PrairiePundit

 Newsbusters: ... AllSides — a media solutions company that purports to “expose people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world” —released a report Feb. 28 illustrating how Google News “displayed articles from left-wing media sources far more often than sources from the right.” Specifically, AllSides said that its analysis revealed that a whopping “61% of media outlets presented on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from sources AllSides rates as on the left, with just 3% from outlets on the right.” “The jig is up,” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider said in a statement. “It’s no accident when Google News promotes left-leaning outlets twenty times more than right-leaning outlets. Google cannot pretend to be unbiased any longer. Our own research has shown it. AllSides is corroborating it.” ... My own experience confirms that Google News is not a good source for conservative content....

 PJ Media: ... A state department cable warning of safety issues at the Wuhan lab was revealed in 2018 — before COVID-19 became front-page news. In  2020,  even  The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin  confirmed the concern over the problems at the lab. In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology, and health. Last week, WIV [removed] that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet. Here’s a look at what you see when you try to find the repor...

 Eddie Scarry: A couple of recent articles in The New York Times show just how annoyed the national media is getting at so far being unable to find something wrong with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Why hasn’t he called Donald Trump a fathead on Twitter yet?! Where are all the women who want to accuse him of being a rapist?! Why won’t he back down from positions that are popular with voters?! Admittedly, it’s never too late for any one of those scenarios to become a reality, and Republicans rarely justify high hopes. But for now, the Times has had to settle on attacking DeSantis for not being more readily attackable. ... He is a successful Republican governor and that is reason enough to frustrate the media.  DeSantis is starting to do things that coule lead to a run for the presdiency, but he has not announced such a run. 

 Fox Business: Iran’s currency fell to a new record low on Sunday, plummeting to 600,000 rials to the dollar for the first time in history as the country’s economy continues to be roiled by nationwide anti-government protests and international sanctions. Iranians’ purchasing power has been decimated by inflation , which reached an annual rate of 53.4% in January – up from 41.4% two years according to the country’s statistics center. The dire economic circumstances have wiped out the life savings of many and caused Iranians to form long lines at currency exchange offices in recent days in an effort to acquire increasingly scarce dollars. In recent months, Iran’s government has embarked on a brutal crackdown against protesters who took to the streets after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s Islamic dress code. The protests rapidly escalated into a call for Iran’s ruling...

 AP: U.S. intelligence shows that China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s military to “be ready by 2027″ to invade Taiwan though he may be currently harboring doubts about his ability to do so given Russia’s experience in its war with Ukraine , CIA Director William Burns said. Burns, in a television interview that aired Sunday, stressed that the United States must take “very seriously” Xi’s desire to ultimately control Taiwan even if military conflict is not inevitable. “We do know, as has been made public, that President Xi has instructed the PLA, the Chinese military leadership, to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan, but that doesn’t mean that he’s decided to invade in 2027 or any other year as well,” Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I think our judgment at least is that President Xi and his military leadership have doubts today about whether they could accomplish that invasion,” he said. ... I would not be surprised by a Chinese attack on Taiwan, although to...

 Fox News: Former Disney CEO privately complained to DeSantis about 'pressure' from woke left amid Florida fight: book 'He did not want Disney to get involved, but he was getting a lot of pressure to weigh in against the bill,' DeSantis writes ... "As the controversy over the Parental Rights in Education bill was coming to a head, Chapek called me. He did not want Disney to get involved, but he was getting a lot of pressure to weigh in against the bill," DeSantis writes. "We get pressured all the time," Chapek told DeSantis, according to the governor's book. "But this time is different. I haven’t seen anything like this before." Chapek told shareholders that he had called DeSantis on March 9 to urge him not to sign the bill, which restricts schools from teaching gender and sexuality to children in kindergarten through third grade. Activists nicknamed it the "Don't say gay bill" despite the legislation not using those term...

