PrairiePundit

  Washington Examiner: Medical professionals call for COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers Medical professionals were some of the first to get the vaccine although there have been a few holdouts.  The Methodist Hospital System in Houston was responsible for distributing the vaccine to millions in the Houston area and it had only around 150 employees who refused the vaccine.  Some of those who refused have been terminated or reassigned.  The requirement makes sense because hospitals are dealing with some of the most vulnerable populations and allowing an unvaccinated provider to deal with those patients would be catastrophic and subject the hospital to liability lawsuits.

 Rasmussen Reports: 1* Should all voters who cast their ballot in-person be required to show a photo ID before voting? 82% Yes 11% No 7% Not sure   2*When someone mails in their ballot, should they be required to include their social security number or driver’s license number instead of just a signature to verify their identity? 67% Yes 22% No 11% Not sure ...  A majority also oppose the Democrats' "For the People Act" and also oppose the runaway Democrats who denied the legislature a quorum. 

  William Jacobson: “Children Are Being Weaponized” By Critical Race Curriculum   Providence Teacher Ramona Bessinger on Sky News Australia: “it’s going to feed the sort of anger and the racial division that is already coming to a boiling point and it’s going to make us all quite frankly, very unsafe.” CRT is a critical part of the evils of liberalism that is trying to destroy civil society in this country. 

  Daily Mail: Most Americans in major cities are more worried about crime than defunding the police - as poll shows 90% of Detroit residents want MORE cops Detroit's police chief was also effective at stopping the kind of riots that plagued other Democrat-controlled cities.   The poll also found that 70 % of black Democrats oppose defunding the cops and want more of them.  The BLM movement and those that support it appear to be the only ones who want to defund the cops.  BLM is a criminal support group that gets exercised when a black criminal is hurt while resisting arrest.  They have done nothing material to indicate that those killed by black-on-black crime matter.

 Miranda Devine: Nancy Pelosi used to point her angry finger at Donald Trump, but she leaves him for dust when it comes to busting norms, dividing Congress and causing mayhem. If anyone is to blame for the hyper-partisanship in Washington these days, it’s the spiteful House speaker. She behaves more like a Mafia don waging a gang war than a dignified, fair and honest presiding officer, which is what the speaker’s role requires. Pelosi abuses her power in ways that once were unthinkable. Her speakership has been the antithesis of Lincoln’s entreaty to “the better angels of our nature.” Everyone in Congress — and by extension the nation — has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere. There is no grace or Christian charity, just the barren wasteland of the zero-sum game, power for power’s sake. It’s made all the worse by her increasingly frantic claims to be a “devout Catholic.” The fact that all this venom is packaged in the shape of a small, elder

 I&I: The media seem to have a pervasive influence on American life, ranging from politics to business to culture. And yet, as our latest I&I/TIPP Poll clearly shows, trust in those who deliver our news, gossip, and opinions is declining sharply and broadly among the American public. In our most recent sounding of public opinion, the I&I/TIPP  Traditional Media Trust Index  stood at 51 as recently as March, a level indicating a slightly positive view of the traditional media. However, it has declined sharply since then, falling to 42.8 in July, a 16.1% decline from March, and down 8.5% from June’s 46.8 reading. ... The chart below shows the tally of responses: ... I think the media is shouldering some of the blame for getting Biden elected.  They allowed their Trump hatred to override commonsense in supporting a mental cripple like Biden. 

 Karen Townsend: When Joe Biden entered the White House, he immediately began to unwind many of the executive actions taken by former President Trump. At the top of his list was stopping the construction of the border wall. On Friday DHS canceled two contracts for border wall construction projects in the Laredo, Texas area. This action was made possible by using Biden’s executive order and its specifications that the construction is “not necessary to address any life, safety, environmental, or other remediation requirements.” The people living along the southern border beg to differ. DHS officials claim that the project, not yet begun, is just the beginning of cancellations. Biden intends to cancel as much of the border wall construction previously funded by Trump as possible. ... The timing of this couldn’t be worse. As Team Biden continues on its mission to open the southern border to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, border states are left to fend for themselves. Local law

 Power Line: ... A just-released ABC News/Ipsos poll   finds   that most Americans are now gloomy about our prospects for the coming year: As President Joe Biden completed 100 days in office, the country was optimistic about the coming year, but now, just after hitting the six-month mark, Americans’ optimism about the direction of the country has plummeted nearly 20 points, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds. A majority — 55% — of the public say they are pessimistic about the direction of the country, a marked change from the roughly one-third (36%) that said the same in an ABC News/Ipsos poll published May 2. In the early May survey, Americans were more optimistic than pessimistic by a 28-percentage point margin. Optimism is now under water by 10 points. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, fewer than half — 45% — now report feeling optimistic about the way things are going, a significant drop from about two-thirds (64%) in the May poll. ABC News attributes the drop in optimism largely t

