Huckabee

So, after three indictments and counting, will there be big-time accountability as a result of John Durham’s investigation of the Russia Hoax? It depends on who’s talking.

The NEW YORK POST ran a superb, richly detailed editorial last week that starts by condemning most of the media for their lack of coverage now that the special counsel is finally speaking. Of course, it comes as no surprise that most media are ignoring the story coming out of his grand jury. The POST reveals the whole sordid story of how the media covered the “dossier” that was peddled to them by Christopher Steele and others. For when you have time, this is recommended reading, and also good to pass along to those you know who are just now becoming aware of what we’ve all known for years.

https://nypost.com/2021/11/09/how-the-media-pushed-hillary-clintons-lies-against-trump/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

The media eagerly pushed a bogus “dossier,” but they avoided revealing the connections between it and Hillary’s campaign or doing anything on their own to try to discredit it, as real journalists would be bound to do. Instead, they lapped it up like a cat with a bowl of cream. For that, THE NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST won the Pulitzer Prize. There might not be jail cells for these “journalists,” but they should at least have to give the Pulitzer back!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/04/donald-trump-pulitzer-prize-board-russia-new-york-times-washington-post

Or make them give it to the NY POST. Here, the POST has clearly outlined the relationships among major players Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko and Charles Dolan. Be glad that a few major news outlets such as the POST are not only reporting what we think of as “old news,” but are doing so in a clear, methodical way that makes the complex simple. We know that one strategy the left uses for cover is to make sure its scandals are too complicated or “inside” for most people to follow. They also delay, delay, delay so that stories BECOME “old news,” and then they say, “Hey, it’s time to move on!” Um, we’ve not moving on from this.

So, the NY POST has indicted the media, not literally in a court of law but as a matter of public shaming. What about actual indictments, the kind that can lead to convictions and jail sentences? I hesitate even to link to the latest commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy, as I think he might have just been in a pessimistic frame of mind last week and will put you in one, too. The theme for his piece might be that “abuse of power is not criminal.” To that we say that, yes, sometimes it isn’t, but sometimes it sure is.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/durham-indictments-collusion-case-direction-andrew-mccarthy

It’s true that what Durham knows and what he can prove in court are two different things. But at this point, Durham doesn’t really have to prove every last word in the "dossier" is false; we’ve already seen enough evidence about this for any reasonable person to conclude it was made up. As for who is responsible at the top for directing this outrageous scheme, we still don’t know everything Durham has. He sure seems to be zeroing in on the Clinton people. So even though McCarthy literally wrote the book on the Russia Hoax (BALL OF COLLUSION; highly recommended), we think he might be trying to forecast too far ahead. There’s more material yet to be declassified, and it might go a long way towards satisfying McCarthy.

In fact, last week, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Maria Bartiromo there were over 1,000 documents from the Durham investigation that haven’t yet been declassified, and some of the intelligence relates directly to criminal activity that could be the basis for “further indictments.” He reminded us that a grand jury is saying that what happened with the Steele “dossier” is criminal in nature, and he anticipates that various people involved in exploiting it will be in legal jeopardy.

Kash Patel, lead investigator for former House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, spoke with Maria this Sunday and specifically implicated Fiona Hill as one who could face criminal charges for lying to Congress in October of 2019 when she said, “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier. None. I just want to state that.” Heck, she counts herself among Christopher Steele’s close friends and introduced him to Igor Danchenko. She also introduced Danchenko to big-time Clinton ally and Trump-Russia fabulist Charles Dolan, who provided fake stories for the “dossier.”

Fiona Hill serves as the connection between the Steele operation and the Democrat Party, Patel said. “John Durham’s on that case,” he said; “I think we’re gonna get there.”

