A small amount of justice for a murder that would not have happened if we had a secure border. May her family find some peace.
The man accused of killing Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, at the University of Georgia in February was found guilty of murder on Wednesday. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, is a Venezuelan citizen who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2022. He was released by border officials while his immigration case was awaiting review, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
by Owen | 2139, 20 Nov 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
Heh. Delta Airlines is one of the most woke large corporations out there and has been increasingly vocal. That fact makes this comment all the more interesting.
The chief executive of Delta Air Lines says the incoming Trump administration will be a “breath of fresh air” for airlines after what he calls government “overreach” under President Joe Biden.
Interesting stuff. I’m certainly not an expert on New Zealand politics, but it appears that, in response to historic injustices against the Maori people, the laws have gradually come to favor them with special privileges. This bill would reset their laws to a status of everyone being equal under the law. The Maori people are opposing equality. This is something we may see in the U.S. some day if/when people get frustrated with the Native American tribes having special privileges under the law.
The ACT Party asserts that the treaty has been misinterpreted over the decades and that this has led to the formation of a dual system for New Zealanders, where Maori and white New Zealanders have different political and legal rights. Seymour says that misinterpretations of the treaty’s meaning have effectively given Maori people special treatment. The bill calls for an end to “division by race”.
Seymour said that the principle of “ethnic quotas in public institutions”, for example, is contrary to the principle of equality.
The bill seeks to set specific definitions of the treaty’s principles, which are currently flexible and open to interpretation. These principles would then apply to all New Zealanders equally, whether they are Maori or not.
According to Together for Te Tiriti, an initiative led by ActionStation Aotearoa, the bill will allow the New Zealand government to govern all New Zealanders and consider all New Zealanders equal under the law. Activists say this will effectively disadvantage the Maori people because they have been historically oppressed.
by Owen | 2028, 19 Nov 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
One can hope. I don’t want a better Department of Education. I don’t want the Department of Education to exist.
Linda McMahon, co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team, has been nominated for education secretary in his upcoming administration.
In a statement, Trump extolled the “incredible” job she was doing as transition team co-chair and said: “As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families. … We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
TEL AVIV—As Israel advances its invasion of southern Lebanon, its troops are finding large troves of Russian weapons, confirming longstanding suspicions in Israel that Hezbollah is enhancing its fighting capacity with the help of sophisticated Russian arms.
Some of the weapons, which include modern Kornet antitank missiles manufactured as recently as 2020, were sent to southern Lebanon in recent years from Russian stockpiles in neighboring Syria, according to Syrian security officials and an Arab official. Russia has long provided arms to Syria’s military, as well as controlling its own warehouses in the country.
I’ve returned home after several days attending to wonderful family things and spending a couple days in our nation’s capital. No, I am not being considered for a cabinet post. Or am I?!?! Here are a couple of thoughts on recent events:
President Biden, or someone in his administration, just committed a bona fide act of war against a nuclear power by authorizing Ukraine to use American weaponry to strike deep into Russia. The deliberate escalation of a war by a lame duck president whose party was just resoundingly rejected by the American people is unconscionable. He is risking nuclear annihilation and sacrificing the lives of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians. Why? My guess is that the Biden Administration if trying to make it impossible for Trump to exit the Ukrainian war by escalating it for the purpose of keeping the military-industrial complex fed and to protect his family’s dealings in that rotten country. If there is anything about which Biden has been consistent, it is using his power and office for personal gain.
Except for Gaetz and Oz, I rather like Trump’s appointments so far. The American people voted for radical change and Trump is bringing in people who are capable of delivering it. I hope they all have the stomach to see it through for the sake of our children and their children. It is going to get nasty when swaths of bureaucrats are unemployed, and the federal spigots turn off. But for the sake of our children, it needs to happen.
This week I visited, amongst other things, Arlington House and Mt. Vernon. Both places gave honorable recognition to the enslaved people who serviced both Lee and Washington while still honoring these complex, yet important, Americans (no, I am not equating the two men, but they are both important parts of our American story). Well done.
Also in D.C., it was interesting how prevalent Trump gear was. I even saw two girls in a middle school group wearing MAGA hats. For the bluest of blue cities, Trump support was surprisingly strong.
It is insane that some states are still counting votes. Impoverished Third World countries are laughing at us.
The messages “appear to be robotext messages,” and the Nevada’s Attorney General’s Office is working with law enforcement to investigate their source, the office said in a statement on X.
Whoever is sending the racist text messages is using anonymizing software to obscure their location, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told CNN on Friday. At least some of the messages were sent using an email service routing traffic through Poland, but it does not mean it is where the sender is, the attorney general said.
“They could be coming from Napoleonville, Louisiana, for all we know. We don’t know where they are originating from,” Murrill said.
Murrill said Thursday she directed state investigators “to fully investigate the origins of these disgusting texts that only intend to divide us.” The Louisiana Bureau of Investigations is “still trying to trace where everything is actually originating from,” she told CNN.
