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Political correctness

Laura Ainsworth: Harvey Weinstein faces prison, so what's wrong with #MeToo?

February 25, 2020

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

On the very day Harvey Weinstein, Honorary Lifetime Member of the Casting Couch Hall of Shame, was finally convicted of rape, I have to admit I have incredibly mixed feelings about the #MeToo Movement.

Harvey Weinstein is a sexual thug who as a matter of course coldly abused women just starting out in their chosen profession. Throw the book at him. I wish the same book could be thrown smack in the faces of those who covered for him, as well as the low-lifes who did the same things he did and those who covered up for THEM. This sort of thing is as ubiquitous as plastic surgery in the entertainment business, Weinstein being just a particularly heinous example. Predation happens to both men and women in the acting field, though I’d guess more often to women, who are lucky if they escape the producer in the bathrobe. I’d love for the stereotype of the Hollywood mogul preying on aspiring movie stars to become a relic of a bygone era, like smoking sections in movie theaters.

On the other hand, I heard today that my best-male-friend-other-than-my-spouse has just been tossed out of a local business/community organization because of complaints from women about his behavior. There was no warning, no discussion, just...goodbye. His understanding is that certain women had complained to the leadership that something about his behavior made them uncomfortable.

This man is just about the last person anyone would expect to face an accusation like this. He is deeply religious, has four young-adult daughters he would protect with his life, and respects women so much he won’t even let his language go beyond PG-13 around them.

To show how bewildering it must be to be on the receiving end of such a complaint when one has not knowingly done anything wrong, I’m reprinting, with permission, an excerpt from the letter my friend sent to the group whose leadership has ousted him. I’ve edited out anything that could reveal identities, as that is not the point. This letter illustrates how someone feels who has been wrongly accused. My friend was first notified of his ouster last week, and he responded assuming it was some kind of mistake. Today he officially learned it wasn’t, and he sent the following reply...

Greetings Loved Ones,

This email is a follow-up message to one that I sent last week regarding leaving the Thursday morning group. The reason I sent that message was out of ignorance. I thought it was a mistake. Now I know better.

Today is my birthday. Also today, Harvey Weinstein was convicted of very bad behavior. Additionally, I spoke with *******, who explained to me that I’m being terminated from membership in the ******* because it is alleged that I have had inappropriate behavior and touching with several ladies in the group. Since the only thing I do with ******* is Thursday group, I have to assume that the ladies who’ve accused me are reading this letter. I categorically deny the behavior which I myself abhor. I’ve raised four daughters to adulthood, am a 20 year charter member of *******, have been working with ******* for forty years and been associated with the ******* for four years. Whatever you perceived that I did, it would have been so much better if you’d have just talked to me and given me an opportunity to fix whatever the problem was. I’m sorry if I hurt you in some way. Certainly, it was never my intention.

This kind of problem has the effect of seriously damaging an otherwise good reputation...Since I don’t know who my accusers are, I will never know who will speak badly of me whenever I go anywhere or do anything.

I don’t live or die by the Thursday morning group, and I’ve made some very good friends there, with whom I’ll continue to do business and referrals. As I leave, please don’t turn your back on [the children helped by a charitable organization they support]. They depend on you to be able to live. It’s amazed me that I’ve not had more sponsors come out of the group over the many years I’ve been a member...

God speed to all of you, may your businesses prosper, and may you always remember to love.

Sincerely,

*******

As you can see, the irony of having this happen to him the very day Harvey Weinstein was convicted is not lost on him. (It was also, sadly, my friend’s birthday.) Now, you don’t know this person and can only take my word, but believe me, he would never intentionally make a female colleague uncomfortable. I’ve seen him in social situations many times; he’s naturally friendly and outgoing and might offer a casual hug (with others around) or compliment someone (man or woman) for a stylish dress or cool tie. But this wasn’t a workplace situation; there’s no HR, no posted behavior code for employees. Within hours of sending this letter, he’d already received numerous letters of support from both men and women in the group.

I spoke with him at length about this today, and he understands that perhaps because of past experiences, a woman might be easily made uncomfortable, but he just wishes he could have been made aware, either by the woman herself (“Eh, I’m not really a ‘hug’ person”) or by leadership (“I thought I’d better tell you, there’s been a complaint about you being too outwardly friendly”). He would have respected that and behaved accordingly.

