Mike Huckabee

For years, I’ve warned my readers not to put much stock in polls, and especially not polls taken months or even years in advance of elections. Of course, that never stops the media from ignoring actual news to obsess over them. Congressional polls can be misleading because national opinion may not carry much sway in a heavily partisan (gerrymandered) district. And they don’t take into account That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (vote fraud.)

All that said, it’s understandable why Congressional Democrats in swing states and districts would be sweating like a Canadian in Haiti over the latest polls on President Biden. If the midterm is the typical referendum on how the President is doing, then a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll shows that Democrats in the battleground state of Iowa may be facing a battle that makes like Custer’s odds at Little Big Horn look like a good bet.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-e2-80-99s-approval-ratings-plunge-in-important-heartland-battleground-poll/ar-AAOFizC

It’s true that Iowa has been trending Republican with Trump winning by 8 points in 2016. But Biden’s approval among Iowans has plunged 12 points since June to a paltry 31% (62% disapprove.) His disapproval among Republicans is overwhelming, but he’s also down at 29% among Independents. On key issues, approval of Biden’s handling of the coronavirus has cratered by 17 points to 36%, and only 22% approve of his handling of the Afghanistan pullout. Frankly, I’m amazed it’s that high. Those must be people who wanted out of Afghanistan in the worst way and at all costs, and that’s precisely how Biden did it.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/16/poll-donald-trump-leads-joe-biden-in-hypothetical-2024-matchup/

Meanwhile, a new national McLaughlin & Associates survey suggests that many Biden voters are suffering from a terminal case of buyers’ remorse. It found that if Trump were running against Biden today, Trump would win by 50-47%. In retrospect, “mean tweets” are starting to look like a pretty minor complaint. 52% of respondents agreed with this statement:

“I used to dislike Trump’s aggressive, confrontational style, but now that I see how weak Biden was in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan, I’m thinking maybe Trump wasn’t so bad.”

By 56 to 40%, they agreed that it “takes a tough man to be President,” and after seeing Biden’s weakness, they’re starting to appreciate Trump’s toughness and think we need more of that now.

It gets worse for the Democrats: 58% agree that Biden surrendered Afghanistan to the same Taliban that aided the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11; and 60% agree that under Trump, inflation, illegal immigration, gas prices and crime were all lower. Admittedly, those statements are less opinion based than a test of people’s memories.

Of course, all media stories about Biden’s abysmal polling have to end by reminding us that he could always turn this around. Except all of this is a result of his deliberate policies and decisions that he adamantly stands by. I also suspect these are the results of those policies, such as open borders, that the Democrats actually want, and they don’t care if Americans hate them. So if the first step to solving a problem is recognizing that you have a problem, I don’t see Biden doing anything in the immediate future but making matters worse until his approval rating is almost as low as that of Congress.

Mike Huckabee

It’s not just the leftist racist brainwashing and the crushing COVID rules that are driving Americans to take their kids out of public schools. While many schools do a good job, some aren’t even worthy of the name “school.” Or maybe I should spell that “Skool.”

In Baltimore, during the 2020-2021 school year, 41% of public school students averaged less than a 1.0 GPA. At one school, a student with a 0.13 GPA was ranked near the top half of his class. This despite Baltimore spending $18,000 per student, 40% higher than the national average. Also worth mentioning: Baltimore is run solidly by Democrats and hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1967.

https://www.westernjournal.com/public-schools-broken-student-got-0-13-gpa-yet-graduated-near-top-half-class/

And then there’s Maspeth High School, a public school in Queens, New York, where a special investigation turned up so much shocking corruption that one city council member said it was run more like a crime ring than a school. Among the many accusations: fake classes, counting students as present even if they didn’t show up, passing kids with no credits, and handing out diplomas that weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. The principal is quoted as saying about one uneducated student who was graduated anyway that he can “have fun working at Taco Bell.”

https://nypost.com/2021/09/18/maspeth-hs-diplomas-not-worth-the-paper-theyre-printed-on/

It sounds as if there are a lot of people in our current education system who should be working at Taco Bell, and I don’t mean the students. I think the idea of public schools is great, but somehow, we’ve allowed it to go off track. Too often these days, the public school system is being used for anti-American indoctrination, a jobs program for incompetent teachers, and political staff and slush funds for Democrat politicians. It desperately needs reforming, to put the focus back where it belongs: on giving our children a real educational foundation for life.

Until we can overcome the entrenched resistance and turn our schools back into schools again, I predict that home-schooling will continue to grow in popularity.

Kenneth Allard

Well maybe but no one in authority ever seems to have asked Bob Woodward about that or to question the ethics of transforming national secrets into highly profitable book sales. Looking over his 50-year track record, Washington insiders know that it pays to stay on Woodward’s good side. If you give him the juicy gossip and inside-the-Beltway psycho-babble he craves, you can be assured of favorable treatment, either in his books or maybe in the pages of the Washington Post (possibly one and the same). An essential part of the gamesmanship includes the pre-publication leaking of lurid headlines. Specifically:

• Shortly before the 2020 election, GEN Milley called his Chinese counter-part to re-assure him that the US would not attack China. “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley reportedly said.
• Similar reassurances were repeated shortly after the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill; “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.” (Lolita C. Baldor, AP, “Milley: Calls were perfectly within scope of the job,” Sept. 17)
• Also according to the AP, “Milley believed the president suffered a mental decline after the November election, agreeing with a view shared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a phone call they had on Jan. 8, according to officials. Milley also asked senior officers to swear an “oath” that Milley had to be involved if Trump gave an order to launch nuclear weapons, according to the book.” (Mary C. Jalonick, AP, “Jan 6 Committee seeking records on Milley’s China calls,” Sep 17)

As you would expect, outraged Republicans called for General Milley to be fired while Democrats from President Biden to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed continued confidence in his judgment.  Since Milley and Austin will testify before the House Armed Services Committee on September 28, the controversy will likely simmer for at least another week: Exactly as Bob Woodward and his media colleagues would have anticipated. Not only is this kind of publicity essential in fueling sales, but it also helps to move the Afghanistan and Southern Border fiascos off the front pages. 

As it happens, my Harvard dissertation and first book was a history of the American command and control system. Shortly thereafter, I had the privilege of working for Congressman Bill Nichols as Congress reformed that system in 1986, including the powers exercised by every subsequent JCS Chairman, including General Milley. If he was indeed free-lancing with his Chinese counter-part, those particulars will certainly become known in our immediate future.

But in that last AP story refenced above, there is a question most observers have missed. Did General Milley actually require senior officers to swear an oath promising to short-circuit the nuclear command and control exercised by President Trump? And if so, what was his authority for making such an extraordinary (and possibly illegal) demand? You see, in their sweeping 1986 reforms, Congress firmly chose to place the JCS Chairman outside the chain of command extending from the National Command Authorities (i.e. the President and SECDEF) directly to the Commanders of our combatant forces in the field.  The principle: Civilians make the decision to go to war while commanders on the ground employ forces and direct missions. The JCS Chairman is expected to give military advice while administering our global command and control systems.

But he is only a Washington staffer, like so many others. That is a distinction General Milley should know well: Bob Woodward not so much!

 LEAVE KEN A COMMENT BELOW, WE KNOW HE WILL APPRECIATE IT!

NOTE: Colonel Allard is the author of Command, Control and the Common Defense, winner of the 1991 National Security Book Award. After leaving active duty, he became an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News.

Mike Huckabee

I think it’s safe to assume that you didn’t watch the Emmy Awards last night (yes, that was actually on last night.) That’s not just a statement about conservatives; I think the only people who watch the Emmys anymore are the nominees. You didn’t miss much, but there was one thing of note: it provided the final punchline to a long stretch of escalating elitist liberal mask hypocrisy.

The same leftist politicians and celebrities who love to berate the masses for not wearing three masks whenever they step outside their bedrooms have given us a number of high profile examples of their “Rules for thee but not for me” philosophy. One biggie was Obama's birthday bash. Last week, the mayor of San Francisco and a co-founder of BLM were among the leftist elites caught defying the city’s mask mandate at a jazz club (where the staff, of course, had to wear masks)…

https://reason.com/2021/09/17/london-breed-san-francisco-mask-covid-hypocrisy/

There were also the notorious photos of the ultra-swank Met Gala in New York, where AOC wore her designer “Tax The Rich” gown but like all the other swells, did not wear a mask (the staff, of course, had to wear masks.) And then last night at the Emmy Awards, hundreds of celebrities gathered close together without masks (the staff, of course, had to wear masks.)

Seth Rogan even remarked on the hypocritical flouting of the rules, noting that it had been described as an outdoor event, but there were way too many people in a hermetically-sealed tent.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2021/09/19/liberal-elites-gather-for-emmys-in-la-where-apparently-covid-doesnt-exist-n2596147

I know hypocrisy is nothing new. These are the same liberal celebrities and the same events where they used to preach to normal Americans about how sexist and unwoke we were, while protecting powerful celebrities who were later revealed to be serial rapists and child molesters. Now, they lecture us about not wearing masks while not wearing masks.

But kudos to everyone who pointed out that in the background, the wait staff and security people are always wearing masks. I guess COVID only attacks hourly wage workers, not celebrities. The same way it knew to spread only at Trump rallies and never at BLM protests.

Mike Huckabee

At first glance, the indictment of a single participant in Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s bogus “Crossfire Hurricane” might not seem like a big deal. In fact, many of you cynics out there, sensing that little more will come of this, have already written me to express dismay, predicting this one person, Perkins Coie attorney and partner Michael Sussmann, will take the fall for all the scammers who collaborated to create what is likely the biggest political hoax of all time. But, believe me, even though this story is currently overshadowed in the news cycle by multiple Biden-caused disasters –- the border catastrophe, the Afghanistan debacle, the vaccine hysteria, to name just three –- it is picking up steam as we find out more.

For example, we know that some of the players in the Russia Hoax happen to be members of President Biden’s current group of White House insiders. One of particular note is Biden foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan.

FOX NEWS’ “Special Report” had a segment on this Monday night, with Mike Emanuel reporting that the Sussmann indictment “might only be scratching the surface.” He said, “One expert [Jonathan Turley, in an opinion piece for THE HILL] says this indictment exposes a type of Nixonian dirty tricks operation run by, or at least billed to, the 2016 Clinton campaign.” The goal was to spread stories in the media and at the FBI that would trigger an investigation of Trump’s Russia connections. The stories were not true, and they knew they were not true.

