PrairiePundit

 Red States: Leftist Claims Lee Zeldin Is an Anti-Semite, Gets Hit With an Inconvenient Fact ...  Just one problem. Lee Zeldin is a practicing Jew. Oops.... ...

 Fox News: As hopes look increasingly bleak for Democrats less than two weeks from Election Day, a number of the party's candidates at risk of losing their races have begun calling for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden to be replaced despite their voting records largely aligning with party leaders. Although Democrats' cries for "new blood" began with the rise of the party's far-left members, such as the "Squad," voters in many areas of the country that aren't buying into "woke" culture, and are seeking a solution to the economic challenges that have become central issues in the midterm elections , are driving these candidates to turn on their leaders. In September, Democratic Ohio Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, who is trailing in the polls to Republican rival JD Vance, called for the next generation of leadership to take hold of the party when asked in a radio interview if he thought Bid...

 Victoria Taft: ... Smiley has been ascendant in recent weeks and has received key aid from Mitch McConnell and his Senate PAC money. She has acquitted herself well on the campaign trail and during debates. A recent poll put Murray up by eight points, but she’s lost that edge recently because of the horrible conditions on the ground in Washington: record gas prices with the intent to raise them even more because of the Democrats’ religious obsession with the weather. Truck drivers need diesel fuel to get goods to customers, and there’s a Democrat-policy-induced shortage. Food is more expensive.  Everything  is more expensive. Why is America funding both sides of the Ukraine-Russian war? Nobody knows but even Ukraine-flag virtue-signalers in Washington know this makes no sense. And RealClearPolitics has now listed the race as a toss-up and a statistical tie. After three decades of doing nothing in the Senate, Patty Murray may have to find a real job. ... Democrat energy po...

 Bill King: ... An extensive  survey done by the Pew Foundation  probed how support for the right to an abortion was affected by various circumstances and how far into the term the pregnancy was. The results showed Americans’ views on abortion are much more nuanced than just the life-choice dichotomy. To me, Pew’s survey shows most of Americans support the right to an abortion early in the pregnancy but that after about 12-15 weeks, a woman needs to have a good reason to terminate the pregnancy. Factors enjoying widespread support for an abortion later in the pregnancy include risk to the mother’s health, fetal deformity, and rape/incest. ... It is interesting that there have been so few attempts to pass the restrictions as stated in the survey. 

 Jazz Shaw: The ongoing panic among liberal Democrats and their mainstream media stenographers over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is continuing through the weekend with no signs of slowing down. Each of his new tweets is being analyzed for indications that he’s preparing to destroy the world by allowing people to post their own views and opinions without being shadow banned, deleted, or outright canceled. The clear and present danger is that people will somehow be “harmed” by viewing speech that they disagree with or find offensive. These innocent victims must be protected, so Elon Musk must be stopped! That’s what we’ve always been told, right? “Harmful, dangerous misinformation” is a threat to anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across the website. And who does such a thing? Racists, of course. Business Insider  rushed to report  that “experts” found the use of the N-word rose by 500% in the first twelve hours after Musk took over. The Network Contagion Research Inst...

 Eric Utter: The BBC, a publicly-funded broadcaster implicitly entrusted with disseminating vital messages to the U.K. citizenry during times of national crisis, has allegedly already begun preparing emergency broadcasts designed to reassure the people of Britain should extensive winter blackouts be necessary in the coming months. These potential blackouts would inevitably cause disruptions to the Commonwealth’s banking systems, internet access, mobile phone networks, and traffic lights, among other things. And would, of course, cause significant hardship—or worse—for much of the populace. Already, various media outlets are speculating about how many Europeans will freeze to death this coming winter. And how tragically ironic that this will, in large part, be because of a misguided attempt to stave off global warming?! Eschewing fossil fuels and going green may lead to frostbite induced gangrene. Or death. But, to hell with oil and coal, to hell with fracking, say no to nuclear. ...

