There’s been a shift in polling in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where former President Trump’s endorsement of Dr. Oz doesn’t seem to be carrying as much weight as it has for other candidates. This link has more, including a debunking of a false smear against the candidate who seems to be moving up, Kathy Barnette.
Saturday, school board elections were held in four suburban school districts around Fort Worth, Texas. There were ten seats. Candidates backed by a conservative parents’ organization that opposes racist Critical Race Theory and other politicized indoctrination of children won all 10 races and ousted three incumbents.
I think that maybe Americans have finally woken up to the horrible damage that can be wrought when voters ignore local races. That leaves them open for leftists to move in like termites and bring down the whole structure. Whether it’s school boards filling kids’ heads with anti-American propaganda or DA’s filling the streets with criminals, those “small” local races that can cause big problems if the wrong people win due to low turnout and voter disinterest. It’s great to see that voters have finally realized where the termites are getting in, and they’re plugging up the entry points.
There’s a report by the Washington Post that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has become famous for being the Court’s swinging door, tried (and may still be trying) to persuade conservative Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett to side with him on a compromise. It would uphold the 15-week Mississippi abortion law, but not overturn Roe v. Wade.
According to anonymous conservative “sources,” Roberts failed on that but is still trying to convince someone to flip to a compromise that would keep Roe but remove the viability standard (Roe only legalized abortion up to mid-pregnancy.) But as Bonchie at Redstate.com points out, without the viability standard, there’s nothing enforceable left to Roe, so what’s the point of upholding a gutted, meaningless ruling conservatives believe is unconstitutional?
Roberts’ waffling, if true, would hardly be surprising, but the most important aspect of the story is this: while the leaked ruling is from February 10th and has likely been altered and amended since then, apparently, the five-vote majority to overturn Roe must be intact or Roberts wouldn’t still be trying to convince someone to “compromise” – something that’s now even less likely, since it would be seen as caving to mob threats and intimidation. So the loudest bullies might just be shooting themselves in the foot.
Alex Parker at Redstate.com has a round-up of disturbing stories that suggest the leaders of many Christian universities are either confused or hostile to the basic tenets of Christianity.
How do you become the administrators of a Christian university without ever reading John 14:6? “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” He didn't say you get there by "praying to the great Queer One," who's a "drag queen and trans man."
Let’s take just a brief break from the left’s railing about women’s health care (abortion) and “Handmaid’s Tale” cosplay to remind you that there is, indeed, a war on women, and this Administration is waging it.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/parent-groups-react-to-biden-administrations-upcoming-title-ix-changes
Former President Trump suffered a loss in court when a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed his lawsuit against Twitter for banning him from the platform (and can you guess why Twitter sought to have the case moved to San Francisco? Why, because that’s where they’re headquartered; did you suspect some other reason?) You can read all the legalities at the link.
The judge left Trump an opening to file an amended complaint, but I’m not sure if it would be worth the cost and effort, between Elon Musk buying Twitter and lifting the speech bans and Trump announcing that he has no plans to return anyway, since he now has his own site, Truth Social. My attitude is, “Don’t feed the lawyers, if you can possibly help it.”
Recently, the Democrat-run House held a hearing into why gas is so expensive. I’m sure you could tell them, but you can guess from the hearing’s name where they pointed the finger of blame: “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.”
Yes, they actually held a hearing to blame oil companies for not finding and producing more oil under the heavy restrictions that President Biden put on oil companies to stop them from finding and producing more oil.
Tip to the Democrats: the answer to why energy is so expensive doesn’t require a hearing. It just requires a seeing, as in, “Look in the mirror.”
Yesterday, primary elections were held in Ohio and Indiana. Here’s a link to results of all the races:
https://www.foxnews.com/elections
While many of the races were uncontested, a couple made big news. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine won the GOP nomination for a second term, defeating three Trump-supporting candidates who challenged him from the right.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/3/mike-dewine-wins-gop-primary-ohio-governor/
But the biggest story was the Ohio GOP Senate primary, where venture capitalist and “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, an anti-establishment populist, topped a five-candidate field with 32.2% of the vote. He’ll face Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Rob Portman. Ohio has been trending redder, and it went for Trump by 8 points. Republicans plan to hit Ryan for talking like a moderate who bucks his own party, but who has voted 100% of the time for the Biden/Harris agenda.
Vance had former President Trump’s endorsement, and he’s embraced that fully, saying in his victory speech, "I have absolutely got to thank the 45th President of the United States." As recently as a few weeks ago, Vance was in fourth place in some polls. Many are saying this shows the clout Trump still has with the GOP base, despite the Democrats’ and the media’s (same difference) efforts to bury him.
In fact, all 22 candidates Trump endorsed won on Tuesday. Added to the 33 winners he endorsed in Texas, he now has a perfect record of 55-0. What really matters, though, is how many of them win in November, so keep working and don’t get complacent.
Democrats knew that President Biden’s uncontrolled mouth would be a problem for them, and he just destroyed a half-century’s worth of abortion propaganda by saying out loud that Roe v. Wade is about who gets to make the judgement to “abort a child.”
So he finally recognized that a baby in the womb is a child! Maybe next, he’ll be struck with the realization that a man in a woman’s swimsuit is still a man.
Related: A PBS “journalist” expressed sympathy and concern for poor women who might not be able to get abortions and will have “pregnancies that will then turn into children.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/pbs-alcindor-mocked-roe-wade
The “party of science,” ladies and gentlemen!
PJ Media took a look at the disturbing series of fires and explosions at American food processing plants and the question of whether there’s something nefarious going on to spark a deliberate food shortage or if it’s just coincidental, caused by things like the pandemic disrupting regular maintenance and creating a shortage of experienced, trained workers.
I’m not qualified to venture an opinion, but I will pass this along. Last weekend, one of my writers spoke to his cousin who’s a retired chief arson investigator for a mid-sized city fire department. She’s still in close contact with her former colleagues nationwide, and she’s very suspicious. She said, “First lesson of fire investigations: Don’t believe in coincidences.” She said these plants are extremely secure with multiple layers of fire protection, because there are so many dangerous chemicals like ammonia that are used for cleaning. She also said she was told that some of the young squirts in one federal office set out to “fact-check and debunk” the conspiracy theories by proving it was nothing unusual, and were shocked to discover there had never been this many such incidents in such a short time.
That’s just, as the media says, “anecdotal,” but I hope there are rigorous investigations going on, and that precautions at all other food processing plants have been greatly beefed up.
Latinos and Latinas both hate “Latinx,” the awkward gender-neutral collective term that the woke crowd tried to hang on them. So they’re back with another lame attempt to make the language more PC. This time, they’re pushing the made-up term, “Latine.” It's like "Latin," only with an "e" for no apparent reason.
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=19483
I’m sure Latinos will love being called by a name that’s just one “r” away from “Latrine.”
Here is today’s link to Fox News’ continually-updated feed of Russia-Ukraine news:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
Some recent developments: Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said Russia has resorted to attacking civilians because its leaders know they can’t beat Ukraine. He thanked Italy for providing arms and for putting sanctions on Russia, including an oil embargo. He also warned Poland’s President that Russia has already started an "energy war" with the whole of Europe.
If only there were some other nation that had the energy resources to replace that Russian oil! But who?!
If you recall, my first comment on hearing Sen. Bernie Sanders call for killing the filibuster to jam a national pro-abortion law down Americans’ throats was “Good luck getting that past Joe Manchin.” Well, Bernie's kamikaze attempt to evade the SCOTUS is already dead, and not just courtesy of Manchin, but Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, too.
Sinema is an abortion rights supporter, but unlike some of her colleagues, she’s not an idiot. She realizes how crazy it would be to destroy the minority’s leverage in the Senate over one issue when the Dems are likely poised to become the minority in less than a year. Socialists like Bernie have never been famous for their ability to foresee longterm consequences, but her Party is lucky that Sen. Sinema can. Of course, that won’t stop them from telling her they hate her, like a bratty kid screaming at his mom because she wouldn’t let him jump off the roof for a YouTube video.
Other liberals took the ball from Swalwell and (understandably) ran fast and far, all the way down the Hallway of Hysteria.
According to them, if abortion goes back to the states to decide, Republicans will next ban interracial marriage, then gay marriage, then consensual sex, then contraceptives, then school desegregation (Uh, guys?...You’re the ones bringing back segregated schools (https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/02/10/woke-segregation-is-still-segregation-n520212), then…I don’t know, the internal combustion engine? No, I forgot, that’s also their ban.
