Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Owen

Everything but tech support

Jed

Tech support

Boeing Strike Ends

Finally.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Boeing’s U.S. West Coast factory workers accepted a new contract offer on Monday, ending a bitter seven-week strike that halted most jet production and deepened a financial crisis at the troubled planemaker.

 

The union said members voted 59% in favor of the new contract, which includes a 38% pay rise spread over four years, easing pressure on new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg after two previous offers were voted down in recent weeks.

 

Shares of the planemaker were up nearly 2% in premarket trading on Tuesday.

 

“This is a victory. We can hold our heads high,” Jon Holden the union’s lead negotiator, told members after the results were announced. “Now it’s our job to get back to work.”

Election Eve

I see a lot of people who are filled with angst and trepidation about the election. Some of them are bemoaning how bad life will be for them if their chosen side loses. I will reiterate again that this is a definitive sign that we have given our government too much power over our lives. Our federal government is too big, too powerful, too intrusive, too expensive, and too corrupt. Small government means that we don’t have to care as deeply about the outcome. I hope and pray that we learn this fact and begin downsizing our government forthwith.

With Days Until Election, Harris Goes on SNL

Such unoriginal, fawning, unfunny, drivel

Kamala Harris’ appearance on Saturday Night Live instantly drew comparisons to Hillary Clinton‘s ill-fated performances on the show in previous elections.

 

The vice president laughed throughout her skit with Maya Rudolph on Saturday’s episode, putting on a similarly giggle-filled performance to Clinton in 2008 and 2016.

 

At one point, Harris even repeated a joke from Clinton’s sketch opposite Amy Poehler, as she asked Rudolph: ‘I don’t really laugh like that do I?’

 

[…]

 

Harris’ appearance on SNL was a surprise last-minute move from her campaign as the election enters its final days.

 

Some viewers noticed the repeated line from Clinton’s previous performance, with one saying on X that the show ‘need new writers.’

 

‘SNL writers must be as lazy as everyone thinks they are,’ said another.

Terrible Jobs Report. Last Two Months Revised Down. Government Adds Jobs.

Ouch. But government continues to add jobs as the private sector contracts.

Total nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in October (+12,000), and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in health care and government. Temporary help services lost jobs. Employment declined in manufacturing due to strike activity.

 

[…]

 

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for August was revised down by 81,000, from +159,000 to +78,000, and the change for September was revised down by 31,000, from +254,000 to +223,000. With these revisions, employment in August and September combined is 112,000 lower than previously reported.

Transcript of Biden’s Words Edited by Staff

This is unconscionable. A hundred years from now when all of us are dead and historians are trying to understand the world as it was in our time, they will read original and contemporary documents to gain that understanding. Altering transcripts of what the President of the United States actually said is a crime against history and a contemptuous slap of our children’s children. Biden said something stupid. Write down what he said. It’s not that hard.

The White House altered the transcript of President Biden’s controversial “garbage” comment despite the concerns of stenographers, Fox News Digital has confirmed.

 

In an email viewed by Fox News Digital, a supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”

 

“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote in the email. “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”

Harris Prepares Ground for the Big Cheat

She is laying the rhetorical groundwork for quashing any pushback or scrutiny when her side tries to cheat their way to victory.

Vice President Kamala Harris believes former President Donald Trump “is capable of anything” when it comes to challenging the result of this year’s presidential election, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce her legal team is “ready” for whatever Trump may do after next Tuesday’s vote.

 

“We are, sadly, ready” if Trump challenges the election results, as he did four years ago, Harris told Bruce in an exclusive interview after her rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

 

“And if we know that he is manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people based on fiction instead of facts, we’re prepared to respond,” she said.

Trump to Visit Muslim Community in Dearborn, MI

Good for him.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump is set to visit Dearborn, Michigan — the nation’s largest Arab-majority city — on Friday, according to a local business owner who first insisted the former president call for peace in Lebanon before hosting him.

 

Metro Detroit is home to nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which President Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

 

While Vice President Kamala Harris has been working through surrogates to ease community tensions, Trump’s visit will mark the first by either candidate, according to a local leader, Osama Siblani. Earlier this year, Harris met with the city’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, though their discussion took place outside Dearborn.

Sam Abbas, the owner of The Great Commoner in Dearborn, told The Associated Press that Trump was set to visit his restaurant.

 

“We expect some remarks around ending the war and bringing peace to the Middle East,” said Abbas. “I’m not here to get political. I’m not here to tell people which way I’m voting. I am simply here because our family is being slaughtered and we just want to end the war. Stop the bombing.”