The way this was handled is just wrong, and, as a woman, I’m flat-out embarrassed by it. In the post-feminist age, are we capable of navigating interpersonal situations (at least in cases not involving a job or other power play) or are women fragile little flowers? I can see not wanting to confront one’s boss or attacker, but this innocent, friendly care-bear? Get real. And if the woman is, for whatever reason, too uncomfortable to talk to the person directly, can’t the leadership of this relatively small, local group bring members together to resolve such issues? As disappointed as I am by the women in this situation, that’s nothing compared to the way I feel about how the organization handled it.

So, where does my friend go to get his reputation back? He has no idea who accused him and has no recourse. He’s well aware of how word gets around, and since he’s a member of other, similar groups in the area, he wonders if he’ll be dropped from them, too. Will he be known as “the guy who got kicked out of *****”? Will false rumors spread that he groped women or propositioned them? Will it hurt the very worthwhile charity he supports? Honestly, the longer I go on about this, the madder I get --- probably much madder than the man this happened to, as he’s more forgiving than I am.

Harvey Weinstein is finally going to prison, and that’s a great consequence of the #MeToo movement. But my innocent friend deserved, at most, a heads-up to just be a little more reserved. He did not deserve what happened to him. And that’s a terrible consequence of the #MeToo Movement.

Evening Edition - February 25

February 25, 2020

Mike Huckabee

I have been working from Israel this week, where I gave a speech on Monday promoting the reelection of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I described him, I think quite accurately, as not just a leader of Israel but a leader of the world, a Churchill in a world filled with Chamberlains.

Video of that speech has now been posted on Facebook, and I hope you’ll give it a look. Outside of our own elections, this is one of the most important elections to the US, since it will determine the future of our greatest ally in an area of the world where we need a strong ally like Israel to keep the peace. Netanyahu will insure that Israel remains strong.

https://www.facebook.com/LikudAnglos/videos/vb.157560110960960/246748056324121/?type=2&thea

And as a timely reminder to American voters, one of the Democrats’ leading Presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, refused to attend next week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference. He accused Israel of “bigotry” against the Palestinians for acts that amount to nothing more than basic self-defense.

Just hours after Sanders made those comments, Palestinian terrorists launched a rocket attack in the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip. The rockets narrowly missed a Jewish school and damaged a playground just a few yards from the classrooms. Several people were treated for shock, but miraculously, no one was injured as there were no children on the playground. Not that the people who fired those rockets cared, since they would have celebrated any injuries to or deaths of innocent Jewish children.

https://www.westernjournal.com/hours-bernie-defends-palestinians-palestinians-shoot-rocket-israeli-playground/

I think Bernie Sanders and I have a very different definition of “bigotry.”

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Many stunning photos have appeared from the President and First Lady’s tour of India, and as usual, there have been comments about Melania Trump’s fashions. She’s a former model and incredibly stylish, so I think she always looks fantastic, but there are also the usual catty, snotty remarks from liberals.

Some people complain that there’s too much coverage of how Mrs. Trump dresses, that it’s either too laudatory or demeaning and sexist. So Fox News did a poll. They found that the public is split, with 37% saying media coverage of her looks and styles has been fair, 35% saying it’s been too negative and 9% saying coverage of her fashions has been “too positive.”

Here’s my question: who are the 9% who think that coverage of Melania Trump by the fashion media is “too positive”? Fashion magazines are so lockstep leftist that three long years into her tenure as one of the most beautiful and fashionable First Ladies in history, I can’t think of a single major women's or fashion magazine that’s put her on its cover even once. It’s absolutely shameful, and a perfect example of how the editors of these magazines prioritize leftist politics over fashion or fairness to the point of acting like a gaggle of high school mean girls with big expense accounts. They’d rather put Lena Dunham on a fashion magazine cover than Melania Trump. And that’s “too positive” for some people?

I just want them to know that we all know that has nothing to do with fashion. We are well aware that if Melania were married to a liberal Democrat President, they’d be worshiping her like she was the second coming of Princess Diana. When they attack her fashion choices or act as if she doesn't exist, they aren't fooling anyone other than themselves.

