PrairiePundit

 Wall Stree Journal: This back-to-school season is filled with uncertainty. Public school districts are dealing with delays, disruptions, disagreements and demands from teachers unions. At the heart of many disputes is whether schools should require all students to wear masks. Some states are in legal battles over the issue. A recent Axios/Ipsos Poll found that 69% of U.S. adults support mandatory masking in schools. The policy is politically polarizing, however, with 92% of Democrats and only 44% of Republicans supporting it. The good news is that we might find some unity amid such division. A nationwide poll by Echelon Insights in August found that 79% of respondents with an opinion support allowing families to take their children’s taxpayer-provided education money to a private or home school if their public school doesn’t mandate masks. Surprisingly, Democrats favored this school-choice proposal more than Republicans, with support at 82% and 78%, respectively. Another recent ...

  National Review: Biden Declares Victory in Defiant Speech on Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal: ‘We Were Ready’ This appears to be more evidence of his advanced dementia. It should not be too surprising for a man known for plagiarism but to pick comedic people to imitate is strange.

 Breitbart: A top leader with Mexico’s Gulf Cartel is expected to face a judge in the near future for his role in violent crimes and even a massacre in the border city of Reynosa. Known in the criminal underworld as “La Droga or Ciclon 89,” Oscar Antonio Lopez Sandoval is the chief regional enforcer for the Matamoros faction of the Gulf Cartel and is second-in-command for the sect. Tamaulipas authorities arrested him on Sunday night during a raid in the border city and then moved him in preparation for his hearing before a state judge on charges including murder, top law enforcement sources tell Breitbart Texas. The raid took place on Sunday night in the beach area known as El Mezquital, where Lopez Sandoval was fishing without his security detail. Special police officers arrested his fishing party. The raid allowed authorities to get him out of the city before Gulf Cartel forces could intervene. Mexican state and security forces escalated patrol operations around Matamoros in the ...

  Newsmax: Trump: Demand US Equipment From Taliban or Bomb it It is not the sort of thing the intellectual lightweights in the Biden administration would think of but it probably has appeal to many Americans.  The potential downside to this idea is what would happen to the Americans Biden left stranded in Afghanistan.  But if the Taliban starts murdering them, it should unleash the destruction of those weapons. See, also: Bargaining chip: Americans left behind give Taliban precious leverage

 PJ Media: Florida redistricting after the 2020 census, plus the state’s rapid population growth, will help redraw the country’s election map next year. POLITICO  reports  that “Florida has gained nearly 3 million people since the last redistricting process a decade ago,” and that expansion has “set the stage for a remaking of its political lines headed into a 2022 election likely to determine control of the U.S. House.” The paper’s Gary Fineout and Matt Dixon remind readers that redistricting “will be controlled by Republicans, who already hold 16 of the state’s 27 congressional districts.” Democrats worry that “the new maps will only further banish them in Florida’s political desert.” Florida will gain a 28th seat in the next Congress, not to mention a 30th Electoral College vote in the 2024 presidential election. That nicely matches the losses suffered by New York State, and ironically enough, New Yorkers fled their own COVID lockdowns for Florida. The seeming miracle ...

  Jordon Davidson: Almost 90 Retired Flag Officers Demand Mark Milley, Lloyd Austin Resign After Afghanistan Debacle I was wounded in action in Vietnam and left the Marine Corps at a much lower rank, but I too think these two should go.  I was not that impressed with them before this debacle on their watch.

 Kurt Schlichter: I will admit my own relatively minor failure: I voted for invertebrate-con Mitt Romney in 2012 and have spent the last nine years regretting it, but now I look at the saps who checked the box for that crusty old pervert who’s busy flushing our country down the crapper and I feel really bad for them. Well, at least for those Biden voters who weren’t dead when they cast their ballots. They thought that mean tweets and dating Playboy models was so outrageously awful that they needed to exchange him for a half-wit plagiarist with busy hands and a slothful mind. He was no prize before he put the “d” in “dementia.” Prior to allegedly being elected president, this dork was, as Democrat Robert Gates famously put it, “ wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades. " The same genius who thought capping Bin Ladin was a bad idea also thought ditching Bagram was a good one. Well, at least he’s consistent. Look around, at t...