 Breitbart: On this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) accused government agency of covering for the Biden family in denying congressional requests for information on investigations pertaining to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Johnson said there was a similar trend in dealing with the Centers for Disease Control. “So, the Secret Service is not being — and so we have asked for — requested for information on that because they have no records of it,” he said. “So, once again, we subpoenaed FBI Director Wray. He slow-walked our request. We basically didn’t get squat. Now Secret Service, they gave us the initial records. Past that point, they haven’t given us squat. What workers they have given are highly redacted. So these agencies are covering for the Bidens. They have always been covering for them. Even though he supposedly ended Secret Service protection, they still apparently provided it as well, but off the books. Who knows what’s hap

 Derek Hunter: ... When it comes to messaging, this White House has taken the approach Democrats in Congress have employed for years, and one at which the administration of Barack Obama excelled – being a complete jackass. That’s about as polite as I can put it, and not the word I would use were it up to me. I would choose the nickname for Richard, but only because it’s accurate. So, how is the President of the United States responsible for the deaths of Americans during a pandemic? First is the messaging on vaccines. I don’t know where you stand I vaccines, nor do I care. I’m not responsible for you, and I’m not about to tell other adults how to live their lives because I’m not about to let someone else tell me how to live mine. But the argument coming from the White House is one telling people, “Either you get the shot or you’re (insert your favorite obscenity here) who is responsible for killing everyone.” Ok, maybe they’re not quite that melodramatic, by it’s pretty close. People w

  NY Times: Pelosi Appoints Kinzinger to Panel Scrutinizing Jan. 6 The selection of Representative Adam Kinzinger for the special committee adds a second Republican who has been an unsparing critic of former President Donald J. Trump. She appears to assembling a hanging jury rather than an honest attempt at fact-finding.  The only two Republicans on the panel are already prejudiced against Trump and his supporters.  She is also trying to deal with the fact that the FBI investigation, to date, does not support her early allegations against the President or the rioters. The Washington Post describes the committee: Jan. 6 select committee to start work amid political chaos and controversy GOP leaders are boycotting the probe altogether — and threatening to retaliate with countermeasures.

  Washington Examiner: Private space travelers should be encouraged, not excoriated The earth had been here for thousands of years before entrepreneurs created the first airplane and took to the skies.  They did it largely without government assistance but the people of the earth have benefited from their flights immensely.  I suspect the same will happen eventually with space travel.  There will also be benefits to the earthbound from what is discovered and learned from these flights.  While Musk has not taken flight yet, his space program is already providing significantly improved internet for rural users of his satellite system.

  Epoch Times: Combined Capital Gains Tax Rate in California to Hit 56.7 Percent Under Biden Plan These punish the rich tax plans never produce more money for the government.  Most people who get rich are not stupid.  They will not sell assets in this environment and will hold onto them until the taxes are reduced or they will sell before the tax becomes effective.  What Biden is proposing looks like government greed that will backfire. 

Most of these hypocrites are Democrats not surprisingly.

 Peter Berkowitz: “The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so,” wrote Andrew Sullivan earlier this month in “ What Happened to You: The radicalization of the American elite against liberalism .” Sullivan is correct that the left has turned sharply against freedom in recent years. And he vivisects the illiberal ideology about race and justice espoused by many schools, private corporations, and government agencies. However, in dating the origins of the larger tempest, Sullivan is off — depending on how you count — by about 50 years, 100 years, or perhaps 250 years. Many Americans associate the recent round of the culture wars to the Yale University Halloween costume imbroglio of 2015. That autumn, a university official sparked outrage among undergraduates by suggesting that they should manage their own Halloween parties. Erika Christakis — at the time a lecturer in Yale’s Child Study Center and associate master at Silliman College — ad

 Jeff Charles: ... This is where the threat of domestic terrorism becomes a quite handy political tool. A recent  Politico  report revealed that the Biden administration might use terrorism to justify its endeavor to further limit gun ownership. In the piece, the author states that “polarization,” “misinformation,” “bigotry,” and “racism” are all elements that fuel “domestic extremism.” But according to a high-ranking White House official, guns are also factors in this perilous equation. Joshua Geltzer, the deputy homeland security adviser at the National Security Council, told Politico that “easy access to firearms – especially certain types of firearms – can make acts of domestic terrorism more feasible to undertake and more lethal once they happen.” Geltzer continued: As this administration works … to address some of the challenges associated with the widespread availability of firearms in this country, we are doing so with the knowledge that that is a priority in and of itself — as