 

Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and last month launched an invasion of Lebanon to suppress Hezbollah, the militia that has continuously launched rockets into Israeli territory. At least 43,000 people have died in Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish in its death toll between combatants and civilians.

I think there are two major things in play here for why the Muslim community is lining up to support Trump. First, Muslim Americans are, after all, Americans. They are as frustrated with the higher cost of living, open borders, tax increases, etc. of the Biden/Harris administration. Muslims are also generally socially conservative (to put it mildly) and don’t like the woke BS infiltrating everything we do. For these voters, their religion is not necessarily the primary driver – just like Christians, Jews, and atheists who support Trump.

Second, for the Muslim Americans who are basing their support on America’s foreign policy in the Middle East, Trump’s foreign policy was far more effective in creating a framework for peace than Biden/Harris’ foreign policy. He was able to do this without wavering in his support for Israel by building connections on the basis of mutual self-interest – like a business deal. Trump was also more effective at keeping the crazies in their caves. He did this partially with the effective use and threat of force, and partly with effective diplomacy with the countries who can help control them. Trump neutered Iran, destroyed ISIS, and kept Russia at bay in the region. For Muslim Americans who want peace with dignity in the region, Trump is more likely to be able to deliver it.

Leftists Raise Taxes

In Britain, the Labour Party (liberals) took power in the last election. What are they doing? Raising taxes. It’s what they do. It’s an ideology that knows no borders. If America elects the Leftists, they will raise taxes on us too. It’s what they do.

Reeves set out plans to raise £40bn. She had promised not to put these rises on “working people”, without precisely defining who she meant. Instead, she explained that most of the money will be raised from businesses, and the better off.

 

In Britain, people who work, and the businesses who employ them, pay a national insurance tax. This is compulsory and it is used to pay for things such as benefits, hospitals and pensions. Reeves raised the amount businesses will have to pay, saying the increase would bring in a substantial £25bn.

 

“I know that this is a difficult choice,” she said. “I do not take this decision lightly. We are asking businesses to contribute more, and I know that there will be impacts of this measure felt beyond businesses … but in the circumstances that I have inherited, it is the right choice to make.”

 

Other taxes were raised too, including capital gains tax (paid when you sell an asset for more than you bought it) and inheritance tax. Private schools will have to pay more tax, as well as people who use private jets. It was the rise in national insurance, though, that was the big ticket of the budget.

Vietnamese Surge into the U.K. on Small Boats

There’s big money in smuggling people and entrapping them into servitude. Go read this story and about the elaborate underground system of gangs that funnels people thousands and thousand of miles through dozens of countries. Don’t think that those same gangs and their peers aren’t just as sophisticated getting people to the U.S.

Earlier this year, Vietnam emerged – abruptly – as the biggest single source of new migrants seeking to cross the Channel to the UK illegally in small boats. Arrivals surged from 1,306 in the whole of 2023, to 2,248 in the first half of 2024.

 

The Vietnamese do not control the small boat crossings themselves, which are largely overseen by a handful of Iraqi Kurdish gangs. Instead they negotiate access and timings.

“The Vietnamese are not allowed to touch that part of the process [the crossing]. We just deliver clients to [the Kurdish gangs],” says another Vietnamese smuggler, who we are calling Thanh, currently living in the UK. He tells us the extra cash secures priority access to the small boats for their Vietnamese clients.

But Who Will Pick the Crops?

American farmers are, and have been, some of the most innovative, creative, and aggressive group of early adopters in the world.

A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortage, help farmers manage costs, and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by bringing greater accuracy to planting, harvesting, and farm management, potentially mitigating some of the challenges of growing food in an ever-warmer world.

 

But many small farmers and producers across the country aren’t convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond steep price tags to questions about whether the tools can do the jobs nearly as well as the workers they’d replace. Some of those same workers wonder what this trend might mean for them, and whether machines will lead to exploitation.

Bezos Gives Reason for Non-Endorsement

He is 100% correct and the Washington Post will be better off without the people who resigned. Is it too late for the paper to regain its previous stature? Time will tell.

The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, in his first public comments since igniting uproar last week over his decision to withhold the venerable newspaper’s endorsement in the presidential race, defended the move in a rare op-ed published Monday evening by the Post.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder, wrote. “No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Canada Cuts Back on Immigration

Any country can only absorb new arrivals, legal or otherwise, so fast without overwhelming systems. It takes time to build, assimilate, and adjust.

But in recent months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he intends to significantly cut the number of immigrants allowed in Canada as public concern grows over inaccessible social services, high costs of living and unaffordable housing.

 

It is a major shift for both the country and Trudeau, who ran in 2015 on a platform of embracing multiculturalism as a key part of Canadian identity.

