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Speaking of terrible, no-good, very bad New York politicians, the state Attorney General’s report into allegations of sexual harassment against Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been released, and it’s not good for him. (Details and a link to the full report here):

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/08/03/hammer-drops-for-gov-cuomo-as-ny-attorney-general-finds-he-sexually-harassed-multiple-women-n420634

After investigators spoke to 179 people and reviewed 74,000 pieces of evidence, AG Letitia James released a 168-page report finding that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women in violation of state and federal laws and his own office’s written policies. It also found that Cuomo and his senior staffers retaliated against at least one former employee and created a hostile work environment and a toxic workplace that enabled the harassment to continue.

James stopped short of calling for Cuomo to face prosecution (of course!), but this should fuel bipartisan calls for him to resign. It’s hard to believe someone needed even more reasons to do that, but if so, here you go.

 

Prayers For Kathy Griffin

August 4, 2021

Controversial Trump-hating comedian Kathy Griffin revealed that she has lung cancer and is about to undergo surgery to have half of her left lung removed. She says it’s stage one and hasn’t spread, so doctors are optimistic that she will recover without chemo or radiation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/08/02/kathy-griffin-reveals-lung-cancer-diagnosis-n1466450

Lung cancer is a frightening and terrible disease (Griffin already knows that from having lost her brother to cancer in 2014), and like fellow conservative Matt Margolis at the link, I send her my prayers for a full recovery. As Matt notes, that’s what decent people do at times like this, even for those who have ignored basic rules of civility toward others. He hopes she will survive this ordeal and come out of it with a little more empathy for others. Amen to that.

At this writing, former President Trump has yet to comment. But a lot of people are waiting.

For the last couple of days, we’ve been following Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to stop contractors hired by the federal government from transporting “noncitizens” (illegals) from the border to other parts of Texas, where those infected with COVID-19 can spread it throughout the state and beyond. The case was presented on Monday before the U.S. District Court in El Paso, and the feds won this round, obtaining a temporary restraining order against Abbott. LEGAL INSURRECTION has a very good analysis of what took place, by William A. Jacobson.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/08/court-issues-temporary-restraining-order-halting-texas-illegal-migrant-transport-ban/

Gov. Abbott had signed Executive Order GA-37 to minimize the “potentially catastrophic effect on public health in Texas” caused by the confluence of the migrant crisis and the pandemic. Texas was facing two surges at the same time: a COVID-19 surge and an illegal immigration surge, and he had to do something to protect the citizens of his state. There is precedent for his standing up to the federal government in such a situation, in the case of Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts: “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

But the DOJ sued, claiming the Texas order infringed on federal control of immigration. Here are the details, also from William Jacobson, including the full texts of the order from Gov. Abbott, AG Garland’s complaint, and a letter sent by Abbott in response, helpfully suggesting some actions the Biden administration could take to avoid a “constitutional showdown.” But such a showdown seems to be exactly what they want.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/doj-sues-texas-to-continue-private-transport-of-illegal-migrants-despite-covid-risks/

One of those suggestions was to “simply enforce the existing federal immigration laws and stop admitting migrants who are not authorized by Congress to be admitted. That would substantially reduce the importation of COVID-19 while also fulfilling the government’s role to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” Seems simple enough. Of course, we know that this is not President Biden’s goal at all, or he would do it.

“How much does the Biden administration love the illegal migration taking place at the southern border?” Jacobson asks. “Biden has encouraged people to come here illegally, and to send their children here illegally in dangerous conditions, by offering a de facto sanctuary nation. So important is protecting this migration to the Biden administration that it trumps the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.”

With that last sentence, Jacobson nails the reason for this whole mess: twisted, toxic politics. We see quite clearly what this administration's actual priorities are, and it’s infuriating. We’ve done our part for a year and a half with the masks and distancing and social isolation and kids at home and business-crushing lockdowns and now shots, only to see that those in charge, in the end, care nothing for our safety. That’s a strong statement, I know, but it’s obviously much more important to them to bus in illegal immigrants by the hundreds of thousands from a part of the world where the virus is rampant. Come on in, healthy or sick, the Biden administration tells its new “noncitizens”; Biden and his Justice Department want you here so much that they’re willing to let you spread the virus from sea to shining sea if you happen to be infected. They just know you’ll vote Democrat, and they want you to keep pouring in till the country is solid blue.

Jacobson finds the federal government’s argument presented Monday to be without merit. The U.S. government, he says, “seeks to judicially nullify GA-37 through a blunderbuss and sweeping application of preemption and intergovernmental immunity.”

[From Oxford Dictionaries –- blun-der-buss (noun) an action or way of doing something regarded as lacking in subtlety and precision: “economists resort too quickly to the blunderbuss of regulation”]

So Attorney General Merrick Garland is using a big ol' blunderbuss to keep Gov. Abbott from protecting the people of his state from the rampant spread of COVID-19. And so far, it’s working. A DOJ lawyer argued that Abbott’s order would disrupt a network of government-paid contractors transporting migrants and cause a backup --- “chaos.” You know what’s already causing chaos? Biden’s border policy.

The next step now is for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file responsive papers, in which he’ll acknowledge that, yes, the feds control immigration but will then argue that their non-enforcement of federal law is creating a health crisis in Texas. This is not an attempt to regulate immigration but to regulate public health during a pandemic. Also, the reasoning goes, there is no infringement on federal immigration because Texas isn’t deporting people. To put it another way, they’re just “stopping the spread,” as we can’t stop the spread of COVID without stopping the spread of migrants who carry it.

In a statement on July 30, Paxton accused the Biden administration of abandoning its duty to safeguard the border and vowed to protect Gov. Abbott’s executive order in court. He says he and the governor “will work together to keep President Biden out of Texas’ business.” We should all count ourselves as Texans in spirit today.

The temporary restraining order goes until 8AM on August 13, “or until such later date as may be extended by the Court or agreed upon by the parties.” That's the specific date and time set for the hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction against Gov. Abbott’s order. In the meantime, presumably the buses will continue to run.

Jacobson agrees that Biden’s malfeasance is “outrageous,” but he says Texas still has “an uphill fight.”

“You Will Show Us Your Papers!” New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that starting next month, proof of COVID vaccination will be required to engage in a range of indoor activities in the city, including dining, fitness, entertainment and others.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2021/08/03/de-blasio-announces-nyc-proof-of-vaccine-mandate-for-indoor-activities-n2593514

So having forcibly shut down businesses for months to stop the spread of COVID, he’s now going to allow the businesses to open but ban large numbers of potential customers from entering them -- to stop the spread of COVID. “Full enforcement” will begin on September 13th, marking perhaps the first time since taking office that DeBlasio has actually enforced something.

Since this makes no exceptions for people who had COVID and have natural immunity or who object on religious grounds, or who have been advised against vaccinations by their doctors, or who just have personal objections, it’s being described by critics as madness and tyranny. But New Yorkers should be used to that by now.

Incidentally, how will people prove they’ve been vaccinated? They’re required to show either their paper CDC vaccine record card or the New York City or State's vaccine record app. That means not only forcing people to make their private medical records public to strangers, but also forcing them to show a government-issued ID. And since blacks and Hispanics have declined vaccination in higher percentages than whites, and will be disproportionately affected by the policy, that means it’s straight-up racism under the Democrats’ own definition.

To the surprise of many, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the first transgender Olympic athlete to compete in women’s events, flamed out and lost to weightlifters who were, you know…actually born female.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/02/heres-how-that-transgender-weightlifter-fared-at-the-olympics-n420030

As the article at Redstate.com notes, defenders of allowing biological males who’ve “transitioned” to compete against women will treat Hubbard’s failure as evidence that they have no unfair physical advantage. But there were two major factors in this case that worked to counter Hubbard’s unfair advantage. The first is age: Hubbard didn’t start taking female hormones until the age of 34 and is now 43, by far the oldest person in the competition.

The second is that weightlifters don’t all lift the same weight. They choose how much they’ll lift with the total of three lifts comprising their scores. By attempting to lift 120 kg (264.5 lbs.), 125 kg (275.5 lbs.) and 120 kg (failing on the first and third lifts), Hubbard tried to lift too much weight. I hope she didn't give herself a hernia. Some might attribute this to “male ego,” but I’m sure that was surgically removed.

Frankly, Hubbard’s loss was the best thing that could have happened to the transgender movement. Imagine how it would have looked on TV to millions of viewers if Hubbard had cleanly lifted so much weight, then stood there towering over the competition and accepting the gold.

Also as noted, Hubbard still got lots of adulatory press coverage for “making history” while the actual winners of the event were completely overlooked. None of the stories that I saw that fawned over Hubbard’s “accomplishment” even mentioned the winners. I had to do a Google search and dig deep into the Olympics website to discover that the gold went to China’s Li Wenwen, the silver to Great Britain’s Emily Jade Campbell and the bronze to American Sarah Elizabeth Robles. Congratulations, ladies: you’re the ones who made Olympic history.

Rep. Ilhan Omar and some of her fellow far-far-left colleagues are pushing a bill they call the SUPPORT Act (I guess that sounded better than the HAMMOCK Act) that would give $1200 a month to people making less than $75,000 a year or heads of household making less than $112,500 a year, plus $600 per child. This would be a first step toward a national “guaranteed income.” Because paying people for doing nothing is working out so well right now.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-guaranteed-income-1200-monthly-checks

Omar declared, "Poverty is a choice. For too long we have prioritized endless growth while millions are homeless, hungry or without healthcare. We as a nation have the ability to make sure everyone has their basic needs like food, housing and healthcare met.”

Hoo-boy, where to start? I guess with the fact that America already takes care of those who genuinely need food, housing and healthcare. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year on programs like Medicaid, Section 8 housing and SNAP food assistance. If we wanted to spend even more on those programs, maybe we could secure the border and stop letting millions of illegal immigrants suck up so much public assistance funding that could go to Americans, especially veterans. Just spit-balling here.

Second, prioritizing growth has enabled us to create the most dynamic economy in the world, one that was creating plenty of jobs and rising wages up until a Chinese virus and Democrat politicians strangled it (and somehow, Trump got blamed for that.)

I do agree with her on one thing: in some cases, poverty is a choice. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of people who are poor through no fault of their own. But then, there are those who make the mistake of listening to the false promises of leftist politicians who promise them things for free in exchange for their freedom. Like a subsistence wage for no work. Leftists hope you choose to stay in poverty because that keeps you dependent on government and them in power.

But one of the problems with socialist ides like this is that there is no magical forest full of money trees, so all that free stuff has to be paid for by someone else. As soon the people paying for it realize it’s not worth it to keep producing when the government is just going to take away the fruits of their labor and give it to the non-productive, then they become nonproductive, too.

And that’s when America becomes Venezuela.

For more news of my news coverage, visit my website here.

One thing that really stands out about Attorney General Merrick Garland’s attempted smackdown of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is how much Garland cares about PROTECTING people, as long as they're here illegally.

In case you didn’t see yesterday’s commentary about the legal fight between President Biden’s “Justice” Department and the Lone Star State, it’s here at the link. The case boils down to whether or not the federal government always has supremacy over a state, even when it causes harm to that state.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=D4342846-F6F2-4D33-A822-930438E55E44

Garland argues that Gov. Abbott’s order to stop contractors hired by the federal government to transport “noncitizens” (their word for illegals) causes injury to those the government is charged to protect,”jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody...”

Sarcasm alert: Ah, I see that I’ve been looking at this all wrong! For some reason, I had it in my head that the government’s priority was to look after the health and safety of its own citizens. But obviously, my view is outdated. The most important consideration in 2021 is not to cause injury to our country's honored guests. That means citizens and legal residents will just have to deal with any injury THEY receive as a result, because we are a compassionate nation.

While many citizens face renewed requirements to mask up to go to work or school, as the pandemic reportedly rages on, the ”noncitizens” get to hop a bus or plane –- chartered for them by Uncle Sam at taxpayer expense –- and head from border towns to big cities within Texas and far beyond, many spreading COVID-19 across the land.

https://news.yahoo.com/surge-raises-suspicions-migrants-propelling-185900170.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Gov. Abbott made the mistake of being concerned about Texans who might get exposed to the virus. The AG is just trying to show him the truth: that government is there not to protect Texans but to make sure everything possible is being done for hundreds of thousands of new Democrat voters---I mean, our new guests.

To that end, Biden’s newly proposed immigration plan says Congress should make available $15 million to cover the cost of private lawyers for “families and vulnerable individuals” who have entered our country illegally (though he doesn’t use the word “illegally”). It also calls for $23 million more to cover “legal orientation programs” administered by the Justice Department.

This is the first time an administration has proposed covering such an expense.

These lawyers would be making an estimated $150 to $300 per hour. We learn from this that the Biden administration is looking out for not only the “noncitizens” crossing the Rio Grande but also the immigration lawyers who will guide them through the legal territory that still must be crossed. That initial $15 million really won’t go very far, though, as it’s only enough to cover several thousand people. But since taking good care of “non-citizens” and the immigration lawyers representing them is so very important, that amount is sure to be just the starting point.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-to-cover-cost-lawyers-migrants-at-border

The WASHINGTON EXAMINER did some math and says that in the past four months alone, 190,000 people illegally crossed our southern border with a family member and 64,000 unaccompanied children also arrived. Just how the Biden administration plans to apply the money is vague, but the EXAMINER estimates the cost of providing lawyers for all of these people at $500 million. Again, that’s for four months.

I’d like to ask Merrick Garland about Section 292 of the Immigration Nationality Act, which specifies that the government is not supposed to pay for legal representation in immigration proceedings. Immigrants have the option of paying for their own representation, or they can receive help from one of the many pro bono and advocacy organizations that are there to assist in such cases. In other words, the American taxpayer is not supposed to be on the hook for this. These are civil cases, and since American citizens and legal permanent residents don’t get taxpayer-funded representation when they’re involved in civil litigation, then “noncitizens” certainly should not.

Obviously, the Biden administration doesn’t view it that way. “Noncitizens” get special privileges that we citizens don’t have. And the attorney general, as we have seen, takes it as his responsibility to keep them safe from harm as they pour into the Lone Star State.

But if the AG really feels that way, he might want to rethink his support of Biden’s border policy. We found a must-read article in the NEW YORK POST from April that would surely change his mind, as it details the nightmare that waits for many children, particularly young girls, who are brought across the border by the drug cartels.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/17/how-bidens-border-policy-will-increase-child-sex-trafficking-to-us/

Many have already been raped and beaten by the time they get here, if they do manage to get here alive. The cartels exploit them in child pornography and as drug mules. Because they’re indebted to the cartels for the cost of bringing them here, they become indentured servants working as prostitutes. One homeland security agent describes the “direct human pipeline” from Tenancingo, Mexico, to New York City, saying his office has prosecuted cases involving girls as young as 14.

The girls are held against their will in apartments in Queens and driven around to be made to have sex with men, typically 15-20 men in one evening. All the money is handed over to the trafficker, to pay the girls’ “debt.”

As for the situation in Texas, here’s more of the reality: So many are crossing the border that they have overflowed the facilities and are being massed under bridges to await being processed. The attorney general’s solution is to keep those buses rolling, throughout the State of Texas and to points north, east and west! And the governor had better not “interfere.” The VICTORY GIRLS BLOG has an outstanding report from South Texas, complete with unbelievable photos of this catastrophe.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/illegals-housed-under-bridge-and-bused-everywhere/

Finally, a legal immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who also happens to work as a health care policy analyst tells us just what is wrong with the current border policy and why. She sees the policy of allowing illegal immigrants to pour into America as “a slap in the face” to legal immigrants. She notes that while the administration is using the threat of COVID-19 to restrict Americans’ freedom, Biden has allowed over a million illegal immigrants, many infected with COVID and other serious diseases, to come here.

Op-Ed: I'm a Legal Immigrant - Here's Why Biden's Border Crisis Angers Me

So this is the reality of illegal immigration. Not only is it spreading COVID and crime, but we can’t “protect” the many thousands of young people who are brought over. Some on the left support this open-border policy because they are naive and think they’re being compassionate, but those at the highest levels of government such as Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, as well as those who promote open borders with their billions, know good and well the damage it causes but don’t care, because, you know, politics.

GOP report on Wuhan lab

August 3, 2021

Monday, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report that the preponderance of evidence, including recently uncovered evidence, points to COVID-19 being accidentally released from the virus lab in Wuhan, China, sometime before September 12, 2019.

https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/mccaul-releases-addendum-to-origins-of-covid-19-report/

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul said the Wuhan virologists were “playing with fire. They were genetically manipulating at the lab this gain-of-function that was taking place." McCaul called for top researchers involved with the Wuhan lab to be sanctioned and for Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliances that sent $3.4 million in NIH grants to the Wuhan lab, to be called to testify before Congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/wuhan-lab-report-raises-further-questions-about-possible-covid-19-lab-leak

McCaul also accused the Chinese Communist Party of engaging in “the greatest cover-up in human history.” I don’t know if there’s an award ceremony for that, but if so, I hope the CCP remembers to thank all the US-based social media sites that made their win possible.

One common refrain over the weekend, in podcasts and on the radio, was that “there just isn’t anything to talk about right now!” What, are they kidding?

Here’s a story, for example, that probably hasn’t been talked about much (yet) outside the Lone Star State, but it has to do with vitally important issues of states’ rights, balance of power, federal sovereignty, illegal immigration and public health. The federal government is trying to stop Gov. Abbott from restricting the ground transportation of illegal border-crossers within his state, as he did with an order filed last Wednesday. And Abbott has responded in writing that the Biden administration has “created a constitutional crisis between the federal government and the State of Texas.”

It sure is looking that way. According to Biden’s DOJ, “In our constitutional system, a State has no right to regulate the federal government’s operations.” Even when those operations are affecting the health and safety of people in that state? We’ll see about that.

Biden’s disastrous border policies have been leading up to this moment, but the final straw was when Attorney General Merrick Garland, who apparently is so disappointed at not becoming a Supreme Court that he’s decided to act like one, filed a restraining order in U.S. District Court, the Western District of Texas in El Paso, on Friday afternoon to stop Gov. Abbott’s order. We went to THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, definitely not a conservative newspaper, to see how a local paper reported this development. To their credit, it’s pretty straightforward.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-sues-texas-over-abbott-e2-80-99s-order-restricting-transport-of-migrants/ar-AAMLxcD?ocid=uxbndlbing

The state attorney general has filed five immigration-related lawsuits against the Biden administration. But AG Garland’s suit alleges that this order by Gov. Abbott “violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that federal laws take precedence over state laws.” Oh, really? I would imagine that many Texans would have a big problem with that, considering that Biden’s border policies are putting the lives and property of Texans near the border at serious risk.