Patel broke down three areas of criminality that Durham has been looking at, describing them as three points of a triangle and represented by the three criminal indictments that have been handed down so far. Michael Sussmann, at the top of this triangle, represents the indictment of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, “funneling tens of millions of dollars to perpetuate the biggest fraud in the history of the FBI.” FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith represents one of the bottom two points, representing the FBI’s role in lying to a federal court by doctoring a document about Carter Page to get a warrant under false pretenses. The other point is the indictment of Danchenko, whose own words discredit the phony “dossier.”

“He’s got a long way to go,” Patel says of Durham. But he’s glad to see that Durham is finally getting information from the FBI that had been intentionally withheld from the House Intel Committee.

Former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe appears to have played a central role. “All roads lead to Andy McCabe,” Patel said. Recall that McCabe was caught in three lies by Inspector General Horowitz during the internal investigation and seemed to have skated, but we’ll see. Patel insisted that a mid-level official such as Clinesmith couldn’t have pulled off “the greatest political scandal in history” by himself. It would have been “virtually impossible.” He was directed by his supervisors, and this would not have happened without the deputy director of the FBI knowing about it, and almost certainly colleagues Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well.

Bartiromo pointed out that “those who abused power are now in power,” notably Jake Sullivan, who was Hillary’s foreign policy adviser and is now President Biden’s national security adviser. Recall that Sullivan is the operative who broke the fake Alfa Bank story, which Hillary herself retweeted and falsely described as a discovery by computer scientists, when it was actually phonied-up by some helpful university techies. And now there he is in the catbird seat –- inside the White House.

Patel sees that “what the American public so desperately need” is accountability. “And I think that’s where this road is going, and [where] John Durham’s taking us,” he said. “So stay tuned; I think we’re only 60 to 70 percent of the way there.”

Former Georgia congressman Doug Collins is quite optimistic as well. He’s got a new book coming out on the whole scandal, called THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR, which comes out this week. We’ll add it to our stack.

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/hillaryclinton-trump-russia-durham/2021/11/14/id/1044594/?ns_mail_uid=f9499f75-6002-4e3d-a92a-60873ae4921d&ns_mail_job=DM275980_11142021&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010101bvtih2

Mike Huckabee

With tens of millions of Americans having already had COVID-19, a lot of people question why the CDC refuses even to discuss a natural immunity exception to vaccine mandates. The agency claims that vaccination boosts immunity even for those who’ve already had COVID, but that relies on one study from Kentucky that’s contradicted by other studies.

But the agency is now coming under new criticism after admitting in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request that it doesn’t have a single case on record of an unvaccinated person who previously had COVID spreading the disease to anyone else.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/11/11/the-cdc-gives-the-entire-game-away-on-covid-19-natural-immunity-n474019

As the linked article notes, “fact-checkers” are already rushing to stem the damage by insisting that this is not proof that people with natural immunity don’t spread COVID, just that the CDC isn’t keeping such records. That’s true, but it also obscures the important point.

The bombshell news here is that the CDC, which Americans are told to depend on as a reliable source for all the latest information on COVID, hasn’t even bothered to gather any data on one of the most important and contentious issues: the relative effectiveness of natural immunity. If they had, they might reach the conclusion that recovered people don’t need “vaccine passports” or to comply with vaccine mandates. This revelation makes them look more concerned with pushing an agenda than with amassing the most accurate data and being transparent about it. It only feeds the skepticism of those who already distrust the CDC. They’re not going to convince more people to get a shot in the arm by continually shooting themselves in the foot.

By the way, if you want to know more about the various studies and the arguments for and against natural immunity, this recent video by a professor of pharmacology summarizes it all pretty objectively.

https://youtu.be/Lz7fZOfPf8M

Mike Huckabee

I’ve written many times over the years about how leftists can’t win an argument with logic or reason (that’s why they’ve now declared those things to be racist), or by citing history, experience or the prior success of their ideas and policies (all of which have been dumpster fires.) Instead, they “win” arguments via two main tactics:

1. Silencing or smearing their opponents by calling them racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, science deniers or whatever, so that their target audience never hears an opposing view…

2. Changing the terms of the debate.

It’s hard to use their own words, or any words, to prove how full of horse droppings they are when they’re constantly changing the meanings of words. For instance, there was once a clear term for judging people by race: “racism.” But now, judging people solely by race is “anti-racism” and criticizing that is “racism.” (“Horse droppings” is also probably now considered racist somehow, so we aren’t allowed to point out how full of them they are.)