  Hardy Grover: The Rise of the Red Flyover States ...   Consider someone with means spending the last year locked down in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, et al in a cramped apartment among a sea of cramped apartment buildings.  With edicts and “Karens” preventing enjoying even a walk in the park, let alone dinner out, gathering with friends, and other old-normal activities what kind of living is that?  The only arguments for living in major urban centers (and paying the associated price) are culture, cuisine, entertainment opportunities -- and those all vanished.  Further, add nightly rioting and looting, harassment of the general public, arson, and vandalism, and the full enabling of the woke mobs doing this by the so-called leadership of these cities.  Here is the question -- why would you stay there, and who the hell would choose to move there now?  ... I never thought those places were appealing beyond the high salaries, anyway. 

  Trending Politics: Mark Meadows Warns Nearly ALL Infrastructure Money in Dem Bill Goes to Blue Cities This would like lead to more blue state corruption and subsidize the current wasteful spending on Democrat vote-buying schemes. 

  Daily Mail: Joe Biden set up private email accounts using fake names including 'Robin Ware' from which he would send and receive government correspondence while vice president, Hunter Biden's laptop reveals ...   One email from Flynn to being sent to Joe, a.k.a Robert Peters, from May 2016 which was also cc'd to Hunter schedules '8.45am prep for 9am phonecall with Pres Poroshenko' who was the Ukrainian president.  At the time, Hunter was being paid $83,333 a month to sit on the board of corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings Ltd.  He had started working for Burisma in 2014 and finally departed two months after his father left the office of vice president. Just months earlier, in December 2015, Biden had threatened Poroshenko that he would withhold $1 billion in US aid unless he fired Ukraine's top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the owner of Burisma,  Mykola Zlochevsky.  Shokin was widely accused of corruption and removed from o

 Newsmax: Delivering a speech on election integrity in the battleground state of Arizona amid a forensic audit, former President Donald Trump told supporters Democrats cannot "win elections without cheating; there's no way." "The preliminary numbers are a total disaster, and we're going to go over those numbers," Trump said Saturday night at the Turning Point Action conference in Phoenix, Arizona, which aired live on Newsmax. "The facts are coming out. The truth is being uncovered and the crime of the century is being fully exposed." ... "We will fight for truth, transparency and accountability, and we will not stop until we have restore out American birthright of honest, free and fair elections," Trump's speech began. "You are the pulse of our movement. So true, and you are the ones who will Make America Great Again. "We're gathered here in Phoenix to show our support for election integrity and for the brave and unyield

 Wall Street Journal: ‘Science” has become a political catchword. “I believe in science,” Joe Biden  tweeted six days before he was elected president. “Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks.” But what does it mean to believe in science? The British science writer Matt Ridley draws a pointed distinction between “science as a philosophy” and “science as an institution.” The former grows out of the Enlightenment, which Mr. Ridley defines as “the primacy of rational and objective reasoning.” The latter, like all human institutions, is erratic, prone to falling well short of its stated principles. Mr. Ridley says the Covid pandemic has “thrown into sharp relief the disconnect between science as a philosophy and science as an institution.” Mr. Ridley, 63, describes himself as a “science critic, which is a profession that doesn’t really exist.” He likens his vocation to that of an art critic and dismisses most other science writers as “cheerleaders.” That somewhat lofty attitude seem

 Karen Townsend: ... The group of Texas state Democrats who ran from their jobs as legislators to the open arms of Democrats in Washington, D.C. is beginning to splinter. They have done all that they can do – secured meetings with senators to push passage of the For the People Act in the Senate, held press conferences, given interviews on friendly cable news stations, received glowing covering in the media, fundraised off their antics, and tweeted up a storm. Still, Biden will not grant them an audience. Frustration has set in . ... So far the biggest names they’ve secured meetings with are House Majority Whip James Clyburn and Kamala Harris. That seems like consolation prizes because Biden has no interest in wasting time with them. We’ll try to “be tactful”, too, and say that the Texas Democrats’ vacation in D.C. has turned out to be a public relations disaster. Remember, they agreed to be useful idiots for national Democrats. They were sent to Washington to pressure senators to get

 Just the News: As Illegal border crossings spiked in one Texas area, COVID cases soared by 900 percent   Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings reported his sector took into custody more than 15,000 illegal immigrants in one week. ... “Even with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, human smugglers continue to try these brazen attempts with zero regard for the lives they endanger, nor to the health of the citizens of our great nation,” the RGV Border Patrol Sector said in a statement. ... You could say the same about the President who is using the military to help him traffick the illegals to inland communities where they are dropped into the laps of locals to deal with. 

