By Mike Huckabee
June 4, 2023
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Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff!
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With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
Matthew 5:44
Biden’s Victory Lap
President Biden gave a televised “victory lap” speech after signing the bill to raise the debt ceiling. As usual, it was filled with equal parts talk about bipartisan unity and false and malicious claims about Republicans, with a few long-debunked boasts about his economic record thrown in. Nick Arama at Redstate.com compiled the corrections so we don’t have to…
He also noted that this speech was so bad that even the commentator on CBS didn’t buy it.
YouTube bows to Free Speech
Friday, YouTube (owned by Google) announced that it will immediately stop censoring and removing videos that contain what it considers “misinformation” about the reliability of the 2020 election. They admit that they took down “tens of thousands” of such videos. Wow, how could so many people be so skeptical about the most trustworthy and secure election in history?!
YouTube said that after careful deliberations, they decided that they “will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. Presidential elections.” Because we all know that NEVER happens! They explained, “…While removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm…The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society — especially in the midst of election season.” Wait, you mean being allowed to voice unapproved opinions is part of free speech? Well, blow me down!
Still, their “misinformation policy” will remain, and prohibit content “aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting” as well as false claims that could “materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail” and videos that encourage others to interfere with “democratic processes.”
Well, at least it’s a good start on restoring free speech, or rolling back some of the censorship. So for the record: YouTube has decided people still have free speech to criticize election processes, with reasonable exceptions – one of those being to suggest that voting by mail isn’t secure. I’m pretty sure there’s a special exemption for that in the First Amendment if you look hard enough.
America is tired of it
The Canadian author Robertson Davies is credited with saying of the gay rights movement, “The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that will not shut up.” And that was decades ago! We’re only three days into “Pride Month” and after the last couple of years of in-your-face radical LGBTQ+++ activism, it appears that many Americans are bone tired of all the endless woke promotion of this issue. Here’s one of many signs of that, beyond the stock prices of Bud Light and Target.
We’ve long ago moved beyond “tolerance and acceptance” to “If you don’t agree with putting gay porn in elementary schools or letting hulking males steal girls’ athletic scholarships and hang out in women’s restrooms, you’re a whatever-phobe who must be destroyed!” Not surprisingly, this hardcore approach is not winning friends or influencing people, except in reverse.
Even after all the relentless propaganda, Rasmussen just released a new survey finding that 71% of Americans agree with the statement, “There are only two genders, male and female.” (It should be 100% if biology class is still required, but I digress.) That number even includes 57% of Democrats. However, the fact that 43% of Democrats think there are genders other than male and female kind of explains why they also buy into so many other reality-defying Democrat policies (“To make cities safer, we must fire the police, disarm the law-abiding, and release all the criminals!”)
The survey also found that 62% of Americans approve of state laws banning genital mutilation surgery (oops, sorry: “gender-affirming care”) on minors. And 59% approve of banning giving hormone replacement therapy to minors, including 59% who strongly approve. In short, they all strongly disagree with giving dangerous, body-altering chemicals to children, as should everybody!
Question: Since we now have confirmation that the vast majority of Americans oppose both denying biological science and treating child abuse as health care, why does the media continue to frame any criticism of those things as a “controversial” stand? Shouldn’t the people pushing these wacky, unpopular views be described as the ones making a controversial stand?
Related: Twitter was under fire for censoring Matt Walsh’s documentary, “What Is A Woman?”, for “misgendering” (i.e., calling people by their actual genders.) Elon Musk stepped in, and there now appear to be two people gone from the “Twitter Trust and Safety” division, while Elon personally tweeted a link to the film, saying, “Every parent should watch this.”
I’m not surprised, considering that Musk previously declared his opposition to puberty blockers and surgery on minors, and called Biden’s opposition to state bans of them “insane.” He also tweeted, “Consenting adults should do whatever makes them happy, provided it does not harm others, but a child is not capable of consent, which is why we have laws protecting minors.”
Naturally, this has gotten him branded as a transphobe by liberal media outlets. I’m still waiting for them to say the same about New York, where state law forbids providing tattoos to anyone under 18 on grounds that minors are too immature to understand the longterm consequences of making permanent changes to their bodies.
Horrifying
Something called the Global Methane Hub announced that 13 nations (and I’m horrified to hear that the US is one of them) have signed onto an international agreement to put more restrictions on farmers to force them to reduce methane emissions by rolling back modern farming methods in favor of “sustainable, green methods.” Which gives rise to the question, “What are people going to eat?”
Speaking of methane emissions, noted agriculture expert John Kerry is one of the driving forces behind this war on efficient farming. Maybe he thinks that if he can just eliminate enough farms and ranches, it will offset all the CO2 he generates by flying private jets to climate conferences. This comes amidst warnings from organizations such as the World Bank and the UN of rising dangers of a global famine. I’m sure this will really help.
But perhaps I’m being too alarmist. After all, farmers worried about how they’re supposed to produce enough food using century-old methods can rest easy, since various climate bureaucrats and technocrats assure us that today’s modern farming methods will be replaced by “innovative” methods and “science-based practices” to be implemented not just on farms but throughout the “food systems.” These miraculous breakthroughs to be named later. It’s too bad farmers have to produce things like corn, wheat and beef. If they just had to generate empty buzzwords, these guys might actually be able to help.
