Mike Huckabee

On this last day of the year (and the decade!), many people are looking back at 2019.  I would hope that a lot of them, particularly on the left, would reflect on how unbelievably well-off America is – unemployment at all-time lows, wages rising, stock markets booming, gas cheap, trade deals being renegotiated in our favor at long last, violent crime down, terrorists on the run, no new wars (and soldiers finally coming home from seemingly endless ones), food healthier and plentiful, and even the environment much cleaner than a few decades ago (unless you live in a Democrat-run city and have to dodge poop and typhus) – and ask themselves one question:

“Why exactly am I constantly complaining about how horrible everything is?” 

In fact, can you imagine what a Golden Age 2019 would have felt like if we hadn’t had to endure the constant whining, sniping, screaming, cursing, crying, protesting and “resisting”?  What are they even resisting? Happiness?

As we stand at the crossroads, assessing the recent past and reflecting on the future, I thought I’d share a few of the more interesting commentaries, the ones you aren’t likely to see in the mainstream media.

I’ll start with one that I’m sure pains the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC, etc., to report: Gallup reports that there’s a tie for the title of Most Admired Man of 2019 between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. 

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/gallup-poll/2019/12/30/id/947695/

The vote was heavily partisan, of course, but among Independents, it was evenly split.  Pretty amazing considering Obama routinely gets the kind of media coverage you’d expect if Julia Roberts found the cure for cancer, while everything Trump does or says is spun as negatively as possible (if the story was that Trump ate wiener schnitzel for lunch, the media would say, “Do you know who else ate German food? HITLER!!”)   

Imagine how fantastic a job Trump must be doing to tie with Obama for Most Admired Man when he gets 94% negative media coverage.  It would like the Businessman of the Year Award going to the president of a tobacco company. 

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama was named Most Admired Woman again, but her share of the vote dropped from 15% last year to 10% this year, despite massage fawning coverage for her book tour and an adulatory media declaring her “First Lady for Life.” Yet, in second place was our real First Lady, Melania Trump, whom the media treat with either snotty disdain or by ignoring her existence.  She came in ahead of such liberal media darlings as Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Greta Thunberg and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

My prediction for the future (and my hope) is that someday soon, the people in charge of all those women’s magazines that have shamefully (and from a business standpoint, idiotically) shunned Melania Trump and refused to put her on their covers will be kicking themselves with pointy-toed Italian boots for acting so lobotomized by political partisanship. 

Moving on, the American Thinker revealed its choice for Most Irritating Person of 2019.  Yes, there were many contenders whose names you’ll surely recognize.  But their #1 choice might surprise you.  At least until it’s explained that like Time’s “Person of the Year,” it might not mean what you think it means. In this case, it’s a positive, since the winner irritated all the right people for all the right reasons. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/the_most_irritating_person_of_2019_is.html

Taking the coveted title of “Rudest City in America” for 2019 in a Fox News poll was…(I’m trying to build suspense, but what’s the point?)…New York City!  At the link, New Yorkers react to being called rude (Warning: contains language likely to offend anyone not from New York!)

https://www.foxnews.com/us/f-k-off-new-yorkers-react-to-being-named-rudest-city-in-america

Marta Hernandez of the Victory Girls blog counts down the biggest “fake news” media fails of the year (as they say at Instapundit, “you’re gonna need a bigger blog.”)

https://victorygirlsblog.com/media-year-in-review-the-fail-is-real/

For instance, this one sneaked in past the deadline but still made it into 2019, but it will likely keep being repeated in 2020.

https://www.westernjournal.com/turns-regretful-trump-voter-swing-state-ad-never-even-voted-2016/

In a related story, from the movie “Unplanned” to Jussie Smollett, Newsbusters lists the Biggest Cultural Winners and Losers of 2019.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2019/12/28/bozell-graham-column-cultural-winners-and-losers-2019

To help end 2019 with some much-needed laughter, here’s Dave Barry’s annual “Year in Review” column.  A favorite sample quote, from March:

“The Iowa state legislature considers a bill that would fund construction of a border wall around the state to stop the influx of Democratic presidential hopefuls, now estimated at several dozen a day. ‘It’s a humanitarian crisis,’ says one legislator, his voice rising in alarm. ‘They’re swarming all over the state barging into pancake breakfasts. Many of them die within days from pancake bloat but THEY JUST KEEP COMING.’”

https://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article238523668.html 

And Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics takes a bemused look back at “The Year the Democrats Went Off the Rails.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/12/30/2019_was_the_year_that_democrats_went_off_the_rails_142041.html

For a no-holds-barred look ahead, Kurt Schlichter predicts what will happen in 2020:

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/12/30/heres-what-is-whats-going-to-happen-in-2020-n2558641

Finally, if you’ve still got a few minutes to kill before the ball drops, here’s a column I wrote about how it’s true: people really do have to be paid to turn on CNN.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/29/huckabee-cnn-airport-news/

Happy New Year! May your 2020 be even more terrific than a lot of people didn't realize 2019 was!

