By Mike Huckabee
April 21, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff!
Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
Mark 9:23 KJV
Remember when Democrats cared about women's rights
I know I must be getting old because I can remember when Democrats actually cared about women’s rights. Once upon a time, they even promoted the idea of girls’ sports in schools and thought they deserved equal funding with boys’ sports. They even thought women deserved "safe spaces" from predatory males. Now, the only thing they seem to care about is forcing women to allow males into their sports and locker rooms. What else can one deduce from the fact that NOT ONE single House Democrat voted this week for the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act that limits school sports for girls to people who were actually born female?
It still passed 219-203, but it’s unlikely to pass the Democrat Senate. And even if a few Senate Democrats still believe in biological science, President Biden has vowed to veto it
College swimming champion (and woman) Riley Gaines blasted Biden for that threat, saying, "The President has declared that science, truth and common sense no longer matter. In opposing this bill, President Biden is catering to a radical minority at the expense of women, who are 51% of the population. Equal opportunity, privacy and safety in our sports shouldn’t be controversial. The women who once advocated for Title IX should be outraged as this goes against everything they fought for. Female athletes of all ages, levels and sports deserve better."
She’s right, and previous generations of Democrats would have been sane enough to agree. But today’s Dems are all-in on the “trans” propaganda, and those in the House not only voted unanimously against protecting women’s sports, they spewed some of the most hysterical, nonsensical rhetoric ever heard in justifying it.
Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman declared, “This bill is about bullying children. Stop bullying children." Rep. Robert Garcia of California echoed, “House Republicans are choosing to bully and belittle trans children. This is about attacking a small group of children, and it is shameful." (You can dismember children in the womb, just don't bully them.) Faaaaaar-left Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal spewed, "We should rename it the 'cancel kids trans hate' bill. This bill fuels a virulent hate campaign against kids who just want to play with their friends." Rep. Mark Takano of California said the bill would make school sports "less safe for women and girls" (less safe than forcing them to compete against males twice their size?) and claimed that even “this debate itself has been traumatizing."
Republicans responded that they don’t “hate” anyone, and this bill is about protecting both female students and girls sports. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx said, "It is ridiculous that we have had to stand here today to defend the rights of women and girls to participate in sports against other women and girls, and (them) not being taken advantage of by biological males." Here are some more salient comments from Republican women about the betrayal of women by Democrats on behalf of the trans lobby.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/
But once again, leave it to Rep. Eric Swalwell to take the trophy for the most cluelessly stupid hyperbole. He unironically declared, “These creeps want to invade our kids’ locker rooms.” Imagine letting creeps invade girls’ locker rooms! If you can’t imagine the response to that on social media, click this link:
https://ijr.com/swalwell-
Related: For Democrats who can’t even tell us what a “woman” is but insist that they are at no disadvantage in sports to biological males, Terry Jeffrey at Townhall.com has a big cooler of cold, truth-flavored Gatorade to dump over their heads. He compares the relative stats of even the best female athletes in the world compared to their male counterparts. This is why males who can't cut it competing against other men suddenly start breaking all records when they begin "identifying" as female.
https://townhall.com/
Good credit vs Bad credit
Have you worked hard, scrimped and sacrificed to pay your bills on time, so that you earned a good credit score? Well, congratulations! The Biden Administration is going to punish you for it! On the other hand, if you have a bad credit score, you’ll be rewarded for that.
A new federal housing rule set to take effect May 1 will hit homebuyers who have federally-backed mortgages via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with an extra charge if they have a FICO credit score of 680 or above. For instance, a 30-year loan of $400,000 at 6% will cost you an extra $40 a month, or $14,400 over the full loan term. It will also hit those who are refinancing mortgages. This will help pay for the cut in fees they’re giving to people with lower credit scores.
They claim this is being done to “lower the gap in home ownership opportunities” for minorities, first time buyers and others with lower credit scores. But is the best way to do that by punishing people who are responsible and subsidizing high-risk borrowers? Didn’t we learn what happens when you hand out high risk mortgage loans back in 2008? One former FHA commissioner under Obama told the New York Post that the Biden move is “unprecedented,” and his email is full of messages from people at mortgage companies telling him “how unbelievably shocked they are” by it.
