Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Author: Owen

Weber Makes Unfortunate Comment and Apologizes

Ope. Big ope. Honest ope, but yuge one. Hats off to Weber for the quick, direct, and full apology.

Jay Weber, a talk show host on WISN-Milwaukee, was slammed online after he called 17-year-old Gus Walz a ‘blubbering b**** boy’ for his emotional reaction to his father’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

 

[…]

 

In a now-deleted tweet, Weber wrote: ‘Sorry, but this is embarrassing for both father and son. If the Walzs represent today’s American man, this country is screwed; ‘Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering b**** boy. His mother and I are very proud.’

[…]

The comment came after Gus, who is neurodivergent, has ADHD, an anxiety disorder, and a non-verbal learning disorder, was seen tearfully exclaiming, ‘That’s my dad,’ during Governor Walz’s speech.

 

His emotional support of his father had many quick to call it ‘cringe-worthy’ before realizing the extent of his disabilities.

 

Weber quickly backtracked, after learning of the teen’s disorders.

 

‘I didn’t realize the kid was disabled, and have taken the post down,’ he wrote in a follow-up tweet.

 

In a longer apology posted Friday morning on X, Weber wrote: ‘This is a fuller apology for something stupid and hurtful I said yesterday. I said it without thinking or having the facts. No excuses. Having been a teacher, I’ve had a standard of never involving children, I broke that and I’m disappointed with myself.’

The Cost of Deportation

We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars PER YEAR on housing, schools, medical costs, law enforcement, welfare, etc. on illegal aliens. It is impossible to conceive a scenario where there isn’t a short ROI on deporting them as long as the border is secure enough to prevent most of them from coming back in.

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said the cost to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is justified and would not rule out separating families made up of citizens and noncitizens.

 

“It’ll cost trillions of dollars to keep these people, and I’m talking about in particular starting with the criminals,” Trump told NBC News in an interview during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. “That’s costing us a lot more than deporting. But we have no choice, regardless, we have no choice. We’re going to have to deport.”

 

When pressed, Trump provided no details on how he would pay for his plan, which could cost billions of dollars to implement at scale. Trump spent much of his first term fighting with Congress to give him money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, an expensive undertaking that the legislative branch never agreed to fund. Ultimately, he took the money from other parts of the Pentagon budget.

But notice how the media is already pretending to care about the cost. They are silent when Democrats find hundreds of billions of dollars to support illegal aliens already in this country, yet seem to think that it would be impossible to find the money for deportations. Remember how they bemoaned $5 billion to build the wall, but were unconcerned with spending 100 times more to pay for illegals who flowed across the border? I do.

Wisconsin DPI Lowers Performance Goals for Students

This happened a few months ago, but I missed it. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has lowered the performance levels for the Forward Exam – the state standardized test that we use to measure the success or failure of our schools. Put another way, the Government Education Complex was frustrated with the fact that test scores have been flat or declining for years, so they decided to lower the standards to make it look better.

The bars for labeling the comparative success of kids have been lowered. Lowered to levels that are more constructive, reasonable and realistic? To levels that undermine efforts to set rigorous goals and improve the overall achievement of Wisconsin students? Different people would have different opinions.

 

The bars — known as “cut scores” — mark the boundaries between one category of performance and the next higher or lower category on the tests. This fall, when information on state test results from last spring are released to the public, the percentages will rise, although by how much is not yet known.

They also changed the nomenclature to:

Advanced – The student demonstrates a thorough understanding of the
knowledge and skills described in the Wisconsin Academic Standards for their
grade level and is on-track for future learning.

• Meeting – The student is meeting the knowledge and skill expectations described
in the Wisconsin Academic Standards for their grade level and is on-track for
future learning.

• Approaching – The student is approaching the knowledge and skill expectations
described in the Wisconsin Academic Standards for their grade level needed to be
on-track for future learning.

• Developing – The student is at the beginning stages of developing the knowledge
and skills described in the Wisconsin Academic Standards for their grade level
needed to be on-track for future learning

It used to be Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic.

Look for the news stories when this year’s test results are released. I expect to see educrats celebrating a “rise in scores,” but remember that what actually happened is that we lowered the standards to appease crappy teachers.