This is so crooked, it’s almost beyond belief. It really does make the Watergate scandal look like a mere warm-up. Here is Turley’s MUST-READ piece, the most damning account yet.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/572861-clinton-lawyers-indictment-reveals-bag-of-tricks

On October 31, 2016, Hillary retweeted this whopper from Jake Sullivan: “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” That bank was Alfa Bank, which later responded to this and similar lies by suing Christopher Steele for libel over what he’d said about them in his now-discredited “dossier.” Fortunately for us, that lawsuit brought Steele out of the woodwork and motivated him to testify in his own defense, revealing much about “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Speaking of Jake Sullivan, Turley said on FOX NEWS, “It’s unnerving that he’s now in charge of looking at intelligence reports and telling President Biden what seems to be good intelligence. This was the ultimate of conspiracy theories, I mean, this was a real tinfoil-hat type of conspiracy theory.”

Sussmann is the Clinton attorney who spread the Alfa Bank story to the FBI, telling them he was there as a concerned private citizen doing his duty (oh, brother), NOT representing anyone else’s legal interests. Perkins Coie billing records show differently, so if that’s what he said to the FBI, it was indeed a lie. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty, and in a court of law he will and should be presumed innocent, but we are not in court and certainly won’t be selected for his jury, so forgive us for failing to find any extenuating circumstances in his case.

As Emanuel reported, “The top Republican on House Judiciary [Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan] says, “This indictment is a sign Durham is getting to the root of the matter.” The Alfa Bank story, Jordan made clear, was one of “the” lies in the very beginning “that launched this whole crazy investigation that we know was all based on just political operatives making things up.”

Emanuel ends his report by implying the Biden “Justice” Department might choose not to make Durham’s final report public. Legally, he gets to make that decision, no matter how unethical it might be. Knowing how Attorney General Merrick Garland operates, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to deep-six the report, or else redact the heck out of it. Either action will not be acceptable.

J. D. Gordon, the Pentagon spokesperson under George W. Bush, has written a piece for the DAILY CALLER that summarizes well what Durham has established so far and clarifies some of the connections between actors in this drama.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/09/20/gordon-durham-indictment-in-russiagate-leads-to-jake-sullivan/

For example, Gordon reminds us that Sussmann is the attorney who represented the DNC when it claimed to have been hacked by Russia. Recall that they never turned over their servers to the FBI, and there was never any evidence that Russia did it, even though that’s a story the media like to maintain. We’re thinking Sussmann is a man with a lot of secrets pertaining to this.

As for Jake Sullivan, Gordon tells us he admitted during congressional testimony in 2017 that he had met with producers for CNN, FOX NEWS, ABC, CBS and NBC about his “suspicions,” which, as Gordon puts it, “were later exposed as conspiracy theories without evidence.” There is no doubt, these people were on a mission to spread lies about Trump. Sullivan was candidate Hillary’s senior policy adviser; now he advises Biden on foreign policy. (I wouldn’t admit that in public if I were him. Sorry; I digress.) In other words, the same man whom we know was busy spreading lies on Hillary’s behalf is now giving press conferences on Biden’s behalf.

Gordon also prods our memories about James Baker, the FBI general counsel who himself was under investigation for leaking stories to Michael Isikoff and David Corn, “Russiagate’s first two journalist instigators.”

And he dips a toe in the issue of accountability as well, not just for Sussmann but for a list of others who are alluded to in Durham’s indictment.

There’s something else of interest about Baker that we rediscovered in BALL OF COLLUSION, by Andrew McCarthy: Baker happens to have been the one who signed off on FISA warrants issued for “Crossfire Hurricane” to spy on Trump’s campaign associates.

BALL OF COLLUSION, written in 2019, has an account of Sussmann's actions on September 19, 2016, the day he brought the Alfa Bank story to Baker at the FBI, that puts it into context well. It’s in Chapter 15, “FISA Warrants: Targeting Trump, Not Page,” under the subhead “Final FISA Warrant Preparations.” We recommend this book highly if you’d like to be well-versed in what we call THE GREATEST POLITICAL HOAX OF ALL TIME.

I do believe that by the time Durham is finished, it will be revealed as just that.

Larry Gatlin

PROLOGUE

On a cold January day in 1842, a half-starved soldier – slumping across the neck of a dying horse - appeared at the gates of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. The horse and rider had survived a 10 day, 90-mile “retreat” over and through the Spin Ghar Range that sprawls between Kabul through Jalalabad to the Khyber Pass. Behind them lay the frozen, mangled bodies of General Sir William Elphinstone and more than 4,500 soldiers of The British and East India Expeditionary Force. The General had been promised a safe withdrawal to India by Muhammad Akbar Khan, the leader of the Afghan tribesmen who had revolted against British rule; but after evacuating Kabul, the British force was attacked by Khan’s tribesman army at Gandamak, where the British Force made a valiant but futile last stand. When Dr. William Brydon, the lone survivor of that first Battle of Kabul was asked where the rest of the army was, he simply answered, “I am the army.”  In 1879, Dr. Brydon and his horse were immortalized on canvas by Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler. Her painting, “Remnants of an Army,” ranks with Picasso’s “Guernica,” Goya’s “The Third of May,” Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” William Bass’ “The Battle of Bosworth Field,” Paul Phillipoteaux’s “The Battle of Gettysburg” and God knows too many more paintings depicting the horrors of war.

CHAPTER ONE

On a hot August day in 2021, I was reminded of Lady Butler’s painting as I watched another “remnant of an army,” General Chris Donahue, retreat from this most recent Battle of Kabul, a retreat which I’m guessing was against the General’s will and better military judgment. General Donahue, Commander of the vaunted 82nd Airborne, was “captured on film” by a night vision camera as he solemnly trudged up the gangway of a C-17 to leave Afghanistan and GOD only knows how many American citizens behind.

Over the last “fortnight” as the Brits would say, I have searched my heart, soul and mind, trying to get my brain wrapped around the events of the last two weeks. President Biden’s shameful, cowardly, militarily indefensible, politically-motivated decision to surrender the most powerful military force on the planet to a rabble of 7th century Neanderthals - murderers, terrorists, and rapists - the Taliban. I confess that I am so damned mad at the “Surrenderor-in-Chief that any clear-eyed assessment of the situation on my part is difficult if not impossible. What I really want to say cannot be printed “in these pages” and if it could be printed, would probably prompt a visit to my house by “employees” of one or more security agencies of the United States government. At the very least, I would be cancelled from Facebook and Twitter (I don’t “do” either one, BTW.)

CHAPTER TWO

In order to try to accomplish that probably impossible task, I decided to try to get some historical perspective regarding wars - the victories, defeats, surrenders and retreats - the cowards and the heroes from the past. I went back and re-read some of the classical writers on warfare: Herodotus, Thucydides, Gibbon and more recent writers, Stephen Crane, Eric Maria Remarque, and finally my contemporary literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, because I remembered what he had said when asked how he started a new novel, “I just sit down at my typewriter and bleed.” So this morning over coffee, I re-read for the umpteenth time, parts of Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the chance that it might help me understand this latest chapter (THE BIDEN BLUNDER) of what Captain Arthur Conolly and Rudyard Kipling long ago dubbed “The Great Game,” the fight for Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Since I don’t own a typewriter, and since my iPad is a cold, black piece of metal and composite poly something or other and has no soul, I sat down at my writing table, the surface of which are my two priceless 1798 Imperial Editions of Charles Knightly’s “The Plays of William Shakespeare;” took my Palomino Blackwing 602 Pencil in hand; and let it “bleed” onto a piece of unlined white paper.

It bled:

1)      I am not a warrior. 

2)      I have never REALLY been shot at. (Once in Somalia...a few rounds fired over my head...different story for another time)

3)      I have never shot at anything that didn’t have 4 legs or 2 wings.

4)      I have never been in that “hell” that General Sheridan called war.

5)      I’ve never seen another human being blown apart in front of my eyes.

6)      I’ve never heard the dogs of war howling all around me, or felt the earth shake from exploding ordinance on a killing field where life seemed to be so cheap and so costly at the same time, so how can I possibly write anything that matters?

The answer is, maybe I can’t; but this morning I watched and listened as a “30-something preppy-looking buttoned-down Ivy League-looking” robot was trotted out by the Pentagon to try to convince me and my fellow Americans that we need not worry about the $90,000,000,000 worth of state-of-the-art military equipment that was left behind in this latest retreat from Afghanistan and that it poses no threat to us. I respectfully offer that those who believe that are either heartlessly indifferent, woefully naive, ignorant of history, just plain stupid or all of the above; and I will state emphatically that there is a danger looming in those remote mountains that has been, for almost 300 years, and still is one of the most strategically important places in the world - the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan and our “friends and “allies” to whom we have given almost $80,000,000 since 1948. And our “friends” have nukes…a lot of nukes…and they have friends called the Taliban...and the Taliban has poppy fields…a lot of poppy fields…which means money...a lot of money…which means weapons...a lot of weapons...which means dead bodies...a lot of dead bodies...because the Khyber Pass is still right there where it has been since the beginning of time - at the crossroads between England, through Europe, through the Straits of Bosporus to Central Asia, India, Arabia and Russia to Africa, intersecting the Silk Road from China to Africa and the Mediterranean. And whoever controls it, to a large extent, controls half of the world.

[SEE: Tom Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears,” wherein the bad guys obtain fissile material from an unexplored Israeli nuke and make a “ dirty bomb” that they explode at The Super Bowl in D.C.] The scariest thing of all is that Joe Biden and “all the usual suspects,” his lemmings/handlers/sycophants, are still in charge of keeping America safe and protecting America’s interests, including the above-mentioned Khyber Pass....and…

THEY JUST DONT GET IT...HELP US!! So Clueless Joe Biden surrendered...again, GOD HELP US!!

Dr. Brydon and his fellow British soldiers were fighting to keep the Khyber Pass open because it was the gateway for trade, for “goods and services” back and forth between England and India, the Jewel of The British Empire. The passing of “goods and services” is no longer the reason to secure “THE KHYBER,” unless by “goods and services” you mean nukes or fissile material, and I’m afraid that there will be nothing “good” passing through The Khyber any time soon.

EPILOGUE

George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I would offer that Clueless Joe can’t remember what he had for breakfast, and he is repeating the same old mistakes.

And finally, Plato wrote that “Argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are some one cannot instruct.” Clueless Joe has proven that being knowledgeable is not one of his strong suits, and that he cannot be instructed unless by “instructed” you mean, “I was instructed to call on Kelly O’Donnell,” etc. etc.”

I would offer that there are some whom one cannot even shame, which is, in fact, a shame.

Charlie Wilson said, “Three things happened. They were glorious. They changed the world. Then we f’d up the end game.”

I would offer that because we “f’d up” the end game back in ‘88, we had to go back to Afghanistan, and that’s what precipitated this latest tragic episode - Clueless Joe Biden’s disastrous surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

GOD HELP US...Dr. William Brydon must be rolling over in his grave.

Mike Huckabee

Are the media barricades against admitting the efficacy of natural immunity from COVID finally starting to crumble? There are some positive indications, like the growing coverage of the recent large-scale Israeli study, and now this shocking twist: the “fact-checking” site Politifact actually admitted that a politician’s statement that people who have recovered from COVID-19 have “very strong immunity” to the virus is “Mostly true.”