How are they shocked by the government punishing responsibility and rewarding irresponsibility? Have they never heard of our income tax code?
Related: Whenever I see polls showing that some percentage of Americans larger than low single digits wants Biden reelected, I wonder just how much some people are willing to pay to keep imposing their crazy political views on the rest of us. Because that price is very high, and rising all the time. Maybe some of them don’t even realize how much it’s costing them, but here are some numbers that may clue them in. You might want to share these with your liberal friends and relatives and ask, “How’s the Democrat rule workin’ out for ya?”
https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy laid out the shocking numbers. Since Biden took office, wages are up an average of 9%, which he is quick to pat himself on the back for. But consumer prices are up by 14.9%, meaning there’s been a 5.1% drop in real wages. A typical two-income family is making $200 more per month, but inflation has caused their actual pay to shrink by over $100 a month. That’s a pay cut every month he’s been in office.
Not only has the average family lost $5600 in purchasing power, but they’re also paying $1500 more per year due to higher interest rates. That represents a combined loss of $7,100 a year in annual income. That’s more than a month’s pay for half of all US households.
Joe Biden’s presidency is like those fancy restaurants that sprinkle flakes of gold on a hamburger and charge you $200 for it. Even if you actually like it for some unfathomable reason, is it really worth what it’s costing you?
The dangers of offshore wind turbines
I’ve noticed left-leaning media outlets have been bending over backwards lately to try to debunk the claims that offshore wind farms are causing environmental damage and deaths of marine creatures, including a number of whales beaching themselves. They treat the stories as if they’re crazy, right-wing conspiracy theories unsupported by any evidence.
I wonder what they’ll say to debunk this: It’s been revealed that last August, the executive directors of three federally-established fishery councils on the East Coast wrote a letter to the then-director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. It warned of their concerns over the dangers of offshore wind turbines and that approving multiple ocean wind farms “will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries."
Over on the West Coast, the Pacific Fishery Management Council also wrote a letter to the BOEM warning that multiple offshore wind energy projects could negatively impact the ecology of the marine ecosystem. Small commercial fishermen, marine equipment makers, fish markets and others with expertise and concerns also complain that the government is moving ahead without listening to them.
Meanwhile, defenders of the offshore wind farms claim all the whale deaths are just part of a natural "unusual mortality event" that’s happened before, even though they’re on track to far surpass previous death figures. Calling the deaths of over 20 whales an "unusual mortality event" is like the phrase PJ Media used to describe yesterday's big SpaceX rocket explosion: "Rapid unscheduled disassembly."
The BOEM “didn’t respond to a request for comment” by Fox News. I guess they figure that if you want to save the planet, you have to be willing to kill as many whales and fish with wind turbines as you do birds.
Not settled science
Wait, you mean all that “settled science” about climate change wasn’t actually settled? That science can change thanks to new data? Whoever would have suspected that?!
https://hotair.com/david-
David Strom at (ironically) HotAir.com reports that a study in the journal Nature found that methane is not as powerful a greenhouse gas as previously assumed. It warms the Earth by absorbing longwave radiation, but it also cancels out some of that effect by absorbing shortwave radiation. There are more details at the link. But what we can take away is this: the atmosphere is a lot more complicated than some people assume, and we shouldn’t destroy entire economies because of hysterical predictions based on flawed computer models and worst-case scenarios derived from incomplete data.
Also, I can tell my pet cow that she can stop holding in her gas.
Keep the Newsletter Going: Buy Mike Huckabee’s Book: A Simple Government
Mike Huckabee has continued to be the voice of common sense conservatism, through his television talk show, his radio commentaries, and his lectures around the country. Now he's written a book that sums up the twelve things we really need from Washington to get the country back on the right track. These twelve essential truths will have you nodding in agreement, whether you're a Republican, an Independent, or even an open-minded Democrat. They can help us put aside our differences, tone down the partisan rancor, and return to the simple principles of the Founding Fathers: liberty, justice, personal freedom, and civic virtue. Originally published in 2010, Mike's solutions can help us tackle even the most seemingly complicated of today's problems.