 Andrea Widburg: From the beginning of the COVID pandemic, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has been focused on following the facts no matter where they lead.  More often than not, the facts have led him in a different direction from those emanating from the World Health Organization or from Anthony Fauci.  What's important to remember about Berenson, though, is that, while his conclusions may differ from those being pushed on the American people, he never deviates from the facts.  That's why Twitter just kicked him off. Because Berenson's conclusions did not support mask mandates and lockdowns, the tech tyrants hate him.  He's routinely been locked out of Twitter, and, last year, Amazon tried to shut down his self-published works about the virus. Now Twitter has banned him permanently for pointing out the obvious about the vaccines: they're not real vaccines that provide permanent protection against an illness. ...

 Thomas Lifson: The tightness of polling on the recall of Gavin Newsom, combined with the frontrunner status of Black conservative Larry Elder, has driven many progressives over the edge, into madness.  Nothing infuriates condescending Whites and racialist Blacks more than an independent-thinking, articulate Black conservative.  The continuing disgraceful treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas by the corporate media and establishment Black institutions is the most prominent example to date.  But the prospect of the governorship of our nation's most populous state, deep blue California, falling into the hands of a Black conservative has driven people to say absurd things, laughable on their face. Heather Mac Donald has a characteristically excellent piece at  City Journal  on the left playing the race card on Elder.  Understand that crime and homelessness are seriously affecting the quality of life for most Californians.  Fea...

  Legal Insurrection: ‘Scripted and Shallow’: Fallen Marine’s Family, Pregnant Widow Slam Biden After Meeting Him   “You can’t f— up as bad as he did and say you’re sorry. This did not need to happen, and every life is on his hands.” Biden seems to think that talking about his son dying of cancer would be meaningful to the family of victims.  It was not. 

 Washington Times: ... Gutierrez is another grim statistic of this year’s unprecedented border surge. He was one of 61 people to die trying to sneak into the U.S. in May and one of 383 over the past 10 months. They have drowned, fallen from the border wall, died of exposure, succumbed to illness or, increasingly, been killed in car wrecks when the smugglers careen out of control. If seasonal patterns hold, the Border Patrol is on pace to challenge 2005 as the worst year in memory for border deaths. Ronald Vitiello , a former chief of the Border Patrol, said it’s a matter of math: More people are coming, so more are dying. “It’s all based on the volume,” he said. “We’ve gone to unprecedented heights in attempted entries. There are more people dying on the way, there are more people dying at the border, there’s more risk to the people coming.” ... They are the victims of Biden's totally irresponsible border policy and his attempt to import people to help Democrats steal elections....

  Daily Mail: Ted Cruz says Afghan refugees are 'getting Ubers' from Fort Bliss when they arrive in the US: Homeland Security faces vetting questions after 'previously deported rapist' and ISIS suspected terrorists were put on evacuation flights from Kabul It is just more evidence that Biden is totally irresponsible about who he lets into the country.  See, also: Report: Biden Brings Convicted Afghan Rapist Deported by Trump Back to U.S.

 Washington Examiner: Few politicians are more effective at owning the libs than Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.). Her refusal to abandon her principled support for the Senate filibuster continues to be a significant source of liberal angst. Adding insult to injury, Sinema has made clear that she couldn't care less what her left-wing critics think about her. Sorry, libs. The Daily Beast reports that liberal activists in Sinema's home state (and beyond) are beginning to accept the fact that they are owned, and there's nothing they can do about it: "For the local and national advocacy groups trying to pressure Sinema, demoralization is setting in as they worry time is running out to enact Democrats’ ambitious agenda while they control Washington." The article opens by describing the pathetic scene at a recent protest in downtown Phoenix, where a group of left-wing activists took turns complaining about climate change while a four-foot ice sculpture of Sinema's l...