Like birds that foul their nests and fly away, leftists move on to new words once the rancidness of their policies taints the old ones. I’m old enough to remember how “liberal” became virtually a curse word. Suddenly, liberals magically became “progressives.” Now that the public is finally figuring out that “progressivism” is just the same poison in a new bottle, some hope that time, fading memories and youthful ignorance have laundered the word “socialist” enough to allow them to return to that. But it’s all the same horse droppings under a different name.

This is all preamble for the good news that the public must be waking up at last to how toxic “wokeness,” “Critical Race Theory,” “politically correct,” “identity politics” and “Defund the police” are because “progressives” are suddenly desperate to make us stop using those terms. Never mind that they coined them and promoted them themselves. If you use them critically, you’re either blowing a “dogwhistle” for racists or you’re too dumb to realize that those things don’t even exist (even if your school actually uses the phrase “Critical Race Theory” in its curriculum documents.) And even though they don’t exist, you’re a racist if you criticize them.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tweeted that pundits are using “woke” as a “derogatory euphemism for civil rights and justice.” No, “woke” doesn’t mean “civil rights.” The opposite, in fact. Civil rights include freedom of speech, assembly and religion and the right to due process. Woke culture has been relentlessly attacking all of those things for years. Saying that “woke” stands for civil rights is like saying that “A.O.C.” stands for “Absolutely, objectively correct.”

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/11/08/heres-why-the-prog-left-are-running-away-from-woke-as-fast-as-they-can-n471940

And here’s some more on why you’re no longer allowed to use the word “woke,” you racist you!

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/483944/

So now that the toxicity of these terms has become so obvious that the public is finally wise to them, expect to hear that it’s racist to use them (“racist” being the one term that never gets old on the left) and for them to be replaced with some new buzzwords that will also eventually be dumped once they absorb the stench of the reality of leftist policies. Might I suggest that “woke” be replaced with something more accurate, like “comatose” or “brain dead”?

(On a side note, have you noticed that they get to decide what we’re called – nonsense like “CIS white male” – but they also get to decide what we call them? And the media actually play along with that, as if these loons are the Divine Arbiters of Speech.)

For the final word (I hope!) on this, check out blogger Freddie deBoer’s post on this. He accurately points out that the term “dogwhistle” itself is “a way for people to simply impute attitudes you don’t hold onto you, to make it easier to dismiss criticism.” And he pleads with the left that if they don’t want us calling them what they call themselves, then how about telling us what they do want to be called? (Warning: he uses some rough language of his own out of understandable frustration.)

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what

Of course, they can’t give us permanent terms because whatever they come up with will be operational only until their inevitable failure and obnoxiousness tarnish it. Then it will have to be replaced with some new term that, like a motel toilet seat, has been sanitized for their protection.

Mike Huckabee

San Francisco voters elected a far-left district attorney who promised “progressive justice reform,” and they’re getting it good and hard. Releasing the same career criminals to victimize citizens again and again…not prosecuting nonviolent crimes of less than $950, which has incentivized gangs of shoplifters to openly loot store shelves and drive stores to close…kowtowing to drug addicts and homeless people until the streets are filled with garbage, needles and feces...

But the San Francisco Chronicle reports that city leaders and residents who are now living in constant fear are baffled over what could possibly be done about all this? Maybe the answer is tolerance…of criminals:

“Should they tolerate a high level of burglaries as a downside of city living and focus on barricading their homes? Should people who are repeatedly accused of stealing be targeted with rehabilitation services or incarcerated so they can’t commit more crimes?”