The Daily Signal has a handy list of six outrageous and nonsensical claims the left is making about the SCOTUS and Roe v. Wade. Welcome to Bizarro World…
And Legal Insurrection looks at their unhinged rants about expanding and stacking the Supreme Court.
Law Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit had the perfect suggestion: “Expand the Supreme Court? Yes, let each Governor appoint a member.”
Here’s today’s Fox News link to continually-updated Russia-Ukraine headlines.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The latest: A group of Ukrainian civilians who’d been trapped for weeks in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were finally evacuated. In a stunning report, the UK estimated that of the 120 battalion tactical groups Russia committed at the start of the invasion, which is approximately 65% of Russia’s entire ground combat strength, more than a quarter of Russia’s troops in Ukraine are now believed to be “combat ineffective.” That would bolster a claim by Ukraine’s Security Service that it intercepted a Russian radio transmission indicating Russia's military is intentionally transporting corpses at night to try to hide their heavy losses.
I’m seeing a lot of articles these days about Democrat panic over a drop in support among African-Americans. I suspect that they’re just fed up with being told Republicans are racists as the Democrats take their votes for granted and make their lives worse year after year. There’s seldom been a more obvious A-B comparison of the effects of each party’s policies than two years ago under Trump, when there was record-low black unemployment and rising real wages for the first time in decades, compared to today's inflation and the huge jump in crime and murder rates in black neighborhoods of Democrat-run cities.
Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears also has some blunt comments about why black poll support for Democrats has dropped 20 points since Biden’s election. In a nutshell: “We're not falling for the okey-doke anymore."
Sunday in Portland, Oregon, some Republican volunteers gathered for an event for GOP gubernatorial candidate Stan Pulliam, who supports re-funding the police. Some masked Antifa goons attacked the group, aiming smoke grenades, paint-filled balloons and fireworks at them, including elderly people and families with small children. At least two people were injured. Naturally, the underfunded police didn’t show up in time to stop them.
Compare this to the story of Christopher Quaglin, the first person charged in the January 6th Capitol riot. He’s been held pending trial for over a year. His attorneys have just filed a habeas corpus petition claiming his constitutional rights have been repeatedly violated. They said Quaglin, who has celiac disease, has been denied the gluten-free diet he requires, gone days without food and lost 68 pounds. He’s been kept indoors for months, held in solitary confinement, and put in cells with rats and black mold. He’s had his right to consult with his attorney violated and prevented from seeing the discovery materials in his own case. The attorneys make five different arguments for his release and say any one should be sufficient grounds. But he’s still in jail while Antifa thugs continue to assault people at will and go free.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21772198-habeas-corpus-filing
Maybe we should all forward the story of the attack in Portland to our Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who seems to think the biggest threat of violent terrorism in America is Trump voters. We could also send it to the members of Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee. They’re so zealous to identify and lock away anyone who would use violence to impede the sacred electoral processes of “our democracy,” so here you go. Sic ‘em!
Friday, the stock market wrapped up one of its worst months in a long time. The Dow dropped over 900 points, the S&P 500 notched up its worst month since the pandemic began in March 2020, and the NASDAQ closed out its worst month since the 2008 financial meltdown. As Aaron Kliegman at Just The News reports, the plunge was led by big tech stocks, including Netflix, Facebook, Google and Amazon, whose earnings reports have ranged from “disappointing” to “dismal.”
https://justthenews.com/nation/economy/stock-market-tumbles-woke-companies-hit-especially-hard
While there are all sorts of excuses being given for the bad reports (COVID, Russia, you know the drill), some analysts are finally starting to wake up to the obvious: “Get woke, go broke.” These companies have jettisoned political neutrality and gone all in on wokeness, and their customers finally noticed. The former CEO of Best Buy said what’s been lost is the idea that you don’t get involved in divisive political stances because you want to attract customers of all different persuasions. He said, "I can't imagine as a CEO that you want to go fire half your customers."
But these companies stupidly did. Now they’re finding out what happens when half of their customers fire them.
Rep. Lauren Boebert has already authored a bill to block funding of the DHS’s “Disinformation Governance Board.” It likely won’t pass a Democrat Congress, but with any luck, and with the good sense of American voters, that won’t be an issue much longer.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lauren-boebert-defund-disinformation-board
While they’re at it, they might want to take a hard look at the DHS’ funding beyond its Ministry Of Truth. It seems that lately, they’ve been doing a lot of things they shouldn’t and very few of the things they’re supposed to do. I don’t see why we should keep paying for that.
Wow, here’s something you almost never see anymore: a unanimous Supreme Court decision! And on a religious freedom case.
https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2022/05/02/scotus-issues-9-0-decision-regarding-free-speech-n558754
All nine Justices agreed that the city of Boston violated the First Amendment when it refused to fly the flag of a Christian group outside City Hall, even though it allowed the flags of other outside groups to fly there. More details at the link. Let’s hope it's a good omen for future religious freedom cases that when the First Amendment was run up the flagpole, every Justice saluted.
Elon Musk may be buying Twitter, but clearly, he’s not running it yet. Someone must not have told MyPillow’s Mike Lindell that free speech isn't legal again there yet.
Just to show how radical the Democrats have become, the Biden DOJ (backed by a slew of leftwing legal groups such as the ACLU, SPLC and Human Rights Campaign) are suing Alabama to overturn a new law making it illegal to give puberty-blocking medications to minors.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-sues-alabama-law-transgender-treatments-for-children
The lawsuit claims that these dangerous chemicals, which can have irreversible negative impacts on the patients’ health and physical development, are ”medically necessary care” for gender-confused minors. Where are those Disinformation Police when you need them?
All of us at the newsletter and the “Huckabee” show were shocked and saddened to hear that Naomi Judd has died at 76. Her daughters Wynonna and Ashley announced Saturday that she died of mental illness, but released no other details, and we will respect their privacy and not speculate further. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to them. The Judds were set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Sunday and had just announced their first arena tour in years to begin this fall, so they obviously had no idea this was coming.
Both Wynonna and Naomi appeared on my TBN show, and I have great affection and respect for both of them as people and as major talents. Naomi was my guest a few years ago to talk about the fact that even someone like her, who was so blessed in so many ways, could suffer privately from crippling depression. She’d written a book about it because she was the kind of person who wanted to help others who were dealing with the same struggles.
Many of the biggest names in country music are also expressing their shock and grief and paying tribute to Naomi Judd, as you can see here:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/naomi-judd-dead-music-world-reacts
Rest in peace to a great talent and a wonderful lady.
The Babylon Bee weighs in on how "fact checkers" and social media giants colluding with "government experts" to police disinformation would have looked 2000 years ago.
First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia, where she will spend Mother's Day with Ukrainian mothers and their children.
And take this with a grain of salt, since it’s attributed to an anonymous Kremlin “insider,” but there’s a claim that Vladimir Putin will temporarily hand over the reins of power to his deputy Nikolai Patrushev while he undergoes a cancer operation. It won’t be an improvement: Patrushev is reportedly the official who convinced Putin that Kyiv was full of neo-Nazis and he’s described as one of the leading advocates and “thinkers” (odd term) behind the idea of Russia invading Ukraine.
Democrats looking for some actual Biden accomplishment that they can tout before the election could try this: in a letter to the Senate, front line border state sheriffs report that due to Biden’s policies eliminating all efforts to keep illegal immigrants out of the US, “We simply have no border left in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or Southern California.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/sheriffs-shocker-no-border-left
You must admit, that’s something that no other President ever has – or would ever want to – accomplish.
Dr. Fauci has become famous for flip-flopping, but he might have set a new land speed record this week. He declared that the pandemic phase of COVID is over, then less than 24 hours later, claimed that the pandemic isn’t over. His excuse is that the key word is “phase”: just because the “pandemic phase” is over doesn’t mean the pandemic is over.
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/04/27/fauci-reverses-by-no-means-is-this-pandemic-over-n465423
Some suspect that the real “science” behind this is political science, and that he probably got a call from the White House telling him that it wasn’t convenient for their narratives to admit that the pandemic is over, hence the double-quick hair-splitting.
That linked article also talks about the mixed messages of Biden wanting to keep forcing everyone to wear masks while he plans to attend this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which some are betting will be another super-spreader event like the Gridiron Dinner, where all the Democrats caught COVID but none of them seemed to get sick. If he really wants us to believe that he still considers COVID to be an existential threat, then it’s probably not a good idea to imply that it’s worth the risk of dying to hear Trevor Noah’s jokes.