  Johnathon Davis: Four Stories That Were Considered ‘Misinformation’ Until They Weren’t: Here’s What We Know The left was just so positive about it until they weren't. 

 Michael Barone: Did you know that black people are not going to be allowed to vote in America anymore? At least in states controlled by Republicans? Sounds a bit unlikely, but that’s a conclusion you might have come to if you took seriously what President Joe Biden said in Philadelphia Tuesday. Biden decried Republicans’ proposed changes to election laws as “the 21st-century Jim Crow assault” that tries “to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy.” This is, to be polite, unhinged nonsense. Biden is old enough to remember what real Jim Crow voter suppression was like. It meant zero black people voting in places like Mississippi. It meant threats and violence against black people who tried to register to vote. It meant unfair application of literacy tests and poll taxes. Requiring voters to present photo ID is nothing like this: Large majorities think it’s reasonable. And measures such as reducing the number of pre-election voting days

  Nick Arama: New Report Raises Even More Questions About NSA Spying on Tucker Carlson I suspect the unmasker was a Biden partisan who was unhappy with Tucker's take on the administration on his popular show.  It looks like a replay of Obama's abuse of power in unmasking Trump associates doing their job. 

  Victor Davis Hanson: How did the Democratic Party of JFK, Bill Clinton turn into a woke neo-Maoist movement?   Democrats used to talk nonstop about the 'working man' ... Democrats talked nonstop about the "working man." They damned high gas and electricity prices that hurt consumers. Almost every liberal cause was couched in terms of the First Amendment , whether it was the right to shout obscenities, view pornography or bring controversial speakers to campus. The Supreme Court was sacred. With a liberal-packed court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, progressive justices restrained the supposedly harebrained initiatives of hick right-wing populists. Once upon a time, Democratic congressmen investigated the CIA and FBI seemingly nonstop. Progressive political cartoonists caricatured the Pentagon’s top brass as obese, buffoonish-looking clerks with monstrous jowls. The "revolving door" was a particular leftist obsession. Democrats blasted generals who ret

 Washington Examiner: ... "I said, 'You should do it because you'll find out what's going on in this country.' It's crazy," he said Saturday night while applauding the "brave and unyielding conservative warriors in the Arizona state Senate" who "created a movement all over the country." On July 12, lawmakers in Texas's state House filed  H.B. 241 , known as the "Texas Voter Confidence Act," which would open a forensic audit into the 2020 election results. "We need a forensic audit to uncover all the voter fraud," state Rep. Steve Toth, who filed the legislation,  said  on Monday. "Prior to the special session, I met with constituents across District 15 in South Montgomery County. The Texas Voter Confidence Act is a product of those meetings and a direct request from the voters who sent me to Austin. Texans want to know more about the claims of voter fraud and deserve to have confidence in their elections.&qu

  Epoch Times: California is Experiencing a Crime ‘Tsunami’: Sacramento DA They have too many DA's who refuse to prosecute crime and are surprised that they suddenly get more of it. 

 Washington Examiner: T he same halls of academe so eager to denounce racism, both real and imagined, continue to be hotbeds of virulent antisemitism. Moral exemplars they are not. A report this week from The Focus Project, self-identified as “a broad coalition of U.S. Jewish community organizations,” tells the tale. In the past two months alone,  it reports , organizations on 152 college campuses released statements condemning Israel, many of them going well beyond respectful discourse into dangerous antisemitic tropes. It is one thing, acceptable even if wrongheaded, to take issue with Israel’s response to rocket attacks from Gaza or with Israel’s settlements on the West Bank. It is quite another thing to accuse Israel and the Jewish people of conducting “genocide” or practicing “apartheid” — or, Lord forbid, of pushing “ Jewish supremacy ,” a neo-Nazi theory that accuses Jews of seeking evil world domination. More than 200 “scholars,” including dozens of professors at prestigious un

 PJ Media: There was a time when we warned our children about adults who asked them to keep secrets. And with good reason. Little good can come from an adult imploring a child to keep something “just between us.” And yet that appears to have been exactly what  happened  in one Minnesota school district. Recently, parents in the Sartell-St. Stephen School District took justifiable umbrage at an $80,000 “equity audit” conducted by the Equity Alliance of Minnesota. As part of the audit, students in the district were given a survey that they had no choice but to complete — even if they did not fully understand the questions. The survey included queries about their gender identity. The students were also told in no uncertain terms that discussing the contents of the survey with their parents was strictly  verboten . You can listen to one student’s comments  here . Parents also had the chance speak their minds at the latest board meeting, and you can hear what they had to say  here . Fast-fo

  Matt Vespa: Sounds Stalinist? Liberal Media Demands Trump Supporters Undergo Deprogramming The leftist media is the one who we should consider deprogramming.  They have been misleading people for years. 