Attorneys general in Washington, DC, Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland have condemned the messages and urged those who feel under threat to contact law enforcement.
Ultimately, it’s up to Ukraine and Russia to end the war. Our choice, as Americans, is to decide how much more we will finance and how and whether we will use our power to help bring it to an end. But this is correct. If Zelensky wants to reclaim Crimea or expand the borders of Ukraine elsewhere, then there is not a path to peace.
A senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump says the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling the country to gain back territory occupied by Russia.
Bryan Lanza, a Republican party strategist, told the BBC the Trump administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a “realistic vision for peace”.
“And if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he’s not serious,” he said. “Crimea is gone.”
[…]
Mr Lanza, Trump’s political adviser since his 2016 campaign, did not mention areas of eastern Ukraine, but he said regaining Crimea from Russia was unrealistic and “not the goal of the United States”.
“When Zelensky says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelensky: Crimea is gone,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme.
“And if that is your priority of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you’re on your own.”
The Dutch king says Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, after violent attacks against Israeli football fans in the centre of Amsterdam.
Willem-Alexander said “our history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse,” adding that the country could not ignore “antisemitic behaviour”.
Youths on scooters had criss-crossed the Dutch capital in “hit-and-run” attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters who were visiting Amsterdam for a Europa League match, authorities said.
Police said five people were treated in hospital and others suffered minor injuries. At least 62 people have been arrested.
by Owen | 1914, 8 Nov 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
They should worry. Frankly, given the amount of bloat even in just the past few years, I’d guess that we could cut 30% of the workforce and not even notice. Then eliminate and consolidate departments to scale back further. It should be easy, but it won’t be. I hope that Trump has the stomach to make real, necessary changes.
Trump, in his formal campaign platform, called to redistribute workers out of the Washington area and implement large-scale cuts to the federal government, which he has long derided as harboring members of the “deep state.” Before leaving office in 2020, he issued an executive order that made tens of thousands of employees subject to firing with little due process if they were found to have resisted the administration’s policies – a move unwound by the Biden administration that Trump’s allies have vowed to restore. His calls for cuts have been amplified by surrogates such as billionaire Elon Musk, who insists such moves are necessary to cut down on waste and inefficiency.
What? Liberal women jump on board a fad without knowing what it actually is? Shiver me timbers. As a man, I’m pretty happy that I won’t have to interact with these women.
Donald Trump’s reelection has triggered a wave of social media posts and search interest in the “4B” movement, a fringe feminist trend that started in South Korea in 2018. Partially inspired by the #MeToo movement in the United States, 4B encourages women to cut ties to men altogether.
[…]
4B (4非) is shorthand for four Korean words that all start with bi- or “no”: bBihon, the refusal of heterosexual marriage; bichulsan, the refusal of childbirth; biyeonae, refusal to date; and bisekseu, the rejection of heterosexual relationships between men and women. The 4B movement essentially encouraged women to boycott all types of relationships with men — both romantic and platonic. 4B was also born out of another Korean feminist movement, tal-corset(“escape the corset”), in which women rejected societally imposed beauty standards by cutting their hair short and not wearing makeup in public.
It’s also worth noting that a number ofKorean womenon social media have emphasized that the 4B movement is pretty radical and not as mainstream as some Western coverage is making it out to be. It also has faced some backlash for allegedly being exclusionary to LGBTQIA+ women since the focus is on cisgender heterosexual relationships.
What do West Bend and Madison have in common? They both passed idiotic, wasteful school referendums that will strangle your taxpayers for decades to come. And neither referendum will result in a single kid getting a better education. But it’s not really about the kids, is it?
by Owen | 2110, 6 Nov 2424 | Politics | 21 Comments
Now that we’ve had a bit of time to reflect, it’s worth thinking about why Trump won. At the end of the day, I think it’s pretty simple. Trump won because of the fundamentals. We are at the tail end of a failed presidency where inflation has eaten away the quality of life of Americans, the pressures put on society by the open border (crime, wage pressure, housing, social safety net, schools, etc.) are real, and echos of totalitarianism felt during and since the pandemic scare people. Americans want change. Biden and Harris were not going to offer that change.
Trump was a flawed candidate for many reasons. He may have won despite that. Maybe. Or he may have won because of that. While flawed, he is unquestionably a tough change agent who has the capacity to effect meaningful change in the way our federal government operates. He is not about incremental change this time. And that’s what people want. We’ll never know if DeSantis or Abbot or someone would have won by a larger margin. What we do know is that Trump DID win. And he won because more Americans want him in the White House than those who didn’t. The same Americans who gave Obama two terms and Biden one term are the same ones who elected Trump. They are not bigoted, stupid, crazy, sexist, or fooled. They know who Trump is. They want change from the misery of the Biden years and Trump is the most likely instrument of that change. It’s as simple as that.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