And what’s even more shocking: it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis whom they admitted was right!

PJ Media has the full story, but it’s behind a paywall.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/09/16/politifact-abruptly-breaks-with-the-preferred-covid-19-narrative-on-recovered-immunity-n1479353

If you’re not a subscriber, here’s why they said it was only “mostly true.” Politifact says the Israeli study did find that natural immunity gives longer-lasting and stronger protection than the Pfizer vaccine. However, “the same study said natural immunity plus a single vaccine dose gave the best protection.” But, fact-checking the “fact-checkers,” PJ Media’s Stacey Lennon adds the “missing context” that the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated recovered patients was so small, it was ruled “statistically insignificant.”

Still, as far as earth-shattering news goes, Politifact admitting that Gov. DeSantis was correct is right up there with “Man Bites Dog, and Gives It COVID.”

Mike Huckabee

Isn’t it great to have competent, adult leadership in the White House that will make other nations respect us again? Yet for some reason, all our allies are furious with us. And in a stunning move on Friday, our oldest ally, France (which helped the Colonies win the Revolutionary War) recalled its ambassador from Washington, DC. French leaders are furious at the Biden White House for blocking them out of a national security pact with the UK and Australia and agreeing to provide nuclear submarines to Australia (France also recalled its ambassador to Australia.) It will cost France billions because Australia canceled a contract to buy subs from France. This follows hot on the heels of Biden pulling disastrously out of Afghanistan without informing our allies such as France.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nation-recalls-us-ambassador-biden-carelessly-humiliates-americas-oldest-ally/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian railed, “This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do. I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.”

I should point out that Le Drain, a former Socialist Party member, probably felt he had to include that kneejerk slap at Trump. But guess how many times France recalled its ambassador while Trump was President.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, the head of US Central Command Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. announced that the drone strike on alleged ISIS-K terrorists in Kabul on August 29th didn’t kill any terrorists. Instead, it mistakenly killed an aid worker who was loading water canisters into his car and nine of his family members, including seven children.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-official-announces-no-isis-k-members-killed-in-august-kabul-drone-which-led-to-civilian-casualties

The attack that was previously called a “righteous strike” by Gen. Mark Milley is now described as a “tragic mistake” for which McKenzie offered “my sincere apology.”

It has to be said that this never would have happened if the pullout hadn’t been so botched and left us with an uncontrollable, chaotic situation, no forces or reliable intelligence on the ground, and an opening for terrorists to launch attacks. But I don’t want to be accused of trying to score political points off of a terrible tragedy, so I’ll just point out that this was so bad, even some of Biden’s most loyal liberal media handmaidens couldn’t stop themselves from expressing outrage.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-admin-botched-drone-strike-reactions

I’ll let you know how they eventually manage to find a way to blame Trump for this.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

Sad news for fans of classic film musicals: One of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Jane Powell, passed away Thursday of natural causes at 92. Powell had a very long career in movies, stage and TV, but is most famous for the classic MGM musicals “Royal Wedding” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Some of her other notable films include “Hit The Deck,” “Small Town Girl” and “A Date With Judy.”

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/jane-powell-dead-dies-royal-wedding-1235066697/

Powell became a star at a time when operatic sopranos such as Jeannette McDonald, Deanna Durbin and Kathryn Grayson could actually become movie stars. She never learned to read music, but despite being only 5-foot-1, she had a powerful coloratura voice. I assume she must’ve had to stand on a pretty tall box to do love scenes with Howard Keel. I had the honor of meeting him once. I’m 6-1, and I had to look up at his face as I shook his hand.

Younger readers might know Powell for her many TV appearances, including a recurring role as Alan Thicke’s mother on “Growing Pains.” Powell’s career spanned 67 years, from her first movie, “Song of the Open Road,” in 1944 to her final guest-hosting stint on Turner Classic Movies in 2011. She even performed in concert with the hot lounge group Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl in 2010.

Fun Fact: even though she was so famous as the sunny “girl next door” that her autobiography was called “The Girl Next Door and How She Grew,” she was married five times. I guess she lived next door to a lot of people at one time or another.

If you’d like to check out Jane Powell at her best, stream “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” a fantastic musical with a wonderfully politically-incorrect plot. Or pick up a copy of “Royal Wedding” (the movie in which Fred Astaire dances up the wall and across the ceiling.) It’s out of copyright, so you can find very cheap DVDs. Just make sure you get a good transfer since some of them look like you’re watching it at the drive-in through a dirty windshield

Mike Huckabee

The security fence has been put back up around the Capitol Building in advance of a rally Saturday in support of January 6th arrestees who are not accused of committing violence, yet some are being held indefinitely without charges and allegedly under appalling conditions such as solitary confinement. The rally is called “Justice for J6.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/thats-a-setup-capitol-fence-comes-back-up-trump-weighs-in-on-rally

The organizer said they’ve already held two events, at the prison and the DOJ, and there have been no incidents. He urged anyone who might commit violence to stay away.

However, many Republicans, including President Trump, say they’re staying away from the rally and urge others to as well. Trump told the Federalist that it’s “a set-up”: “If people don’t show up they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a lack of spirit.’ And if people do show up they’ll be harassed.”

There’s also the potential that leftist agitators from groups like Antifa will show up dressed as Trump supporters and start violence. Not that that would EVER happen, of course. But if they wanted to, they probably could, since most of them who were ever arrested for rioting or attacking federal buildings were immediately released.

I think it’s also worth noting that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi insist that it’s crazy to think a border wall would provide any security, but the minute they feel even slightly threatened, what happens? They put up a security wall.

Mike Huckabee

While we’re on the subject of comparing Joe Biden to LBJ, some media outlets are trying to do that favorably by comparing the $3.5 trillion spending boondoggle bill he’s attempting to force through Congress to FDR’s “New Deal” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Anyone who studied history before it was subverted by leftist politics should feel his blood run cold at the very thought. Those two massive expansions of government are almost entirely responsible for the bloated, Constitution-shredding government, corrosive welfare state and back-breaking national debt that we’re now enjoying.

Like Biden, those Presidents claimed that their massive spending and government programs were going to result in countless jobs, as if jobs were created by government, not the private sector when government gets out of the way and off its back.

At The Hill Newspaper, Amity Shlaes has a MUST-READ article about FDR’s New Deal, its similarities to the plan by Biden and today's Democrats, and why in most ways, it failed to work and made things worse for years.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/552354-biden-as-the-new-fdr-its-the-same-old-bad-deal-for-jobs

In a statement that could easily apply to today’s Democratic socialist schemes, the chief economist at Chase Bank, Benjamin Anderson, said of the New Deal that after failing by playing God, the government chose not to retire but simply “to play God more vigorously.”

Finally, a hat tip to Instapundit for reminding everyone of this 2015 study by UCLA economists that found that FDR’s New Deal actually prolonged the Depression for seven years past the point when it should’ve ended. Coincidentally, the Obama-Biden Administration managed to drag out the 2009 recession for seven years past the point when it should’ve ended. And now, Biden’s trying to do it again with the pandemic shutdown recession.

https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

These people just keep repeating history, maybe because they keep flunking it.

Mike Huckabee

Sen. Ted Cruz went to Del Rio, Texas, to highlight the massive surge of illegal immigration. Fox News reported that the number of people trying to cross the border doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 in one day. Cruz said when he arrived, there were an estimated 10,503 illegal immigrants gathered under the Del Rio International Bridge.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hannity-questions-faa-grounded-drones-southern-border-cover-up-bidens-failures

But don’t worry, the Biden Administration is doing something about this. Fox News reported that “for special security reasons,” the FAA declared a two-week temporary flight restriction over the bridge, so Fox can’t fly its drone cameras overhead and show viewers pictures of the massive crowd of illegal entrants.

And that should stop the coverage, since liberal outlets certainly aren't covering the border crisis.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/media-coverage-of-border-mayhem-drops-94-under-biden

Problem solved! Well, Biden’s problem. Not America’s.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff writer

Several days ago, I related a story about my personal experience with someone who exhibited blind, irrational fear of a non-vaccinated person (me), even though the non-vaccinated person had already had COVID-19 and as a result possessed natural immunity that studies increasingly suggest surpasses the protection provided by vaccines.

The reason for telling this story in the first place was to show that we really are living in a time of mass hysteria --- a time when facts don’t much matter because everyone believes he HAS the facts and “the science is settled” –- and that in many cases our fears are being exploited to achieve desired behavior. How does the government get everyone to do what it wants them to do? By scaring them half to death.

We received numerous reader comments, a few of which we highlighted. One we did not include but that I’d like to address now came from a reader named Chris who identifies himself/herself as a “pediatric technician.” Chris is about to become famous as “Exhibit A” in my case that logic flies right out the door when fear climbs in the window. Here’s the letter, with slight editing...

………………………

You and the Christian Broadcasting Network are totally immoral and irresponsible. You all claim to be "Pro-Life" and you are all miserable hypocrites in the eyes of the world. You don't follow scripture or read your own revised Bible.

Kids are dying daily by the thousands in America and the Pediatric wards are packed with kids who have COVID. YOU ARE KID - KILLERS AND THAT IS HOW YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED. Infants are dying. Toddlers are dying. Small children are dying. You are not pro-life. You are anti-science and anti-fact. You are ignorant and stupid! You can't fix stupid. Too much inbreeding in your own family.

COVID is preventable by a simple vaccine but because you want money from the Trump base, you keep quiet while many children are being killed by their parents and their miserable stupidity. Pure GREED. This is not your finest moment. Maybe your grandchildren will be waiting on a ventilator soon....possible, because of the stupidity that runs in your family.

By remaining quiet you are executing children......you are kid - murderers and kid - killers. No different than serial killers and rapists but you all claim to speak the "truth" and follow Jesus. What a joke.

You are weak and cowardly and you will be judged on this by the big guy in the sky. BURN IN HELL.

You can take that banjo and Bible of yours and shove it up your a--.

…………………………...

Okay, where to start? Do you sense the terror that has transported this person to Crazy Town? First of all, in his (her?) rage, Chris directed this abuse at “all” of us “miserable hypocrites,” including Gov. Huckabee, when I’m the person who wrote the piece. I guess if anyone is going to be judged by “the big guy in the sky” and “burn in hell,” it is me. Though I’m tempted to say this person is not guilty by reason of insanity, I think he or she or xi owes the Gov. an apology. The individual who wrote this also owes the “Christian Broadcasting Network” --- does he mean Trinity Broadcasting Network? --- an apology. Gov. Huckabee, CBN/TBN, the pro-life movement, Christian believers in general, and the version of the Bible the Gov. prefers to read (I have no idea) have absolutely nothing to do with the commentary on vaccines and virus-fear, which I wrote, would write again, and proudly put my name on.