But never mind those Texans --- Garland’s suit argues that the governor’s order causes injury to individuals whom the U.S. is charged to protect (yes, he’s talking about the migrants, not the Texans), “jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody, risking the safety of federal law enforcement personnel and their families, and exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.”

What? If anything is exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, it’s the steady stream of illegal, potentially infected border-crossers into Texas and other border states.

But Garland called Gov. Abbott’s order “both dangerous and unlawful.”

Let’s turn Garland’s argument around and word it so it actually makes sense from Gov. Abbott’s point of view: Biden’s border policy causes injury to American citizens who reside in Texas, particularly near the border, whom the U.S. is charged to protect. By allowing covid-infected individuals and members of violent drug cartels –- and who knows who else? –- to cross into Texas, they jeopardize the health and safety of American citizens (Texas residents and their families), risk the safety of federal and state law enforcement personnel, and exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 in Texas communities.

Abbott accuses the Biden administration of exposing Texas to COVID-19 (true) and “creating a public health disaster in Texas.”

I would add that letting thousands of untested, unvaccinated and largely unmasked people cross illegally into Texas makes it a lot harder for rational people to take the government’s warnings about the virus seriously. COVID-19 and its variants are either still very dangerous, or they’re not. If they are, then why are hundreds of thousands of people from around the world allowed to stream into our country through our southern border? This makes absolutely no sense, except perhaps in Joe Biden’s brain.

Abbott’s executive order, which took effect on Wednesday, ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to detain vehicles that were transporting migrants after their detention by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reroute them to their point of origin or entry.

Attorneys and “immigration nonprofits” jumped all over this order as unconstitutional. But Abbott responded that he has legal authority to do it under “long-established emergency response laws to control the movement of people to better contain the spread of a disaster, such as those known to have COVID-19.”

Abbott’s order certainly plays heck with the government’s logistics for transporting “noncitizens” (the nice vanilla word now used by the feds to encompass illegals), as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are designed only for short-term holding, and with people pouring as fast as they are, they have to keep folks moving...somewhere else. In just the Rio Grande Valley, CBP in the fiscal year to date has used contractors to transport about 120,000 (!) “noncitizens” hither and yon. Your tax dollars at work.

The “noncitizens” are transferred to another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), except for unaccompanied children, who are taken to Health and Human Services. It is then that “other non-governmental agencies” do COVID-19 testing along with what Garland suit describes as “safe placement and quarantine.” Sarcasm alert: I’m sure it’s all very safe and the virus doesn’t spread at all.

The numbers quoted in the DALLAS MORNING NEWS report are quite staggering. Just Thursday, nearly 2,300 unaccompanied minors were put in custody of the Border Patrol. This fiscal year, about 95,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended. Detention facilities can hold only so many. It’s clear that if Texas doesn’t play nicely with the Biden administration and cooperate fully with their master plan for spreading new “noncitizens” throughout the country, the feds will face a logistical nightmare. That’s the argument being used by many to get Gov. Abbott to reconsider and cooperate.

We all know there’s another solution to this logistical nightmare: stop letting people stream across the doggone border. Close up the gaps in the wall and stop the flow NOW. But that won't happen.

A story in the DAILY CALLER has more details. The DOJ suit also claims that in dealing with the contractors the feds are using to transport “noncitizens,” Abbott’s order allegedly interferes with nongovernmental partners and contractors working with the federal government and the “administration of federal immigration law.” It also said that the order obstructs Congress, since Congress is charged with crafting immigration law.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/30/biden-doj-sues-texas-greg-abbott-migrant-transportation/

If that’s the case, then Texas or any state is at the mercy of any federal law having anything to do with immigration, no matter how damaging it might be. Abbott could be right: this might be a constitutional crisis.

And so far, he's not blinking. Garland has warned him that if his order is not rescinded immediately, then the United States “intends to pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.” It occurs to me that this is the strong-arm approach he’s taking with state legislatures that want to run and audit their own elections, as they are constitutionally entitled to do.

Sarah Palin For Senate

August 2, 2021

Other than “Trump Wins Second Non-Consecutive Term,” I can think of few headlines that would cause more anguish in liberal circles than “Sarah Palin Elected To Senate.” And for that reason alone, this story makes me smile…

https://www.westernjournal.com/sarah-palin-floats-big-2022-possibility-sen-murkowski-notice/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

In a related story, I have a feeling Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t the only Republican in Congress who will be facing a challenge from the right. In a new McLaughlin & Associates survey 53% of regular Republican primary voters in Wyoming described Rep. Liz Cheney, currently the darling of CNN for her spot on Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6th show trial, as “liberal.” Only 23% say they plan to vote for her, and 77% say they will not. I think you can safely call those “daunting odds.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/cheney-in-trouble-77-gop-would-not-reelect-53-call-her-liberal

When the Supreme Court pulled a right to same-sex marriage out of the air, it created a legal hornet’s nest that pitted their newly-created right against the clearly-enumerated religious freedom rights of the First Amendment. Almost overnight, LGBTQ activists went from arguing that legalizing same-sex marriage would have no effect on Christians who oppose it to launching lawsuits to destroy Christian-owned businesses that declined to participate in same-sex weddings. In its original ruling, the SCOTUS voiced some empty words about respecting others' beliefs, but created a cloud of confusion that opened the door to religious persecution.

They had a chance to correct it when they got the case of Colorado Christian cake artist Jack Phillips, who has been hounded for years by lawsuits for declining to take jobs creating gay wedding cakes. But again, the SCOTUS punted and refused to clarify that First Amendment rights are supreme. So Phillips continues to be targeted with malicious lawsuits. And now, the SCOTUS’ creative rights-making and general dithering has resulted in yet another injustice, and from the same state and the same politicized and vindictive state officials they already had to reprimand before.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judges-rule-christian-web-designers-beliefs-not-supersede-colorado-law-refuses-promote-gay-marriage/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Once again, a federal court has sided with Colorado officials who are ordering Christian web designer Lorie Smith to take jobs designing same-sex wedding websites or else face serious legal consequences. In a 2-1 ruling, the court said Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination law is a “neutral law of general applicability” and can therefore compel Smith to promote speech that violates her religious beliefs. But the dissenting judge called the ruling “unprecedented,” and said, “This case illustrates exactly why we have a First Amendment.”

Exactly. So how many more Christian business owners are going to have their lives, businesses and finances ruined before the Supreme Court finally does its job, cleans up the mess it’s created, and affirms the supremacy of the First Amendment?

There’s a key difference between how those on the right and the left view the economy and the role of the government. We’re experiencing the stark contrasts as the Biden administration carries out its policies that lean to the left—in some cases to the far left.

Here are some basic truths about how the economy works. The rule of supply and demand says that if the demand is higher than the supply, prices go up. So if a lot of people want a car or a house but there is a low inventory of cars and houses, the prices will go up. The more demand, the higher the price. That’s true for gasoline, groceries, or gravel. Conversely, if there is a huge supply and little demand, prices will plummet. This is true of labor as well. If there are lots of help wanted signs and job openings but not many workers willing to take the jobs, employers will have to bid up the wages and pay more. But they may try to function with fewer employees, which in the long run means fewer jobs.

Another truth is that taxes taken by the government mean less money for a family or a business. We need taxes to pay for essential services and functions, whether having a military, having airports, waterways, police departments, fire trucks, roads and highways, parks, or sewer systems. But whatever the government does for you, it takes FROM you to do it. If they do stuff you don’t want or need, it costs you in real money. That’s money you don’t keep to buy clothes for your teenager, buy food, pay your housing costs or utilities, or put gas in your car.

When prices go up but wages don’t, that’s inflation. Inflation is a silent tax on you. If the cost of your electricity, gasoline, food, building supplies, and the cost of labor goes up, you have less money left to do things you want to do and less money to buy things you want to buy. The decrease in what you can afford to buy leads to fewer things being sold, which means fewer things will be manufactured and transported which means some people who made, shipped, or sold those things will lose their jobs. Everyone gets hurt by inflation and we are seeing a uptick in inflation right now under the policies of the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress. Those on the left believes that government should do more to redistribute the money in the economy by taking more from the people who have worked and giving it to those who either didn’t work or who didn’t earn as much as others. Sometimes government promises to “do things” for people for providing “FREE college or childcare.” But it isn’t free at all. The government will have to take more of your money to pay for it. And when taxes are higher, you have less money. And your employer has less money. You can’t buy things you want and your employer can’t increase your wages or benefits. And a store can’t afford to put more items on the shelf which means fewer things are ordered, fewer things are shipped, and fewer things are made. Get the picture? Good, because the folks on the left don’t seem to. They truly believe they can spend your money better than you can. If you actually believe that, you will love those who govern from the left. If you believe you’d spend your money better than the government would, then you’ll want to vote for people on the right.

It’s really not that complicated. How you vote will determine how you live. Elections do have consequences. And if you’ve bought gasoline, clothes, food or planned a vacation lately, I hope you’ve noticed the consequences!

Vaccine Talk

August 1, 2021

The Biden White House is furious at the New York Times and the Washington Post for tweeting what they claim is false information about the risk of COVID infection among the vaccinated and their likelihood of spreading it. Details here:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-house-washington-post-new-york-times-covid-spread-vaccinated

Can I just point out that it’s no wonder the public is skeptical of government claims about COVID and vaccines? What does it say when the Administration’s messages are so mixed and confused that not even their court stenographers can get the official version straight?

Speaking of which…

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/30/white-house-walks-back-biden-statement-that-national-vaccine-mandate-is-under-consideration/

And Matt Taibbi shows how vaccine skepticism is not a new phenomenon but the latest manifestation of the long term out-of-touch arrogance and doubletalk of the elites.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/28/smug-dems-have-only-selves-to-blame-for-vaccine-hesitancy/

The only good thing I can say about Attorney General Merrick Garland and his stewardship of the Biden “Justice” Department is that at least he’s not a Supreme Court Justice. During his brief time in office, he’s obliterated any sense of the DOJ as a fair and impartial arbiter of laws and the Constitution and is rapidly turning it into the kind of politicized enforcement arm of the President that we normally see in banana republics.

Here are just a few recent stories out of the DOJ:

They’re threatening states that conduct ballot audits…

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/28/doj-warning-election-ballot-reviews-501295

They’re threatening states that pass laws to safeguard election integrity…

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-doj-sets-stage-permanently-destroy-election-integrity-ensure-gop-never-wins/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

They’re suing Texas because Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to stop the feds from transporting COVID-positive illegal immigrants around the state. Imagine if this Administration went to this much effort to keep COVID-positive illegal immigrants out in the first place...

https://www.theblaze.com/news/doj-sues-texas-gov-abbott-over-the-governor-s-executive-order-on-migrant-transportation

They dropped charges against five suspected Chinese spies while hounding Trump supporters like Inspector Javert…

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/07/26/doj-drops-charges-against-5-possible-chinese-spies-as-fbi-focuses-on-january-6-n1464726

They declared vaccine mandates legal, even while admitting that some legal scholars say they’re not…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-vaccine-mandates-legal

And now (surprise!), the Biden DOJ has ordered the IRS to turn over former President Trump’s personal income tax records to his rabid haters in Congress for them to fish through.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-doj-orders-irs-release-trumps-tax-returns/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

The DOJ memo said, “Executive Branch officials must apply a presumption that Legislative Branch officials act in good faith and in furtherance of legitimate objectives.”

So I’ll give Biden’s and Garland’s “Justice” Department this: they may no longer be providing justice, but at least they’re trying to give us some much-needed laughter.

Thanks to all who wrote concerning the story of the father whose son has been "detained" for months after the Capitol breach and our follow-up concerning a letter critical of the dad. Here's one we found particularly insightful and would like to highlight, from Terry...

Dear Gov. Huckabee:

First of all, I am extremely grateful for your daily newsletters, which are a primary source of news for me, as well as for your TV show that provides a variety unmatched in that medium.

I'm moved to write concerning what is being said about the events of January 6 by people on both ends of the spectrum who seemingly value inflammatory hyperbole over rational discussion of what actually happened. Your own remarks have consistently been even-handed and well thought out, it seems to me.

Conservatives are wearily accustomed to the distortions and outright falsehoods voiced by people like the chair of the Joint Chiefs and the Capitol Police officer who testified this week before the House committee. As onerous as those remarks are to us, some statements I've seen in your reader comments bother me almost as much. They amount to heaping fuel on the fire that the left wants to keep burning. The criticism leveled at the letter from the detainee's father was to me excessive and uncalled for.

Believing in an unrealistic and idealized view of Jan 6 is certainly their prerogative, but conservatives who do so need to realize the grave harm still being done to the movement they purport to represent.

This response is somewhat lengthy I know so I will end here. Once again, thanks for providing a forum for rational discussion.

Terry Allen

Pekin, IL

Dear Terry:

Thank you so much for writing. This is a point we've been trying to make ever since the event took place. It's easy to understand why Trump supporters were fed up --- especially after even the Supreme Court refused to look at evidence --- and why some of them were ready to blow and desperately wanted to make a statement, but to understand this is not the same as approving of it or defending it.

The way they chose to make their statement caused tremendous long-term harm to conservatives, by playing right into the left's hands. We should know by now how the left will twist whatever they can to further their own narrative, which in this case was that Trump supporters are crazy right-wing "insurrectionists" who want to "subvert democracy." Conservatives attended that rally because they want to PROTECT democracy. Think that case ended up being made? No, it did not.

Letters such as yours might help more conservatives see that we have to not just fight, but FIGHT SMART. Thanks again.

Dem Panic

August 1, 2021

Citing concerns over the Delta variant, various cities and businesses including Walt Disney World are bringing back indoor mask mandates. Teachers unions are pushing to continue them in schools. And President Biden, who changes direction more often than LeBron James, now appears poised to mandate that all government workers (not surprisingly, that’s the largest workforce in America) get vaccinated or face regular tests and various restrictions. The Postal Workers Union had something to say about that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/07/29/americas-largest-postal-worker-union-has-thoughts-about-vaccine-mandates-n2593280

We’re told that we need to bring back all these draconian measures because of the dangers of the dreaded Delta Variant. Biden once even claimed it’s deadlier than the original disease, which it is not (like all viruses, it’s mutating to forms that are weaker but easier to spread as it tries to stay alive when there are fewer potential hosts.)

This mixed messaging is destroying the CDC’s credibility and undermining their own arguments for getting vaccinated. For instance, if it’s still necessary for vaccinated people to wear masks and social distance, that implies that the vaccine is useless, which isn't true. They say we should listen to them because they represent “SCIENCE!” but they’re coming off more as politicians speaking out of both sides of their mouths at once (I wish there was a vaccine to cure that.)

Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw released a series of tweets blasting the CDC and claiming that the entire basis for the return of mask mandates was a single study done in India that was rejected in peer review and that involved a vaccine we don’t even use here.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/07/28/dan-crenshaw-tweets-stunning-revelation-on-new-cdc-mask-guidelines-n2593271

Wednesday, Fox News Primetime aired a series of graphs illustrating the rising cases of COVID that are sparking the return of draconian measures. They showed that the case increase was about one-tenth of the previous peak, and the more important measures (hospitalizations and deaths) were flat. In fact, US COVID deaths are at their lowest level since March of last year, around the time the pandemic began.

https://fee.org/articles/despite-delta-alarmism-us-covid-deaths-are-at-lowest-level-since-march-2020-harvard-and-stanford-professors-explain/

Since so few people trust the CDC, here’s some straight dope on the actual danger level of the Delta variant and the effectiveness of the vaccines (quite high, but not perfect), from health industry consultant Kevin Roche’s Healthy Skeptic blog.

https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/07/28/what-more-can-i-say/

He deserves a read just for his brilliant observation that “pandemic” is an anagram for “Dem panic.”

News Correction

August 1, 2021

CORRECTION: We recently commented on a report that the CDC was revoking emergency use authorization for a particular test for COVID because it couldn’t differentiate between the COVID virus and influenza. It turns out that’s inaccurate (that test can differentiate but was withdrawn for different reasons.) Although it is true, as I said, that the initial story had a lot of people questioning whether the original COVID case numbers were accurate, but the CDC says they are. You can read full details at this fact-check article by Kaiser Health News.

https://khn.org/news/article/fact-check-cdc-pcr-covid-test-distinguishes-from-flu-eua-request-withdrawal/

On a side note, I don’t know why the writers saw fit to single me out, as if we were a source of this story, which had been widely distributed long before we touched on it. In fact, that’s the only reason we posted a brief mention of it: it was already all over the place.

As we have repeatedly made clear, in most cases, we aren’t an original news source site, we’re an aggregator/commentary site. We try hard to find multiple reliable sources for stories, but those are increasingly hard to come by in the age of social media and blatantly politicized news. Our original story even linked directly to the CDC website, so if it was incorrect, all they had to do was add a correction to that page. We may be the first people accused of spreading misinformation by linking to the CDC’s own website.

We have no interest in spreading misinformation, and if something we comment on later turns out to be inaccurate, we always run a correction, as you see here. How many original source news outlets – or for that matter, fact-checker sites – do that?

Thursday, President Biden held a press conference where he promised to give us the straight facts about COVID-19 and vaccinations. To say the least, many were skeptical of that.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/29/joe-biden-loses-it-calls-fox-fax-snaps-at-peter-doocy-and-wrecks-his-own-argument-on-masks-n418622

The big takeaways from Biden’s speech were that Americans should get vaccinated, and he would require civilian federal workers to “attest” that they’ve been vaccinated or wear masks and undergo regular tests and travel restrictions. He also encouraged local governments to use leftover COVID relief funds to pay $100 to people who get vaccinated.

(Just as an aside: isn't making people prove they're vaccinated a form of requiring ID? And since blacks and Hispanics are less likely than whites not to be vaccinated, that would mean it's an ID requirement that disproportionately affects minorities, or as the Democrats call that, "RAAAAAAACISM!!!" But I digress...)

Many critics are taking this as a sign that the government is ramping up for tighter restrictions and even more lockdowns over a spike in cases that’s not that high and that isn’t accompanied by a big increase in deaths because the Delta variant isn’t as dangerous. All this paranoia, and the DOJ’s dubious ruling that it’s legal for companies to require workers to get vaccinated, is sparking big companies like Google, Twitter, Netflix and Facebook to require their employees to get vaccinated.

(Some legal scholars question the DOJ’s reasoning, arguing that the Geneva Convention recognizes the right to refuse to have experimental drugs injected into your body against your will, and the vaccines have received only emergency use authorization by the FDA. Please note that I’m not discouraging vaccination – I’ve been vaccinated myself – I’m just talking about other people’s right to say no.)

