Liberty & Prosperity Blog

Each day, Terry McAuliffe makes a different set of mistakes. Today, "McAuliffe praised his state's education system" while omitting the fact that 4 of his 5 children "went to private high schools." You can't make this stuff up. Thanks to McAuliffe's gaffe-filled campaign, we don't have to. He's a real-life disaster machine, a younger version of Joe Biden without the cognitive issues. This morning on Meet the Press, McAuliffe said "We have a great school system in Virginia. Dorothy and I have raised our five children" while he "slammed Youngkin's positions on education. While this may be true, four out of McAuliffe's five children went to private high schools." Hasn't anyone told McAuliffe that they invented Google and other search engines years ago? This type of mistake is unforgivable. People will notice. Further, Virginians' problems isn't as much with Virginia's public schools, though that's cer...

Larry Kudlow's opening riff yesterday is a perfect example for why reconciliation needs to be overhauled. In his opening riff, Kudlow states "This new spending number that is circulating at $1.75 trillion is phony boloney. It’s larded with gimmicks and not credible. The Wall Street Journal's editorial today called it a 'jerry-rigged budget framework.' They are right. Basically, the Democrats are scoring permanent programs as one-year temporaries. Like extending the child-care tax credit for a one-year cost of $110 billion, when in fact it’s a 10-year cost of well over $1 trillion. Ditto for expanding Obamacare subsidies. And expanded Medicare and Medicaid services. The Journal puts the cost at $4 trillion." Nobody thinks that Democrats want the child-care tax credit to sunset after just a year. That isn't transformational. That's a lie. The reforms I'm thinking of would give Democrats 2 options in this situation. The first option is to tell them t...

The Lincoln Project is lots of things. Profiles in honesty and integrity aren't part of who they are. Friday morning, the Lincoln Project tried smearing Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin as a racist. Their tactic failed. According to the article, "The disgraced anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project is facing intense backlash for orchestrating the viral hoax involving tiki torch-holding individuals associating themselves with the Youngkin campaign. "Twitter was set ablaze after images of a group wearing white shirts, khakis, baseball caps and sunglasses stood alongside the campaign bus of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin reportedly vocal expressing support for the Republican, according to local NBC affiliate anchor Elizabeth Holmes." These men approached @GlennYoungkin ’s bus as it pulled up saying what sounded like, “We’re all in for Glenn.” Here they are standing in front of the bus as his campaign event at Guadalajara started. @NB...

NOT Minnesota Nice By Ramblin’ Rose Minnesota is not one of the states frequently mentioned on national media sites…until the end of the last academic year and again recently. The location for the noteworthy comments was the same—school board meetings. Last spring, a student called out the school boards for racist instruction in classes. Another called the school board for the hypocrisy of establishing policies for students while ignoring those same policies when they were inconvenient for administrators. While the focus has been on the parents in Virginia (state) challenging school boards, administrators, and politicians for trying to silence parents about academic and safety concerns related to their children, parents/citizens were also threatened in Minnesota. In Fergus Falls, a surgeon was fired nine days after addressing the school board. The grounds for the dismissal were not specified, but Dr. Horak suspects that his 40-year career was terminated because of his statements that...

I've thought for some time that Kevin McCarthy was right when he called Nancy Pelosi a lame duck speaker . Today, additional proof is apparent that he's right: Regardless, Nancy Pelosi is using the news to take a baseball bat to the progressive wing, even as the far-left group of lawmakers spent yesterday evening lodging threats. According to Pramila Jayapal, there are dozens of Democrats ready to kill the infrastructure bill unless there’s something more than a framework on reconciliation. Yet, Pelosi is casting them aside and moving forward anyway, saying she wants the former bill passed today. The Nancy Pelosi that pushed Obamacare through had a larger majority but she had some tough nuts to crack. Think Bart Stupak. Still, she got it done. Today's vote, if it happens, will be a major defeat for both Biden and Pelosi. Biden will be landing in Rome on a major international trip with egg on his face and weakness as his suit of armor. There's no way to sugarcoat this. P...

This morning, Joe Biden will announce a framework for his reconcilliation bill. He's hoping that this will start some Joementum for the stalled bill. He'll need something after this morning's GDP report came in at 2%. This is actually semi-miraculous considering the vaccine-mandate-induced employee shortages, the supply chain crisis and the end of the stimulus checks. Now that that's worn off, there isn't a reason for people to invest in expanding their businesses. When you punish success, you get less prosperity. That's what's happening right now. Democrats want to punish prosperity. Their goal is to redistribute wealth. It isn't to create wealth. With these fundamental in place and with the supply chain crisis beyond the Democrats' comprehension in terms of solutions, expect this GDP drag to continue. Rick Santelli tells it like it is in this report: Considering the fact that Biden's Build Back Better Bill is slowly going up in flames, Biden is...