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There are two prominent names in this morning’s obituaries. Hosni Mubarak, the former strongman leader of Egypt who rule for 30 years before being deposed in 2011, has died in a Cairo hospital at 91 after undisclosed surgery.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/hosni-mubarak-egypts-former-autocratic-president-dead-at-91-report

And former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson has died at 101. She was one of a group of African-American women whose genius at math helped build the US space program. Their contributions went unrecognized for many years until their story was finally told in the book and 2016 movie, “Hidden Figures.” A big Huck’s Hero salute and the gratitude of all Americans to Katherine Johnson, and our prayers and condolences to her family.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nasa-mathematician-depicted-hidden-figures-katherine-johnson-passed-away-age-101/

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Pot, Meet Kettle: While Elizabeth Warren was blasting Mike Bloomberg for having female employees sign non-disclosure agreements, the Democratic Party was trying to keep the media from learning about any potential disasters in the Nevada Caucuses by requiring volunteers to sign…non-disclosure agreements!

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernies-win-nevada-caucuses-rocky-start-democrats-telling-volunteers-not-talk-media/

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Okay, I said I wasn’t going to run all of these “foaming-at-the-mouth leftists attack innocent Trump supporters” stories every day because there are so many of them, it would be all we ever got done. But to that anonymous Internet commenter who started this by claiming that most politically-motivated violence was perpetrated by people on the right, I can’t help adding this one.

https://www.westernjournal.com/couple-charged-felony-allegedly-running-boys-bikes-trump-flags-off-road/

Two details worth highlighting: there have been about 400 politically-motivated violent incidents against Trump supporters since September 2015 (those are just the ones that were reported; and it doesn’t take into account how many people have felt too threatened even to wear a MAGA cap or put a Trump sticker on their car or a sign in their yard, which is a blatant violation of their right to free speech.)

Also, note that this cowardly assault took place back in July but is only now coming to light because it took three months for Snapchat to turn the video over to police in response to a search warrant. Funny how when a Trump supporter posts a joke or meme that a leftist doesn’t like and they claim to feel “threatened” by it, social media sites somehow manage to take action overnight.

Bernie's dangerous ideas

February 25, 2020

Mike Huckabee

It’s easy to dismiss Bernie Sanders’ grandiose pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas, but now that too many people are actually voting for him, let’s take a look at just how high in the sky his pie is flying (take that, Cole Porter!)

Bernie has been notably vague about how much his socialist transformation of America would cost or how it would be paid for, but like all purveyors of questionable, overpriced goods, he assures the suckers that they will pay for themselves in the long run. Greg Re at Fox News reports that Sanders released a “fact sheet” (quotation marks intentional) Monday night on the financials, and both the costs and his plans for paying them make the mind reel. It’s a ruinous cocktail of massive spending and government expansion into every corner of your life, paid for by a mountain of new taxes, mandates, lawsuits, deep cuts in defense, and wishful thinking.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-payments-green-new-deal-medicare-for-all-explanation

For instance, he claims that the “Green New Deal,” which has been estimated to cost more than $90 trillion over ten years, would actually save $70.4 trillion over 80 years by averting climate catastrophe. No figures are given to back that up, but as Re notes, “the Trump administration's National Climate Assessment found that it was possible climate change could reduce the size of the U.S. economy by 10 percent by the end of the century, assuming no substantial changes in technology (including carbon-reducing innovations) or policy occur in the meantime.”

Aside from stressing the word “possible,” I’ll note that the end of the century is 80 years from now. Do you think there will be no policy changes or substantial changes in technology by then without massive government intervention (incidentally, in socialist nations, that always stymies technological advancement.) Think back to 80 years ago. How many changes in technology have there been since 1940? Today's young people laugh at the technology they see in reruns of "Friends"! And how many of the tech advances since 1940 have been led by the government? Sure, we learned a lot from the space program, but it was the private sector using that data that gave us home computers, smart phones, etc. It was only five months ago that the government finally updated the computers controlling our nuclear weapons systems so they no longer use floppy discs.

https://www.businessinsider.com/military-replaces-floppy-disks-used-to-control-nuclear-weapons-2019-10

Elsewhere, Bernie seems to think there’s an endless supply of super-rich people just waiting around like cows to be milked by the government. Like a communist Old McDonald, he plans to have a wealth tax here and a wealth tax there, oblivious to the fact that people don’t get rich by letting the government take all their money. They will simply shelter it or send it overseas, which will pull it out of productive investments and kill US job creation, reducing federal revenue. But never fear: he’ll stop people from doing what they want with their own money by expanding and empowering the IRS and having a lot more audits (does that make you feel more secure?)