I expect quite a bit of pushback even from government workers (the postal union already is rebelling), and even more if they try to use COVID to hang onto the abusive power the government seized last year.

Meanwhile, Mark Theissen in the Washington Post (surprisingly) helped put this pandemic/”Dem panic” into perspective by pointing out, using the CDC’s own numbers, that only 4,072 vaccinated Americans have been hospitalized with symptoms out of 161 million, for a breakthrough infection rate of less than 0.003%. Of those hospitalized, 849 have died, for a death rate of 0.0005%. The median age of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections was 74, and an Israeli study found that only 4% of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections had no comorbidities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/07/29/joe-sacrifices-military-readiness-and-freedom-over-stats-showing-vaxxed-people-are-more-likely-to-die-from-bee-sting-than-covid-n1465668

For comparison, that means that if you’ve been vaccinated, you are less likely to die of COVID than from a car crash; seasonal flu; a lightning strike; choking on food; sunstroke; drowning; a dog attack; or being stung by a bee. Yet some people want to bring back draconian pandemic measures.

Somehow, I get the feeling we're all being stung.

Reliable News Sources

July 30, 2021

I get a lot of requests from readers asking where they can find reliable sources of news that are not tilted too far to the left or the right – aside from this newsletter that is (I am unapologetically conservative, but I won’t bend or ignore facts to make a point; that would only weaken my own arguments.)

The sad truth is, there are few sources these days that are completely reliable. My staffers previously wrote a radio prep service that required them to read news from a variety of sources and they developed good noses for sniffing out self-serving bias and spotting fake news and slanted “facts,” which made them uniquely qualified for this job. I like Fox News and Western Journal and have business relationships with them, but I acknowledge that they mostly come from a conservative point of view, even as they do try hard to get the facts correct. One good thing about them is that, unlike many of their critics, they label commentary as “commentary,” not front page news.

To find the news we print, we look at a wide variety of sources, even liberal outlets (we have to know their version if we’re going to refute it.) The aggregator/commentary site Instapundit is a good place to go for a variety of viewpoints and intelligent commentary. For videos that YouTube censors, the sites Rumble and Odysee are oases of free speech. JustTheNews.com does a good job of living up to its name. Substack has become the home base of a number of reporters such as Glenn Greenwald whose archaic pursuit of actual journalism has gotten them banished from the big media outlets. And the Epoch Times and the associated sites of Redstate.com, Townhall.com and PJMedia.com offer a good selection of news and conservative/Libertarian commentary.

And here’s some welcome news for those who have been frustrated by the recent leftward lurch of the once-mighty Drudge Report: a former Drudge editor who feels your pain has launched a site called OffThePress.com that brings back the no-holds-barred spirit of the original Drudge Report.

Here’s some more information on that:

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2021/07/27/conservative-and-miss-the-old-drudge-report-heres-some-awesome-news-for-you-n417299

Or you can just continue reading this newsletter, safe in the knowledge that we read the news, so you won’t have to.

Related news?

July 30, 2021

Are these stories related? You make the call!

1. Wages are rising due to the difficulty of getting people to take jobs (maybe because they’re being paid more not to work under expanded unemployment.) But at the same time, inflation is pushing consumer prices so much higher that real average hourly wages decreased by 1.7% between June 2020 and June 2021. That means that Americans earning $50,000 a year lost about $850 in purchasing power to inflation. And with Biden and the Democrats determined to pump out trillions more in deficit spending, inflation shows no signs of slowing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-america-american-wages-drop-nearly-2-inflation-spirals-control/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

2. The Commerce Department reports that in the three months ending in June, the US economy grew slower than expected, considering the lockdowns were finally ending. Due to supply chain disruptions and labor shortages (see above), GDP grew at only a 6.5% annual rate. Economists were expecting 8.5% growth. First quarter growth was also revised downward from 6.4 to 6.3%.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/gross-domestic-product-q2-2021

3. Six months into his Administration, President Biden’s approval rating with likely voters has taken a plunge. Rasmussen’s poll is based on a three-day rolling average, and Biden has generally polled in the high 40s to low 50s. As of yesterday it had dropped to an all-time low of 46% with 52% disapproval.

https://www.westernjournal.com/official-poll-shows-bidens-approval-rating-time-low/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

See any connection? If you do, forget about ever working for CNN.

Yesterday, we wrote about a letter from a newsletter reader whose son is one of those incarcerated in the wake of the Capitol breach on January 6. (His son is one of those who didn’t even go inside the building.) Imagine how it must be to have one’s son being held in jail by the feds, with no bail, for many months (like a murderer), awaiting a trial that might not even happen until sometime in 2022. It’s not even possible for the father to have a private conversation with his own son, as phone conversations are monitored at the jail, and the son isn’t even able to meet in private with an attorney. All of this, I feel compelled to remind you, is happening in America, the land of the free.

In case you didn’t see the father’s letter and our response, here it is.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=25AAFBB1-0197-4525-A6F6-CC190FDAB183

After this piece ran, we received a comment from another reader who took exception to what the father had said about his son, saying the son had nothing to apologize for and was even a hero. In fact, her letter ended in a way that seemed downright abusive to the father. (It’s all too easy to get abusive towards people we only talk to online, people we have never met and don’t know at all.) We thought this reader’s questions and observations deserved to be addressed at length. First, here is her letter...

(From Sharon)

Just a couple of questions about the father of the Capitol Hill detainee:

First of all, why would black people not support Trump people?

Because most black people do but then again these were criminals.

Also, the father says what his son did was wrong? Oh? Getting in the way of Goebbels and the Gestapo?

My father saw combat in Korea and Vietnam and if that’d been me he’d have been cheering not saying I’d done wrong.

Mister your son did right and he is a hero and if you don’t stand with him shame on you.

………………..

Dear Sharon:

Thank you for responding; we welcome responses from all sides. But I think some issues here cry out for clarification.

The father, Keith, did mention in his letter that most of the inmates at DC Correctional were black –- as are most of the residents of Washington, DC –- and that in general they were dismayed to have Trump supporters in their midst. That is not surprising and is not the same as saying black people don’t support Trump, only that these particular black people in Washington, DC, did not. And while the black conservative movement is picking up steam in some parts of the country, most black people are still not a part of that. We can deny reality if you would like, but these inmates of the DC Correctional facility, who do happen to be mostly black, are not Trump supporters. Probably some of the white ones aren’t, either; after all, this is Washington, DC. On the bright side, once they learned Alan was a Trump supporter and not a pedophile, they treated him better than they treat pedophiles.

Recall that according to the letter we previously posted from detainee Joe Biggs, some of the black people Biggs met in a Florida correctional facility were struck by what a nice guy he was. They liked him. It wasn’t the black men, but some of the white men identifying as white supremacists, who didn’t want to be associated with him. They said he was “too nice” to be in their group.

In fact, Joe said that one thing he’d learned for sure after meeting real white supremacists in this jail was that he WASN’T ONE.

Sharon, you criticize Alan’s father for saying that what his son did was wrong. We don’t know the details of the confrontation his son had with police and a reporter outside the Capitol Building, but the son does, and if he feels contrite and believes he was in the wrong, I think we should take him at his word. You know I’ve said myself that this confrontation was a bad idea and has had terrible repercussions. I’m not sure you understood me when I said the left is using this for great political benefit. In that sense, anything that was done at the Capitol Building that went beyond peaceable assembly was indeed wrong. If this young man realizes that, so much the better.

You may say he did right to fight against “Goebbels and the Gestapo,” but, again, we don’t know exactly what went down and his part in it. According to his dad, since he’s come to the Lord he’s thought deeply about the kind of man he wants to be. He’s sorry for what he did. His father respects that, and I think we should, too.

The thing that really stood out to me in this father’s letter was the dismay at the two-tier justice system. “I guess if you are a Democrat,” he said, “you can burn a city or burn a federal building with agents inside it; you may be arrested but will be out the next day without bail.”

This young man does NOT deserve to be languishing on a lower rung of our “justice” system simply because he is a Trump supporter, and he absolutely does not deserve to be held for many months with bail denied. As I’ve said, he and the other “detainees” (political prisoners) are being used as political props for the statecraft that is Nancy Pelosi’s investigatory “commission,” when they should be treated with exactly the same rights as any other American. Direct your fury at THAT, not at a father who is hurting and thinking about his son.

As thousands of illegal immigrants continue streaming across our border, and getting released on the US side with no court dates (only 13% even check in as they’re ordered to), Vice President Kamala Harris finally released her five-pronged plan to deal with the problem. It has to be seen to be believed.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/29/harris-releases-migration-strategy-amid-border-crisis/

Talk about a fork full of manure. The various prongs are heaped with high-flown liberal fantasies about fixing the “root causes” of illegal immigration into America, like “combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law” and “promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and free press” in Central America. All well and good, as future goals. But, maybe, in the short term, we might consider CLOSING THE DOOR!!!

It’s like asking someone to help put out a forest fire that she started, and seven months later, she hands over an essay on the history of combustion. And it’s a D- essay. If she and President Biden really want to know the root cause of our current illegal immigration crisis, they can find it in the nearest mirror.

Meanwhile, a new cry has gone up for Biden to appoint someone else as an illegal immigration czar. Say, I know someone who’d be perfect! He has a proven track record of reducing illegal immigration, and he left his last job on January 20th, so he’s probably tanned, rested and ready.

As a number of commentators are pointing out, the once-free nation of Australia is quickly devolving back to its roots as a penal colony, with the government using the spike in COVID cases to justify outrageously draconian measures. Residents of high-transmission sites in Sydney are being ordered to stay within three miles of their homes and wear masks even outdoors. The government is sending in military troops to enforce the measures. This is in reaction to a rise in cases that has resulted so far in 13 deaths in Sydney out of a population of nearly 5.4 million.

https://www.westernjournal.com/looks-like-people-facing-total-medical-tyranny-military-rolls-major-city-enforce-covid-lockdowns/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I’m worried that our leaders must be looking at Australia as a role model while the rest of us should be looking at it as a cautionary tale.

Chief among those “leaders” who are seeing disaster in a minor spike of a less dangerous variant is, not surprisingly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has finally found a way in which she thinks police can be useful.

https://www.westernjournal.com/pelosi-bends-capitol-police-will-stunning-power-grab/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Republicans immediately launched a protest of Pelosi’s threat to arrest people who don’t wear masks even if they’re vaccinated. They called it, “Kiss My Mask.” They’d better be careful: protests are only legal in the Capitol when Democrats pull them.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-democrats-mask-mandates-cdc

Related: While Democrats are excoriating fully-vaccinated Republicans who refuse to obey Pelosi’s mask edict, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was photographed reportedly walking in the halls of Congress, carrying her mask in her hand.

https://www.westernjournal.com/aoc-busted-dire-health-risk-damning-photo-floating-around-dc-report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

That gave conservatives an opening to mockingly denounce her as a homicidal maniac and a dire threat to public health who’s putting people’s lives at risk.

Of course, that’s just exaggeration for satirical effect. I think the only thing coming out of her mouth that poses a serious danger is her words.

While it’s always sad to have to write the celebrity obituaries, this one hits especially hard. Dusty Hill, bassist and vocalist for “The Little Ol’ Band from Texas,” ZZ Top, died in his sleep at his home in Houston Wednesday at 72. The Top were on tour and Hill had taken a break, supposedly to deal with hip problems.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/28/dusty-hill-zz-top-bassist-dead-at-72/

Hill was a Dallas native (like me), and I can assure you that to us true Texans, ZZ Top are icons. Anyone who badmouths ZZ Top, Willie Nelson or the Alamo in Texas runs the risk of getting their butts kicked up to their shoulder blades with a pointy-toed boot. We grow up on ZZ Top, never grow tired of ZZ Top, and when the real thing isn’t touring, we go see tribute bands who wear department Santa beards. ZZ Top IS Texas. What other band ever went on tour with live longhorn steer on stage with them? Or had a hit song about the Chicken Ranch five years before “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas” debuted? But I saw a recent YouTube video that attempted to list the “Most American Bands of All Time,” and they tied for #1 with Lynyrd Skynyrd, so I guess we’ll share them with the rest of y’all.

Dusty Hill, drummer Frank Beard and guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons had been together since 1969, making them the longest-running band ever with the original unchanged lineup (52 years!) They’ve gone through some musical changes over the years, from the bluesy sound of “ZZ Top’s First Album” through the smoother ‘80s hits like “Sharp-Dressed Man” and “Legs,” to their more recent albums like “Rhythmeen” or 2012’s “La Futura,” that returned to the rough blues/rock style I sometimes think of as the sound of heavy machinery self-destructing. But they never strayed too far from that uniquely Texan blend of blues, rock, country and sly, hilarious lyrics. If you liked the old stuff and haven’t heard any of the newer material, check it out. It’s raw and terrific.

The band announced that it will continue on, and I’m sure Billy and Frank will keep making great music (Billy has put out a couple of excellent solo albums in recent years.) But it will never be exactly the same. Especially if Gov. Huckabee grows his new beard out and becomes Dusty’s replacement.

Order a taco plate, hoist a Lone Star and put on “Tres Hombres” or "Tejas" in Dusty’s honor. And watch the Grammy-nominated documentary, “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

https://www.amazon.com/ZZ-Top-That-LIttle-Texas/dp/B085LW1FYD

But wait, there’s more! We’ve also lost yet another American icon of a very different sort: Infomercial king Ron Popeil died in Los Angeles Wednesday at 86.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/infomercial-icon-ron-popeil-dies-at-86/ar-AAMGaB6

Possibly the greatest sales/pitchman of all time, Popeil also invented many of the gadgets he hawked on TV (although two of his most famous, the Veg-O-Matic and the suggestively-named Pocket Fisherman, were actually invented by his father.) Popeil’s knack for coming up with products you never knew you needed (The Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler! The Mr. Microphone! The Electric Food Dehydrator! The Portable Smokeless Ashtray! And of course, Hair-In-A-Can!) was matched only by his talent for making them so entertaining.

While some of these products seem kitschy today, they were often surprisingly high quality. I recently saw a YouTube video of someone trying a Veg-O-Matic from the ‘60s, and it still worked like a charm. Try that with one of today’s plastic, made-in-China gadgets. And I would definitely not recommend any Chinese-made Hair-In-A-Can.

Cuomo Begs For Business

July 30, 2021

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is begging New York City employers to make workers come back to their offices by Labor Day because so many people are working from home that local businesses are struggling. Cuomo said they have to get people back to support all the struggling shops, restaurants and service businesses. I'll say to him what many of his female staffers probably have: "Please don't beg."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/cuomo-begs-businesses-nyc-return-devastating-shutdown

I won’t go into the fact that it was boneheaded lockdown policies by Democrats like Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio that forced people to work at home in the first place. But they also bear responsibility in many other ways for the reluctance to return. DeBlasio’s awful leftist policies have brought back the crime and filth that Rudy Giuliani miraculously reversed, and the high taxes and costs of living are also driving people not only out of the city but out of the state.

I’ll share a secret with him: employers don’t locate in a city or people move there because the city needs them to support it. They move there because they see it as a good place to live. If it’s dangerous, dirty, inconvenient and over-priced, they’ll go somewhere else.

I used to have to go to New York City every weekend to do my Fox News show, and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I now get to record my TBN show in Hendersonville, Tennessee. I assume that many of those workers are overjoyed to be able to work from somewhere else via Zoom and the Internet.

I’ve been predicting for years that as more and more of our business transactions moved online, people would start to question why they were living in tiny, expensive apartments in cold, dirty, dangerous, overtaxed cities when they could do the same work via their laptops from the sunny patios of their spacious homes in low-tax Florida or Texas? I've said that the day that possibility finally dawned on everyone would be the beginning of the end of New York City as a hub for major financial services.

Gov. Cuomo doesn’t seem to realize that COVID didn’t cause the great exodus, it just sped it up. Begging employers to force workers to come back is like standing on the banks of a river and ordering it to flow the other way. Or to choose a metaphor liberals should appreciate, it’s like trying to deny evolution.

New York City might recover a bit, if its leaders ever take their boots off the necks of business owners and citizens and start using them to kick criminals into jail again. But the only way they’ll convince people to start flowing back in big numbers is to do what Rudy did: create a clean, safe, well-run city and state. Frankly, I don’t believe they’re capable of that.

A Sad Day In The House

July 30, 2021

It was a sad day in the House Thursday, and a sign of just how radical the Democrats have become, when for the first time in 45 years, the House passed on party lines a Medicaid spending bill that didn’t include the Hyde Amendment. That’s the amendment that prevents taxpayer money from being used to fund abortions, something opposed by a majority of Americans.

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2021/07/29/democrats-blow-up-the-last-bipartisan-refuge-in-congress-n418763

It also didn’t include the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits agencies that receive federal funds from discriminating against entities because they refuse to provide or fund abortions.

Later that night, House Democrats passed a State Department funding bill that dropped the Helms Amendment, which prohibits using taxpayer money to fund abortions in other countries. A Marist poll shows that’s opposed by 77% of Americans and supported by only 19%, but the Democrats care more about the abortion lobby than the will of the people.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/29/breaking-house-passes-bill-to-force-taxpayers-to-fund-abortion-n1465634

The Democrats have always been the more pro-abortion party, but at least there used to be room for pro-life Democrats. Not only have they all been driven out, but now, even the reasonable compromise of not forcing pro-life taxpayers to fund the killing of children in the womb is gone.

That’s been replaced by denouncing every disagreement as racist, which California Rep. Barbara Lee tried here, saying, “These provisions have long had a terrible and disproportionate impact on low-income women and women of color. Getting them off the books will be a huge step forward for reproductive and racial justice.”

In short, the Democrats now claim to be fighting racism by making it even easier to abort black babies, who are already greatly disproportionate victims of abortion. In opposing voter ID, Democrats argue that the disproportionate impact of any policy on certain races is prima facie proof of racism. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who thought that “inferior” races should be weeded out, must be looking up and smiling.

The good news is that these radical changes aren't likely to survive in the Senate. But it should send a long-overdue wake-up call to everyday Democratic voters that this is no longer your father’s Democratic Party. The leadership is now solidly a far-left, pro-death cult of radical extremists. And the one thing I do agree with them on is that extremists are dangerous to America and should not be in positions of power.