So, Chris, let’s talk about what has inflamed you so and how much truth there is to it. As you are an irrational person, this analysis will not change your mind at all --- probably just anger you more, if that’s possible --- but there are other, sane readers who might benefit from the discussion. Let’s look at a few things you claimed in your letter:

1. “Children are dying daily by the thousands in America and the pediatric wards are packed with children who have COVID.” This is wildly incorrect. Can you even imagine what it would be like in our country if this were actually happening to our children? The total number of children who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. since the pandemic began is just over 400. Of course, that’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s not thousands of deaths a day. A Johns Hopkins research team looked at records from 48,000 cases in young people under 18 from April to August of 2020. At that time, they found zero deaths that didn’t involve a serious comorbidity such as leukemia. More here…

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-side-effects-hospitalization-kids-11626706868

So, who fed you that lie about thousands of children dying every day? Someone has an interest in making you believe this. And if you’re really a “pediatric technician,” it stands to reason that you would know it’s false. You certainly haven’t witnessed it on your job, because it isn’t happening.

2. “You are not pro-life. You are anti-science and anti-fact.” Chris, you are stating opinions that are not based in any fact at all. To say Gov. Huckabee is not pro-life is like saying Dr. Kevorkian was not pro-death. And nothing makes a real scientist cringe like the phrase “follow the science.” That is a talking point; you do not understand how science works. Instead of discussing the research, you stoop to crass personal insults.

3. “COVID is preventable by a simple vaccine but because you want money from the Trump base, you keep quiet while many children are being killed...” Chris, the vaccine can provide a lot of protection and lessen the severity of symptoms but it does not PREVENT infection. Gov. Huckabee has said numerous times that he personally has been vaccinated, and he advises everyone to seek their doctor's advice. He would never tell someone not to get vaccinated, and neither would I.

Again, though every death from this virus is tragic, it’s not true that “many children are being killed.” This is true though vaccines weren’t even approved for children until very recently, and then only for kids 12 and older.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/covid-19-vaccines-for-kids/art-20513332

Ah, and we see from your reference to “the Trump base” that it really does come down to politics. Chris, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump or his base. You are off-base. But I would say the current administration has worked hard to make you believe it does, so that you'll associate your fear with Trump, and they have succeeded.

4. “Maybe your grandchildren will be waiting on a ventilator soon.” Chris, I can tell from this remark that you are one of those compassionate liberals I’ve heard so much about.

Finally, what was that banjo remark? The Gov. plays bass. Facts matter!

Chris, your letter is so out-there that at first I thought it might even be an attempt at satire. Satire is very challenging to do well –- and even to recognize in this age when real stories can be as crazy as made-up ones. If you were just impersonating a crazy person, you succeeded. Be well.

Mike Huckabee

The report that special prosecutor John Durham was, at long last, going to indict someone in the Russiagate investigation was confirmed Thursday when a grand jury indicted attorney Michael Sussman of the powerful Democratic-linked law firm Perkins Coie. The charge is providing false information to the FBI to smear Donald Trump and then lying by denying that he represented the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The New York Times now admits that Sussman was the source of their fake story about the Trump Organization having a secret web server to communicate privately with Alfa Bank, a Russian bank connected to Vladimir Putin. That story was trumpeted by Hillary Clinton, and naturally, picked up and flogged like crazy by other liberal news outlets that demanded an FBI investigation.

The Conservative Treehouse has a good untangling of this web of lies…

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/16/clinton-lawyer-michael-sussmann-indicted-for-lying-to-fbi-while-spreading-the-false-alfa-bank-trump-russia-collusion-conspiracy-on-behalf-of-clinton-campaign/

For an even more succinct recap, read Glenn Greenwald’s blunt Twitter thread:

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/09/16/russiagate-in-a-nutshell-glenn-greenwald-sums-up-the-latest-on-john-durhams-investigation-pulls-hillary-clintons-old-tweet-about-trumps-covert-server/

Greenwald calls this “Russiagate in a nutshell”:

“A DNC-linked lawyer, partners with Clinton lawyer Marc Elias, fabricated a Trump/Russia leak, fed it to DNC operatives masquerading as journalists, had Hillary trumpet it, then lied to (the) FBI about who he worked for.” He adds, “Along with the FBI lawyer who previously pled guilty for lying to the FISA court to spy on ex-Trump campaign official Carter Page, it's clear that much of the criminality of Russiagate was not from any Trump/Russia collusion but by those who fabricated this conspiracy theory."

I’ll have more about this story as it develops, but for now, let me just make one observation: for four years, a duly-elected President was relentlessly slandered as a Russian agent by the media until millions of Americans believed it, undermining trust in their own government and in the electoral process. His agenda was hamstrung; innocent people who worked for him were hounded, harassed and bankrupted; and qualified people who might have made great contributions to America were frightened away from public service for fear of being targeted by the FBI.

And all over a story that was a complete lie. A fabrication designed purely for the purposes of ensuring that Hillary Clinton achieved her lifelong dream that she had a divine right to be President, whether the voters agreed or not.

How much expense, damage, division, turmoil, and distrust in government has been inflicted on this nation by one woman’s insatiable ambition and the utter lack of scruples of those around her in achieving her goal? And who do the Democrats blame for “lowering the tone of political discourse” and undermining faith in the electoral system? Why, Trump, of course.

Mike Huckabee

The Pentagon seemed to confirm Bob Woodward’s claim that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley attempted to usurp President Trump’s powers by calling his Chinese counterpart and assuring him he would give China advance warning if Trump launched an attack.

https://www.westernjournal.com/pentagon-appears-confirm-bombshell-gen-milley-report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I’m not going to quote their statement verbatim (you can read it at the link), since it went on at length in the kind of gaseous government-speak that’s meant to make outrageous acts sound not merely defensible and reasonable but downright laudable. Indeed, a lot of liberal news outlets (those that aren’t ignoring this story entirely) are trying to present it that way and hail Milley as a heroic figure for protecting America from the “unhinged” duly-elected Commander-in-Chief that they hated. Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki called Milley a “patriot.” So chalk up “insurrection” and “undermining our democracy” as yet another area in which the Democrats’ sacred principles are highly situational.

Even Biden himself reportedly said he has “great confidence” in Milley.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-great-confidence-in-milley-china-calls

Really? So Joe Biden wants to keep a guy around him who has a history of trying to overthrow Presidents whom he thinks are showing mental decline? REALLY?!

If Milley thought it was his duty to step in and take control away from a cognitively-challenged President who was about to commit a dangerous foreign policy blunder, then why didn’t he do that two months ago?

Finally, the line of the day is about this story, and it’s courtesy of former Rep. Trey Gowdy, who said you know who would have appreciated an advance call to warn him of an attack? The Afghan aid worker who was blown up by a drone while loading water cans into his car.

Mike Huckabee

Wednesday, four female Olympic gymnasts – Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman – came out from behind official anonymity to testify to the Senate about the horrific sexual abuse they suffered from former USA Gymnastics team physician Larry Nassar (now serving a sentence of up to 360 years in prison - yes, you read that correctly.) Much of that was already known, but what also was revealed was the shocking way in which the FBI, then under our self-appointed national conscience James Comey, turned a blind eye to their accusations against Nassar and attempted to cover it all up so the public would never learn about it.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-kruiser/2021/09/15/lock-em-up-same-fbi-that-chased-russia-collusion-hoax-for-years-covered-up-sexual-abuse-of-usa-gymnasts-n1479070

As Stephen Kruiser reminds us at the link, this was the same FBI leadership that busied itself with trying to manufacture accusations of Russian collusion against innocent political opponents while at the same time refusing to investigate “a serial predator who was attacking the most vulnerable among us.” He quite rightly calls for us to “start casting a wide net for people within the Bureau who need to be locked up.”

There’s a lot more at the link, including a video of Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s statement (sample quote: “Every single person in authority who turned a blind eye to these young athletes’ allegations is complicit in Nassar’s crime, and each one of them should be considered a predator.”) There’s also video of Ms Maroney’s testimony, which I warn you is disturbing and graphic.

Here’s more on this story from Matt Vespa at Townhall.com.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/09/15/its-not-hard-to-see-why-the-fbi-didnt-care-about-larry-nassar-raping-scores-of-young-women-n2595948

Mike Huckabee

In breaking news Wednesday night, THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that Special Counsel John Durham has informed the Department of Justice that he will seek a grand jury indictment against Michael Sussmann of the law firm Perkins Coie for making a false statement to the FBI.

John Durham, remember him? Even President Trump has wondered from time to time what happened to him. Apparently, he’s just had his head down working, ever since he was assigned to the case by Bill Barr...in 2019. His status was raised to Special Counsel in December of 2020.

The NYT is subscription-only, but Rebecca Downs at TOWNHALL has details.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/09/15/durham-indictment-n2595973?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky1

No discussion of the “Russia Russia Russia!” hoax would complete without bringing in the huge role played by Perkins Coie, the Clinton-affiliated law firm that in 2016 paid opposition research company Fusion GPS to hire former MI-6 spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt and provide a report on then-candidate Donald Trump. That scheme produced the infamous “dossier” that contained outrageously fake stories like the one we all know involving Trump and some prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. We’ve covered the story of the phony “dossier” from the start and had always hoped the story of how it came to be would be completely exposed. Now, perhaps this is the first shoe dropping.

Incidentally, Perkins Coie was involved in shady activities in 2020 as well. For the year preceding the Trump/Biden race, it was Marc Elias, a partner at Perkins Coie, who coordinated the state-by-state effort to change election laws and procedures in ways that made it much easier to cheat almost undetectably. And never mind that these changes were supposed to be made by the state legislators, not judges and bureaucrats. All those millions of ballots being mailed out to every name on out-of-date voter rolls and stuffed into unmanned dropboxes? For destroying all trust in our election system, we have Marc Elias of Perkins Coie largely to thank.

Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor, is a partner at the firm as well. As reported by the NYT, he represented the Democratic National Committee “on issues related to Russia’s 2016 hacking of its servers.” As you can see, I’m quoting the TIMES there, as we do not actually have evidence that this “hacking” of the DNC servers was carried out by Russia. It’s part of their narrative that the mainstream media take as a given and keep repeating. We don’t.

But the fact that Sussmann was representing the DNC on this matter should tell you he is the Mother Lode of information on what really happened with that and where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. Not that we can pry it all out of him. There’s this little inconvenience called “attorney-client privilege” that limits what investigators can ask.

Anyway, the Special Counsel has been investigating Sussmann’s activities conveying “certain suspicions” about Trump and Russia –- related to what we have come to know as “the Russia Hoax” –- to James Baker at the FBI in September of 2016. Specifically, investigators want to know who his client was at the time. Investigators have been looking into whether he was secretly working for Hillary’s campaign. He denies that.

Sussmann’s reason for meeting with Baker was to further a long-since-debunked story about covert communication through suspicious “pings” between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Russian financial institution linked to the Kremlin. That story has been so thoroughly discredited that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t even mention it in his final report. But there was Sussmann, apparently trying to hand the FBI a fake story. I would add that this was the James Comey FBI, which was eager to run with all the anti-Trump stories it could find.

