By Mike Huckabee
January 9, 2024
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Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Today, if you have a moment, leave me a comment about something you read. Comments help me fine tune what I am writing, and they show that we have an active community of readers.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
Daily Bible Verse
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 KJV
Newsletter Notes
9 stories
3,499 words
Reading time: About 16 minutes
We aren’t lying about the border
Monday, “Homeland Security Secretary” Alejandro Mayorkas held a press conference near the US-Mexico border, where he accused his critics of lying about him and insisted that “Some have accused DHS of not enforcing our nation’s laws. This could not be further from the truth.” I haven’t been so convinced since Joe Biden declared Trump to be the enemy of democracy as he tried to have him imprisoned and banned from ballots.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/08/dhs-chief-mayorkas-border-fix-bus-more-migrants-u-s/
In the midst of record illegal immigration with millions of border crossers swarming into the US, Mayorkas blamed Congress for not funding Biden’s plan to deal with illegal immigrants, which would have spent even more taxpayer money on apprehending and processing illegal entrants, then releasing them inside the US and giving them bus fare to wherever they want to go to await their court date that they likely won’t show up for nearly a decade from now.
Meanwhile, the President of Mexico made heavy demands for help in curbing illegal immigration, including $20 billion and work permits for 10 million Hispanics. Funny, Trump was able to make them cooperate using the immense leverage we have over their economy. I guess they know a pushover when they see one.
This is a plan that House Speaker Johnson should declare dead-on-arrival. I’m hopeful that he will, judging by how he responded on Tuesday morning to the Biden Administration’s attempts to blame the border catastrophe on Republicans.
Johnson told Fox News Digital, “Since his first day in office, President Biden and his administration have worked to systematically undermine America’s border security.” He listed more than 60 Biden actions, from halting border wall construction to expanding catch-and-release inside the US, that “manipulated the federal bureaucracy to open our borders to illegal immigrants, human trafficking, fentanyl, and potential terrorists. The result is a humanitarian and national security catastrophe."
Johnson said, "The President must use his executive authority to repair what he has broken. I am calling on him to do so." Fat chance of that, but at least it sounds as if he won’t fall for passing Biden’s latest effort to fund even more illegal immigration under the guise of fighting illegal immigration.
Related: Because sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, the Babylon Bee perfectly sums up the Biden Administration’s efforts to prevent Texas from doing the job on the border that they’re supposed to be doing but won’t.
I didn’t see this coming
Well, here’s something I never expected to see: an accusation of actual, scandalous wrongdoing coming out of the ridiculous Trump RICO trial in Georgia. Except it doesn’t involve Trump or his associates.
Former Trump campaign official Michael Roman has filed a motion for charges against him to be dropped and for political hatchet woman/county DA Fani Willis, special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the entire DA’s office to be disqualified from further prosecution of the case.
Roman’s motion accuses Willis and Wade of having an improper, clandestine romantic relationship that began before the case started and included taking vacations and cruises together; and that she had no legal authority to appoint him as special prosecutor. He further claims that they have profited significantly from this case at the expense of taxpayers, and that they “have violated laws regulating the use of public monies, suffer from irreparable conflicts of interest, and have violated their oaths of office under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct.”
I can’t verify the truth of those charges, and at this time, we’re still waiting for Willis to respond. But I just hope I’m not drinking coffee in front of my computer when she claims it’s an outrage to take innocent behavior and try to twist it into a crime.
Notice 703
If you’re on Social Security, you’ve likely received or will soon receive a Notice 703. That’s a letter from the Social Security Administration, warning that your Social Security benefits may be taxable and providing a worksheet to help you figure out how much of your SS checks for 2023 that they’re going to demand you give back in April.
Many recent retirees may be in for a shock at tax time, since they naturally figured that their Social Security wouldn’t be counted as new taxable income. After all, it’s NOT. It’s your own money that you already paid taxes on years or even decades ago. The government took it on the promise that they’d give it back to you with interest when you retired. But thanks to a tax reform bill in the ‘80s, it started being considered taxable income if you continue working and earning other pay.