Joe Biden will make an announcement this morning. What that announcement is isn't known at this point but it's definitely getting lots of hype. According to this article , "The topline number of the reconciliation framework President Biden is expected to announce to House Democrats Thursday is $1.75 trillion, Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich reports." Already, the Squad is making demands, though they're softening their complaints a bit: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Thursday morning that President Biden's reconciliation framework will have to be better than something "on the back of an envelope" for her to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill this week, according to Fox News' Chad Pergram. "I think we need to have certainty either through legislative text, through a uniform agreement that we can trust because there's been so many changes in this process," she also said. "I think legislative text is one mechani...

Nancy Pelosi is famous for saying about Obamacare that "you've got to pass the bill to find out what's in it." Those were the good old days when voting meant that you could vote on a bill that only a handful of people had read. There will be a hearing today in the House Rules Committee "on Democrats' massive reconciliation spending bill, as Democrats struggle to come to an agreement on the bill but still hope to vote on it this week." "As we have insisted, we are close to agreement on the priorities and the topline of the legislation, which can and must pass the House and Senate," Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a letter to fellow Democrats. "At the same time, we are facing a crucial deadline for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework to pass." "I have asked the Rules Committee to hold a hearing tomorrow, October 28, to advance this spectacular agenda For The People," she added, regarding the reconciliation bill. Fox News is tol...

The Democrats authoritarian instincts are getting them into major difficulties. Scott Ziegler, the superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools, has taken lots of heat for hiding the sexual assault of a freshman girl in a bathroom. Now that the judge has issued a guilty verdict in the case, a member of the school board has called for Superintendent Ziegler's resignation . A member of the Loudoun County School Board in Virginia has joined concerned parents and students in calling for the resignation of Superintendent Scott Ziegler in the wake of an email that surfaced last week. In an exclusive statement to Fox News, John Beatty, the Catoctin District member of the board, accused Ziegler of "withholding information for political gain" when it came to an alleged sexual assault against a female student in a girls restroom on May 28. "My heart breaks every time I hear about the assaults in our schools," Beatty told Fox News in an email statement. "I could ne...

Jodi Sapp is a member of the school board serving Mankato Area Public Schools. At a recent school board meeting, Ms. Sapp said "I just want to remind everybody this is a business meeting of the school board, it is not a meeting that belongs to the public. Each speaker is asked to state his or her name and address for the record. Failure to do so will result in an individual not being allowed to speak." That's breathtakingly authoritarian. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there . She also said "new guidelines that will be enforced: no calling out specific board or staff members and no applause, talking, or hollering." There's so much wrong with what she said. First, the meeting belongs to the public because that's who the school board is supposed to serve. (Obviously, they don't serve the public at this point.) Next, the school board doesn't have the constitutional right to restrict political speech, which is what this is. If I lived in Mankato...

After Monday night's plea agreement, Loudoun County high school students staged a walkout "in protest of recent sexual assault cases at the public school system and to show solidarity with victims of such abuses." This isn't going away anytime soon. For starters, people will need to be fired or resign. The next one to resign or be fired should be Superintendent Scott Ziegler. "Students who choose to participate will not be penalized for their participation; however, we do ask that students who participate do so peacefully, without signage, and in accordance with the Students Rights and Responsibilities we all reviewed and signed at the beginning of the year," said Michelle Luttrell, the principal at Loudoun County High School, according to WUSA. According to this video, the protest was planned by parents, not students: These students have a right to feel betrayed. Their superintendent, Scott Ziegler, said that he didn't know of any sexual assualts in th...

The 15-year-old boy who was accused of sexually assaulting a freshman girl attending at Stone Bridge High School "was expected to plead guilty at a court hearing in Loudoun County on October 14, following the negotiation of a plea agreement. The second attack, however, happened on October 6th, and the Smith family was later told that the two incidents would be dealt with at the same time, during a hearing on October 25th." The judge "found sufficient evidence that the teen sexually assaulted a fellow student in May. A sentencing hearing will be held at a later date, likely November." That means that the Smith's daughter lived to see justice. That won't eliminate the pain that their daughter feels but it's justice. On a peripheral note, I hope that Barack Obama apologizes to the Smith family for riffing about phony culture wars or fake outrage that the right-wing media peddling just to juice up your ratings" like he did on Saturday in New Jersey....