Baker, now out of the FBI, reportedly told investigators he recalled Sussmann saying he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. Likewise, according to Sussmann’s lawyers, Sussmann simply wanted to give the FBI a “heads-up” because he thought the NEW YORK TIMES was about to publish a story about the Alfa Bank allegations. Wasn’t that nice of him? (The NYT didn’t mention Alfa Bank at all until six weeks later.)

One problem, though: in a 2017 deposition before Congress, Sussmann testified that he had sought the meeting on behalf of an unnamed client, a cybersecurity expert whom he said had helped analyze the Alfa Bank data.

Second, even bigger problem: Durham has obtained billing records from Perkins Coie that show some of Sussmann’s time working on the Alfa Bank matter was billed to...(drum roll, please)...the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign.

By the way, just a month ago, Marc Elias left Perkins Coie to form a separate law firm, Elias Law Group LLP. The press release says this new spinoff firm “will represent candidates, party committees, political committees, nonprofit organizations, entities and voters. Elias Law Group will be mission-driven, focusing on electing Democrats, supporting voting rights, and helping progressives make change.” More details here.

https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/perkins-coie-and-its-political-law-group-announce-the-formation-of-the-independent-firm-elias-law-group-llp.html

This new separation “will provide Elias Law Group with the independence to broaden its advocacy and types of matters on which it works, including by engaging more directly in the political and electoral process.”

As if Elias and Perkins Coie haven’t been engaged enough in that already. Elias will have offices in both DC and Seattle, where they’ll be “focused on helping Democrats win, citizens vote, and progressives make change.” And anyone who thought Perkins Coie was some little boutique law firm should think again: Perkins Coie is a huge international operation with 1,200 lawyers in offices “across the United States and Asia.” Watch out –- they’ve made this move as part of their gearing-up for the 2022 elections and are looking ahead to 2024, and judging from their past behavior, I don’t think they’ll waste much time debating the ethics of what they’re doing.

For now, though, Michael Sussmann is a major player who finally appears to have been caught in Durham’s net. Colton Salaz at JUST THE NEWS also has a write-up, and we look forward to investigative reporter John Solomon’s take as well, as he’s been all over this story for years.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/special-counsel-seeks-indictment-against-lawyer-center-steel-dossier

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” his attorneys told the NYT. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.”

Are these really Sussmann’s attorneys or a comedy writing team? Because that line about the DOJ is pretty darn funny.

Mike Huckabee

Is the biggest story in the nation Tuesday a bombshell revelation of treasonous behavior by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? Or just one of the biggest examples yet of fake news? As the Magic 8-Ball tells us, “Unclear, ask again later.” Here’s the story:

https://www.westernjournal.com/book-milley-took-top-secret-action-cut-trump-off-nuclear-weapons/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

According to an upcoming book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was so concerned that then-President Trump, who was daring to call out China over its coronavirus cover-up, would launch a military attack on China that he took action to subvert Trump’s command of the military.

The book claims that Milley met with senior military officers to tell them that Trump could not launch nuclear weapons unless Milley was involved to okay it…that he called his counterpart in the Chinese military to assure him that he would warn China in advance if the US was going to attack…and that he met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 8th (who, of course, agreed with him that Trump was mentally “unhinged” – the term leftists use for anyone who disagrees with their disastrous policies) to discuss ways to block him from using his Presidential powers.

The Pentagon claims this was just standard operating procedure, nothing to see here. And liberal media outlets are trying to paint Milley as a hero protecting our democracy from…democracy, apparently. Incidentally, there’s no need for Milley’s “heroic” usurpation of power because there’s already a constitutional way to deal with a President who is mentally incompetent for real. It’s called the 25th Amendment. Democrats might want to bone up on it.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/09/14/the-gaslighting-begins-after-mark-milleys-treasonous-actions-are-revealed-n443122

Conservative commentators, however, say that if true, this is a stunning incident of out-and-out treason: an unelected official staging a clandestine coup to usurp the powers of the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief and conspiring with our enemies against the US President. It’s the most shocking example yet (and we’ve seen a mountain of them recently) of entrenched deep state elites completely disregarding the elected representatives of the people and acting as if they have a divine right to rule.

Here’s a hint as to how bad this is: even Alexander Vindman, who thought he should decide policy instead of Trump, says that if true, Milley “usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military” and he “must resign.” He called this a “dangerous precedent” that we can’t simply walk away from.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/14/hilarious-mark-milley-has-even-lost-alexander-vindman-now-n443064

All this hinges, of course, on two key words: “If true.” Bob Woodward has a track record of making incendiary claims for which he offers no supporting evidence. Trump agrees that if it’s true, it would be treason, but he also doubts the story. He called Woodward a writer of fiction, but he still called on Milley to resign because he believes Milley made up the story to deflect attention from this Administration’s catastrophe in Afghanistan. Trump also made the excellent point that it’s ridiculous to think he would attack China, which never even occurred to him, noting that he’s the only President in decades who didn’t start a new war.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-doubts-report-of-milley-calling-chinese-general-but-says-treason-if-true

So where do we go from here? Obviously, we need a full investigation to determine whether this incredibly serious charge against the Joint Chiefs Chairman is credible. If he met with senior officers and Pelosi, then there should be plenty of witnesses and/or co-conspirators to call.

I suggest that Congress immediately convene a 9-11 style commission to investigate this allegation of what could be the most serious attempt at insurrection and the worst assault on our democracy since the Civil War! Since Nancy Pelosi has been accused of being a secret conspirator with Milley to overthrow the duly-elected President, she should probably be jailed (perhaps in solitary confinement) until such time as authorities decide whether to charge her with anything or not.

I know this sounds a tad harsh, but hey: Speaker Pelosi did establish the precedent.

Mike Huckabee

In Tuesday’s election, Californians went for the “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” option, and Gov. Gavin Newsom easily escaped being replaced by about 67-33%. It was disappointing but hardly unexpected, as the recall was always a longshot. That’s why we have the saying, “You can’t fix…California.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/the-nos-have-it-gov-gavin-newsom-survives-in-california-recall-election

Newsom claimed that what the election was about was, "We said yes to science, yes to vaccines, yes to ending this pandemic." Funny, just one day before, he was claiming that the election was about protecting “racial justice” by not replacing the wealthy white guy with a black man who grew up poor.

Also, his policies of shutting down churches while allowing BLM protests, closing neighborhood restaurants while he dined in fancy French restaurants and let Hollywood productions set up big catering stations, and forcing other people’s kids to wear masks at summer camp while sending his son to one that didn’t require masking don’t exactly scream, “I care about science.”

Here’s a good analysis of the race and its likely aftermath from Joe Cunningham at Redstate. He expects Democrats to do what they always do: interpret this win as a mandate to inflict more disastrous, freedom-crushing policies that will eventually hurt them in the upcoming general election.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/09/15/gavin-newsoms-win-will-end-up-dragging-democrats-down-n443242

I expect that the immediate result will be that more people will decide California is beyond redemption and move out. But wherever you end up, please don’t forget what you came there to escape and vote for more Gavin Newsoms to ruin your new home. It’s bad enough that Texas has to deal with Austin now. They don’t need “Beto” O’Rourke actually getting elected to anything important.

Mike Huckabee

You can always tell when the Democrats are either solidly in power or think they’re about to be kicked out of power – or, as is currently the case, both. That’s when they push for massive taxing and spending. The Democrats’ reputation for taxing and spending is so well-established, Will Rogers was telling jokes about it in the 1920s, although if he’d known it would end up in a $28 trillion debt, it might have been harder to laugh about it.

When the Dems are out of power, they do everything possible to convince voters that they’ve learned the error of their ways. They’re now the new pro-business, fiscally-responsible Democrats. And the voters, prodded by a leftwing media who convince them that whatever Republicans have the economy humming and the border secure are really Nazis, believe the Dems and reelect them. And then they go on a spree like a spoiled teenager with mom’s platinum card.

Right now, the Dems are in power and sense the foot of the voters itching to kick them out of office in 2022, so they’re not only pushing two spending bills that total nearly $5 trillion, but on Monday, the House Ways and Means Committee unveiled a massive tax hike proposal to pay for it. This is their definition of fiscal responsibility now: massive inflationary spending responsibly offset by economy-killing taxes.

Here’s an analysis from Fox Business News, explaining how these proposals will once again kill American jobs and drive US businesses overseas.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-dems-proposed-tax-plan-could-increase-offshore-avoidance-shift-burden-onto-small-businesses/ar-AAOqBfs

It’s really astounding the way voters have to keep learning the same basic economic lessons the hard way, over and over again. But at least they learn it, even if they forget after a few years. Democrat politicians haven’t learned anything since the ‘20s. Well, at least I know I’ll always be able to recycle Will Rogers’ jokes about them.

Mike Huckabee

Today is the recall election on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, but voting has already been underway for a while. And apparently, so has “voting.” While I’d love to report that Californians have come to their senses, some conservatives are concerned that the effort will fail, not because voters want to keep Newsom (“Thank you, sir, may I have another?!”) but because the heavily-entrenched Democrats have made election cheating so easy.

Wayne Allen Root is one of those people. He describes the many ways in which California Dems have made vote fraud simpler than ordering a pizza online.

https://townhall.com/columnists/wayneallynroot/2021/09/12/why-larry-elder-will-win-the-california-recall-election--but-he-will-lose-a-rigged-election-just-like-trump-n2595719

To back him up, here are two reports from KTLA-TV, the first about multiple people in a Republican district in the San Fernando Valley showing up to vote and finding that someone had already cast ballots in their names.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/san-fernando-valley-residents-have-trouble-casting-recall-ballots/

They were allowed to cast provisional ballots, but I’m curious as to whether someone else had actually voted in their names, and if so, what happens to those ballots? Can they be identified and disqualified? If not, and the fraudulent vote is also counted and cancels out the real provisional vote, then fraud DISENFRANCHISED a legitimate voter. I thought the Dems were all about preventing voters from being disenfranchised.

The other story is about police in Torrance arresting a known felon who was found passed out in his car in a 7-11 parking lot. The car contained a loaded firearm, meth and other drugs, thousands of pieces of mail, multiple driver’s licenses and credit cards in various people’s names, and approximately 300 recall ballots. This story said that police “reminded community members to report any suspicious election activity.” I think this would qualify, even by California standards.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/300-recall-ballots-drugs-multiple-drivers-licenses-found-in-vehicle-of-passed-out-felon-torrance-police/amp/

However, some conservative organizations are bracing to fight any attempts at fraud and asking people to report suspicious activity. You can find that information here:

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2021/09/12/ca-recall-so-it-begins-woodland-hills-voters-report-trouble-casting-ballots-n441999

I don’t think it’s impossible for the recall effort to succeed, but it will take all fed-up California voters turning out and making their voices heard. Please don’t sit on the couch and then complain on Wednesday that not enough people voted.