Mike Huckabee

I said that only urgent news would make me interrupt my family holiday before the New Year, but I think it’s urgent that I ask you to please join me in praying for the victims of a string of attacks on Jews in the New York/New Jersey area over the past week, and of Sunday’s shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, west of Fort Worth.  In Texas, two people are dead, including the shooter, and one injured.  The latest anti-Semitic attack in the Northeast happened in Monsey, New York, when a man walked into the home of a rabbi and stabbed five people who were celebrating Hanukkah.  This rising tide of anti-Semitic violence has many Jews voicing concerns that it is scarily reminiscent of the days before the Holocaust.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/jewish-leaders-urge-action-after-senseless-hanukkah-attack

Fortunately, Texas recently passed a law allowing concealed carry permit owners to have their weapons in churches, so it did not turn into the kind of mass church shooting we’ve seen before. The service was being live-streamed on the Internet, and less than three seconds elapsed from the first shot to an armed guard stopping the shooter. 

https://pjmedia.com/trending/two-dead-in-texas-church-shooting-highlighting-the-need-for-good-guys-with-guns-in-places-of-worship/

The video also showed several members of the congregation pulling out weapons and pointing them at the shooter, so if the guard hadn't been there, half a dozen "good guys with guns" were. Contrary to predictions, they didn’t start firing wildly and hitting bystanders. They acted responsibly and were prepared to stop the shooter, if need be.  Who knows how many victims there might have been if they’d had to wait 15 minutes for the police to show up?   

But I don’t want to politicize these attacks because there are too many people already cynically and self-servingly doing that.  I’ll talk about some of the responses after New Year’s Day.  In the meantime, let’s concentrate on what’s really important and pray for those who were killed, for the swift and full recovery of the injured, for comfort for their loved ones, and for a miraculous cure to the sickness in the hearts of anyone who would defile a house of worship with violence or assault their fellow human beings just because of their religious faith. 

Mike Huckabee

Here’s an insightful letter from reader Craig:

Can you imagine the bad precedent –- If both houses were controlled by one party and the Presidency the other, then they could do just exactly this: impeach both the President and the Vice President because they do not like the results of the election and the Speaker of the House becomes President (in this case Nancy Pelosi). How can anyone not realize this is a coup of the executive branch of government by the legislative? This is an attack on the Constitution, our Republic and the American people and our way of life. Horrible !!!!!

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Craig. You are correct, and yes, it is indeed horrible. It’s exactly what the founding fathers feared about impeachment. If Chuck Schumer were running the Senate right now, I’m afraid this is exactly what would happen --- or would have already happened. (Result in this case:  Nancy Pelosi would be sworn in as the UNELECTED President, Justice Ginsberg would retire, and the UNELECTED Pelosi would immediately nominate the next justice, whom the Democrat Senate would rubber-stamp.  It would actually constitute a coup against the judiciary as well.)

This is why it’s so important to show this effort to be what it is and smack it down hard, with no negotiation whatsoever. It’s also why we need to keep the Senate and get the House out of Democrat hands, as they would take a machete to the Constitution if it meant they could stay in power.

-----------------------

From the Gov:

I love this reader response to my open letter to Nancy Pelosi:

From Judy:

Brilliant! I’m not sure if she is smart enough to know that you just handed her head to her! Well...bless her heart??

-------------------------------

Some comments of mine that you might have missed:

Interesting story about how, despite more than $1 billion in spending to eliminate homelessness, Seattle’s homeless problem just keeps getting worse. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that “progressive” officials are spending most of the money on fighting “oppression” and “(interrogating) the current structures of power” in order to “examine the legacies of structural racism in our systems, and co-design a path towards liberation with black, indigenous, brown and other marginalized communities.”

https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-progressive-municipal-employees

Silly me, I would have spent the money on shelters, drug and alcohol programs, mental health care and job placement.  Let’s hope that the next increase in the homeless population comes from those officials being thrown out of office and into the street. 

