Liberty & Prosperity Blog

Now that the US Government has pulled the last of its troops from Afghanistan, it's time for 'retired' troops to get Afghan interpreters and helpers out of Afghanistan. It isn't that US troops didn't perform honorably. It's because the politicians who masquerade as generals tied their hands who let our troops down. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the leader of Centcom, had the audacity to say "I do know this just speaking clearly practically as a professional, they helped us secure the airfield, not perfectly, but they gave it a very good effort, and it was actually significantly helpful to us, particularly here at the end." I can't imagine hearing an officer say something this stupid, much less hearing the theater commander say it. It's a breathtakingly stupid thing to say. Gen. McKenzie says of the Taliban, "I do know this just speaking clearly practically as a professional, they helped us secure the airfield, not perfectly, but they gave it a ...

If Gavin Newsom is recalled on Sept. 14, it will be because of Christine Abercrombie, Ellen Woitalla, Roxanna Maxam , aka "the Mama Bears." This trio has put together a coalition of volunteers that's beyond impressive. According to the report, "the communications and visual face of the Recall has often been leads like Orrin Heatlie, Mike Netter, or Tom del Becarro" but that it's been "these Mama Bears who did all the groundwork, the leg work, and sacrificed an entire year and a half of their lives in order to see the September 14 recall election happen." Christine Abercrombie, Recall Gavin Newsom Executive Secretary, said "We’re the ones that spent the hours, we’re the ones that got this pushed over the finish line. And so, I really want to tell our story, you know, and from a woman’s perspective. This is not just a man’s kind of political world." There's much to tell, including their strategy for fighting ballot harvesting and electi...

Joe Biden's 'plan' to get Americans, Afghanis and our military out of Afghanistan failed miserably. Biden's plan led to this morning's terrorist attacks. The administration isn't showing signs of repentance, though. They're blaming the people for not getting out sooner: When asked why the United States did not begin evacuating our citizens and allies from Afghanistan sooner, the acting U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson said they were given more than enough warning to leave since March or April. "Never in my 40 years of working, since I began working at the State Department, have I seen such strong language used. People chose not to leave. That's their business. That's their right," Wilson told CBS News on Wednesday. "We regret now that many may find themselves in a position that they would rather not be in. And we are determined to try to help them." This is disgusting. Blaming people for not anticipating Joe Biden's...

Truth Wins Out By Ramblin’ Rose Unfortunately, when politicians and their pundits must admit the truth, they do it when the citizens are agitated by other headlines. Right now, the focus is on the debacle in Afghanistan by Joe Biden and his cronies. With that distraction, the FBI released its report that admits that there was NO insurrection on January 6, 2021, and furthermore, President Trump was not culpable. While the intent was to prove an insurrection and a coup, the FBI had to admit that the evidence did not support the Left’s hypothesis. In fact, Pelosi’s hand-picked radicals made a case that President Trump should be held responsible for the Capitol siege and drafted an 80-page document of impeachment against him. He was found innocent. Even the evidence supplied by the New York Times did not support reality. The Times reported the first breach of the barricades at 12:53pm. The Times also reported that Trump incited the "coup attempt" some twenty minutes later at 1:1...

Thanks to Joe Biden's cowardice, chaos, "confusion and terror have" forced people like retired Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan Rogers to step up. Sgt. Rogers said "Everyone is pissed about this even being necessary. But if the president doesn't want to step up and lead, someone else will." It's shameful that the National Resistance Front is attempting to do what Joe Biden refused to do. "Last week, Rogers helped raise the alarm that his former U.S.-contracted Afghan interpreter was trapped in Kabul, hiding from the Taliban and hoping to make it out of the country. He was still there as of Tuesday, but Rogers said he’s now in touch with non-government sources who heard of his plight and reached out to the retired Marine to try and coordinate an escape. It's embarrassing on an international scale that we are even in this situation," Rogers said. "It's insulting to not even have a number of Americans left to get out." This coalition has a...

Keith Ellison, Minnesota's DFL Attorney General, wrote this op-ed that USA Today published. The op-ed opens by saying "Millions of people have taken to the streets demanding an end to racial injustice and mass incarceration. Now it’s clear that they’re also taking to the polls. Just last month, a reform-minded candidate for district attorney who promised to stop prosecuting many low-level crimes in Manhattan took the lead in the primaries. New York City isn't alone. Voters across the country are giving the nod to prosecutors who are pushing for an end to mass incarceration over those with a more tough-on-crime agenda." What Mr. Ellison omits are articles like this . The money paragraphs say "Randolph alleges that on Dec. 7 2020 — the day Gascón was sworn into office — he issued directives that substantially changed the way crimes are prosecuted, including a policy that abolished the ability of prosecutors to file certain crimes against juveniles governed under C...

