By Mike Huckabee
July 24, 2021
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Good morning!
Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!
Today's newsletter includes:
- Bible Verse of the Day - John 13:34
- Featured Article: President Trump Criticizes Biden Over Vaccines
- Help The Bilbreys
- How are the left-wing media controlling the news?
- Pay Attention To South Africa
- America The Beautiful
- Unemployment Claims
- Welcome News
- Charlene Darling of “Mayberry” Fame Needs Help
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
P.S. If you need to change the email address for your subscription, please go to my website here.
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
John 13:34
Featured Article: President Trump Criticizes Biden Over Vaccines
By Mike Huckabee
Former President Trump put out a statement this week criticizing the way President Biden is handling convincing Americans to get vaccinated against COVID. Because of the media’s prime directive that Trump is always wrong and to blame for all bad things, this is being spun as Trump promoting the anti-vaccination movement, which he wasn’t at all (you can read his statement here for yourself):
As noted, why would Trump, who got the vaccine himself, urged Americans to take it, and rightly takes credit for getting it developed so quickly, back the anti-vaccination movement?
The big story about the lagging vaccination numbers is just how much Democrats themselves have had to do with them. Most of their arguments are based on mockery and condescension rather than facts, and that works with some people, but it’s backfiring big time at convincing people to get vaccinated. To begin with, the idea that the “vaccine hesitant” are a bunch of dumb, anti-science Trump voters is not only insulting, it’s patently false.
A Kaiser poll in May found that only 20% of those hesitant to get vaccinated were Republicans, with 19% being Republican-leaning Independents. 41% were Democrats or Democrat-leaning Independents, and 20% pure Independents or undesignated. So reluctance to get vaccinated spans the political spectrum and might even lean slightly Democrat.
And who’s to blame for that? Biden and Kamala Harris might want to check out the nearest mirror. The press pretends to forget (and Biden probably has forgotten), but Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Cuomo and other top Democrats spent much of the 2020 election campaign casting suspicions on any vaccine developed under Trump (see the media’s prime directive, above.) Harris said flat-out that she would refuse to take it. Here are a couple of strolls down Memory Lane…
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/why-do-some-mistrust-the-vaccines.php
That first link up above to Redstate.com also includes a video montage of Biden and Harris throwing shade at vaccines. Of course, that was before they got elected. Then they got the vaccines even before taking office and immediately began taking credit for them. They also began sending other mixed messages, like continuing wearing masks and social distancing even after getting vaccinated, and flip-flopping on issues like the effectiveness of facemasks.
https://www.westernjournal.com/trumps-surgeon-general-sounds-warning-biden-making-massive-mistake/
Other attempts to force/convince people to get the jab, from threatening them with loss of rights to sending government reps to our doors to offering $1 million lottery jackpots, have also predictably backfired. The first two simply reinforce the idea that this is more about increasing government power than public health, and the third…well, when you offer someone one miiiiiillion dollars to inject something into their body, you have to expect the reaction to be, “Keep that stuff away from me!”
Incidentally, if only rightwing Republicans are unvaccinated, why is there a surge in cases in Los Angeles? Is that a hotbed of Trump supporters?
Full disclosure: I got the vaccine because having previous lung issues and having lost friends to COVID, I thought it was the best choice for me. But I wouldn’t force it on anyone else. I try to present accurate information and let people make up their own minds. And despite the media narrative, it seems that’s exactly what people are doing.
A study by MIT found that many vaccine hesitant people made decisions that were highly informed, scientifically literate and sophisticated. They examined the date carefully and arrived at the conclusion that because of their age, health status or locations, the risk wasn’t sufficient. The government could try countering that respectfully with fact-based counter-arguments, but it’s easier to assume they’re just morons and treat them as such with orders, bribes and threats of punishment.