Saturday evening, Barack Obama campaigned for Gov. Phil Murphy in New Jersey. While there, he let loose with a riff that's almost totally devoid of verifiable facts. He said "These are serious times and we need serious people. We have too much to get done to be going backwards. Here we are trying to recover from a global pandemic that has killed more than 700,000 Americans, put millions in harm's way. We don't have time to waste on phony culture wars or fake outrage that the right-wing media peddling just to juice up your ratings." Obama is right. These are serious time. He's also right in saying that the pandemic "has killed 700,000 Americans." After that, it's devoid of truth-telling. The culture wars aren't phony. The outrage isn't ginned up by right-wing media to juice up ratings. A freshman girl allegedly got raped in Virginia and the school board covered it up. That isn't ginned up. The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office is in...

When it comes to dividing people with smooth-sounding lies, few excel at it more than Barack Obama. It isn't a stretch to think of him as America's Divider-in-chief . While campaigning for Terry McAuliffe, Obama said "All across the country, Democrats are trying to make it easier to vote, not make it harder to vote, and push back on Republicans who are trying to systematically prevent ordinary citizens from making their voices heard. You have to ask yourself, why is it Republicans don't want you to vote?" This summer, the Supreme Court ruled in the case titled Brnovich v. DNC. In their ruling, the Supreme Court said " Arizona law generally makes it very easy to vote. Voters may cast their ballots on election day in person at a traditional precinct or a 'voting center' in their county of residence. Arizonans also may cast an 'early ballot' by mail up to 27 days before an election and they also may vote in person at an early voting location in...

Minutes after Atlanta defeated the LA Dodgers to clinch the National League, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp took to Twitter to extract a little revenge against Major League Baseball, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and Democrat activist Stacey Abrams. Kemp wrote "While Stacey Abrams and the MLB stole the All-Star Game from hardworking Georgians, the Braves earned their trip to the World Series this season and are bringing it home to Georgia," Kemp wrote. "Chop On, and Go @Braves!" I hope Atlanta wins the World Series just so Manfred has to present the World Series Trophy to Braves ownership. I hope that Braves ownership then takes time in accepting the trophy to remind people that MLB took the All-Star Game away from a city that's 51% African-American and gave it to a city that's 76% white (Denver). Back in April, MLB decided to relocate the scheduled July 13 All-Star Game after critics complained that Georgia’s election law would adversely affect minority and low-in...

Apparently, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema aren't the only Democrats objecting to the Democrats' reconciliation bill. Seven Texas Democrats have written Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer objecting to Joe Biden's reconciliation bill.Appparently, hardline Democrats don't care if moderate Democrats return after the next election. Despite the objections of "Henry Cuellar, Vicente Gonzalez, Lizzie Fletcher, Sylvia Garcia, Marc Veasey, Filemon Vela, and Colin Allred," Democrats "in the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee pushed through a section of the bill, which includes billions of dollars in taxes, fines, and fees on the oil and gas industry in the name of climate change. Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., said the section of the bill that passed 'invested in millions of American jobs' and put the U.S. 'on a more stable long-term economic and environmental path.'" In a newsletter to constituents, Gonzalez, whose district stret...

While Terry McAuliffe hides behind Barack Obama, Glenn Youngkin is campaigning aggressively across the state of Virginia. Today, Youngkin "called for the resignations of Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the school board in the wake of a bombshell email this week. The email showed that Ziegler alerted the board that a male student allegedly assaulted a female student in a girl's bathroom – about a month before Ziegler publicly declared that he had no record of bathroom assaults." This isn't just about Democrats catering to the teachers unions. It's about Democrats pushing a radical pro-transgender agenda that's endangered students. It's about Democrats ignoring parents, too. "It's outrageous," Youngkin told Fox News on Saturday. He said the email "simply confirms what we know, which is we had administrators at a school board who have been covering this up. I mean, they tried to hide it from parents, they've hidden it f...

The superintentendent of Loudoun County Public Schools sent a confidential email to Loudoun County's school board members on May 28. In the email, Superintendent Scott Ziegler wrote "The purpose of this email is to provide you with information regarding an incident that occurred at Stone Bridge HS. This afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom. The LCSO is investigating the matter." This video should be sufficient to get Ziegler terminated: "Ziegler declared that the predator transgender student or person doesn't exist and, to our knowlege, we don't have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms." That's stunning. Ziegler wrote that the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, aka LCSO, was investigating the matter. Why should we trust a thing Superintendent Ziegler says? Here's Ziegler's letter: That's pretty explosive stuff. I can't imagine why a school board would employ so...

