By Mike Huckabee
March 9, 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.
With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 NIV
In case you missed it: New book showcases stringed instrument collection of Mike Huckabee
It is said that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is a different kind of politician, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s assembled a different kind of collection of basses and guitars.
The governor’s zeal for guitars and basses began—as was the case for an untold number of other youngsters—when he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Almost three years later, at the age of 11, Mike’s Christmas present in 1966 was a Penncrest model 1580 electric guitar and amplifier, purchased from a J.C. Penney catalog.
And that exact instrument is one of the guitars and basses displayed and chronicled in the “Personal Time (Warp) Machines” chapter of BASSES AND GUITARS: The Huckabee Collection.
So why did Huckabee opt to participate in a photo-centric book project about his instruments?
“It had been suggested to me by more than one person,” the governor said, “and I loved the idea, because the collection is eclectic, with lots of stories behind the guitars.”
The book’s author is Willie G. Moseley, Senior Writer for Vintage Guitar Magazine. Willie has been writing for VG since 1989, and BASSES AND GUITARS: The Huckabee Collection Is his fifteenth book.
“I always appreciate it when guitar articles I’m researching happen to reveal intriguing ‘people stories’ that can be interpolated,” said Moseley, “and working with the governor on this book meant that I got to interview numerous luthiers who had built basses that are part of his collection. The governor also told me some great stories about why he was inspired to collect certain instruments.”
“I’ve known of Willie for years, from his many books and his work in Vintage Guitar Magazine,” said Huckabee. “I knew he would be the perfect author.”
BASSES AND GUITARS: The Huckabee Collection isn’t a high-end “coffee table book.” Its egalitarian presentation is no-frills, but the full-color images of Mike’s instruments are accompanied by detailed chronologies and information.
“The focus is on the instruments and the stories behind them, and not on the ‘box’ the stories come in,” the governor explained.
Chapters in the book include instruments (“plain” and autographed) that have been presented to Huckabee, Beatles-oriented instruments, and utility guitars and basses. A separate chapter profiles the three workhorse basses used on his weekly television show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
“In my opinion, the governor’s TBN show has a type of infotainment format that works,” said Moseley, “and that influenced the approach to the book—keep it accurate, and present the images and information in a straight-on and enjoyable format.”
Legendary guitarist James Burton wrote the foreword for BASSES AND GUITARS: The Huckabee Collection. Among the other participants who discuss the guitars they’ve played on the Huckabee TV are Doyle Dykes, Mark Farner, Steve Wariner, Vince Martell, Greg Martin, Doug Phelps and Richard Young.
Huckabee was asked if he had any favorite “people stories” in the book.
“Great music stories are really ‘people stories’,” he opined. “One story I love to tell is about getting a letter from Peter Cetera after he saw me play on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and he had the Pat Wilkins bass made for me. The bass is special, but so is the story!”
While the Wilkins bass is a custom-made instrument that he uses on this TV show, Gov. Huckabee is also proud to note that his cheap 1966 Penncrest guitar—which he reacquired in the late ‘90s after some 30 years—is also displayed in full color in his collection book.
“It’s the one that started it all,” he said.
To buy a Mike Huckabee autographed copy of the book go to his website here: The Huckabee Guitar Collection - Mike Huckabee
Chuck Schumer: The lowest of the low
By Mike Huckabee
Having been in politics longer than Ariana Grande has been alive, I have seen more than my share of blatant opportunists and unrepentant, bald-faced liars. But I have to admit, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech in the Senate yesterday might have set a new benchmark for the lowest I’ve ever personally witnessed.
Schumer looked Americans in the eye (or down his nose, as usual), and read into the Congressional Record a demand that a news outlet with First Amendment protection (Fox News) be censored because one of its reporters was showing unaltered video proving that Schumer and his cohorts have been lying to us all for two years, and that their lies have resulted in the prosecution and imprisonment of American citizens who are more than likely innocent. Schumer actually expects us to believe that by letting the American people see the full evidence from the surveillance cameras on January 6th instead of the cherry-picked, edited and altered excerpts that the Democrats and their partisan allies wanted us to see, Speaker McCarthy “enabled the big lie and has further eroded away at our precious democracy.” McCarthy has responded to that:
As I’ve written before, it’s now apparent that the real “Big Lie” of the 2020 election was that Joe Biden was a bipartisan, moderate centrist. Schumer, however, would have us believe that allowing Americans to see all the evidence and decide for themselves is an assault on “our precious democracy.” Funny, I thought that was the foundation of our jury system.