 

His government has relied on ambitious immigration targets to fuel economic growth.

 

In the face of criticism and plummeting approval ratings, the prime minister now says that his government miscalculated, and that Canada needs to “stabilise” its population growth so that public infrastructure can keep up.

 

On Thursday, Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller presented their most stringent immigration cutbacks yet – a 21% reduction of permanent residents accepted into the country in 2025.

Harris Campaign and Media Pushing People Toward Trump

I know of others who are experiencing this – including me. Trump was not my first choice. I did not vote for him in the primary. I planned to vote for him in the general election, but somewhat reluctantly. The more that Harris tells me that I’m a terrible person and lectures me like I’m a child for voting for Trump, the more energetic I am about doing it.

Vice President Kamala Harris, her surrogate Democrats and the left-leaning legacy media are all making me – a conservative who is not MAGA in any way – actively want to vote for former President Donald Trump.

And I know I’m not alone.

 

Harris and her fellow liberals are starting to sound a lot like the Democrats did in 2016, and it’s a huge turnoff to voters like me.

 

Many in mainstream media (with few exceptions) have dropped any pretense of covering this election fairly and gone full steam ahead in helping Harris defeat Trump.

 

[…]

 

Between Harris’ nonsensical preaching on democracy, the media’s harping against Trump and liberals playing the woman card, I’ve had enough.

 

And I may do exactly what they’re hoping people don’t: Vote for Trump.

 

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. 

Rich Celebrities Line Up Behind Harris

Nothing convinces middle and lower class people who can’t afford homes or groceries to support you like having millionaires and billionaires fly in on their private jets to lecture you about “democracy.” 

On Tuesday, Harris got the endorsement of rapper and Detroit icon Eminem at a rally in the city. Also attending was former president Barack Obama, a superstar in the Democratic Party who rapped the opening segments of Eminem’s famous hit “Lose Yourself” to cheers from the crowd.

 

Duncan said celebrities would be used more by campaigns in the final two weeks to tap into a localized “sense of identity,” with appearances becoming “more targeted” to specific cities.

Popstar Lizzo joined Harris last weekend for an event to mark the first day of early voting in the “About Damn Time” singer’s home city of Detroit, while R&B star Usher appeared with the vice president in Atlanta, where he launched his career.

 

Democrats hope that the potent presence of Obama, America’s first Black US president, and his popular wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, will shore up support among African American voters, particularly men, in key cities.

 

The former president is also set to hold multiple events with rocker Bruce Springsteen in the coming days, with Harris joining them in Atlanta on Thursday, her campaign said.

 

Superstar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris minutes after her first and only debate against Trump, in early September, timing which Duncan called “very strategic… to have the most impact.”

Harris Is Not Equipped to be POTUS

Harris’ CNN Townhall confirmed what we have come to more fully understand as we hear more from an unscripted Kamala Harris – she is not intellectually, socially, or temperamentally equipped to be POTUS. She is imperious, kind of dumb, and incapable of articulating, and apparently understanding, complex topics. These are critical skills for a POTUS to have. I encourage everyone to go watch the CNN Townhall in full and judge for yourself.

The vice president’s uneasy performance on Wednesday night was immediately panned by Democratic strategist David Axelrod who claimed she went ‘word salad city’ on several answers.

 

Harris stood before undecided voters in the swing district of Delaware County, Pennsylvania as new polling showed Trump taking a slight edge over the VP nationally.

 

[…]

 

She also dodged when Cooper asked her if she’d be stronger than Trump on Israel.

 

That answer, particularly, got under Axelrod’s skin.

 

‘When she doesn’t want to answer a question her habit is to kind of go to word salad city and she did that in a couple of questions,’ he said.

 

‘One was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question on would you be stronger on Israel than Trump and there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question,’ the Obama adviser complained.

 

[…]

 

Van Jones, a prominent talking head on CNN who worked in the Obama administration, echoed Axelrod’s key point.

 

‘The word salad stuff gets on my nerves,’ he said on-air after the town hall wrapped. ‘I think some of the evasions are not necessary.’

 

CNN’s Dana Bash said afterward that ‘if her goal was to close the deal, they’re not sure she did that.’

Mexican President Pushes for Return to Old Diet

Marxists always have a soft spot for a more rural, simple, bland life for their people as they live large.

“It is about producing what we eat,” Sheinbaum said of her policy, whose main focus will be on increasing bean and corn production.

 

Sheinbaum appears to have a deep interest in boosting beans. On Monday, she said, “It is much better to eat a bean taco than a bag of potato chips.”