Meanwhile, the California campaigning is still going strong and taking some unusual twists. Actress Rose McGowan already risked her Hollywood career by daring to go public with her sexual assault allegations against movie mogul and Democrat mega-backer Harvey Weinstein. She once again proved that she refuses to bow to industry groupthink by appearing with GOP gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder over the weekend.

McGowan said she is no longer a Democrat and she rejects people who want us to micro-label each other by race and views. She said she may disagree with Elder on some policies, but he’s “the better candidate and the better man.” Her message to the state, the voters and the media was “Be human first, vote for humanity."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rose-mcgowan-calls-out-blm-during-event-with-larry-elder

McGowan also cautioned those who attack Elder as not really being black because he disagrees with Black Lives Matter to "understand who it's coming from and that he might just know more than you, living in a different skin."

Of course, McGowan might also have another reason for not supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom or the Democrats in general: she claimed recently that his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom called her when she was about to go public about Weinstein’s serial sex crimes and told her that Clinton fixer and Weinstein’s then-attorney David Boies wanted to know what it would take to “make her happy.” Fortunately, she refused to keep quiet and she got what she wanted anyway: Weinstein is currently in prison.

In other Elder campaign news, two Venice neighborhood council board members who were showing Elder around a homeless camp have filed hate crime charges with the LAPD against leftist protesters who showed up and threw things and yelled sexist and racist slurs. One woman wearing a gorilla mask threw an egg that narrowly missed Elder.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/venice-neighborhood-councilors-file-hate-crime-complaint-against-larry-elders-attackers_3993026.html

Elder and other conservatives have pointed out that if that had been a conservative activist attacking a black Democrat, it would make 24/7 news about systemic racism and racist Republicans, but instead, there’s been barely a peep from local liberal media outlets that would rather fill space with ridiculous articles about Elder being a black white supremacist.

If you think that sounds insane, congratulations, you’re sane. But it’s just the latest leftist insanity on race. Check out these CNN talking heads pushing the idea that even after America becomes a majority-minority nation, it will still be plagued by white supremacy because of all the black and brown white supremacists. I kid you not.

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2021/09/13/cnn-sees-a-racist-future-full-of-nonwhite-white-supremacists-n442101

The racially-obsessed left has become like a Dave Chappelle sketch in real life. (Warning: Lots of “N-words” in this brutally satirical sketch that would never be allowed to air today.)

https://youtu.be/7HcQ87RFN5k

Finally, I’m going to wrap up this wrap-up of California recall stories with our Headline of the Day, from Fox News:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dont-let-california-become-texas-newsom-says-as-residents-businesses-flee

“Don’t Let California become Texas, Newsom says – as residents, businesses flee” (to Texas.)

Laura Ainsworth, Staff writer

Question: What’s the most sure-fire strategy to get people to behave the way you want them to?

Answer: Scare them half to death.

And that’s really how the Democrats roll in the 21st century, citing so-called threats ranging from climate change to right-wing “insurrection,” though the strategy of cultivating fear certainly isn’t new. As H. L. Mencken said in the last century, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

There seems to be some discrepancy as to whether Mencken said “all of them imaginary” or “most of them imaginary.” Given the current circumstances surrounding COVID-19, he would have been smarter to say “most.” This virus is certainly not imaginary; it’s all too real and can cause everything from mild, even unnoticeable symptoms to consignment to a ventilator and eventual death in an ICU. It seems almost everyone knows at least someone who has died of this disease, though most of those have been elderly or affected by underlying health problems such as obesity or diabetes. Some of us, including me, are grieving for friends and family and even beloved entertainers who have died. I don’t mean to make light of the impact of this virus.

But since the vaccines came along, the government has been working overtime to make sure everyone gets “the jab” (or, in most cases, two or more jabs). Radio ads produced by the CDC call “Delta” the “new, more dangerous variant,” essentially pointing to a new hobgoblin, even though we don’t have evidence that it’s more deadly, just more easily transmissible. (But, hey, if the Delta variant isn’t deadlier, the NEXT variant to come along surely will be.) The ads say vaccines offer us “our best chance to get back to normal." Right.

The President himself is doing everything he can –- ethical or not, constitutional or not –- to get everyone vaccinated. Yet the protection provided by vaccines is so sketchy that many vaccinated people are still going around in masks.

But stories about hospitals filling up with unvaccinated people in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” turned out to be fake news. As we reported a couple of weeks ago, there are 15 academic studies showing the superiority of natural immunity, including the latest out of Israel showing natural immunity to be far more effective than that produced by the vaccines. Details of that study are here.

https://fee.org/articles/harvard-epidemiologist-says-the-case-for-covid-vaccine-passports-was-just-demolished/

But it doesn’t matter to apostles of Dr. Fauci terrified of the threat posed by the unvaccinated, who must now be fired from their jobs and generally treated as lepers, no matter what the reason for their personal choice not to get jabbed.

Think I’m exaggerating the fear? I saw it firsthand in an incident over the weekend and realized the emotional power of government propaganda. Here’s what happened, with some of the conversation condensed but, I swear, including these exact words. It got intense...

On Saturday, I went to the home of someone who had graciously allowed me to use his striking interiors for a photo shoot. (He’s probably in his 50s, not obese, with no underlying health problems that I’m aware of.) I had met him a couple of times before, but he didn’t know my politics and certainly didn’t know I’m a news writer/researcher for a conservative commentator. I think our conversation would have gone even more disastrously if he had.

His first question when I walked in was, “How are you feeling?,” as in, “Have any covid symptoms?”

Me: “I’m feeling great. And don’t be concerned --- I’ve already have covid.”

Him: “Okay, but you’ve been vaccinated, right?”

Me: “No...I’ve been doing a lot of study on this and choose to rely on my natural immunity.”

Him: (moving across the room) “What??? You mean, you’re NOT VACCINATED???

Me: No, in fact, it’s looking as though natural immunity might be way better than the vaccines---

Him: (horrified) But you didn’t get vaccinated TOO??? I just ASSUMED someone like YOU would be VACCINATED!! Are you an ANTI-VAXXER???

Me: No, not at all. I traveled to India just a few years back and had to get some shots, and that was fine with me. But with covid, there are some studies---

Him: That’s just your OPINION!

Me: Well, opinion based on what I’ve been able to find out---

Him: It seems like most of the people who don’t want the vaccines are evangelical Christians!

Me: Actually, the groups with the greatest percentage of unvaccinated are Ph.D.’s and health care workers.

Him: I BELIEVE Dr. Fauci!! And I don’t think I can have an unvaccinated person in my house!

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This man was freaking out over the fact that I wasn’t vaccinated, even though I’d had the virus months ago and was perfectly fine. My photographer was already there to do the shoot and had been setting up. I’d spent hours getting ready for this and was on a deadline to get these pictures. And this homeowner was so fearful of the unvaxxed, he was about to kick us out of his house.

What he decided to do instead of banishing us was leave the house himself, with his wife, and they went out to a restaurant for dinner, where, presumably, there were people who hadn’t been vaccinated, taking off their masks to eat. They didn’t come home till after we had left. I never said fear was rational. Nothing about this makes sense.

This is really the first time I’ve personally witnessed such an irrational expression of fear. I’ve seen images on TV, of course: Democrats screaming at the sky when Trump got elected and leftist women donning “Handmaid’s Tale” garb out of genuine terror of what he was going to do to women’s rights. But of course, those women had nothing to fear but fear itself. Their fear was based on nothing. They had been brainwashed to be terrified of Trump.

So it is now with the campaign against the unvaccinated. They (we) are "those" people.

Whatever the reason for this one-size-fits-all insistence on everyone getting these vaccines --- I won’t speculate here, but it’s obviously not to “get back to normal” --- it is ruining some people’s lives. I’d like to leave you with this video made by an ethics professor at Ontario’s Huron University College, Dr. Julie Ponesse, just before she was fired after 20 years for not following their new COVID-19 vaccination mandate. In it, she explains that coercing someone (like her) into a medical procedure is...not ethical.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/vaccine-mandate-ethics-professor-video

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Showing the deep-seated love of “DEMOCRACY” for which the left has become famous lately, leftist agitators disrupted California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder’s public appearances Wednesday, shooting pellet guns at his security detail. And one “activist” (that’s the current leftst term for “thug”) in a gorilla mask rode by on a bicycle and tried to throw eggs at Elder, but missed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/larry-elder-says-his-security-details-was-hit-by-pellet-gun-while-campaigning

Ed Driscoll at Instapundit noted that this is now the Los Angeles Times headlined that story: “Larry Elder cuts short Venice homeless encampment tour after hostile reception.” Notice how it’s obviously meant to imply that Elder is unpopular, not that he was targeted by a handful of violent radicals.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/472670/

Now, try to imagine the L.A. Times headline if a conservative activist in a GORILLA (!!) mask had thrown eggs at a Democrat who was seeking to become the first black Governor of California. Think maybe the word “racist” would’ve been in that headline somewhere?

Conservative media seems to have noticed the glaring double standard and the deafening silence from “progressives”…

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/09/09/whether-its-racism-mental-illness-or-intentional-progressives-silence-on-the-larry-elder-attack-is-deafening-n440203

Mike Huckabee

The latest YouGov/Economist poll shows President Biden’s approval rating sinking so low, he’s almost reaching the approval levels of used car salesmen, cockroaches and Congress.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/09/08/the-most-brutal-poll-of-bidens-presidency-is-released-shows-reality-has-undoubtedly-set-in-n439877

Biden’s approval rating is down to 39%, a 6-point drop just from last week. It’s only that high because he still has 77% approval of Democrats (many of whom I believe are lying to the pollsters), 65% approval of blacks and 53% approval of women with degrees (I can only imagine what those degrees are in and where they came from.)

That’s offset by an approval rating of 42% among women in general, 36% among men, 41% of Hispanics, 43% of registered voters, 28% of white men with no degree (no surprise, since this Administration thinks working class white males are a bigger threat than radical Islamic terrorists), 35% of Independents and a whopping 9% of Republicans.

Even worse for a guy whose only real campaign issue was that he was the anti-Trump and would unite the country in bipartisan unity, when asked, “Do you believe Biden will be able to bring the country together?,” only 17% said yes.

I think that’s unfair. At the rate his approval numbers are cratering, I think it won’t be long before almost all of the country will be united in their opinion of him.

