By Mike Huckabee
September 14, 2021
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Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!
Today's newsletter includes:
- Bible Verse of the Day - James 3:17-18
- The Backlash Against Vaccine Mandates
- The Best Place On God's Green Earth
- Here we go; Maricopa County canvass draws "fact"-checkers
- Poll shows government fear campaign WORKS!
- A Loss In Court
- Facebook Secret Revealed
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
James 3:17-18
The Backlash Against Vaccine Mandates
By Mike Huckabee
What is it with liberal Democrats treating nursing homes like Godzilla treats Tokyo? First, it was Andrew Cuomo ordering nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients. Now, with the aging population and the pandemic already creating a shortage of elder care workers, President Biden’s vaccine mandate is set to make it worse. I told you yesterday about the hospital that was shutting down its maternity ward because so many staffers quit rather than comply with the government mandate. Now, it’s going to affect people on the other end of life, too.
And the backlash against the vaccine mandate is hardly limited to health care workers. A number of state Governors are already planning lawsuits to fight it. A big protest broke out in New York (hardly a bastion of rightwing Trump supporters), and teachers were seen among the protesters.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/anti-vaccine-mandate-protesters-new-york-city-joe-biden
A new Trafalgar survey also finds that that anger is pretty common across America.
There’s also an angry backlash over news that Congress is exempt from the vaccine mandate, although to be fair, Biden has no power to issue such an order to the legislative branch. But some would argue that he also doesn’t have the power to issue it to every business with over 100 workers, but here we are.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congress-exempt-biden-covid-19-vaccine-mandate
And it didn’t have to be this way. There are much more effective ways that Biden could've helped the US reach herd immunity other than acting like a dictator and assuring that millions of Americans would dig in their heels and say no. For instance, he might have expressed gratitude to President Trump for facilitating such rapid development of vaccines and asked Trump to join him for a joint effort to promote vaccination (which Trump has done.) But again, demonizing Trump is more important than convincing people to get vaccinated. That’s certainly how Trump sees it.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-covid-19-vaccine-democrats-coronavirus
Biden ran on a promise of being a bipartisan uniter, but all he’s done since taking office is attack anyone who disagrees with him and wield government power like a caveman’s club. What happened to that balloon juice about being the “adult in the room”? When I was a kid, my mother (the real adult in the room) didn’t get me to eat spinach by threatening me. She told me that Popeye ate spinach and it made him strong, and that did the trick. And having both had the jab and eaten spinach, I can assure you the latter was much less pleasant to a kid.
We have readers leaving messages in our comments section who are genuinely concerned about the reports they’ve read of serious side effects. They don’t know whether to believe these sources or not. One man mentioned that he’s 78, a prime danger zone for COVID, but he’s afraid to get vaccinated. That greatly concerns me.
I’m not a doctor or a dictator, so I don’t feel it’s my place to tell strangers what medical decisions to make. The situation varies with each individual, which the government doesn’t want to acknowledge. Some people might have a history of serious adverse reactions to vaccines. Many millions have already had COVID and might have natural immunity that’s at least as effective as vaccination, if not more so. Each person has to weigh the risks vs. benefits.
For many people (particularly my reader who’s 78), the risks of COVID infection likely far outweigh the risk of vaccine side effects. They need to talk to their doctors for advice.
In my case, I had respiratory issues that would make COVID extremely dangerous, so I was grateful to get vaccinated, and like the vast majority of people, I’ve suffered no side effects. It’s important to remember that almost nothing is pure black and white. Yes, there are breakthrough cases, but no vaccine is ever 100% effective. Yes, some people suffer side effects, even severe ones; but that’s a miniscule percentage of the hundreds of millions of vaccine recipients (and there are different vaccines; you might be scared over stories about a vaccine we don’t even use in America.)
The best way to persuade people to get vaccinated isn’t through threats and demonization, it’s through persuasion and education. Be completely transparent and honest, give them the facts, and respect their right to make the best decision for themselves.