 

Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said the focus would be on guaranteeing prices for farmers who grow corn used for tortillas and lowering tortilla prices by 10% after prices jumped a couple of years ago.

 

The government aims to boost bean production by about 30% in six years to replace imports of beans, and will set up research centers to supply higher-yielding bean seeds.

 

“Self-sufficiency in beans is a goal the president has set for us,” Berdegué said.

 

The government will also focus on supporting coffee production, but mainly for instant coffee, which it claims is used by 84% of Mexican households. The plan will also seek to support cocoa production, but mainly for powdered baking and hot chocolate, not fine chocolate bars.

 

The policies appear to run counter to market trends and what Mexican food sales look like today, when consumption of most of the old basics has fallen.

 

Most Mexicans today shop at modern grocery stores, and consumption of fresh ground coffee, not instant, has increased enormously, accompanied by a boom in specialized coffee chains and shops.

 

Meanwhile, bean consumption has been dropping precipitously for decades in Mexico. According to the government’s “2024 Agricultural Panorama” report, Mexicans consume only about 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms) of beans annually. That’s less than half of the 35.2 pounds (16 kilograms) consumed per year in 1980.

Harris Campaign Triggers Godwin’s Law

We’re in the silly season. With two weeks left before election day, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops. Women making accusations of abuse from decades ago, referencing Jeffrey Epstein, claiming that Trump will be the new Hitler…. you name it. They are throwing everything they have because they think they are behind.

While it is the silly season, the Democrats’ actions are not without consequence. There have been two assassination attempts against Trump this year. Harris’ rhetoric is to irresponsible and irrational that some rabid followers will see it as their duty to try again. After all, if the Germans could have killed Hitler in 1932, wouldn’t it have made for a better world? If Trump is the new Hitler, then wouldn’t it be the moral duty of a loyal Democrat to protect America from that future?

Of course, such thinking is un-American and morally repugnant, but it is not illogical if you really believe that Trump is Hitler. Harris and her supporters are poisoning our political discourse and their actions are disgusting.

Harris Plagiarizes Again?

Color me shocked. This is my shocked face.

Kamala Harris has been rocked by a plagiarism scandal as potentially damning allegations surfaced about testimony she delivered when she was a U.S. senator.

 

Harris is accused of lifting text ‘verbatim’ from a former colleague for use in written congressional testimony she gave in 2007, in an analysis by the Washington Free Beacon.

 

The latest allegations about Harris come hot on the heels of another scandal – over whether she actually worked at McDonald’s in college, as she has claimed.

 

[…]

 

The latest plagiarism allegations arise from testimony Harris gave as a senator in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007.

 

[…]

 

But her written statement in support of the bill, sent to the House Judiciary Committee, was not about her own experience.

Instead, it reflected nearly verbatim text sent by District Attorney Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois, a Republican, in support of the bill.

 

Of the 1,500 words in the testimony, 80 percent were exactly the same as Logli’s submission, according to the Free Beacon analysis.

Recent Comments

  • jonnyv on Congratulations, President Trump: “Actually T, no sour grapes. I said yesterday morning on THIS website that I thought Trump was going to win.…Nov 6, 15:34
  • Tuerqas on Harris Prepares Ground for the Big Cheat: “>No where did I say it has always been available. But there has NEVER been a legal question to early…Nov 6, 14:16
  • Tuerqas on Congratulations, President Trump: “Mmm, these grapes are pretty sour. I love sour grapes.Nov 6, 13:13
  • jonnyv on Congratulations, President Trump: “I wouldn’t be sad seeing a cheeseburger take it’s natural course with him. I look forward to seeing a worse…Nov 6, 11:48
  • dad29 on Harris Prepares Ground for the Big Cheat: “The media is a direct reflection of the people. The media is out to sell advertising, and will show whatever…Nov 6, 09:26
  • Merlin on Congratulations, President Trump: “Now the challenge is to keep the man alive long enough to get the job done.Nov 6, 09:02
  • MjM on Congratulations, President Trump: “With 88% counted every WI county voted for the state constitutional amendment requiring US citizen-only voting. Except Dane. 71.3% for,…Nov 6, 01:03
  • Tuerqas on Election Eve: “We won’t downsize though. The people won’t permit it, especially as the media is run by Government, it is no…Nov 5, 17:04
  • jonnyv on Harris Prepares Ground for the Big Cheat: “T, typical that you try to put words in my mouth or change what was written. I clearly said that…Nov 5, 09:33
  • jonnyv on Election Eve: “Predictions anyone? I think Trump wins by a small margin (and AGAIN loses the popular vote). Rs have the senate.…Nov 5, 09:20

Archives

Categories

Contact B&S

Pin It on Pinterest