 Power Line: The Telegraph’s Nick Allen  reports  that President Biden vows to remember what they’re saying about him over in the scepter’d isle. This is how it goes: Joe Biden “will remember” comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will “bear a grudge” against Britain, sources told the Telegraph. It came after Cabinet insiders were quoted as suggesting the US president “looked gaga” and described him as “doolally” in the wake of the fall of Kabul. “The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” a US source told the Telegraph. “It’s always been his way that if somebody says something really bad to him, or about him, he doesn’t speak to them again. He does bear grudges. Boris Johnson should know that.” The source added: “The president is not ‘gaga’. He’s actually picked up his game quite a bit since the campaign.” Comments by Cabinet insiders...

  Fox News: Taliban commit 'house-to-house executions' in Kabul after US exit as chilling audio demonstrates Afghans' fear   Afghan man who helped the US on the ground: 'I have no idea how to leave' This bugout will make it harder for US troops to find people to cooperate with them in the future. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Joe Biden’s scripted or no-questions press conferences, and the clean-up afterward by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Jen Psaki, have been some of the most misleading episodes in modern presidential history—mostly in what was not said rather than was exaggerated, warped, and misrepresented. The more Joe Biden mutters “The buck stops here” or “I take full responsibility,” the more we know he will not—and not just because of his now reduced mental state, but because 1) he repeats the same opportunist messaging that he has for the last 50 years of his political career, and 2) the only true thing he could say was “I ordered a withdrawal in the most reckless manner in U.S. military history.” When Biden then blames Donald Trump, it raises the immediate questions: 1) If the Afghanistan deal was so flawed, why did Biden stick with it, given his other radical departures from what he inherited on the border, on fossil fuels, on the Middle East—on just about everything bef...

 Mark Steyn: ... There are not a lot of real conservatives, are there? The most eminent right-side commentators back when I wrote After America - George Will, Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot - are now all enthusiastic Biden voters, assuring us he's a "moderate" Democrat. The moderate opens the borders, transgenderizes the laws, and turns a two-decade inconclusive colonial policing operation into a devastating global humiliation. Perhaps we should launch a competition to spot which conservative pundit will be endorsing Miss Ocasio Cortez a decade hence. ... There are a lot of "dead things" going with the stream. The United States military is utterly dead, at least in terms of being a force of influence in the world for anyone other than German supermarket managers dependent on the local base's patronage. Thoroughly Modern Milley goes with the flow because he's all ribbons and no chest. Pentagon press releases read like Teen Beat in the Seventies. ...

 Washington Examiner: R epublican members of Congress reportedly being targeted by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot are pushing back, accusing Democrats of trying to spy on them for political purposes and starting another “witch hunt” akin to the investigation that preceded former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. The select committee is preparing to ask telecommunications companies to preserve records from a group of Republican lawmakers and some members of Trump’s family who were involved in the “Stop the Steal” rally that took place outside the White House before the Capitol breach, according to a  report  from CNN. ... Republicans say it is much more important to investigate the origins of Covid .   ... Over 600,000 people have died of COVID so far in the United States, yet the best our intelligence experts can tell us is that some “elements” of the intelligence community have “low confidence” in the conclusion that COVID o...

  Washington Examiner: Biden's and Democrats' 2022 hopes depend on voters forgetting about botched Afghanistan withdrawal Even if Big Tech tries to censor what happens, people are never going to forget Biden's screw-up and the continued Democrat support for it.  Democrats are whistling in the dark if they think it will not be an issue in 2022. The Americans he left behind will be a constant reminder of that screw-up.  Their fate would not let Americans forget even if they wanted to.  The pictures of people hanging by the neck from US helicopters left behind will shadow Democrats every time a Democrat tries to tell people to forget.

 National Review: After President Biden gave the cue to Education Secretary Cardona, the Department of Education has launched civil-rights probes against five Republican-led states that banned mask mandates in public institutions. “The Department has heard from parents from across the country – particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions – about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally,” Cardona said in a press release. OCR will investigate whether the states in question have violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which deal with discrimination. The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to education leaders in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Iowa, Tennessee, and Utah. The recipients did not include Florida or Texas, whose governors have been battling ...