Unfortunately, the people in charge now have played politics with this disease so much, and they’ve declared their claims to be absolute truth that may not be questioned (only to see that get reversed over and over again…here’s the latest example)…
https://nypost.com/2021/07/17/top-biden-officials-now-believe-covid-lab-leak-theory-report/
…that they’ve flushed their credibility down the porcelain convenience. Like anything else that goes down there, once it’s gone, it’s awfully hard to retrieve.
PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT! I READ THEM!
“Pride Goeth Before A Fall” News
By Mike Huckabee
If you saw “Huckabee” on TBN over the weekend, or watched the live stream concert from our theater on CountryRoadTV.com, then you know the terrible difficulties that our good friend Keith Bilbrey and his wife Emy Jo have endured. They lost their beloved son Mark in a tragic car accident during a storm three years ago. Then recently, Emy Jo was still recuperating from debilitating surgery when their historic home caught on fire. They barely escaped, but their house burned to the ground, along with all their possessions and a lifetime of memories and memorabilia.
The many people who love Keith, Emy Jo and their family are rallying to help them get back on their feet. If you’ve been entertained over the years by Keith, on “Huckabee,” “Larry’s Country Diner,” the Grand Ole Opry or any of his many radio and TV appearances, I hope you can spare a few dollars to help. A GoFundMe page has been set up, and any amount is greatly appreciated.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/bilbreyrebuild
How are the left-wing media controlling the news?
This essay originally posted on July 19th.
By Mike Huckabee
A reader wrote in to ask, “How are the Democrats/left controlling social media and news? I truly don’t understand how this is happening and would appreciate your thoughts.”
It did seem to happen almost overnight, didn’t it? It was as if all the chess pieces were in place to take over most popular methods of communication. But this has been at work in media for a long time, just as it has been on college campuses and in corporations that suddenly appear “woke,” arranged by people who want nothing less than to control us all. They plan to take down this country and establish what they want. They’re focused like a laser beam, and they’re well on their way to doing this.
It is 100 percent about power: they think that they, as the “virtuous,” the socially aware, are going to be on the winning side and get all the favors while the other half of the country, the “deplorables,” will be at their mercy. That, to them, is “justice.” The “reckoning.” And in order to stop this unraveling and repair the damage we first have to know what their mechanisms are.
Coincidentally, FOX NEWS weekend host Pete Hegseth was on LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN on Sunday to talk with Mark about the imminent threat. Levin has a new book called AMERICAN MARXISM, in which he writes, “Our challenge today is just as crucial and urgent [as it was in Revolutionary days], and in many ways, more complicated. We did not ask for this confrontation, but it is here. And, in truth, like the early days of the Revolutionary War, we are losing. Unfortunately, most of the country has been caught flat-footed and remains unengaged.”
“We’ve reached the point where we’re either going to live in a free society or we’re not,” he says.
The media now are essentially the mouthpiece for the movement to take down America. It wasn’t that long ago when anyone saying that would have been ridiculed. Levin says it was created through “hybridized” or “Americanized” forms of Marxism, “tailored to our country, tailored to our system.” Look at the original mission statement of Black Lives Matter, he says, and it’s easy to see that it’s full of Marxist theory. It’s completely anti-growth and anti-capitalist, using racism as a pretext. I would add that there are other pretexts for government control, such as “climate science” and COVID-19.
Levin finds it significant that the first action Joe Biden took as President was to shut down an oil pipeline. They attacked energy, he said, because energy “provides and serves the energy of our economic system and makes everything else possible in this country. [When ] you control energy, you control the so-called environment, you control the budget, you control the constitutional system, you control EVERYTHING.”
Right now, they control most of the media –- what we call the “mainstream media” or “legacy media” –- and this control goes against a core principle upon which our nation was established. Our founders knew we had to have a free press if the people were going to govern themselves. That doesn’t mean the press in 1800 could be counted on to bring “the facts” --- far from it. But it couldn’t be censored, either.
