By Mike Huckabee
December 8, 2023
|
|
|
|
BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team!
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11
End of Year Notice
We'd like to keep the newsletter going but can't if we don't reach our monthly paid subscriber goal: we have to find 659 paying subscribers by the end of this month to keep the lights on.
As a free subscriber, I hope you will consider upgrading today.
With Hanukkah looming and Christmas not far behind it, I wanted to offer you the ability to receive my politics newsletter for the low price of $3.75 monthly or $27 annually as a gift to yourself. Just hit this link below, to receive my newsletter at the discounted rate:
I started this newsletter back in the fall of 2016 just ahead of President Trump's election over Hillary Clinton. Since then, I have chronicled his presidency, a nation grappling with COVID, woke ideology, elections, more elections, Congress and finally Joe Biden's presidency.
My team and I like to say that we read the news, so you don't have to. We spend late nights and early mornings, finding news we think is important for you to read, and then we add our two cents and sometimes three cents to help frame things.
It's hard work and time consuming, but we love to do it, and I hope you like to read it enough to pay for a subscription!
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
Subscribe to The Morning Edition (substack.com)
Here’s today’s link to continually-updated news on the war in Israel from Fox News…
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/december-8-israel-hamas-war
Hamas, that benevolent humanitarian organization so beloved on America’s college campuses, has reportedly murdered one of their hostages, Israeli taxi driver Eitan Levi. He was described as "a warm, loving family man who always cared for others over himself.” He loved to go hiking and eat at steakhouses with his son, and he loved animals, especially dogs. I tell you all this because he deserves to be remembered, and so you know that the people who kidnapped and murdered him deserve everything that the IDF is about to deliver to them.
Related: Some ignorant Western tools are having a hissy fit over photos of Hamas terrorists surrendering to the IDF en masse. Apparently, they think peaceful capture is a violation of their human rights now. Perhaps they'd prefer to be treated as they treat others.
Big Salute
A big salute to the newly-formed Jewish student group Harvard With Hamas, which took credit for hiring a plane to fly over Harvard University dragging a banner reading, “Harvard Hates Jews.”
I’m also very pleased to report that thanks to University of Pennsylvania president Liz McGill’s inability to tell Congress that she thinks threatening genocide against Jews is unacceptable, a donation of $100 million has been withdrawn.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/12/07/upenn-just-lost-a-100-million-donation-n2632153
Here's some more good commentary on the university presidents story, including the Babylon Bee's take...
https://instapundit.com/620860/
Appropriately enough, the IDF discovered that Hamas was operating out of the campus of a university in Gaza, using its buildings to store a huge stockpile of weaponry, including paint buckets filled with grenades.
Finally, for any deluded liberals who still think Hamas cares about the Palestinian people, listen to this elderly Palestinian lady say what really happens to the humanitarian aid that is sent to Gaza. Most of it is stolen and goes down the hole into the cowardly terrorists' tunnels, leaving little to nothing for the people.
Positive news for Trump
Donald Trump is celebrating a positive ruling by a New York appeals court, pausing the judge’s order to dissolve his businesses in New York state.
https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-celebrates-appellate-courts-good-ruling-inside-nyc-courthouse/
It’s a corporate death penalty that would affect thousands of employees, ordered by a blatantly partisan judge before he heard a single word of arguments or testimony. And over the past week, the testimony has pretty well blown apart Attorney General Letitia James’ real estate fraud narrative.
First, a Deutsche Bank executive testified that there was nothing unusual after the loans they made to Trump or their disagreement with him over property values. Then, Trump’s attorneys called New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov, who looked over the loan documents and testified that he found “no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” and that Trump’s financial statements “were not materially misstated.”
The prosecutor attacked the witness' character, calling his testimony “pure speculation from someone they hired to say what they want.” An angry Bartov fired back, “You should be ashamed of yourself, talking to me like that. I’m here to tell the truth.” Unfortunately for all these Trump prosecutors, the truth is very harmful to their narratives.
The appeals court, however, refused to halt the trial, which is what the judges in all these bogus cases should have done on day one. They’re all transparent selective prosecution and election interference on an unprecedented scale, and we shouldn’t have to put the defendants and the taxpayers through all the time, agony and expense of appealing all the way to the Supreme Court before finding a judge who has the integrity to say, “How dare you bring this garbage into my courtroom?”
How is Gavin/California doing these days?