Or are all those things beyond this Administration?
The Best Place On God's Green Earth
By Mike Huckabee
This is the monologue for my television show from this past weekend.
This weekend marks 20 years since Islamic radical terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and would have flown a 4th plane into the Capitol or White House except that passengers on that plane wrestled the controls away from the hijackers and the plane went down in Shanksville, PA. 3000 innocent people were murdered in the space of a few minutes in a cowardly attack that shook the nation more powerfully than anything since Pearl Harbor. One of the reasons the events of that day are seared into the deepest recesses of our souls is that we saw it play out on live television. Some of the images, especially of desperate people jumping from the Towers to escape the fireball of the airliners exploding or the soot-covered people in business attire stumbling away from the collapsing buildings are images we can’t unsee.
We all remember exactly where we were that day and what we were doing when we saw the planes hit. Like the JFK assassination for those of us old enough to remember it, or the Challenger explosion, there are moments in our lives where an event so stunned us that time seemed to stand still and we had to catch our breath from the sheer shock of what our eyes had told us.
In the hours, days, and weeks following 9-11, America was united like I had never witnessed. Flags flew everywhere—on office buildings, residences, and cars. And no one took a knee. Members of Congress from both parties stood together on the Capitol steps and sang a hymn. Churches were filled with people praying. Young men and women put aside their studies or their lives to enlist in the military. America was at war. And we were united.
Here’s what didn’t happen. People didn’t divide among lines of race, gender, political party, or sexual identity. No sane person blamed America or systemic racism or white rage. If we really were a racist, imperialistic, evil country, surely we would have been told that by members of Congress. But we weren’t told that. Because we weren’t an evil country. And let me tell you, we aren’t an evil country now. Imperfect? Sure, but still the best place on God’s green earth.
We’ve allowed America-hating academics and outright Marxists to tell us we’re all racists. We’ve had frightened CEO’s down on their knees apologizing to total strangers for some symbolic repentance of sins they can’t even recall or name. And we’ve watched otherwise responsible corporate boards pretend to be “woke” and demand their employees get instruction in some nutty nonsense called Critical Race Theory that only serves to divide people when there is so much to unite us as people blessed by God to live in a nation where color isn’t what we’re about—character is. That’s the beautiful message from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and it’s never been more needed.
9-11 was a slap in our face and it was a rude awakening to the real evil in our world. An ideology that hates America, hates freedom, hates equality for women or people of color is the ideology that attacked us. It remains a threat to our freedom and our way of life. Ultimately, the battle we faced then and the one we still face now is a spiritual battle. Will the Judeo-Christian framework we were built upon remain our foundation, or will we surrender to a fanatic world-view that believes women are property who don’t deserve an education or identity and that killing innocent people for a political cause is okay? Instead of apologizing for America, we ought to unapologetically affirm our love for America. And no better day to do that than a day which reminds us who we really are.
LEAVE ME A COMMENT, I READ THEM!
Here we go; Maricopa County canvass draws "fact"-checkers
By Mike Huckabee
The report from the 2020 Maricopa County election canvass conducted by Liz Harris of the Voter Integrity Project and sponsored by Arizona Senate Republicans, which we brought to you last week, has drawn "fact"-checkers like a picnic draws ants, so let’s take a look.
Keep in mind that, as we pointed out in our original commentary, this two-month effort was NOT part of the official audit currently going on in Maricopa County. The huge, official one has no set deadline and keeps stretching into the future because, according to auditors, they haven’t been getting cooperation from either state officials or Dominion Voting Systems, who have withheld materials the auditors say they need. That’s something we know is true.
So, we just have to cool our heels, as the official report will take as long as it takes. In the meantime, the Voter Integrity Project did their own canvass of just mail-in votes. Something else we know is true: the sudden and widespread implementation of mail-in balloting, in itself, doesn’t prove cheating but sure does make it easier. And, the easier it is to cheat and the more difficult it is to detect, the more likely there is to BE cheating. The key question is, “How MUCH cheating?”