So, what has happened to the media? Levin traces it back to education, the way journalism schools have indoctrinated their students. “Journalism has changed completely,” he says. “It’s always been liberal, but now it’s out of the closet. People you see on CNN, MSNBC, even on the big networks, would never have made it 30-40 years ago. You would have had responsible executives who would have said, ‘Okay, look. Cut it out. I know we feel this, and I know this is our way, but we’re destroying our brand as a free press.”
Levin continues: “So we do not have a free press. We have a free opinion, if you’re a leftist, but we don’t have a press. We have propaganda mills.” Much of his book is apparently spent talking about THE NEW YORK TIMES.
For generations, journalism schools have been turning out indoctrinated “reporters” set on fundamentally transforming America. Colleges used to teach them how to inform Americans –- the individuals in their own households reading their papers at the kitchen table –- but the mission has changed. Any focus on the individual is gone. It’s now on government, indoctrination, identity groups, sharing approved content, centralized control. Anyone who dares to even question the official word on such issues as the election or the virus is tagged as a destabilizer or even insurrectionist.
Ironically, it’s those in control who are the real insurrectionists, as they’re trying to take all the power, and by whatever means at their disposal.
It became easy for them control news content once they were ensconced in editorial offices in New York and Los Angeles. Add social media to the mix –- with their current ability to censor anything deemed “misinformation” and to monitor and even ban us –- and their control is virtually complete. We’ll need reform legislation or a major Supreme Court decision to change that.
Levin has a section in his book on what I spoke about above; he calls this new agenda-driven reporting “public journalism.” He says that at one time, journalists at least tried to do the right thing, but now they have an agenda. “Look who they hire as news people,” he says, after mentioning ABC’s George Stefanopoulos, who leapfrogged right from the Clinton White House to the newsroom. “Mostly Democrats, but definitely leftists,” Levin notes. Donald Trump exposed this completely, he says. But they go right on; for example, covering for Biden while working for his radical agenda.
And now, as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki openly admitted, we’ve got the White House colluding with Big Tech to thwart the spread of “misinformation.” “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others” if you provide misinformation, she said. Really? Would that by any chance include the “misinformation” that COVID-19 might have come from a Chinese lab? That was misinformation, until it wasn’t.
The good news: most people no longer trust the media. That trust has eroded for decades, and now its level is downright pitiful, especially for TV news. In case you didn’t see it, here’s a poll we reported on yesterday. The media are distrusted only slightly less than Congress!
Still, to function as a republic, we must have sources for real information, not phony narratives. Reform of education is the long-term solution, but for now, just as we need to pull kids out of bad schools, we must also turn to uncensored alternative media, and the sooner the better.
Recommended reading:
AMERICAN MARXISM, by Mark Levin
https://www.amazon.com/American-Marxism-Mark-R-Levin/dp/150113597X
BREAKING THE NEWS: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, by Alex Marlow (editor-in-chief of BREITBART NEWS)
SLANTED: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism, by Sharyl Attkisson
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08537FVFV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
THE SMEAR: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote
and…
THE MIKE HUCKABEE NEWSLETTER
TO READ MORE OF MY ESSAYS, GO TO MY WEBSITE HERE>>>
Pay Attention To South Africa
By Mike Huckabee
I know Americans usually don’t care much about the internal problems of other countries, but what’s happening in South Africa right now is both a tragedy and a cautionary tale we’d do well to heed.
Sunday would have been the late Nelson Mandela’s birthday, but his dream of a peaceful, multi-racial South Africa has crumbled, with the nation torn by riots, looting, rising radical political parties, racial demonization of whites, staggering unemployment and the jailing of the former President. One woman ruefully tweeted that an entire shopping mall had been looted with the only thing untouched being the bookstore.
And why should this spreading implosion of South Africa be of concern to Americans? Because, as this article from Revolver News explains in depth, it was the first nation built on the concepts of Critical Race Theory, and this is where it’s sadly led.
https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/
America The Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Kobuk Valley National Park, visit its website here.