 NY Times: On the screen of a thermal imaging camera, the Russian armored personnel carrier disappeared in a silent puff of smoke. “What a beautiful explosion,” said 1st Lt. Serhiy, a Ukrainian drone pilot who watched as his weapon buzzed into a Russian-controlled village and picked off the armored vehicle, a blast that was audible seconds later at his position about 4 miles away. “We used to cheer, we used to shout, ‘Hurray!’ but we’re used to it now,” he said. The war in Ukraine has been fought primarily through the air, with artillery, rockets, missiles and drones. And for months, Russia had the upper hand, able to lob munitions at Ukrainian cities, towns and military targets from positions well beyond the reach of Ukrainian weapons. But in recent months, the tide has turned along the front lines in southern Ukraine. With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has artillery superiority in the area, commanders and military analysts say. Ukraine now has a...

 Breitbart: A majority of American voters believe Democrats put the interests of migrants ahead of Americans, while Republicans put Americans first, according to a CBS poll of 2,119 registered voters. “What an absolute terrible poll result for Democrats,” Republican consultant Ryan Girdusky tweeted on October 30.... ... The poll also showed that 59 percent of all voters, and 61 percent of independents, say Democrats will “open the U.S.-Mexican border” if they keep control of Congress in 2023. Twenty percent of liberals and 27 percent of Democrats say their party will open the borders. The pre-election poll comes after President Joe Biden’s deputies imported at least 3 million foreign workers, immigrants, and illegal immigrants. In 2022, for example, he imported at least seven migrants for every 10 births. Biden’s migration is unfairly pressuring down Americans’ wages. It is also boosting rents and housing prices , and is pushing up inflation for a wide variety of goods, such ...

 Daily Wire: ... “It’s 35 degrees out [in New England],” Sununu said. “Folks are filling up their 270-gallon [home heating oil] tanks, and it’s costing them ($1200-$1300). Kerosene is limited because there’s no incentive to create more natural gas or more fuel for this country, and that should be our priority: keeping people warm this winter.” Even in NBC News’s own polling, Americans were more likely to say that economic issues and inflation were the country’s most pressing concerns. According to an NBC News poll conducted earlier this month, a combined choice of 35% of Americans considered “jobs and the economy” as one of the most important issues; another 29% said it was the “cost of living.” Just 30% considered “threats to democracy” a pressing issue. I think "treats to democracy" is a BS issue.  I do not know anyone who wants to do away with democracy.  Republicans want to elect people who will support their agenda and doing away with democracy is not on their agend...

 Monica Showalter: ... According to  Just The News : “Ballot brokers typically work up to a year in advance,” [the whistleblower] stated. “Ballot brokers visit individuals in their residences and assists the individual with filling out a request for a mail-in ballot. After the mail-in ballot arrives, the voter is instructed to wait for the ballot broker returns to the individuals residence. They are asked to not seal the certificate envelope.” “In rare circumstances, if the voter has filled out the ballot and sealed the envelope certificate, the ballot broker will take the ballot and then steam open the sealed envelope,” the affidavit added. “The ballot broker will either correct any votes, if necessary, that were not voted according to their wishes or just throw them out.” So this has been going on for years in the Orlando area and, up until now, nobody did anything about it. It's coercive, illegal, anti-democratic,  widespread , and slimy. According to a 2020 ...

 Roger Kimball: “The Bird is Freed!” That’s what Elon Musk tweeted upon the consummation of his bid to buy Twitter. ’Twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why? For one thing, as Musk later tweeted, henceforth comedy once again will now be “ legal on Twitter .” Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for more money than you or I can really contemplate ( $44 billion ) lit the punditocracy ablaze. On the Left there was, as St. Matthew ( 13:42 ) put it in another context, abundant “fletus et stridor dentium,” “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” On the Right, there were cheers and not a little “Schadenfreude,” which is German for “serves you right, knucklehead.” The Right also went in for some creative trolling . The dominant narrative, on the Left anyway, is that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter represents a conservative takeover of the social media giant. Twitter had been a brash and scrappy upstart, you see, and now it has been “colonized” by the rich and powerful. . . . That’s the idea, anywa...

 Washington Examiner: Only 17% of black voters support defunding the police: Poll The defund the police movement was mainly supported by Back Lives Matter and it is clear that the group was out of touch with the majority of black Americans. 