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/11/08/san-fran-chronicle-gets-responses-they-deserve-after-ridiculous-tolerance-suggestion-on-burglaries-n472081

Supervisor and “justice reform” advocate Rafael Mandelman is frustrated. The city’s leftist leaders claim that jailing criminals “fails to address the underlying factors” such as poverty and addiction (which they address by giving junkies free heroin needles.) Speaking of two constant repeat offenders, Mandelman said, “It raises tricky questions about incarceration. Because so far we’ve been unable to release (them) without them committing more crimes. And the question for reformers is, ‘What do we do with someone like that?’”

Yes, ‘tis a puzzlement. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. What can you possibly do with criminals who just keep committing more crimes every time you let them out of jail? Hmmm...

This is your brain on leftism. And you thought heroin was a terrible drug!

RELATED: 

Last month, Derek Hunter at Townhall.com wrote a great article about how he used to feel sorry for people suffering in Democrat-run cities, but he just can’t empathize anymore because “They vote for this, they elect these idiots who implement these asinine plans and policies.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/10/17/democrats-make-it-impossible-to-have-empathy-n2597549

And they just keep doing it again and again, even as everything slides deeper into the sewer. One of his many examples was San Francisco, where as bad as it’s gotten, “not a single elected Democrat in the city (fears) anyone taking their job, outside of the rare primary challenge.” And those primary challengers are usually even further left.

But I’m a little more optimistic. Hunter assumed that Virginia would elect yet another Democrat and keep careening over the leftward cliff, but the voters finally rose up and said, “Enough!” Maybe someday, even San Franciscans will get fed up with dodging criminals, homeless mental cases, addicts, drug needles and feces and actually force themselves to vote for some Republicans to save their city. Maybe they’ll finally stop playing out Einstein’s definition of insanity over and over.

I will maintain hope, but I won’t hold my breath. Unless I’m forced to visit one of these poop-covered, garbage-strewn, urine-soaked, Democrat-run cities. Then I’ll definitely be holding my breath.

Mike Huckabee

Joe Biden may be President of the United States, but judging from his response when he was asked about his dismal poll numbers, he must be running for Queen of Denial.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-brushes-off-lagging-poll-numbers-talks-supply-issues

While the latest USA Today/Suffolk poll shows him at a historically low 38% approval, he insisted his polls were on par with Clinton’s and Obama’s and that he just saw a poll that had him at 48%. I assume he means the latest CNN poll (of course), but even that one shows 58% of respondents say he’s not paying enough attention to the most important problems. I checked the Real Clear Politics roundup of the latest 13 polls. Even including the Democrat-friendly ones, his average approval rating is 42.8%.

Still, Biden brushed off the question, saying, "But look, the point is I didn't run because of the polls." Darn good thing!

But that was only the tip of the denial iceberg. He also blamed his low ratings on Americans being anxious about COVID. He said, "Even though we've created almost six million jobs since I came into office, we're in a situation where people don't, I mean they don't feel it right now. They don't feel it." (Note: allowing businesses that were artificially shut down by the government to reopen and people to go back to work is not “creating” jobs.)

He went on, “Gas prices are up, exceedingly high…That's why I have the Attorney General taking a look at whether or not these gas companies are gouging people." Yeah, that’s the reason why gas is so expensive! Those same gas companies that were charging $1.89 a year ago suddenly realized they could gouge customers after he coincidentally declared war on the domestic fuel industry.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-responds-skyrocketing-gas-prices-thinking-shutting-another-american-pipeline/

Supply chain problems? That’s all just COVID, man. But don’t worry, because with the passage of the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill (about $110 billion of which goes to actual infrastructure), widespread infrastructure projects will begin in "the matter of weeks."

I’m old enough to recall the last time Congress voted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on “shovel-ready jobs.” Several years later, even Obama later had to admit there were no “shovel-ready jobs.” Because of all the green regulations and red tape that Biden wants to make even worse, no major infrastructure projects could launch without a decade’s worth of environmental studies first.