It's pretty obvious that there's still quite a bit to iron out the Democrats' Eternal Entitlements Bill. This article highlights the principal difference between Joe Biden and Joe Manchin. During CNN townhall Thursday night, Biden's "first question came from a Morgan State University employee with two young children who asked about Biden's child tax credit plan." Biden quickly replied "No. Here's the deal: All these people are working anyway. And, by the way, why should somebody who is not working, and who has a million-dollar trust fund, why should they get the benefit when someone who is making $60,000 and not working, staying home, why should they not get anything? I don't get that." Biden never had much of a fastball when it came to policy. His fastball has less on it now than it did 15-20 years ago. The whole idea behind imposing a workfare requirement on the child tax credit is to make certain that people gain the skills to re-ente...

When Alejandro Mayorkas lied about the border being closed , the American people knew immediately that he wasn't telling the truth. The NYPost is reporting that DHS has been chartering flights from Texas to Jacksonville, FL and White Plains, NY to disperse illegal immigrants across the United States. Consider that so far this fiscal year, more than 132,000 underage migrants have been taken into federal custody — a 64 percent increase from the last border crisis in 2019, and a nearly 300 percent increase from last year. These youth are part of a months-long, 21-year-record surge in illegal immigration, still ongoing, that was triggered when Biden scrapped many of former President Donald Trump’s border policies. So along with record numbers of migrant youth, we also have record numbers of families and single adults being released from federal custody. This describes the Democrats' catch-and-release program perfectly. The border isn't closed. It's open. This isn't opi...

The Washington Post's editorial is their attempt to shame Joe Manchin into supporting Joe Biden's Build Back Better Bill. The Post identifies 2 points of disagreement with Sen. Manchin -- workfare requirements for entitlement recipients and climate change. Take the Child Tax Credit, which is now going to families making under $150,000. Even if that were cut down to $60,000, it would still go to a great many West Virginia families. But the key is the work requirements. We’re not going to impose that bureaucratic burden on the middle class, let alone the wealthy — make a lawyer or a small-business owner document their work hours for the government, are you crazy? What’s next, require drug testing before you can get the mortgage interest deduction? But Manchin wants to impose work requirements on poorer people, including his own constituents. If you give them a hand it will just turn them into bloodsucking leeches who won’t pull their own weight. Do that, Manchin says, and we’ll b...

Axios is reporting that Joe Manchin has some stiff conditions to gain his vote on the Democrats' Build Back Better Bill. According to Axios's article, "Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told the White House the child tax credit must include a firm work requirement and family income cap in the $60,000 range, people familiar with the matter tell Axios." This won't get a hero's reception with the socialist wing of the Democrat Party. The idea behind Build Back Better is for the federal government to be Santa to the middle class. Democrats want the middle class to think that they're the party who extends the middle class's paychecks. The bad news for the middle class is that what they gain in 'free' benefits will get stripped away by high inflation. That's already happening. Work requirements aren't popular with Sanders/AOC wing because they were the cornerstone of the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reforms of 1996. Sen. Sanders thinks that Bill Cl...

In 1996, Bill Clinton was strongly supported by suburban women satisfied with the economy. In that election's aftermath, these women became known as soccer moms. Legend has it that they typically drove minivans while taking their kids to soccer practice. Those Clinton-supporting soccer moms quickly changed in the aftermath of 9/11. That's when they quickly became security moms, women who worried their sons and daughters fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq or whether their communities would be safe from future terrorist attacks. It turns out their communities weren't subject to additional terrorist attacks. This year, thanks to the teachers unions' arrogance, distance learning and the school board's intransigence, a new group of moms is rising up. I'm naming them school board moms. They're upset with things like CRT, transgender rights and in-person learning. These women have what might be termed a 'decency agenda'. These women aren't automatically pa...

Dan Wolgamott's op-ed is either proof that he needs a new dictionary or that he isn't tightly tethered to the truth. The subject of Rep. Wolgamott's op-ed is voting rights. Specifically, Rep. Wolgamott insists that "elected Republicans in Minnesota are doubling down on Trump’s baseless lie that the election was stolen in order to pass voter suppression laws to limit, restrict and undermine your vote for their political gain." Continuing, Wolgamott said "It’s time for Republicans to return to their principles, stop lying to the people they represent, and work with Democrats to strengthen and protect your right to vote." That's a rather provocative statement for a state legislator to make. The word suppress is defined as "to stop or arrest, to vanquish or subdue (a revolt, rebellion, etc.); quell; crush. " Nothing that Republicans have done remotely comes close to crushing people's right to vote. Wolgamott's 'proof' that Rep...