 Daily Wire: New Twitter CEO Elon Musk is reportedly set to cut up to 50% of the work force at Twitter after taking over the company late this week, and layoffs are expected to begin as soon as this weekend. The New York Times reported that Musk “ordered the cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others,” adding that “some managers [were] being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut.” ... The layoffs are reportedly set to happen before employees were scheduled to get stock grants as part of their compensation, the report added. ... It is not uncommon for people to be fired after an acquisition. Twitter must have had a lot of people responsible for its censorious policies.

 Fox Business: President Biden on Friday was fact-checked by Twitter for inflating the number of corporations that were making billions. In a tweet, purporting to give his followers "the facts," the president asserted that 55 corporations made $40 billion in 2020 and "paid zero in federal taxes." The tweet included context added by readers, noting that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act imposed a minimum tax on corporations with average pre-tax earnings greater than $1 billion. It noted that of the 55 corporations mentioned by President Biden, only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden’s tax law. ... Was Biden misinformed are just winging it when he made this false statement?  He was clearly wrong/

 Fox News: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey was accused this week by the Biden Administration of trespassing as the Republican governor makes efforts to fill gaps along the U.S.-Mexico border with shipping containers. Ducey announced last week that he would have crews install shipping containers along a section of the border to fill gaps not covered by a wall. The announcement came two weeks after federal officials ordered him to take down containers he had placed in the southwestern part of the state. The Republican governor then sued and requested the courts allow Arizona to keep 100 shipping containers, double stacked with barbed wire on top, in place near Yuma. The containers were put in place in August to fill gaps in the border , which Ducey said was pushing back against "the inaction of the Biden Administration in stopping migrants from entering the state from Mexico," according to the Associated Press. Ducey’s plan is to cover a 10-mile section of the border using more than 2...

 NY Times: Senate Control Hinges on Neck-and-Neck Races, Times/Siena Poll Finds The contests are close in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Many voters want Republicans to flip the Senate, but prefer the Democrat in their state. I can't think of any Democrat I prefer in any state.  Democrat control of the Senate and the House has been a disaster under Biden.  Their response to the pandemic has been wrong on many counts including the worst inflation in 40 years.  Democrat crime policies mainly benefited the criminals. 

 ISW: ... Russian President Vladimir Putin will most likely try to continue conventional military operations in Ukraine to hold currently occupied territories, gain new ground, and set conditions for the collapse of Western support for Ukraine that he likely expects to occur this winter. Putin has likely not abandoned hopes of achieving his maximalist aims in Ukraine through conventional military means, which he is pursuing in parallel with efforts to break Ukraine’s will to fight and the West’s will to continue supporting Kyiv.[1] Putin is unlikely to escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons barring the sudden collapse of the Russian military permitting Ukrainian forces to make uncontrolled advances throughout the theater.[2] Such a situation is possible but unlikely. Putin is extraordinarily unlikely to seek direct military conflict with NATO. Putin is very likely to continue to hint at the possibility of Russian tactical nuclear use and attacks on NATO, however, as parts ...

 Red States: ... “President Obama was here last night. He said I’m a celebrity. He got that one wrong, didn’t he? I’m not a celebrity, I’m a warrior for God. He got something else wrong, too. Remember two years ago he told us to vote for Joe Biden, didn’t he? He got that one wrong, did he not? He’s lost twice in Georgia already, hasn’t he, so I think he probably needs to sit this one out,” Walker then took on the pilot analogy, saying Obama said he wouldn’t hire Walker to be a pilot. “I wouldn’t hire him [Obama] to be a pilot either” Walker declared to great laughs. Then he said Obama would probably want him on his debate team after Walker so handily dispatched Warnock in the debate. Gas prices are up, crime is up, and the border is wide open, Walker said. “They’re destroying this country.” He laughed that they don’t “even know the definition of a woman yet.” “Where has he been?” Walker asked about Obama as everything has gotten worse under Biden. “He’s been in his nice house, hasn...

  Michael Shellenberger: Dumping milk onto floors. Hurling food onto walls. Refusing to eat . Gluing body parts. Throwing paint . Refusing to leave. Threatening to pee and poop in your pants. Screaming accusations. Are those the behaviors of a toddler’s temper tantrum? Yes. But they’re also the dominant tactics of today’s climate activists. Consider the case of Gianluca Grimalda. On October 19, Grimalda, along with 15 other members of a climate activist group called Scientist Rebellion, glued himself to the floor of the visitors center next to a Volkswagon factory in Germany. The VW security guards brought pizza to Grimalda and the other activist scientists, but Grimalda felt disrespected and so he declared a hunger strike in retaliation. Grimalda immediately expressed outrage at his treatment. “VW told us that they supported our right to protest,” he complained on Twitter, “but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner whi...