If the Democrats are planning to use Hunter Biden’s indictments as their excuse for ditching Joe Biden and his plummeting approval rating (notice they haven’t done that to Bob Menendez, whom they need to keep in the Senate – remember, with them, it’s always about staying in power), they’ll need someone to take his place. And despite his insincere denials, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has obviously been running a shadow campaign for months while waiting in the wings for Joe to trip over a bag of Hunter’s Chinese money.
So if Gavin is going to be the nominee and promise to do for America what he’s done to…sorry, “for”…California, voters should take a good look at his record. Warning: you might need a hazmat suit to examine San Francisco.
So, how’s Gavin doing? This should give you a good idea: Fox Business News reports that due to a severe tax revenue decline caused by productive citizens fleeing California for red states like Texas and Florida, the state is having to slash spending to deal with a projected record $68 billion budget deficit.
Sounds like Gavin has done for California what the Democrats have already done to America, so who needs him in Washington?
Compromise
House Republican leaders agreed to a compromise $900 billion defense spending bill that does not restrict spending for abortions for military members or transsexual sex change procedures, but it does extend the FISA surveillance of American citizens. If you want to see the concessions that the Republicans actually got, click the link and see if you think it's worth it.
More bad EV news
It's been two whole days since I reported any negative electric vehicle news, so before it piles up any higher, I’ll clear out a couple of stories:
Ford is backing off its attempt to force dealers to spend up to $1 million each on expenses such as installing EV charging stations and training mechanics to work on EVs. The dealers are already dealing with lots full of EVs that nobody wants to buy, and they refuse to take on all those maintenance costs for their nonexistent EV customers. The dealers filed legal challenges against Ford in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota. While Ford won in South Dakota, New York courts granted the dealers a stay on the requirements, and Ford was just found in violation of the Illinois Motor Vehicle Franchise Act that bars car makers from forcing dealers to “purchase unnecessary equipment and adhere to unreasonable requirements.” “Unnecessary” and “unreasonable” are good adjectives to describe a lot of the pressure to force Americans into EVs.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ford-eases-ev-requirements-after-latest-5467112/
And this is an interesting video from Australia about the disastrous implementation of electric buses.
https://youtu.be/6zdSDnLSYEM?si=vxi6uxO13i401iJi
He describes how the “green” leaders of several communities wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on electric buses, only to find that they can’t get parts for them and they can run for only a few hours at most before having to sit idle as they charge for hours.
It’s also well worth watching for his comments on the ludicrous leftist fantasy of attaining “net zero” carbon emissions, and how it will devastate Western economies and harm working people while China and India continue building coal-fired power plants. As he observes, before we inevitably admit it's impossible, we will have wasted a staggering amount of money for very little benefit.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: if you really want a vehicle that creates the least pollution, buy a late model used gas-powered car, preferably a hybrid. You’ll get reliable transportation and high mileage from a high-efficiency, low-pollution engine with none of the pollution that comes from making a new car, especially the highly-polluting mineral mining necessary to make EV batteries. And you won’t be contributing to Third World child and slave labor, which I think of as a net positive.
The Three Stooges of the Left
If anyone needed another reason not to go into hock to send their kids to an “elite” university, they certainly got one this week when the three female presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce. Pressed to explain the widespread pro-Hamas protests by leftist students, with their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel chants that have terrorized Jewish students, the three stooges of the left dodged and dissembled, refusing to condemn this vile and violent hate speech as bullying or harassment, or to say that it violated their codes of conduct. They suggested it was “free expression” and had to be considered “in context.”
This from the same people who have spent the past few years firing, expelling and censoring any professors, students or guest speakers who dared to express a moderately conservative thought or even an unassailable fact, like that men can’t wish themselves into being women. But when their leftist students start holding the equivalent of Nuremberg Rallies on their campuses and chanting for a Jewish genocide, suddenly, they become defenders of free speech – even though open threats of violence are among the few legal exceptions to free speech protections.
The public backlash against these noodle-spined enablers of Hitler’s Harvard fan club was swift and furious. Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy declared that his company will no longer hire Harvard, Penn or MIT grads, and I think he’s probably one of many business owners thinking that, he just said it out loud.
One of them is hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who previously called on Harvard to release a list of all the student groups that signed that statement blaming Israel for Hamas’ attack so that he and other CEOs will know not to hire them. He’s given millions to Harvard in the past, but he says he’ll never donate again. He called on all three school presidents to “resign in disgrace” for their “utter moral bankruptcy.”