Our government education system has been failing and collapsing for decades. We are larding up the bureaucracy with administrators and cost while educational performance keeps falling. We are filling up the curriculum with useless information and social engineering while other countries are teaching their kids how to be successful in the 21st century. We are failing our kids and the government’s response is to lower the standards and use different words to obfuscate their failures. Bad test scores are not an indictment of the kids. It is an indictment of the system and adults who are failing the kids.

 

Rumor of Beyonce at DNC Proves to be Another Lie

Way to cap off the DNC convention with yet another lie. This rumor was swirling for days. The DNC could have denied it at any time and chose not to do so. They let the rumor continue because they liked the buzz that it created. But their refusal to reveal the truth was just another lie in a convention full of them. The Democratic Party is the party where everything is made up and the truth doesn’t matter.

Beyoncé fans flooded the internet with memes after she was rumored to be performing at the Democratic National Convention but didn’t show.

 

Speculation swirled that the pop megastar would appear to endorse Kamala Harris for president and sing for the convention crowd on Thursday night.

 

Hours before Harris’ nomination speech, TMZ claimed Beyoncé was indeed the guest star, after letting the Harris campaign use her song Freedom in its ads.

 

[…]

 

It’s unclear exactly how the rumor started – and why cold water was never thrown on it before the 11th hour.

 

The memes began in earnest, as they always do, joking that Beyoncé arrived but changed her mind in the parking lot and left, or slept through the convention.

 

Another showed the singer and Taylor Swift eating popcorn in an empty theatre, joking they were watching the DNC from home.

 

Others showed clips from Joe Biden angrily denouncing Donald Trump in a speech as if he were attacking whoever started the Beyoncé rumor.

Chinese Car Sales Surpass American Car Sales in Mexico

This is happening all over the world. As the U.S. and European countries pile on the regulations that make our cars prohibitively expensive, the rest of the world is still looking for good, reliable, cheap transportation. China is filling the void. It is yet another area where the U.S. is ceding global leadership.

Last year, China was the leading car supplier to Mexico, exporting $4.6 billion worth of vehicles to the country, according to the Mexican Ministry of Economy. Even customers wary of EVs have been won over by affordable price tags. Tesla rival BYD sells its Dolphin Mini in Mexico for around 398,800 pesos, or about $21,300, a little over half the price of the cheapest Tesla.

“The Chinese automakers came to the country very aggressively,” said Juan Carlos Baker, former Mexican deputy minister for international trade. “They have very good promotions. It’s a good product that sells at a very reasonable price.”

 

Some Chinese EV makers, including BYD, have been looking for a further foothold in North America by exploring factory sites in the Mexican states of Durango, Jalisco and Nuevo Leon. The foreign investment would be an economic boost for Mexico. BYD has claimed that a plant there would create around 10,000 jobs.

 

UW to Ask for $855 Million More

How about…. no.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Universities of Wisconsin regents agreed overwhelmingly on Thursday to ask Gov. Tony Evers for an additional $855 million for the cash-strapped system in the next state budget.

This.

The Universities are educating 17,297 fewer people. That’s like the entire population of Kaukauna or Cudahy. Why would the taxpayers spend another $855 million to educate fewer people?

Wisconsin Leftist Judges Work to Rig Election

The leftist judges on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are actually doing the work of the DNC to keep the Green Party off the ballot. Where are the Greens?

(The Center Square) – Following the Wisconsin Election Commission’s dismissal of a complaint from a Democratic National Committee staffer, who seeks to remove Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the ballot, the plaintiff has doubled down and filed an expedited appeal with the state’s Supreme Court.

Court documents reveal it accepted the case Thursday and is requesting that the plaintiff provide additional information, actions that have caused two Supreme Court justices to dissent.

“The majority issues an unprecedented order directing the petitioner – within two hours – to give the court contact information for the respondents, which is currently absent from the record because no one has entered an appearance on behalf of any of those parties. How is the petitioner – an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – supposed to know the name or physical address of an ‘attorney or other representative of each respondent who is authorized to accept service of orders issued by this court’?” Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote in dissent of the Supreme Court’s majority ruling. “To my knowledge, at no time in history has the court issued orders before parties had made their appearances. Petitioner filed this original action on Monday, served the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Tuesday, and served the Wisconsin Green Party just yesterday. The majority steps beyond its neutral role to lawyer the case on behalf of the DNC, seemingly facilitating an expedited review of this original action. Other parties presenting original action petitions have not received such preferential treatment by this court.”