If I could reset the clock and return to the day after Rob O'Neill killed bin Laden in Pakistan, I'd make lots of changes. First, I would've gotten US and NATO combat troops out of Afghanistan. I would've kept special operators and intel forces in theater. I would've ordered groups like the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions into Afghanistan to provide close air support for Afghani troops and gather intel. I would've limited the scope of the mission by eliminating the nation-building part. Further, I'd limit the mission by ordering troops to focus on permanently stifling the Trifecta of Terror , aka the Taliban, al-Qa'ida and ISIS. Let the Trifecta of Terror know that we'll keep our foot on their necks in perpetuity. Finally, I'd unleash the beast. I'd let the world's greatest military act like the world's deadliest fighting force. It's time to admit that it's still important to stifle future terrorist attacks. George ...

Last week, Joe Biden put on a clinic of what-not-to-do-presidenting. Never in the history of US presidents has a president looked this stupid or this confident while being this wrong. Byron York's daily newsletter quotes Pete Wehner frequently. Wehner made the strongest case against Biden's decisions while explaining why everything fell apart for Biden. Wehner ticked off the case against Biden. The then-senator was wrong about the first Gulf War. Wrong about the second Gulf War. Wrong about the surge. He was so wrong about everything, Wehner noted, that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously wrote that Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."  Wehner concluded that Biden is wrong so often because he, Biden, thinks he knows more than everybody and thus has "far too much confidence in his own judgment." And that judgment is often bad. But there's more than that, Wehner wro...

When Joe Biden sat down for his interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Biden thought he'd get softball question after softball question. Instead, he got peppered with legitimate, hard-hitting question. By the time it was done, Biden had made more news. During the interview, Biden announced that American troops would stay in Afghanistan until every American was brought home. He also said that he didn't know how this chaotic finish could've been avoided. That's a jaw-dropping statement. All Biden had to do was keep some troops in Afghanistan until the diplomats, foreign nationals and US assets had been removed from Aghanistan. Instead, he got the military out first, then shut down Bagram in the middle of the night without warning.   Joe Biden also told Stephanopoulos that " I don’t think it could’ve been handled in a way that. We’re going to go back in hindsight and look but the idea that somehow there was a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I...

Joe Biden's speech this afternoon on Afghanistan was the most important speech of his lifetime. It's understatement to say that he blew it. A check of the speech's transcript exposes multiple straw-man arguments and some outright deceptions. Let's jump right into his deceptions. Early in the speech, Biden said "U.S. forces had already drawn down during the Trump administration from roughly 15,500 American forces to 2,500 troops in country, and the Taliban was at its strongest militarily since 2001. The choice I had to make, as your President, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season. There would have been no ceasefire after May 1. There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1." The most preferred option would've been to keep US bases, especially Bagram, open to conduct ...

While it isn't right to compare Joe Biden's mishandling of the pullout of Afghanistan with Jimmy Carter's Operation Eagle Claw , Biden's fiasco is a major national security mistake. Kevin McCarthy's criticism of the Afghanistan operation is totally justified. Joe Biden is quickly morphing into Jimmy Carter 2.0. It's difficult, if not impossible, to name a single accomplishment that's made people's lives better. Before Afghanistan, most people would've said that inflation is the thing that Biden and Carter most had in common. Now, though, it's difficult to not compare Biden's military blunders with Carter's infamous military blunder. Leader McCarthy ripped into Biden for Biden's incompetence. Ditto with Sen. Mitch McConnell: "The White House has no discernable plan other than pleading with the Taliban," McCarthy said in a statement late Friday. "The bungled withdrawal, reminiscent of his failed withdrawal from Iraq, is ...

Joe Biden's America Last agenda took a major hit when Bugsy Allen, a laid-off Keystone XL Pipeline worker, blasted Biden for begging OPEC to increase production of oil : "All we're doing is sitting here on hope. We're not being able to get out there and prosper our families one bit. Biden says he's a big union man, well I've been a member of the 798 Pipeliners Union out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for 21 years. He cut us down to nothing. We can't go on our pensions, on our insurance, this man doesn't have a clue what he's doing to the American people." Joe Biden's priorities aren't Americans' priorities. Joe Biden's priorities are essentially AOC's priorities and Bernie Sanders' priorities. Here's Bugsy criticizing Joe's decision to shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline: Joe Biden has made one detrimental decision after another. Biden and the Democrats didn't just make foolish decisions. It's about the effect that t...

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sang a familiar-sounding tune when he defended Joe Biden's open borders policy . Mayorkas "attributed the rise in migration to violence, poverty and corruption in Central America, problems that he said the Biden administration is seeking to mitigate through foreign aid." This was attempted during the Trump administration. When it failed, President Trump cut off aid to the Northern Triangle. Then he threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico if they didn't start enforcing their borders. This formula failed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. President Trump scrapped that pattern and tried something that hadn't been tried before. Trump negotiated an agreement with Mexico. It didn't take long for border crossings to slow to a trickle. Joe Biden couldn't tolerate that. Anything with Trump's name on it was immediately jettisoned. It didn't matter that it was working. This chart shows who got it right (Trump) ...