These academics seem to be notoriously slow learners, but even they quickly realized how badly they’d botched it because within 24 hours, they were already releasing video statements backtracking. NOW, they’re condemning threats of genocide against the Jews as “vile,” and claiming they just weren’t “focused” when they answered the question.
I am as close to a free speech absolutist as any conservative Christian is likely to be, and I certainly didn’t attend Hah-vahd, but I don’t need 24 hours to think it over when asked if calling for a second Holocaust is acceptable on-campus speech.
What’s happening in our streets and on Ivy League campuses is looking all too familiar to anyone who knows the history of the 1930s. In the lead-up to the Holocaust, most of the world’s population thought that talk of annihilating Jews was just over-the-top political hyperbole. It seemed so preposterous that the highly-educated elites in Europe and the US dismissed it as impossible. Only after eleven million murders, with six million of the victims being Jews, did the world declare, “Never Again!” There was a profound sense of guilt and regret that the threat to Jews, the infirm, the elderly and those who spoke up in support of Jews was not taken seriously until it was too late.
“Never again” means we can’t sit by silently and let this cycle of evil repeat itself. If university presidents are just too plain dumb or cowardly to lead the battle to protect all human beings, especially including the Jews from genocide, then we at least need to send our children and our money to institutions run by people who haven’t lost their minds and their decency.
The Fire Next Time
By Kenneth Allard
It was as if they had called The Stupids to Washington and invited them to perform for the TV cameras, delighting those idle kibitzers who love such spectacles.
On the one hand, here were three Ivy League presidents, none of whom seemed to have brought their neurons to the witness table. With all their smirking, sneering and condescending answers, viewers must have wondered if they had mistakenly tuned into The View: Which one was Joy Behar anyway? The core question: Do your respective codes of conduct prohibit the kinds of antisemitic rants we keep seeing on our TV screens? Their core answers seemed like oatmeal. Outraged, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik repeatedly pressed the witnesses to define when antisemitic speech became indistinguishable from action. As Penn trustee Bill Ackman summarized their response: “It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into conduct,’ that is, actually killing Jews.” He then added, “This could be the most extraordinary testimony ever elicited in the Congress, certainly on the topic of genocide…”https://twitter.com/
Writing in the New York Post, Rikki Schlott aptly summarized the proceedings as demonstrating the “institutional stupidity” of the Ivies, made even worse because Harvard was already notorious for suppressing free speech, particularly from conservatives. “Today’s professors are no longer predominantly stodgy, bow-tie wearing classical liberals. They’re critical theorists with nose piercings and a distaste for Western values…Desperate transgressors need to dig deeper in search of an edgy cause — and they’ve found one in the Israel-Palestine conflict.” https://nypost-com.cdn.
My letter to Senator Ted Cruz demanding that Harvard be de-funded had barely begun when TV coverage suddenly shifted to Exhibit B of the Congressional follies. Today’s controversy: women’s athletics and resolving the ever-popular issue of What Is A Woman? Although Supreme Court justices have been baffled by the latter, today’s congressional hearing asked: Should transgender athletes only be permitted to compete on teams “consistent with their gender identity?”
As Newsmax later summarized the hearing: “Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines called progressive Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., a "misogynist" after the lawmaker condemned the activist's testimony as "transphobic" and asked that it be stricken from the record during a House hearing.” Ms Lee, a member of “the Squad,” apparently denies those pesky safety and privacy issues when biological men are introduced to women’s sports and locker rooms. Fortunately, the committee’s chair, Congresswoman Lisa McClain, brought the debate (if not the controversy) to a merciful conclusion: “Quite simply, men do not belong in women’s sports. That this needs to be said out loud is really kind of a sad reflection of where the other side is on this issue. There should be no debate about this." https://www.newsmax.com/
No wonder we have a problem on our campuses when even athletics are so controversial! But wanting to complete my trifecta of argumentative hearings, I tuned in to see FBI Director Christopher Wray on the hot seat. For months, the back-and-forth between Wray and the House Judiciary Committee has been about the Bureau’s weaponization, specifically the lengths to which FBI agents went while investigating ‘traditional Catholics.” Was this investigative activity another example of government over-reach? https://judiciary.house.gov/
On Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wray was again a smooth performer, never losing his cool even when challenged sharply. “No sir, I was aghast when I learned of this problem and took immediate action to correct it. Well, no sir, no one’s been fired.” I was actually starting to nod off before Wray unexpectedly made headlines, saying that he sees “blinking red lights everywhere” since the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th. Although some threats varied more than others, “I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time.” https://americanmilitarynews.
