US President Joe Biden has agreed to give Ukraine anti-personnel land mines, a US defence official told the BBC, a move seen as an attempt to slow Russian troops who have been steadily advancing in Ukraine's east in recent months. read more
California's Unemployment Insurance Fund will end the year with a $21.7 billion debt to the federal government that will continue growing through 2025, according to the latest Unemployment Insurance Fund forecast from the Employment Development Department. The debt triggers an automatic tax increase on employers. The EDD's report stated that the debt triggered a $396 million tax increase on employers in 2023, projected to increase to $812 million this year " a cumulative $1.2 billion tax hike for just those two years. California's UI Fund, responsible for providing financial assistance to unemployed residents, has faced financial challenges since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund ended 2019 with a $3.3 billion surplus, but that reserve was quickly depleted due to a sharp rise in unemployment associated with the pandemic and government-mandated business closures. read more
A decade ago, when conservatives were attacking President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act as government encroachment in health care, they worked to amend state constitutions around the country to affirm a broad right for people to control their own medical decisions. "Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions," reads section 38(a) of the Wyoming constitution's Declaration of Rights, under the header "Right of healthcare access." The provision was placed on Wyoming's ballot by state lawmakers and approved by voters in 2012; voters saw ballot language that described the measure as preserving this right "from undue governmental infringement." Now these anti-ACA provisions"and their broad affirmations of a right to decide"have turned into an unlikely weapon in progressives' fight against restrictions on abortion. read more
Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, as mounting losses, unaffordable debt, increased competition for bargain-seeking airline passengers and the inability to merge with other airlines left it little choice. The airline said it will continue to operate as it restructures its debt. read more
SACRAMENTO, California " Phillips 66 announced Wednesday that it will close its Los Angeles oil refinery next year, citing "long-term uncertainty" two days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law clearing the way for new regulations on the state's refiners. The closure would knock out about 8 percent of refining capacity in a state that barely produces enough of its special-blend gasoline to meet demand from its 31 million gas-powered vehicles. read more
Update
Russia has unveiled a new weapon system as a warning to Ukraine and the West.
Russia has apparently launched a single RS-26 Rubezh road mobile missile against a target in Dnipro, Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk).
According to Ukrainian authorities, the missile struck an unnamed industrial enterprise.
Dnipro is home to the Pivdenmash (former Yuzhmash) missile production facility.
Analysis of imagery of the attack indicates the RS-26 carried six independent warheads, each in turn deploying several submunitions.
This warhead package is exclusively for conventional attack.
Russia had not been previously assessed to outfit the RS-26 with a warhead of this design.
By unveiling the conventionally armed RS-26, Russia is changing the qualitative nature of the conflict, something promised by President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine and its Western allies must now evaluate the destructive potential of this weapon, and understand that Russia can deliver this warhead to any target in Ukraine or Europe knowing there is no defense against it.
The RS-26 is produced in Votkinsk. It is assessed that the production of the RS-26, which was halted in 2017, was resumed this past summer. With production rates estimated at 6-8 missiles per month, Russia could have accumulated an arsenal of between 30-40 RS-26 missiles. Although described as an intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-26's range actually depends on the warhead package. If armed with a single warhead, it can exceed the 5,000 kilometer threshold used to differentiate between intermediate and intercontinental range missiles. The RS-26 did not go into serial production because of this ambiguity; at the time, Russia was a signatory to the INF treaty, which prohibited intermediate range missiles.
It is assessed that the six warhead conventional warhead package used against Dnipro would have made the RS-26 used fall into the intermediate range for classification.
Donald Trump withdrew from the INF treaty in 2019.
If the United States had remained in the treaty, this version of the RS-26 would not have been available for use by Russia.
x.com
You guys are rearranging the deck chairs
The ICBM launch is all that matters.
- Psychological warfare. In the minutes between the launch was detected and the warheads started detonating a lot of people in the Ukraine and the #West will have been delivered a a huge emotional shock.
- To test #Biden's response to a single missile nuclear strike on the Ukraine. There was no response.
- Even with a conventional payload, this was the most powerful strike since the war began. The target (potentially an important defense plant, Yuzhmash) will have suffered immense damage.
x.com
Little did California businesses know that they were cosigners on the state's nearly $20 billion loan from the federal government that was used to cover California's unemployment fund shortfall during the COVID pandemic.
This ugly truth became apparent when the state recently decided to stop making payments on this loan.
www.hoover.org
Russia and North Korea are actively attacking Ukrainians.
After decades of encroachment and lies from the west.
It was bound to happen, Washington wanted it to happen.
WATCH: Jeffrey Sachs tells the cold, hard truth how the US and NATO provoked war in Ukraine in 4 minutes
"It started in 1990, when US Secretary of State James Baker said to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward...
The US then cheated on this, starting in 1994, when Clinton signed off on a plan to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine.
The expansion of NATO started in 1999 with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Then, the US led the bombing of Serbia in 1999. That was the use of NATO to bomb a European capital for 78 straight days to break the country apart.
The Russians didn't like that very much, but even Putin started out pro-European and pro-American. He considered whether to join NATO when there was still the idea of some kind of mutually respectful relationship.
In 2002, the US unilaterally walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. What it did was trigger the US putting in missile systems in Eastern Europe that Russia views as a dire, direct threat to national security, by making possible a decapitation strike of missiles that are a few minutes away from Moscow.
In 2004-2005, the US engaged in a soft regime change in Ukraine, the so-called First Color Revolution.
In 2009, Yanukovych won the election and became president in 2010 on the basis of neutrality in Ukraine.
In 2014, the US participated actively in the overthrow of Yanukovych. Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine...talked about regime change. So they made the new government!
The US then said 'now NATO's really going to enlarge.' Putin kept saying 'stop, you promised no NATO enlargement.'
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, seven more countries in the 'not one inch eastward.'
In 2021, Putin put on the table a draft Russian-US security agreement. The basis of it was no NATO enlargement.
The special military operations started, and five days later Zelenskyy said 'okay, okay, neutrality.'
And then the US and Britain said no way, you guys fight on. We've got your back. That's 600,000 deaths now of Ukrainians since Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell them to be brave. Absolutely ghastly.
We're not dealing with, as we're told every day, this madman like Hitler. This is complete bogus, fake history that is a purely PR narrative of the US government.
We're playing games here. So God forbid a nuclear power comes at us. I don't know what's going to happen, but we came at them."
x.com
If the United States had remained in the treaty, this version of the RS-26 would not have been available for use by Russia.
This could be taken two ways.
1. The Russians couldn't have used this missile, it could only be used with a nuke.
2. The Russians were allowed to send a warning salvo to prevent nuclear war.
The West is in a precarious situation.