Schumer’s speech was so slimy, dishonest, self-serving, reprehensible, un-American and obviously panic-driven at the thought of his carefully-constructed tower of lies being toppled that I considered making a video myself to respond to it. But then I realized, the great Johnny Cash had already done it for me. He did it in this video:
Johnny’s words are worth quoting directly to Sen. Schumer:
“Well, you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man.
But as sure as God made black and white,
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light.
You can run on for a long time,
Run on for a long time,
Run on for a long time,
Sooner or later God'll cut you down.
Sooner or later God'll cut you down.
Go tell that long tongue liar,
Go and tell that midnight rider,
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter,
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down…”
There is a difference
The president of USA Powerlifting is quite reasonably considering an appeal after a Minnesota state judge sided with a biological male who “identifies” as female and ordered that “trans” males be allowed to compete in women’s weightlifting competitions. The president said it’s obvious that the capacities of males and females “differ significantly in purely strength sports.”
But the judge, in siding with transgender weightlifter JayCee Cooper, ruled that "The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than. That is the very essence of separation and segregation, and it is what the (Minnesota Human Rights Act) prohibits."
That is just outright nutty. Expecting biological males to “identify” as biological males in weightlifting contests is not “making them pretend to be something different” than they are. It’s expecting them to accept who they are and not forcing the rest of us to pretend they’re something different. Cooper isn't being told "you're less than" the girls, but that "you're much more than the girls," by a considerable and unfair amount of muscle mass. And if that judge really thinks there’s no difference between men and women when it comes to lifting weights, then I feel sorry for his poor wife, having to carry all their luggage through airports by herself.
Let’s hope this is appealed to a higher court with a judge who at least identifies as being sane. In the meantime, note the celebratory tweet from a group laughably misnamed “Gender Justice,” praising Cooper for being “courageous and strong.” I agree, Cooper is certainly strong. Strong as an ox. A male ox. And that’s precisely the problem.
Crazy idea
The Washington, DC, police chief has a piece of advice for the city council on how to reduce the rising homicide rate: “Keep violent people in jail.”
It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work!
Russell Brand gets it
Watch red-pilled British comedian Russell Brand on Bill Maher’s show eviscerate an MSNBC analyst for trying to claim it was reasonable to disbelieve the lab leak theory because it was coming from racist and biased sources like Trump and Fox News. Brand said he’d appeared on MSNBC, and it was “propaganda” and “nutcrackery.” When the MSNBC mouthpiece demanded an example, Brand had one ready and threw it in his face. If he had needed any help, he could've called me and I would've given him a couple dozen.
Must-see video
I hadn’t seen this channel before, but this is impressive. The Treehouse News analyzes the new Disney “Proud Family” series’ angry racial propaganda aimed at children, “Slaves Built This Country,” and cites real history to refute every false claim in it. I think you’ll like this lady, she’s really good!
Wayne Shorter, R.I.P.
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
As a music lover, indie record label co-owner, University of North Texas graduate, and husband of a jazz singer (Laura Ainsworth) whose dad was a major big band saxophonist, it gives me great sorrow to have to report that Wayne Shorter died Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital at 89.
https://news.yahoo.com/saxophonist-weather-report-co-founder-194054530.html
Shorter was an extremely influential saxophonist, composer and arranger who was a founding member of the pioneering jazz fusion group Weather Report. He played with everyone from Miles Davis and Art Blakey to Steely Dan (he played the sax solo on “Aja”), Carlos Santana and Joni Mitchell. Over a career that spanned seven decades, he was nominated for Grammy Awards 23 times and won a dozen, most recently in 2019 for Best Jazz Album for his final release, “Emanon.” He retired from performing in 2018 due to health problems, but continued composing.