This morning, the Commerce Department reported that the US economy shrank by an annualized rate of 1.4% in the first quarter of the year, from January through March. Economists had predicted it would grow by 1.1%. But weighed down by record high inflation, the supply chain crisis and labor shortages, the economy notched its worst quarter since the spring of 2020, when the COVID lockdowns were in full swing.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-economic-growth-gdp-first-quarter
GDP also declined by 0.3% from the last quarter. I hope I’m wrong, but needless to say, this is how recessions start.
In a story that I believe is related, Democrats seem stunned to discover that voters have bigger things to worry about and don’t really care about a 90-minute riot that happened in the Capitol 15 months ago.
If our current Democrat government actually did care about fighting “misinformation,” then it would stop the Department of Education from promoting Miseducation. As part of our never-ending stories on the left’s assault on science, common sense and the English language, check out this DOE training video. It shows a lesson about pregnancy by an alleged biology teacher who strains credulity by trying to convince us that women don’t produce eggs. “Ovaries” do. If only there were a simple biological term for people with ovaries!
The “teacher” says, “We can show our support for trans and non-binary students just to clean up that language, be more precise. We can be more accurate and be more inclusive. So I would say, no, it’s not women that produce eggs. It’s ovaries that produce eggs. That’s accurate, that’s precise. We’re acknowledging that not all women produce eggs and also, not all egg producers are women, for example.”
Okay, if you want to be accurate and precise: it’s true that not all women produce eggs. Not women who are infertile, or who’ve gone through menopause. But sorry: all egg producers are women. The “pregnant man” is not a biological fact, it’s a laughable emoji.
But if we’re going to have a federal speech police that cracks down on “disinformation,” I’ll need its phone number because I have some disinformation to report.
Here’s today’s link to Fox News’ continually updated Russia-Ukraine news:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The latest: The Kremlin claimed there have been acts of “terrorism” in Moldova, which was taken as an excuse for Putin to expand his invasion beyond Ukraine. Putin warned the West that any outside interference would lead to "lightning"-fast retaliatory strikes, and Ukrainian officials said Russia is increasing the pace of its offensive operations. But despite Putin’s threats, the head of NATO said Finland and Sweden will be warmly and quickly welcomed into NATO if they decide to join.
No wonder the leftist Twitter mobs are so twitterpated over the idea of allowing conservative journalists like James O’Keefe of Project Veritas to have freedom of speech: O'Keefe obtained a recording of the “all-hands” meeting at Twitter to discuss Elon Musk buying the company, and he released it.
It reveals that the current CEO (I stress the adjective “current”) seems to think he can “moderate” Musk’s promise to bring back freedom of speech. They also spoke in soothing tones to the melting down employees, as if trying to calm a toddler during a thunderstorm (and that’s a remarkably apt analogy.)
Twitter’s top lawyer, one of the instigators behind booting President Trump from the platform and censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, broke down crying.
See what interesting things you learn when journalists aren’t prevented from reporting the truth?
Incidentally, Elon Musk’s latest response to Twitter’s laptop censorship also bodes well for Twitter’s future, but not for that lawyer’s future with Twitter.
Between the supply chain crisis that the Biden Administration still appears to be doing very little about (can you imagine Trump letting this problem fester for 15 months without rallying a massive government-private sector response to fix it?) and the Russia-Ukraine war and sanctions, experts are warning to brace for serious food shortages. And of course, the “Green” movement is fighting efforts to mitigate it, like temporarily cultivating farmland that was being returned to the wild.
There are already a lot of empty shelves in American grocery stores, which was unthinkable just a couple of years ago, but as a great man once said, “Never underestimate Joe (Biden’s) ability to (bleep) things up.” However, Instapundit blogmaster Prof. Glenn Reynolds warns that those random semi-empty shelves may just be the tip of the iceberg.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/looming-food-shortages-is-worlds-next-slow-moving-disaster/
The shortages are already impacting food pantries, which serve those “most vulnerable among us” that leftists claim to care so much about.
And a reminder: it’s not just human food that could be in short supply. We also have to feed livestock and pets. I’m told by friends who own cats that they’ve recently had to go to several stores to find any canned cat food on the pet aisles. Trader Joe’s, which carries its own house brands, announced that due to shortages, it’s discontinuing four types of cat food and two types of dog food.
I recently reported that polls showed the only demographic group that's actually increased its support of President Biden is single, college-educated, Democratic women. If those women go to Trader Joe’s and find no food for their 14 cats, it’s over for Biden.
Here’s today’s Fox News feed of continually-updated Russia-Ukraine news:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The top stories: Marine veteran Trevor Reed, who was being held in jail in Moscow, is back home after the White House worked out a prisoner swap for him in exchange for a Russian drug trafficker. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy called for global controls to be imposed on the Kremlin’s nuclear capabilities because of their “completely irresponsible actions” such as firing missiles around nuclear power plants. And the head of the EU accused Russia of blackmail after it cut gas access to Poland and Bulgaria for refusing to pay in rubles.
Oh, if only there were some other country that could produce more oil and gas and undercut Russia’s power to blackmail other nations. But sadly, there’s not. At least, there won’t be until at least 2024.
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-shrinks-area-eligible-224231066.html
House Republicans are reportedly preparing for only the second impeachment of a Cabinet official (the first was in 1876.) Unlike the Trump impeachments, this would be for actual reasons. This time, it’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
133 House members sent Mayorkas a letter accusing him of violating his oath of office, undermining American sovereignty and the rule of law, and endangering American citizens by his continuing refusal to do his job, which legally requires him to maintain operational control of the border and detain illegal aliens.
Mayorkas is set to testify for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. I’ll be eager to see if he will try to refute those accusations, or just put them on his resume.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford has released his 6th annual “Federal Fumbles” report on "wasteful, ineffective, or duplicative" government spending. This year’s report lists over $10.5 trillion in wasteful spending at a time when the national debt has topped $30 trillion, and President Biden and the Democrats are pushing to spend trillions more.
https://www.lankford.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Federal_Fumbles_Vol_6.pdf
Among the ways your tax money is being flushed down the toilet:
$2 billion given to contractors NOT to finish building the border wall…
A $29 billion slush fund for the EPA…
$2.5 billion to plant trees to increase “tree equity”…
And a plethora of pork projects, including $47 million to promote travel in the US; $765,000 to Maine to study the future of the lobster industry; $2 million for indigenous coffee producers in Columbia; $500,000 to revamp a state-owned ski jump in New Hampshire; $2 million to renovate an RV park in Oregon; an unspecified “bucket” of money to expand Internet access for felons in prison; a $1.2 million NIH grant to develop “sun safety programs” for people with tattoos; $120,000 to two authors to write a book about Russian art; $606,000 to China’s CDC to research “the global risk of noble infections throughout China” (don’t we already know that?); and a number of arts grants, such as $15,000 for a puppet opera called “Monkey: A Kung Fu Parable” and $16,000 to produce “Fat Pig,” an opera that “tells the story of a plus-sized woman who falls in love with a man who has a ‘normal’ body.” I assume that opera is over when the fat lady sings.
Here’s some commentary from Jesse Watters’ Fox News show by the colorful Sen. John Kennedy on what he calls this “spending porn,” and how it’s not just Democrats who are protecting it. He says that Republicans have also resisted ending even the most outrageous wastes of money, including sending checks to dead people. And they're Democrat voters.
A number of agitated leftists on Twitter are posting some legal boilerplate threatening lawsuits over use of the content they’ve posted. If they’d researched this, they would’ve realized it’s a hoax that first went around on Facebook several years ago. Here are more details on the so-called “Rome Statute” and why it’s nonsense.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/08/19/facebook-scam/?sh=2c341565a4cf
As part of the never-ending fishing expedition by New York’s liberal “justice” establishment, a judge found former President Trump in contempt of court and fined him $10,000 a day until he hands over his business records to rabidly anti-Trump Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump’s attorneys said they plan to appeal because there are no more business records to turn over. They say Trump doesn’t text, email or use a business computer, so there’s nothing more to provide that hasn’t already been provided, so how can he be in contempt of court?
I don’t know, but I admit, I’m feeling a bit of contempt for New York courts. Oh well, $10,000 a day sounds harsh, but it makes me think of the famous line from “Citizen Kane,” where the wealthy newspaper publisher Kane says he’s losing a million dollars a year printing what he wants, and at that rate, he’ll have to shut down…in 60 years.