Some other “revenue enhancements” include suing and taxing the daylights out of oil companies (goodbye, affordable gasoline!)…a range of taxes on everybody to pay for “Medicare For All” (but don’t worry, he says this will replace what you currently pay for insurance – but it will also replace the choices you currently have with a one-size-fits-all government health care program)…and a “modest” tax on Wall Street stock and bond transactions that would not only hit everyone with retirement accounts, it also adds up to five times the average online brokerage fee. Ironically, the federal government won’t let brokers charge that much because they’d consider it to be ripping off consumers. But socialists always believe that when the government rips you off, it’s for your own good.

PS – This article also mentions some more blowback on Bernie’s praising of Fidel Castro for implementing a literacy program. Critics say that literacy was already rising in Cuba before Castro’s revolution, and the program he instituted was largely to indoctrinate Cubans by making them read communist propaganda. I wonder if Bernie’s response to that will be “So what’s wrong with reading nothing but communist propaganda?!”

And here’s a little more about what really happened to education in Cuba under the benevolent Castro regime…

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article240425431.html

 

Sotomayor dissents

February 25, 2020

Mike Huckabee

I told you yesterday about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a much-ballyhooed dissent in the “public charge” immigration ban case. Her major gripe was that the Trump Administration calls on the SCOTUS too often to make emergency rulings rather than let challenges to its policies work their way through the courts. Trump defenders (myself included) pointed out that this is because so many liberal activist judges keep imposing unconstitutional nationwide stays that are beyond their jurisdictions, in a politicized attempt to thwart policies that the President has the Constitutional power to impose and hog-tie his Administration. The problem here is not an out-of-control White House, but an out-of-control judiciary.

Now, as you knew he would, Trump himself has weighed in on Twitter. He said Sotomayor was accusing some of her fellow Justices of being biased in favor of him and trying to “shame” them into voting her way, but she never criticized Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg when she publicly made anti-Trump comments during the campaign. Trump said both Sotomayor and Ginsberg should recuse themselves from cases involving him, since they’ve both publicly expressed bias against him.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-sotomayor-ginsburg-should-recuse-themselves-from-cases-dealing-with-his-administration

I’m sure this will spark the by-now ritualistic cries of “outrage” from Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself.) That would carry a lot more weight if we didn’t just go through an impeachment process where the same people were demanding that Mitch McConnell recuse himself from voting because he’d publicly supported Trump. Frankly, I assume that in today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, nobody who isn’t forced by law to recuse him- or herself is ever going to do it.

Hey, speaking of that, Roger Stone’s Obama-appointed judge who praised an outrageously biased juror and accused Stone of things he wasn’t even charged with while sentencing him, just refused to recuse herself and let him have a new judge. Quote:

"If parties could move to disqualify every judge who furrows his brow at one side or the other before ruling, the entire court system would come to a standstill."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/23/roger-stone-judge-berman-jackson-117066

I don’t think there’s enough Botox in the world to hide a brow that furrowed.

AOC's double standard

February 25, 2020

Mike Huckabee

“If It Weren’t For Double Standards…” Dept: A few years ago, before entering politics, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bragged on social media about somehow being able to get her goddaughter into a good charter school, something that liberals like her want to abolish because they think private education alternatives to public schools undermine the power of teachers’ unions. Needless to say, they also undermine the school’s ability to indoctrinate students with leftist curricula because they empower parents.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/the-aoc-tapes-rep-says-she-got-goddaughter-into-bronx-charter-school

I have never understood why anyone would think that the public school system should prioritize protecting teachers’ unions over the good of the students (but then, I don’t belong to a political party that’s heavily dependent on money and campaign volunteers from teachers’ unions.) The only purpose of a school should be to give the students the best education possible, and if it’s failing to do that, then something needs to change.