If you’d like to explore his music, USA Today compiled some videos of some of his most popular tracks, including the jazz standard, “Birdland.”
https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/wayne-shorter-best-songs-died-jazz
For those wanting to do a real deep dive, Ranker.com has a list of his albums ranked by fans (but don’t necessarily go by that.)
https://www.ranker.com/list/best-wayne-shorter-albums-list/reference
Finally, Robert Spencer at PJ Media penned an appreciation of Wayne Shorter and how his passing represents the passing of a great era of American music, art, literature and culture, the likes of which are almost nonexistent today.
The targeting of Elon Musk; Shellenberger testifies today
Before we get into the story of what the left is trying to do to Elon Musk for daring to expose the truth about Twitter, here’s an update on January 6 and Jason Chansley. Chansley, alternately dubbed “the QAnon shaman” or “Chewbacca,” was sentenced to four years in prison simply for going into the Capitol building in a Viking helmet and, escorted by hospitable Capitol Police officers who even opened the door for hm, peacefully entering the Senate chambers. The video of this peaceful stroll that Tucker Carlson revealed on Monday was exculpatory to Chansley, though J6 prosecutors had withheld it from the court as well as his defense.
Chansley’s attorney, Albert Watkins, had never seen this evidence (!) until it was aired Monday, and he appeared on Tucker’s show Wednesday, saying it had been his job as Chansley’s attorney to know everything “good and bad” that the government had before his client made the decision to go to trial or take a plea. It’s obvious now that the government KNEW Jacob was not violent, that he had simply walked around, casually accompanied by nine officers. As for the video, Watkins had requested what video evidence they had, but “I didn’t get it,” he said. “It wasn’t disclosed to me. It wasn’t provided to me...They had a duty, an absolute duty, with zero discretion, to provide it to me, so that I could share it with my client.”
What’s happened is “a dagger in the heart of the American justice system,” he said. After this derailment of justice, Chansley should be released from prison immediately. This innocent man also deserves restitution for his long time behind bars, and he and his lawyer will have to determine what form that should take.
“We’re living through one of those clarifying moments,” Tucker Carlson said Wednesday, “that we should be thankful for, where we’re learning exactly who the liars are.” But the liars have nothing to fall back on but rage, and, of course, more lies. A must-watch...
https://rumble.com/v2cbbks-tucker-goes-scorched-earth-on-dc-swamps-lies.html
(The Capitol Police have since responded; scroll to the end for that.)
Some people just can’t stop lying, even when the truth is right here for all to see. Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the January 6 Kangaroo Kommittee, actually disputed Tucker Carlson’s claims that they deceptively edited security video footage from that day, when we absolutely know they did. And he apparently didn’t even know that Jason Chansley had been sentenced to four years in prison. “I don’t know who he is,” Thompson said. If ignorance is bliss, he must be supremely happy.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/7/bennie-thompson-jan-6-committee-chairman-denies-pa/
Now, on to Elon Musk, who, ever since his personal assault on public-private censorship that we find nothing less than heroic, is being subjected to an all-out assault from the left. It’s usually very easy to see when this kind of orchestrated attack has begun, as some memo/mantra is always sent out to key media friends, advising them to start using certain focus-group-tested verbiage. With Musk, for example, they know to tie his name to Rupert Murdoch’s whenever possible.
Jeff Charles at REDSTATE has noticed this, too.
Those on the left who wanted Twitter to maintain control of the political narrative were not going to go quietly when Elon Musk stepped in to stop them. As Charles put it, “The authoritarian left went into full meltdown mode over the prospect of not having supremacy over the platform any longer.”
And it’s all Elon’s fault! The left used to love Elon. Why, he was building electric cars! Cars that few besides Leo DiCaprio could afford to drive, but still! However, once he recognized and called attention to the gaslighting that was being done by the left, that love turned to hate, and they threw everything they had at him to see what would stick. They accused him of continuing to allow child pornography on Twitter. They claimed that by not moderating content the way they saw fit, he was increasing bigotry and hate on Twitter. And now, even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has targeted him. (We’ll get to that.)
The BBC conducted their own investigation, which concluded that hundreds of accounts recently allowed back on Twitter “have been spreading abuse or misinformation.” They said they found “problematic content [editorial aside: a favorite leftist cliche] posted on the platform in over a third” of the accounts that had been restored. Read Charles’ report for details of their very-objective “study,” which focused only on accounts with right-leaning views. Progressives who engaged in the type of behavior they were purportedly studying got no mention.