One story we linked to, from THE GATEWAY PUNDIT, had a headline we made clear was theirs, not ours, as it out-and-out said that “Election steal is now confirmed.” We advised readers to look at the story and come to their own conclusions, which I assume they did.
One thing we credited these canvassers with was transparency. It’s possible to go back and see their methodology. It was made clear that, unlike the enormous official audit, this was another one of those attempts to extrapolate from a limited sample. For example, from the 330 registered voters –- 34 percent of their total sample –- who claimed they had voted but whose votes couldn't be unaccounted for, they came up with an estimate, county-wide, of 173,104 votes that were cast but not counted.
Opinion writer Laurie Roberts at the ARIZONA REPUBLIC predictably made fun of the canvass for its process of statistical sampling and the “conspiracy crowd” that was “abuzz with excitement” about it.
As for “ghost” voting --- mail-in ballots cast by people that residents said they didn’t know or had moved away --- the same extrapolating was done. Canvassers looking at a sample of voters ended up talking with 164 people who told them this had happened. They extrapolated from that number to get their rough estimate of 96,389 “ghost” votes counted county-wide.
Even so, Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem is premature in saying the statewide election should be decertified. He’s running for secretary of state and wants to show how proactive he is, but we’re not there yet. Quite possibly we will be after the full audit is complete, but not now. They can’t decertify with only rough estimates based on statistical samples. Still, this does give us a pretty good idea of what probably happened.
“Our questions were really simple,” Harris said. What method did you use to vote? Did you receive extra ballots? What did you do with those extra ballots? How many registered voters are supposed to be here, and how many actually voted? Not once do we ask who the person voted for.”
See her interviewed by Steve Bannon here.
The canvassers did run into trouble identifying a couple of properties as vacant lots. One of these appears to be a mistake; there’s actually a house with a pool at that address. The other, which was unfortunately used in a cover photo for the report –- inviting ridicule –- is something we’re checking into. There’s data from 2019 showing that it was a mobile home park and from 2021 showing it to be vacant lot, under construction. So, was anyone at that address actually registered to vote at the time of the 2020 election? We’re not sure; it’s possible. But the issue with that one property is just a small part of the big picture this canvass paints, the one that “debunkers” desperately want to turn your attention from.
As Bannon says of Liz during the interview, “She never states here that this is definitive or final. But this is why you need a full canvass to be part of a full forensic audit.”
Exactly. But that doesn’t matter to agenda-driven “fact”-checkers determined to discredit any challenge to the 2020 election. They’re jumping all over this as if it WERE intended to be a definitive accounting. That’s what Lead Stories does --- they criticize Harris for using only “rough reckoning,” when, of course, that’s all it’s intended to be and, given realistic budget restraints, all it really CAN be.
“Has an Arizona Republican’s door-knocking campaign and back-of-the-envelope estimate proved there were “173,104 lost votes and 96,389 ‘ghost’ votes in Maricopa County’s 2020 election,” asks Dean Miller. “No, that’s not true.” The problem with his critique is that Harris doesn’t claim her canvass IS proof of those exact counts.
Lead Stories also points out that there are problems when people are just asked for their responses, because they don’t always answer accurately. And that is right; people might not want to tell the truth, or they might not remember correctly. This is the same problem pollsters have. But, again, Harris’ report is not intended to provide a perfect, definitive vote count, just an idea of how bad the problems were with all those mail-in ballots in 2020. In a state with a tiny margin of “victory” of just over 10,000 votes, these problems essentially render the real election outcome unknown. For this reason, the report proposes banning mail-in voting.
Harris did tweet that those who “knew the election was stolen” and had been ridiculed as conspiracy theorists should feel vindicated, and it would have been better for her to hold off on that until the official audit is done. Similarly, GATEWAY PUNDIT should not have oversold this as they did. As bad as the results look, it’s not time to decertify the Arizona election at this point, which is not to say that we won’t get there.