As hypocritical as this story makes AOC sound, though, I have to cut her some slack. I don’t blame her for wanting her goddaughter to have the best education possible. In fact, I want that child to go to a good charter school with a real economics class that won’t teach her to be a socialist. And AOC is hardly the only liberal politician to preach public schools for everyone else while sending their own family to expensive private schools. Frankly, I can’t think offhand of any liberal politicians who did send their kids to public school (you’re welcome to list them in the comments section if you know of any. And Elizabeth Warren’s denials don’t count.)

It’s only natural to want the best education possible for your own family. I just wish they'd quit fighting so hard to deny that right to other people's children.

Sen. Lindsay Graham announces start of FBI/FISA investigation

February 24, 2020

Mike Huckabee

Just as the Democrats have started in AGAIN, this time for 2020, with their frantic cries of “Russia, Russia, Russia!,” Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced the formal start of his investigation this coming week into FISA abuse and the origins of the “Trump/Russia” hoax.

Sen. Graham told Maria Bartiromo on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES that he doesn’t “have jurisdiction” over the whistleblower (you know, ERIC CIARAMELLA) --- which would belong to the Senate Intelligence Committee, I suppose because of highly classified material --- but in light of the current DOJ’s decision that the last two FISA renewals to spy on Carter Page were illegal, he plans to call a long list of people to determine what Andrew McCabe and James Comey knew about the fictional nature of the Christopher Steele “dossier,” and how early in the process they knew it.

We still don’t have determinations on the legality of the original FISA warrant application and the first renewal; those are pending. But we know for sure that way back in January of 2017, Steele’s primary Russian “subsource” told four members of the DOJ and FBI that the dossier was nothing but “bar-talk and hearsay,” as Graham put it. For an investigation so important –- into a major-party nominee for President, no less –- how could the director and deputy director of the FBI not have known about this? (Answer: THEY DID, but they’ve already lied so much, I wouldn’t expect the truth from them about this, either.) Yet they kept pursuing their bogus investigation, to the point at which the whole issue was handed off to Robert Mueller’s special counsel. The four people who heard directly from the subsource are at the top of the list Graham intends to call.

Recall that the first FISA application was made after a previous effort to get a warrant, in July of 2016, was turned down by the court. On Sunday, Sen. Graham mentioned something quite interesting: It was McCabe, at that time the deputy FBI Director, who then advised the FBI Washington, DC, office to go to the New York office, saying “they have something” that might help them get a warrant. That “something” was the Steele dossier.

So….how did McCabe know about the dossier? Who had been in touch with McCabe about it? (We know that stupid dossier was being floated around by then-CIA Director and known liar John Brennan; if I were investigating this, I’d focus on him.) Also, did Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on the last FISA renewal, know that the dossier had already been debunked? How could he possibly not have known that?

The interviews with McCabe and Comey won’t be happening right away. Before Graham calls them, he needs to lay the groundwork. So his staff will be interviewing other witnesses first to assemble the necessary foundation.

We know they kept renewing the FISA warrant after they knew the dossier on which it had been based was a pile of trash. Why did they keep going –- not just within the FBI but two more years with a special counsel, when there was no evidence of any underlying crime? In Sen. Graham’s words, “This whole thing is fishy as hell.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/02/23/lindsey_graham_says_he_will_call_21_people_to_testify_in_senate_judiciary_investigation_into_fisa_abuses.html

Over in the House Judiciary Committee, they’re supposedly looking at the FISA issue as well and are scheduled to work this week on a “markup” of new legislation. But under the control of impeachment-mad Jerrold Nadler, the focus has not been on determining what is wrong with that process. Ranking member Doug Collins wanted to have Inspector General Horowitz come in and give testimony about the problems he found with the FBI’s use of the FISA court, but that hasn’t happened. It’s no surprise that Nadler isn’t going to get into all that. “And now,” Collins said, “we’re going to put forward a bill that, really, I don’t think is going to address the issues. We’re gonna have some say about that; wait for what we’re gonna be putting forward. I think we’re gonna find ways to understand it. We need to restore the American people’s trust in [FISA], and if that cannot be done, then people will not have confidence that our intelligence communities are doing what they need to be doing and being able to use this court properly.”

