By Mike Huckabee
April 21, 2022
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Good evening!
Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!
Tonight's newsletter includes:
- Panic at the Capitol
- Netflix and Disney, are cracking due to self-inflicted wounds
- And more…
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
Mark 10:45
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
Panic at the Capitol
Wednesday night, the US Capitol was put on high alert and panicked staffers were evacuated after Capitol Police identified an aircraft as “a probable threat.” It turned out to be the US Army’s Golden Knights parachute squad on their way to perform a demonstration jump at the Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium.
https://headlineusa.com/pelosis-capitol-police-trigger-panic-in-d-c/
I could link to a more nonpartisan site, but that write-up includes some of the reaction to the story, some well-deserved mockery of Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to wring another drop of anguish over January 6th out of it, and the perfect description of this entire affair: it was “a stunning display of ineptitude that could have led to deadly consequences.”
Netflix and Disney, are cracking due to self-inflicted wounds
What happens when an irresistible force like “Too big to fail” meets an immovable object like the ironclad law, “Get woke, go broke”? It appears that what’s happening is that some of the most powerful entertainment megacorps are cracking up due to self-inflicted wounds caused by putting leftist virtue signaling ahead of serving their core customer base. Cases in point: Netflix and Disney, two companies that got very woke, very arrogant and are having a very bad week/year.
Wednesday, Netflix suffered a 35.1% drop in its stock price, the worst since 2004, after announcing that instead of the expected first quarter subscriber increase, it lost 200,000 subscribers. Including Wednesday, Netflix’s stock is down 62% for the year.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-stock-price-plunges-premarket-after-subscriber-loss-11650449002
Netflix’s plunge dragged down other large streaming services, including Disney, which dropped by 5.6%.
Of course, there are a number of contributing factors. People are going back to work after the pandemic (Note to Washington: the pandemic is OVER!) and not streaming Netflix all day. There’s rising competition. Netflix just raised its prices at a time when Americans are cutting expenses due to high inflation. All of these things give them cover to ignore a cancer they’d rather pretend doesn’t exist, but Elon Musk, as usual, dared to voice the unspeakable truth on Twitter: “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.”
And he’s right: Netflix used to provide fun movies to distract us from the problems of the world. Now, they concentrate more on creating “original” programming (I have to put "original" in quotation marks) that pushes woke messages and undermines traditional moral values. It was admirable that they actually refused to “cancel” Dave Chappelle for daring to tell jokes about radical LGBTQ activists, but they still knuckled under by vowing to spend millions on shows pushing their message. In fact, they’ve squandered tons of money on woke message shows that hardly anyone is watching.
And Robert Spencer at PJ Media reminds us of some of Netflix’s recent brilliant programming decisions, from a documentary narrated by Barack Obama (can you imagine them asking Trump to narrate a show?) to a cartoon series that attacked Christians in a vulgar fashion to the execrable “Cuties,” which was basically an attempt to mainstream kiddie porn.
And they wonder why people refuse to pay to pipe this sewage into their living rooms?
Meanwhile, Disney has its own set of self-created problems. Wednesday, Florida’s Senate voted to end the self-governing status Disney has enjoyed since Walt Disney World was built. It’s expected to pass the House, and Gov. Ron DeSantis will likely sign it, since he already called for it.
While popular with most on the right, some are protesting that it’s anti-free speech to punish Disney for taking political stands. Others, however, say the reason is unimportant; that kind of crony capitalism should’ve ended long ago anyway.
Personally, I think they should be viewed as two separate issues. No, Disney shouldn’t have such a sweetheart deal. And yes, both Florida political leaders and parents are justifiably outraged. Disney isn’t just “taking a political position.” They’re diving headfirst into leftist political activism. They’re also destroying their nearly century-old reputation as a creator of safe, wholesome family entertainment in favor of pushing inappropriate sexual messages and LGBTQ propaganda onto small children.
If the current CEO thinks that mollifying the loudest, most radical activists on his staff is more important than maintaining the company’s reputation and customer base, then it deserves to drop in stock value and lose business. And he deserves to be replaced. There are already whispers of that happening. Couldn’t happen fast enough, if you happen to be a Disney stockholder.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/as-disney-flails-hollywood-weighs-a-possible-bob-iger-comeback/
By the way, if Netflix and Disney would rather go into the grooming and indoctrination business than provide family-friendly entertainment, there are any number of other companies ready and willing to fill the void. Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire recently announced a $100 million investment in creating children's entertainment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/31/daily-wire-kids/
Here’s another new channel that “Full House” star Candace Cameron Bure is helping to launch.