Senior Biden adviser Cedric Richmond is leaving the White House for a job at the DNC, one day after it was reported that after the 2020 election, he blasted AOC and her fellow “Squad” members as “(bleeping) idiots” and was one of Administrations’ leading critics of the far-left progressive wing. Too bad he’s leaving; sounds as if he’s one of the few people there with a brain.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cedric-richmond-white-house-biden-dnc
Speaking of AOC, she’s the genius who thought Democrats should severely punish Sen. Joe Manchin for blocking Biden’s big spending agenda. Which would just encourage him to switch parties and take away the Democrat’s majority (see Cedric Richmond’s assessment of her above.) Well, it appears that Manchin doesn’t have to be too concerned with whether AOC approves of him. According to a new Morning Consult poll, guess who’s seen the largest gain in his approval rating of any Senator?
You wondered who was inside that Easter Bunny costume and was leading President Biden around? Turns out it was George Soros.
Many Americans who were sold a bill of goods on Biden being a moderate centrist, only to get one far-left, America-destroying policy after another, are asking who’s really making the decisions in this White House because it can’t be Joe. Well, this could be the answer:
Documents reviewed by Fox News show that a secretive group called GFI (Governing For Impact) that’s funded by millions of dollars from socialist billionaire George Soros, has been working behind the scenes with Biden’s Administration to reverse Trump policies and enact its leftist agenda. Their internal memos boast that they’ve already implemented more than 20 of their agenda items. The head of Soros’ Open Society Foundations (an odd name for a group that operates in secret) said, "Open Society is proud to support Governing for Impact's efforts to protect American workers, consumers, patients, students and the environment through policy reform."
Governing For Impact is reportedly zeroing in on education, environmental, health care, housing and labor issues. Do you like anything the Biden White House is doing on any of those issues? I’d say they’re having an impact on America, all right, the same way a bulldozer has an impact on a house’s foundations.
Show of hands: how many people voted in 2020 to have America run by George Soros and a secret cabal of radical leftists?
The disturbing number of fires and explosions that seem to be “coincidentally” striking America’s food processing plants. Eighteen in the last six months.
For all the transparently phony hyperventilating about the dangers of free speech to “our democracy,” here’s the real reason why leftists are melting down over losing control of Twitter: A study by the Media Research Center found that over a two-year period, from the 2020 campaign through the 14th month of the Biden presidency, Big Tech censored Biden’s critics 646 times.
That includes 140 instances of censorship over Hunter Biden’s laptop alone (stories that were true, by the way), with Twitter being the worst offender. It offered an array of excuses for censoring Biden’s critics, many divorced from reality, like claiming the posts contained “malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices,” “spammy links,” or “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.”
Ironically, in censoring the true Hunter Biden laptop story as “disinformation,” it was Twitter that engaged in misleading content that’s led to a lot of real-world harm.
“CBS Reporter Who Had Been Accused of Pro-Abortion Bias Announces New Job at Planned Parenthood.”
Well, that oughta show her accusers!
Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media takes a look at the very bad week America’s “woke” tyrants are having, from Elon Musk buying Twitter; to the fortunes of Disney, Netflix and CNN+; to parents and states fighting back against radical left education officials; to the newly-woke Jon Stewart’s new show tanking.
It is a very welcome trend. As previously noted, maybe ExxonMobil’s banning of outside political flags like the BLM and rainbow flags is a harbinger of business leaders standing up to the tiny but loud leftist mobs and saying, “We’ve had enough of you. You’re done.”
In honor of this, I think it’s about time we retired the word “woke.” It served its purpose, but it was always misleading. The people pushing this divisive radicalism thought they were more conscious than the rest of us, but it’s become obvious that they just live in a homogenous echo chamber and don’t know or care about anyone who’s at all different from them.
I suggest that instead of “woke,” we call them by the far more accurate term, “hypnotized.” That’s what you call someone who appears to be awake but is actually sleepwalking, and just doing and saying ridiculous things because someone else is controlling their brains.
Any discombobulated leftists who are terrified that Twitter won’t be acting as speech police anymore might want to try switching to writing letters to each other on Google Docs. Google is adding a new “feature” that will nag you as you type, telling you whenever you’ve used a word or phrase that isn’t diverse or inclusive enough or that someone somewhere might find offensive, and suggesting more woke alternatives.
To make sure Google is up on all the latest “offensive” terms, I should let them know that they need to block all the people who use Google Docs to create digital whiteboards because “whiteboards” are apparently racist now.
https://campusreform.org/article?id=19429
And not just because they have the word “white” in them. There’s an even more convoluted reason that you can read at the link. But be warned: to understand it, you have to be either a liberal college professor or a complete drooling moron. Or both, as so many are.
Oh, and it might also make sense to you if you’re high on marijuana. Except that you also can’t use the word “marijuana” anymore because that’s apparently racist now, too.
Washington State will officially refer to it as “cannabis” instead. I hate to tell them this, but that word can be traced back to Eastern European origins, so it’s probably racist, too. To avoid offending anyone, I would suggest they call it “Wacky Tobacky.”
It’s not just anonymous trolls on Twitter who are having conniption fits at the idea of “our democracy” being imperiled by the people having free speech rights. Some major organizations are outing themselves as enemies of free speech, and you should definitely remember them for future reference. They include Amnesty International, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch.
Here is today’s link to Fox News’ feed of Russia-Ukraine news:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The latest: In a major policy shift, Germany has approved the shipment of anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine. The Pentagon doubled down on this weekend’s statement that it wants to see Russia come out of this as a weakened nation that’s unable to carry out another illegal invasion. Russia may postpone or cancel upcoming local governors’ elections out of fear that low turnout will telegraph the public turning on Putin, despite heavy propaganda efforts.
Interesting interview with my friend Pat Boone about how Hollywood has removed moral values from movies and is destroying America’s image.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/pat-boone-moral-values-hollywood-movies-the-mulligan
He also talks about his new faith-based movie “The Mulligan.” I had his co-star Eric Close on my show recently to discuss that and show a clip:
By the way, Pat mentions that one of his golf pals is rock star Alice Cooper, which I guess means there’s only one degree of separation between Alice Cooper and Mike Huckabee. But that’s actually not as weird as you might think…
I’m sad to have to report that former Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch died Saturday at 88 at home in Salt Lake City, surrounded by family. He was one of the most respected Senators of the past century, the former President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the longest-serving Senator in Utah history, serving from 1977 to 2019.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/longtime-utah-republican-senator-orrin-hatch-dead-at-88
Sen. Hatch was described as the personification of the American Dream, a man who rose from an impoverished childhood to the US Senate, and who made it his mission to expand freedom and opportunity for others. He was renowned for his ability to reach across the aisle to get things done and for protecting religious freedom. He was a truly great man and public servant. You might not know that he was also a gifted songwriter and musician. He was a strong advocate for music and the arts, something we shared in conferences for the arts.
Tributes to Sen. Hatch are pouring in. Here are some from various political figures.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/political-world-reacts-orrin-hatch-death
All of us on the Huckabee team extend our prayers and condolences to Sen. Hatch’s wife Elaine and their six children.
Finland is also preparing for a Russian invasion if the nation joins NATO and Putin makes good on his threat to retaliate.
A ludicrous legal attempt by a Democrat group to keep some Republicans off the ballot for reelection has gone down in flames, and rightly so.
They were trying to claim they were ineligible to run because they’re “insurrectionists” for attending Trump’s January 6th rally or opposing certification of the 2020 vote, which is entirely within their power to do. If questioning an election result is insurrection, then we’d better arrest all the Democrats who did the same thing to Bush in 2000 and 2004, and to Trump in 2016. Not to mention all the Hollywood celebrities who made that cringe-inducing YouTube video calling on Trump electors to vote for Hillary instead (yes, I remember that, no matter how hard I’ve tried to flush it from my mind.)
Unfortunately, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is still having to deal with this idiocy because she got a liberal judge who allowed it to proceed, despite a day of testimony that brought to mind the Three Stooges film, “Disorder in the Court.” I’m not kidding: you have to read this to believe it.
Let’s hope the judge doesn’t prove to be a complete knucklehead and tosses this lamebrain case. But he could actually rule in favor of the Democrat law firm of Larry, Moe and Curly, which would mean Greene would have to appeal a case that should never have sullied the interior of a courtroom.
As of this writing, an intense search is still underway for the Texas National Guardsman who dived into the Rio Grande River to save some migrants who were in danger of drowning while trying to cross the border illegally. The water is muddy, deep and more treacherous than it looks. The migrants were saved, but the Guardsman who risked his life to save them has yet to be found and is believed dead.