Mixed Messaging On Masks

July 29, 2021

Citing concerns over the Delta variant, various cities and businesses including Walt Disney World are bringing back indoor mask mandates. Teachers unions are pushing to continue them in schools. And President Biden, who changes direction more often than LeBron James, now appears poised to mandate that all government workers (not surprisingly, that’s the largest workforce in America) get vaccinated or face regular tests and various restrictions. The Postal Workers Union had something to say about that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/07/29/americas-largest-postal-worker-union-has-thoughts-about-vaccine-mandates-n2593280

We’re told that we need to bring back all these draconian measures because of the dangers of the dreaded Delta Variant. Biden once even claimed it’s deadlier than the original disease, which it is not (like all viruses, it’s mutating to forms that are weaker but easier to spread as it tries to stay alive when there are fewer potential hosts.)

This mixed messaging is destroying the CDC’s credibility and undermining their own arguments for getting vaccinated. For instance, if it’s still necessary for vaccinated people to wear masks and social distance, that implies that the vaccine is useless, which isn't true. They say we should listen to them because they represent “SCIENCE!” but they’re coming off more as politicians speaking out of both sides of their mouths at once (I wish there was a vaccine to cure that.)

Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw released a series of tweets blasting the CDC and claiming that the entire basis for the return of mask mandates was a single study done in India that was rejected in peer review and that involved a vaccine we don’t even use here.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/07/28/dan-crenshaw-tweets-stunning-revelation-on-new-cdc-mask-guidelines-n2593271

Wednesday, Fox News Primetime aired a series of graphs illustrating the rising cases of COVID that are sparking the return of draconian measures. They showed that the case increase was about one-tenth of the previous peak, and the more important measures (hospitalizations and deaths) were flat. In fact, US COVID deaths are at their lowest level since March of last year, around the time the pandemic began.

https://fee.org/articles/despite-delta-alarmism-us-covid-deaths-are-at-lowest-level-since-march-2020-harvard-and-stanford-professors-explain/

Since so few people trust the CDC, here’s some straight dope on the actual danger level of the Delta variant and the effectiveness of the vaccines (quite high, but not perfect), from health industry consultant Kevin Roche’s Healthy Skeptic blog.

https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/07/28/what-more-can-i-say/

He deserves a read just for his brilliant observation that “pandemic” is an anagram for “Dem panic.”

Well, people in blue cities like San Francisco voted in leftists because they promised everything would be free, and for once, they kept their promise.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-shoplifting-retail-cvs-pharmacy-video

The first month of New York City’s new program of sending in social workers to handle 911 calls showed surprisingly positive results.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-city-social-workers-911

One minor caveat: the social workers were allowed to choose which 911 calls they answered. They dealt with only about 20% of the calls, the “easy” ones that excluded suspected violence, imminent harm or a subject who required hospitalization. Or to put that another way: 80% of 911 calls.

Is this really proof that we need to defund police and replace them with social workers, or just that about 20% of the population doesn’t know when to call a social worker instead of dialing 911?

In a related story, it’s been noted that in 2020, the ground zero of the “Defund the Police” movement, Minnesota, set new annual state records for both murders and assaults on police officers in the line of duty. Obviously, they need more social workers.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/minnesota-murder-record-2020-assaults-police-officers

Virginia’s Democrat nominee for Governor, Terry McAuliffe, attacked GOP opponent Glenn Youngkin for appearing at an election integrity event by claiming that anyone who questions the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory is attacking “the fundamentals of democracy,” and hurting our country, our men and women in uniform and "everybody." He demanded Youngkin “disavow this dangerous, deadly conspiracy theory once and for all."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcauliffe-says-election-doubters-hurting-our-country-despite-questioning-democrats-loss-in-2000

Problems: Youngkin’s event was about securing the upcoming election. He’s never claimed the 2020 election was stolen and even said months ago that Biden was legitimately elected President.

McAuliffe, however, did repeatedly insist that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore. He accused the Supreme Court of tampering with the vote; said, "Folks, you know it. I know it. They know it. We won that election and let's never forget it;" and insisted that Gore would have won if all the votes were counted in Florida (a later recount by the media found that Bush won legitimately, which would make McAuliffe's claim...how to put this?...oh yes: a Big Lie.)

Youngkin’s spokesperson responded, "If Terry McAuliffe is accusing you of something, he’s probably guilty of it himself." Well, except when he said that Youngkin attended that election integrity event. I’m sure that’s something Terry McAuliffe would never do.

Comedy Is Racist

July 29, 2021

Robin DiAngelo, the white lady who’s made a fat living off of peddling woke racial divisiveness and cringing white liberal guilt to corporations and the media via her absurd book “White Fragility,” must know how many people, including some professional comedians (although not late night hosts, of course) are starting to shake off their fear of cancel culture and make fun of her nonsense. You can tell because she’s now declared comedy itself to be racist.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-fragility-author-comedy-excuse-racist

I’m not going to recount what passes for her “reasoning,” because it was painful enough just having to slog through it once. But you can read it at the link. It might remind you of the classic scene in Mel Brooks’ “History of the World” where he’s a Greek philosopher applying for unemployment, and the clerk (Bea Arthur) says, “Oh, you’re a bull-BLEEP artist,” and asks, “Did you bull-BLEEP last week?...Did you TRY to bull-BLEEP?...” No wonder she hates comedy: Mel Brooks has already summed up her profession perfectly.

You won’t be surprised to learn that this tidbit of self-interest disguised as high-mindedness came in an interview promoting her new book, "Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm." Finally, she said something we can all agree with!

Comedy is essential to free speech and free thought. Since the days when court jesters were the only ones allowed to joke about the king, it’s been the job of comedians to mock the foibles and hypocrisies of all sides, especially those in power. They perform the vital service of pointing out when the emperor has no clothes. That’s why tyrants always try to crack down on comedy, and why victims of oppressive regimes always have plenty of jokes about their leaders that they only tell amongst themselves. Here in America, we tell those jokes out in the open. Or at least we used to (I refused to stop), and I hope we’re finally getting back to doing it again.

For the record: no, Ms DiAngelo, I will not stop joking about things that richly deserve it, and if that includes certain politicians or celebrities who happen to be black, then so be it. Claiming as she does that it’s racist for white people to joke about black people is itself racist and condescending. The shows she criticizes (“Family Guy,” “South Park,” “The Simpsons”) often include jokes that are offensive to my sensibilities, but I’d never say they shouldn’t be allowed to make them. They can make fun of my beliefs, and I can make fun of theirs. And fortunately, since MsDiAngelo is white, she should have no objections to all of us making fun of her beliefs, which are a veritable Mother Lode of comedy material.

Nancy Pelosi’s embarrassingly political “January 6 commission” is underway as planned. (Was there ever any doubt that she wouldn’t go through with this carefully staged farce and take great delight in it?) Her handpicked “commission” purports to “find the truth,” but her search for truth is like looking for your misplaced glasses way over in the corner of another room because the light is better in there. Where she’s looking, she’s guaranteed to miss a big part of the truth, and that is on purpose. But we do get to see Adam Schiff cry.

Those who really want the truth surrounding the Capitol breach –- and Pelosi’s role in letting it happen –- are going to be kept in the dark.

There’s a more personal story, too, that this charade is going to miss. Part of it was reflected in a letter we ran a couple of days ago from retired Army staff sergeant Joe Biggs, a man who was arrested after peaceably entering the Capitol Building and who, after three months, is still being held without bail in a Florida jail in what he describes as extremely poor conditions. Then, yesterday, we received a similar letter from a reader of this newsletter, whose son is also one of those incarcerated, this one in Washington, DC. What this father told us will touch your heart...

Dear Gov. Huckabee:

My son Alan Byerly is in DC Correctional. Did not enter Capitol Building, but had a confrontation with a reporter and policemen. But the charges are much greater [than what] was done. I do not know exactly what happened, because phones being monitored in jail.

Most Jan. 6th folks are somewhere else; there are only two in this jail. When they first arrived, the population (mostly black) thought they were pedophiles, and that is very dangerous, to be one in jail (where did they get that idea?). Anyway, Alan spoke up the next day and told them who they were, and things simmered down, although most were not happy about them being Trump supporters. He has not had a bail hearing in DC yet and expects that bail will be denied.

Greg Kelly on 7/22/21 reported on the mistreatment of Jan. 6 people –- Alan was mentioned in that list of folks he read out. I guess if you are a Democrat, you can burn a city or burn a federal building with agents inside; you may get arrested but will be out the next day without bail.

Sorry I had to vent. Since Alan was saved, he is not the same as he was...What he did was wrong, and he’s sorry for what he did. Thank you for the opportunity to express my frustration. Good bless you and yours.

………………

We looked for the Greg Kelly report and found a write-up on it by THE GATEWAY PUNDIT. Kelly read out the names and showed pictures of all who have been arrested and held in “pretrial detention” without bail. Their trials might not even begin till next year, so these detainees (Kelly’s apt term was “political prisoners”) could be spending 23 hours out of every 24 in a small cell, even denied private conversations with their attorneys, until 2022. Unbelievable.

As Kelly reported, over 500 Americans were arrested, and dozens have spent the past six months in solitary confinement, some of them for simply walking into an unsecured building, unaware that there was violence going on in another area. (Alan apparently didn’t even go inside; we still don’t know the details of his confrontation outside.)

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/bravo-greg-kelly-airs-photos-jan-6-political-prisoners-still-gulag-without-trial-video/

And now, as part of the politics surrounding this “commission,” everyone who even peripherally took part has been labeled a domestic terrorist and white supremacist, though no one was armed and race had nothing to do with it. The crackdown is happening step-by-step; for example, in Florida, the agriculture commissioner, Democrat Nikki Fried, has moved to suspend the concealed-carry licenses of 22 people who were charged in connection to the Capitol breach. In her words, “The deeply disturbing events that occurred at our nation’s Capitol on January 6 were sedition, treason, and domestic terrorism –- and those individuals involved in the insurrection must be held accountable for attempting to subvert our democratic process.”

That’s odd; I thought our democratic process included such basic concepts as “innocent until proven guilty.”

But never mind the Constitution –- this is politics, Fried blamed Trump, and she happens to be one of the top two candidates for the Democrat nomination for Florida governor, trying to unseat Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. She did this to rally the Democrats...around herself. And since when do Democrats care about the constitutional rights of Trump supporters?

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/565096-florida-democratic-official-suspends-concealed-carry-permits-for-22-people

I’ve made my disapproval of what happened at the Capitol crystal clear. It was a stupid stunt that led to the death of an unarmed woman and caused tremendous, lasting political damage to the conservative cause. (That’s true even if the FBI had a role in encouraging it, which is another aspect of this story that won’t be addressed by Pelosi’s “commission.”) The comments by Fried, above, illustrate just how it played right into the hands of Democrats itching to tar Trump and his supporters as insurrectionists.

Whenever possible, even when it doesn’t make sense, Trump support will be linked by Democrats with race and white supremacy. It doesn’t matter that they made it up. Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University Eddie Glaude, Jr., appeared on MSNBC to respond to what he’d heard on Day 1 of Nancy’s “commission,” saying how “moved” he was by the “powerful testimony.” He said that “this is in some ways a white mob arguing for a white nation.”

If you’re mystified as to where he got this idea, I’ll try to explain. Those who are contesting the election process are doing so in black-majority cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. So if you challenge the results in those places, it means you are against black people. Um, got that?

He says that, given our nation’s history of inequality, a third of America is “still in the soil of our American republic. It has not been excavated in a way to to remove the poison of it.” That’s right, we, as conservative Trump supporters, are poisoned with racism. The only solution: excavation, removal.

“And Donald Trump,” he said, “give Donald Trump credit for one thing. Donald Trump recognized that when he came down the escalator.”

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/07/28/professor-calls-jan-6-protesters-a-white-mob-arguing-for-a-white-nation-1109983/

This is all political theater at its worst. Sadly, “detainees” such as Joe and Alan are being used as props. Yes, some of them were confrontational and might deserve to be charged with something, though not held without bail for months on end. Yet all have been branded domestic terrorists and white supremacists when all they might have done was walk peacefully into our nation’s Capitol –- a public building –- take a selfie and ask where the restroom was.

Please pray for Alan’s father, as he watches helplessly while his son is caught in what is obviously a two-tiered justice system.

For more on our "Two-Tiered Justice System" go here>>>

Tuesday, the Biden Administration released a 21-point plan for processing asylum seekers more quickly.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-unveils-plan-allows-immigrants-granted-asylum-bypassing-courts/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

It would allow some to bypass immigration courts, which have a 1.2 million-case backlog, and let their cases be decided by asylum officers. (FYI: the courts would be backlogged even worse if Biden would let immigration authorities schedule court dates or if those who did have them were actually showing up for them.)

https://www.westernjournal.com/report-50000-immigrants-released-us-without-court-date-small-fraction-report-ice/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

They claim the plan would also promptly deport those who don’t qualify (question: would there be any of those under Biden?) There’s a lot of nice talk, like, “We will always be a nation of borders, and we will enforce our immigration laws in a way that is fair and just,” but is that just camouflage to hide the devil in the details?

Color me skeptical, considering that the White House statement declared that “asylum and other legal migration pathways should remain available to those seeking protection.”

Do you know who’s currently seeking protection from deadly threats by a genuinely oppressive government? Cubans.

Biden Priorities

July 28, 2021

Demonstrating the priorities of our “intelligence” and “justice” agencies, just as actual violent, anarchist rioters are being released without charges, Biden’s DOJ has dropped the investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s part in putting COVID patients in nursing homes with deadly results.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cuomo-still-faces-a-doj-investigation-e2-80-94-but-the-real-action-is-the-state-ag-e2-80-99s-probe/ar-AAMAu4f

The DOJ has also dropped charges against five Chinese scientists who hid their involvement with the Chinese military to obtain work visas at American universities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/07/26/doj-drops-charges-against-5-possible-chinese-spies-as-fbi-focuses-on-january-6-n1464726

Meanwhile, they are focusing hard on investigating and prosecuting the daylights out of the real threat to America: everyone who entered the Capitol on January 6th, even if they just stepped through the open door to take a selfie or use the bathroom.

Related: Cuomo dismissed the now-dropped DOJ investigation of his nursing home policies as “toxic politics” (funny, I reserve the word “toxic” for things that actually kill people, like forcing nursing homes to take in COVID patients.) He’s now showing his COVID-fighting bona fides by declaring that government reps should knock on doors, put unvaccinated people in cars and drive them to get vaccines. If they were forced into a car with a driver who had COVID, that would sound like an Andrew Cuomo plan.

https://www.westernjournal.com/cuomo-says-knock-doors-put-people-cars-drive-get-covid-vaccine/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

This story was so absurd that I held off from commenting on it until I was fairly certain it wasn't a hoax or a prank. But apparently, the leftist BLM group Dallas Justice Now really did circulate a letter to parents in the wealthy neighborhoods of Highland Park and University Park, telling them that if they wanted to prove they’re allies of BLM and not racists, they should pledge not to send their kids to Ivy League schools to leave more spots open for minority students.

https://www.westernjournal.com/dallas-leftist-group-accuses-rich-white-parents-oppressing-minorities-makes-head-scratching-demand/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

My writers live in Dallas, and they assure me that’s about as likely to happen as them being able to afford a house in Highland Park. This came about because, even though those neighborhoods are heavily old-money Republican, their kids have been indoctrinated and were virtue-signaling their BLM support. That gave the DJN group an opening to accuse them of being racist hypocrites if they don’t really make sacrifices to atone for the wealth they’ve accumulated by oppressing minorities (they seem to think that’s how wealth is accumulated; not by providing goods and services that people want to pay for – sounds like they’ve been indoctrinated with dumb ideas, too.)

While everyone is having a good laugh over this, I think the parents should take it seriously. Look at how your kids are already acting. Can you imagine what insufferable, useless little socialists they’ll become if you send them to an Ivy League university? This group may have done you the biggest favor imaginable by scaring you into sending them to Liberty University or military school before it’s too late.


Four Republican members of Congress --- Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar --- walked to the doorstep of the Department of “Justice” headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue at midday Tuesday to express their concerns about treatment of those jailed for participating in the Capitol Hill “breach” on January 6. They had serious unanswered questions for Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The doors of the DOJ building were closed to them. The members of Congress were not allowed inside.

But guess what happened? Some leftist protesters showed up who seemed to take their inspiration from January 6th. No doubt the only reason they didn’t “breach” the DOJ headquarters themselves is that the doors had been shut to keep out the Republicans. Would those leftist protesters have been tossed into sweaty jail cells and held without bail for three months (and counting)? I think we know the answer to that question.

It was only a matter of minutes before the four Republicans speaking outside the entrance were swarmed by leftist protesters, one of them incessantly blowing a shrill whistle to keep them from being heard from their podium.

The Right Side Broadcasting Network aired their press conference live, not knowing, of course, what it was going to turn into. So now we can see from their recording the lengths to which intolerant, idiotic leftist protesters will go to shut down attempts at reasoned discussion. Video starts about 30 minutes before the press conference begins, but this time is used by reporter Liz Willis to read the letter to AG Garland and give some background, detailing some truly horrific allegations of beatings and denial of sleep and medical care.

Note: their video was removed from YouTube, but as far as we know, you’ll still be able to see it in its entirety here. If sometime between this writing and your attempted viewing it has been taken down, C-Span should have it.

https://rsbnetwork.com/video/live-reps-gaetz-gohmert-gosar-and-greene-press-conference-on-status-of-jan-6-prisoners-at-doj-7-27-21/

As soon as Greene took to the podium and started asking substantive questions, the loud, piercing whistle started, and it never let up. “We’re here standing up for due process,” Gohmert said as the whistle shrieked nonstop. Gohmert is a former defense attorney and Texas district judge, so fighting for due process and other basic civil rights has been an integral part of his career. He said that when he was a judge, he used to make unannounced visits to jails to make sure the conditions weren’t abusive.

Matt Gaetz spoke through the whistle as well, pointing out that Antifa “set fire to this country for months” when law enforcement didn’t seem to be concerned about that.

Rep. Gosar (yes, through the interminable whistle) called for all 1400 hours of security tapes from that day at the Capitol Building to be released and for all those taken into custody to have their due process rights respected.

Leftist protesters edged closer and started circling, to the concern of staffers and security personnel. To interrupt the press conference, they simply invaded, walking right up to the podium area and causing participants to scatter.

I hope you will listen through the headache-inducing whistle; they used this appalling tactic it to try to keep anyone from hearing. As it went on, they also used drums, horns and other instruments along with the whistle to prevent the members of Congress from speaking. They did manage to speak for about 15 minutes, mostly to stress that they were there to get answers concerning January 6.

As THE EPOCH TIMES has reported, “According to numerous reports, January 6 inmates have been beaten, held in solitary confinement, and denied access to evidence about their own cases.” The attorney general should provide thorough answers to questions on this, but he has responded with silence for months.