I’m sure he’ll find a way to ignore this poll, too: USA Today asked people what was the one thing they wanted to see President Biden do in the next year. The top answer was “Resign/retire/quit.”

Mike Huckabee

Today is Veterans Day, and with so much going on in the news, it would be tragic for it to be overshadowed or overlooked. Today is about something far more important than politics. It’s about the men and women who make it possible for us even to enjoy the freedom of having elections and the Constitutional right to protest and seek redress when we think our government isn’t doing right by us.

Memorial Day in May is to honor veterans who gave their lives in defense of America. But Veterans Day is to honor all veterans, living or dead, past and present.

It began as Armistice Day, declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks of Birmingham, Alabama, began a personal crusade to expand Armistice Day into a state holiday honoring all veterans. In 1953, an Emporia, Kansas, shoe store owner named Al King launched a campaign to make it a national holiday. Just one year later, in 1954, he succeeded. It helped that the President was a retired army general from Kansas named Dwight Eisenhower.

Not only is today Veterans Day, but yesterday was the 246th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It commemorates the day in 1775 when the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Marines to serve in the war against Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War ended, the Marines were disestablished for a time until President John Adams reestablished the Marines as we know the Corps now, on July 11, 1789. But November 10th, 1775, is still considered the birth of the US Marines.

So if you see someone in uniform, this is a great day to say “Thank you” for protecting America’s freedom. Then again, any day is a great day to do that.

Mike Huckabee

Ever since day one of President Biden taking office, a debate has been raging over whether his Administration is malicious or just almost supernaturally incompetent. Nobody wants to believe that a President (or more likely, his staffers who are really pulling the strings) would deliberately inflict so much damage on America. But could anyone possibly be dumb enough to think that throwing open the borders or shutting down the domestic fuel industry or pulling troops out of Afghanistan BEFORE evacuating our people, etc. etc. etc., could be anything other than disastrous?

Then, just as you’ve almost convinced yourself that they couldn't really hate America, they’re just really terrible at their jobs, they give you more evidence that it’s the former. Meet Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova, Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the most powerful and important regulator of banks, financial institutions and the US dollar.

https://redstate.com/dennis_santiago/2021/11/09/why-congress-is-troubled-by-the-saule-omarova-nomination-n472870

She brings to the job such a long history of hostility to the banking industry and the established system that keeps our economy stable that it’s sort of like appointing Lex Luthor to oversee Superman. Her longtime dream is to kill the private banking industry and create a “National Investment Authority,” an independent government agency that would “centralize and nationalize strategic spending,” replacing the free market economy with a controlled economy, like that of China.

She’s praised the old Soviet Union for not having a “gender pay gap,” and she also recently told a conference that her NIA would direct capital toward “green” energy companies and away from the oil, gas and coal industries, because “we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.”

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/484337/

This is the type of idiotic blather that George Orwell called so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it. FYI: some European nations tried replacing reliable energy sources with insufficient and unstable alternative sources, and they ended up freezing in the winter and dying of heat stroke in the summer. And it could happen again, because leftists never learn from their mistakes, since their disasters are always someone else’s fault.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/10/06/friedman-dont-blame-the-greens-for-the-looming-energy-disaster-this-winter-n420638

These are the type of grandiose, revolutionary pipe dreams that hothouse academics have been pushing for years, except the only places they actually work are in theory and in faculty lounges. Previous Administrations were smart enough to keep them there, but Biden actually wants to put one of these bubble-dwelling revolutionaries in charge of our money and our energy supply. That’s why it’s hard to believe anyone could have America’s best interests at heart and do that out of simple stupidity.

Omarova’s ideas are so out there, and would clearly be catastrophic to America’s economy and the free market, that even some Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, including Sens. Jon Tester, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Warner, are reportedly reluctant to confirm her. Surely, Biden can find someone better to deal with America’s money and energy interests. If not, try throwing a dart at the Dallas phone book.

