By Mike Huckabee
June 8, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff!
Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
GENDER POLITICS
Blocked: Florida’s new ban on giving puberty blockers to minors
Tuesday, Clinton-appointed federal Judge Robert Hinkle temporarily blocked portions of Florida’s new ban on giving puberty blockers to minors, declaring that “gender identity is real, the record makes this clear,” and the state has no rational basis for denying patients “treatment” (quotation marks my own.)
The ruling applies only to three children who are already receiving this quackery, and the judge claimed they would "suffer irreparable harm" if they were not allowed to continue their “treatments” (I'd argue the opposite.) The Governor’s press secretary said the law would be enforced on everyone else pending appeal, and “We will continue fighting against the rogue elements in the medical establishment that push ideology over evidence.”
Of course, “trans” activists said they hoped the judge’s ruling would be extended to everyone and claimed that these treatments are “aligned with every major medical organization — not a rogue few, but all of them.”
While it’s true that a number of medical organizations and hospitals that seem to have too much concern with their bottom lines have allowed political activists to bully them into violating their duty to “do no harm,” a growing number of doctors, medical organizations and governments around the world are waking up to the dangers of treating confused children as lab rats and are banning or reversing previous approval of these barbaric experiments.
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/06/07/norway-this-gender-bending-stuff-isnt-science-n556178
Nobody disagrees that “gender identity” is real, but if immature children claim to identify as the opposite gender, that doesn’t mean adults responsible for their well-being should subject them to permanent disfigurement via chemicals and surgery. Anorexia is a real condition, but that doesn’t mean we should allow doctors to treat it with liposuction.
As for the argument cited by this judge that “banning treatment for minors ignores risks patients might face” and that research suggests transgender youth and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal thoughts, here is some context: Maybe people suffering from gender dysphoria would be prone to the risks of stress, depression and suicidal thoughts even if doctors didn’t mutilate their bodies. Studies in Europe found that such treatments had no discernable effect on rates of suicidal thoughts, which is one reason why various nations there are turning against these practices.
And if someone claims their problem is not mental and demands that they be given drugs and unnecessary surgery or else they’ll kill themselves, doesn’t that seem like a pretty good indicator that they have a mental condition? The proper prescription for that is therapy. Or should we now prescribe drugs and surgery based on blackmail? Because I’ll bet a lot of people would threaten to kill themselves if it would get them a prescription for heroin, but that wouldn’t be a very sound medical practice, would it?
SPLC targets Moms group
America’s most lucrative hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, must not be generating enough income from putting mainstream conservative and Christian groups on its bogus list of “hate and anti-government groups” that it peddles to woke corporations. So now they’re adding moms who protest school boards that indoctrinate their kids with leftist and racist propaganda.
The SPLC’s latest target is Florida-based “Moms for Liberty,” a group they accuse of "galvanizing supporters around supposed ‘parental rights’ and ‘family values’” (the horror!) They’re described as part of an “anti-student inclusion movement” that “targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities” with “hard-right attacks.” They say Moms For Liberty’s primary goals are to “fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students – primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families."
Wow, they sound scary! And how are they advancing this Nazi-like campaign? I’ll let the SPLC elucidate: “They can be spotted at school board meetings across the country wearing shirts and carrying signs that declare, ‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.’ The group hijacks meetings, preventing officials and parents from conducting their normal proceedings." (Oh, so they're challenging what they see as destructive curricula and demanding to speak at open public meetings. Those MONSTERS!!)
Shock of shocks, Moms For Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich take exception to this hysterical depiction of them: "Name-calling parents who want to be a part of their child’s education as ‘hate groups’ or ‘bigoted’ just further exposes what this battle is all about: Who fundamentally gets to decide what is taught to our kids in school - parents or government employees? We believe that parental rights do not stop at the classroom door and no amount of hate from groups like this is going to stop that."
I make no secret of my utter contempt for the SPLC, a once-noble organization that used to fight real villains like the KKK. As that threat receded into history, and their own sex scandals and financial shenanigans were exposed, they had to keep ginning up fear and hysteria among paranoid liberals to keep the donations flowing. It worked. So now, they’re in the business of crying wolf, and according to them, any group to the right of Bernie Sanders is the next Klan.
Maybe if their own parents had raised them right and sent them to better schools, they would have grown up to be decent human beings.
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
FEATURED NEWS
Barr says Rep. Jamie Raskin “lied” about him; much more developing
If there’s a general theme today, it might be that the “48-hour rule” or even “72-hour rule” is sometimes good to follow on breaking news stories. We like to apply this when a story doesn’t smell quite right, if it’s from a dicey source, if it’s just too on-the-nose, if it seems really out of character for someone, or if we just don’t know enough yet. Let’s start with the statement made on Monday that it was then-Attorney General Bill Barr and his “hand-picked prosecutor” who ended the FBI’s investigation of a CHS’s allegation concerning then-VP Biden and a $5 million bribe.