“To the guy who’s blowing the whistle, we are not deterred,” Taylor Greene finally said. They were there to ask questions, she said. It was at that point that the leftists stormed the podium and created a situation that made them have to leave. Cars were blocking traffic, and a loud band with crashing cymbals played as well.

As it turned out, the loud whistle-blower interrupting the speeches was standing directly behind the reporter and refused to stop when he was asked. She said after the event that her ears were still ringing. That’s “the intolerant left,” she said. “You’re being censored if you’re a conservative,” she said.

I would encourage you to watch the entire video, as there are some great comments from onlookers after the event ended. “These savages, they belong in jail,” said one onlooker after the speakers dispersed. She called for an investigation of what Nancy Pelosi knew about plans for the Capitol breach before it happened.

Another bystander called for interested persons to contact their representatives for an appointment to tour jail facilities where detainees were being held. She said that in one facility, the temperature had reached 114 degrees. We would add that during the winter it was freezing --- that’s how long these people have been detained! There have been reports of beatings, and of at least one detainee losing an eye in one.

THE EPOCH TIMES has a “premium” report of today’s event.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/leftist-protestors-interrupt-gop-lawmakers-inquiring-into-treatment-of-jan-6-prisoners_3921206.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-07-27-3&mktids=e8a6c285787e5b6b98f4a01dfe90b148&est=VWnwVhRU%2FPjJCAPvbXUOKiirZjUjkhSFCvTHBImWZLxe7RMBoLOSvnGNmKxNvSZkSG3xVA%3D%3D

On the same day this happened, the hearings called for by Speaker Nancy Pelosi into the events of January 6 began, with an extremely dramatic depiction of what happened from the point of view of the Capitol Hill police. Republican committee member Adam Kinzinger of Illinois got all choked up. California Rep. Adam Schiff also appeared to weep at one point (right), and a staff member was handing out Kleenex. Tucker Carlson had a field day with this on Tuesday night.

https://mediarightnews.com/tucker-carlson-mocks-emotionally-fragile-adam-kinzinger-and-adam-schiff-for-weeping-during-jan-6-hearing/

Here are more highlights –- or perhaps I should say lowlights.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/pelosis-sham-hearings-on-jan-6-capitol-protest-are-even-more-staged-and-nauseating-than-expected/

We'll have more on this as it unfolds. If only it could be a nonpartisan attempt at fact-finding, but it won’t be. Recall that Pelosi rejected two of the Republican choices for committee members (a first), Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana. Pelosi says the “bipartisan” panel “will pursue the truth,” but I have no confidence that it will do so, as that is not its purpose

A real investigation would do what that bystander at DOJ headquarters suggested: find out what Pelosi herself knew and why she didn’t order even the barest security, when President Trump had offered her the National Guard and essentially anything she wanted. We also deserve to know more about the killing of Ashli Babbitt, but what do you think are the odds of that?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/police-officers-offer-harrowing-accounts-at-first-jan-6-panel-hearing_3920968.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-07-27-3&mktids=e8a6c285787e5b6b98f4a01dfe90b148&est=temtjr12Hlmkjye3KyC%2BgFfzhYWQD7AU7gXIHFdam2Qmd26R%2FqZ%2B%2BEYljrLLp69H4av8VA%3D%3D

There were plenty of phony tears and histrionics at the opening day of the House’s January 6th “investigative” committee (as Mary Chastain at Legal Insurrection noted, it’s no wonder Hollywood and politicians get along so well: they’re all actors.)

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/kizinger-schiff-fake-cry-during-january-6th-hearing/

Among those testifying tearfully were Capitol Hill police officer Harry Dunn. He claimed that the protesters were chanting the “N-word” at him. To my knowledge, and from both my quick search and research by Redstate.com, he’s the only person who’s ever made that claim and no video or audio has surfaced to substantiate it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true, but it’s so incendiary (and perfectly on the nose with the leftist narrative about Trump supporters) that it seems that someone else would’ve heard it and mentioned it before now. And since he also claimed under oath that officer Brian Sicknick died as a result of injuries sustained that day, which an autopsy proved was not true (he had a stroke), then he’s already established himself as an unreliable witness.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/07/27/january-6-commission-star-witness-has-a-history-of-hating-president-trump-and-support-riots-that-arent-where-hes-working-n417384

That story also includes a lot of Dunn’s previous tweets that were widely distributed by conservative media outlets and that suggest he is not exactly an unbiased, objective witness. He has a history of making nasty and even racist comments about prominent conservatives; calling his commander-in-chief, President Trump, the “racist in chief;” defending radical anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar; and most tellingly, defending the violent George Floyd rioters, even after their rioting got people killed. He tweeted to Tucker Carlson, “Why is murder an appropriate response to property damage but property damage isn’t an appropriate response to murder?”

Ironically, some people might point to justifications for the shooting of unarmed protester Ashlii Babbitt and the refusal to hold anyone accountable for it as evidence that the people running this commission think murder is an appropriate response to property damage.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gop-rep-says-hugged-cop-shot-ashli-babbitt-said/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Maybe the Democrats are right: some cops do need better training.

Update On Simone Biles

July 28, 2021

The Olympic gymnast who was expected to dominate the Tokyo Games pulled out of all team events and has now dropped out of individual events as well and will not defend her title.

https://fox40.com/japan-2020/simone-biles-withdraws-from-all-around-gymnastics-competition-wont-defend-title/

Without her, the US women’s gym team lost the gold for the first time in 13 years, coming in second to Russia.

https://www.westernjournal.com/us-loses-gymnastics-gold-first-time-13-years-self-proclaimed-greatest-time-simone-biles-pulls/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Ms Biles explained that she was not physically injured, but was feeling too emotionally shaky to go on. She said, “Once I came out here (to compete), I was like, ‘No, mental is not there so I just need to let the girls do it and focus on myself.’”

Her last-minute withdrawal drew harsh criticism from some analysts, who accused her of being self-centered and said if she couldn’t compete, she should have let someone else take her place rather than leaving her team in the lurch. Kylee Zempel at the Federalist took that view.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/27/theres-no-i-in-team-but-there-is-in-simone-biles/

Others took Biles’ side, noting that she had been one of former team doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual assault victims, and people shouldn’t judge her if they don’t know what she’s going through.

One of the best commentaries was from radio host Mark Davis, who didn’t rebuke Ms Biles but considered what this says about how attitudes have softened and how the value of exhibiting mental toughness when the going gets tough is slipping away.

https://townhall.com/columnists/markdavis/2021/07/28/the-simone-biles-moment-reveals-our-softened-world-n2593215

As for me, I will pray for Ms Biles to achieve her peace, and also root for the US Women’s Team to call on their mental toughness to succeed without her.

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse must be really desperate to change the subject from Democrat failures and his longtime membership in a tony, all-white beach club because he’s demanding a revival of the investigation into ridiculous, partisan accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has been on the Supreme Court for coming up on four years now.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/26/the-key-detail-missing-in-the-nyts-piece-on-brett-kavanaugh-that-exposes-democra-n2592833

I don’t why he didn’t pick something more timely, like a new investigation of the crash of the Hindenburg. For those who think that’s insensitive because we must “believe all women,” please note that that’s also an outdated relic of the Kavanaugh brouhaha. That had a stake driven through it by the liberal media’s burial of a rape accusation against Joe Biden that actually came with some corroborating evidence.

Whitehouse and fellow Democrat Sen. Chris Coons are questioning whether the FBI fully investigated the most credible of 4500 tips that came into their tip phone line. First of all, if you open up any forum about any political figure, you’ll get a bare minimum of 4500 replies of questionable value (see “Twitter.”) Secondly, their claim that they didn’t get this information is belied by the fact that the FBI printed out a summary of all 4500 “tips” and made it available to every Senator to read at the time.

Did Sen. Whitehouse not know that? Or was he too busy at the regatta to read it?

Facebook And The Gospel

July 27, 2021

Facebook has started partnering with churches to make the platform a virtual home for religious communities and to help their message and services “go further farther on Facebook.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-getting-involved-religion-signs-contract-megachurch-platforms-director-global-faith-partnerships-reveals-coming/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I admit to having mixed feelings about this. Anything that helps spread the Gospel is good. And all their talk about reaching the world with your faith is certainly a tempting apple to dangle. But Facebook has a reputation for getting people dependent on it, and then cutting off, or threatening to cut off, access if they decide your message doesn’t jibe with their Silicon Valley leftist views.

Do you really think they wouldn’t try to tell any church that, for example, held to the Biblical definition of marriage that it was guilty of hate speech or homophobia as an excuse to deplatform it if it didn’t change its beliefs?

So I would warn churches to be very cautious in dealing with Facebook and not let it become a deal with the Devil. Use it to get the word out, organize the church picnic, or share your services with shut-ins. But never let it replace real fellowship in person in the church. Don’t let it erode human interaction, or replace your church socials, newsletters and email lists. Most importantly, never let it become the exclusive channel through which you communicate with the world. Let it be just one of many tools you use, so that if you are suddenly banned, it’s no big deal.

Remember that Mark Zuckerberg seems to think he’s God, and that what Zuckerberg giveth, he can taketh away.

I’m seeing some encouraging signs of life on the right, with more conservatives fighting back against the left’s assumption that they get to play Big Brother and determine the limits of OUR conversation. As long as we stick to facts --- not facts as determined by leftist “fact”-checkers but real, verifiable information --- it’s time to fly over the target and bomb away. Especially, we need the courage to ask questions and demand real answers. That’s true most of all when it comes to the 2020 election.

Former President Trump is right out in front on this and sets a great example. He DOES NOT CARE what the left says about him, and this weekend, he spoke out in Phoenix at Turning Point USA about cancel culture and the need to speak up about the election. Self-censoring is exactly what the left wants us to do. Regardless of what we’ve able to determine thus far about the security of Dominion Voting Systems, there’s much that leftists did to turn the 2020 election into a legal and logistical --- and unverifiable --- mess, and much they continue to do to keep us from looking at it.

“Just so you understand, you know, we talk about cancel culture,” Trump began. The biggest thing that they want canceled, is they don’t want you talking about the election that just took place. Because they say, ‘Holy sh**, they caught us! [wild applause] They caught us. [even wilder applause] THEY CAUGHT US. And you know, we’ve seen it: the scandal, the likes of which we’ve never had. But the only way you get away with the scandal, is if they don’t talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it.”

But Trump said –- and he’s right –- that they won’t be able to avoid it. They talk in general about banning speech, “but what they don’t want...is anything having to do with the 2020 election.”

Another fighter who refuses to be cowed is attorney Sidney Powell, best known for representing another deeply wronged individual, Michael Flynn. We don’t see much of Powell on TV right now because of legal saber-rattling by Dominion Voting Systems, which is acting on the theory that the best defense is a big, blustery offense. But that’s okay; the legal stuff will work itself out, and it might actually be better for Powell to fly mostly under the radar right now.

Readers have asked what she’s up to, though, and I’m happy to be able to answer that question, at least partially. Powell happens to be in the news this very day, concerning a desperately important matter: the treatment of those who “breached” the Capitol Building and are still being held without bail.

https://thenewamerican.com/sidney-powell-to-assist-jan-6-prisoners-as-inmate-letter-sheds-light-on-jail-conditions/

Last Thursday, conservative radio host Pete Santilli announced on his show that Powell will be involved in helping the January 6 detainees, who are called “political prisoners” by many (who have a point). Another attorney on the team, Cynthia Hughes, made the same claim on Steve Bannon’s show. “She [Powell] is really, really, really gonna get behind us,” Hughes said.

The announcement essentially coincided with the release of a letter from a member of the Proud Boys on the three-month anniversary of being locked up. I will not in any way defend the Proud Boys, who are labeled as by the media as being neo-facist and leaning in to white supremacy. But even if they are as evil and they have been reported to be, its members are still protected by the Constitution and are innocent until proven guilty and are guaranteed due process and not subject to unreasonable “search and seizure.” I’ll leave it up to you to determine if the treatment of this person is reasonable. It’s bad enough that he and others are being held without bail, but his description of the conditions he faces is shocking. “My body feels as if it’s aged so much,” he writes, as he can’t work out and suffers a lot of back pain. He sleeps on a thin mattress on a piece of steel welded to the wall. He gets very little protein to eat –- there’s some kind of soy-based “gelatin dog food looking stuff” –- and feels himself weakening, saying he can hardly walk.

Also, there is no privacy, ever, he says; even going to the bathroom is in full view. He has one small window in the cell, but it’s sandblasted to be opaque, so he can never see the outdoors.

If you break any rule, he says,, they put you in a brightly lit, freezing room, naked. Now he has panic attacks, “so bad I black out.”

He knows he’s not a white supremacist, he says, because he’s there with guys who really ARE white supremacists. In fact, they tell him they hate that the Proud Boys are being called white supremacists. “They all say I’m too nice,” he writes, “and nothing like the media makes me out to be.” And, in an ironic twist, the black guys he’s met there say that if the Proud Boys as a group are like him, they want to join!

He says he spends most of his time alone, reading the Bible and other Christian books. “The plus side to this [is] God was able to get ahold of me in this place,” he writes. “In the end I just pray people see the truth. I had nothing to do with that day. I never planned what happened. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The man’s name is Joe Biggs. (In fact, he signed his letter “Joe Biggs, political prisoner.”) He’s a retired Army staff sergeant, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and described by another of the Proud Boys as a “war hero” who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also an online personality. If you know the story, Biggs is the man who simply walked in, took a few selfies to document his peaceful protest of what he believes was a stolen election, asked a security guard if he could use the restroom and was directed to it, used the restroom, and walked out.

He’s been in a cell in Florida’s Seminole County Jail for three months. If the report of what he did is accurate, and I’ve seen nothing to the contrary, this man shouldn’t even have been detained, let alone held without bail. The left has gone so far that we can’t even recognize our country. This is why we can’t be silent any longer.

Mark Tapscott in THE EPOCH TIMES has a story about four GOP members of Congress –- Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louis Gohmert of Texas, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Ggeorgia –- taking this issue to the door of the “Justice” Department Tuesday. They have questions for law enforcement authorities about what they knew and when, and why Congress wasn’t told. They also have “unanswered questions relating to the treatment of January 6 prisoners.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gop-congressmen-schedule-news-conference-at-justice-department-to-demand-answers-on-jan-6-detainees_3919646.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

For several months, they’ve received no response from Attorney General Merrick Garland. (The only bright spot about having this political hack as attorney general is that I get to thank my lucky stars he didn’t get on the Supreme Court.) His failure to provide answers is why they’re headed to the DOJ in person. Texas Rep. Gohmert, in a statement, compared what has been done to these detainees to what is done in “tyrannical third-world countries, not the United States.”

So, at least some Republicans have a spine. It’s time to join them, and speak out in every way we can.

Congratulations to the US swim team, which has already won eight medals at the Tokyo Olympics, including a record six on the first day.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/us-swimmers-win-8-medals-historic-6-sunday

It’s a shame that the accomplishments of so many great young Americans are being overshadowed by the anti-American political grandstanding of a handful of ingrates. But it appears that the squeaky wheels have soured a lot of people on watching the Summer Games. The opening ceremony pulled only 17 million US viewers across all viewing platforms, the lowest numbers in 33 years. By comparison, the 2016 Rio Games opener attracted 26.5 million viewers.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/tokyo-olympics-opening-sees-33-year-low-tv-viewership-167-million-us-viewers

In a sign of how much the knee-taking and bad-mouthing of America and its flag and anthem have turned off viewers, many are saying online that for the first time ever, they’re rooting against certain US teams, such as women’s soccer and basketball. The women’s soccer team kicked off with a 3-0 skunking by Sweden, and the US men’s basketball team, filled with NBA pros, snapped its 17-year, 25-game winning streak by losing its first game to France, 83-76.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/olympics/us-mens-basketball-team-loses-first-olympic-game-in-17-years/ar-AAMxScb

In the last 4-1/2 minutes, the US team missed five shots in a row and didn’t score a single point. And in the comments sections of conservative media outlets, normally rah-rah patriotic Americans were saying things like, “Serves ‘em right” and “Never thought I’d say this, but ‘Go, France!’” (For the record, the French team also had some NBA players.)

Unless these athletes are throwing the games so they won’t have to suffer the terrible pain of hearing their own National Anthem while receiving gold medals, I have to assume something else is up. Maybe they’re learning that pride goeth before a fall, and they should have prioritized effort, practice and teamwork over political posturing. Or maybe God really does listen when people pray for their teams to win, but this time around, all the Americans who pray are backing their opponents.

We are all very sad to have to report that comedian Jackie Mason died Sunday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan at 93, with his wife Jyll and a few friends by his side.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/iconic-borscht-belt-comic-jackie-mason-dead-at-93

Before becoming one of America’s greatest and most distinctive comic voices, Mason was a rabbi. Friends say his concern for people stayed with him all his life; and wherever he went, whether on the street or trying to eat dinner, he would always stop to talk to strangers who approached him and listen to their problems.

Mason was one of the last practitioners of the classic Borscht Belt style of very Jewish comedy, which went out of favor with the rise of comics who did social commentary or talked about their personal lives. But with his unique delivery and sharp wit, he continued to make people fall down laughing decades after most of the Catskills resorts had closed.

His career had its ups and downs (a couple of the downs were his feud with Frank Sinatra – he believed a beating by a mob thug was done at Frank’s behest – and a banning from the Ed Sullivan show when Sullivan mistakenly thought he’d made a one-finger gesture.) But in the 1980s, he combined the best of his well-honed one-liners with his commentary on current events into the one-man Broadway show, “The World According to Me,” which was a smash hit. It won him Tony and Emmy Awards and set the template for several more such shows to follow.

One of those one-liners from the 1960s is still remarkably topical: questioning why rioters would burn down their own neighborhoods, he said, “With Jews, every fire shows a profit!”

In his later years, he became increasingly more outspoken about his conservative political views, which of course led liberal critics to pan him as having lost his sense of humor (laughing at themselves was never their strong suit.) It is true that he became more likely to express serious outrage at what was happening in the US and to Israel, but then, who can blame him?

If you’d like to hear some of the best of Jackie Mason, stream the CD of “The World According to Me” on Amazon Prime and check out some of his TV appearances on YouTube, like this...

https://youtu.be/oed9mpPz0Bc

Or be like me and hunt through thrift stores and garage sales for the 1962 LP, “I’m the Greatest Comedian in the World, Only Nobody Knows It Yet.”