----------------------------------

Well, this isn’t at all suspicious: surveillance tape of wealthy and well-connect pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide attempt in a Manhattan jail has somehow gone “missing.” Oh, just to be clear: this isn’t the video that got turned off when he did “kill himself.”  This is the video of his earlier suicide attempt, the first time that he didn’t kill himself.  Oh, sorry, I mean, the first time he TRIED to kill himself…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7807919/Jeffrey-Epsteins-suicide-attempt-video-gone-missing.html

-------------------------------------

I said that only urgent news would make me interrupt my family holiday before the New Year, but I think it’s urgent that I ask you to please join me in praying for the victims of a string of attacks on Jews in the New York/New Jersey area over the past week, and of Sunday’s shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, west of Fort Worth.  In Texas, two people are dead, including the shooter, and one injured.  The latest anti-Semitic attack in the Northeast happened in Monsey, New York, when a man walked into the home of a rabbi and stabbed five people who were celebrating Hanukkah.  This rising tide of anti-Semitic violence has many Jews voicing concerns that it is scarily reminiscent of the days before the Holocaust.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/jewish-leaders-urge-action-after-senseless-hanukkah-attack

Fortunately, Texas recently passed a law allowing concealed carry permit owners to have their weapons in churches, so it did not turn into the kind of mass church shooting we’ve seen before. The service was being live-streamed on the Internet, and less than three seconds elapsed from the first shot to an armed guard stopping the shooter. 

https://pjmedia.com/trending/two-dead-in-texas-church-shooting-highlighting-the-need-for-good-guys-with-guns-in-places-of-worship/

The video also showed several members of the congregation pulling out weapons and pointing them at the shooter, so if the guard hadn't been there, half a dozen "good guys with guns" were. Contrary to predictions, they didn’t start firing wildly and hitting bystanders. They acted responsibly and were prepared to stop the shooter, if need be.  Who knows how many victims there might have been if they’d had to wait 15 minutes for the police to show up?   

But I don’t want to politicize these attacks because there are too many people already cynically and self-servingly doing that.  I’ll talk about some of the responses after New Year’s Day.  In the meantime, let’s concentrate on what’s really important and pray for those who were killed, for the swift and full recovery of the injured, for comfort for their loved ones, and for a miraculous cure to the sickness in the hearts of anyone who would defile a house of worship with violence or assault their fellow human beings just because of their religious faith. 

---------------------------------

Mike Huckabee

Nobody is more excited about Christmas Day than children, and sometimes, it inspires them to come out with some real gems.  For instance, Mona from Kentucky wrote:

“When I was a child, we had a coal stove. One of those potbellied stoves. Of course with those stoves, there was a small pipe that went out the ceiling so the smoke would not get in the house. I remember wondering how Santa got down that skinny pipe.  So one day I asked Mom how he got down that pipe.  I guess I really put her on the spot because she replied, “He has a house key!”  And that satisfied me.” 

Thank you, Mona, and Merry Christmas to your mom, who I bet had to answer a lot of tough questions before you grew up! 

Here’s another story of a Christmas miracle that started with the words of a child.  Tom from Louisiana wrote that he used to volunteer for the park district in Calumet City, Illinois, in a low income area.  One year, the man playing Santa was ill, so Tom filled in.  It was a hard job, listening to the Christmas wishes of hundreds of children, knowing most of their parents were too poor to make them come true. 

One day, a little 5-year-old girl, as beautiful as a china doll, hopped up in his lap and didn’t say a word.  He asked her if she’d been good and obeyed her parents.  She said yes.  So he asked what she wanted for Christmas.  She replied, “Nothing.” 

Tom was dumbfounded.  He asked if she was sure she didn’t want anything.  She said not for herself.  But could Santa give her daddy a job?  He needed a job.  Well, Tom didn’t know how to answer that.  So he just said he’d try his best, but that was one wish Santa might not be able to fill.

But, Tom wrote:

“God works in great ways.  At the time the young girl was sitting on my lap, (a local reporter) was there taking pictures and…overheard the child’s conversation with Santa. The next day, the paper (ran a photo) of the little girl sitting on Santa’s lap with the caption ‘All she wants for Christmas is a job for her daddy’…The next day, the little girl’s father received a call and was offered a job. A day or so later, the little girl came back to see me with my favorite chocolate chip cookies and a thank you for Santa…

Till this day, and it’s been at least twenty-five years, I still tear up thinking about that little girl and her unselfish wish. Christmas is truly about miracles.” 

Thank you, Tom.  I bet that little girl was the best gift her daddy ever received.