Many in the media, looking to shift blame to a Trump appointee, ran with the story, but this newsletter did not. First of all, the statement came from Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who as a source is about as reliable as solar panels when smoke from raging Canadian wildfires is blotting out the sun. Perhaps only California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell rival Raskin in their ability to say absolutely anything their party trots them out to say, no matter how outrageous it might be. So, there was that.
Also, even though Bill Barr has been shall-we-say unpredictable at times in his pronouncements, the idea that he would squelch a look-see on such an important matter seems incredibly out of character for him.
And now, sure enough, the extremely reliable legal analyst Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST is out with an exclusive piece entitled “Bill Barr Confirms Rep. Jamie Raskin Lied About Biden Family Corruption Investigation.”
Barr personally told THE FEDERALIST that “it’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” adding, “On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
Raskin, ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, had made his statement to the media just after the closed-door meeting with the FBI and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, having been invited by the FBI to sit in. During the meeting, Comer and Raskin were briefed on the subpoenaed “1023,” which the FBI has still refused to turn over to the committee.
Raskin claimed that Barr had appointed U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania Scott Brady to head a group of prosecutors who would look into “all the allegations related to Ukraine.”
“After Rudy Giuliani surfaced these allegations,” Raskin said to the press [editorial aside: note the attempt to discredit the allegations merely by introducing a link with Giuliani], Brady’s team looked into the FD-1023 and “in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation,” and so “they called an end to the investigation.”
Raskin’s conclusion: “If there is a complaint, it is with Attorney General William Barr, the Trump Justice Department, and the team the Trump administration appointed to look into it.” Raskin later claimed the same thing in a press release.
Barr says flat-out that this is not true. Raskin also falsely suggested that the CHS’s allegations were related to information Giuliani had unearthed about Biden family corruption in Ukraine. Again, not so, according to Cleveland’s sources. The information from the CHS is “not derived” from any information supplied by Giuliani. In fact, it’s pre-Giuliani, going back to 2017.
We also know it was FBI headquarters that placed the information, after an assessment done by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, within a restricted-access subfile, preventing the office in Delaware from investigating it.
Wray is implicated, too, even if he wasn’t aware at the time of these goings-on, because, as Cleveland says, “framing the intel from the ‘highly credible’ longtime FBI CHS as coming from Giuliani reeks of a cover-up. And suggesting that Barr and Brady closed down an investigation into the FD-1023 when it was sent instead to Delaware for further investigation IS a cover-up.”
Jesse Watters invited Comer and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on his show last night for an update. Comer said there was “negotiating” going on with the FBI but that his committee still plans on “moving forward with contempt hearings on Thursday.
Grassley said the FBI was “absolutely” playing games. “We have an unclassified document,” he said. “We have what the FBI calls a credible source, because they paid this person, over years, six figures. And I’ve got a reputation for protecting whistleblowers, and we’re going to keep going until we get this document.” He believes the FBI is covering for President Biden. We would add that the ultimate person being protected here is President Obama, as he was responsible for policy, not Biden. Any bribe for policy decisions had to come with the understanding that Obama would go along. And if the FBI were only trying to protect Biden, they might have given up by now, as according to a new Rasmussen poll, 60 percent of likely voters think it’s likely that the FBI has helped cover up wrongdoing by Biden and his family.
UPDATE, as of late Wednesday night: FBI Director Chris Wray has finally agreed to allow members of the Oversight Committee to see the unclassified document, just in time to avoid being held in contempt of Congress.
As for the next story that needed a little waiting period, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a member of the House Oversight Committee, created a stir after Monday’s committee meeting when she tweeted that the FBI was worried their CHS on the Biden bribe story would be “killed” if that person’s identify were to be revealed.
An FBI statement made since then to the DAILY CALLER does imply as much, saying that “releasing confidential source information could potentially jeopardize investigations and put lives at risk.” However, this is also a convenient excuse for the FBI not to turn over the document to the committee. That excuse seems bogus; they should just redact the identifying information and turn the darn thing over. They also need to do whatever it takes to protect this CHS. But, absolutely, hand over that “1023,”, because if the information is so explosive that a source could be killed over it, it certainly is important enough to require congressional oversight.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/06/anna-paulina-luna-fbi-informant-biden-allegations
Watters asked Comer and Grassley about this very issue on his show last night. Grassley let loose: “Now, let’s put it this way --- compared to the way they’re treating Congress, as a second-class citizen, they gave THE NEW YORK TIMES on May 18 a CLASSIFIED document. We have an unclassified document. And they gave them the name of a human source. Did they worry about that person being assassinated? I think it’s all blue smoke.”