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A First Meeting
This week, despite Disney Corp’s best efforts to evade and nullify it, the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board had its first meeting. Chris Queen at PJ Media has been doing a great job of reporting on this story, and his articles yield some eye-opening facts.
For instance, this one talks about how allowing Disney to govern itself has resulted in some lax standards. Like the revelation that over the past 15 months, according to a state regulatory official, inspections of food service establishments “yielded over 3,300 violations, which include 393 high-priority violations.” Don’t tell me, let me guess: mice?
Queen also reports that in their first meeting, the new board outlined their plans for the district Disney occupies. The reforms include new zoning to develop affordable housing for workers, creating voting rights for future residents, creating more funding for public schools, joining with neighboring counties to fight Disney’s lawsuits to avoid paying their taxes, regulating Disney like every other corporation in Florida and reducing the district’s carbon footprint.
Remember, liberals have sided with the big Disney corporation because it claims to be “woke,” and they think Gov. DeSantis is so evil that he must be wrong about everything. Now, look back over that list of proposed reforms. I can’t wait to hear the left’s rationale for opposing all those things.
And Another One Joins In…
Conservative talk show host and former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder announced that he’s running for the GOP nomination for President in 2024.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/04/20/larry-elder-announces-run-for-president/
In case you missed it: Fetterman's return
John Fetterman finally returned to the Senate after a protracted hospital stay for the first meeting of the subcommittee he now chairs. The good news: he was dressed appropriately in a suit and tie. The bad news: everything else. The poor man struggled both to understand other people and to communicate with others, even when trying to read prepared remarks.
https://www.westernjournal.
It’s obvious that after suffering a severe stroke and not taking the time and rest for rehab that he needed, he is simply not physically capable of serving as a US Senator. Fetterman’s spokesman accused Republicans of “attacking John’s health,” but that’s not what anyone is doing. They’re criticizing people like him who refuse to acknowledge his health problems.
I have nothing but sympathy for him personally, and I pray for him to make a full recovery, but I fear that’s not going to happen while he struggles to handle such a high stress job. He should not have run (or been pushed to run by people who put their hunger for political power above his health.) The Governor should appoint a replacement now so that Fetterman can concentrate on recovering fully, if that’s even still possible at this point.
But that’s not likely to happen because the Democrats in Pennsylvania need to keep him in office long enough to avoid a special election, so they don’t risk losing the seat. Once again, they’re cynically demonstrating that their holding on to power is far more important to them than John Fetterman holding on to his health.
In case you missed it: Dispatches From The Blue Wilderness
In recent months, Walmart, Cracker Barrel and the pizza chain Hotlips have announced closures of multiple outlets in Portland, Oregon, due to the rampant crime that the leftist DA refuses to prosecute. The latest to hightail it out of Portland is the outdoor store REI, which said that despite adding extra security, they’d had their “highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades.”
And in case any “progressives” think they’ll just be replaced by other retailers clamoring to come in, Shake Shack is set to open its first location in Portland next week, and some would-be thief has already smashed a window, but apparently couldn’t get inside.
I guess that’s the new Portland standard of popularity: not even open yet, and people are already lining up to rob you.
Alec Baldwin update
Alec Baldwin’s lawyers announced that they expect the manslaughter charges against him in the fatal shooting on the set of his movie “Rust” to be dropped. It’s not quite clear why. This has been under investigation for over a year, and it's been through a couple of special prosecutors.
While we wait for word from New Mexico authorities on why the charges will be dropped, Matt Margolis at PJ Media makes the very good point that kneejerk Hollywood liberalism also contributed to the tragedy. The NRA provides firearms safety experts to movie sets to prevent incidents like this, but of course, Baldwin’s movie didn’t have one of those because “NRA!!!!”
