By Mike Huckabee
August 24, 2021
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Good evening!
Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! Topics include:
- Bible Verse of the Day - Psalm 19:1
- Are Biden's Divisive Mask Mandates Coming?
- Absolute Chaos In Portland
- A New Governor In New York
- Sinema Stands Against Democrats' Massive Spending Bill
- A Small, Positive Story
- China cozies up to the Taliban, Iran, Russia
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
19 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Psalm 19:1
Are Biden's Divisive Mask Mandates Coming?
By Mike Huckabee
Monday, the FDA gave approval to the Pfizer COVID vaccine, and President Biden immediately called on employers to start mandating that their employees take it.
While many Americans are still hesitant to take the vaccine, the FDA action will make it harder to mount legal challenges based on the claim that it’s still unapproved – not that the legal challenges have been very successful so far anyway. Still, this is an end run around red state Governors who say they’ll oppose any attempts by Biden to illegally impose vaccine mandates: instead of imposing them himself, he’s leaning on employers to impose them or people will lose their jobs. But this could lead to a whole new wave of lawsuits from a different angle: wrongful termination.
As with almost every issue Biden touches, it’s as if he asked himself, “What’s the most divisive way I can go about this?” and then does that.
Absolute Chaos In Portland
By Mike Huckabee
If you’ve seen any video this week from the streets of Portland, Oregon, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for footage from Kabul. It’s a fascinating example of how far-left rule always ends the same way: in absolute chaos. In Portland, far left and far right groups are clashing in the streets with rising levels of violence. It started with property destruction and shooting paintballs, air guns, fireworks and chemical spray at each other, which escalated to baseball bats and on Sunday, gunfire.
And where are the police during all this? Standing by and doing nothing, as ordered. They’ve been told to take a “hands-off” approach and observe the violence from a distance, only intervening when it got so out of control that actual shots were fired. This, “despite calls by officials and police to remain peaceful.”
Meanwhile, far-left Mayor Ted Wheeler insists this was the right strategy and is a success: “This time, violence was contained to the groups of people who chose to engage in violence toward each other. The community at large was not harmed and the broader public was protected. Property damage was minimal.” He said a larger police presence might have enticed Antifa into attacking police or damaging more property. (Hint: that would have been your cue to arrest them.)
So, just to recap: a weak leftist leader tried to stop violent radicals from doing what they do by begging them to be peaceful. He failed to use the force available to him to keep order for fear that the radicals might not like that. And now they’re trying to convince us that despite the evidence of our lying eyes, there’s no out-of-control violence or citizens feeling threatened. No, this strategy has been a whopping success.
If anyone can tell me any difference between how Wheeler is handling Portland and how Biden is handling Afghanistan, aside from the scale of the carnage, I’d love to hear it.
A New Governor In New York
By Mike Huckabee
As of this morning, Andrew Cuomo is no longer Governor of New York, and that sound you just heard was millions of New Yorkers heaving a simultaneous sigh of relief. Cuomo being Cuomo, he couldn’t even leave without controversy, involving both his dog and his commutations of sentences for several convicted murderers.
But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t trying to abandon his dog. As radioactive as he is in the Democratic Party, if he wants any friends at this point, he’s going to need his dog.
Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul is being sworn in today as New York’s first female Governor. As someone who also became Governor during a turbulent and divisive time, due to the resignation of a corrupt Governor, I know the challenges she’ll face and sympathize. While our politics are obviously not in alignment, I wish her well in repairing the damage and restoring confidence in the state government. I hope she will consider how both bad policies and arrogance brought Cuomo down, and that she will work across the aisle, listen to the people and hear their grievances, and try to unite rather than divide or dictate.
If I could offer her a piece of friendly advice, it would be to read this article from the Federalist:
It’s about how new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks New York as the fourth-worst state in unemployment. But beyond that, there’s a wider message. Note that the bottom nine states for employment all have Democrats in control of both the legislative and executive branches, while nine of the top ten states are run solidly by Republicans.