We also haven’t been closely following the “will-they-or-won’t-they indict Trump” chronicle that infects most of the media (on both sides). But today, JUST THE NEWS has an update that could be hugely significant.
According to John Solomon, just as Special Counsel Jack Smith informs President Trump he’s a “criminal target” in the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case and is “likely to be indicted imminently,” Trump’s defense has submitted evidence, still kept secret, alleging a prosecutor tried to sway witness testimony by discussing a federal judgeship.
Trump’s attorney’s asked that there be a delay in charging their client so they could “investigate allegations of witness tampering…” The ‘Justice’ Department denied their request. (Surprise.)
Multiple sources told Solomon that the allegations involve a senior prosecutor on the case trying to influence a key witness “by discussing a federal judgeship with the witness’ lawyer.”
So this is yet another developing story. In the meantime, the threat of Trump’s arrest over the “classified” documents issue might recall this observation by Mike Davis: “ICYMI from January 2021: Trump declassified these Crossfire Hurricane records. He may have legally declared a copy as “personal,” under the Presidential Records Act. These records could be very damaging to Biden, Obama and Hillary. Hence, the unprecedented and unlawful raid?” Intuition says this is a very good question. What did Trump have that they perhaps wanted back?
IN OTHER NEWS
WATCH MIKE
Today’s Huckabee video links include:
My appearance on ‘The Balance’ on Newsmax:
My Breakdown reports from:
Here’s my appearance Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s show, talking about Chris Christie entering the GOP Presidential race and related topics.
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=E6D6779B-3263-4752-A0C6-44C51927E102
And I spoke with Tony Perkins about the backlash against woke companies that are pushing “Pride Month.”
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=961DB552-F732-43E9-B11D-8D56831B4C35
Related: Stephen Kruiser of PJ Media suggests which months should be designated to celebrate the other six deadly sins.
Deadly Virginia Shooting
This week, two people were killed and five injured after a gunman opened fire near Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond as people were leaving a graduation ceremony for Huguenot High School. The two fatalities were a 36-year-old man and an 18-year-old male who had just graduated. Police have arrested a 19-year-old male who will reportedly be charged with two counts of second-degree murder.
At this point, the police haven’t released much information. But Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears said, "The people that I represent are not safe. They’re not safe in this city, and we have to figure out why that is. This is not about law-abiding gun owners. This is about gangs.”
I assume we will be learning a lot more about this tragic story soon. In the meantime, please keep the victims in your prayers.
RIP, JAZZ ICON ASTRUD GILBERTO
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
I’m sad to report that Brazilian jazz singer Astrud Gilberto has died at 83 of undisclosed causes. Although she hadn’t been active in the music world for a long time, she left an indelible stamp on jazz.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/astrud-gilberto-obituary-1234764496/
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65818566
In 1963, she’d never performed in public before when her then-husband, guitarist João Gilberto, was making an album with saxophonist Stan Getz and asked her to sing on a tune called “The Girl from Ipanema.“ Her cool, sultry style made it a massive hit that ignited a worldwide bossa nova craze and won the Grammy for Record of the Year. It even influenced Frank Sinatra, who recorded it on a bossa nova album with guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim. In 1996, George Michael sought her out to duet with him on a charity recording of “Desafinado.”
Astrud Gilberto was shy and didn’t like performing live, but she went on to release nearly 20 albums, as well as writing songs and acting in several movies. She complained about the misogyny of the music industry, how other people tried to take credit for her success or deny her credit for producing her albums, and she had to fight to be paid what she was owed. Her son Marcelo said there was also a backlash against her in Brazil, due to resentment for her becoming famous in other countries.
But I’d say she had the last laugh, not only leaving behind a rich legacy of music of her own, but inspiring so many others who wanted to be like her. Which explains why “The Girl From Ipanema” is the second-most covered song in history, after the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”
United in California
Well, the Democrats claimed they were going to unite Americans, and they’ve finally done it. California’s first Muslim Assemblyman, Bill Essayli, joined Republicans and Christians in walking out of the Capitol in protest when the Democrats honored a member of the blasphemous, Catholic-mocking drag group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, on the floor of the state Senate Monday.
They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, but I still say the bedfellows are stranger on the Democrat side.
MORE NEWS
Not kidding
Continuing the left’s policy of enabling homeless drug addicts to kill themselves, New York City is installing crack pipe vending machines. And as this story notes, no, this is not from the Babylon Bee.
https://notthebee.com/article/new-york-city-just-introduced-crack-pipe-vending-machines-really
Frankly, the only thing that surprises me about this story is that they’re only now doing it. I would’ve assumed that there were crack pipe vending machines in New York City dating back at least three mayoral elections.