Mike Huckabee

That’s what investigative reporter John Solomon told FOX NEWS’ Maria Bartiromo on this week’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

In fact, if you saw our reports last week about new developments in the Special Counsel investigation, Bartiromo’s interviews with both Solomon and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe will serve as a great summary and follow-up. (And if you didn’t see them, these interviews will help catch you up.) Here’s the link to that episode; Bartiromo’s coverage of the Durham probe starts about 17 minutes in.

https://www.fox.com/watch/1d8b670ef3da2a619b2f20ee00351f82/

Solomon, who told Maria the Danchenko indictment shows the Trump-Russia investigation was built on “lie upon lie upon lie,” has a new report at JUST THE NEWS in which he shifts to Durham’s look at top FBI officials.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/biggest-loser-durham-indictments-james-comeys-fbi

According to Solomon, Durham has two “buckets” of evidence he’s assembling, one implicating the Clinton campaign and the other involving top intel personnel and their willingness to mislead with falsified evidence in their pursuit of Trump. He told Bartiromo that “many other [intel] people are being examined at this moment.”

“There’s no doubt there’s activity inside the grand jury right now,” he said, “aimed at looking at top level officials at the FBI.” Red flags were raised on the Steele “dossier” as early as August of 2016 but were obviously set aside. A month later, the CIA tied it to the Clinton campaign, but sent their report on this to...Peter Strzok. The FBI even had a spreadsheet indicating all the dossier’s impossible or uncorroborated claims.

Solomon says the latest criminal indictment, that of Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source Igor Danchenko --- alleged to have made false statements five times to the FBI --- is just as much an indictment of the FBI as it is of him. The FBI should have seen the serious flaws in the “dossier” even though Danchenko didn’t tell them about getting the material from Clinton ally Charles Dolan.

Incidentally, Dolan wasn’t Danchenko’s only named sub-source. One of the others, “Sub-source #4,” Alexey Sergeyevich Dundich, claims Danchenko “framed” him as a sub-source “to add credibility to his low-quality work.”

“My impression is that Mr. Danchenko fabricated the information published in the Dossier to make quick money,” he declared. “It is apparent to me that the Dossier is a deliberate fraud and a collection of idle rumors.”

But if the “dossier” was so obviously bogus, why didn’t then-FBI Director James Comey, deputy Director Andrew McCabe and lead “Crossfire Hurricane” investigator Peter Strzok dismiss it as such? They clearly knew it was a hoax. As retired FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock says, “The fact pattern that John Durham is methodically establishing shows what James Comey and Andrew McCabe likely knew from Day One, that the Steele ‘dossier’ was politically-driven nonsense at the behest of the Clinton campaign. “And yet they knowingly ran with its false information to obtain legal process against an American citizen. They defrauded not just a federal court, they defrauded the FBI and the American people.”

He went on to say that this has destroyed trust in the FBI. “As Comey cashes his royalty checks from a book and a movie, where do everyday, working FBI agents go to get the Bureau’s reputation back? The damage done by Comey, McCabe and others to the trust that Americans have traditionally placed in the FBI is incalculable.”

Indeed, as the depth of this deceit becomes increasingly evident, there will no doubt be calls to dismantle the FBI and completely start over. I would say the person most qualified –- and motivated –- to restructure the intel bureaucracy might be none other than Mike Flynn. Now THAT would be justice.

I would also add that, in exploiting this fakery after Trump became President, it was THEY at the Justice Department –- as opposed to Trump supporters –- who were involved in a coup, ultimately engineered by Hillary Clinton and her allies. I hope this is where Durham is headed.

One defense the FBI will likely try, to defend itself against charges of corruption, is that this happened because of incompetent people at the top, but that doesn’t wash. As Solomon points out, one FBI official, Kevin Clinesmith, has already admitted doctoring a piece of evidence that was used to get the Carter Page warrant. And these people are highly skilled at protecting themselves legally. Recall that Comey even gave up his security clearance so he wouldn’t be able to testify about classified matters. Not so incompetent when it comes to covering his backside.

Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes has known about the Clinton connection for years now. “We already knew the Steele ‘dossier’ was orchestrated and funded by the Democrats, and now we know that a Democrat operative, who’d been a registered Russian agent and was closely linked to Kremlin officials, served as a direct source for the dossier’s fabrications, he told JUST THE NEWS in a reference to Charles Dolan. “As I’ve said for years, the only people who colluded with Russians were the Democrats.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/clinton-operative-linked-to-steele-dossier-did-not-disclose-work-for-russia-to-justice-department/

As for Peter Strzok, he went on MSNBC Thursday and actually denied to Rachel Maddow that there was ever an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, which is a blatant lie. (I assume he’d justify this statement by saying Carter Page was no longer with the Trump campaign when they got the warrant against him; this is a dodge that is easily dismantled.) He said that what “certain far-right commentators” are saying about that is “nonsense.”

Solomon just smiled and shook his head at this, saying that Strzok’s own original statement that started the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was that they were “looking at whether individuals associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating or conspiring with Russia.” The Trump campaign was mentioned a dozen times in the first FISA application, submitted in October of 2016 at the height of the campaign.

“He was lying the other night,” Solomon said. “There’s no other way to say it politely.”

Sara Carter, in an appearance this weekend on Steve Hilton’s FOX NEWS show THE NEXT REVOLUTION, brought up a couple of interesting facts we didn’t know about Fiona Hill, a star witness in Trump Impeachment #1. Not only did she introduce Igor Danchenko to Christopher Steele, but she also introduced Clinton crony Charles Dolan to Danchenko. All of these connections appear to center around the solidly anti-Trump “think-tank” the Brookings Institution, headed by big-time Clinton ally Strobe Talbott. Also, Hill was working closely at the time with H. R. McMaster, the person who replaced Michael Flynn as Trump’s new national security adviser after the FBI set Flynn up and destroyed his career. It seems that practically every day, there’s another puzzle piece or two to put in place.

Mike Huckabee

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows why Democrats were wiped out for the first time in years in Virginia: they just weren’t left-wing enough.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/11/04/democrats-should-listen-to-aocs-take-on-virginia-election-if-they-want-to-keep-losing-n2598585?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3

AOC said if only the candidates hadn’t moderated their stances so much, they would have energized the “progressive” base and won.

As usual with her statements, there are multiple layers of “flat wrong” in there. First of all, you can’t win an election just by turning out “progressives.” A July 2020 Gallup poll found that only 26% of Americans self-identify as “liberal.” Pew found that even among Democrats, only 47% describe themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal.” The majority say they’re either “moderate” or “conservative.” I know that math isn’t the strong point of socialists, but neither 26% nor 47% of half the population is a majority.

Also, Virginia’s new Attorney General-Elect Jason Miyares pointed out to Townhall.com that before the election, the House of Delegates was 55-45 Democrat, and they passed every piece of “progressive” nonsense that came in front of them, from “social justice” to the Green New Deal to gun control to unfettered abortion. Surely, that must’ve “energized” “progressives.” All 100 seats were up for reelection, and when the votes were counted, the House of Delegates had flipped Republican by 52-48.

So here’s the truth: it wasn’t that Democrats didn’t run far enough to the left. It’s that they governed far to the left, the people got a bellyful of that, and they turned out in droves to kick them out of office.

This is what comes from living in an impenetrable ideological bubble. You think your ideas are wildly popular, just because all the people you talk to like them.

Incidentally, if your brain is hurting from trying to analyze AOC’s explanation of the Virginia election, you may need a crate of Excedrin after hearing her explanation of why there’s inflation and why the cure is for the government to spend another $5 trillion at bare minimum.

https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021/11/04/oh-honey-stop-aoc-uses-her-big-brain-and-econ-degree-to-explain-why-inflation-is-happening-in-a-thread-annnd-we-cant-even/