Buzzfeed RIP
The far-left “news” outlet Buzzfeed is shutting down. Fifteen percent of the staff will be cut, while the remainder will be folded into the equally far-left Huffington Post. I’m not going to miss what I always called “Buzzard Feed.” Now, it can be food for the buzzards itself.
I hate to see anybody lose their jobs, but as Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit reminded us, these are the people whose response to coal miners losing their jobs thanks to leftist green policies was to sneer that they can “learn to code.” So maybe they should try that.
YES, Biden campaign was behind Hunter laptop “classic earmarks” letter
Yesterday, the story broke about the IRS whistleblower who wants to testify before Congress about the special treatment Hunter Biden’s tax/financial case has been receiving.
Today, we know a lot more.
First, here’s a big thank-you to Tucker Carlson for taking us on a trip in the Way-Back Machine last night to the first day President Biden was in office, when he named a new head of the Criminal Division at the Justice Department: Nick McQuaid. We’ve talked about him before; he was the former law partner of Hunter Biden’s own criminal attorney, Chris Clark.
So, looking at the timeline, just one month after Hunter hired Chris Clark to defend him on potential federal tax charges, his father, the brand-new President, hired Clark’s law partner to head the DOJ Criminal Division. And he did it on INAUGURATION DAY. Now, why would he do that? This would seem to be an obvious conflict of interest, but McQuaid did not recuse himself from duties related to the Biden investigation.
Both Clark and McQuaid were partners at the law firm of Latham & Watkins. You’ve heard that name before, numerous times here in the newsletter, because they are THE powerhouse Democrat law firm in Washington DC.
Clark has released a harsh statement about the whistleblower that says, “It appears this IRS agent has committed a crime. It is a felony for an IRS agent to improperly disclose information about an ongoing investigation. The IRS has incredible power, and abusing that power by targeting embarrassing, or disclosing information about a private citizen’s tax matters undermines Americans’ faith in the federal government. Unfortunately, that is what has happened and is happening here in an attempt to harm my client.”
The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, responded to the statement Thursday evening in an interview with Bret Baier, calling it “unfortunate.” He said his client, after many sleepless nights, decided he “could not live with himself if he stayed quiet and said nothing.” He knew he’d be attacked like this, and he still wants to reach out and tell the truth “to both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill.” He’s armed with documentation and is following the provisions of the whistleblower law, which is designed to help people come forward without getting threatened.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/
Recall that the FBI gained possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop and all its contents in December 2019. Since October 2020, we’ve come to know pretty much what’s on it, thanks to reporters who obtained copies of the hard drive and actually investigated. We know the Biden family made millions of dollars from foreign governments (directly and/or indirectly) by selling access to our own government through then-Vice President Joe Biden. And this year, congressional committees now headed by the GOP have heard whistleblower testimony and finally even obtained bank records. But from the ‘Justice’ Department, there’s been silence.
We know Hunter Biden had a delinquent tax fill of around $2 million, which a wealthy friend paid for him along with hundreds of thousands more in month-to-month support. (As the song goes, he gets by with a little help from his friends.) But how much money did he receive that went unreported? Given Hunter’s, um, distractions and dicey sources of income, what are the odds that every decimal point was in the right place? Also, we know Hunter lied on a federal application to purchase a gun. I thought Democrats were real sticklers on that sort of thing.
And, of course, this dive into Hunter’s finances really is about influence-peddling by the current President. On Thursday night, Tucker played an excerpt from an April 2021 interview on “CBS This Morning” in which Hunter said he’d never given his father anything from any of his business ventures. “Not a nickel,” he said. “Directly or indirectly…100 percent, no. Never.”
If this is true, why was one of Hunter’s emails a rant about being the one in the family who had to give his dad half his money?
Which brings us back to the whistleblower in the Biden case. If what this supervisory special agent at the IRS has said about the investigation is true, then Attorney General Merrick Garland was not telling the truth while testifying to Congress under oath about U.S. Attorney David Weiss operating independently of political influence and being able to do what he wanted to do. That was March 1, and it appears to have been the last straw for the agent --- what made him decide to go to the Inspectors General of the Treasury and DOJ.