 PJ Media: To preserve the integrity of ballots cast in an election,  Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14  dictated that absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be  immediately  transported to the county registrar and processed and stored in the same manner as absentee ballots returned by mail are processed and stored,” and that “The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form  upon receipt  of the ballots from the collection team.” [Emphasis added] This emergency rule was adopted during a July 2020 meeting of the Georgia State Election Board. But according to  an analysis of ballot transfer forms  by  The Georgia Star News , 43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots that were put in dropboxes by voters, a whopping 72 percent, violated this rule. Based on their analysis, 28,194 absentee ballots (46 percent) “were not documented as being received by the elections registrar or the director’s designee un...

 Washington Examiner: O fficials in states with skyrocketing hospitalizations due to the COVID-19 delta variant have touted underutilized monoclonal antibody treatments as the best way to avoid serious illness. Still, they stand by their decisions to ban vaccine mandates. The treatment was given to former President  Donald Trump  when he was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who  tested positive  after getting vaccinated, was also prescribed the treatment earlier this month. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, also touted the treatment’s efficacy, saying on Tuesday the risk of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19 could  decrease by 70%-85%  . “This monoclonal treatment is probably one of the best ways to be able to [prevent serious illness], it's important to do it early, though,” Florida Gov.  Ron DeSantis  said on Thursday. “If you wait till you're very, very ill a...

 Politico: Just 24 hours before a suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, senior military leaders gathered for the Pentagon’s daily morning update on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Speaking from a secure video conference room on the third floor of the Pentagon at 8 a.m. Wednesday — or 4:30 p.m. in Kabul — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin instructed more than a dozen of the department’s top leaders around the world to make preparations for an imminent “mass casualty event,” according to classified detailed notes of the gathering shared with POLITICO. During the meeting, Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of “significant” intelligence indicating that the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, ISIS-K, was planning a “complex attack,” the notes quoted him as saying. Commanders calling in from Kabul relayed that the Abbey Gate, where American citizens had been told to gather in order to gain entrance to t...

 Washington Examiner: ... "I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens," Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., U.S. CENTCOM commander, announced at a Pentagon briefing on Monday evening local time. All of the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a number that progressively dwindled ahead of the exit date, have left the country shortly after midnight in Kabul, in line with President Joe Biden’s self-imposed withdrawal date, as celebratory gunfire  rang out  across the capital city. ... It was one of the more chaotic retreats in history.  The story does not indicate whether all of the American civilians were evacuated.  While the Taliban never defeated the US forces in the war, Biden's decision to leave looks like a defeat. See, also: Macron vows French troops will remain in Iraq even if US withdraws And: Biden breaks vow and leaves stranded Americans in the hands of bloodthirst...

Daily Mail:   Biden is a 'feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap': Mother of Marine killed in Kabul airport attack slams the President as he meets families of the 13 dead troops The story is about the victims of the attack and their families.  See, also: Mom of Marine slain in Kabul says Biden voters 'killed my son'

 Jason Hayes: There’s little room for nuance when it comes to President Biden ’s energy policy. The Biden administration appears to be working from one of two realities. The more charitable interpretation suggests administration officials are so overtaken with green ideology that they’ve lost the ability to recognize the economic, social and environmental damage their “Green New Deal”-like plans are causing. A less charitable take would suggest they are comfortable relying on foreign competitors — and a few well-connected Washington insiders — for energy that should be produced domestically. From its first days, the Biden administration has attacked and stifled America’s energy production. When he was campaigning, Biden and his running mate both promised to stop fracking . Immediately after he was elected, Biden paused all oil and gas leasing on federal lands. He then killed the Keystone XL pipeline and the many thousands of jobs it supported, claiming the pipeline did not serve ...