So to be clear: The politicians spent like drunken sailors on shore leave (apologies to drunken sailors for comparing them to politicians), driving inflation through the roof and forcing Americans to continue working into their 70s and beyond because Social Security doesn’t cover basic living expenses. Now, they punish the elderly for continuing to work to survive by claiming that the pay they earn makes them wealthy plutocrats who don’t need to keep all of their Social Security, so they tax a big chunk of it back.
And how much do you have to earn to reach that plutocrat level? A whopping $25,000 if you’re single and $32,000 if you’re married and filing jointly. FYI: that’s not adjusted gross income. That’s TOTAL income before any deductions. It also includes any pension payments, dividends or other savings or investment income.
FYI: Here’s why retirees have to keep working until they die. The Blaze reports that since Biden took office, retirement accounts have lost 25% of their value (an estimated $1 trillion net loss.) In the third quarter of 2023 alone, pension plans lost $3.3 trillion. And due to Bidenflation, the average American family has lost the equivalent of about $7300 in annual income.
For years, there have been moves in Congress either to eliminate this unconscionable soaking of seniors or at least to greatly raise the outdated income threshold to reflect the huge inflation of recent years. Thus far, nothing has come of them. We should all let our representatives know that it’s long past time to end this monstrous double taxation of Social Security payments and stop forcing struggling seniors to pay for the government’s spendaholism.
Ohio News
UPDATE: After inexplicably vetoing a bill to ban “gender-affirming” (actually the opposite) mutilations of children and bar men from women’s sports, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday signed an executive order that pretty much repeats the first part of that ban. Of course, executive orders can be reversed much easier than laws.
This also makes little sense if he really believes, as he said, that such a ban inserts the government between children and their parents making the best medical decisions for them. Never mind that permanently mutilating a child with unnecessary elective surgery and chemicals is NEVER in the child’s best interests, or that certain medical facilities that provide “trans” procedures to minors have become notorious for deliberately misleading parents on the consequences or cutting them out of these decisions entirely.
Paula Bolyard has more at the link, and let’s hope the Ohio legislature clears up the confusion by overriding his veto.
Positive Court Decision Round-up:
For people who accuse their opponents of being authoritarian dictators, the Democrats sure don’t have much respect for Constitutional rights, the rule of law or the court system. Fortunately, we do still have a court system that occasionally defends those things.
For example, on Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge by the Biden Administration to Idaho’s new law banning abortion except to save the life of the mother, but they allowed the law to go into effect. This puts on hold the Biden White House’s attempt to force Idaho ER doctors to perform abortions, even if it violates their religious or ethical beliefs. And FYI, despite hyperbolic claims from the pro-abortion lobby, the Idaho law does not consider removing miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies as abortions.
Also, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved a hold placed on a new California law, banning the carrying of firearms in most public places. A lower court allowed the law to go into effect on January 1st, despite the fact that it is in direct violation of the Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen ruling that the right to carry a gun in public places for self-defense is protected by the Second Amendment. The judge who originally stayed the law called it unconstitutional, “sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”
The case will be heard in April. Let’s hope the full appeals court throws out this law and saves the SCOTUS the trouble.
When the law was allowed to go into effect, an attorney for the plaintiffs said, “The right to carry in California was unconstitutionally eliminated for almost a week.” Meanwhile, California officials began declaring just about every public place as a “gun-free zone,” meaning that nobody but criminals could carry guns in them.
The liberals in California defied the SCOTUS and the Constitution and imposed this clearly unconstitutional law anyway in the name of “safety.” It would be nice if they were at all concerned for the safety of law-abiding citizens who need guns to protect themselves from all the criminals they’ve let run wild.
Least Surprising News Of The Day:
New data shows that illegal aliens have less than a 5% chance of being deported under Biden.