Another reason the left is coming after Elon is that he’s not scared of them and will come right back, brilliantly. Take this example…
And now, Michael Shellenberger, one of the independent journalists given access by Musk to the internal communications at Twitter (the “TwitterFiles”), has tweeted: “The Biden administration is demanding that @elonmusk explain why he allowed journalists access to the Twitter Files. This is an outrageous attack on the First Amendment...I look forward to discussing this directly with Congress on Thursday morning.”
Unbelievably, the FTC is demanding to see journalists’ work product relating to the Twitter Files.
Shellenberger went on: “There is no logical reason why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter. There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”
“The strong inference from these facts is that Twitter’s rediscovered focus on free speech is being met with politically motivated attempts to thwart Elon Musk’s goals,” he continued. “The FTC’s demands did not occur in a vacuum. They appear to be the result of loud voices on the left, including elected officials --- urging the federal government to intervene in Musk’s acquisition and management of the company. The FTC’s harassment of Twitter is likely due to one fact: Musk’s self-described ‘absolutist’ commitment to free expression in the digital town square.”
But, yes, Shellenberger is testifying today about this before the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. In the Executive Summary of the Committee report, they state that as part of their responsibility to protect civil liberties, and “consistent with the Committee’s oversight responsibilities of the FTC, the Committee has been conducting oversight of the unusual response by the FTC to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter last year.”
The FTC has sent over a dozen letters to Twitter over a span of three months following Musk’s acquisition, making more than 350 specific demands. New information the Committee has acquired “shows how the FTC has been attempting to harass Twitter and pry into the company’s decisions on matters outside the FTC’s mandate.”
Here’s the full subcommittee report.
It was Ryan Tracy of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL who reported this story, but it’s subscription-only. Here’s more information. The FTC is even calling for information on “the launch of Twitter Blue.”
Dan Bongino had plenty to say in his Wednesday podcast: “What business is it of the FTC to question a private business, Elon Musk’s Twitter, over their HR decisions [hiring practices, etc.]?” None whatsoever. “It’s a frigging police state apparatchik,” he said, “of Joe Biden’s new police state.” The Biden appointee running the FTC, Lina Kahn, is a “freaking lunatic,” he said, “...a crazy person drunk with power, who is destroying that entity, the FTC.”
“I expect lawsuits and hearings on this immediately,” Bongino said. “It’s a big deal...please don’t let this go. Contact your congresswoman or congressman today and ask them about this, because if this continues, this bureaucratic police state, that just usurps power, starts demanding this, demanding that, then there’s nothing left, folks.”
He’s right about calling our representatives --- we’ve got to start taking a more activist role. In the meantime, even President Biden is marching in step with the left’s hard-targeting of Elon. Months ago, when asked in the press room if Musk, since his joint acquisition of Twitter “with foreign governments that include the Saudis,” was a threat to national security, Biden chuckled and then said, very slowly and deliberately, “Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.” Biden is one to talk about relationships with other countries, but we’ll just let that sit.
UPDATE: Chris Bray at American Greatness reports that Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger tried to refute Tucker Carlson’s video of Capitol officers escorting a peaceful Jason Chansley around the building by claiming that they did that as a “de-escalation tactic” because they were outnumbered by the rioters and thought it would be prudent to engage with him peacefully and show him around.
https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/08/beware-the-nonresponsive-response-to-tucker-carlson/
Okay, that explains WHY they showed him around peacefully. But he’s sitting in a prison cell for four years because he’s convicted of violently attacking the building. The Police Chief’s own explanation is an admission that that crime didn’t happen. In fact, he’s giving his officers credit for preventing it! So why is Chansley in a federal prison, again?
Finally, please read the entire article. Bray makes a great point that this is the only specific refutation of any of Tucker’s claims by his critics. The left is railing furiously against him, calling him everything from Hitler (of course) to a “demonic sycophant” (Michael Steele on MSNBC), and claiming that by showing Americans the unedited video evidence, he’ll be responsible for “the next January 6th.” Yet not a single one of them has even tried to factually refute any of his specific points that upend their narratives.
As Bray writes, “When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air.” Correct: it’s intended to get you so riled up thinking what a monster Tucker Carlson is for telling you the nasty truth that you won’t ponder how they’ve led you down the garden path with lies for the past two years.
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