Dear President Putin:
Since the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year I have tried to use my small influence to encourage a ceasefire and a diplomatic settlement that addresses the security needs of both Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
In that endeavor I have written two open letters to Mrs Olena Zelenska, the the wife of the Ukrainian president. These letters are readily available on the Internet. I am increasingly asked to write to you too, so here goes.
First, would you like to see an end to this war? If you were to reply and say, “Yes please,” that would immediately make things a lot easier. If you were to come out and say, “Also the Russian Federation has no further territorial interest beyond the security of the Russian-speaking populations of the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk,” that would help too.
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The U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday to strike down Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion.
In the 6-3 decision, along party lines, the court ruled that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.”
Abortion laws and restrictions vary by state and, now the federal protection has been overturned, abortion will not be accessible everywhere in the U.S.
Some states have trigger laws in place that immediately ban abortion once Roe was overturned. Others guarantee the right to an abortion via laws or constitutional amendments.
Here is where abortion laws stand in each state, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that focuses on sexual and reproductive health, and further reporting.
Continue readingA terrorist plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush in revenge for the Iraq War was uncovered earlier this year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in an unsealed search warrant.
Shihab Ahmed Shihab, an Iraqi asylum seeker, described the plan to a paid FBI informant who also drove the suspect around Dallas to conduct surveillance on Bush’s home and offices in February, according to a March 23 search warrant unsealed last month in federal court in Columbus, Ohio.
The plotters “wished to kill former president Bush because they felt that he was responsible for killing many Iraqis and breaking apart the entire country of Iraq,” FBI Special Agent John Ypsilantis, a member of Joint Terrorism Task Force in Cincinnati, said in the filing.
The warrant, first reported on Tuesday by Forbes, has been resealed. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Cincinnati declined to comment. Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Citing operational security, Secret Service Special Agent Steve Kopek declined to comment on the matter except to say the “US Secret Service takes all threats to our protectees seriously.”
ISIS Support
Four Iraqi nationals, two of whom are ex-intelligence agents, were to be smuggled into the US from Turkey, Egypt and Denmark as part of the plot, the FBI agent said. The plan involved getting the plotters into Mexico and then crossing the border into Texas, Ypsilantis said.
Though Shihab was not himself a member of the Islamic State militant group, the warrant described the smuggling plot as an “attempt to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, specifically ISIS.”
A Columbus resident, Shihab asked the informant for details about security operations at Bush’s home in Dallas and Crawford, Texas, ranch, the FBI agent said. In February, the informant picked up Shihab at the airport in Dallas and assisted him as he used his phone to record video of Bush’s gated home as well as the library and offices at the George W. Bush Institute, according to the filing.
Shihab allegedly told the informant “that he wanted to be involved in the actual attack and assassination” and that he “did not care if he died as he would be proud to have been involved.” according to the search warrant.
He also inquired about how to obtain fake FBI or police badges, the FBI said. The informant has been supplying information in exchange for money for over 10 years and recorded many of his conversations with Shihab, according to the filing.
Bush last week reignited controversy over the war when he inadvertently transposed “Iraq” for “Ukraine” while criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin for a launching a “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion.”
If you’ve heard people chanting “Let’s go, Brandon!” or seen someone with a shirt or hat sporting the seemingly-jovial message lately, you might be wondering who Brandon is and why so many people are rooting for him.
In this case, the phrase isn’t actually supporting a guy named Brandon. Instead, it’s a euphemism that many people in conservative circles are using in place of saying “F*** Joe Biden.”
The origins of the meme go back to Oct. 2, when race car driver Brandon Brown won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race and was being interviewed by NBC reporter Kelli Stavast. In the background, some in the crowd can be heard chanting “F*** Joe Biden,” though Stavast says “you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’ ” in her broadcast.
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How concerned should we be about America’s $28 trillion debt?
America has a problem. Well, almost 28,000,000,000,000 problems.
The national debt has ballooned to an astounding 27.9 trillion dollars. To put in perspective of just how much money that is, consider this.
If you were to stack $100 bills on top of each other, one million dollars would be around the three feet mark – about the height of a chair or a toddler.
And if you keep stacking the $100 bills, eventually past the peak of the world’s tallest building, going a little over half-a-mile into the air, this would be one billion dollars.
But we’re going for a trillion.
This would have you stacking $100 bills into the stratosphere and past the International Space Station. You would have to stack these bills 631 miles above Earth’s crust. That would equal one trillion dollars. Now imagine 28 stacks of 631 mile-high $100 bills.
That’s America’s debt.
Continue readingPresident Biden Proposed raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15.00/hour as part of his $1.9 billion stimulus plan.
Americans have debated where to set the federal minimum wage for decades. President Joe Biden’s proposed stimulus plan aims to increase the federal minimum to $15 an hour, more than doubling the current wage of $7.25. Currently, wages vary by state, with some cities mandating more than double the federal minimum and other states with requirements below $7.25. Employees covered by both state and federal minimum wage laws are entitled to the higher of the two minimums.
How many people earn the federal minimum wage?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 1.6 million workers, or 1.9% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers, earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage in 2019. That year, 82.3 million people were paid hourly rates, making up 58.1% of all wage and salary workers in the United States.
Fewer Americans today make the federal minimum wage or less.
In 1980, when the federal minimum wage was $3.10 ($9.86 in 2019 dollars), 13% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Today, only 1.9% of hourly workers do. The number of federal minimum wage workers has decreased from 7.7 million in 1980 to 1.6 million in 2019. This is partly due to states establishing higher minimum wages than the federal level.