PrairiePundit

 Matt Tabbi: ... Since the beginning of the “content moderation” movement, a major problem has become apparent. Human beings simply create too much content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for other human beings to review. Machines have proven able to identify clearly inappropriate content like child pornography (though even there the algorithms occasionally stumbled, as in the case of Facebook’s removal of the famous “Running Girl” photo ). But asking computer programs to sort out the subtleties of different types of speech — differences between commentary and advocacy, criticism and incitement, reporting and participation — has proven a disaster. A theme running through nearly all of the “Meet the Censored” articles is this problem of algorithmic censorship systematically throwing out babies with bathwater. Whether it’s YouTube cracking down on videographer Ford Fischer for covering events involving Holocaust deniers or white supremacists, the same platform zapping foota

  Red States: Texas Democrats Finally Begin to Realize They Are Screwed They thought their action would spur Washing Democrats to pass their own vote fraud facilitation act, but they obviously don't have the votes for that debacle either. 

 Washington Examiner: Echo Park Lake, the city’s former jewel, now has E. coli seven times higher than state mandates, thanks to a homeless encampment allowed to flourish there for years, according to a report. "There is no question" that the levels of E. coli contamination in the lake was because people used it as a bathroom, a doctor told  CBS Los Angeles .  Ingesting  it can cause blood and kidney infections, nausea, and stomach cramps. ... “The homeless were sh****** in the lake. I’m not surprised to hear this. I saw them jump in and use it as their personal shower and bathroom,” said a woman identified as Natalia, who lives in the area. “They need to stop the boats, they need to clean it up, and it’s one more reason that you can’t have a homeless encampment there ever again. They ruined it for the rest of us.” ... California has become an unsanitary mess where homeless camps are allowed.  The once Golden State has become a dumping ground for people living "rough.&qu

  Townhall: ... That’s Mr. Lloyd Austin, ladies and gentleman, the man in charge of our weapons systems. What's he got on there? Is that a welder’s mask? Is it a dental visor? Has Lloyd Austin been cleaning teeth this morning? Nope! Looks like Lloyd Austin is just terrified of Covid. Well then, why doesn’t he lose weight? Quite a bit of weight actually. That's a good question. That would be the rational response, so of course, he has not even considered that. Lloyd Austin instead got the vaccine, but he's still so petrified of corona that he put a windshield over his face and demanded that all his dutiful little minions do the same. An entire army of dental hygienists. Watch out, China! Move against Taiwan and we'll scrape the tartar off your molars.  And yet, even after all of those comically elaborate precautions, Lloyd Austin still looks scared for his life. Notice how he bumps their hands instead of shaking them? How long before Lloyd Austin's wearing surgical g

  Newsbusters: GOP Fights Back: House Republicans Launch Massive Assault Against Big Tech, Unveil 32 Bills While I support making Big Tech play fair, I do not think the Democrats want to give up the advantage of having them act as their censors. 

 Karen Townsend: The Biden border crisis is not just a humanitarian crisis, it’s also a public health crisis. That issue was brought to the forefront earlier this week when a family infected with COVID-19 left their hotel room and walked over to Whataburger. That trip likely exposed many people to the coronavirus. The hotel is near a migrant shelter that is overwhelmed with illegal migrants in Hidalgo County, Texas. The overflow is housed in hotel rooms. Unfortunately, the hotel didn’t monitor the migrants to make sure they remained in their rooms. Naturally, when this story surfaced, the local officials were alarmed. Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez demanded that the federal government stop releasing COVID-19 infected illegal migrants into local communities. ... Governor Abbott responded by calling on the Texas National Guard to assist DPS in arresting illegal migrants. He also issued an order Wednesday that bans ground transportation of migrants who “pose a risk of carrying COVI

 Jack Hellner: It should have been a big story on the nightly news that France warned the Obama administration in 2015 about the Wuhan lab, but it didn't seem to make the cut. It should also have been a big story last year when President Trump, Sen. Tom Cotton, and others were raising concern about the lab as being the origin of the virus, but most of the media and other Democrats dismissed that as a false conspiracy and buried the story because all they cared about was defeating Trump and discrediting everything he said. Why did taxpayer funds ever end up at a Chinese lab?  Here's  the story : France Warned US in 2015 About China's Wuhan Lab, Investigator Says In 2015, French intelligence officials warned the U.S. State Department and their own foreign ministry that China was cutting back on agreed collaboration at the lab. The U.S. has had over 600,000 deaths attributed to the COVID-19 virus, yet when Republicans had a congressional hearing about the origins of the virus,

 Liam Brooks: The True Believer: Harbinger of Hate and Destruction Brooks talks about how a new book on Marxism gets into the fundamentals of Eric Hoffer's True Believer.   I read the book on my own when in college and think it is still one of the best explanations of political movements of all time.  If you have never seen it, I think it is well worth your time.  BTW, although CRT came after it, the book explains why CRT is a mass psychosis.

