By Mike Huckabee
March 9, 2023
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THE EVENING EDITION
BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family and from all the Huckabee staff! Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy my newsletter.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
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
Allard: Do we deserve our freedom?
By Colonel Kenneth Allard
Just three years short of the nation’s 250th anniversary, the moment may have arrived when Americans no longer deserve our freedom. The latest points in evidence:
- The abduction by Mexican drug cartels of four Americans in Matamoros, hard by the border town of Brownsville Texas. In case you have been asleep these last two years, Mexico and the entire border region is now under the exclusive governance of the drug cartels, not the Department of Homeland Security and certainly not its hapless Bidencrat-in-chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
- While the security of our homeland is still quivering from border to border (now including the flyover states recently visited by that Chinese spy balloon) American military pre-eminence is openly challenged by our traditional adversaries in Russia and China as well as such upstarts as Iran and North Korea.
As if all that were not enough, it appears that our volunteer military has fallen on hard times since both the Army and Air Force are falling well short of their recruitment goals. Even their sister services have been scrambling to deal with a tough labor market and an increasingly indifferent youth cadre.
Because in 2022 the Army fell farthest behind – 15,000 short of the 60,000 replacement troops it needed - Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recently visited Chicago-area recruiters to get a handle on the problem. Her visit was especially sensible because Chicago residents typically deal with casualty rates and daily mayhem worse than most battlefields. However, beleaguered Army recruiters were blunt in their assessment of civilian educational leaders, “many (of them) skeptical that the Army offers a good career option for their students. “I’m going to use the word hostile,” one recruiter told her. “There’s no other word to use.”
Worse yet, “Army leaders say their surveys show that young people don’t see the Army as a prime career choice, often because they don’t want to die or get injured, deal with the stress of military life or put their lives on hold.” But perhaps the greatest obstacle Secretary Wormuth encountered was “resistance from teachers’ unions and school board members who don’t see the value in offering students the military as a career option. In some cases, school officials view the military through a post-Vietnam era lens.” https://www.armytimes.com/
As a Vietnam-era draftee, I believe todays Army is still dealing with the latent effects of both Vietnam and the Great Divorce that followed immediately thereafter. While the volunteer Army re-established professionalism during the generation that followed, most Americans became accustomed to thinking of the Army – and the Armed Forces in general - as someone else’s problem. Even the shock of 911 didn’t bring national mobilization since we effectively transferred its burdens onto the Reserves and those hyper-deployed volunteers. Today we are defended by a brave but tiny force representing less than half of one -percent of our population. Small wonder that civilian educators in Chicago and elites elsewhere else recognize a segregated, sacrificial community when they see one!
While we have happily lived with those anomalies for decades, such a force becomes problematic when you need an Army to defend our own borders. The combination of cartel violence and the curse of fentanyl –already said to have killed more than one hundred thousand Americans – led Senators Lindsay Graham and John Kennedy to call for a declaration of war against the cartels: “We are going to unleash the fury and might of the United States against these cartels…We’re going to destroy their business model and their lifestyle because our national security and the security of the United States as a whole depends on us taking decisive action.” https://www.washingtontimes.
But barely were the words out of his mouth than White House spokes-person Karine Jean-Pierre responded, "Designating these cartels as…foreign terrorist organizations would not grant us any additional authorities that we don't really have at this time. The United States has powerful sanctions authorities specifically designated to combat narcotics trafficking organizations...” Thanks again, Baghdad Bob!
This Oscar weekend do yourself a favor and look up an old movie that portrays our new realities better than any DC bureaucrat: Sicario: Day of the Soldado. This 2018 thriller captures the ambiguities, tragedies and pathos of what an all-out war against the Mexican cartels would look like. Along the way, we might also find that the greatest tragedy of life imitating art is the creeping realization that both should have been better planned!