Attorney General Bill Barr goes before the House Judiciary Committee at the end of March. Rep. Collins wants to know, as we all do, why Andrew McCabe was not charged. He also wants to make sure that the Durham criminal investigation has all the resources it needs to go forward. There are questions for FBI director Christopher Wray as well. But Nadler and the Democrats will be too busy trying to trash Barr as someone just trying to protect the President to drill down on these important issues.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/barr-hearing-will-address-whether-john-durham-has-adequate-resources

My take-away: ELECTIONS MEAN THINGS. If Democrats hadn’t taken control of the House in 2018, we already would have been able to look into all of this. Instead of FISA reform, we got Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and the ginned-up impeachment. It’s so important that the House be taken out of their hands with the 2020 election.

As for the renewed “Russia” hysteria, the media will cooperate at every step with Democrats trying to spread it. Adam Schiff likely leaked information –- somebody did, and he’s the most likely suspect –- from a classified briefing to THE NEW YORK TIMES, who grabbed on to the old “Trump is an agent of Putin” idea” with no supporting evidence at all. Why would it surprise anyone that big-time leaker Schiff would leak classified information? Likewise, why would it surprise anyone that the Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese or anyone else might try to interfere with our elections, in 2016 or 2020 or any year, past, present or future? It would be weird if they DIDN’T. We know that Russia –- along with Ukraine and surely other foreign entities –- “meddled” in 2016 to create chaos (which we got), but keep this in mind: Foreigners may have “meddled,” but Democrats in our own government helped them when they “peddled”...the Steele dossier. And now they’re peddling the same garbage.

The media are ready partners in that effort, and this “Russia” story lingers and spreads like a political coronavirus. Here’s a piece from last December that seems even more significant now in light of what we know…

https://pjmedia.com/trending/reporters-lied-steele-dossier-carter-page-fisa-warrants/

Now here’s a new story on the latest “peddling,” and it should surprise no one who is leading the charge…

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/21/hillary-clinton-peddles-russia-collusion-2-0-labels-trump-putins-puppet/

Who was Philip Haney and why did he die?

February 24, 2020

Mike Huckabee

Who was Philip Haney and why did he die?

I can offer some information regarding the first part of that question but none, at least yet, on the last part. “Brilliant, dedicated, devout” are some of the words being used by his stunned friends to describe Philip Haney, a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security who, according to one online tribute, “was characterized by tireless, intrepid, and in certain quarters unwelcome research and analysis about...Islam’s totalitarian code known as sharia and the supremacists who seek to impose it on all of us.”

Haney co-authored a book with Art Moore detailing the challenges of his work during the Obama administration called “SEE SOMETHING, SAY NOTHING: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad.” His job was to identify individuals and organizations with terrorist links, and he made it clear he saw people promoting sharia law within this country as America’s “enemy within.” He was self-taught in Arabic and had spent many years studying the Koran and other sacred and judicial texts.

"We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for his life and innumerable contributions to the cause of freedom,” the tribute continues, “many of which will never be publicly acknowledged or otherwise made known to his countrymen and women whom he did so much to secure.”

This DHS “whistleblower” apparently did not receive whistleblower protection when he exposed some intricate ties inside the Obama administration to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups they called their “outreach partners.” It might come as little surprise that for his efforts, Haney was reportedly subjected to various job actions, investigations and threats. Rep. Louis Gomert apparently helped him clear his name and retire with full benefits; Gomert’s glowing review of Haney’s book, in which he calls Haney “a modern-day hero” and “an honorable, truthful patriot,” can be found on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/See-Something-Say-Nothing-Governments/dp/1944229205

Haney’s wife Francesca died last year after a long struggle with her health, but Haney had gone on with his life and was planning to be married in about a month.