  Gateway Pundit: Joe Biden Says He Was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee 150 Years Ago (VIDEO) It is not the only time he has made impossible claims. 

 Breitbart: A group of Republicans sent a letter to the President Joe Biden administration demanding answers on the White House’s “censorship program” with private companies to “undermine free speech [the companies and the White House] don’t agree with.” The letter, signed by 189 House Republicans and led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), seeks answers as to why the White House is on their “mission” and “demanding they stop” trying to censor Americans. The letter expresses the House Republicans’ concern that the White House’s efforts are “undermining First Amendment principles by pressuring private companies to censor free speech.” ... They want to know all the Big Tech entities they are working with on their censorship efforts.  In hindsight, many of the early censorships by the tech companies have been found to have been based on Democrat misinformation. 

  Daily Mail: What about your boss, Jen? Psaki promises to continue 'fighting' 'misinformation' after Biden falsely told CNN town hall 'you're not going to get COVID if you have vaccinations' and struggled to explain FDA approval They are having trouble keeping him on message even when whispering into his earpiece. 

 Ed Morrissey: Who are we to begrudge  a little competitive dunking  between news outlets? Fox News isn’t exactly betraying industry secrets here, anyway.  CNN couldn’t fill more than a third of the auditorium  it used for Wednesday’s town-hall event with Joe Biden. Now it turns out that it couldn’t hold better than a third-place finish in the ratings either: CNN’s heavily promoted town hall event with President Biden failed to resonate with Americans on Wednesday night, as it got thumped by Fox News and even finished with a smaller audience than MSNBC. The CNN Biden town hall, moderated by Don Lemon, averaged only 1.5 million viewers from 8-9:30 p.m. ET, while Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers during the same time period. MSNBC averaged 1.6 million sets of eyeballs, which pushed CNN’s chat with the president to last place among relevant cable news stations. Fox News beat CNN by a staggering 83 percent during the Biden town hall with regular programing on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” a

 John Horvat II: The name "Global Minimal Tax" should immediately set off red flags. No American likes to hear the two words “global” and “tax” in the same expression. It implies a surrender of sovereignty to a vague and mysterious world body. They also don’t like to see “minimal” and “tax” together. Experience shows that taxes rarely stay minimal and tend to become maximal. Based on the name alone, it is best to trash the whole idea. However, the Biden Administration wants to approve this disastrous idea. The three words that sound so threatening are proposed in the name of two words that everyone wants to see restrained: “Big Tech.” Thus, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen is lobbying Congress, asking them to “please jump from the frying pan into the fire” to rein in Big Tech. American participation -- she claims -- will also show goodwill in cooperating with the “world community.” That’s two more ambiguous words that don’t belong together. A Flawed Plan that Bodes Ill for the

 Daily Signal: Over 80% of Americans support proposals to fund the repairs of roads, bridges, ports, and drinking water pipes, but support for most other infrastructure issues is split sharply along party lines, new polling shows. President Joe Biden and a bipartisan Senate group compromised on a $973 billion infrastructure plan in June, but Democrats are working to pass a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that allocates funding for child care, tax credits, schools, climate change, and more. Many of those provisions are far less popular among Republicans, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Opinion Research. Biden’s approval on infrastructure overall stands at 55%, but has the support of just 22% of Republicans. Support for repairing roads, bridges, and ports comes from 83% of Americans, while 79% support funding for new pipes or replacing lead ones that carry substantial health risks. Three-quarters of all Americans surveyed—and 62% of Republican

 Steven Hayward: We all know the Great Barrier Reef is in danger of disappearing because of c—— c—–. The climatistas tell us so, at every opportunity: Well guess what Mom? Check in with  The Australian  (behind a paywall so here is the relevant text—made available by the indispensable  Global Warming Policy Foundation ): The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing  the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels . Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions. Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment. ... This looks like another failure of "climate change" to meet its propon

  NY Times: For Republicans, Deep Wounds Fuel Resistance to Bolstering the I.R.S. A desire to crack down on tax cheats is overshadowed by years of G.O.P. resentment toward the agency. Some of us still remember when Obama got the IRS to attack Republican donors and also discriminated against Republican non-profits. Why would Republicans want to fund people out  to destroy them?