Andy Puzder's article lays out the difference between President Trump's economic performance and Joe Biden's economic performance by using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' own charts. Puzder makes his argument with just 1 chart. This is that chart: This is the opening of Mr. Puzder's article: What is all this "Biden inflation tax" talk really about? What is the actual effect of inflation on the lives of real people?  Well, below is a chart that compares yearly wage and inflation rates for each month from 2017 through July of this year using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Wage rates are in blue and inflation (as measured by the consumer price index) is in red. When blue is on top, as it was during the entire Trump administration, workers’ wages are beating inflation and their standards of living are improving. When red is on top, they’re not.  While President Biden claims that it is “indisputable” that his jobs plan “is working,” this chart unequivocall...

 Gov. Kate Brown, the Democrat governor of Oregon, has a tell that she's a bigot. She isn't called on it but it's there nonetheless. Former President George W. Bush called it "the soft bigotry of low expectations." But I digress. Let's return to Gov. Brown and the Democrats' soft bigotry of low expectations. Last month, Gov. Brown signed a bill into law with little fanfare. Not every bill signing has a signing ceremony so that, by itself, isn't that unusual. What makes this bill signing different is what the bill doesn't do and what it does. This bill doesn't require students of color to be proficient in "reading, writing or math." This bill does tell students of color that they aren't capable of meeting high expectations. This got Whitney Munro of the Cicero Institute, Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter and Lawrence Jones upset: This is odd: The Oregonian reported that the governor has seemed to avoid discussing Senate Bill 744. Her...

Apparently, Equity Alliance of Minnesota, aka EAM, thinks that it can keep its work secret . Kids Over Politics 748 thinks that the equity survey that EAM did for the Sartell-St. Stephen school district is the district's work product. In fact, James Dickey of the Upper Midwest Law Center, which represents Kids Over Politics 748, is preparing to file a lawsuit to get a copy of the survey. Dickey is quoted as saying "If you do not provide the responsive data or indicate that you will promptly provide it, our clients have authorized us to commence a lawsuit under the MGDPA to compel production and seek reasonable costs and attorney fees." EAM hasn't complied with 3 previous requests, which likely means that EAM is preparing to fight the lawsuit. If that's the case, they'll lose. Equity Alliance doesn’t directly operate any schools anymore but is still considered a joint powers organization and is therefore subject to the Data Practices Act, Dickey argues in his l...

Larry Kudlow took a blow-torch to Joe Biden's infrastructure plan in Friday's monologue . He said "The Biden administration is now rolling towards its goal of a Green New Deal. The infrastructure deal has about $140 billion worth of subsidies and government investment funds. Subsidies for electric cars, electric charging stations. A transformation of our utility grid, handouts to certain companies, a slush fund for the energy department, all under the general grandiose goal of net-zero emissions by some date certain yet to be determined. American car-makers are boasting that electric vehicles will be half of their sales by 2030 even though right now they're only 3%. Mind you this whole exercise is a textbook case of central planning that is unprecedented in this country." That's the definition of corporate welfare. It's also the personification of central planning. Government makes the decisions. Subjects, not citizens, get to obey the government's ord...

Here We Go Again: Round Two By Ramblin’ Rose Every ten years in Minnesota, another set of academic standards is revised. The only role that the legislature plays is to approve the schedule for such reviews. The governor appoints the panel; they issue a draft for public comment; they prepare another draft to present to the Commissioner of Education who signs it and presents it to a law judge for approval. Our elected representatives NEVER participate in the process. That process started about the time of the pandemic for the social studies academic standards in Minnesota. Walz called for applicants (who knew about the invitation?) and appointed the participants, many who had served on other panels for/with him. The first draft (32 pages) was released in early December. The comment period for the public was again not widely publicized. Local news media did not cover the story at all. Those that watched the panels’ presentation online in late March heard the members state that they had r...

It's safe to say that Jen Psaki has a truth problem. This article quotes "Chris Cabrera, a vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, as saying "Not everyone we encounter we test, only those that exhibit some type of symptoms and not everybody has symptoms that has it." Cabrera also said "And we’re releasing people out of the door day in and day out with actual positive tests for COVID and more keep popping up." That hardly fits with what Psaki said in this brief, heated exchange: In that exchange, Psaki said that "CBP provides PPE to migrants" the minute they're captured and migrants are required to keep masks on at all times, including when they're transferred or being released." Cabrera then added this: As a result, Cabrero warned that a number of agents have been quarantined or are sick with the virus."We have a lot of agents quarantined right now, which adds to our problem, on top of agents who are sick with...

The Upper Midwest Law Center sent a letter to the Equity Alliance of Minnesota on behalf of Kids over Politics to notify EAMN that "the District violated Federal and Minnesota constitutional and statutory rights of parents and students." Kids over Politics is "a non-profit organization devoted to supporting Sartell’s students and advocating for their best educational opportunities." In the letter, Kids Over Politics 748 "ask the District to do the following to avoid a possible federal lawsuit": Discard and disregard any findings or recommendations of the flawed and illegal survey. Commit to never again force students to take a survey like this without first giving parents a copy and obtaining their written consent. Provide an accounting showing the public the source of the funding for the survey and the amounts paid for it, and to whom. Publicly take responsibility for forcing the survey on students and apologize to the parents and students of ISD 748 f...