A Huck’s Hero Salute
By Mike Huckabee
A Huck’s Hero salute to the students of Bullis High School in Potomac, Maryland, who designed and built a combination wheelchair/stroller so that a physically-impaired teacher could walk his newborn son.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/high-school-students-wheelchair-stroller-father-walk-newborn
Better yet, instead of patenting the design for profit, they posted it online so that others who needed it could copy it. This is a reminder that there are a lot of terrific kids in America’s schools, even if the ones who just want to tear things down get all the publicity.
Off Script
By Mike Huckabee
I have to assume that this was one more of those moments where President Biden went off script and gave his staffers heart attacks.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-abolishing-fillibuster-throw-entire-congress-chaos
Charlene Darling of “Mayberry” Fame Needs Help
By Mike Huckabee
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
I’m sorry to have to report that Maggie Peterson, most famous for playing Charlene Darling on the iconic “Andy Griffith Show,” is in need of financial help due to medical issues. Her longtime husband, musician Gus Mancuso, is suffering from Alzheimer’s and she was his caregiver before she suddenly began having serious health issues of her own. They had to give up their apartment and need full time care that insurance won’t cover. Their family has set up a GoFundMe page. You can read details and see a video by Maggie if you click on “older updates.” And please share this link:
Beloved as the only female amidst the “Deliverance”-like Darling clan (her bros played by bluegrass greats The Dillards), she also played a completely different role in an episode of the final season of the show and a third on an episode of “Mayberry RFD.” The same person popping up as different characters was a strange quirk in Mayberry, perhaps due to there not being enough people in small towns to go around.
Maggie would sometimes sing on the show with her sullen, silent siblings, on such memorable tunes as “Salty Dog” and “There Is A Time.” Here’s a delightful YouTube video of a reunion at which they performed the latter: https://youtu.be/8F8VvG99CH4
She also did commercials; had a regular role on “The Bill Dana Show;” one-shot roles on “The Odd Couple,” “Love American Style” and other TV shows of the era; and parts in the Don Knotts movie “The Love God,” Andy’s film “Angel In My Pocket,” and, of course, the TV movie “Return to Mayberry.” She was sometimes billed as Maggie Mancuso and later worked as a location scout.
(Side note: If you’re a Griffith Show fan, try to catch “Angel In My Pocket” if it comes on TV. It’s very Mayberry-like – it even has Jack “Howard Sprague” Dodson – but for some reason, it was hard to find for years. It finally came out on an import DVD last year, but it looks as if the mastering was done by Ernest T. Bass.)
Maggie was best known as an actress, but actually devoted more time to singing. She started out in a band with her brother Jim and two friends called Margaret Ann and the Ja-Da Quartet. They were noticed at a record convention by Andy Griffith’s manager, who encouraged them to come to New York. That led to some TV variety show shots, a few singles and a 1959 Warner LP called “It’s the Most Happy Sound.” It’s filled with Shakey’s Pizza Parlor singalongs such as “Swanee River,” “Mississippi Mud” and “My Cutey’s Due at Two to Two Today.”
While touring the Vegas-Tahoe-Reno lounge circuit with a musical act called Margaret Ann and the Ernie Mariani Trio, she was spotted by the Griffith show’s producer and director and asked to play Charlene, and the rest is TV Land history. She’s always been very grateful to “Griffith” fans for remembering her, and everyone who’s met her describes her as the sweetheart you’ve always imagined her to be.
If you have fond memories of Maggie with the Darlings (and who doesn’t?), I hope you’ll kick in a few bucks to help her and her family. To answer the obvious question: no, she gets no royalties from the show and hasn’t since the 1960s. Considering it plays constantly and is more popular than ever, someone must be making a fortune off of it. It would be nice if whoever that was would crack open their money vault and help Maggie, to pay her back for her invaluable part in creating a show that’s still universally beloved nearly 60 years later.
For more news, visit my website here.
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