And be sure to check out this interview he gave to the Governor on “Huckabee” in 2019.

https://youtu.be/cu1UTEv_d04

Reminder

July 27, 2021

In politics, a “gaffe” is when someone slips up and accidentally tells the truth. Like when a co-host on “The View” agreed that it would be great to demand people provide ID before opening social media accounts to keep racists from having a forum.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/23/the-views-sunny-hostin-you-should-be-required-to-identify-yourself-before-you-use-social-media-n2592941

Uh…isn’t asking someone to show an ID a form of racism itself? You know, “Jim Crow on steroids?” Also, hate to mention it, but demanding that people show proof of vaccination before being allowed to exercise various rights, another current hot liberal idea, is also demanding a government-issued ID.

President Biden also committed an accidental truth “gaffe” at last week’s CNN Townhall. In response to the White House’s jaw-dropping claim that it’s Republicans who want to defund the police, a reporter asked, “Are there people in the Democratic Party who want to defund the police?” Biden snapped, “Are there people in the Republican Party who think we’re sucking the blood out of kids?”

https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/is-joe-biden-calling-defund-democrats-crazy/

As Noah Rothman at Commentary magazine points out at the link, yes, there are a teeny-tiny handful of crazy conspiracy theorists who self-identify as Republicans. And Biden just compared all the Democrat Congress members, mayors, city council members, academics and others who’ve pushed the insane “defund the police” movement to a fringe group of nutjobs. Which, I have to admit, makes a lot of sense.

To be fair, when a Democrat President tells a lie so blatant that even the Washington Post calls him out on it, telling the truth is pretty much his last resort.

Two-Tiered Justice

July 27, 2021

I find it hard to believe that America has such a shortage of criminals that the FBI has to go out and manufacture them. But that seems to be the case, considering that the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is starting to smell like an entrapment scheme that might not have existed if FBI undercover agents hadn’t lured people into it. And now, another example:

https://www.westernjournal.com/former-dea-agent-tells-tucker-fbi-informant-invited-capitol-jan-6-pressured-enter/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

A now-former DEA agent lost his job and is facing up to 15 years in prison for his alleged part in the January 6th Capitol violence. But he told Tucker Carlson on Fox News that he only came to Washington because an FBI informant invited him there. He says he brought his sidearm and stood outside with the informant because he thought he had been invited to help keep the peace and protect the public.

He’s now accused of breaking 40 US Code 5104. That’s what? Brace yourself: it makes it a felony to “step on or climb on any statue, seat, wall, fountain or other architectural feature or any tree, shrub, plant, or turf” on the Capitol grounds.

So this man who served his country for decades has lost his job and is facing up to 15 years in prison, not for taking part in a riot inside the Capitol but for standing outside on the grass. Meanwhile, leftist anarchists who actually did climb on public monuments, topple them, smash them and set them on fire are being released with no charges filed.

It should outrage every American to see such corruption of the legal system usher in the kind of two-tiered “justice” we used to see only in banana republics. It’s especially infuriating to see the media covering it up to protect the Biden Administration after railing for four years that Trump was “shredding the Constitution” without giving any concrete examples of how he was allegedly doing that.

Glenn Greenwald has more on the FBI creating terrorist plots, and how this isn’t really new.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/fbi-using-the-same-fear-tactic-from

Byron York has some things to say about Nancy Pelosi’s bias in picking members of her committee to “investigate” the Capitol violence.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-democrats-double-standards-and-the-capitol-riot-committee

And leave it to the satire site the Babylon Bee to summarize the FBI’s actions perfectly (aside from this newsletter, about the only outlet left that’s still interested in jokes that are funny because they’re true):

https://babylonbee.com/news/dangerous-organization-found-to-be-organizing-acts-of-terror-across-united-states

Expressway shootings in Chicago are surging, with two on the same day last week, bringing the total to 137 just so far this year. There were 52 in all of 2019 and 128 in 2020.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/chicago-expressway-shootings-surge#&_intcmp=hp1bt1

Of course, the roadways aren’t the only dangerous places to be in Chicago. Over the weekend, 70 people were shot and 12 killed. Last weekend, 56 were shot and 11 killed. The details are here, and they're heartbreaking.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/chicago-expressway-shootings-surge#&_intcmp=hp1bt1

The state police got a $12.5 million state grant in February for automated license plate readers, software and specialized cameras to help fight the expressway shootings, but they haven’t been installed yet. Meanwhile, Democrats like President Biden continue to blame the problem on gun dealers who don’t run background checks, as if criminals buy their guns from legal gun dealers. Or maybe the guns just go around firing themselves.

Or maybe, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot suggested, it’s all due to racism and is Trump’s fault. That’s why she rejected his offer of federal troops to help, but is now begging Biden for them. I guess she assumed the shooting victims prior to January 20, 2021, would rather have been shot than accept Trump's help.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/07/09/hypocrite-after-rejecting-help-from-trump-lightfoot-asks-biden-to-send-federal-troops-to-chicago-n1460609

If you’d like to read about all the “nuances” of the argument over why Chicago is so bloody and whether it’s due to the “defund the police” movement (Mayor Lightfoot has proposed cutting nearly $59 million from the police budget), here’s everything you might ever want to know from NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chicago-crime-complicated-truth-behind-defund-police-efforts-n1231381

On the other hand, since Democrats always insist we have to get to the “root cause” of crime, okay, here’s your root ball: thanks to the city’s leadership driving cops to quit, they’re now outnumbered up to 10-1 by gang members. Gangs commit about two-thirds of all the murders in Chicago, and thanks to the corrupt city government, gang leaders enjoy a great deal of protection from the police.

https://lettersfromflyovercountry.com/urban-criminal-gangs-in-the-civil-war-to-come-210/

And this all grows out of one big root: Chicago’s last Republican Mayor left office in 1931.

Last week, given the difficulties President Biden was having just getting through an incomprehensible townhall meeting, we took a look at what Vice President Kamala Harris brings to the Oval Office if (when) the 25th Amendment is used to “retire” him. It’s not encouraging news, as you know if you read it.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=01A2837A-8710-4A6B-9A96-3021399FE349

Of the many reader responses we received, a couple of them pointed to a report on her that appears in the book PROFILES IN CORRUPTION, by Peter Schweizer. In fact, she’s Chapter 2.

http://www.jack-ass.net/art/pic/pic2a.html

The chapter begins with a story that shows the close connection between Harris and President Obama. She first supported him when he was running for the Senate in Illinois in 2004. Then, after he was elected, he flew to San Francisco to attend a fundraiser to help retire her campaign debt after being elected San Francisco district attorney. In 2007, when Obama announced he was running for President --- SO SOON after winning the Senate --- Kamala and several family members joined his campaign and, as Schweizer described it, worked tirelessly. When Obama won, Kamala was there in Chicago’s Grant Park for the celebration.

As Schweizer wrote, “Harris is widely admired in progressive circles as the ‘female Obama.’ Smooth, polished and confident” –- this was obviously written before that unnerving cackling began –- “she has worked hard to ‘cultivate a celebrity mystique while fiercely guarding her privacy.

What we wrote concerning her early life and Marxist influences is confirmed in Schweizer’s reporting.

And, yes, Harris’ political rise is tied to “one of California’s most corrupt political machines,” namely, the one connected to former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, Jr. As Schweizer put it, “Kamala Harris’s entre into the corridors of political power largely began with a date.” At the time, he was Speaker of the State Assembly, the second most powerful political figure in California. Brown’s relationship with Harris was well-known; as Schweizer reports, “Their affair was the talk of San Francisco in 1994.” Though he was married, her own mother is quoted as defending the affair: “Why shouldn’t she…?”

Schweizer has detailed the various boards and commissions Brown put her on; these did not require approval from the legislature. These were an extremely lucrative way to pad her salary of $100,000 a year as a county employee. He also bought her a new BMW. But most important of all was the access he gave her to “his vast network of political supporters, donors and sponsors. Soon she was arm in arm with Brown in the most elite circles of San Francisco, including lavish parties and celebrity galas.” And this was before he was even elected mayor.

In fact, it was shortly after Brown became mayor that he and Kamala split up; details aren’t known. She started dating TV talk show host Montel Williams. She and Brown were still political allies, though, and he continued helping her career, through “the most powerful political machine in California,” which he ran.

Kamala went on to head the Career Criminal Unit in San Francisco, and apparently the DA who hired her, Terrence Hallinan, soon regretted his decision. When he didn’t give her a promotion she had wanted, hiring someone else instead, she ended up with Brown’s political machine backing her to run against HIM, and, as Schweizer wrote, “the flow of money directly into her campaign was unlike anything the district attorney’s race had ever seen.” The SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY said, “She’s hauling in money like there’s no tomorrow.” The San Francisco elite with whom she’d connected while dating Brown forked over the big bucks. Schweizer’s chapter details the various ethical conflicts concerning this money and her use of city employees to do political work.

Harris outspent Hallinan two-to-one and came in second behind him in a three-person race. But in the run-off, she won and was sworn in as San Francisco DA. She took her oath on a copy of the Bill Of Rights rather than the Bible. Given her party’s anti-constitutional proclivities, I doubt the Bill Of Rights was any more honest for her to use than the Bible would have been.

Schweizer’s chapter also tells of Harris’s unimpressive history with the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests. This was a widespread scandal in California. Hallinan, as her predecessor, had uncovered documents going back 40 years, previously sealed by the Church, and had prosecuted numerous cases of child sexual abuse by priests.)

It turns out that according to San Francisco election disclosures, the Catholic Church donated big-time to Kamala Harris’s campaign against Hallinan, though she had no particular ties to the Catholic Church or Catholic organizations. And once she became DA, even though she had prosecuted sex crimes earlier in her career, she oddly moved in the opposite direction of Hallinan and worked to cover up the records. Victims’ groups wanted those records made public and were outraged that she wouldn’t do it.

From 2004 to 2011, when she was San Francisco DA, and then from 2011 to 2016, when she was California attorney general, she never brought a single documented case forward of an allegedly abusive priest.

There’s much more in Schweizer’s chapter about her performance in these jobs, and it is not pretty. He provides numerous examples of her selective enforcement of the law, to benefit friends of her “ex,” Willie Brown, and also of her husband, after she married Los Angeles attorney Doug Emhoff. We’ve also heard from readers in California who told us of her dismal performance there. Recall that when she ran for President, she bowed out even before her own state’s primary. She didn’t win one primary. And yet here she is, virtually destined to be the next President of the United States.

Throughout her career, Kamala has used her associations with powerful people to help her move forward, so it’s not surprising that her closeness to former President Obama would have led her to her current position. Before Biden was nominated in 2020, some had thought Michelle Obama might be the choice. (One of my staffers went on record with that prediction, writing at length about why she believed this would happen.) Certainly if Michelle had wanted it, she would have been the nominee and probably the next President, as the fawning media would have made sure of that. But the Obamas managed to accomplish the same thing, in a way that would still allow Michelle to sit at the beach with friends, sipping exotic drinks with little umbrellas. They did this by putting the woman known as “the female Obama” –- the far-left woman who shared their views in every way but who could never have even made it to her party’s nomination –- on the ticket with “moderate” (ha) Biden, knowing that Biden would never make it through a first term.

At this point, Biden can hardly make it through a town hall meeting.

What the left has done to our country through this scheme will not be forgotten --- or forgiven.

When some Democrat legislators in Texas didn’t like some legislation that would have made it harder to conduct election fraud, they didn’t stand and fight back in public debate. They high-tailed it to an airport, boarded a chartered private jet and flew to Washington, DC with cases of beer on board. They were all smiles and looked more like naughty college students proud of their latest pub crawl than serious public officials. By fleeing the state, they kept the Texas legislature from having a quorum and therefore unable to conduct business. Beside their actions being as petulant as a 5 year old having a meltdown in the grocery store because his mother selected Special K instead of Fruit Loops, things got kind of messy for them when their arrogant stunt fell apart in oh, so many ways!

They seemed so proud of themselves and posted photos of their Excellent Adventure with their maskless faces smiling bigly, shortly after arriving in Washington, the “mother ship” for those who love government more than liberty. They were honored as heroes and were seen hob-knobbing with the Vice-President, Speaker Pelosi, and White House staff. But soon as many as 8 of them tested positive for Covid, throwing official Washington into panic and throwing the renegade Texas legislators into lockdown/quarantine where one boo-hooing legislator lamented that she actually had to do her own laundry while holed up in her hotel room.

For a state whose origin was Col. William Travis and his small band of citizen-soldiers defending the Alamo despite being outnumbered by 20:1 against the troops of Santa Ana, the sight of Texas Democrats fleeing their duties in a private jet and swilling beer like a scene from Animal House was just the sort of image political ad-makers dream of. These off-duty Democrats continued to receive their taxpayer funded paychecks and live in nice DC hotels, but the narrative was not about “courageous Democrats fighting against legislation” but that of cowardly carriers of Covid who created a super-spreader event in the nation’s Capital and had become a shining example of hypocrisy, hubris, and humor, being ridiculed from every angle except the far left, who is beyond shame of any kind at any time.

The ultimate irony? (And irony is something leftists seem incapable of seeing) Is that the big issue that caused them to run like a 3 year old’s nose during allergy season was a bill to secure the integrity of elections which included requiring photo ID to vote. Even on their charter flight, they had to show a photo ID to the charter company, showed one to check into their hotel, showed one to get into the Capitol and to the White House, and showed one to go to the clinic where they tested positive for Covid. So since Democrats have said that having to show photo ID is racist and a return to Jim Crow laws, I guess that these Democrats have reverted to racism and decided to comply with Jim Crow laws after all.

In politics, the worst situation is not losing—it’s being ridiculed. And these Texas Democrats have conducted a clinic in more than Covid transmission—they have schooled the political world how to carry out the most ill-planned disaster since General Custer. And they still haven’t answered the question, “who paid for the millions it has cost for them to have their little excursion into political history?” To quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as Stupid does.”

The Olympics officially got underway in Tokyo, and while I’m hoping for the best and rooting for the USA as usual, there’s no question these will not be your typical Olympics. Japan is bracing for losing billions of dollars because COVID restrictions mean no spectator ticket sales. The lack of cheering crowds and athlete interactions will likely lend the Games a sterile quality that could turn off TV viewers. And many are already turned off by the relentless leftist virtue signaling.

Back in the USA, NBC and its advertisers are bracing for the lowest-rated Olympics ever. As always, the corporate suits have plenty of excuses for why a sporting event (or movie, TV show, etc.) craters in the ratings that, of course, have NOTHING to do with it going full-on social justice warrior and insulting at least half the potential audience. No, it’s always due to streaming or cable cord-cutting or COVID or the many other options competing for eyeballs.

Well, maybe. But COVID should mean more people staying home to watch the Olympics. The shutdown went on so long, and interrupted filming of new content, that people are complaining they’ve seen everything else they might want to watch, so that also should boost viewership. Even if you cut your cable, you can still stream the Olympics, or watch it over-the-air. So the liberal media executives need to face reality: the in-your-face wokeness and disrespect for America are indeed a large part of what’s driving away audiences for sports, movies, TV shows, awards ceremonies and more.

Don’t think that’s really a major issue? Michael Reagan agrees with me: here’s his column in which he admits that when the knee-bending USA women’s soccer team led by radical activist sourball Megan Rapanoe was humiliated 3-0 by Sweden, he and his wife (both soccer fans) weren’t bothered one bit “because of the politics.”

https://www.timesenterprise.com/opinion/columns/politics-is-spoiling-the-olympics/article_f38b51d0-db11-588f-ad88-abb90e06e178.html

But don’t go by just two guys’ reactions. A survey by the marketing firm Zeta Global found that “more than 60% of Americans were unable to express excitement or interest in the summer games, and at least 45% of Americans confirmed they are NOT looking forward to the games in any capacity.” And why all the ennui? A separate Ipsos survey found that less than a third of Americans (32%) believe Olympic athletes should be allowed to engage in political protests, while a majority feel that a positive performance from U.S. athletes makes them proud to be American.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/olympics-ratings-set-to-crash-research-suggests-get-woke-go-broke-effect-partly-to-blame-report

And it's not just Americans. People around the world watch the Olympics to root for their nation’s teams. If you hate patriotism, avoid the Olympics, because it’s a veritable orgy of national pride and cultural solidarity. That’s probably why the leftists are so determined to ruin it with their divisive political showboating.

To be clear: most of America’s athletes are great, patriotic young people who are proud and honored to be representing the USA, and I’m cheering for them all the way. But it’s the handful of outspoken activists, the ones who seem angry and ungrateful at having a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this, who are turning viewers off. Americans of all races tune in to root for America’s team, not to watch them take a knee to protest how we’re all a bunch of racists, and then scowl and turn their backs on the flag if they win.

In short, “Get woke, go broke” applies to non-professional athletics, too.

I’m sorry to have to report that Maggie Peterson, most famous for playing Charlene Darling on the iconic “Andy Griffith Show,” is in need of financial help due to medical issues. Her longtime husband, musician Gus Mancuso, is suffering from Alzheimer’s and she was his caregiver before she suddenly began having serious health issues of her own. They had to give up their apartment and need full time care that insurance won’t cover. Their family has set up a GoFundMe page. You can read details and see a video by Maggie if you click on “older updates.” And please share this link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/h45wj3-maggie-quotcharlene-darlingquot-peterson-needs-help?qid=29eb89b34186406dbc8e9e75f2057221

Beloved as the only female amidst the “Deliverance”-like Darling clan (her bros played by bluegrass greats The Dillards), she also played a completely different role in an episode of the final season of the show and a third on an episode of “Mayberry RFD.” The same person popping up as different characters was a strange quirk in Mayberry, perhaps due to there not being enough people in small towns to go around.

Maggie would sometimes sing on the show with her sullen, silent siblings, on such memorable tunes as “Salty Dog” and “There Is A Time.” Here’s a delightful YouTube video of a reunion at which they performed the latter: https://youtu.be/8F8VvG99CH4  

She also did commercials; had a regular role on “The Bill Dana Show;” one-shot roles on “The Odd Couple,” “Love American Style” and other TV shows of the era; and parts in the Don Knotts movie “The Love God,” Andy’s film “Angel In My Pocket,” and, of course, the TV movie “Return to Mayberry.” She was sometimes billed as Maggie Mancuso and later worked as a location scout.

(Side note: If you’re a Griffith Show fan, try to catch “Angel In My Pocket” if it comes on TV. It’s very Mayberry-like – it even has Jack “Howard Sprague” Dodson – but for some reason, it was hard to find for years. It finally came out on an import DVD last year, but it looks as if the mastering was done by Ernest T. Bass.)