The heroic Guardsman has now been identified as Specialist Bishop Evans, 22, an Arlington native who served in Kuwait and Iraq.
Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott honored him as a hero “who risked his life in service to Texas and America.”
That story also includes some furious reactions from both Republicans and Democrat veteran Tulsi Gabbard, roasting the Biden Administration for encouraging waves of illegal immigration that are putting both Americans and the migrants at risk. Making it even worse was a report that the two illegal migrants Specialist Evans lost his life trying to save were both involved in the illegal narcotics trade. They survived to try to get in again, and thanks to this Administration, they most likely will.
When I comment on legal cases, I often remind readers that I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV, like the legal analysts on CNN and MSNBC. But I sometimes feel as if I – or just about anybody, really – must know more about the law than some very prominent lawyers in the news. Like former Trump attorney-turned-Trump attacker and convicted fraudster Michael Cohen.
As I said, I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think you get grand juries to indict former Presidents by threatening them.
Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the appeal of a Washington State high school football coach who lost his job due to a dispute over his practice of praying on the field after games. It’s a complex case with a lot of claims and counterclaims, so check out the link for full details.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-religious-liberty-school-coach
He’s lost in all the lower courts, but he might have a "Hail Mary play" chance in the 6-3 conservative SCOTUS. The SCOTUS initially turned down this case in 2019, but four conservative Justices warned that the appeals courts’ "understanding of the free speech rights of public school teachers is troubling and may justify review in the future." There’s a chance, at least, that Monday may finally signal an end to the long wait for some clarity on issues of freedom of speech and religion.
Update: It appears that there really is a tape of House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy telling other Republicans on a phone meeting after the January 6th riot that he’d “had it with this guy” (Trump) and was thinking of asking him to resign. That contradicts what he's previously said.
McCarthy said Friday that he was just walking through “different scenarios” and didn’t actually want Trump to resign. As of this writing, Trump has yet to comment publicly, but he reportedly talked to McCarthy Thursday and said he wasn’t upset and was glad McCarthy didn’t follow through. Conservatives who have long been suspicious of McCarthy’s allegiance to Trump or to conservative principles say that if Trump changes his mind and publicly denounces McCarthy, it would likely kill his ambitions to become House Speaker. So the ball is in Trump’s court.
Incidentally, Rep. Matt Gaetz suggested that notorious anti-Trumper Liz Cheney, who was in the call, could have leaked the tape to the New York Times, but she denied recording or leaking it.
The Biden Administration announced reforms to student loan forgiveness programs that will result in at least 40,000 people getting immediate forgiveness for their loans.
It’s a complicated reform, so check out the link for the full details. I’ve said before that I have no problem with making some reforms to the process to help make it easier for people to pay off their loans. But the problem with “forgiving” debt that people willingly assumed is that debt doesn’t just magically disappear. You can let someone off the hook for paying back money they borrowed, but it’s still owed. Someone has to pay it back. And if you can’t guess who will eventually get the bill, then take a look in the nearest mirror, sucker.
A Trump-appointed federal judge has put Kentucky’s new law restricting abortion on hold. But before anyone makes too much of this, the judge made it clear that the ruling had nothing to do with the constitutionality of the law. She said the problem was with the enforcibility of it: abortion providers can't prove they’re in compliance because the monitoring system it requires doesn’t exist yet.
https://redstate.com/beccalower/2022/04/21/fed-judge-puts-hold-on-new-kentucky-abortion-law-n554159
More details at the link, but for now, this looks less like a roadblock than a bump in the road.
The Ace of Spades blog reports that a lot of people are noticing that the Biden White House thinks we’re still in such a dire COVID emergency that we can’t let Americans stop wearing masks…but we’re also so far beyond the COVID emergency that we can drop Title 22 and let tens of thousands of illegal migrants swarm across the border, and there’s no need to deport them.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/398774.php
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But a foolish inconsistency is the hallmark of the modern left.
And speaking of foolish inconsistency, Democrats are furious that Florida’s legislature gave final approval to revoking Disney’s power to run its own government.
Here’s Dana Loesch on how leftists who claim to hate corporations and think they have too much power are throwing temper tantrums because Florida is finally making mega-corporation Disney obey the same rules as every other company in the state.
https://danaloesch.substack.com/p/disney-losing-their-corporate-welfare?s=r
In fact, Democrats are acting so much like five-year-olds over this that maybe Disney will endorse teaching them about kinky sex.
Congratulations to Sean Hannity. Last night, he marked a consecutive 25 years, six months and 15 days on Fox News, which broke Larry King’s record as the longest-running host on a single cable news network. He first joined Fox News prime time as co-host of “Hannity and Colmes” in 1996. He’s also been #1 in his time slot for 13 consecutive years.
Now, let’s hope he’ll really drive liberals crazy by breaking Larry King’s record of continuing to host TV shows until he was 87 years old.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s ambitions to become House Speaker might have hit a serious obstacle, thanks to a new book by two New York Times writers called, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.” McCarthy has been publicly supportive of former President Trump, but the book’s authors claim that in an audio recording of a meeting of Republican leaders shortly after the January 6th riot, McCarthy said of Trump, “I’ve had it with this guy,” and said he would push Trump to resign immediately.
At this writing, I’ve yet to hear McCarthy’s side of the story. And before anyone leaps to judgement, I will point out that I didn’t just say that an audio recording proves he said that. I said that a book by TWO NEW YORK TIMES WRITERS claims that there’s a recording of him saying that. Experience has shown that what Republicans actually say and what New York Times writers say they said can be very different things. So I’m taking a “wait and see” attitude on this one.
As I’ve said, I don’t call attention to all of President Biden’s “gaffes,” because we all get it, and it’s both sad and scary to dwell on it. But when he can’t even keep two of the major issues he’s supposed to be dealing with straight, this situation is becoming impossible and too dangerous to ignore.
A Trump-appointed federal judge has put Kentucky’s new law restricting abortion on hold. But before anyone makes too much of this, the judge made it clear that the ruling had nothing to do with the constitutionality of the law. She said the problem was with the enforcibility of it: abortion providers can't prove they’re in compliance because the monitoring system it requires doesn’t exist yet.
https://redstate.com/beccalower/2022/04/21/fed-judge-puts-hold-on-new-kentucky-abortion-law-n554159
More details at the link, but for now, this looks less like a roadblock than a bump in the road.
Here’s today’s link to Fox News’ continually-updated Russia-Ukraine war bulletins:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
Some of the latest developments: Ukraine accused Russian troops of committing atrocities in Mariupol and burying up to 9,000 victims in mass graves. President Biden said the US will provide another $500 million in economic aid to Ukraine and he announced a “Uniting for Ukraine” program he says will “enable Ukrainians seeking refuge to come directly from Europe to the United States.”
And a Russian major general revealed that Putin’s goal is to establish full control over both the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.
It’s official: after less than one month, CNN’s new paid streaming service, CNN+, is shutting down.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/21/media/cnn-shutting-down/index.html
Perhaps we should call it "CNN-Minus" because it subtracted a lot of money from CNN. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, but even at deep discount subscription rates, it attracted only about 10,000 daily users.
So stow this away for future reference: Charging people for something they refuse to watch for free is NOT a smart business model. Who knew?
The same Pulitzer Prize winner who predicted that markets would “never recover” from Trump’s election is now predicting that people who continue to wear facemasks will “face harassment, even violence” from those who aren’t wearing masks.
Hate to break it to him, but nobody cares. I suspect the worst “violence” they might experience is some people violently rolling their eyes at them. And in case he hadn’t noticed, it's the mask fanatics who've been harassing and attacking people without masks, not the other way around.
As I said yesterday, there’s a very simple solution for those who truly believe that wearing a mask will save them from catching COVID: wear one. Problem solved.
Here’s today’s link to Fox News’ continually updated Russia-Ukraine news.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The latest: The mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, says that Russian troops have launched an intense bombing campaign on the city, despite the fact that around a million civilians are still there after only about 30% of the population was able to evacuate. This morning, President Biden is expected to announce another package of security assistance to Ukraine. President Zelenskyy accused Russia of repeatedly using banned thermobaric bombs in Ukrainian cities. These bombs detonate fuel and oxygen that’s dispersed into the air. Putin said he ordered his troops not to storm the last Ukrainian holdout in Mariupol, the Azovstal steel plant, claiming it’s unnecessary and they’ll impose a blockade instead.