Mike Huckabee

Thursday, President Biden gave what many commentators are describing as the most disturbing, dictatorial speech ever given by an American President. I’m so angry about this speech that I’m glad I don’t have to describe it in detail, since the writer Bonchie at Redstate.com did it so well for me:

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/09/09/joe-biden-threatens-the-unvaccinated-and-announces-his-unconstitutional-vaccine-mandate-in-disturbing-dictatorial-speech-n440634

Stacey Lennox at PJ Media also has a good rundown…

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/09/09/breaking-joe-biden-unveils-authoritarian-plan-to-defeat-covid-19-blames-the-unvaccinated-n1477304

And Lincoln Brown has some pointed questions about it…

https://pjmedia.com/columns/lincolnbrown/2021/09/10/mr-president-a-few-questions-n1477380

The President who didn’t dare say “boo” to the Taliban attacked the “freedom and personal choice” of tens of millions of Americans who are hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID, darkly warning that his “patience is wearing thin” with them. The man who, as a candidate and as recently as six weeks ago, rejected vaccine mandates…

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/09/biden-proved-today-what-liars-they-are-with-vaccine-mandate-n440681

declared that he would impose a draconian mandate on both government and private sector employees, including every business with more than 100 workers, forcing them to force their workers to be vaccinated or be tested weekly. Considering businesses are already having trouble finding workers, what would it do to the economy if millions of workers simply refused to show up and comply? Particularly since that includes a large percentage of healthcare workers.

Biden also spat on the entire idea of federalism by warning that if any state Governors opposed him, he would use his powers to “get them out of the way.”

I know he’s been acting more and more like King Lear lately, but someone needs to tell him he’s not a king, and he doesn’t rule by Divine Right. He’s also not Tony Soprano. And of this writing, 14 Governors have already announced plans to sue the second he tries to impose this.

Bear in mind, I’m only talking about the parts that blatantly overstepped his powers, and not even the parts that defied logic, like saying, “We’re going to protect the vaccinated from unvaccinated co-workers” (if vaccines work, why would the vaccinated be threatened? It sounds as if he’s saying vaccination is useless while attacking anyone who thinks that.) Or claiming that GOP officials are actively working to undermine the fight against COVID and not encouraging people to get vaccinated. That’s not merely a lie, it’s a slanderous lie. The Governors he attacks most often, DeSantis in Florida and Abbott in Texas, are both vaccinated, both strongly encourage vaccination, and they’ve both done a far better job of distributing vaccines than just about any blue state.

I’m stunned by the openly authoritarian tone of this speech. For four years, the left railed that Trump was a dictator, he was “literally Hitler,” just for using his Constitutional authority to enact his agenda. And yet they’re cheering this insane power grab, with Biden angrily dictating to private businesses, state officials and individual citizens that they will do what he says and inject something into their bodies that they don’t want injected, or else.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/intense-mixed-reactions-biden-anger-at-the-unvaccinated

If Afghanistan didn’t convince Americans, this should: he needs to resign, NOW. I’m sure a lot of Republicans would agree, as both GOP Governors and Congress members are already declaring Biden’s threats and mandates to be blatantly unconstitutional, calling him the wannabe dictator that the left falsely accused Trump of being, and prepping to fight him in court and Congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-respond-to-vaccine-mandates-issued-by-biden-absolutely-unconstitutional

That rising spirit of resistance to government overreach may be the only silver lining to this toxic cloud. To be clear: I’ve been quite open that I’m vaccinated myself, and I think people should be vaccinated, but it’s not the government’s place to force it on anyone (the “My body, my choice” crowd thinks that only applies to abortion, which actually destroys someone else’s body.) And this is such an unprecedented abuse of power that there’s no way it will stand.

But Brandon Morse argues that it will serve the left’s political aims because when the Supreme Court inevitably throws it out, that will give Democrats the opening to fire up their crazy base by claiming the conservative court wants people to DIE and the only solution is to expand and pack the Court, and so we’re back to that end-run around the Constitution.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/09/09/bidens-unconstitutional-promise-to-force-vaccinations-on-private-companies-is-hollow-but-dont-get-comfortable-n440604

If Biden and his cohorts spent as much time and effort figuring out how to get around the Taliban as they do trying to get around the Constitution, all our people would be out of Afghanistan by now.

Mike Huckabee

We interrupt this newsletter, of necessity focused recently on the international threat created by Biden’s tragically inept pull-out from Afghanistan, to bring you some long-awaited 2020 election news.

It’s been ages since we’ve heard anything about the audit that’s been taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona. That’s the Phoenix area, one of the largest counties in the United States. (Keep in mind that Biden “won” the ENTIRE STATE of Arizona with only a 10,457-vote margin.) We’re still waiting for results of the official audit –- as we’ve reported, the auditors have run into snags in getting material they say they need to complete their work –- but canvassing efforts by a separate group have apparently been completed and what they reveal is stunning.

Of course, few news outlets will report this at all; we’ve gone to Joe Hoft at THE GATEWAY PUNDIT for his story. The headline from Wednesday says ‘ELECTION STEAL IS NOW CONFIRMED.” Let me make it clear, that’s their headline, not ours, but we are eager to take a look at what the results of this canvass tell us, and then we can all make up our own minds.

Again, this is not the official Maricopa County audit report, which is still going on and has no hard-and-fast deadline. It’s an independent effort conducted by Liz Harris and a group of volunteers, a “separate exercise” sponsored by the Arizona State Senate Republicans. That alone will give the Democrats the excuse they desperately need to dismiss this canvassing as partisan. But the methodology is transparent; volunteers went door to door, verifying the registration and voting information of thousands of voters, who make up a large statistical sample. And Democrats who scream “Partisanship!” need to understand something: this, I’m sure, is documented right down the line and can be verified for you, every bit of it. (You, on the other hand, still work tirelessly to avoid election transparency.) So read it and weep

Liz Harris tweeted this morning, “For all of those who knew the election was stolen, those who were ridiculed or labeled conspiracy theorists, you have been vindicated.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/breaking-huge-results-canvassing-arizona-released-election-steal-now-confirmed/

First, let’s look at “lost votes.” These are votes that were discarded and never counted even though people actually cast them. They were cast, primarily by mail, by American citizens living in Maricopa County, and yet there is no record of them at all. This canvass brought to light 173,104 lost votes.

Then, there are “ghost votes.” These are votes cast by someone other than the voter who was assigned that ballot. The example everyone knows is a vote cast for someone who is dead and should have been dropped off the voter rolls. Someone else had to cast that vote, but who? The number of ghost votes uncovered in this canvas was 96,389.

There were other irregularities as well, though not as many, including votes cast from addresses that turned out to be vacant lots and votes recorded from people who it turned out hadn’t actually voted. And when they went door to door to gather data on 2,897 mail-in voters, 98 of those people said they’d actually voted in person.

According to their Election Summary, “Two primary categories of ineligible ballots and election mishandling, encompassing hundreds of thousands of votes, render the 2020 General Election in Maricopa County UNCERTIFIABLE.”

The report talked as well about smaller, local elections that would have been impacted by this sort of inaccuracy. Ironically, those include the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (which oversees elections, haha), which, in District 1, was decided by a mere 403 votes. Their election for U.S. Senate was decided by 78,886 votes, still well within the margin here.

The Election Summary proposes a solution with which we wholeheartedly agree: BAN VOTE-BY-MAIL. “The U.S. Mail is not meant to be a secure transactional system,” they say. This is why we don’t send cash through the mail. How much is your vote worth to you? With that in mind, do you really want to send it through the mail, knowing all the things that can happen to it? They mention that “most first-world democracies, such as Germany, either ban Vote-by-Mail outright or place very heavy restrictions on its use.”

They also provide some historical perspective: “Until the late 1800s, all votes in all states were public information.” Our country went to secret ballot to stop a tremendous problem with voter fraud. (Before then, many people had been paid to vote a certain way, and it could be checked.) History is repeating itself now with mail-in balloting, “and again we have ridiculous and frivolous arguments being put forth against common-sense legislation to secure the rights of honest American citizens to vote and have their vote count.”

For more details on why and how this canvass was conducted, be sure and go to the link provided above and read “Canvass Overview.” All the issues they uncovered impacted an estimated 5.18 percent of mail-in votes, or about 88,215.

In a presidential election where statewide, the margin of “victory” was only a little over 10,000, it’s clear that reforms are necessary if we’re ever going to trust our system again. (In such a close race, with these discrepancies, I don’t think I need to tell you what the real outcome in Arizona likely was.) But, when Texas addresses the same issues with solid legislation, the bill is condemned by the left as racist and “anti-democracy.” It is nothing of the sort. (I would say that “anti-democracy” should apply to any policy that makes cheating easier or less detectable, because cheating causes real disenfranchisement.) Here's what is really in the new Texas law, just signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-election-law-what-is-in-it

This is all totally common sense, to make the voting process easier to monitor.

Of course, the new law will face legal challenges, but it should be looking pretty good when it gets to the Supreme Court. Let’s hope more states follow Texas’ lead and adopt election integrity legislation, not be bullied out of it.

Mike Huckabee

The Democrat Protection Industry (i.e., the media) has another explosive document to ignore aside from those obtained by the Intercept suggesting that Dr. Fauci lied to the Senate about funding gain-of-function virus research in China. Now, they also have to try to bury the original Trump plan for pulling out of Afghanistan. It lays out the conditions the Taliban was required to meet, and the sequence of events that were to take place. Needless to say, closing Bagram Air Base and removing our troops before we evacuated our people was NOT Trump’s plan. That was entirely Biden’s.

https://www.westernjournal.com/document-nobodys-heard-confirms-afghanistan-disaster-bidens-alone/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Speaking of the media as the Democrat Protection Industry, the Media Research Center notes that none of the big three network newscasts mentioned the bombshell documents revealing that Dr. Anthony Fauci apparently lied to the Senate about the NIH under his leadership funding gain-of-function research on viruses in China, and the possibility that experiments he funded resulted in COVID-19.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2021/09/07/nets-censor-evidence-fauci-lied-about-funding-wuhan-covid

ABC and CBS had a more important story: attacking Texas for passing an election integrity law. ABC covered Fauci, but only to repeat his COVID scaremongering against attending Labor Day events and his touting of a third COVID booster shot (or is a fourth by now? It is in Israel.)

Meanwhile, CNN actually interviewed Fauci and didn’t even bring up the new revelations, instead using the segment to attack Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for refusing to impose draconian COVID measures.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/09/07/this-is-cnn-dr-fauci-gets-a-complete-pass-following-bombshell-report-on-wuhan-research-n1476618

Moral: When you rely on these sources for your news, you get all the news that fits the left’s agenda.

In a related story, the news networks might not be serious about holding Dr. Fauci accountable for lying to the Senate, but Sen. Rand Paul is.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/09/08/rand-paul--fauci-n2595510

Mike Huckabee

Did you ever see the classic episode of “Friends” where Ross bought a couch that he roped his friends into helping carry up a stairwell? Even after it was hopelessly stuck in place, he kept frantically yelling, “Pivot! Pivot!! PIV-OT!!!”

Well, that’s pretty much the Biden White House strategy for pivoting away from his Afghanistan catastrophe and getting us all to forget about the Americans and Afghan allies he left behind at the mercy of the Taliban.