In a related but more hopeful story, read how a group of Republican state attorneys general managed to crater a UN-backed scheme to press major insurance companies to misuse their assets to push a radical climate/ESG agenda. All it took was a single warning letter.
https://freebeacon.com/energy/how-republican-ags-tanked-a-3-trillion-woke-climate-alliance/
Quote of the Day: “The climate cult has as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ.” – Vivek Ramaswamy
Target shares tank
Has it really been only a few weeks since the CEO of Target was boasting about how great it was for their business to embrace “woke” capitalism? As Dr. Phil says, how’s that workin’ out for them?
Thanks to public outrage over their in-your-face promotion of Gay Pride merchandise and trans clothing, like “tucking” swimsuits for little boys, Target's stock price has plummeted, wiping $13.8 billion off its market value. Its stock price is down by 19% from just two weeks ago, to its lowest level since the 2020 pandemic. The pandemic of wokeness is proving nearly as economically destructive as COVID.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/31/targets-stock-loses-12-7-billion-hits-lowest-level-since-2020/
Now, JP Morgan Chase Bank has downgraded Target’s stock from a strong buy to “neutral.” An analyst said, “We believe this share loss could accelerate into back-to-school and linger into holiday given consumer pressures and recent company controversies."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/jpmorgan-chase-downgrades-target-stock
So they’re saying they don’t expect a big consumer demand for “tuck-friendly” back-to-school clothes and Santa costumes? No wonder they’re considered market experts!
The Left takes care of its own
One thing you’ve got to give to the left, they take care of their own. Whenever one of them takes the fall for the horrific consequences of their awful policies, they ensure that person always makes a soft landing, whether with a well-paid government appointment or a fat book contract that would never be offered to a real writer who might turn out a book worth reading.
The big names score multi-million-dollar production deals with Netflix or Amazon Prime to make propaganda films nobody wants to see, while the minnows get regular gigs on MSNBC. Those who aren’t telegenic enough at least get cushy university jobs. But none of them are ever cast adrift to earn an honest living in the lousy conditions they helped to create. It’s like being the boss’s son-in-law or a made man in the Mafia: they are protected from the consequences of their own incompetence.
But seldom has there been a more glaring example of the leftist protection racket than these two stories. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot – who was so bad at her job that even being a black, lesbian, Democrat incumbent couldn’t save her from being a one-termer – just got hired to teach a course at Harvard…
…While Chesa Boudin, the criminal-releasing former DA who set off a crime wave that’s decimated San Francisco, and who was so hated that even the uber-liberal voters there turned out in droves to recall him – has been hired by UC Berkeley to run their new “Criminal Law and Justice Center.” What does he know about either of those things?
Note that the initiatives UC-Berkeley cites as his accomplishments are precisely the same things that got him kicked out of office. Is this really worth the cost of tuition? Attending UC-Berkeley and living on campus runs about $45,000 a year, but the good news is that you can steal it and the faculty member in charge of the Criminal Law and Justice Center won’t even care.
As for Lightfoot, tuition to Harvard for 2023-’24 is $75,000 for nine months, with other fees and costs boosting that to $111,000. That’s what you’ll pay to have your kids taught to be colossal failures by Lori Lightfoot. You could save a lot of money and get far better results by letting them stay home and watch Prager U videos on YouTube.
Least Surprising News of the Day:
Kari Lake has filed an appeal of her court challenge to the Maricopa County election, which was denied because the judge decided that the election official accused of running a rigged election claimed it wasn’t. Or something along those lines. I read his ruling, and that’s pretty much what I got out of it.
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/kari-lake-files-notice-appeal-election-challenge
Idaho leads the way
This is interesting, in light of all the claims that black people can’t get ahead because America is so racist. It’s an analysis of what lies behind a surprising fact: Idaho is the only state where blacks earn more than whites. Black weekly income on average is 106% of mean weekly white income. This despite the fact that blacks are only 1% of Idaho’s population, making them even more of a minority than in the US in general, where they’re 13% of the population.
https://libertysentinel.org/how-blacks-experience-in-idaho-differs-from-national-narrative
The study looked at a number of factors, both historical and current. For instance, in its early years, Idaho needed workers so it didn’t have oppressive racist laws as other states did. Also, it is a very free market, low-regulation, pro-property rights state, where blacks could own businesses and farms and have the freedom to work hard and succeed.
But what’s most interesting is the current social situation. In Idaho, communities are cohesive, churches and religious beliefs are strong, families stay together (the number of single-parent black households headed by women is 6% in Idaho compared to 26% nationally), and black families are much more likely to have a positive male role model in the home.
As that article states, the study shows that a “culture of meritocracy based upon a level playing field, as evidenced by the black experience in Idaho, creates prosperity.” This is not to deny that racism is a problem, especially in places that don’t have Idaho’s history. But it does show just how much control anyone can exert over their own future success if they just make good personal choices.
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