In this post , I wrote "When he took office, Joe Biden inherited a strongly growing economy , a secure border, 3 COVID-19 vaccines and inflation that sat at ~2%. We'd just achieved energy independence and we were exporting oil and natural gas for the first time in our history. Just 9 months later, the Tex-Mex border is functionally open. Inflation is eating wage gains and gas prices just hit a 7-year high . In this article, Bloomberg reports "Just a few months ago, the U.S. economy looked like it was roaring back from the pandemic slump. Now the recovery is starting to look more like a grind. ... The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s real-time estimate of economic activity now predicts growth of 1.2% in the quarter that ended in September. Two months ago it was forecasting 6%." This is a policy-induced recession. Specifically, the policies are owned by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi. Their free money is costing families dearly in high inflation and reduced purc...

The latest Trafalgar Group polling in Virginia shows Republican Glenn Youngkin leading Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a margin of 48.4% to 47.5%. This is the first time that a major poll has had Youngkin leading McAuliffe since the race started. Youngkin has razor thin lead in #VAGov race: 48.4% @GlennYoungkin , 47.5% @TerryMcAuliffe , 1.3% Third Party/Write-In 2.8% Undecided, According to @trafalgar_group #poll Conducted 10/11-10-13. See Report: https://t.co/27f8lnj8XJ pic.twitter.com/lTjx7rd6gw — Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) October 15, 2021 The Trafalgar poll has a sample size of 1,095 likely Virginia voters. It was conducted on Oct. 11-13, making it the latest poll in the RCP average of polls. The poll's MOE is +- 2.96%. The Youngkin-McAuliffe horserace question was the first question in the poll. The next question in the poll is Joe Biden's approval rating. Biden is underwater, with 39.9% approving and a whopping 58.4% disapproving. What's frightening for Biden ...

When he took office, Joe Biden inherited a strongly growing economy, a secure border, 3 COVID-19 vaccines and inflation that sat at ~2%. We'd just achieved energy independence and we were exporting oil and natural gas for the first time in our history. Just 9 months later, the Tex-Mex border is functionally open. Inflation is eating wage gains and gas prices just hit a 7-year high . Thread. The reason this continues is that there’s been no serious effort to stop it. https://t.co/lAhOvrvXnO — Brit Hume (@brithume) October 13, 2021 Kristin Tate's op-ed provides a blueprint for why the Biden/Democrat recession is inevitable. Tate wrote "Three main issues likely will plunge the country into economic backsliding and spark stagflation by the end of 2022: inflation, supply chain issues, and an unraveling labor market." I'd add that passing the reconciliation bill will kill the economy because of the tax hikes contained in the bill. This chart shows how inflation is...

Dr. Marty Makary's op-ed for Fox News is a definite eye-opener. Dr. Makary "teaches public health policy as Professor of Surgery and Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health." Dr. Makary's op-ed shines a bright, unflattering light on the FDA . It leads to a comparison between Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed and Joe Biden's FDA approval of Molnupiravir. Dr. Makary writes "Our public health leaders have become too be accepting of the bureaucratic processes that would outrage a fresh eye. For example, last week the antiviral pill Molnupiravir was found to cut COVID hospitalizations in half and, remarkably, no one who got the drug died." Dr. Makary continued, saying "The irony is that Molnupiravir was developed a year ago. Do the math on the number of lives that could have been saved if health officials would have moved fast, allowing rolling trials with an evaluation of each infection and adverse event in real-time...

Last night, the Daily Wire published an article that highlights the Loudoun County Public Schools cover-up of a sexual assault of a high school freshman. Most of the 5,000+ word article are behind Daily Wire's paywall but what isn't behind the paywall is chilling and infuriating. Luke Rosiak's article opens by saying "On June 22, Scott Smith was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting, a meeting that was ultimately deemed an 'unlawful assembly' after many attendees vocally opposed a policy on transgender students. What people did not know is that weeks prior on May 28, Smith says, a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith's ninth-grade daughter." Later in the article, Rosiak reported "Minutes before Smith’s arrest, the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) superintendent lectured the public that concerns about the transgender policy were misp...

When Frank Figliuzzi worked for the FBI, he was classified as a Special Agent-in-Charge. These days, he plays the role of political commentator. In reality, he's a political hatchetman. In this article , Figliuzzi's chief roll is of a propagandist. His other role is to throw police officers under the bus. Figliuzzi starts the article by saying "Any parent who has a kid in Little League Baseball is familiar with the agreement they sign that governs parental conduct at games and that reminds them to be a role model for their kids. If only such agreements applied to school board meetings. Violent threats, even death threats, against school board members have become increasingly common as school boards across the nation meet to consider mask mandates, vaccine requirements and how to teach topics that include the history of race and its impact on our society. The hostility directed at its members has led the National School Boards Association to call upon President Joe Biden to...