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2021/09/07/biden-hoping-to-turn-the-page-on-afghanistan-stranded-americans-unavailable-for-comment-n439248

As Mike Miller of Redstate.com reports at the link, Biden’s staffers are hoping to “turn the page” on this “unrelenting summer” (Yeah, all these disasters must be the summer’s fault! No wonder Biden thinks the weather is America’s #1 threat.) They want the media to direct Americans' attention away from Afghanistan, the border, and all of Biden’s other self-inflicted disasters and get us to focus on the shiny object of his “domestic agenda.” That is, the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill (only about 23% of which will go to actual infrastructure) and the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion “expansion of the social safety net,” or as we critics more accurately call it, their government-bloating, socialist spending orgy. (And Sen. Joe Manchin may have just scuttled that, or at least $2.5 trillion worth of it.)

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/08/manchin-destroys-dems-dreams-delivers-his-ultimatum-on-3-5-trillion-spending-bill-n439628

Biden will also use try to distract us with an all-out battle against the new Texas abortion law protecting babies with a fetal heartbeat. He wouldn’t stand up and fight the Taliban when they were slaughtering post-born humans, but he will bravely go to battle to ensure the slaughter of pre-born humans.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/09/06/biden-seems-more-determined-to-fight-texas-than-the-taliban-n1476297

In this, he’ll have the help of big tech companies like GoDaddy and others that are trying to punish Texas for protecting life.

https://freebeacon.com/policy/big-tech-companies-mobilize-to-disrupt-texas-abortion-law/

Will this Penn & Teller-level feat of misdirection work? So far, it’s not going too well, even in deep blue New Jersey.

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-bidens-trip-new-jersey-blows-face-protesters-special-greeting/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Nor is Biden reacting well to criticism. Or even coherently.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/08/biden-lies-his-head-off-and-attacks-americans-who-yelled-at-him-about-afghanistan-n439601

But as powerful and politically biased as the mass media are, it will undoubtedly work with some people, particularly those whose political prejudices make them predisposed toward wanting to be gaslighted. But I believe in Abe Lincoln's principle that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

I especially don’t believe that Americans can be distracted into forgetting the horrific scenes in Afghanistan, not when I fear more horror stories will continue to come pouring out; or that they will ever forget the shame of an American President leaving Americans behind enemy lines and running away while he took orders from a group of terrorists who gave a safe haven to the people who plotted 9/11.

I’m not a doctor, so I won’t make any guesses about the state of Joe Biden’s memory, but I can assure you that’s something that most Americans will never be able to forget, no matter how much they wish they could.

Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, we brought you the story of Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin, who went on FOX NEWS’ SPECIAL REPORT in an interview with Bret Baier to talk about the effort he was involved in to help Americans still trapped in Afghanistan. Trapped, stranded, held hostage, use whatever words you prefer.

If you missed the original interview, here it is. Check out some of the recent comments, too, some of which will renew your faith in the American spirit.

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

If you don’t know the story, people had started calling the congressman wanting help getting out, he said, or getting out their loved ones or people who had helped them in Afghanistan as interpreters, etc. There were 20 who needed evacuation, but after he made some phone calls, he found out they needed some government entity, such as the State Department, to sponsor their flight. That’s the only way a plane could get in. But no such entity, he said, would sponsor them.

But then he was told a member of Congress can sponsor a flight. For example, if the State Department wanted to stay out of it, knowing not to touch it, this would give them cover. (Remember that useful old phrase, “plausible deniability”?)

Rep. Mullin explained that he was asked to go along when the “Tier One” operators –- Special Forces people experienced in this sort of thing –- were repeatedly denied a flight in. They felt he, as a congressman, could be an asset. He had no military background himself, he said, and “wasn’t trying to be a cowboy.”

When they got to the airport, all they could do was circle, for an hour, and he thinks this was the doing of the State Department, “100 percent.” Five requests to land were denied. And during this time, they lost contact with one American citizen, her father and her two-year-old son, who had been slated for rescue along with her father and two-year-old son.

But now that you’re caught up, here’s something that’s been escaping attention in the American press but that looks to us to be potentially quite significant. During this interview, Rep. Mullin happened to mention, seemingly in passing, that he’d been told of a “very sensitive” upcoming visit on September 5 by both “Putin and the Chinese government.” Wait a minute --- China, Russia and the Taliban all getting together? What was that about?

We found no news reports specifically about a meeting on September 5, but several reports in the foreign press do describe an upcoming “celebration” for the Taliban’s new government. We found little in the American press on this, but according to a story in THE GATEWAY PUNDIT --- taking information that first appeared in AL-JAZEERA and Russia’s TASS NEWS –- the Taliban have just announced that they invited Turkey, China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and Qatar to participate in a ceremony announcing their new government in Afghanistan.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/taliban-invites-russia-china-pakistan-iran-turkey-qatar-ceremony-announcing-new-government-afghanistan/

Apparently a representative for the Taliban gave the story to AL-JAZEERA on Monday, bragging that the Taliban would create “a regime that will be accepted by the global community and the Afghan people.” I suppose if the alternative is to be beheaded, you'll accept it, all right.

According to plan, the big international party to ring in the new official interim Taliban government will reportedly take place on...(drum roll, please)...September 11. (When else?) And if that weren’t in-your-face enough, four new ministers in this new government happen to be former Gitmo detainees who were traded for captured U.S. service member Bowe Bergdahl. The whole list of terrorists --- I mean government ministers and other officials --- is listed here.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/07/four-gitmo-detainees-released-in-berghdahl-swap-are-now-taliban-ministers-for-afghan-government-interim-government-will-be-officially-introduced-on-sept-11th/

Their statement reads, “The Islamic Emirate [NOTE: I think that’s what we’re supposed to call Afghanistan now if we want our Americans back] will take serious and effective steps towards protecting human rights, the rights of minorities as well as the rights of underprivileged groups within the framework of the demands of the sacred religion of Islam.” Never mind that the “framework” nullifies the entire first part of that sentence.

Here’s a write-up of the new government “inauguration” in ONE INDIA.

https://www.oneindia.com/international/taliban-finalises-new-govt-formation-in-afghanistan-invites-china-pakistan-russia-3307758.html?story=1

(Incidentally, we learned something while perusing ONE INDIA. We’ve all been hearing a lot from the administration lately about how the Taliban is not the same as the “real” terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network, but don’t believe it. They’re all the same.)

https://www.oneindia.com/india/ties-of-blood-why-there-is-no-separating-the-taliban-al-qaeda-and-haqqani-network-3308576.html?ref_medium=Desktop&ref_source=OI-EN&ref_campaign=Auto-Deep-Links&story=2

But back to our main story. This big celebratory “do” isn’t the only international meeting going on concerning Afghanistan. Here’s the write-up from Japanese news service ANI on the upcoming G7 foreign ministers’ meeting to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan, particularly as pertaining to human rights, although we can see from the above statement that the Taliban have that covered. Over 20 nations are expected to take part, including Russia and China, though they are not members of the G7. The extent of America’s participation in this meeting isn’t clear, although Secretary of State Tony Blinken said he would be traveling to Germany to co-host with the German foreign minister. Other foreign ministers will be joining online.

https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/g7-foreign-ministers-meeting-on-afghanistan-expected-next-week20210905112540/

For what it’s worth, Russia is denying participation in the G7 meeting, according this report in REUTERS.

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-denies-it-has-discussed-participation-g7-meeting-ifax-2021-09-05/

As there’s so little media coverage, my research staff and I are just feeling our way here. Putting the puzzle pieces together to get an idea of what’s really going on as alliances are forged in that part of the world, it's easy to feel like the blind men trying to describe an elephant. What we get in the media is just one tiny part. And the American press is strangely quiet about all this –- they want to move on and talk about vaccines and climate change, just as Biden does –- and we certainly can’t trust the administration to tell us, as we know they’ve been lying.

In fact, in an update to the Rep. Mullin rescue story, we’ve now learned that the White House actually blocked private rescue flights out of Afghanistan that would have landed in third countries. According to FOX NEWS, “the State Department explicitly stated that charter flights, even those containing American citizens, would not be allowed to land at Defense Department (DOD) airbases.” And as for who will be allowed to depart, including Americans, the Taliban are calling the shots.

Mullin isn’t the only one who’s been finding out about this.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state-department-afghanistan-private-rescue-flights-leaked-email

Rep. Mullin returned for a must-see follow-up interview Tuesday evening on FOX NEWS PRIMETIME. He told host Rachel Campos-Duffy that embassies in that part of the world had been instructed by Washington DC not to assist his rescue party “in any way.” He said that the State Department’s assertion that the Taliban had been working with them to get people out is a lie.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6271373883001#sp=show-clips

He lays this all at the feet of President Biden, saying he never would have considered going over there if Biden hadn’t failed so spectacularly.

Right now, of course, there’s still one immediate concern, and it’s getting Americans evacuated. Six planes chartered by Glenn Beck’s charity, are still sitting on the tarmac in Mazar-i-Sharif. There are other planes as well, also grounded.

https://www.newsweek.com/taliban-holds-glenn-beck-groups-planes-least-100-americans-among-passengers-1626294

https://www.theblaze.com/news/glenn-beck-taliban-hostage-planes

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

We hear a lot of talk from politicians about values…but do we truly value work and the people who do it?

Companies should pay employees as generously as they can, because good workers have worth. This is why you should always be skeptical of any politician who claims to “care” about workers, but also wants to raise taxes, both on workers and businesses. When taxes are high, it’s a sign that the government disrespects the worker by believing that what it will do with their salary is better than what the person who earned it will do. When we see employees as having worth, we see their work as valuable. That’s the value of work. I believe YOU are valuable and therefore what you DO has value.

I think a lot of politicians don’t understand that a job is more than just a way to put bread on the table. From man’s beginnings as recorded in the book of Genesis, we were hard-wired for labor. God told us to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. It’s natural for us to want to prove our value by producing.

From the time we are children, we imitate our parents in their work. It’s part of our DNA to want to be grown up, and one sure way to feel grown up is to work. That’s why the loss of a job is far, far more than an economic setback. It’s de-humanizing to want to be productive and not be able. There is pride and dignity in sitting down to a meal that your work provided.

The CDC studied suicide rates since 1928 and found that they mirrored the economy. Suicides took a big uptick during the Great Depression. They plunged during World War II, and spiked again in the recessions of the mid-70’s and early 80’s. Suicides dropped to their lowest levels ever in the year 2000, when the tech boom dropped unemployment to just 4 percent. But after the dot-com bubble burst, America's suicide rate began steadily climbing. Recently, because of the endless shutdowns forcing people to stop working, we saw a new spike in suicides.

It’s a stark reminder that employment is more than an economic issue. Good jobs and rewarding labor save lives by making us feel that we're valued and needed. A government handout might provide bare sustenance, but it doesn’t feed the soul. It only demoralizes us.