 Legal Insurrection: Democrats are beginning to worry that Vice President Kamala Harris could hurt their chances to retain power in the 2022 midterm elections. This was entirely foreseeable. Harris was so unpopular in her party that she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before anyone voted. The Hill  reports: Harris’s bad polls trigger Democratic worries Vice President Harris has some ground to make up in order to be perceived more favorably by the public, a complicating factor for the Biden administration as it maps out its midterm strategy. Six months into office, polls indicate Harris is viewed less favorably than President Biden. She has also made some tactical missteps outside of the White House that Democrats say show she hasn’t quite yet found her bearings. Vice presidents historically do not outperform the leader at the top of the ticket. But her lower ratings haven’t gone unnoticed… “As of right now, I think she has the potential of doing more harm than good for some

  Power Line: TEAM BIDEN’S LOVE OF CRT IS REAL, NOT INADVERTENT ...   But did the Biden Education Department commit this error unintentionally? Almost certainly not. As   Kurtz says : Bettina Love is all the rage among progressive educators (i.e., the entire education establishment), including leading members of Biden’s Education Department. . . . Since the Biden administration was caught promoting ATN’s attack on “Whiteness,” a  series  of  reports  from  Fox News  have  suggested  that,  despite disavowals , that was no mistake. Top Education Department officials have  ties  to Bettina Love. The Biden Education Department clearly loves CRT, and that is the important point. The department’s  supposed retreat  from CRT in its priority criteria for grants in history and civics is  smoke and mirrors . So is its disavowal of Bettina Love. The links in these paragraphs document the ties between Team Biden and Love. For example, a top Biden Education Department appointee, Cindy Marten, hos

  Fox News: WH condemns WaPo, NYT for 'completely irresponsible' tweets hyping COVID spread among vaccinated '   Unreal to not put that in context,' White House official Ben Wakana reacted to the Post ... The Washington Post was highlighting a CDC study that focused in on a "massive" outbreak in Massachusetts among the vaccinated . "Vaccinated people made up three-quarters of those infected in a massive Massachusetts covid-19 outbreak, pivotal CDC study finds," the Post's tweet read. "Completely irresponsible," Wakana reacted. "3 days ago the CDC made clear that vaccinated individuals represent a VERY SMALL amount of transmission occurring around the country. Virtually all hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among the unvaccinated. Unreal to not put that in context." ... I am not sure the context will make much difference to the anti-vaxxers out there.  Their opposition appears to be unrelated to the efficacy of the

 Glenn Reynolds: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest confused pronouncement about masks is another blow to the embattled agency, whose track record hasn’t been exactly brilliant. For months, the CDC has married a god-awful communications strategy with a determination to cater to the most irrational whims of the paranoid, triple-masking urban gentry: the whims of the archetypical Karen, in other words. The latest stutter-step is an embarrassment for the public health establishment and for a Team Biden left trying to explain what the CDC meant. But there’s also an opportunity here for Republicans heading into the 2022 election: The GOP should run as the anti-lockdown party — the anti-Karen party. A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that broad swaths of America are skeptical of the lockdown response to the pandemic. What’s most interesting is that the skepticism is highest among groups that are key Democratic constituencies. Overall, a majority of voters — 55 percent — a

The gates are open to illegals. There is no spin that the Biden administration can put on their open borders policy that can cover for the reality that they are importing sick people by the thousands into this country and turning them loose in US communities. See, also: Just 41% buy into Biden re-masking and only 40% will wear one

 National Review: The state of Georgia has filed a motion to dismiss the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit aimed at its new, much-maligned election integrity law, S.B. 202 , calling the legal action “a politicized intrusion into the State of Georgia’s constitutional authority to regulate the ‘time, place, and manner’ of its election.” Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger concurred, saying in a Friday interview with National Review that “the left” had an “agenda” that they were going to push regardless of what the state’s legislature did. “No matter what was passed, they were going to be against it and the DOJ just, in effect parroted what was already out there with the misinformation, the disinformation,” he asserted. “What you saw is that Stacey Abrams and her allies, two weeks before the bill was even passed bought ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ and they hadn’t even finalized what the reading of the bill was.” Both Raffensperger and the motion itself allege that the lawsuit fails to pas