One of the first issues Gov. Hochul will have to deal with is the expanded federal unemployment benefits ending on September 6th. Many red states cut them off early because they were preventing people from taking jobs by paying them more to stay unemployed than to work. When they end, many New Yorkers will need to get back to work. That might be difficult if businesses are still being locked down, or ordered to turn away half their customers for not being vaccinated. Some harsh economic reality is barreling toward New York like a subway train. It’s best to start working to get off the tracks now.
Sinema Stands Against Democrats' Massive Spending Bill
By Mike Huckabee
Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema announced Monday that she will not support the Democrats’ massive, transformative, $3.5 trillion spending bill, possibly killing their hopes for forcing it through with just 51 votes as a budget reconciliation bill (which is a total perversion of that process, by the way.)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/sinema-dashes-house-dems-hopes-for-3-5-t-infrastructure-bill
Sinema supported the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill, but her spokesperson said she won’t support a budget reconciliation bill that costs $3.5 trillion. Incidentally, supporters of that bill have now started calling it a “human infrastructure” bill, which is obviously a focus group-tested euphemism for “bill that has nothing to do with actual infrastructure, but people like spending money on ‘infrastructure’ so we’ll call anything that.”
Interestingly enough, while Democrats are telling us we need to pass these bills to spend trillions we don’t have in order to stimulate the economy, the stock market, which had been falling for days, turned positive as news came that Biden’s spending bills may be bogged down in Congress.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/stock-futures-higher-biden-infrastructure-plan-doubt
And if you’re wondering why businesses would be relieved to see that bill die, here’s why:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/big-business-coalition-ad-campaign-democrats-spending-package
A Small, Positive Story
By Mike Huckabee
I hate bringing you so much terrible news (and I wish the Biden Administration would stop making so much of it.) But here’s a small, positive story that I think will warm your heart. It’s about a World War II veteran who finally tracked down three Italian children whom he saved from the Nazis. They posed for a photo together in 1944 that he’s treasured for decades. And now, they’ve all recreated that photo, even though the three Italian siblings are now octogenarians and the veteran is 97.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/american-wwii-vet-reunites-with-italians-he-saved-as-children
Read the whole story, check out the photos, and see why he says their mother was the real hero that day.
China cozies up to the Taliban, Iran, Russia
By Mike Huckabee
Investigative reporter Lara Logan made a good point about the fiasco in Afghanistan on last night’s Tucker Carlson show. She said that “this doesn’t just empower al-Qaeda, and the terrorists’ offensive. It empowers every enemy the United States has.”
That observation might apply most specifically to China, which, according to China analyst Gordon Chang, has ties with the Taliban that go back over 20 years, to before 9/11.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/china-taliban-connection-hold-beijing-accountable-gordon-chang
Did anyone think it was odd that the Chinese Embassy in Kabul stayed open as the Taliban took over Afghanistan? The Taliban and the CCP must have had some sort of “understanding.” In contrast, we know what happened to OUR embassy as the Taliban advanced and Biden retreated and, in effect, surrendered. Our State Department abandoned their embassy building, the Taliban sacked it, and they took all the files left behind that identified Afghans who had helped America. God help those Afghans who were our friends.
As Chang reports, on July 28, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with senior Taliban officials in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The next step is for China to officially recognize the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
This association between the Taliban and China is nothing new. I wonder if we’ll ever know what role, if any, China might have played in the attack on the Twin Towers 20 years ago. Apparently, Huawei, along with another telecommunications company, ZTE, worked on Kabul’s telecom system two years before that. Right after 9/11, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said that China had no “formal relations” with the Taliban, that the only ties they had were on the “working level,” and that reports of China building telecom networks and dams for the Taliban were “unfounded rumors.”
Does anybody buy that? If recent events have brought about one thing, I hope it’s a total lack of patience with being LIED TO, over and over. Seriously, can we believe anything the CCP tells us about the virus? Can we believe anything the Taliban tell us about letting Americans into the airport? For that matter, can we believe anything our own administration tells us? Biden, Harris, Jen Psaki, the Joint Chumps of Staff? Tragically, no. As I said to Sean Hannity on his TV show last night, our administration is lying to us. Allies must assume they’re lying, too.