  Legal Insurrection: Jonathan Turley: Statements By Capitol Police Officer Who Killed Ashli Babbitt ‘Demolish the Two Official Reviews That Cleared Him’   “Under Byrd’s interpretation, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6.” The main distinction I draw from this exoneration is that he killed a Trump supporter rather than a BLM rioter.  If he had killed a BLM rioter and been exonerated it would have triggered another deadly riot.  This dual system of justice is not sustainable.  See, also: The military brass may regret firing Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller ...   In fact, we’ve been watching unfold for some time in America a two-tiered justice system. In the civilian world, one tier, the higher one, is for leftists and the other, the lower one, is for conservatives. It started in politics. We’ve all noticed that Republicans who err got fired. Meanwhile, leftists who violated the law (e.g., Hillary) never got fired. The only exceptio...

 Instapundit: THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS FAILING. IT’S UP TO THE STATES.  Afghanistan, Southern US Border Show Biden Uninterested in Defending America.  “Confronted with a whole summer of insurrectionary violence in American cities, it can’t seem to bring itself to guarantee public order. Confronted with angry citizens overrunning the very seat of its rule on Capitol Hill, it can’t seem to defend itself. Confronted with a metastasizing narco-state threat in Mexico, and a historic crisis of human trafficking overwhelming national borders, it can’t seem to do much but watch. Yet when confronted with states organizing in blocs to execute tasks reserved to itself — the so-called ‘Western States Pact’ comes to mind, as do the various states sending forces to the U.S.-Mexico border — the federal government seems strangely passive and inert. Perhaps that’s to the good.” Plus: “It’s tempting to look at unforced errors like this in isolation, just one episode among many. We shouldn...

  Karen Townsend: Gen. McMaster puts blame for Afghanistan disaster squarely on Biden - "self-defeat" ...   McMaster says the war in Afghanistan ended in “self-defeat”. He said everyone involved in the war management during the last 20 years bears some responsibility but it didn’t have to end this way. He calls it “a one-year war fought twenty times over.” The decision for withdrawal has been a costly one. McMaster said that Biden “doubled down” on Trump’s original plan and “failed to reverse” it. The fact is, too, that Trump’s agreement with the Taliban – an agreement that wasn’t a formal agreement – was already null and void due to Taliban conduct before Biden set his withdrawal operation into play. “And of course, what’s sad about it is this war ended in self-defeat, Chuck. I mean we had a sustainable effort in place several years ago, that if we had sustained it, we could have prevented what’s happening now,” McMaster told host Chuck Todd. “But instead, what we did, Chuc...

 Power Line: STILL CRAZY ABOUT TRUMP ...   In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump often dispatched with even the fig leaves that past presidents had employed around the rule of law. So you might expect the editorialists to cite at least one thing Trump did that was arguably illegal. But you would be disappointed. He demonized his political foes and the free press… Fortunately, criticizing reporters is not yet illegal. And no one in public life since Abraham Lincoln has been demonized like Donald Trump. spread lies… Notice that none of this has anything to do with the subject of the Times editorial. and lauded strongmen. On Mr. Xi’s bid to remain president for life, Mr. Trump said: “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” Does the Times seriously not understand that this was a joke? Liberals are so crazed with hatred these days that they can’t think straight. He also tried every trick to overturn a democratic election. That is to say, he ...

 Fox News: A new national poll indicates that most Americans want U.S. troops to remain at the airport in Afghanistan 's capital city of Kabul until all Americans, as well as Afghans who aided the U.S. during the 20 year conflict in the war torn central Asian country, are evacuated. More than 8 in 10 (84%) Americans say that U.S. troops should remain in the country until all Americans are evacuated, according to a ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. And 71% of those questioned said that the troops should stay until all Afghans who helped the U.S. are evacuated as well. 350 AMERICAN STILL ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE AFGHANISTAN: STATE DEPARTMENT The U.S. has airlifted some 114,000 people – including 5,500 Americans – since repressive Taliban forces swept the country and captured Kabul – Afghanistan’s capital and largest city – two weeks ago. ... There was none of the typical partisan divide in the survey, with 87% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats and independents saying U.S. troop...