Huck’s Hero Final Salute:
Let’s all pause to give a final salute to one of the true heroes of World War II, who passed away last week at 104.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25253608/mike-sadler-dead-aged-103-sas-hero/
During his extraordinary service with the British military, Major Mike Sadler was a gunner and anti-tank specialist, he parachuted into France after the D-Day landings, worked with the UK intelligence service MI6, was captured by the Nazis and escaped, and had part of Antarctica named after him. But most impressive, he was the last surviving member of the original SAS (Special Air Service.) In that capacity, he taught himself to navigate by the stars and became chief navigator to SAS founder David Stirling. He became known for his “superhuman” ability to lead long-range missions through the deserts of North Africa, once leading a 100-mile trek through the shifting sands with no maps and no water.
Go to the link to read his astonishing life story and see the photos of him in his youth. This is what a real hero looks like.
Silly Woke Nonsense of the Day!
The British Film Institute sparked a mocking backlash by announcing that it would start putting “trigger warnings” on 1960s James Bond movies, because they “reflect views prevalent in its time, but will cause offence today (as they did then).”
As Chris Queen points out, “It's long past time for the ruining of our cultural classics to come to an end.” He asks, who was offended by 007 in the 1960s? “Grubby Communist henchmen? Megalomaniac billionaires’ intent on taking over the world? SMERSH? SPECTRE? (Someone should tell the BFI that both of those organizations are fictional) …Sexy Japanese secret agents, rifle-toting henchmen on skis, mute Korean butlers with razor-brimmed hats…?”
I’m old enough to remember when Sean Connery as 007 was called “the man every woman wanted and every man wanted to be.” I guess liberals today think that every woman wants a woke feminist man, and every man wants to be a woman.
Campaign 24: Here come the Obamas!
You probably saw the story in yesterday’s newsletter about President Obama taking a lunch with President Biden before the holidays to express concern with how the Biden campaign was going and to advise him to surround himself with different people. Obama reportedly expressed anxiety about a possible Trump return to power.
But what we didn’t get into yesterday was the question of why that story would appear now. It first appeared in the WASHINGTON POST, in a piece by Tyler Pager, and so would have been leaked there, perhaps by someone in the White House, perhaps by someone allied with the Obamas (though I may repeat myself).
WAPO reported that Obama “suggested to Biden’s advisers that the campaign needs more top-level decision-makers at its headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, or else must empower the people already in place. Obama hasn’t recommended specific individuals but did mention David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 race, as the type of senior strategist needed at the Biden campaign.
“During the lunch,” the report said, “Obama noted the success of his re-election structure in 2012, when some of his top presidential aides, including David Axelrod and Jim Messina, left the White House to take charge of the re-election operation in Chicago.”
So, here we go. Putting an Obama-style campaign in place. Will it eventually be moved to Chicago to work for...someone else?
“Obama also recommended that Biden seek counsel from Obama’s own former campaign aides,” WAPO reported, “which Biden officials say they have done…” In conversations with Biden’s associates, Obama has been even more explicit about the need to be more “agile.”
Matt Margolis in PJ MEDIA made the point that Biden’s problem isn’t his campaign --- it’s his record of utter failure. But he doesn’t tie Biden’s catastrophes to this insidious involvement of the Obamas in his presidential race. We hypothesize a direct connection.
Biden’s gonna be out, you know. And stories about the Obamas’ involvement in the ‘24 race appear to be very strategically timed.
AXIOS wrote about the WAPO story, mentioning that “Biden and his allies will spend over $1 billion this year telling voters Trump is terrible.” It occurs to me that if Trump really had been so terrible as President, they wouldn’t HAVE to spend a billion dollars to convince voters of that! We’d all just know. They’re spending that much money because the situation is the opposite: we know that Trump was right about so many things and made some great decisions as President.
According to their report, top Democrats who’d been thinking the Biden campaign was being too complacent were relieved at Biden’s speech, because they liked the horrid thing. They called the speech the campaign’s “we get it” moment. So expect to see a lot more darkness and lying about Trump and January 6.
AXIOS likes to answer for its readers the question of “why it matters?” In this case, they say it reflects a need by “someone” to “light a fire” under Biden’s campaign people. But we don’t think that quite captures it. The “someone” is most likely Obama, and the fact that this story was leaked to WAPO at this particular time reflects the Obamas’ strategy for their own comeback.