Victor Davis Hanson:   Refighting the Vietnam War Triumph Regained shows that America’s war in Vietnam could have been won earlier at far less cost, and in fact almost was, even belatedly by 1968. In 1968 I was assistant commander of the 3rd Marine Division communication center in Dong Ha.  One of my roles was to review communication and send it to the appropriate commands.  It was my impression from these communications that the US was indeed winning.   I later became an executive officer of a rifle company on the DMZ and that experience confirmed much of what I was seeing at the communication center.  The NVA at that point was doing what it could to avoid contact with the Marines in Northern I Corps.  We would see an occasional artillery attack and troops in the field would encounter occasional hit-and-run mortar attacks.   There would be occasional ambushes of patrols but little in the way of mass attacks.  The attacks on Khe Sanh fai...

 Fox News: 'Greater Idaho' movement to absorb conservative rural counties from liberal Oregon gains momentum Idaho legislature pushing bill to open talks about moving border between western states You can't blame the conservative counties of Oregon for wanting to leave.  Portland and the coastal liberals have made a mess out of their government.  See, also: Nike BEGS Portland mayor for police protection to reopen shuttered community store plagued with retail theft "It is critical that one of these two models be made effective prior to May 1, 2023," Nike said.

 NY Times: Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short The struggle to deliver on promises to provide Leopard 2 tanks for use against Russian forces has exposed just how unprepared European militaries are. The Leopard 2 tanks are first-class equipment, but Europe needs many more of them. 

 Houston Chronicle: Two UPS employees have been accused of taking part in a larger drug trafficking operation by transporting packages of cocaine through their work. The two employees, Orlando Candelario Almanza, 49, of Edinburg, and Fidencio Salinas Jr., 51, of Pharr, were arrested along with three other people on February 21. They were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and possession with intent to distribute cocaine, according to a news release . The other three arrested in the trafficking operation include 48-year-old Javier Enrique Mendoza, 58-year-old Jose Felipe Lozano, and 45-year-old Enrique Bernardo Gamez. Almanza and Salinas allegedly transported the packages of cocaine that were provided to them by Mendoza. Reportedly, Lozano printed out the fake shipping labels and Gamez stored the packages of cocaine at his home before they were distributed. The group allegedly trafficked the cocaine from March 24 through October 3, 2022. Law enforcement seized around 60 k...

 Trending Politics: Elon Musk accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan, China lab where COVID-19 is believed to have originated from. Musk said Fauci funded gain-of-function research “via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth)” on Twitter Sunday. Musk’s fiery accusation came in response to a tweet that aggregated the multiple occurrences where Fauci denied any gain-of-function research and counter-signaled the idea that COVID-19 originated from a 2019 Wuhan lab leak. “Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?” the video’s caption reads. ... Hours earlier the Wall Street Journal released a bombshell report which revealed the U.S. Energy Department is now considering it likely COVID originated from a Wuhan, Chin...

 ISW: Russian officials are promoting an information operation that falsely frames Russia’s war in Ukraine as existential to the continued existence of the Russian Federation. In an interview with TV channel Rossiya-1 on February 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he does not know if "such an ethnic group as the Russian people can survive in the form in which it exists today" if the West succeeds in "destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its fragments."[1] Putin accused the collective West of already having plans "set out on paper" for the destruction of the Russian Federation in its current form.[2] Putin also remarked that Russia had to suspend its participation in the START treaty in order to ensure its strategic stability and security in the face of a concerted Western effort to use START to cripple Russia’s strategic prospects.[3] Putin began to set conditions for the perpetuation of this information operation i...

 Washington Free Beacon: An Israeli think tank executive who served alongside Hunter Biden as an adviser to a Chinese energy conglomerate widely suspected of serving as a front for the Chinese Communist Party now says he provided the FBI with damning information about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings. Gal Luft, the co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, says he provided information about Hunter Biden, his father, and his uncle, Jim Biden, to the Justice Department in March 2019. Luft served as an adviser to CEFC China Energy, a conglomerate that "aligned itself so closely with the Chinese government that it was often hard to distinguish between the two," according to CNN. The group, which donated at least $350,000 to Luft’s think tank, paid Hunter Biden at least $6 million in 2017 to procure energy investment deals in the United States. Luft’s claims come as a former Hunter Biden business partner, Eric Schwerin, has sta...