It’s also being reported that Russian troops are shooting volunteer aid workers who are trying to deliver humanitarian help.
Here’s the latest on the story of the liberal Washington Post writer attempting to dox the creator of the Libs Of TikTok Twitter account, and how she continues getting facts wrong, endangering innocent people, and attracting more and more subscribers to that account.
The Biden Administration announced reforms to student loan forgiveness programs that will result in at least 40,000 people getting immediate forgiveness for their loans.
It’s a complicated reform, so check out the link for the full details. I’ve said before that I have no problem with making some reforms to the process to help make it easier for people to pay off their loans. But the problem with “forgiving” debt that people willingly assumed is that debt doesn’t just magically disappear. You can let someone off the hook for paying back money they borrowed, but it’s still owed. Someone has to pay it back. And if you can’t guess who will eventually get the bill, then take a look in the nearest mirror, sucker.
Here’s more on the RNC’s excellent move to refuse to continue with the blatantly biased presidential debate process. This is from Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, so he has some jaw-dropping examples of that bias that our “professional journalist” class claims not to see, even as they decry the parties turning into “echo chambers” on liberal media outlets that are nothing but echo chambers.
Wednesday night, the US Capitol was put on high alert and panicked staffers were evacuated after Capitol Police identified an aircraft as “a probable threat.” It turned out to be the US Army’s Golden Knights parachute squad on their way to perform a demonstration jump at the Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium.
https://headlineusa.com/pelosis-capitol-police-trigger-panic-in-d-c/
I could link to a more nonpartisan site, but that write-up includes some of the reaction to the story, some well-deserved mockery of Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to wring another drop of anguish over January 6th out of it, and the perfect description of this entire affair: it was “a stunning display of ineptitude that could have led to deadly consequences.”
In the wake of Will Smith’s assault on Chris Rock at the Oscars, the producers of the Tony Awards have issued a strict warning that no violence will be tolerated during the Tony broadcast, and perpetrators will be immediately removed.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/tony-awards-warning-no-violence-policy-oscars-slap
Is that really a concern, fistfights breaking out at the Tony Awards? Just be warned that if it happens, a street gang with really scary choreography will dance you right out of the theater.
A new survey by the Trafalgar Group finds that a whopping 63.7% of American voters believe that President Biden is likely compromised and/or conflicted in dealing with China because of the Biden family’s personal business dealings with China. Surprisingly, that includes 34.3% of Democrats.
And now you know why the media and social media platforms were so desperate to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.
Here’s yet more proof that when it comes to political movements, you can’t believe the label, you have to look at what’s really inside the package. You can give your organization a name like “Black Lives Matter,” knowing that it’s something nobody could possibly disagree with. But the name means nothing when the policies you promote result in a 43% increase in murders of black Americans compared to the previous 10-year average.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-americans-paid-enormous-price-for-defund-the-police-movement
After the Biden White House flip-flopped twice in two hours over how to respond to a federal judge striking down the airline mask mandate, the DOJ announced that it would appeal the ruling.
However, as the writer Bonchie points out at the link, they’re not seeking an emergency stay on the ruling, which makes this appeal an incredibly stupid political move. It will likely be late summer or fall before an appeal is heard. If it fails, it’s another humiliating Biden loss. If it succeeds, it will mean trying to force an angry public that’s been breathing free for months back into masks just before the election.
There’s a much better solution, but I don’t expect people who’ve grown addicted to government power to see it: Just tell the public, “If you believe that wearing a mask is protecting you from COVID, then feel free to wear one.”
YouTube removed a video of Tucker Carlson’s interview with a young woman relating her personal experience with being pressured and misled into taking dangerously high doses of testosterone to "change her gender" instead of getting the counseling she really needed, and how she has now “detransitioned” back to her birth sex.
https://thepostmillennial.com/youtube-removes-tucker-carlson-interview-of-woman-who-detransitioned
The reason YouTube gave for banning it: The video violates their policy on “spam, deceptive practices and scams.” Take a look and try to find any way this video could violate such a policy, unless the policy is that YouTube protects certain politically-correct deceptive medical practices and scams from exposure. It’s either that or they’ve redefined “scam” to mean “actual journalism that undermines quackery we support.”
Even the New York Times is finally noticing that while COVID case numbers may be rising, hospitalization rates are down or flat.
Their daily newsletter even admits that a couple of weeks ago, the news was full of top Democrats getting COVID, even elderly ones like Nancy Pelosi, and then we didn’t hear any more about it because they got over it and it was no big deal. The Times writer credits this, of course, to vaccination and improved treatments, with a grudging nod at last to natural immunity (which provides “at least some immunity,” as he puts it), but never mentions that the new variants causing the infections are, as real scientists predicted long ago (but were accused of spreading “misinformation”), becoming more contagious but less severe.
The story says that because positive tests for COVID are no longer an indication of serious illness, the Times newsletter will no longer report case rates, but only hospitalization rates. I take that as an indicator that Democrats have determined that trying to revive COVID panic will not help them in the November elections, but running away from it might. I doubt that, but it’s still immensely preferable to more pointless mandates and lockdowns, so I say go for it, Dems.
Great commentary from Tom Knighton about Critical Race Theory and how one of its most financially successful proponents, Robin DiAngelo, has basically created a vile form of religion in which all white people are guilty of racism, there is no forgiveness or redemption, and the only form of absolution is to give her a lot of money to tell you “what a horrible person you are so you can feel better about being a little less horrible than other white people, so you’ve got that working for you.”
https://tomknighton.substack.com/p/the-vile-nature-of-the-crt-movement?s=w
Here’s today’s Fox News link to continually-updated Russia-Ukraine headlines:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
Among the latest developments: Russia is ramping up fighting in the Donbas region. Putin refused to agree to a ceasefire to evacuate civilians during the Eastern Orthodox Holy Week leading to Easter, claiming it was a ruse to rearm Ukraine’s military. President Zelenskyy said it’s unfair that he has to repeatedly ask allies for weapons that they have sitting in storage, and that if Ukraine had the weapons it needs, they would’ve already ended this war. Russia gave the city of Mariupol a new deadline to surrender, amid reports that not a single Ukrainian soldier wanted to surrender under the previous deadline.
Meet the Hispanic conservative college student at Wichita State University who was denied nomination as a candidate for student government because she dared to nominate a fellow conservative for recognition.
Not only did she refuse to take the “racial sensitivity class” they demanded she take, she launched a write-in campaign for student government – and won. Then she got the student supreme court to overturn the leftist student government’s decision to deny official status to her conservative student club. Then she ran for president of the student government – and won! Better yet, one of the major agitators who led the move to block her club lost his seat. So she’s now the leader of the student government that tried to silence and bully her six months ago.
Interestingly, she didn’t run as a conservative, but on depoliticizing student government and allowing all groups, including leftist and racial groups, to have a voice. If defending freedom of speech and standing up against leftist totalitarianism can actually win elections on today’s college campuses, then I have a very good feeling about the coming elections.
There are very few stories that pop up and go through so many twists and turns in so short a time as the Washington Post’s attempt to dox the creator of Libs of TikTok. Follow me closely, and I’ll attempt to bring you up to speed as quickly as possible.
Libs of TikTok is a Twitter account that makes the left look dangerous and ridiculous, not by attacking them or spreading “disinformation,” but by simply reposting things they put onto social media themselves. It’s enraged the left because it’s started being noticed by influential people, like conservative reporters and parents who are shocked to see teachers openly bragging about flying their freak flags in the faces of first graders.
In time-honored “kill the messenger” form, liberal politicians and media figures aren’t angry at the people who expose their lunacy to the world, they’re angry at the Twitter account for shining a brighter spotlight on it. The account has already been suspended a couple of times by Twitter (even though, again, it simply retweets posts from leftist accounts that weren’t suspended – you couldn’t cut the hypocrisy with a chainsaw.)
So this week, in an attempt to intimidate the anonymous private citizen behind the Libs of TikTok account into silence, Washington Post “tech reporter” (i.e., blogger) Taylor Lorenz ran an article that was a thinly disguised attempt to dox her – that is, to reveal details of her identity so that unhinged leftists could threaten her and her family, demand she be fired, and all the other loathsome things online leftist mobs have become notorious for. Lorenz even went to the home of the woman’s relatives.
This rightly ignited major blowback, especially since Lorenz herself had recently been literally crying in a TV interview about how people’s mean tweets to her were “horrifying” and amounted to harassment of women.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-taylor-lorenz-libs-of-tiktok
Instead of apologizing for this outrageous breach of ethics, WaPo defended it, in the process telling outright lies, like claiming the creator’s identity was already public knowledge and that they didn’t publish any private details about her (it wasn’t and they did.) Quickly removing it after being called on it didn’t change the reality.