Obama Twists Knife in Biden’s Back

Ouch.

A White House aide reportedly called Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention an “implicit rebuke” to President Joe Biden’s term, perpetuating rumors that there is a rift between the president and his former boss Barack Obama.

 

[…]

 

“It was an implicit rebuke of the Biden era,” the source told Politico, claiming that the former first lady seemed to be blending together the Trump and Biden presidencies into one dreary era in US history.

 

The aide’s comment furthers swirling theories that there is some continuing tension between Obama and Biden.

 

Last week, sources told Politico that Biden will not stay in Chicago to hear Obama’s speech because he harbors resentment toward his former boss for not directly calling him to voice his concerns about his re-election chances.

Biden Starts Protecting Illegals from Deportation

Read this story and think to yourself… how much vetting did the Biden administration really do before granting the illegal immigrant protection from deportation? They are likely getting thousands and thousands of applications. Are they really checking the information in them if they are able to grant immunity in 24 hours?

Cecilia sat in front of her computer repeatedly refreshing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage on Monday, waiting for the application for the Biden administration’s “Keeping Families Together” program to show up on her screen.

 

Minutes later, she clicked it open and submitted the form in less than 20 minutes.

 

A little more than 24 hours later, she got an e-mail sharing the news that she had been waiting 20 years to hear.

 

“I see that I got approved, and I’m like, oh that was quick,” she told ABC News in an interview. “I was lost for words…a whole bunch of emotions were going on.”

 

Cecilia, who asked ABC News not to disclose her full name so she can freely disclose her immigration status, is one of the first immigrants to receive parole in place, a temporary relief from deportation under a new program that allows undocumented spouses and stepchildren of United States citizens to apply for permanent legal residence without having to leave the country.

Target CEO Rejects Accusation of Price Gouging

Remember that he is a big-time Lefty.

There’s no room for price gouging in a ultra-competitive business like retail, Target CEO Brian Cornell said on Wednesday.

 

In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the retail chief disputed campaign talking points accusing grocers of inflating prices. He said retailers have to be responsive to customers or risk losing business.

He was asked by CNBC’s Joe Kernen, who referred to comments by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and asked if Target or its competitors ever benefit from price gouging. Harris last week proposed the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” saying some companies are charging excessively and fueling household inflation.

 

“We’re in a penny business,” Cornell responded, noting the small profit margins in the retail industry. He described the many places that customers can turn to check for lower prices or to find merchandise elsewhere, from going to stores to browsing on their phones to compare the prices of a gallon of milk at different retailers.

Sadly, Kamala Harris and the Leftists have been successful in pivoting the discussion away from inflation to corporate behavior. The reality is that prices have gone up substantially under Biden/Harris. This is textbook inflation. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. This causes the value of the currency to decrease because it takes more money to buy the same value. Inflation cannot be caused by the private economy because that economy does not control the money. Government does. Inflation is caused by the government printing or spending more money than the economy can naturally absorb. In the case of our current economy, it is both. The federal government is spending a gargantuan amount of money, but since they don’t have enough tax revenue to cover the spending, they are just printing money to cover the cost.

The only real fix for inflation is to dramatically reduce government spending. The reason that the Democrats don’t want to do that is because federal spending has become a gigantic gravy train for millions of people. If they cut it off, it will anger those people. So the resistance to doing what needs to be done to fix inflation is not an economic one… it’s a political one.

Drastically reducing federal spending would also trigger a recession. All of that spending goes somewhere and if it is cut off, those jobs and businesses go away. It will take some time for the Invisible Hand of our economy to reallocate those resources to more productive means. It would be painful. But it is also the only way and the alternative is that we continue to devalue our currency to the point that there is no wealth left for anyone except political elites. This is where the current path leads and has been replicated dozens of times in modern history.

I know this seems elementary to most of our readers, but this kind of simple economic understanding is being lost. A natural result of the decline of education in America is that we have two generations of people who have not been taught the very basic understanding of how our government and economy works. And yes, I believe that our education was intentionally changed to achieve the level of ignorance necessary for communism to take root.