We’ve also learned more about how Mike Morell came to coordinate the “classic earmarks” letter signed by 51 former intel officials to cast doubt on Hunter’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election. And, yes, the push definitely came from the Biden campaign.
In a private sworn transcribed interview with the House Judiciary Committee, Morell said it was Antony Blinken, now Secretary of State but then Biden’s senior campaign adviser, who reached out to him “on or before” October 17, 2020, three days after the NEW YORK POST published the “laptop” story by Miranda Devine about Hunter Biden introducing his Ukrainian business partner to his father. Morell was in the running to be CIA director at the time. He told the committee that until he got the call from Blinken, he’d had no intention of getting involved, and that part of his motivation was to get Biden elected.
It seems appropriate that Miranda Devine would be writing the update on this story. Here it is…
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/
The POST also reports that AG Garland is the “senior political appointee” accused by the whistleblower as having given false testimony. We could have told you that yesterday; in fact, we did.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/
John Solomon’s update at JUST THE NEWS is a must-read. Solomon says that when that letter was signed by all those officials, the FBI knew the laptop was real and there was no intelligence whatsoever suggesting the laptop was Russian disinformation. It was totally made up. He calls this “one of the greatest political dirty tricks in American history.” That would put it right up there with Hillary’s fake Trump “dossier” and Alfa Bank story.
Morell told the committee he did a little research on his own and then reached out to retired CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos to help him write a letter discrediting the POST’s reporting about the laptop.
It took him just two days for Morell to gather the signatures of 51 former intel officials. Four former CIA directors signed, including John Brennan (no coaxing needed, I’m sure) and Leon Panetta.
Here’s more to implicate the Biden campaign: Morell said he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former deputy chief of staff to Brennan, that the campaign wanted the letter to go to a particular reporter at the WASHINGTON POST. Shapiro should also send a copy of the letter to the campaign.
Later on, Morell couldn’t recall why he specified that particular reporter; the letter ended up going to POLITICO. They published it on October 17 under the headline, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.” (See, that’s the story the media went with; never mind the disclaimer in the letter that none of them had even seen any evidence.)
Morell also testified that after the presidential debate, in which Biden used the letter to defend against Trump’s mention of the laptop story, he received a call from Steve Richhetti, chairman of the Biden campaign, thanking him for the letter.
But after all that work, Morell was not nominated for CIA director. Blinken did become Secretary of State, though.
Reps. Jim Jordan and Michael Turner, who chair the Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee, respectively, wasted no time sending a letter to Blinken. “The concerted efforts to dismiss the serious allegations in the POST’s reporting and to suppress any discussion of the story played a substantial role in the 2020 election,” they wrote. They requested his assistance because they “have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign adviser…”
Jordan and Turner have now asked Blinken to turn over all documents and communications relating to the letter and provide the House with the identities of everyone involved in its “inception, drafting, editing, signing, publishing, or promotion.”
The WASHINGTON EXAMINER also has an excellent summary…
Legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy has written a piece, appropriately published in the POST, about the special treatment Hunter Biden has received. He says there’s really only one way to get off the hook for the things Hunter has done, and that’s to be Joe Biden’s son.
“The gun offenses,” he says, “are so straightforward that they’d take a competent investigator five days, not five years, to wrap into a prosecutable case. Some of the tax offenses, which stretch back seven years or more, are so undeniable that liens were placed on Hunter’s properties…” Plus, it’s really not just Hunter, but the entire Biden family, who are the “salient feature” of the investigation.
McCarthy says Rep. James Comer, as chair of the House Oversight Committee, needs to have the whistleblower provide the testimony he wants to --- preferably in public --- about the “political roadblocks that have obstructed investigators.” In this must-read piece, McCarthy says the whistleblower is providing us with “the long-awaited but always obvious answer.”
Finally, law professor Jonathan Turley has a message for the Democrats. “The party has already embraced censorship,” he says. “It should not now embrace corruption.” Funny, I thought it had embraced that, too.
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