All this journalistic malpractice and bullying got the attention of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who asked some uncomfortable questions of WaPo about the source of the private information they used to try to dox the site creator. Carlson connected their source to a German-based intelligence operation that he said is trying to “silence and intimidate an American citizen,” and asked if that’s legal and if Lorenz is registered as a foreign agent.
Libs of TikTok’s creator said she’s been forced to flee her residence because of the doxing and threats, but she refuses to be intimidated into silence, and she’s garnered even greater attention and support. So it appears that an attempt to bully another conservative has blown up in WaPo’s face like one of Wile E. Coyote’s Acme Roadrunner Missiles.
Putting a cherry on top, the CEO of the satirical site The Babylon Bee (which has also been suspended by Twitter for running humorous pieces that were too truthful) announced that he’s struck a deal with the creator of Libs of TikTok to “turn her heroic, high-risk work into a career.”
So a cancel culture leftist set out to silence someone for exposing the truth about the left, inadvertently exposed the ugly truth about herself and her employer, and it all ends up with her intended victim getting a career, a big boost of attention, and an even bigger public platform.
Who says stories these days never have happy endings?
By the way, I would like to point out to WaPo and all the other liberal media outlets that I’ve been reporting and making fun of the insane things leftists say and do for over a decade. So if they’d like to give me some free publicity, my name is Mike Huckabee.
The New Neo blog ponders the question of what the people who promoted Joe Biden as President and Kamala Harris as VP thought was going to happen once they got into office? They seem stunned at how quickly everything has gone south, and how low Biden's approval ratings are (down to 33% in the latest survey.) But seriously: what did they think was going to happen?
And a great PS from Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit:
https://instapundit.com/515795/
“…They thought their ideas would work. From Modern Economic Theory, where money can just be printed and not increase inflation, to unicorn fart land where the only reason we didn’t all drive EVs is that gas was so cheap. (And gas is only used for jaunts in the countryside, toot tooting your horn and scaring the wildlife. Not to transport food, etc.) Once we experienced the wonderfulness of renewables, we’d be so happy and grateful.
In other words, they’re morons. They didn’t think so much as emote about how wonderful everything would be with them in charge.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, who should have been censured and drummed out of Congress long ago for his repeated slanderous claims and for falsifying evidence, is not only still there, he thinks he should become Speaker.
He has no business being Speaker of the House (in fact, he really should stop speaking entirely), but if there were an official position called Liar of the House, he’d be overqualified for that. And that’s saying a lot, considering the competition.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ended the inspections of trucks entering from Mexico that were causing backups and delays. But before the left starts celebrating the success of their vilification of Abbott, it should be noted that he ended them after bordering Mexican states signed tougher inspection agreements, which was the whole point of imposing them. So he won.
It’s also worth pointing out that seeing a problem, taking action to fix it, persuading others to get on board, and quickly changing policies when unexpected problems arise are all things that actual leaders do. Maybe the Biden White House should look into that.
PS - The busloads of illegal immigrants Abbott is sending from Texas are still arriving in Washington, DC. Let's see how they deal with the problem they created when it's in their own backyard.
To listen to the Biden spokespeople/apologists, you would think that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's busing of illegal immigrants to Washington, DC, where they can be the problem of the people actually responsible for them is anything from a “publicity stunt” to an unconstitutional outrage. But if Biden is really so opposed to moving illegal immigrants away from the border and into other far-flung locations in America, why has he quietly resumed putting them on secret midnight charter flights and whisking them up to Westchester, New York, where they are then put on buses (!) and dispersed across New York and New Jersey?
The flights to Westchester ended in October after the New York Post exposed them (although secret flights to other locations reportedly continued.) I guess they figured all the Ukraine news distracted us enough that we wouldn’t notice if they rusumed flying illegal aliens into New York again. As with so many other things, they were dead wrong.
Once again proving that George Orwell perfectly predicted today’s world, here’s another example of his observation that there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them:
In an article titled, “Should Will Smith’s Slap Be Condemned More Harshly Than Chris Rock’s Words?,” Yale psychologist Dr. Amanda Calhoun argues that words “can be just as detrimental as physical violence.” Claiming that words may lead to depression and even suicide, she writes, “Should a physical assault always be judged more harshly than a verbal assault, no matter the context? I don’t think so.”
This is part of a concerted effort by leftist elites to convince us that freedom of speech is dangerous, so we need “experts” to “moderate” what we say. We might say something that’s “dangerous” or worse, “wrong,” in that it challenges their opinion, which they’ve defined as objective truth. It’s funny that their arguments against free speech are actually the greatest arguments in favor of it.
As for whether words hurt as badly as physical violence, maybe we should ask Chris Rock which hurt worse: Will Smith yelling at him, or Will Smith slapping him across the face. I notice that nobody who pushes this nonsense ever says, “Wait, don’t call me an idiot! Punch me in the face instead. That would hurt less.”
The media’s latest excuse for President Biden isn’t doing him any favors: it’s not his fault that he’s ineffectual. They’re saying, sure, inflation’s out of control and illegals are swarming across the border, but “there’s just not much President Biden can do about it.”
Just spitballing here, but he could reverse the policies that caused it. CNN’s John Harwood claims that Biden is just “a victim of circumstance.” The circumstance is that he had the bad luck to be President when Joe Biden was in the White House.
I don’t think the American people are going to buy this, but I would suggest that if Biden tries it, he should say it like this: “I’m a victim of coicumstance!” Americans like Curly Howard. Maybe that would help his approval rating.
True to form, on Good Friday, the New York Times ran an editorial calling on people to “Give up God.” My suggestion would be to give up the New York Times. But I’ll also link you to an excellent response to this latest attack on God from the newspaper of broken record.
Here is today’s link to continually updated Russia-Ukraine bulletins from Fox News:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live
The most recent headlines: Having pulled back from attacking Kyiv, Russian military forces have turned to conducting a full-scale offensive against the eastern part of the country. Russia’s foreign minister said, “Another stage of this operation is beginning.” President Zelenskyy called it the “Battle of the Donbas” and vowed to fight there, too. He said, “We will not give up anything Ukrainian."
Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused the United States and other Western countries of trying to "delay" the course of the war in Ukraine by sending shipments of weapons to Kyiv’s military. He said, "Increasing volumes of foreign arms deliveries clearly demonstrate their intentions to provoke the Kyiv regime to fight to the last Ukrainian." So to recap: we’re sending them weapons and they’re using them to fight off the Russians who invaded their country, and that’s not right because wars are over sooner when the other side is unarmed.
That’s the kind of reasoning that’s so stupid, I’d expect only leftist college professors to agree with it.
Saturday at Dodger Stadium, there was a celebration of Jackie Robinson Day, the 75th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. And as she does every year, his widow Rachel Robinson attended. She not only helps keep Jackie’s legacy alive, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation that’s helped over 1,000 minority students and the Jackie Robinson Development Corp. that creates low-income housing.
And she’s still going strong at just a few months shy of her 100th birthday.
As I’ve said before, even if Elon Musk never buys Twitter, it will all be worth it just for the anguish he’s causing leftist authoritarians, the way he’s forced them to expose themselves as being passionate enemies of free speech, and now, how he’s showing the public just how divorced from the interests of the stockholders these “woke” corporate board members are.
Last week, Musk tweeted an article revealing that the current board members collectively own almost zero shares of Twitter stock (so why should they care if their decisions, like banning conservatives from Twitter, hurt profits?) One member has had a Twitter account for four years and has never even used it.
And now, Musk has really hit them where it hurts: he tweeted that if his bid to buy Twitter and take it private succeeds, there won’t be a board anymore. That means all those board members will lose their part time job that pays them up to $300,000 annually to suppress free speech, for an immediate savings of $3 million a year.
As we’ve learned from Hunter Biden, overpaid corporate board positions for underqualified but well-connected liberals are one of the left’s favorite ways to launder money. But don’t cry for the Twitter twits if they lose their cushy board seats. There are still plenty of other ways for leftist billionaires to launder money and fund their political puppets. Like do-nothing jobs for well-funded nonprofits and PACs, big speaking fees and huge advances for books nobody wants to read.