 Michael Lind: ... In isolation, the transgender controversy might have been viewed as a strange aftershock of the gay rights movement, which achieved its much more moderate goals of civil and marriage equality for gay men and lesbian women by the first decade of the 21st century. But the imposition of transgender ideology through economic compulsion by the federal government and major private sector institutions was only the beginning. It was followed by the march through the institutions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) based on “critical race theory” (CRT), a sectarian ideology that holds that all whites and “white-adjacent” Asian Americans, no matter how poor and powerless, are “privileged,” while all Black and Hispanic Americans, no matter how rich and powerful, are “marginalized” members of “underserved communities.” By the 2020s, at one university after another, applicants for faculty positions were required to submit “DEI statements,” listing the ways that they w...

 Fox Business: Fuel company issues diesel shortage warning, says conditions 'rapidly devolving' Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina expected to be impacted by diesel shortage None of those states are major oil producers. But if production is not increased the problem is likely to spread.  See, also: Bye-bye trucks? California air regulators to consider phasing out diesel big rigs If adopted, new rule would all new medium and heavy-duty vehicles to be zero-emission by 2040.

 Jazz Shaw: ...  German energy company RWE operates several different types of power generation operations in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. At one location, they have a large lignite coal mine and a wind turbine farm located side by side. (A rather startling juxtaposition given the divisive nature of the ongoing green energy debate.) But some changes are coming, and not the sort that green energy enthusiasts are cheering about. RWE has begun taking down some of its wind turbines   to make room to further expand the coal mine . A spokesperson for the company said that they realize that this development may be seen as “paradoxical.” (Townhall) In the throes of an energy crisis, a German energy company is moving forward with plans to dismantle a wind farm adjacent to its coal mine in order to expand operations. The removal of one of the wind farm’s eight wind turbines occurred last week, with two more coming down next year and the rest getting removed by the end of 20...

 Legal Insurrection: U.S. Senate Report Concludes Covid Pandemic ‘Likely’ Originated with Leak from Wuhan Lab ProPublica, in collaboration with Vanity Fair, also published a report that drew the same conclusions. This is a fact that the Chicoms have been trying to suppress.  I suspect they fear being sued by the victims of Covid. 

 Alex Berenson: What will Twitter look like after the world’s richest man finishes buying it? Very different. Very quickly. And better. Elon Musk’s takeover should close tomorrow. (It was always going to close; he was never going to walk away.) Then Musk will have a hot mess on his hands. Twitter is awful, and getting worse by the day under current management. The little bird is a uniquely important property, as Musk knows. When it is working, it is the world’s most important forum for journalism - and for debate. It is a no-holds barred public square where elite gatekeepers cannot stop reporting and research from being presented and judged on their own merits. It is the world’s largest open journal, the ultimate peer-review site. Because on Twitter anyone and everyone can speak, and ideas are judged very quickly and rise or fall on their own merits. When it is working. It’s not working now. I joined Twitter in 2009, but I only learned its power in March 2020, after I became public...

 CBS News: There are more and more signs that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be unraveling. One of the most glaring setbacks in its war is its recent big call-up of more troops — a plan that doesn't appear to be working. Russia's mobilization has caused anger at home, forcing the old and inexperienced into uniform, with claims they're short of even basic equipment. The call-up followed weeks of embarrassing setbacks for Russian forces, as Ukraine has retaken swaths of its territory. And in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, officials appointed by Moscow have evacuated civilians ahead of another expected Ukrainian counter-offensive. On Russian state TV, at times the tone seems close to despair. Russia miscalculated its strength and for eight straight months can't win in its war on Ukraine, said one commentator. Perhaps another sign of Russian desperation is its new tactic: targeting the Ukrainian power grid, which has led to blackouts in Ukraine — but no coll...