Because I now reside just over a hundred miles north of our wide-open southern border, Wray’s assessment got my undivided attention. What better time and place could a terrorist want for a cathartic attack designed to break American morale, already at its weakest point? Why not strike hard and see if the American polity shatters in a thousand pieces?
For most of 2001, I worked as military-technical advisor on an MSNBC documentary premised on a terrorist attack in the heart of Manhattan. Yet I was as shocked as anyone by sight of that deadly 767 closing in on the Twin Towers like a marauding shark: and on this December 7th I still wonder what our enemies have planned for us.
COL (Ret.) Kenneth Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.
Another reminder
I wrote recently that much of today’s news reminds me of the Firesign Theater album, “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” All the ”best and brightest” assured us that Hillary couldn’t lose, Trump was a Russian agent, Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation, the vaccines stopped both the infection and spread of COVID, January 6th was an “insurrection,” etc. etc. etc. With each passing day, another bogus narrative is debunked, only to be replaced by another one offered up with equal unquestionable certitude.
Well, add to that the mantra that our elections are completely on the up-and-up and vote fraud doesn’t exist. Here’s a story about four elections that have been overturned in the past few years due to vote chicanery. The latest came on Tuesday, when a Louisiana judge voided a local sheriff’s election that the Democrat won by a single vote and ordered a run-off after some illegal votes were discovered. I wonder if there would be more than four overturned elections if we had more judges who would actually agree to look at the evidence?
Interesting timing for Hunter Biden indictment; Joe Biden is further implicated
By now, you’re no doubt aware that late Thursday, news broke of first son Hunter Biden facing indictment in the Central District of California on nine counts of tax-related criminal activity, including three felonies. As ABC NEWS reports, Hunter allegedly spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills, engaging “in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018, when he filed false returns in or about February 2020.”
Note that charges stemming from the years 2014 and 2015, when Hunter was raking in huge monthly income --- a reported $83,000 a month --- for being on the board of corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, are not included in the indictment, as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “Justice” Department let the statute of limitations run out on those years.
The charges against Hunter claim that rather than fulfill his tax obligations, he spent oodles of cash --- well, they don’t use the word “oodles” --- on an “extravagant lifestyle” including memberships in sex clubs and over $188,000 for “adult entertainment.” (This sort of thing is ironically known as cheap sex.) In just the year 2018, Hunter hemorrhaged money, spending $1.8 million on lavish personal expenses instead of paying Uncle Sam. That more than qualifies as oodles.
Weirdly, Special Counsel David Weiss reportedly said he “didn’t want” to bring charges against Hunter because “the average American would not be prosecuted for them.” I beg to differ. These are serious charges, carrying a maximum sentence of 17 years. If you or I had handled our tax liabilities as Hunter did --- and didn’t have a powerful father and a wealthy Hollywood “sugar daddy” to pay off our back taxes --- we would no doubt be sitting in prison right now, wondering if today’s baloney sandwich would be on white or wheat bread.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/07/
If you read the newsletter, you know the background of the Hunter case from this summer. He was supposed to be all set to plead guilty in Delaware to a gun charge and two misdemeanor tax charges in what has accurately been described as a “sweetheart deal” that would have given him immunity from future charges (!) stemming from the investigation, but that deal collapsed after presiding Judge Maryellen Noreika read the fine print and called attention to it. Prosecutors had to admit they’d never before seen anything like this very special deal. Weiss, who as U.S. Attorney for Delaware had been tasked in 2018 with investigating the financial allegations against Hunter, refiled the tax charges in the California court.
https://discernreport.com/
We weren’t sure anything would come of this, as the U.S. attorney for that district, Martin Estrada, was one of two Biden-appointed prosecutors (DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves was the other) who refused to work with Weiss on bringing charges against Hunter. But apparently Weiss has been working quite diligently with a grand jury in Los Angeles to gather the evidence for potential tax charges.