And our pop culture guru Pat Reeder listed some others recently, which I’ll repost below. So it’s not as if we’ll run out of anything to watch if we don’t have Netflix or Disney:
From Pat: If you’re looking for Christian-oriented programming for the whole family, first stop would be TBN, where we do the “Huckabee” show. With that shameless plug out of the way, there are also lots of other great shows on TBN. They even have a 24-hour free streaming service of programs for kids ages 2-12. It’s called Smile of a Child TV, and you can sign up here:
Some other popular Christian streaming services that offer movies, family-friendly TV series and kids programming are Pureflix (https://www.pureflix.com), Minno (https://www.gominno.com), Faith Life TV (https://faithlifetv.com), Up Faith & Family (https://uptv.com) and the Dove Channel (https://www.dovechannel.com.) If you’re just looking to stream movies, there’s Christian Cinema (https://www.christiancinema.com) and Vid Angel, which offers regular movies with the objectionable material edited out, the way broadcast TV does -- or used to (https://www.vidangel.com.)
If you have an Amazon Prime membership for free shipping, it includes all sorts of other benefits, including free streaming of music and thousands of movies and TV shows. And if you have any cable service with Turner Classic Movies, you can get the TCM app for your Firebox, Roku, etc., and stream a constantly-changing assortment of classic films from the days when Hollywood made movies instead of political speeches.
YouTube is owned by Google, which I hate to support, but if you’re willing to sit through brief commercials, you can watch it for free. There are now hundreds of full-length movies on YouTube, as well as episodes of older TV shows and classic cartoons, where Bugs Bunny in a dress is the closest you'll get to gender politics messages.
Or you could just watch old sitcoms on Hulu. But you should know it’s owned by Disney.
Your Thursday Dose of Fake News
Yesterday, a promo was released for an interview by Piers Morgan with former President Trump. It painted it as the “most explosive” interview of the year, and showed Trump saying, “Very deceptive” and storming off the set, barking, “Turn the cameras off!”
Yeah, about that… One thing we learned from “The Daily Show,” which won scads of Emmys by deceptively editing interviews to make Republicans look dumb, was that whenever you grant an interview to a hostile reporter, make sure you record a copy of the entire interview for yourself. Trump apparently did.
Trump’s communications director released an audio recording of the interview showing that it actually ended on friendly terms, with Morgan saying, “That was a great interview,” Trump agreeing, and both thanking each other. That’s when Trump said, “Turn the cameras off.” The promo was edited to make it falsely appear he said that as he was rising in anger. And the “very deceptive” quote was lifted from another part of the interview when he chided Morgan for repeatedly saying he had just one more question, then asking more.
I’m surprised they actually thought they could get away with this moldy old trick again. To give you an idea of how long we’ve been on to it, Instapundit blog master Prof. Glenn Reynolds linked to an article he wrote in the New York Post titled, “Bring Your Own Camera.” It was about a deceptively-edited ABC interview with Sarah Palin, and it ran in 2008, fourteen years ago.
https://nypost.com/2008/09/13/bring-your-own-camera/
Student loan forgiveness reforms announced
The Biden Administration announced reforms to student loan forgiveness programs that will result in at least 40,000 people getting immediate forgiveness for their loans.
It’s a complicated reform, so check out the link for the full details. I’ve said before that I have no problem with making some reforms to the process to help make it easier for people to pay off their loans. But the problem with “forgiving” debt that people willingly assumed is that debt doesn’t just magically disappear. You can let someone off the hook for paying back money they borrowed, but it’s still owed. Someone has to pay it back. And if you can’t guess who will eventually get the bill, then take a look in the nearest mirror, sucker.
Murders and shootings dropped in this U.S. city
Well, here’s some news you hardly ever see these days! A US city announced that in just one year, murders have dropped by 30% and shootings by 17%. How did they do it? Bail reform? Replacing cops with social workers? Federal grants?
https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-prosecutor-crackdown-repeat-offenders-drop-violent-crime
No, the city was Jacksonville, Florida, where the Republican prosecutor targeted violent repeat offenders and pushed for stiff penalties instead of letting them back out on the streets to do it again.
Hey, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, New York, et al: maybe you should give enforcing the law a try. It’s crazy, but it just might work!
Related: At this writing, we’re still waiting for comment from the Black Lives Matter organization on a new FBI report showing a disproportionate 32% increase in murders of black Americans from 2019 to 2020, and various experts saying this was not due to the coronavirus but to BLM-endorsed policies such as defunding the police.
And if you’re scratching your heads over how a virus that forced everyone to stay home and watch TV could have sparked skyrocketing crime and murder rates, you’re not alone. But some people are still pushing that idea. In her latest column, Ann Coulter takes a look back to remind us of what happened, how some people did indeed try to blame it on the pandemic, and how they were unable to provide any more evidence of that than if they’d blamed all the crime and murders on UFOs.
https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/04/20/the-pandemic-made-me-do-it-n2606140
I Just Wanted to Say:
Thank you for reading the Evening Edition.
For more news of my news coverage, visit my website here.
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