Trump Proposes Ending EV Tax Credit

Yes.

YORK, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday that if elected he would consider ending a $7,500 tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases and that he would be open to naming Tesla CEO Elon Musk to a cabinet or advisory role.

 

“Tax credits and tax incentives are not generally a very good thing,” Trump told Reuters in an interview after a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, when asked about the EV credit.

Asked if he would consider naming Musk to an advisory role or cabinet job, Trump said he would. “He’s a very smart guy. I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would. He’s a brilliant guy,” Trump said.

Biden’s Self-Eulogy

This about sums it up.

Emotional Joe Biden cries then mangles his words during swansong speech that is bumped off primetime in final humiliation for dumped president

I stayed up late to watch Biden live. It was everything we have come to expect from Biden. Shouting. Outright lies. Slurs. Insults. Insults. One might have felt bad for him having to give his own political eulogy if one is willing to willfully forget how terrible a human being Joe Biden is. The only thing missing was the creepy whisper.

Iran Hacked Trump Campaign

Clearly, Iran has a favorite in this race and a vested interest in the outcome.

Iran was behind the recent hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, US intelligence officials have confirmed.

 

The FBI and other federal agencies said in a joint statement that Iran had chosen to interfere in the US election “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”.

 

The Trump campaign pointed the finger at Iran on 10 August for hacking its internal messages. Iranian officials denied it.

 

Sources familiar with the investigation told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that they suspect Iranian hackers also targeted the campaign of Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris.

Notice how the story is written… we confirm that Iran hacked Trump, but to give the appearance that Iran hates Harris just as much, we get unnamed “sources familiar with the investigation” saying that they “suspect” that Iran “targeted” Harris too. There is no evidence or named sources to back it up, but the FBI and media have to run cover for Harris.

Car Insurance Skyrocketing Under Biden/Harris

We will see more and more of this if we elect Harris to continue and accelerate Biden’s terrible policies.

There’s some bad news ahead for the nation’s car owners, with a new report forecasting that auto insurance — one of the biggest drivers of inflation this year — will continue to rise in 2024. In fact, residents of three states could see their coverage rates spike by 50% in 2024.

 

That’s according to a new report from Insurify, a company that provides data about auto insurance rates. The typical U.S. insurance policy will jump 22% this year to an average annual premium of $2,469 by year-end, the report found. That comes after drivers saw their policies jump 24% in 2023, it noted.

 

The three states where insurance rates could jump by more than 50% this year are California, Minnesota and Missouri, the Insurify report found. Drivers in those states could see their rates rise by 54%, 61% and 55%, respectively.

 

[…]

 

First, the costs paid by insurance providers to repair vehicles after an accident, such as for labor and parts, have increased more than 40%, and insurers are passing those increases onto drivers. Secondly, because lawyers are more often involved in handling accident claims than in prior years, settlements are increasing, which also boosts insurance costs.

Harris Seeks to Introduce Herself to Public

They’re kidding, right?

WASHINGTON — A mad scramble is underway to introduce Vice President Kamala Harris to Americans who know little about her, with both campaigns vying to leave a vivid impression that sinks in before voters start casting ballots this fall.

 

In the 11-week sprint to the election, Harris’ campaign is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an ad blitz meant to humanize a candidate whom the electorate may know only as the understudy to Joe Biden.

She is the former AG of one of our largest states. She is a former U.S. Senator. And she is the sitting Vice President. The American people know who Kamala Harris is.

The real problem is that the American people know who Kamala Harris is. Get it? So the effort here is really to introduce a different, electable version of Kamala who isn’t a dim-witted, mean, condescending Communist. It’s a con.

Trump’s Agenda in 36 Words

Yes. More of this.

‘Basically, we’re going to drill, baby drill, get the energy prices down, almost immediately, we’re going to close the border and get the bad ones out,’ the Republican began.  ‘And we’re gonna let a lot of people come in.’

There is almost universal support for welcoming more legal immigrants into our nation. We are, as they say, a nation of immigrants, after all. But we need to keep out the crooks and the communists. And we need to lean heavily toward people with valuable skills that will benefit our nation and allow them to support themselves. That allows for a reasonable number of true refugees too.