Maggie was best known as an actress, but actually devoted more time to singing. She started out in a band with her brother Jim and two friends called Margaret Ann and the Ja-Da Quartet. They were noticed at a record convention by Andy Griffith’s manager, who encouraged them to come to New York. That led to some TV variety show shots, a few singles and a 1959 Warner LP called “It’s the Most Happy Sound.” It’s filled with Shakey’s Pizza Parlor singalongs such as “Swanee River,” “Mississippi Mud” and “My Cutey’s Due at Two to Two Today.”

While touring the Vegas-Tahoe-Reno lounge circuit with a musical act called Margaret Ann and the Ernie Mariani Trio, she was spotted by the Griffith show’s producer and director and asked to play Charlene, and the rest is TV Land history. She’s always been very grateful to “Griffith” fans for remembering her, and everyone who’s met her describes her as the sweetheart you’ve always imagined her to be.

If you have fond memories of Maggie with the Darlings (and who doesn’t?), I hope you’ll kick in a few bucks to help her and her family. To answer the obvious question: no, she gets no royalties from the show and hasn’t since the 1960s. Considering it plays constantly and is more popular than ever, someone must be making a fortune off of it. It would be nice if whoever that was would crack open their money vault and help Maggie, to pay her back for her invaluable part in creating a show that’s still universally beloved nearly 60 years later.


2020 Election Update

July 25, 2021

I’m sure some readers wonder why I don’t write daily updates on all the 2020 election audits and questions and challenges. It’s because if I did, that’s all I’d ever have time to do. The general flow of these stories is that the auditors request information, the officials refuse to hand it over, the Democrats attack the auditors and say “Jim Crow” a lot, Republicans go to a judge to force the officials to turn over the evidence, the officials refuse again, the Republicans go back to court, lather-rinse-repeat.

Occasionally, the auditors will come up with something that stinks like week-old fish, and the election officials and Democrats will insist there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation that they would have seen if they’d only examined the evidence that the election officials and Democrats fought like panthers to keep them from seeing. Pardon me if I don’t want to cover that five times a day.

I bring it up only because that’s the basic story of the latest update to the Maricopa County, Arizona, audit story. The auditors reported last week that about 74,000 absentee ballots had been mailed in and counted for which they could find no records of anyone requesting them.

https://www.westernjournal.com/az-audit-exclusive-audit-taking-long-maricopa-county-intentionally-sabotaging/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

The county officials have now responded that the auditors were wrong and nearly 400,000 more ballots were requested than received back. The auditors said they didn’t accuse the county of criminality, they just said they couldn’t verify the records because the county officials kept fighting them to keep from showing the records. I won’t bore you with all the details and serial numbers of forms and he said/they said, etc., but if you want to see it, it’s here.

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/07/23/doug-logan-from-cyber-ninjas-releases-a-statement-on-the-alleged-missing-74000-ballots-in-maricopa-county/

Read that and you’ll understand why I’m cautious about reporting any stories that come out of an election audit until they're verified. I do NOT want this newsletter to read like that every day.

I will point out, however, that just a couple of days after the election, I called on Joe Biden to join with Trump in requesting an open, bipartisan examination of the vote, warning that if he didn’t, a cloud of suspicions, whether legitimate or not, would hang over his Administration, undermine his credibility and make it difficult for him to unite the country and govern. I got attacked from the left just for saying that. Well, we’re now six months into the Biden Administration, and how is that plan of telling skeptics they’re crazy while fighting to keep the evidence hidden working out?

“So when I was a young girl, Uncle Sherman taught me to play chess. He said, ‘You need to know, life is like that chessboard. There gonna be all kinds of players on that board. They’ll have all kinds of different moves. You have to think strategically. You have to learn to think about what that tenth move will be before you make that first move. And if you’re smart,’ he taught me, ‘that pawn can take out that king.”

--- Kamala Harris, July 2019

With President Biden in the news because of the horrendous, incomprehensible performance he gave at a townhall meeting on Wednesday, it seems like a good idea to take another look at the person who is positioned on that chess board to take his place. We’ve known her lately as someone who seems in over her head, who is given huge areas of responsibility and then ducks them, who giggles and cackles uncontrollably and inappropriately. Who is she, really? How did she get to this position on the chess board, and what does it mean for the country if (when) she “takes out the king”?

On October 14, 2020, Trevor Loudon at THE EPOCH TIMES had a detailed article about her background, and it seems like a good time to revisit that.

https://www.trevorloudon.com/2020/10/why-is-no-one-except-the-president-calling-out-kamala-harris-communist-ties/

Loudon, an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand, wrote the book “ENEMIES WITHIN: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress,” and also filmed the 2016 documentary ENEMIES WITHIN. Here’s a trailer from that movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQQDQhipYg

Of course, we knew Kamala was raised around radical leftists; her father was an professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University, where he used to say he was too far left even for them, and her mother was a longtime political activist, first in India and later in California. "Uncle Sherman" was an activist lawyer. Recall that Kamala, on the campaign trail, spoke of being wheeled through protest marches in a stroller, calling for “Fweeedom!!” (We don’t know if THAT story is true, but we do know for certain that her parents and their circle of acquaintances were radical left activists.

But there’s much more here, about specific organizations, their heroes (such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara), and their ultimate aims. RedState has a good summary, which also first appeared in October 2020, of the information turned up by Loudon. (All of it was available to the curious BEFORE the election, even though the mainstream media seem to have put it in the same category as Hunter Biden’s laptop and pretended it didn’t exist.)

https://redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2020/10/29/cvfc-kamala-harriss-close-ties-with-marxists-communists-maoists-and-socialists-n271428

The RedState piece was written by retired U.S. Navy Capt. Joseph R. John, who’s formerly with the FBI is currently chairman of the Combat Veterans for Congress PAC.

https://www.combatveteransforcongress.org

It’s not disputed that Harris got into politics after having an affair with then-California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Jr., who was 60 and married at the time. We know he guided her fledgling political career, which led to her being elected attorney general of California. But aside from that, I wonder how many know that when Brown ran successfully for mayor of San Francisco, he strongly endorsed Marxism and was, in turn, endorsed by the Communist Party USA. In the RedState article it states, “Willie Brown is widely regarded as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s best friends in the San Francisco Bay area.”

I don’t want anyone to be tarred with guilt by association. For example, Van Jones is mentioned in Loudon's piece and is perhaps overzealously described as a Communist, but the fact that I count him among my friends --- a brother in Christ who has been a guest on my TV show --- should never convince anyone that I share his views on politics or economics. He might be far to the left on those issues, but if Communists are atheists, he isn't either of those things.

https://www.faithwire.com/2019/04/11/cnns-van-jones-talks-value-of-faith-in-culture-where-its-too-trendy-to-have-no-empathy/#:~:text=God%20and%20religion%20are%20familiar%20to%20Jones%2C%20who,as%20we%20continue%20to%20turn%20…%20Continue%20reading

That said, Kamala Harris has been steeped in radicalism her whole life through her closest connections. (Imagine if a conservative candidate and his family and friends had associated exclusively with John Birchers and such.) Read on to learn about the Chinese Communist ties of Kamala’s husband Doug Emhoff and also of her younger sister Maya, whose close associate is one of Kamala’s major financial sponsors, the wealthy leftist Steve Phillips. (How is it that so many leftist, even Marxist, men marry very wealthy women?)

If Harris had been appointed to a federal position that required confirmation, Loudon’s article postulates, she would not have passed the background check because of her 40 years of close ties with Marxists, Communists, Maoists and Communist China. But as an elected official, she is not subject to the security clearance process. (I would add that this observation applied to Barack Obama as well.) As the article states, “Harris would never have been approved for acceptance to any of the five military service academies, been appointed to a U.S. government sub-cabinet position, or would have been approved to fill a sensitive position for a high-security defense contractor. Yet if Joe Biden were elected, Harris would be a heartbeat away from the President.”

The article goes on to cite not only Harris’ ties to the Communist Chinese, but Hunter Biden’s business dealings there. (Remember –- this came out BEFORE the election, but only conservative media were focusing on it.) As RedState says, “If the American voters read the background information [in Trevor Loudon’s article] about Kamala Harris, they would never support her election as Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden...will continue to decline in cerebral awareness; he will never be able to fill out a four-year term of office. If Biden is elected, the Socialists, Marxists and Communists who control Kamala Harris are planning to enact provisions of the 25th Amendment in order to remove Joe Biden from office, so Harris can become the first Communist President of the United States.”

Obviously, Bernie Sanders, as a Democratic Socialist, wouldn’t have been able to win the general election, but “moderate” (ha) Joe Biden, with a female and black running mate to check a couple of boxes, had a much better chance. So that’s how Kamala’s chess piece ended up where it did on the board. The moves started much earlier.

Now that parents are catching on and rising up against the racist indoctrination of their children by schools pushing Critical Race Theory, those behind it are trying to deny that’s what they’re doing, even as they continue to push for the same goals. In short, they’re talking softly, but carrying on the same shtick.

Here’s an example of an organization like that. It’s being promoted by the Biden Department of Education, and while it’s deliberately vague about whether it pushes CRT, here’s a quote from its board chairwoman that should give you a clue or two: "If you don’t recognize that White supremacy is in everything we do, then we got a problem. I want us to be feared."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/biden-admin-promotes-radical-group-critical-race-theory-schools

There’s a lot more at the link. I don’t think these radicals should be feared, because that might keep people from speaking out against them. Instead, they should be exposed and removed entirely from our school system.

Who says there’s nothing entertaining on TV anymore? Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci was back in the hot seat before the Senate, and it got blistering when Sen. Rand Paul, who is also a doctor, drilled down on his reported funding and support for “gain of function” virus research. That’s when viruses from sources like…let’s say, bats…are altered in the lab to make them more transmissible to humans, so that their effects can be studied.

In years past, Fauci made comments about the benefits of such dangerous experiments outweighing the risks, and it’s believed that the NIH under Fauci funded such research. If it turns out that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab, Paul wants Fauci to take partial responsibility for those risks that resulted in a deadly pandemic. He also quoted Fauci’s emails in which colleagues expressed fears that that was the case, but he publicly dismissed them. Fauci angrily accused Paul of not knowing what he was talking about. But Paul replied that Fauci can call him a liar, but he didn’t produce any facts that contradicted him. There are more details and video here:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/rand-paul-anthony-fauci-intimidates-scientists

Later, Sen. Paul told Sean Hannity that he will ask the DOJ for a criminal referral against Fauci for lying to Congress.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/21/rand-paul-seeks-doj-criminal-referral-to-hold-that-lying-sack-fauci-accountable-n2592856

In further Fauci news, the doc says he agrees with the American Academy of Pediatrics that it’s “reasonable” to require all children older than two to wear masks all day at school.

https://www.westernjournal.com/fauci-now-wants-mask-3-year-old-school-calls-reasonable-thing/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV, like some people I could name. But I’ve already written at length about the many problems with making children wear masks for hours, from developmental issues to forcing them to breathe dangerous levels of CO2 to all the bacteria and viruses that get on the masks and are then pressed tightly over their mouths and noses. Here are a couple of links as reminders. I hope someone forwards them to Dr. Fauci and the AAP.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2781743

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/15/a-group-of-parents-sent-their-kids-face-masks-to-a-lab-for-analysis-heres-what-they-found-n2591047


The problem with trying to build a mass political movement on fringe groups that demand everyone agree with them 100% is that, sooner or later, the members of your coalition will start turning on each other. Case in point: In Fairfax, Virginia, a group of LGBTQIA+ (it’s getting longer than an eye chart) activists are condemning an otherwise solidly leftist school board member because she politely said she couldn’t 100% endorse their agenda, maybe because she’s Muslim.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/20/diversity-crack-up-lgbt-group-attacks-muslim-school-board-member-for-emotional-violence-n1463273

Now, a full the-left-eats-its-own frenzy is afoot, complete with angry demands for the requisite groveling apology. This may be how the leftist movement will ultimately be stopped; not with a civil war, but just by their own incivility and their utter intolerance of anyone who won’t tolerate anything they demand.

Imagine if they’d found something really bad like this in the school!

https://www.foxnews.com/world/slam-boarding-school-gay-killed-book

TO READ MORE "POLITICS" ARTICLES, GO TO MY WEBSITE HERE>>>

California’s Third District Court of Appeals unanimously (3-0) struck down a state law requiring nursing home workers to use people’s “preferred pronouns.” Prolonged use of someone’s non-preferred pronoun could result in fines of up to $1000 and even a year in prison. The Court quite rightly ruled this a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

https://www.conservativereview.com/court-rules-california-law-requiring-use-of-transgender-pronouns-is-a-violation-of-free-speech-2653873814.html

Rick Chavez Zbur of Equality California blasted the ruling, declaring, “Let’s be clear: refusing to use someone’s correct name and pronouns isn’t an issue of free speech – it’s a hateful act that denies someone their dignity and truth.” I assume Mr/Ms/Whatever Zbur doesn’t see the irony in accusing someone else of being hateful while claiming that applying labels to others that they don’t like isn’t protected free speech. Or that just because someone declares what “their truth” is doesn’t mean that it should be illegal for others to disagree with it. A lot of liberals have no qualms with vehemently disagreeing with what I believe to be Biblical truth.

The bill’s author, Sen. Scott Wiener (I’ll risk prison by assuming Scott is a “he”) of San Francisco, of course, railed, “The court’s decision is disconnected from the reality facing transgender people” and vowed to get it overturned on appeal. I’d say that if he thinks the Supreme Court is going to uphold that law, he’s the one who’s disconnected from reality, which seems to be a chronic condition among California legislators.

TO READ MORE "TRANSGENDER ACTIVISM" ARTICLES, GO TO MY WEBSITE HERE>>>

Just yesterday, I received an urgent letter from a reader –- a former teacher –- warning about the danger of leftist activism in schools. Here is what Amy had to say:

Sir, I’m a mom and a former teacher, and the direction we are going is very concerning to me. There used to be the understanding that crazy ideas would not get far. Unfortunately, now there are too many crazy ideas and they are not going away. Now we have reached the point where if you don’t stand up and disagree, then you are actually just acquiescing.

The left has created a CRT activist group for children called Diversify Our Narrative. The left are genius in how they have made activism for youth so simple that it requires absolutely no thought –- it actually works better if they don’t think.

I really feel like we need to use their template and create our own program only focused on teaching youth to be critical thinkers who evaluate the messages around them. I sound old to say this, but, back in my day, when journalism was taught, we were told to always ask who, what, when, where, and why. I think they are only taught to retweet and forward now. We have got to come up with a program that teaches critical thinking and combines that with community service and innovative solutions.

I really believe if we can get kids to start thinking and evaluating the information around them then they are not going to be as easy to turn into mindless liberal activists. I’m hoping that you might know where I can find a program that is out there like this or who I could talk to about creating this program.

Thank you so much for writing, Amy. If every kid could have a teacher like you, we’d have a lot more confidence in the future.

You’re right that it’s getting hard than ever to evaluate and determine what is “crazy.” It seems the indoctrinators of our kids are going by the principle that if everything is crazy, nothing is crazy. And they want parents to just stay out of it, which is, exactly as you say, acquiescing. One silver lining to the stormcloud of COVID is that kids and parents spent more time at home together. Kids started getting their lessons online at home, where parents often got a glimpse of their “classrooms” and were appalled at what they saw being taught. It took a few brave parents to stand against cancel culture and speak out, and now there are nationwide networks of parents working to fight leftist indoctrination in schools.

You are also very perceptive to say the activists’ goal is to separate ideology and activism from thought. In George Orwell’s book “1984,” there’s a Newspeak term called “duckspeak,” which means literally to quack like a duck, without thinking at all. It’s considered to be a good thing –- “doubleplusgood,” in fact. Here’s how Orwell described it:

“The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life, it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinion as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets...Ultimately, it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word “duckspeak,” meaning ‘to quack like a duck.’ [This word was] a warm and valued compliment.”

This is what they’re trying to do to kids. There’s no real thought involved in calling someone a “Nazi” or a “white supremacist” --- kids don’t even know what that really is. They don’t know what “capitalism” and “socialism” are, either. All such words have been conveniently redefined. We looked up “Diversify Our Narrative”; here’s the website:

https://www.diversifyournarrative.com

It says on their home page that they’re involved in 1) grassroots activism/policy change, 2) curriculum creation, 3) leadership development, and 4) educational resources and support. This is a new organization; they say that since June 2020, they’re in 800+ school districts. They're partnered with Generation UP, which fights for the College For All Act (free college); Bay Area Student Activists; the NFL (I am not kidding); and Justice In The Classroom –- check out their website at https://www.justiceintheclassroom.org

One strategy used by the proponents of Critical Race Theory is to name a study based on its principles something else and then deny they’re teaching CRT. Take a look at these sites, and it’s easy to see that this is just the same old leftist indoctrination, with the same cascade of buzzwords, perfect for duckspeak.

For example, the stated mission of Diversify Our Narrative is “to fight to be anti-racist and to encourage a productive dialogue on race and identity among our student bodies through the inclusion of racially diverse, anti-racist texts in USA schools; to work towards racial justice, educational equity and community power.” They address issues such as “systemic racism and microaggressions.” They “create curriculum centered around anti-racist teaching practices in the classroom.”

We also scrolled down their page of lesson plans, and this pretty much says it all…

https://www.diversifyournarrative.com/lesson-plans

While high school students in other countries are learning math and science, American kids taught with lesson plans from Diversify Our Narrative are learning “Exploring LGBTQ+/Immigrant Narratives Through Music,” “Analyzing Queer Dance,” “The New Jim Crow,” “Biology, Society and Policy,” “Acting Out: Resisting Policed Performances of Gender,” “The Intersection of Colonialism and Gender & Sexuality” (I am not kidding), and more.

Thanks, Amy, for bringing this to our attention. It’s true that we need to be at least as good as the left is when it comes to organizing. And YES –- you put it so well –- there needs to be a program that stresses critical thinking, community service and innovative solutions! Right now, I’d say critical thinking is the one that most desperately needs help.

For now, we wanted to alert you to this apparently very well organized group, Diversify Our Narrative. But we’ll also be working on a list of resources that offer strong lesson plans, especially for learning at home. (The best thing you can do for kids being force-fed anti-racist garbage is to take them out of their awful school.) Parents, grandparents, teachers and tutors: if you know of good curriculum plans and supplemental material for homeschoolers, please let us know, and we’ll pass that information along.