 National Review: The Biden administration remains supportive of gain-of-function research despite the potential risks as long as that research is pursued in a safe and transparent manner, national security council communications coordinator John Kirby explained on Monday. The controversial practice involves making pathogens more deadly or transmissible in order to better understand current or future pandemics, and thus be able to respond faster. Funding for the research was halted in 2014 during the Obama administration due to concerns about the risks: If modified pathogens escape the laboratory setting, they can cause pandemics. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) lifted that funding pause three years later after the creation of an oversight framework. In 2021, it emerged that U.S. taxpayers had funded research into bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through an intermediary — that is, EcoHealth Alliance. The news gained new relevance last week after the En...

 Frank Miele: The news broke last week that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson of Fox News access to thousands of hours of surveillance video from the day of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Naturally, this has led to panic on behalf of the usual suspects – the leftist mob who are not outside the Capitol but within its halls. These petty tyrants think only they should have access to information – and control its release. First up was Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the House Select Committee on January 6, who could have released the footage any time he wanted during the 18 months when he was supposedly seeking the truth. His statement was typical of the smears progressives employ to kill the messenger before the message can get out. You know the type. Just think back to the phony claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a “Russian information operation” and the accompanying attacks on the New York Post for trying to get the laptop’s incrimin...

 Jonathon Turley: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Department has concluded that the COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak. The conclusion is reportedly based on a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. Many will be exploring why the scientific evidence of a lab leak was so slow to emerge from intelligence agencies. However, for my part, the most alarming aspect was the censorship, not the science. There will continue to be a debate over the origins of COVID-19, but now there will be an actual debate. For years, the media and government allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racist or racist conspiracy theorist. ... There is more. This looks like censorship is anti-science a fearful of having a debate on the source of a deadly virus.  We should investigate how the virus came to be and anyone who was responsible for it. 

 Daily Mail: 'I felt safer in downtown Saigon during Vietnam': Moment squatters terrorizing Portland family almost set their home on fire as city battles to deal with 6,600 homeless people across 700 encampments A family in Portland is being terrorized by squatters who have set up camp next door and even set their property on fire. Jacob and Beth Adams live next door to an abandoned home that has been taken over by several homeless people. The couple has caught the homeless people overdosing and stealing from their backyard - but said the final straw was when the group set their property on fire. 'There are fires that have been happening off and on. Major ones. This recent one actually came and set our property on fire,' Jacob told Fox12. The Adams' official neighbor, who is a Vietnam veteran, echoed his concern, adding that the squatters have made his living situation worse than his military deployment in Vietnam. 'I felt safer when I was walking around in do...

 Biz Pac Review: According to historian and filmmaker Amity Shlaes, modern America under President Joe Biden is not all that different from the America that then-President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, faced when he took office in 1923. “It was very similar to today, almost eerily similar,” she said this week to Fox News . She proceeded to provide three specific examples. “We were coming out of a pandemic, influenza. Two, we had recession… or the prospect of recession. Three, we had hidden inflation. The government wasn’t acknowledging to people that prices were up 40%,” she said. “There was a sense of radicalism in the country and people were talking socialism and there it was. In came Harding first, then Coolidge for common sense America, what they called normalcy. They were elected with strong number of votes,” she added. ... I do not think Biden is very intelligent nor is his appointees. 

 Yahoo News: Check Your $2 Bills — They Could Be Worth Upwards of $4,500 ... If the $2 bill was minted and printed before 1976, it will likely be worth more than its face value on the collectibles market. In some cases, it might be worth only $2.25. The highest value is $4,500 or more for uncirculated notes from 1890, although most of those bills range in value from $550 to $2,500. The values are the same whether the bill has a red or brown seal. An original uncirculated $2 bill from 1862 ranges in value from $500 to more than $2,800. You might get $3,800 or more for an 1869 note. More recently, the USCA lists a value of $500 on certain uncirculated $2 bills from 1995. If you have a $2 bill from the 2003 premium Federal Reserve set of 12, you could get $700 or more. ... If you have one it also could be just worth $2.  It is not clear to me how you can get an uncirculated $2 bill.