 Bonchie: COVID hysteria is back in full swing, and it’s as hectic and incoherent as ever. The Delta variant is at the top of the news as case totals are blasted out with no context. Meanwhile, the CDC has  completely finished off  what little credibility they may have had remaining. All the while, the data shows that there’s  no major crisis justifying  all the smoldering hair of our intellectual betters. In short, it’s been quite the week. In the midst of all that, some questions have become paramount. How could the government possibly screw up messaging as badly as it has? Why are news networks pushing narratives that actually undermine the promotion of the vaccine? Take this nonsense from CNN, which is repeating an unsourced claim by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, as an example. I can’t think of a worse message regarding the vaccines than to tell people that it may not be effective for much longer. Couple that with the push to make masks preeminent, something completely in conflic

 Washington Examiner: House Republicans want answers about the “dramatic change” in how a top scientist first talked about the coronavirus, from initially saying some of COVID-19’s features “(potentially) look engineered” to calling it a “crackpot theory” a few days later. The GOP is focusing on a still-secretive teleconference call with Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top GOP member on House Oversight, sent a letter to Kristian Andersen, a professor of immunology at Scripps Research, asking him “to brief the committees about gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan lab and the possibility COVID-19 was engineered to be more contagious.” Jordan and Comer wrote: “On the evening of February 1, 2020, you and several other international virologists participated in a conference call with Dr. Fauci. The American public does not know what happened on this call,

 Epoch Times: In the normally peaceful desert town of Gila Bend, nestled 100 miles north of Arizona ’s border with Mexico, illegal aliens have been arriving daily since the town declared a state of emergency in March. The illegal immigrants have all been on foot, and all appeared to be bound for parts unknown, carrying with them only their backpacks and the clothes they had on. “What we are literally getting is a flood of migrants walking into town,” said Gila Bend Mayor Chris Riggs, who requested that a state of emergency be declared when a busload of 30 migrants was dropped off without any warning by the U.S. Border Patrol. Riggs said the arrival of the bus came as a shock—not just to the city’s 1,900 residents—but to municipal resources already stretched thin by the economic impact of the CCP virus pandemic. “We had no way of getting these people anywhere,” Riggs told The Epoch Times. When Riggs and the Gila Bend City Council unanimously declared a state of emergency, the buses sto

The Democrat argument against voter ID in Texas was destroyed by this questioning.

 Stacey Lennox: ... The trend among likely voters in the Daily Presidential Tracking Poll is clear. It appears the flip-flop on CDC mask guidance is rubbing Americans the wrong way.  For the last three days , total disapproval has been over 50%, and the approval index between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove has been -13, -16, and -15. These ratings accompanied announcements about requiring vaccines at the Veteran’s Administration and other federal agencies. Related:  Will Biden’s ‘First 100 Days’ Polling Convince Him His Agenda Does Not Have a Mandate? This poll is a valuable tool to detect trends because it uses a consistent methodology to assess the feelings of likely voters. Rasmussen picked up the daily presidential poll when Gallup abandoned it during the Obama administration. Biden’s approval rating has not been above water since February 15, 2021, when it was at 53%. Perhaps the news on inflation and indications that it will be persistent are affecting the rig

 Nick Arama: ... Joe Biden was at a virtual Zoom meeting from the White House with governors in regard to wildfires. His brain broke again while he was talking about wildfires and Delaware. ... “You know, I come from the state of Delaware,” Biden said. “We had more acreage burn last year than the state of Delaware and Maryland combined. COMBINED.” Wait, what? How does that make any sense? Of course, it doesn’t. I think that he was trying to talk about how wildfires in the United States have burned nearly three million acres so far this year — that’s the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. But he didn’t seem to be able to say it coherently. But it gets worse. At some point during the meeting, Kamala Harris appears to have taken over, so you can hear her droning on in the background of this clip. Biden sits there, looking vacant. But that isn’t the focal point of the video. The focus is that Biden receives a note from an aide, reads it, then wipes something off his chin and appe

  Breitbart: Poll: Chuck Gray Drubbing Liz Cheney in Wyoming, 63-24 Percent Republicans opposed to Trump are not competitive at this point. 

 Conservative Tree House: The Biden Administration, Nancy Pelosi, the CDC and scientific establishment along with the Democrat machine writ large, have re-instituted a new indoor national mask mandate that everyone is expected to abide by.  However, check out Joe Biden today in Pennsylvania…. notice anything missing? Not a mask in sight; which highlights the reality – Democrats do not even believe their own message.  It’s not really hypocrisy because they know the mask narrative is a fraud.  They know their mask narrative is a purposeful ruse.  Their actual behavior is a physical representation of the lie they know they are selling. As Donald Trump Jr rightly  said , the mask mandate has nothing to do with science, it is “ actually all about protecting the political power of left-wing Democrats who want to use COVID as an excuse to fundamentally transform America forever. ”  Democrats need COVID in order to advance their objectives. ... Either they are idiots are they think the rest of

  Legal Insurrection: Diversity Staffers Outnumber History Professors at Some Schools   “At Georgia Tech, there were 3.2 times as many DEI staff people as history professors.” The CRT agenda is actually wasting money and ignoring more important education curricula.  Why would you need to have diversity staffers in the first place?  It suggests a departure from merit-based policies.