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Tuesday, billionaire Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos returned safely from a trip to the edge of space on one of his Blue Origin private spacecrafts. Immediately afterward, he announced that he was giving $100 million, no strings attached, to leftwing CNN commentator Van Jones and celebrity chef Jose Andres. He calls it his “Courage and Civility Award.” They are free to give the money to their own charities or non-profits or to others’.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/jeff-bezos-giving-100-million-jose-andres-van-jones-after-blue-origin-rocket-flight

Andres runs a charity called World Central Kitchen that provides food to victims of natural disasters, so I can see how the money will be well-spent there. However, the grant to Jones raised criticism and eyebrows.

Full disclosure: while Van and I couldn’t be further apart on political issues, I consider him a friend and a Christian brother, and he is that rare liberal who will put aside politics to work across the political spectrum for good causes. Here’s a segment from “Huckabee” on TBN where he was my guest and we talked about his series “The Redemption Project.” If he uses the money for causes like this, then I can’t get too exercised about it.

https://youtu.be/bU0lrpDhrPI

What has some people questioning the appropriateness of the grant was the wall-to-wall positive coverage of Bezos on CNN, but that was going on well before the awards were revealed. Maybe with Trump gone, they’re desperate for anything to talk about. On the other hand, considering CNN’s ratings, I could understand why they’d want to suck up to any billionaire who’s handing out money.

A New Political Circus

July 22, 2021

Just as I expected, that “9/11-style” House committee to investigate the January 6th Capitol violence hasn’t even been formed yet, and it’s already imploded into a giant political circus.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/21/pelosi-proves-what-a-sham-her-jan-6-commission-truly-is-with-her-latest-move-n414037

Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of the Republican nominees to the committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana, because they’d objected to certifying the Electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona. This despite her already claiming that past votes would not be considered.

Pelosi’s attempt to ban Trump supporters angered House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy so much that he threatened to pull all GOP members from the committee. That would kill the “bipartisan” claim and turn it into what many of us figured it would be: a partisan show trial designed to keep publicly whipping this dead horse into hamburger as a distraction from the many things the Dems are currently screwing up.

What makes this doubly hypocritical is that Pelosi okayed Democrats Adam Schiff, who blatantly lied about having evidence of Russian collusion to justify a bogus impeachment charge, and Jamie Raskin, one of the Democrats who tried to prevent the certification of the 2016 election, back before things like that were treason, insurrection and assaults on democracy.

To be clear, I would support a legitimate, transparent, bipartisan investigation of what happened on January 6th, but Democrats seem determined to prevent that from happening. Come to think of it, you could say the same thing about the election.

Related: A new Rasmussen survey finds that only 49% of Americans support Nancy Pelosi’s investigation of the January 6th Capitol riot, but 66% want last year’s Black Lives Matter riots investigated. That includes 67% of whites, 64% of black voters, 66% of Hispanics and 62% of other minorities.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/two-thirds-want-blm-riots-probed-more-than-jan-6

Also, 51% believe politicians who downplayed the Capitol violence deserve criticism, while 62% believe the same about elected officials who downplayed the 2020 riots and looting.

I guess these people just don’t understand that riots are only to be taken seriously when they happen near Nancy Pelosi.

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Here’s an update on the latest leftist virtue signaling by Ben & Jerry’s, the premium ice cream for wealthy, decadent socialists. I reported that the brand announced it would not sell its ice cream in “occupied Palestinian territory,” meaning certain parts of Israel, a move that got it praised by the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. The prime minister of Israel warned parent company Unilever of “severe consequences” for its boycott decision. Well, here they come…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/07/19/the-stock-market-tumbles-and-joe-bidens-response-is-unbelievable-n413091

First of all, that article points out that no part of Israel is “occupied Palestinian territory.” Israel took over the West Bank when it won the 1967 war against Jordan and its Arab allies, and the Israelis have a claim on that territory going back to Biblical times.

More to the current point, Israeli law requires local distributors to sell products in all of Israel, so this is an illegal decision that could get Ben & Jerry’s removed from the entire nation’s store shelves. In addition, 35 US states have made it illegal to boycott Israel, which hurts both Israelis and Palestinians, so they might have opened up a legal can of worms in two-thirds of the US. Finally, a number of grocers in the New York area and beyond announced that they will stop carrying Ben & Jerry’s ice cream over this.

Moral: Don’t let radical leftists run your ice cream company if you don’t want your business to suffer a complete meltdown.

Delta Variant Worries

July 22, 2021

If you’re one of the many millions of Americans who have money in stocks through a 401K, IRA or small day-trading account (No, AOC, all market investors aren’t greedy capitalist billionaires), then you might be panicking over the recent plunge in the market. I can’t give you financial advice or assure you that all will be well, but I can safely say that over time, a diversified portfolio of stocks tends to grow, despite periodic drops. And I can explain why this current plummet is due almost entirely to the incompetence of the current occupants of the White House.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/07/19/the-stock-market-tumbles-and-joe-bidens-response-is-unbelievable-n413091

The Biden Administration has been all over the map with its chaotic messaging about COVID, stoking fear of the Delta variant to try to goose lagging vaccination numbers. This fear and confusion have spooked the market due to worries that the government might impose another pointless economic lockdown. I have to assume that at some point, the truth will prevail and the market will rebound (if Biden doesn’t K.O. it with inflation, which is another story.) Here are some facts about the current situation to help calm the artificial panic.

Contrary to what President Biden claimed, the Delta variant is NOT “deadlier” than the original virus. Just as with most viruses, it’s mutated to a form that spreads easier, since it’s trying to stay alive as there are fewer and fewer potential hosts, thanks to vaccines and natural immunity in those who’ve recovered. But it’s actually less dangerous than the original virus.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/08/dont-buy-the-hysteria-the-delta-variant-is-actually-less-dangerous/

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the recent spike in cases in the UK has not resulted in hospitalizations or deaths anywhere near those of the original pandemic. The previous peak in the UK came in January with a seven-day average of 50,000 cases, out of which 40,000 required hospitalization and there were 1,000 deaths. The latest surge was 25,000, with 2,000 hospitalized and an average daily death rate of less than 20.

Bottom line: the Delta variant can kill and must be taken seriously, but it is not deadlier than the original. While no vaccine is 100% effective, the new cases are mostly among the unvaccinated and those without natural immunity. The vaccinated who do catch it are more likely to have mild symptoms. A case could be made that shutting down the economy again, with the attendant bankruptcies, suicides, depression, drug abuse and postponed medical care for other problems, would be deadlier than the virus.

I won’t tell someone else that they have to get vaccinated, but know that these are the risks you’re taking, and they’re serious. But it’s not the apocalypse. The spike is caused by the virus itself fighting against dying out. The worst thing the Administration could do is exactly what they’re doing: shredding their own credibility by trying to incite a needless panic.

To paraphrase FDR, the virus may be scary, but we can only make it worse if our leaders gin up fear of fear itself. I miss the days when Democrat Presidents occasionally said things that made sense.

The FBI has suffered so many black eyes lately, it must have more eyes than a housefly. And here’s the latest haymaker:

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/07/20/it-sure-looks-like-the-fbi-basically-orchestrated-the-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-n413686

As we’re learning more about that alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, it’s looking more and more as if the FBI didn’t just get a tip and infiltrate the plot but were actively engaged from the beginning in orchestrating it and luring people into it. Attorneys are starting to question whether there would have been a conspiracy at all if the undercover agents hadn’t lured people into it. It’s getting perilously close to the definition of “entrapment.”

But that’s not all: in a separate story also cited at that link, an Inspector General’s report cited found that a then-senior FBI official had numerous unauthorized contacts with the media and accepted unauthorized gifts from the media.

As columnist Kurt Schlichter points out, in his inimitable way, it’s getting harder to buy the claim that it’s just a few bad apples at the FBI causing all the problems when all we ever hear about is barrels and barrels of bad apples and no good apples speaking up to say, “Enough! I quit!”

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/07/19/are-there-any-good-apples-n2592697

It’s an age-old problem in Washington that whenever conservative Justices actually join the Supreme Court, pressure immediately gets put on them to move to the left. It comes from the media, their colleagues, and the people they lunch and golf and attend cocktail parties with. Some (looking at you, John Roberts) seem to sprint to the left, others inch leftward, and only a rare few, like Justice Thomas, stick to their principles despite all the slings and arrows hurled at them. And of course, when they do move left, this is described by the media as the Justices “evolving” and “growing.”

Those of us who think of moving leftward as the wrong direction for America consider that “devolving.” And despite all the wails from the media about the “far-right drift” of the Supreme Court, there were plenty of disappointments among the few victories for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the most recent term. Here’s a recap of that term, along with an account of what happened when former Vice President Pence pointed to the appointment of conservative judges as a great victory at the Family Leader leadership summit in Iowa. The audience wasn’t buying it.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/social-conservatives-disappointment-trump-supreme-court-justices-rulings

Not since Ford introduced the Edsel has so much hype been followed by so much disappointment.

BUT...here’s the kind of case for which I hope those allegedly conservative Justices will be able to find their principles: Incoming college freshman Olivia Sandor was denied admission to BYU Hawaii and lost the $200,000 scholarship she’d earned because she asked to be exempted from the state COVID vaccination mandate. The reason: she has serious medical issues (she was paralyzed from the waist down for over a month due to Guillain-Barre Syndrome after getting a vaccine in 2019), and her doctors advised her not to get the jab and even wrote her a letter to exempt her, but to no avail.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/college-student-denied-admission-to-dream-school-despite-vaccine-exemption-for-medical-history

Sandor says she’s now without a school or scholarship and has nowhere to turn. Personally, I’d turn toward the office of the best attorney I could find. I know one court already ruled that colleges could require it, but would this case be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act? Might be an argument worth pursuing.

Will wonders never cease? The Washington Post ran a genuinely funny op-ed spread of parody “Hunter Biden paintings,” the point being to mock what an obvious influence-peddling scam his “art” career is.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/glenn-kessler-slammed-funny-display-hunter-bidens-scandals

Of course, that got them some criticism of their own from readers wanting to know where their concern about Hunter’s corruption was when they were burying the story of his laptop revelations during the campaign. I guess it’s “safe” to make fun of his efforts to profit from his dad’s power, now that his dad is safely IN power.

In a related story, a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic says that Hunter’s art is so bad that it wouldn’t even fetch $1,000 on its own merits, while it’s being offered for sale for up to $500,000.

https://www.westernjournal.com/pulitzer-prize-winning-art-critic-hunter-bidens-art-bad-shouldnt-even-worth-1000/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

On this one, I have to defend Hunter. I’ve seen some of what passes for valuable modern art these days. If it really were that bad, it would definitely be selling for up to $500,000.

On Tuesday, at the request of one of our readers, we expanded on the testimony given in June by Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he --- just like the DNC, coincidentally --- blamed the breach at the Capitol on January 6 on Trump supporters’ “white rage” and anti-constitutionalism.

RELATED READING: The Pentagon Speaks From Phony DNC Playbook 

Tuesday evening on TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT, Tucker included a segment on something we’d discussed in our commentary, the focused military indoctrination currently going on within the ranks. “Biden has gone much farther than any other President,” he said, “to politicize every federal agency, and that includes, terrifyingly, the military.”

The Defense Department has been ordered to direct its attention at American citizens, including our own military, as Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin states outright that some of our enemies “lie within our own ranks.”

The contractor with whom the Defense Department is working to stamp out these domestic “white supremacist” enemies is called Moonshot CVE (“Countering Violent Extremism”), a contractor based out of London. If you would like to read in great detail about how they operate, here is a long article, for when you have time. Warning: it might keep you awake at night.

https://founderscode.com/the-feds-have-hired-moonshot-cve-be-worried/

The folks at Moonshot are the ones who have been looking into the online history of American soldiers to ferret out “extremist” views. So, what exactly are those extremist views?

Tucker reported what we had said, that they searched for phrases such “the truth about Black Lives Matter.” “If you wanted to know the truth about Black Lives Matter, you were, by definition, a white supremacist, and an enemy of the United States,” he observed.

You see, no one is even supposed to ASK about BLM. Yesterday, we dared suggest that it deserves the same scrutiny as any other organization, which, I suppose, makes us –- at least to Moonshot CVE and the new leaders of the U.S. military –- incorrigible, detestable, deplorable RACISTS.

“The outcome is contrived,” said Tucker’s guest, radio host Vince Coglianese. The only reason they’d include a question such as that would be to rig the outcome of a study, he said.

Moonshot CVE, he said, showed us what they’re about when they released a study in June about white supremacy in the United States, as determined by search trends. In that study, they happen to have included that same phrase, “the truth about Black Lives Matter.” This is something that anyone, of any skin color or political persuasion, might be searching for, for a variety of reasons.

In fact, my own researchers, given that they look high and low for information on just about any topic you could think of –- from any perspective that might possibly be weighing in –- would be very likely to search a phrase such as this. If they had, would that make them white supremacists?

No. Just no.

It would make them...inquisitive, curious, interested. Anybody looking at the varied online search history of my researchers would be mystified as to their personal political proclivities. But if Moonshot wanted to take some searched-for phrase out of context and tar them falsely with extremist beliefs, they certainly could. And so they could with our soldiers.

In fact, when one of us did a search on “white supremacy u.s. military,” this is the first article that came up. We include a link to it for illustrative purposes only; the article itself is a big steaming load of leftist propaganda about how the U.S. military is full of white nationalist extremists. It says that white supremacism in the military is “a problem that threatens both to compromise the integrity of the military and endanger the society it purports to defend.” Feel free to be as offended as we are by this statement, especially if you are in the military or have loved ones who are. If soldiers hate anything, it might be the attempt --- by those they are sworn to defend --- to paint them as racists and domestic terrorists.

https://newrepublic.com/article/162400/us-military-white-supremacy-problem

This is far from the only article of this type, either, as we checked out articles in THE NEW YORK TIMES and VANITY FAIR. We’ll spare you --- you would thank us, believe me.

We prefer this take on the subject from THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION.

https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2021/07/20/pentagon-contractor-paid-to-tackle-extremism-claims-searching-for-the-truth-about-blm-implies-white-supremacist-behavior/

As Coglianese suggested on Tucker’s show, doing an online search for such a phrase might even mean you’re a member of Black Lives Matter yourself, trying to find out where on earth $90 million that was raised by the national organization disappeared to. Does that make you a white supremacist? No, it makes you fiscally responsible.

Maybe you’re just wondering about the ideological beliefs supporting BLM, after hearing one of its leaders speak of being a “trained Marxist" or others among its leadership express support not for the Cuban people but for the Communists trying to keep them in their place. In other words, it likely has nothing to do with race at all.

Coglianiese said he’s never seen anything like the current politicization of the military and says it’s “completely out of control.” Asking questions = extremism. Free inquiry = extremism. “It’s getting worse,” he said.

In order to further the left’s narrative about white supremacy in America, they have spread it worldwide, with the Biden administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, even saying it wants the United Nations Human Rights Council to get involved in investigating our country’s “systemic racism.” In case you weren’t aware, some of the new members of the Human Rights Council are (get ready) China, Russia, Pakistan, Senegal, Malawi and Cote d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast). Does this strike you as a little...infuriating? The fact that China and Russia are even ON the Human Rights Council makes no sense, let alone that they, to the delight of the left, are being put in the position of judging our country. And our current leaders actually want that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/zachbauder/2021/07/20/blinken-wants-un-to-investigate-us-for-hr-violations-despite-member-nations-long-track-record-of-actual-crimes-n2592746

Our country should be the bastion of freedom right now. We should be welcoming those who risk their lives to escape Cuba, as they would be political prisoners if they returned. We should have a well-functioning legal immigration system with rules that everyone understands and respects. We should be pressuring China to stop their blatant human rights violations, their enslavement and persecution of religious minorities. We should be known as the nation with a military that fights to preserve freedom for all, regardless of skin color (which is what they DO). In other words, we should be that shining city on a hill. And we could be, if only…

LEAVE ME A COMMENT BELOW, I READ THEM!

(1.) The California state board of education has decided to postpone for 10 months the implementation of a new “social justice”-oriented math curriculum. It rejects the idea of some people having natural gifts for math, would end advanced courses such as AP Calculus, and make teachers use math class to promote “sociopolitical conscience” and social and environmental issues.

https://www.joannejacobs.com/2021/07/social-justice-math-stalls-in-california/

The postponement came after the board received massive backlash from critics who said the new curriculum would politicize math in “a potentially disastrous way.” It would block gifted kids from rising to positions such as engineer, where they could get rockets into the sky and build bridges properly. And it would uproot long-proven, effective math methods in an attempt to “build a mathless Brave New World on a foundation of unsound ideology.” Of course, to the people pushing it, that’s their mission statement in life. Judging from “progressive” ideas about economics, I have a feeling most of them are still nursing a grudge about making F’s in math.

(2.) Say, do you know how President Biden wants all government agencies to go to 100% electric vehicles, and then force all Americans to do the same? Well, the Democrat-led city of Philadelphia led the way in 2016 by buying a fleet of 25 electric Proterra buses.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/report-philadelphias-proterra-fleet-in-complete-shambles/

But if you’re waiting for one of those buses, brace yourself for a long wait. The city transit authority SEPTA has already removed the entire fleet from service due to “structural and logistical problems;” i.e., the batteries didn’t hold a charge long enough for the bus routes and were so heavy, they were cracking the buses’ chassis.

The city paid $24 million for the electric buses, partly subsidized by a $2.6 million federal grant, so all taxpayers got stuck with some of the bill (get used to that feeling.) The buses were introduced when they were rolled out into the 2016 DNC Convention with the boast that the city was “plugging into an emissions-free future."

They should’ve known better than to believe that anything that came out of a Democratic Convention was going to lead to a better future or less hot noxious gas.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to be taking a page from Bernie Sanders and many others who failed at everything in life before becoming socialist politicians and then they somehow turned into millionaires. AOC has signed a deal to sell a line of "AOC" and “Tax the Rich” merchandise on her popular social media pages. Now, listen to her try to explain how making money through private enterprise isn’t capitalism when she does it. Unlike her merch, it’s priceless.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/20/aoc-struggles-to-explain-how-cashing-in-on-her-tax-the-rich-merch-isnt-capitalism-or-something-n1463200

On a more serious note, AOC’s attempt to sorta voice solidarity with the Cuban people while not actually denouncing their oppressive communist government and instead blaming America and denouncing Trump did not go over well with a former Democrat House member from Miami. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell gave her a scolding and a civics lesson on Twitter.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/carsonswick/2021/07/20/aoc-embargo-comments-n2592796

Will that be enough to convince Cuban-Americans to vote for Democrats again? With Biden ordering the Coast Guard to make sure they’re the only asylum seekers on Earth who are actually turned away from America, I wouldn’t count on it.