Last night, I appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. We talked about the RNC’s decision to pull out of the presidential and vice presidential debate organization until they reform it so that it's not blatantly biased in favor of Democrats. If you missed the segment, here’s the video:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6304357667001
Having been a participant in a number of presidential debates during two different campaign seasons, I cheered the RNC’s move and offered a few suggestions of my own. One was that we do away with those demeaning “kid’s table” debates featuring what the media decides are the “secondary” candidates (news flash: it’s not their job to decide which candidates the voters should pay attention to.) Another is to give all candidates the same amount of time to speak. And one suggestion I didn’t realize would be so popular, but it’s already gotten a flood of positive reaction: do away with the moderators entirely and just let the candidates make statements and then debate each other over them.
Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas didn’t need some talking head from CNN to pick the questions and interrupt them constantly, and I hear those debates turned out pretty darned well.
I am always hesitant to pass along stories about a politician reportedly having psychological issues, when such claims are often weaponized by people who aren’t doctors and have never met the person they’re diagnosing. We got a lot of that quackery during Trump’s term.
But this story might be more credible than usual, since it allegedly originated with four political colleagues and three former staffers sharing concerns about a powerful DC Democrat’s deteriorating memory and growing cognitive decline. There are calls for this politician to take a cognitive test and possibly resign. And no, it’s not who you’re thinking it is.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/sf-chronicle-editorial-board-dianne-feinstein-memory-resign
The Republican National Committee voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.
It’s a supposedly non-partisan group that organizes presidential and vice presidential debates. But for years, the group has ignored Republican complaints that they stack the debate moderating roster with Democrat partisans, including people who’ve actually worked on some of the Democrats’ campaigns and staffs. Republicans still point to the 2012 debate where CNN’s Candy Crowley argued over a claim made by Mitt Romney. It was as if he were debating both Obama and the moderator – and it was later confirmed that Romney had been correct.
In January, the RNC sent the Commission a letter listing several reforms they demanded be made to ensure genuinely fair and nonpartisan debates. The Commission again brushed them off, so the RNC said they’re outta there. The Commission might be happy, since it’s obvious they’ve always wanted "debates" that are nothing but Democrats repeating DNC talking points to each other. But if voters wanted to see that, it’s on CNN 24/7.
Here is today’s link to the Fox News continuous feed of Russia-Ukraine bulletins.
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-updates-04-18-2022
Latest developments: The pointless violence drags on, with Russia firing several missiles at the city of Lviv. The missiles hit three warehouses and a car tire service center (strategic targets all), and killed seven people and injured 11 others. Ukraine’s military has liberated several towns near the city of Kharkiv. Russia surrounded Mariupol and gave Ukrainians there a deadline to surrender, they refused, and it’s since passed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “The situation in Mariupol is both dire militarily and heartbreaking. The city doesn’t exist anymore. The remainder of the Ukrainian army and large group of civilians are basically encircled by the Russian forces.”
And Russia’s former foreign minister said he believes that despite his nuclear threats, Putin is “barking” with “no way to bite.” He believes Putin would use nuclear weapons only in very specific circumstances, such as if Russia faced an existential threat, like NATO troops coming to Moscow, or if he were facing an "overwhelming military defeat" in Donbas. But he said the problem in figuring out what Putin would do is that he’s not making rational decisions because he’s operating in a fictional universe, but it’s not clear just how much of the “universe of fiction” the Kremlin puts out that Putin actually believes.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/foreign-minister-putin-nuclear-weapons-existential-threat
In news that will have a lot of ultra-sensitive Twitter employees squealing like stuck pigs, Elon Musk has made an offer of $54.20 per share (about $43 billion) to buy 100% of Twitter and take it private.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-offer-buy-twitter-take-it-private
Musk said, "I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form."
So obviously, he heard all that screaming from the leftist employees after he bought 12% of the company, about how he was going to destroy democracy by forcing them to respect free speech. And it convinced him to buy 100% of the company and fire them. So thanks to them for that!
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be rooting for a billionaire to become the sole owner of a major communications outlet, but since Twitter's already been ruined by censorious leftist billionaires, it might as well be owned by one who doesn’t want to tell everyone what they’re allowed to say.
This week’s buzz phrase is “death of democracy!” As in, if Republicans are elected to majorities in Congress, it will be the “death of democracy!”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-abc-cbs-democrats-fearmonger-gop-death-democracy
Only in the brainwashed Bizarro World of the left could putting power into the hands of the people's chosen elected representatives spell the “death of democracy.” When I hear them say “democracy,” I think of the famous quote from “The Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Wednesday, special counsel John Durham scored another win in court when a judge in Washington denied Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussman’s request to throw out the charges against him for lying to the FBI. Sussman’s attorneys had argued that his false statements to the FBI about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia weren’t “material” to them launching an investigation. Durham disagrees, and the judge ruled that that’s up to a jury to decide.
(The judge also accidentally revealed that “Tech Executive II” is Rodney Joffe, as we’ve long assumed.)
While the ruling was predictable, it has to have the Clinton camp feeling as itchy as a man on a fuzzy tree, to quote the King.
As Nick Arama at Redstate.com points out, this ruling leaves Sussman with two options: risk going to trial and maybe facing jail time, plus having a lot more evidence about the Hillary campaign’s activities come out…or strike a plea deal and cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation. Neither of those is a very attractive option for Hillary, who is still dreaming of putting her hand on a Bible to be sworn in as President, not to testify in a federal trial.
Stay tuned, we’ll definitely have more coverage of this story.
This week on The People’s Podcast, Governor Huckabee interviews Yale University’s aging expert Dr. Becca Levy about her new book Breaking the Age Code, in which she debunks the most common myths about aging and offers advice on how to age successfully and be liberated from the negativity around getting older.
This week brought a one-two punch in the gut with inflation news. Tuesday, the BLS reported that the Consumer Price Index’s annual inflation rate hit 8.5% in March, the highest in 40 years. Then on Wednesday, we learned that the producer price index, which measures inflation of wholesale prices before they reach consumers, hit 11.2% in March. That’s higher than the most pessimistic predictions, and the highest since this measure started being taken in 2010.
That kind of inflation of wholesale prices means that consumers are in for even higher prices as it filters down to the retail level.
The White House has tried to blame everything but the policies of Biden and the Democrats for the galloping inflation. Biden blamed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, even though inflation had been rising for over a year before that happened. And now, they’ve found a new culprit: it’s Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s fault.
Because of the flood of illegal immigrants (again, due to Biden’s policies), Abbott has ordered inspections of trucks coming in from Mexico. This has caused some traffic backups at the border. Psaki claimed that the inspections are “causing significant disruptions to the food and automobile supply chains, delaying manufacturing, impacting jobs, and raising prices for families in Texas and across the country.”
But as Mike Miller at Redstate.com points out, those inspections only went into effect last week. How have they already managed to delay manufacturing, impact jobs and cause the inflation rate that set a record last month?
If this keeps up, I suspect that next, Biden will try to blame it on the dog.
More details on yesterday’s late-breaking story about New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin surrendering to federal authorities on charges of bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy. He also resigned from his post, the #2 position in the state’s government.
He was appointed less than a year ago by now-Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took office when Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign. Hochul’s Republican challenger in the November election, Rep. Lee Zeldin, blasted her for her bad judgement in picking Benjamin as her second-in-command, and Bob McManus in the New York Post concurs, explaining how the top echelons of the state’s government got so corrupt and incompetent.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/12/gov-hochuls-terrible-judgment-leads-to-one-terrible-day/
By the way, since the media don’t seem to be mentioning it, I should add that all of these people are Democrats.
Walmart is so desperate for reliable merchandise transport that they’re not only giving pay raises to their current in-house truck drivers, they’re raising the starting pay for new truck drivers to as much as $110,000 (minimum $95,000.) Their average starting salary was already $87,000.
As Bobby Burack at Outkick.com reports, $110,000 is twice the average starting salary of college graduates. And without having to assume debt you can never repay or sit through leftist brainwashing by America-hating professors who’ve never spent a day in the real world. For some students, like those in medicine or STEM programs, college is a must. But for others, it’s becoming more of an anchor than an elevator.
There’s huge demand everywhere for truckers as well as other skilled trades, from welders to construction workers to furnace and A/C technicians. You know, people who actually know how to do something useful. Not so much for poli sci or gender studies majors, whom many of us would gladly pay to go away.
Mike Rowe is quoted in this article, pointing out that there are 7.3 million jobs open for skilled trades people. After you get those skills, you can immediately land a secure, good-paying job. And if you worry that elitist, leftist college grads will look down on you, then just don’t tip them when they serve you your coffee at Starbucks.