 Power Line: The current re-masking of America is driven by hysteria over the Indian variant of covid (renamed the Delta variant when it occurred to liberals that if “China virus” is racist, “Indian variant” must be racist too). It is entirely foreseeable that viruses will mutate, usually to a less lethal form, since it is bad for the virus to kill you. That is what is happening with the Indian form of covid. A few simple charts, courtesy of the CDC, tell the story. “Cases,” many of which are false positives, are rising rather sharply: But deaths are not: The tally of “covid deaths” is inflated, since doctors write “covid” on death certificates in many instances where the virus had little or nothing to do with the cause of death. The better index, I think, is the total number of fatalities in the U.S., week by week. I don’t have much faith in the CDC, but I assume they can count bodies. This shows that there was in fact a significant excess of mortality in the U.S. during 2020 and earl

 Real Clear Politics: ... The way Cruz sees it, President Biden’s honeymoon has turned into “an absolute train wreck.” At home, illegal immigrants are pouring across the southern border unchecked, gasoline prices continue to climb, and inflation alarm bells are ringing off the hook, ignored. Abroad, things are not much better. The White House surrender on the Nord Stream pipeline amounts to “a generational geopolitical mistake” that will line the pockets of “the next dictator in Russia” long after Vladimir Putin is dead and gone. And the Department of Justice’s dismissal of charges against visiting Chinese researchers was a disturbing sign of an administration trying to “make nice with the Community Party of China.” The frustrated Republicans in the room nodded along at the doom-and-gloom, waiting on the promised good news. “Why is it that I'm optimistic then?” Cruz asked. “I'm optimistic because there's a natural tendency in politics of the pendulum going too far in one di

  Cruz nails them on their admission against interests.

 Red States: The economic illiteracy of the left never ceases to amaze, and that’s certainly true regarding Joe Biden’s latest push. The president is now moving to pressure Congress into extending the so-called  “eviction moratorium”  that has crippled the housing market and crushed landlords across the country. This comes after some property owners have not gotten paid rent in over a year while they still have to pay their mortgages. As you can see, this is really caring and compassionate stuff coming from Joe Biden. The absurdity isn’t just that this is coming under the guise of an “emergency,” but that it’s been allowed to happen at all. On what planet does the CDC or Congress have the constitutional authority to literally steal people’s property with no reimbursement? Yet, that’s exactly what’s been happening. In fact, you can find multitudes of left-wing ideologues willing to defend it as a right and just move, citing the supposed evils of landlords. The liberals on the Supreme Co

 Victor Davis Hanson: Most Americans were as indifferent to the U.S. women’s soccer team’s recent loss to Sweden in the Olympics as they were excited about the team’s World Cup win in 2019. In between was the team’s nonstop politicking, from whining about compensation to virtue-signaling their disrespect for the United States. The celebrity face of the team, perennial scold Megan Rapinoe, is going the way of teenage grouch Greta Thunberg, becoming more pinched the more she is tuned out. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac used her corporate grifting to buy four homes. The one she bought in California’s Topanga Canyon is surrounded by a new $35,000 security fence. Critical race theory guru Ibram X. Kendi offers virtual, one-hour workshops for $20,000 a pop. He is franchising woke re-education kits—in between bouts of damning capitalism as a catalyst of racism. The woke movement is a slicker, more sophisticated and far more grandiose version of Al Sharpton

 Washington Examiner: V accinated family members from Europe are still barred from entering the United States, but President  Joe Biden  is still welcoming tens of thousands of unvaccinated illegal immigrants into the country every month. This incoherent, contradictory policy undermines both public health and the rule of law. And it will get innocent people killed. Earlier this week, White House press secretary  Jen Psaki  announced the U.S. will maintain its travel ban on certain COVID-infected countries, including Brazil, China, India, Iran, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and most European Union members. “The more transmissible delta variant is spreading both here and around the world,” Psaki explained. “Driven by the delta variant, cases are rising here at home, particularly among those who are unvaccinated, and appear likely to continue in the weeks ahead.” One area cases are rising particularly fast “right here at home” is the Rio Grande Valley, where thousands of illegal immigrants