Harris Proposes Communism to Heal Economy

Goodness… Let’s take it in pieces.

The campaign’s proposals include a “first-ever” tax credit for builders of homes sold to first-time buyers, as well as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for “eligible” first time buyers, a move that her campaign estimated could reach four million households over four years.

So…. welfare for “eligible” (a.k.a. “people from whom the politicians want to buy support”) home buyers. Much like government spending in education, healthcare, etc., the effect will be for the price of every home to go up by $25k. Meanwhile, it will drive prices further up by increasing demand.

She has also called for capping the monthly price of diabetes-drug insulin at $35 for everyone

Price controls from the government never work. Never. Ever. In the history of economies. What happens is that the incentive to create whatever the product is is removed, so people stop making the product. Why make a product that you can’t make money on? Then the government has to step in to become the means of production too. Then you have… communism. All of this must, of course, be enforced with the violent power of government.

, finding ways to cancel medical debt,

Just like with student loans, there is no such thing as “canceling debt.” The government does not have the power to make debt disappear. The government does have the power to pay that debt or force a private enterprise to write off the debt, but in both cases, all that is doing is transferring the debt from one person to another person. It is the forced transfer of wealth. Again… communism.

and giving families a $6,000 tax credit the year they have a new child.

They made fun of JD Vance for suggesting an increase to the child tax credit, but here we are. Even as it is, the child tax credit is a form of welfare by shifting the expense of government to people without children. We can debate whether or not it is good for the general welfare for the general public to subsidize families in this way, but it is what it is.

She is supporting a federal law banning firms from charging excessive prices on groceries and urged action on a bill in Congress that would bar property owners from using services that “coordinate” rents.

More price controls enforced by the violent power of government. If we want rampant shortages of food and housing with a collapse of the dollar, by all means… let’s go this route /sarcasm.

There is a very clear contrast on the ballot this year. It’s not Liberal vs. Conservative. It’s Communist vs. Populist. I’m not a fan of either, but one is a proven path to tyranny and ruin.

Ukraine Invades Russia

Well, isn’t this a pickle.

US officials are assessing how the incursion might reshape the political and military dynamics of the war, as well as the implications for Washington’s long-shifting stance on how Ukraine can use American-supplied arms.

 

The stunning raid, catching both Russian and apparently Western leaders by surprise, highlights one of the riskiest dilemmas for the Western-backed defence of Ukraine: President Biden has consistently tried to empower Kyiv to push back Russia’s invasion without risking an American escalation with Moscow. As President Putin has always tried to portray the conflict as a war between Russia and the West, Mr Biden has sought to put clear limits on US policy to deflate that narrative and prevent a conflagration.

 

But Ukraine’s Kursk assault – the largest incursion into Russia by a foreign military since World War Two, according to military analysts – has raised a series of urgent questions for the White House. Does it rapidly expand the boundaries of Washington’s set limits for how Ukraine can use American and Nato weapons systems? Does it risk crossing Russia’s red lines over Western involvement in the war? If not, has President Zelensky showed Washington he can call Mr Putin’s bluff?

I know that I break ranks with many of my conservative brethren on this war, but I do not think that is in our national interest to prop up Zelensky’s dictatorial regime in opposition to Putin’s. Yes, I get that Ukraine is bleeding out Russia’s military capacity. Yes, I understand that a Russian victory would make it slightly easier for Putin to invade a NATO country, thus pulling the U.S. into a hot war. That risk is, however, minimal.

But I also understand that Russia occupying a hostile Ukranian population would keep Putin bloodied and distracted for years. And Ukraine was a corrupt oligarchy before Russia invaded it. It was only marginally better than Russia in the first place.

Also, by leaning into this war so hard supporting Ukraine, we have pushed Russia and China closer together. We have also incented Putin to attempt to launch proxy wars to attack our interests in other regions. And while the war may be bleeding Russia’s military, it is having the same impact on the American military readiness and economy.

So what do we do now? The veneer of Ukraine fighting a defensive war to push Russia out of their national territory has been shorn off. Now Ukraine is an active belligerent that is occupying Russia’s national territory. Should we really be supporting one side over the other in a regional war? Or should we be focused on arming and fortifying our NATO allies that border Russia and Ukraine? Given the absence of leadership in America, what is our national policy here?

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