CNN Firing
Just over a year ago, Chris Licht became CEO of CNN, and he set about the herculean task of turning it back into a legitimate, objective news channel with actual viewers. He did manage to get rid of Brian Stelter and Don Lemon, but with all the leftist rot at CNN, that was like trying to cut out your advanced brain cancer by trimming your nose hairs. He even greenlit a townhall with Donald Trump, but that only got Republicans to tune in for less than 90 minutes, while CNN’s few remaining non-airport viewers were outraged at hearing any views other than ones they already held.
So now, Licht himself is out, and will be replaced with a group of suits you’ve never heard of, all of them from the corporate media world. Or as the Who so brilliantly put it, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” They’ll get busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Here’s more on the story from Breitbart entertainment writer John Nolte, who has far more fun than is seemly celebrating how “Trump broke CNN.”
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2023/06/07/nolte-donald-trump-breaks-cnn-ceo-chris-licht-is-out/
Tucker Returns
Tuesday, Tucker Carlson made his return to broadcasting, or whatever you call it these days, with the first episode of his new show on Twitter. It drew a massive number of views, but it felt like a “getting your feet wet” episode, unless he plans for all future shows to be only about 10 minutes long and release several of them per day. Here it is on Rumble:
He covered two topics that are known to be important to him: the Ukraine war and UFOs. As for the latter, I was frankly surprised that he chose to make his Twitter bow with this story, both for what he said about it and what he didn’t say.
The story involves a supposed “whistleblower” with high level security clearance who claims that the US secretly has crashed UFOs (and the bodies of alien pilots) and for years has been studying the technology to reverse-engineer it. Carlson called this potentially one of the biggest stories in history, but he said all major media outlets had chosen to ignore it, citing that as proof that the media exists to bury the truth, not report it.
I can kind of get on board with that last part, but the rest is just flat incorrect. Immediately after watching this, I did a DuckDuckGo news search and found plenty of coverage of this story across the political spectrum, from the UK Guardian to the New York Post. Turning on Fox News, I saw it reported on the straight news and discussed in its own segment on “Gutfeld.” (Comedian Joe Machi had a great line: Why are we trying to reverse-engineer spaceships that crash? “Is this a trap?”)
In fact, this is the kind of splashy story that the media love to cover. It gets lots of eyeballs and clicks because there’s a built-in audience for it, thanks to it being the basis of countless movies and TV shows, from “Independence Day” to “The X-Files.” That’s not to disprove Carlson’s point that they want to distract us from all the important stories that they don’t want to cover. I’d say it actually proves that, just not the way he thinks it did. I was even surprised that Carlson covered it instead of some of the many other major stories that have occurred since he’s been out of the public eye.
As for the credibility of the story, well… The source has impressive credentials, but many commentators had questions. He claimed he’s given documentation to Congress members, but he didn’t share any photos or documents, and he admitted he hasn’t seen any of this himself. He assured us that other people he trusts told him this is true. That’s not exactly “whistleblowing.” There’s a legal term for that: “hearsay.” Up until Democrats started charging Trump and his supporters with everything under the sun, it wasn’t considered actual evidence.
And now, the part I’m surprised Carlson didn’t talk about: why this story would be coming out now. I’m pretty sure he believes there is a vast conspiracy of totalitarian/socialist/communist government leaders, megalomaniac billionaires and arrogant elitist pratts (ahem: “John Kerry”) who are trying to shred that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights so that they can establish a one-world global government and dictate how the rest of us live. It’s not even like it’s a secret conspiracy theory anymore; they go on TV and brag about it.
We also know that they see any “global threat” as a golden opportunity to advance their power-grabbing agenda. They did it with COVID and it worked frighteningly well, which is why we see them using organizations like the WHO to prepare us for giving up even more freedoms during the “next pandemic.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/who-eu-global-vaccine-passport-initiative/
Unfortunately for them, that blasted First Amendment still applies sporadically, and a lot of people have talked about their mishandling of COVID and are unwilling to be suckered a second time. “Climate change” is the other “existential threat” to the Earth that they’ve used for years to amass money and power, but after 60+ years of failed predictions, including snow still existing and the Pacific Ocean stubbornly refusing to cover Florida, people are growing skeptical of that, too.
So if you wanted to frighten people into thinking that there was an existential threat to Earth and we needed a global government to save us, wouldn’t the idea of space aliens be awfully convenient, not to mention well-timed (it suddenly leaks now after decades of it being kept top secret in a government that otherwise leaks like a sieve?)
That’s the angle that I’m surprised Tucker Carlson didn’t mention, since it seems to be in his wheelhouse. The “whistleblower” even made a comment himself ("This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us"), apparently oblivious to how that might sound like a motivation for such stories being internally circulated for leaking. Even President Reagan once said, “Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond…I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” Maybe that's the only idea today’s gang of one-world government pushers ever took from Ronald Reagan.
But they obviously did learn something from early 20th century journalist and curmudgeon H.L. Mencken, who wrote this a century ago:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
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