Early unofficial reports said that Haney had been found on the ground next to his vehicle, killed by one gunshot to the chest, near the intersection of two highways in Drytown, California, not far from his home in the San Francisco area. The story is developing, with few details so far and some conflicting reports, but at the time of this writing neither suicide nor foul play can be definitively ruled out. National security specialist Ilana Freedman, who had worked with Haney, said in an interview Sunday with The Gateway Pundit that she was very surprised and that people who knew him wouldn’t believe he committed suicide. “He was a very religious man who believed suicide was a sin," she said. "A fellow associate I know said Philip stated several times that if he was accused of suicide not to believe it. He said that to a lot of people.”

She said he was working on a project involving some very serious allegations that was going to be published later this year. I’m passing this information along just to let you know this is what his friends are saying. But, as I said, no one can get inside someone else’s mind, and I would not want to come to a conclusion at this point based on speculation. I’ll have more information to share when this story passes that stage.

In the meantime, check out the interview Haney gave in June of 2016 with Sean Hannity.

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/02/22/report-obama-administration-whistleblower-found-shot-to-death/

Bernie Sanders wins in Nevada

February 24, 2020

Mike Huckabee

Bernie Sanders notched up a decisive win in Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses. At this writing (early Monday morning), with 88% of precincts reporting (and why is it taking so long to count these votes? Do they let Bernie's economic advisers handle the math?), Bernie has 47.1% (13 delegates) with Joe Biden a distant second at 21% (2 delegates), followed by Buttigieg (13.7%, 1 delegate), Warren (9.6%, no delegates) and everyone else below 5% (Bloomberg didn’t participate.)

This sets up Bernie Sanders as the Democrats’ definite front runner. Biden is calling his second-place win a comeback, but he was leading in Nevada polls until recently. He’s hoping that South Carolina will bring him back into the lead, but it now seems harder than before, since Biden was counting on strong African-American support, and Nevada proved that Bernie is drawing a lot of that. Bernie also got the lion’s share of Latino support, which is surprising, since you would think Latinos would have friends or relatives from places like Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba who would warn them not to fall for the siren song of socialism.

In fact, they’re trying. In case you missed it, try this…

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/socialisms-victims-warn-us-bernie-sanders-your-enemy-dont-fall-it-people-are

Or this…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/02/15/donald-trump-venezuela-socialism-bernie-sanders-ilhan-omar-column/2861461002/

If Sanders can keep his momentum going through Super Tuesday, it will be hard for anyone else to overtake him, since the Dems have no winner-take-all states. So even if Sander loses a state, he’ll still likely add to his delegate total (as with “doing away with the Electoral College,” the Democrats are always changing the rules to give themselves an advantage in the last election without thinking ahead to what it might do to them in the next election. Here’s a story from back in 2018, warning them that they were setting themselves up for a fiasco in 2020, but did they listen?...)

https://prospect.org/power/democrats-just-set-fiasco/

So now, Democratic Party leaders are panicking and their press agents in the “news” media are in meltdown mode over the possibility that the Party’s Presidential nominee won’t even be a Democrat but instead a ranting Socialist with fiscally ruinous policies, and a severely misplaced admiration of such communist Utopias as the USSR and Cuba.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/liberal-tears-flow-msnbc-bernie-win/

Lest you think I’m slandering him, “60 Minutes” ran an interview with Bernie just last night, in which he praised Castro’s murderous, oppressive dictatorship, saying this, which echoes the praise of Mussolini, that at least he "made the trains run on time"...

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but it’s unfair to simply say everything’s bad. When Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-fidel-castro-cuba-socialist-defense

On Twitter, Charles C.W. Cooke noted that “came into office” is a “euphemism for the ages,” while Cory Morgan writes, “Literacy is always a good thing in a totalitarian dictatorship. You want to be able to read those 50-year-old books donated to the prison library as you do your 15-year stint for being critical of the state.”

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/02/23/not-the-onion-bernie-sanders-praises-the-castro-regime-in-new-60-minutes-interview/

As for Bernie’s attempts to deflect his genuine admiration of communist dictators by pointing out that Trump has said nice things about Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, I’d like to point out that that’s just a negotiating tactic when he was trying to get them to sign a deal. It was summed up well by Will Rogers, who said that “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”

Personally, I have to congratulate Bernie. He’s dangerously wrong about absolutely everything, but he campaigned hard, he fought for the votes, and he won fair and square, which must be a real novelty for him in a Democratic Primary.