Federal judge strikes down Biden immigration policy
A federal judge in Florida ruled in favor of the state and struck down President Biden’s “catch and release” border policy. That’s where, instead of stopping illegal migrants or turning them back, they are captured on the US side of the border then released into America on the pretense that something will be done to deal with them later, which seldom happens.
The judge ruled that Biden’s program violates the law, it’s turned the border into a meaningless line in the sand and our immigration laws into no more than a speedbump, and it imposes an undue burden on the states. He ordered Biden to adopt a new, lawful policy to fix the chaos he’s created and protect the American people (could we make that a blanket order?) But the order is on hold for seven days to give Biden a chance to appeal it, which I’m sure he will because he actually believes he’s doing a great job on the border.
Speaking of the undue burden Biden’s open border has imposed on states and US citizens, we can now put a number on that. According to a new analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, there are more than 15.5 million illegal aliens in the United States, and they’re costing taxpayers about $182 billion a year at the local, state and federal level. As for the argument that they contribute more than they cost, FAIR found that they contribute $32 billion a year to the economy for a net cost to taxpayers of just over $150 billion.
On the other hand, that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to how much Biden has cost us in other ways. Like his reported plans to propose over $2 trillion in tax hikes, including hiking income taxes on people making over $400,000, placing a 25% minimum tax on billionaires, nearly doubling the capital gains tax, and increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. These ideas would kill the already struggling economy, depress job creation and increase consumer prices even more during a period of crippling inflation, which is why Republicans say they will be dead on arrival in the House.
The White House argues that massive tax hikes are necessary to reduce the deficit. Otherwise, they might have to do something drastic and unthinkable, like spend less.
Entertainment news
The Academy Awards air this Sunday, but it’s an open question as to how many people will actually watch what used to be the movie fans’ equivalent of the Super Bowl. The combination of off-putting woke liberal lectures from hypocritical stars and nominations for movies nobody saw have killed interest and ratings, although maybe the nominations for “Top Gun: Maverick” will bring back a few viewers.
How bad has Hollywood become at connecting with the audience? This should give you an idea:
Recently, a small-budget, faith-based independent film called “Jesus Revolution” opened in a limited number of theaters. Breitbart reports that after just two weeks, it had quadrupled expectations and earned $30.5 million, which is $3 million more than four of the Best Picture nominees combined. It’s added another $2 million in the past few days, and by the end of its theatrical run, it will likely gross more than five Best Picture nominees combined. This is without any CGI effects and only one name star, Kelsey Grammer.
Granted, $32.5 million might seem like chicken feed to some Hollywood moguls. But you’d think they might prefer making that kind of money to losing billions cranking out woke garbage like “Strange World” or “Lightyear.” Maybe there should be an Oscar for “Biggest Leftwing Activist Loser.” Unfortunately, that would be impossible to choose because there would only be spaces for five nominees.
By the way, if you’d like to know why Kelsey Grammer is starring in a faith-based film, this might answer that and convince you that Hollywood needs more actors like him.
R.L. Stine, the author of the scary children’s book series “Goosebumps,” has joined Roald Dahl as the latest revered author to have his books given a PC rewrite without his knowledge or permission. Dahl has the excuse of being dead, but in Stine’s case, he simply wasn’t told. He recently learned that since 2018, his publisher has made over 100 woke edits to his books in the name of “mental health,” to make the language “more inclusive” so they “don’t negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today.” Stine insists he has never changed a word of his books (scaring kids is his mission in life), and these these edits were not shown to him.
By the way, some of the vital changes they made include changing the world “plump” to “cheerful,” a boy who dismissed a book as “girls’ stuff” now just says it’s “not interesting,” and the word “crazy” was changed to “silly.”
In that spirit, let me say that their attempt to make Stine’s books “not interesting” is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard; so silly, in fact, that it’s crazy. It ought to raise goosebumps on anyone who cares about protecting literature from cultural vandals. And no, I won’t soften that to protect the publishers’ mental health, since I don’t believe they have any.
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