As the NEW YORK POST reported in August, Weiss was not planning to bring charges against Hunter at all until two IRS investigators assigned to the case, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, came forward and blew the whistle, citing political interference and claiming they had faced unique roadblocks in investigating Hunter, particularly when the trail would have led them to Joe Biden. Shapley testified that Weiss had said his hands were tied regarding whether or not to bring charges in other districts; Weiss denied this but the story was not consistent.
The timing is intriguing. This comes just as the GOP-led House Committees were cracking down on his lawyers’ efforts to thwart a subpoena to Hunter demanding he appear to testify in closed-door hearings. Lead attorney Abbe Lowell had told them his client would appear for a public hearing but not in a deposition behind closed doors, a more detailed and down-to-business examination which is typically done first. Hunter was being threatened with contempt of Congress charges if he didn’t appear for questioning on the scheduled date of December 13.
And this coming week, the full Congress (as opposed to the GOP-led committees, which were already investigating) was expected to hold a floor vote on initiating a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s involvement into his son’s foreign business dealings. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky announced that subpoenaed bank records showed Joe Biden had received $1,390-a-month payments from a business entity of Hunter’s that received money directly from a Chinese company. Hunter’s attorneys tried to pass this off as Hunter repaying his father for the use of a truck, but that doesn’t really matter; for whatever reason, Joe Biden was being paid through Hunter’s Chinese source of income.
As Sean Hannity said Thursday night, “This is not about Hunter Biden. Instead, this has always been and continues to be an effort to protect ‘the Big Guy,’ the brand, Joe Biden. Remember, without Joe Biden, there is no Biden brand,” the one we heard about from Hunter’s former business partners Devon Archer and Tony Bobulinski. There was no product for sale other than the connection with then-VP Joe Biden; access to him was the reason for the multimillion-dollar payments from China, Ukraine, Romania, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Even as the House committees are putting together bank records that show the family’s many shell companies and the flow of money, President Biden is still lying about his knowledge and involvement.
“And now,” Hannity said, “in order to save Joe and keep his campaign afloat, Hunter is likely being offered up as the ‘sacrificial lamb.’ They will prosecute Hunter, they will distance him and his crimes from his father, and then declare, ‘Oh, justice has been served.’ That’s what the new plan is.”
We thought it was especially interesting that this went down just as Hunter was being pressured to come in for hours of testimony next week. That is precisely what Hunter’s attorneys and the Biden campaign DO NOT want. And the announcement just happened (ha) to come on the same day House Republicans released the 14-page text of their upcoming resolution on an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. It’s expected to be brought to the floor next Wednesday.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/
FOX NEWS’ David Spunt explained more about the charges against Hunter last night, saying they were brought in California’s Central District because that encompasses Los Angeles, where Hunter has lived since April of 2018. Weiss is alleging that Hunter willfully chose not to pay his taxes and used a “scheme” to avoid paying them. Spunt also mentioned that Hunter has not been charged with a FARA violation, meaning failure to register as a foreign agent. Weiss is, however, planning to bring federal gun charges against Hunter in Delaware and says the investigation is still “ongoing.” Abbe Lowell, as Hunter’s attorney, had made no statement as of this writing early Friday morning.
But on Thursday night, investigative journalist John Solomon of JUST THE NEWS joined Hannity to offer more details, saying that this indictment “affirms every fact that the whistleblowers...gave. They’ve been tormented by some in the media, and certainly by Hunter Biden’s defenders. Their truthfulness is 100 percent confirmed in this indictment tonight.” (So is Solomon’s, by the way.)
He gives these whistleblowers credit for changing the course of history by refusing to stay silent. And right now, Joe Biden has “a very bad mark on his record.” As for son Hunter, he’s been shown in the indictment to be “a quintessential tax cheat.” Solomon says that in 2019, the Ukrainians tried to tell the U.S. government that Hunter hadn’t paid his taxes on the Burisma income, but “they were turned away.”
Let’s see...2019. Wasn’t that also the year Joe Biden started running for President? The year the FBI confiscated and hid Hunter’s abandoned laptop? (Gosh, 51 intelligence experts later said the laptop had all the “classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation, but WE were right about it in this newsletter --- yet we’re the ones who got flagged by Google, with help from them!)
So, with Hunter’s indictment, what happens to his testimony before Congress? He’s been threatened with contempt of Congress if he doesn’t appear December 13, so now his attorneys may tell him to just show up and take the Fifth.
https://www.foxnews.com/
Leave a Comment
Note: Fields marked with an * are required.