But to the “fact”-checkers: You dissected Harris’ study so you could say she didn’t “prove” those numbers when she wasn’t even claiming to –- and, of course, so you could get in some digs at the right. We think, though, that your main goal here was to pull focus from the real take-away, which is that there are massive problems with mail-in ballots and even more reasons to suspect the Biden win in razor-close Arizona.
RELATED READING:
Important follow-up: Maricopa County "discrepancies"
Maricopa County canvassing uncovers huge discrepancies
Poll shows government fear campaign WORKS!
By Mike Huckabee
In yesterday’s newsletter, we discussed the way fear has been used to make Americans do what their government wants them to do, most recently to get vaccinated (two or maybe even three times, whether they need it or not) for COVID-19. Staff writer Laura Ainsworth related how she had just witnessed firsthand the cold, irrational fear someone was experiencing just from being in the same room with an unvaccinated person. This was the case even though he knew the unvaccinated person had previously had COVID, which appears to provide far better immunity, especially against variants, than the vaccines do.
So, would it surprise you to know that according to a new Scott Rasmussen poll, a majority of Democrat voters believe that Trump supporters and unvaccinated Americans pose a bigger threat to the nation than either the Taliban or China? I am not kidding. That’s what it’s like on Planet Democrat, now that a relentless and apparently successful propaganda campaign has been waged against both of these groups. These days, who needs a terrorist attack aided and abetted by the Taliban when you can feel terror just from the presence of an unvaccinated neighbor or friend? Even when that neighbor or friend has already recovered from COVID and has virtually zero chance of giving it to anyone.
The poll is real. Breakdown at the link.
I’m reminded of that infamous video of Maxine Waters urging people to harass former Trump administration officials and “tell them they’re not welcome.” The unvaccinated, even those with natural immunity (which, for some reason, doesn’t count), are now in that category of deplorables as well. Socially aware people see the unvaccinated as ignorant, extremist, irresponsible, uncaring, and dangerous. Never mind that they might have a heart condition, clotting disorder, autoimmune disease or...pregnancy, or that about 40 percent of health care workers are vaccine-hesitant. If “those people” don’t worship at the altar of Dr. Fauci, they’re to be feared and marginalized, barred from as much of public life as possible.
Governments know: nothing motivates the populace to do what you want more than fear. And, at least among Democrats, this fear campaign is working. Ironically, that’s a little scary.
A Loss In Court
By Mike Huckabee
Once again, the executive branch has lost a battle in court, only this time, it’s actually a Trump-era order that was overturned -- although it’s one of the few that Biden didn’t overturn himself.
In 2018, Trump directed the BATF to issue a new interpretation of a rule and declare bump stocks illegal because they turn semi-automatic firearms into illegal machine guns. But the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that bump stocks don’t meet the definition of a machine gun, the rule change was based on a claim of a power the BATF doesn’t have, and that such a change should be made only through legislation.
There are many more legal details at the link, but it boils down to the courts being the last bulwark against politicians and unelected bureaucrats issuing orders with no regard for archaic concepts like the Constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers or limits on government power (no wonder the left wants to stack the Court!)
Facebook Secret Revealed
By Mike Huckabee
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has a secret internal system called XCheck that allows up to 5.8 million celebrities and politicians to get away with posting things that would get any of the platform’s regular users banned.
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-content-moderation-58-million-users-xcheck-2021-9
Giving new meaning to “white privilege,” Facebook allegedly uses the term “whitelisting status” to refer to elites who don’t have to follow the rules. The report also uncovered internal employee complaints about the system, including that “we are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” that "having different rules on speech for different people is very troubling,"and that Facebook is "influenced by political considerations" when making content moderation decisions.
The heck you say! Well, knock me over with a cotton ball!
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