 Just the News: In the years since Hunter Biden's laptop was seized by the FBI and made public, one business associate with unique access to both Joe Biden and his son has repeatedly emerged as key to investigators: longtime Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm executive Eric Schwerin. Contemporaneous emails gleaned from the laptop show Schwerin handled some tax matters for both the future president and his son, engaging in conversations about everything from Joe Biden's private earnings potential to his son's unpaid taxes. He also witnessed discussions about some of the family's most controversial overseas business deals ranging from Hunter Biden's remuneration from the Burisma Holdings natural gas firm in Ukraine and a plan to make money off the name of a Russian oligarch to dealings with the CEFC energy firm in communist China. On Thursday, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) revealed to Just the News that his investigati...

 Fox Business: Iran's currency plummets to all-time low amid anti-regime protests, sanctions Inflation has risen to an annual rate of more than 53% in Iran Iran’s currency fell to a new record low on Sunday, plummeting to 600,000 rials to the dollar for the first time in history as the country’s economy continues to be roiled by nationwide anti-government protests and international sanctions. Iranians’ purchasing power has been decimated by inflation , which reached an annual rate of 53.4% in January – up from 41.4% two years according to the country’s statistics center. The dire economic circumstances have wiped out the life savings of many and caused Iranians to form long lines at currency exchange offices in recent days in an effort to acquire increasingly scarce dollars. ... The mullahs are having a tough time managing the Iranian economy and the people are suffering because of it.  Their religion is not making the people better off. 

 Fox Business: NFL free agent Jordan Poyer isn't fan of states that 'take half my money' Poyer played in New York for the past six seasons, where state income taxes are higher than most Athletes get to keep more of their earnings in Florida, Texas, Washington, Tennessee, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire, and Nevada which have no state income tax. 

 Fox News: Merit was never a dirty word for Blacks. Competing on merit empowered us to destroy racist stereotypes about our capabilities, shatter color barriers, and pioneer inventions that improved all Americans' quality of life. For example, do you know someone whose cataracts were removed by laser eye surgery? Thank Dr. Patricia Bath. This ophthalmologist pioneered laser eye surgery and advocated for preventive blindness, earning her the "ultimate reward" of restoring sight to the blind. Bath enjoyed many firsts, including being the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency program in the United States. In 1986, she discovered a new device and less painful method to remove cataracts. Despite a colleague’s sexist denials of her breakthrough, Bath became the first Black female doctor to receive a medical patent for her treatment. A merit-based program set Bath on a career path. In high school, she won a competitive research opportunity from the National Science Fo...

 Andrew Stuttaford: ... Putin’s decision to invade was almost certainly made easier by the thought that he could get away with it. He underestimated the extent to which Russia’s earlier aggression had unified what was left of Ukraine, as well as the improvement in Ukraine’s now battle-hardened army, which had also been buttressed by some $2.5 billion in aid from the U.S. He seems to have believed that Ukraine was so rotten that its people would fall gratefully into his arms. He was wrong. Putin also failed to anticipate the strength of the Western response. It is hard to blame him. To be sure, some NATO members had increased military spending in the years after 2014, but otherwise relatively little had changed. Russia remained a valued business partner, and, critically, it continued to be a key supplier of natural gas to Europe, a role that, if anything, became more important as the continent put the pursuit of decarbonization ahead of energy security. Meanwhile, the White House ...

 American Action News: President Biden’s administration has come under scrutiny for its record-breaking spending habits, which have surpassed those of any other U.S. president in history. Despite his claims of being a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars, his policies have resulted in almost $900 billion in additional debt in just two years. Examples of Biden’s excessive spending include the “Build Back Better Plan” and the nearly $80 billion aid package to Ukraine. The administration’s record of spending has raised concerns about the long-term impact on the economy and the national debt. In addition, Biden’s decision to spend $400,000 to shoot down supposed “UFOs” with a $400 Sidewinder missile has also drawn criticism. Despite campaigning as a moderate deal-maker, Biden has now won over progressives with his readiness to spend money at the slightest provocation. Democrats typically believe that spending money cannot be excessive, as they often foot the bill (using taxpayers’ m...