But that said, as any American should be, I’m also appalled that an open socialist would ever come within a thousand miles of a major party Presidential nomination. Some people think this is great for Republicans because Trump would beat him so badly, it would harm Democrats all down the ticket. But as much as I want to see the House flipped, I’d like to see it done because Americans realize that Republican ideas work better, not because one of the two major parties committed suicide, or because vast numbers of Americans have been so misled and miseducated that they would actually vote away their birthright for socialism’s poisonous, empty promises of “free stuff.”

I have long said that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, and the country is healthier when we have a strong two-party system with open debate. If we lose that, it will be because the Democratic Party leadership flushed away their own legitimacy. If they’re panicked by Bernie’s success, what did they expect? They created it.

First, their attempts to rig the last primary for Hillary insured that Bernie would start 2020 with a strong organization fueled by fired-up supporters who felt that the Establishment had ripped them off and who were dead set on insuring that it didn’t happen again (this is part of the parallel I made recently between Bernie and Trump.)

And in a larger sense, the Democrats spent decades taking over the schools so they could spoonfeed socialism and blaming-America-for-all-the-world’s-ills to generations of kids. Now, they’re surprised that their party is being taken over by young radicals who hate America and don’t know how horrible socialism is? They’re like Dr. Frankenstein being surprised that the monster he created turned on him. Unfortunately, now the monster is threatening the entire village.

Let us hope Democratic primary voters come to their senses. If not, then we can look forward to the starkest choice in Presidential election history, a choice that really will be “the most important election of our lifetimes,” since it could determine whether America remains America or not.

President Trump pushes back on Obama

February 21, 2020

Mike Huckabee

The annual Economic Report of the President was released Thursday, a massive 435-page compilation of government economic statistics. Here’s the entire thing in PDF form, if you’d like a little weekend light reading:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2020-Economic-Report-of-the-President-WHCEA.pdf

If you’d prefer a bottom-line summary, try this: This economy is hotter than Satan’s steam bath. And no, former President Obama, you did not build that.

Obama and many Democrats are trying to claim that Trump merely inherited a booming Obama economy, which makes me concerned that they might be suffering short term memory loss. The Obama Administration ended just three years ago. Most of us remember it quite well. Remember when economists used to be surprised by monthly jobs reports because they were LESS than predicted rather than MORE than predicted? That was the Obama years in a nutshell. Hope, but no change.

The White House is going all-out to crush that narrative, and using the numbers in the new report as a sledge hammer...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/trump-bump-real/

They quote a number of stats to argue that there has clearly been a major upswing from the end of the Obama years, when many economists were warning we were overdue for a recession (the previous one officially ended in June 2009, but many Americans hardly noticed for years; and when they complained about stagnant pay, anemic job creation and low growth, they were told it was the “new normal,” manufacturing jobs weren’t coming back, and to get used to it.) Here are five facts from the new report that show the Trump economy is outpacing Obama’s far beyond what the “experts” predicted:

“Real GDP is 1.4 percent—or $260 billion—higher than projected…Real wage and salary compensation per household is roughly $2,300 higher than projected…Total non-farm payroll employment is 5 million higher than projected…The unemployment rate is 1.4 percentage points below projections…The labor force participation rate is 1.5 percentage points above projections.” That last figure means many people who gave up looking for a job under Obama are now back at work, which also helps reduce the need for government assistance such as food stamps.

It also notes that there were “turnarounds or improvements in the pre-election trends for homeownership, prime-age labor force participation, manufacturing employment, labor productivity, and net wealth for the bottom half of American households.” That's right, despite what you keep hearing from Bizarro World (i.e., the Democratic debates), this economy is working for the poor and middle class.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/the-trump-economy-benefits-historically-disadvantaged-americans/

Again, in short: the report confirms that areas that were trending downward or incrementally improving under Obama all took off like a rocket after Trump took office. There are a lot of charts and graphs in the report, but if you want to summarize them all, imagine a chart showing the acceleration of a powerful speed boat with its motor going full throttle. Trump’s Inauguration would mark the point at which someone cut the rope tying the boat to the dock.

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