BRING BACK BEER: Study: Nearly 1 in 5 high school kids uses trio of pot, vapes, cigarettes.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THERE ARE INNATE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO SEXES: COVID-19 lockdowns revealed significant, cliche gender differences.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

THE VIRTUE SIGNAL GAME : You can get all the games on sale here. They make fun gifts for those in your life who would get the humor or maybe even better for those who don’t.

HMM: VA Republicans Jump to In-Person Early Voting Lead, Model Shows.

Just 82,000 Virginians cast ballots during the first week of early voting, according to the state’s Department of Elections. That figure marks a sharp decline from the 270,000 voters who flocked to the polls during the first week of early voting in 2020. Of the 51,000 early votes cast in person, Republicans hold a 127-vote advantage, a data model provided by the Virginia GOP shows. While the state does not register voters by party affiliation, the model uses factors like primary voting history to extrapolate the voters’ partisan preference. Democrats have historically dominated early voting—President Joe Biden won Virginia’s early vote by more than 30 points against former president Donald Trump.

Those numbers will likely alarm supporters of former governor Terry McAuliffe (D.), who face an enthusiasm gap in their bid to defeat Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. An August Monmouth poll found that Youngkin enjoys a 19-point lead with voters who describe themselves as being “more enthusiastic.”

The early voting numbers also come as Biden’s standing in the state slips significantly. According to a September poll conducted by Democratic consulting firm Global Strategy Group, 49 percent of Virginia voters hold a favorable opinion of Biden, while 50 percent of voters view him unfavorably. Biden won the state by double digits in November.

Republicans’ apparent lead among in-person early voters “clearly is concerning for Democrats, who traditionally have been the advocates of early voting and have turned out more than Republicans,” according to Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Well, don’t get cocky.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Woke Loudon County tried really hard to keep Matt Walsh from speaking at their school board meeting, but speak he did, and dang did he unleash fire on those “child abusers” and “gutless cowards.”

LIFE IN THE CRAZY YEARS: California’s ‘Fawn Fire’ Allegedly Started By Student-Turned-Shaman Claiming She Boiled Bear Urine To Drink: Alexandra Souverneva is charged with felony arson to wildland. Authorities suspect she started other fires, too.

IN OVER HIS HEAD: Republicans Get Out of the Way as Democrats Form a Circular Firing Squad. “The president badly overestimated his own abilities and underestimated GOP unity. He overestimated his ability to sell his agenda to both radical socialists and Main Street Democrats. In the end, the socialists undermined Biden by acting like radical socialists and throwing a tantrum when they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. And the Main Street Democrats got a bad case of the shakes when contemplating the passage of the $3.5 trillion budget bill without any obvious way to pay for it.”

I’m old enough to remember when Biden was sold to us as the man who could work with Congress, but aside from a couple of meetings with Manchin an Sinema, he’s been noticably absent from the process of pushing his own agenda.

He’s just not up to the job.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS DELENDA EST:

AHOY! Terry McAuliffe touts the endorsement of Bill Kristol, the ‘leading conservative in America.’

Flashback: Bill Kristol and the political defector grift. Since the days of Richard Nixon, you can make a very good living in the DNC-MSM media bubble by being a prominent Republican who never votes for Republicans.

Also McAuliffe last night: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Well, that should lock-up the all-important Comcast demographic in Virginia:

DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Preschool Funding in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Is Modeled After Failed Head Start Program. “Fraud, abuse, poor outcomes, and high costs.”

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, DEMS OR YOUR OWN LYIN’ EYES? Democrats Would Prefer That You Ignore All of the Violent Crime Around You. “Before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all.”

THEY DID NOTHING WRONG AND BIDEN CAN’T HAVE THAT: NYT corrects false claim that Border Patrol ‘whipped’ Haitian migrants; agents may still face discipline from Biden admin.

RESIDUE OF HATE: Remembering what campus cancel culture has purged.

SMART GOVERNMENT: Governor Kathy Hochul Declares a Healthcare Worker Shortage Emergency of Her Own Making.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: PPU students petition to remove classmate from campus after Fox News interview .

EVERYONE SHOULD: Lithuania could ban Chinese smartphones from state institutions as Xiaomi censorship row continues.

CONSEQUENCES ARE FOR THOSE WHO GO OFF-MESSAGE: Marine Who Criticized Biden Admin’s Afghanistan Withdrawal is Jailed: Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller only asked for those in charge to accept responsibility and admit they messed up the withdrawal.

Those who are responsible for the debacle, meanwhile, get book deals and fawning CNN interviews.

#RESIST: “Fu*k Joe Biden” Chant Hits the Ryder Cup and a Staten Island Food Court.

HMM: Did Pelosi Attempt to Take Over the Chain of Command Before Trump Left Office?

JOHN LUCAS: Biden’s Doubled-Down Lies About Border Whips Are More Proof He’s Unfit To Lead. The problem is, we’ve gotten ourselves into a situation where everyone in the line of succession is unfit, too. Kamala Harris? Nancy Pelosi? Patrick Leahy?

And by “we’ve gotten ourselves” I mean a nearly-united establishment fiddled the rules and lied in all the press coverage to get us here, even though everyone important knew Biden was unfit, and so were his potential successors.

THAT’S WHY THERE’S TESTING: Tiles Fly Off SpaceX Starship Prototype During Testing. “The S20 prototype still has many stress tests ahead of the its first orbital launch. The spacecraft will have to undergo cryogenic proof and static fire tests, Teslarati reports. According to road closure postings, the first tests could kick off as soon as later this week.”

I AGREE: Parents of Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller call for resignation of top military leaders.

The parents of the Marine officer who is jailed after posting a scathing video about the botched Afghan withdrawal slammed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Frank McKenzie – and called for their resignations.

Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller has landed in the brig after he ripped into military leadership following the devastating suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans.

The officer announced he was resigning and walking away from a $2 million pension after 17 years of service.

His parents, Stuart Scheller Sr. and Cathy Scheller, said in an interview on “The Ingraham Angle” on Tuesday that their son is being unfairly punished as he sits in solitary confinement at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC, Fox News reported.

They expressed their anger at Milley, Austin and McKenzie, the commander of the US Central Command, saying they refused to take accountability during their earlier appearances at a Senate hearing.

Admiral Byng, pick up the white courtesy phone.

BYRON YORK: Mayorkas: We won’t build a wall because it might work.