 ISW: ... Putin may find himself facing another dilemma after another wave or two of reserve call-ups, as the pool of reservists appropriate for front-line fighting is finite. The Russian conscription system generates roughly 260,000 new soldiers each year, drawn in two semi-annual call-ups. The combination of the pre-war reserve call-up, the recruitment efforts that drew partly on reservists, and the partial reserve call-up of September have likely made significant inroads into the available reserve manpower in the age groups and with the experience appropriate to replace losses in front-line combat units. Putin may need to consider expanding conscript service itself, drawing a higher proportion of young Russian men against their will into military service each year. But demographics do not favor such an approach. Roughly 800,000 young men turn 18 each year in Russia.[42] Expanding conscription much beyond the 260,000 of those already forced into military service risks not only ta...

 Townhall: Last September, 30 former FBI agents, including a retired deputy assistant director, head of counterterrorism, and five SWAT team members, stood up to defend Stephen Friend, a suspended FBI agent who blew the whistle on the agency’s political game. ... The former FBI agent said that what he saw in the agency during the January 6 investigations was “disturbing,” adding that he has “lived a few years over the last few months.” ... Friend “soon uncovered efforts by the FBI and Department of Justice to manipulate statistics and exaggerate the nationwide threat of domestic terrorism. [He] spotlighted how the politicized FBI was cooking the books to support an ongoing narrative from the Joe Biden administration to label Donald Trump voters as violent extremists,” the former agent’s tell-all book reads. He allegedly witnessed extreme practices to harass conservative Americans, realizing the FBI was turning its investigative process into a punishment. Following Friend’s public c...

 Federalist: ... In this time of environmental crisis, Greta Thunberg and the usual climate change activists are nowhere to be found. Where are the students who felt so passionately about the notion of disrupting the system in the name of preventing environmental catastrophe they threw mashed potatoes at one of the most cherished works of art in the world?  I don’t need to ask where Biden is. He made his visit to Ukraine very public in an effort to show his unwavering support. While not a single person from the White House had even acknowledged the disaster in Ohio for 10 days, Joe Biden spent this week personally visiting Ukraine to announce a half billion dollars in new spending. While Joe Biden claimed in his State of the Union speech earlier this month to fight for the “forgotten” man, the Ohio train derailment had already gone unaddressed by his administration for four days by that point. What man is he referring to? The past year has been challenging for most Americans s...

 National Review: Covid-19 Likely Originated with Lab Leak, U.S. Energy Department Finds in New Report The Covid-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report from the U.S. Energy Department. The report, which was included in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office, was recently provided to the White House and other lawmakers. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the updated assessment from the Energy Department is the result of new intelligence. The Energy Department, which oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, made its judgment with “low confidence,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The assessment marks a change from 2021, when the department was undecided on how the virus originated. ... One of the advantages of this theory is that it does not require a vigorous response to China's spread of the pandemic.  It is also helpful that the pandemic is not ...

 Daily Mail: President Joe Biden fumbled around his words as he tried to explain why he still has no plans to visit East Palestine after a toxic train derailment devastated the small Ohio community. As he was leaving the White House on Friday to head to his Wilmington, Delaware residence, a reporter asked Biden if he was going to travel to East Palestine after his administration had been accused of ignoring the city's plight. The president answered, 'At this point, I'm not,' but then he appeared confused and strained as he tried to explain himself. 'I did a whole video, I mean, um, what the hell, on,' Biden rambled as he looked for reporters to fill in the gap. 'Zoom?' one of the reporters said, trying to help the president. 'Zoom! All I can think of every time I think of Zoom is that song in my generation, Who's Zoomin' Who,' he said, referencing the Aretha Franklin song. The odd exchange comes as the Biden administration is under fi...