 Reuters: Some of the largest U.S. oil producers on Friday signaled productivity and volume gains in the top U.S. shale oil field are slowing, citing disappointing well results and output that is no longer topping their forecasts. U.S. shale oil producer Pioneer Natural Resources on Friday told investors it will reshuffle its drilling portfolio next year to target wells with potentially higher returns, a move to boost lagging productivity levels. Chevron and Exxon Mobil also offered cautious notes on their Permian oil and gas volumes. Chevron's full-year output will be near the lower end of the 700,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil and gas per day (boed) it has targeted while Exxon lowered its forecast to a gain of 20% from last year from its earlier estimate of 25%. ... This is happening as Biden blocks new production in some federal control sites.  The Feds do not control the production in Texas, but they do in the part of the Permian field that is in New Mexico. 

 Daily Mail: Sure about that, Joe? Biden, 79, claims US has FIFTY-FOUR states during speech in support of post-stroke Senate hopeful John Fetterman - as gaffes pile up and concerns continue to mount about the president's cognitive abilities Both Biden and Fetterman appear to have cognitive issues and I think Pelosi has to some extent.  See, also: THIS SENIOR MOMENT

 Newsmax: Nearly 250,000 ballots, state data show, were mailed to Pennsylvania voters without their identities being verified, according to the election integrity organization Verity Vote . Citing the information provided by Verity Vote, 15 Pennsylvania state House representatives sent a letter to acting Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Leigh Chapman on Tuesday. Citing testimony from Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks, the legislators pointed out that ballots are being "mailed to unverified applicants." "But less than two weeks" after Marks' testimony, the legislators continued, "the Department of State sent out guidance informing the counties that the verification is done prior to the mailing of ballots." "Either the ballots are mailed to unverified applicants or ballots are not mailed to unverified applicants but both statements cannot be true," the state representatives wrote. "Due to this con...

 Harold Hutchison: Two pollsters told Fox News host Sean Hannity Friday night that black and Hispanic voters are moving to the GOP droves, particularly in Pennsylvania and Georgia. “We consistently see where the African American vote, about 20% or more, are going for Republican candidates,” Matt Towery, chairman of InsiderAdvantage, told Hannity when asked about Georgia and Pennsylvania, two states which could decide control of the Senate. (RELATED: ‘A Difference In Leadership’: Democrats Are Losing Support Among Minority Voters) “When it comes to either Hispanic, Latino or what we call other, sometimes it’s 60-something percent for the Republican,” Towery continued. “These are things that we’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen Republican candidates getting 20% of the African American vote this close to an election. I certainly have never seen Hispanic, Latinos or other races trending Republican like I’m seeing in this particular year.” ... Asian-American voters apparently turned...

 Daily Caller: Something strange just happened in the pages of New York Times’ magazine. They published an eye-opening admission from renowned climate alarmist David Wallace-Wells, titled “Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View.” What is this intriguing “new reality”? In short, as Wallace-Wells writes, the “worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so, which is inarguably good news and … a truly underappreciated sign of genuine and world-shaping progress.” In other words, the apocalypse is canceled. Now, Wallace-Wells is wrong that these worst-case climate modeling scenarios, collectively called RCP8.5, were ever “plausible” to begin with. They weren’t. RCP8.5’s scary results largely stem from already overheated climate models and highly unlikely projections that global coal use per capita will boom about six-fold. As Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Richie noted in a 2021 paper , “[i]n the latest version of the RCP8.5 sce...

  David Harsanyi: At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn't going to save democracy — if such a thing exists. If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don't vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to "save democracy," writes The Washington Post's Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. "Now you need to vote to literally save democracy once again," contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our "fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy." Chilling stuff. But it doesn't end there. You will remember that by failing to "reform" the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational "reforms" without an...

 Post Millennial: Arizona rules in favor of monitors' constitutional right to oversee ballot drop boxes US District Court Judge Michael Liburdi said it was unconstitutional to prevent monitors from overseeing the delivery of ballots via drop boxes in Arizona. The monitors can detect the use of mules to dump harvested ballots.  See, also: Group can monitor Arizona ballot drop boxes, federal judge rules Local and federal law enforcement have been alarmed by reports of people, including some who were masked and armed, watching 24-hour ballot boxes.