When Psaki, with a fleeting smile, can “call out” reporter Peter Doocy as “irresponsible” for suggesting that Americans are stranded outside the airport in Kabul, when we know that’s exactly what they are, then we can’t trust anything our leaders are telling us. When Biden assures us he’ll get all Americans out “who want to leave,” his implication that some Americans DON’T want to leave is such a huge whopper, it insults our intelligence. They all want to leave. I’m tired of being lied to.
Anyway, Chang says that ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES reported in the aftermath of 9/11 that Indian intelligence officials believed Huawei India (yes, there’s a Huawei India!) supplied communications surveillance equipment to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Huawei denied the charge, and a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman called it “misleading.” Not untrue, it should be noted; misleading.
China has also been a main supplier of small arms to the Taliban and insurgents in Iraq, a vast array of weaponry and ammo, some of which were shipped by dirty arms merchants directly from China’s factories. Some weapons were routed through intermediaries in Iran and Pakistan, but central Chinese authorities had to know where they were headed, as there would have been government surveillance every step of the way. Chang singles out a “series” of U.S. Presidents, notably George W. Bush, for looking the other way.
So, why would our leaders just let this go on? Recall that at the time, the thinking was to bring China in to the international system, to “engage” China, to indulge China, to trade with China, to fund Chinese virology labs hard at work studying bat viruses. Well, I made that last part up, sort of.
It turned out we couldn’t trust China, and the optimism is gone when it comes to dealing with that totalitarian state. After what Chang calls “two decades of aggressive, malicious and provocative acts,” we can no longer overlook their dangerous conduct. It’s not just the Taliban who must be held accountable for their terrorist atrocities, but also their #1 sponsor: China.
I have to wonder what Chang, who wrote the book THE COMING COLLAPSE OF CHINA, is thinking of China’s position of power right now. Who, exactly, is collapsing? Our once-dependable power center, the Oval Office, is now a vacuum, a void, a cipher, a blank, a Black Hole in our universe that compares to nothing in our previous experience. So China is sitting in the catbird seat at the moment and will use this time as productively as possible.
China has also said it plans to coordinate with Iran and Russia on joint naval drills in the Persian Gulf, either late this year or early next year. The three countries pulled together for similar exercises in 2019. They plan to make it an annual event.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/23/iran-holding-joint-naval-drills-with-russia-china-in-coming-months/
The Russian ambassador said that these drills are being done “to practice actions to ensure the safety of international shipping and the fight against sea pirates.” Okay……
Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, met with the president of China, Xi Jinging, last week, reportedly to tell Xi that Iran was “ready to cooperate with China in establishing security, stability and peace in Afghanistan.” Ah, so this is who holds influence in the "new" Afghanistan as we depart. Raisi said, “We believe the departure of foreigners [NOTE: by “foreigners,” he means America], as well as past experiences in this country, has highlighted the need for the support and participation of all Afghans to ensure the security and development of Afghanistan more than ever.”
Raisi also spoke to Russian President Putin, saying much the same thing, that they should “make the U.S. withdrawal a turning point for lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.” He’s also spoken with Japan’s foreign minister, who traveled to Iran for the meeting.
Incidentally, Iran’s nuclear program is chugging right along, with the U.N. confirming that they’ve produced uranium metal enriched to 20 percent for the first time and have upped their production of enriched uranium by 60 percent. Of course, Iran insists this is for its civilian nuclear program; they’re not interested at all in developing a bomb.
I wonder if even Jen Psaki could tell a lie that big. On second thought, sure she could.
China and its growing circle of friends need to know that Americans won’t stand for the current situation and will soon be tossing out our worthless “leaders.” We’d do it today, if we could. Time to admit the biggest national mistake in history. It’s obvious we need leaders like Trump, maybe Trump-to-the-tenth-power, to reassure our allies that we haven't lost our minds and impress upon our adversaries that there are consequences to stepping out of line with us.
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