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/07/obama-biden-trump-2024-election
Adding to the picture of the Obamas’ growing involvement, Sean Hannity reported Monday night that Michelle Obama appeared in a recent wide-ranging interview on what is billed as “the Number One health and wellness podcast” to express her own Trump-fear, which she said keeps her up at night.
“I am terrified about what could possibly happen [in the next election],” she said on the Jay Shetty “On Purpose” podcast, “because our leaders matter. Who we select, who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit, it affects us in ways that I --- sometimes I think people take for granted. You know, the fact that people think that government, you know, doesn’t even do anything. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God! Does government do EVERYTHING for us. And we cannot take this democracy for granted. And sometimes I worry that we do. And those are the things that keep me up.”
Never mind her disturbing observation that government does everything for us. Michelle, without mentioning Trump by name, launched into problems with the tone of messages, and we know exactly who she’s talking about: “The tone and tenor of the message matters. We just can’t say...the first thing that comes into our minds. That is not authenticity to me. That’s childish, and we see childish leadership right before us --- what that looks like and how that feels, where someone is just base, and vulgar and cynical in a leadership position. It doesn’t trickle down well. You know, that just begets more of that.”
It’s as we’ve said for a long time: that if Michelle were running against Trump, she would be offered up as the nation’s “healer,” the strong but gentle antidote for the rawness that is Trump. She reinforced that image during this interview.
“I think we are obligated to model,” she said, “for those of us that have a platform, because it resonates. And I want to resonate good. I want to resonate reason and compassion and empathy. And that’s more important than my feelings. ‘Cause my feelings, I can take care of those.”
“That’s a master class in communication,” Shetty responded with an admiring chuckle. Michelle’s combination of empathy and energy “is so empowering for everyone who’s listening and watching.” Tellingly, she said she learned this perspective “on the campaign trail.”
Michelle also made it clear that after living so closely with the leader of the free world, she knew a LOT. Some of it she didn’t want to know, and it kept her up at night.
She did a skillful cleanup job on remarks she’d made years ago about “not loving my country.” “People will distort you whenever they can,” she said, obviously not thinking about how relentlessly the Democrats distort Trump. She said people tried to “other-ize” her and her husband, as “the first black people,” accusing her husband of “being a terrorist” (what, not a Russian agent?), labeling her as “an angry black woman,” etc. It was “to make people afraid of us,” which is “a strategy that gets played again and again and again.” (What, like calling someone a dictator and a threat to democracy?)
She oh-so-pleasantly dropped a nasty dig at Trump at the end: “I mean, the bars [levels of expectation] are different for people in life. That I’ve learned. This is the thing about being an ‘other’ [as in, being black]. You learn how to be excellent all the time, because you can’t be ‘less than.’ Other people can. Other people can be indicted a bunch of times and still run for office. Black men can’t.” This teaches you to be good, she said, and you end up benefiting from that “extra resilience.”
“But it’s still not fair.”
By the way, if Michelle would like to see a list of black men who were indicted and went on to run for office (and win), we’ll see what we can do. For now, two words: Marion Barry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry
Certainly, the Obamas aren’t getting involved in this campaign for Biden’s sake. The Obamas famously can’t stand the Bidens. Besides, President Biden has his own problems with “tone” these days, most recently in his dark, divisive, foreboding speech at Valley Forge. Michelle didn’t mention THAT, of course, but we all know it’s true.
The opening to Michelle’s podcast interview, which runs a little more than an hour, looks like a brief promotional piece for her. Watch about the last ten minutes and tell me she’s not running for President, and essentially a socialist one. Low-information voters who know little about Obama-style leadership and the REAL “threat to democracy” currently residing in DC thanks in large part to him will be mightily impressed. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
https://news.yahoo.com/michelle-obama-am-terrified-could-154821087.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Related: I didn’t want to say much more about Biden’s kick-off speech last Friday for his 2024 Scaremongering Tour, but this blog post from John A. Lucas that analyses Biden’s Kim Jong Un-like propaganda tactics, expose some of the outrageous lies Biden spouted, and sums it up as the “worst presidential speech ever,” is well worth reading.
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